Tag Archives: Book

Two Books For The Weekend (10/10/26)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been watching Mike Flanagan’s Carrie on Prime.  I’ve made it through four episodes and to say that I’m not enjoying it would be an understatement.  The miniseries is spending 8 hours on a story that Stephen King handled in about 200 pages and which Brian De Palma was able to tell in a little over 90 minutes.  Of course, De Palma was smart enough not to give Carrie an invisible friend.  He also didn’t introduce a psychic cult.  De Palma knew the story worked as it was.

If you haven’t read Stephen King’s original novel, you really should.  That’s especially true if you’re currently watching the Flanagan miniseries and you’re wondering what all of the complaints are about.  Carrie was King’s first published novel and King himself has admitted that it’s a flawed work.  It’s a mix of passages that are definitely the work of King and excerpts from government hearings, Carrie’s notebook, and Sue Snell’s autobiography.  The split format shows that King still wasn’t totally sure how he wanted to tell the story.  That said, when the book works, it really does work.  King doesn’t shy away from Carrie’s anger and bitterness.  He doesn’t try to make the story about anything more than what it is.  And even the government hearings and Sue Snell’s autobiography show us that Carrie, the outcast with telekinetic powers, will never be forgotten.

For the record, I do know that King has endorsed Flanagan’s revisions.  With the exception of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Stephen King tends to endorse everything and one gets the feeling that, much as was the case with Frank Darabont, King enjoys the fact that Flanagan is such a fan.  That’s just human nature.  That said, the novel, flaws and all, is infinitely superior to Flanagan’s miniseries.

Again, as I mentioned in my previous post, if you’re watching Flanagan’s miniseries but haven’t seen Brian De Palma’s film, that’s something you need to rectify.  After you watch Brian De Palma’s film, be sure to check out Like Being On Mars: An Oral History Of Carrie (1976) by Lee Gambin.  This book is all about the production of the film that changed horror in much the same way that Star Wars, a year later, would later change science-fiction.  Gambin interviews the key players: Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Nancy Allen, Amy Irving, William Katt, P.J. Soles, De Palma, Stephen King, and even Bill Paxton!  (Paxton worked on the crew.)  It’s a great book for lovers of both movies and horror.

Book Review: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies by Phil Hardy

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh, how I love Half-Price Books!

Whenever I browse through Half-Price Books (and yes, you can order from the store online, but a used bookstore really is someplace you should visit in person), I always hit the Film, TV, Music aisle immediately after checking out the American History section. That was where I found The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies. I purchased it. I can’t remember how much it cost, but I didn’t care. It was an encyclopedia of movies. I had to have a copy.

It’s a great collection of reviews. The films are listed by year, so you can actually chart how the genre developed, and flipping through this book definitely helped me develop a better understanding and appreciation of science fiction movies. (And, of course, quite a few of the films reviewed were also horror films that happened to have science fiction elements.) Now, of course, I should mention that this book was published in 1986 and, as a result, it ends with the year 1985. But you know what? I don’t really need a guide to recent films. I’ve either seen or heard about most of the recent science fiction films. What I do need is a guide to the films that were made before I was even born. This book has introduced me to films that I otherwise would never have heard about. That’s the most important thing that a film guide can do!

The reviews are short, well-written, and opinionated. Because the book was published in the UK, a lot of American films that were made for television are reviewed as feature films, because that’s what they were in Europe. It’s an entertaining book, one that you can happily flip through with the knowledge that you’ll find something worth examining on each page.

This book can be ordered from all the usual suspects. I’ve seen it going for as little as $4. Don’t look for it at Half-Price Books. I grabbed the last copy.

Horror Book Review: The Fury by John Farris

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 1976, John Farris’s The Fury tells the story of two teenagers whose powers could change the world. Robin and Gillian both possess potentially devastating psychic abilities. Robin is the son of Peter, a government assassin. Peter’s boss, a demented film lover named Childermass, eventually learns of Robin’s power and kidnaps him. Peter is led to believe Robin is dead; Robin is led to believe the same of Peter. Gillian, meanwhile, is Robin’s psychic twin. The book implies that Robin and Gillian have lived several past lives, always connected and always returning after death. Robin realizes this. Gillian does not, and is genuinely confused by her powers.

While Robin and his growing abilities are manipulated by a doctor ordered to keep him placated through sex, Childermass spends his time trying to track down Gillian. Peter, having discovered that Robin isn’t dead, is now searching for Gillian as well.

The Fury is a tawdry, pulpy mix of psychic horror and over-the-top espionage, a collision of the entertainingly sordid and the shockingly vulgar. (Let’s just say the novel goes into a lot of detail about how Robin is seduced by his psychiatrist.) If the plot seems familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen Brian De Palma’s film adaptation. Farris wrote both the novel and the screenplay. As over-the-top as De Palma’s version was — he was still riding high on Carrie, so he got to indulge every trademark flourish — Farris’s novel is somehow even more flamboyant, stuffed with odd characters and action sequences that sometimes seem to erupt almost at random. That actually works in the book’s favor. It creates a secret world of psychics, assassins, and pervy doctors living in the shadows of ours.

It’s very much a book of the ’70s, and as with any work that epitomizes an era, whether that’s a problem depends on how easily offended the reader is. It mixes Watergate-era paranoia with telekinetic mayhem and even a hint of New Age nonsense. It also features sex scenes that almost read like a parody of ’70s swinger culture — though it’s harder to laugh when you remember Robin is meant to be 14 in the novel. (When De Palma made the film, he was smart enough to cast actors in their twenties and keep the characters’ ages ambiguous.) It’s sordid and trashy in a way few authors could get away with today.

Sordid and trashy, but undeniably entertaining. That’s The Fury.

Horror Book Review: First Blood by David Morrell

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 1972, David Morrell’s First Blood tells the story of two men who go to war in what was then contemporary Kentucky.

Police Chief Wilfred Teasle runs Madison, Kentucky. He’s a Korean War veteran trusted with keeping his town quiet. When he spots a young, long-haired drifter, he harasses him and tries to run him out. When the drifter keeps coming back, Teasle arrests him. What Teasle doesn’t understand is that the young man is Rambo, a Vietnam veteran and former Green Beret still carrying the PTSD from his time as a POW. Triggered by a claustrophobic cell and the deputies putting hands on him, Rambo escapes into the mountains. One deputy dies in the station. Three more die on the first pursuit. Teasle becomes obsessed with taking him down even as his own injuries mount. Rambo knows he could slip the net and keep walking. The fight feels too good to leave. Many more people die before the novel reaches its tragic conclusion.

First Blood the novel is not a novelization of the film it later inspired. Rambo is not the misunderstood victim of the movie. He’s a mentally unstable man who kills numerous deputies and National Guardsmen. Teasle is not the snarling cartoon sheriff of the movie. He’s a stubborn, decorated chief who develops a strange respect for Rambo and feels a kinship because both of them served overseas. The difference is that Teasle was welcomed home. Society treats Rambo as a pariah, the walking symbol of an unpopular war.

Before we get into why this belongs in the horror column, First Blood is a very well-written novel. The chapters cut back and forth between Rambo and Teasle; both men are vividly drawn. The ending is dark and feels earned. Readers who expect the Stallone movie on paper will be surprised, and hopefully pleased.

As for the horror: you can read First Blood as Vietnam brought home. The same way Last House on the Left dragged overseas atrocity onto American porches, Morrell imagines the war fought in Kentucky hills. Rambo uses what the jungle taught him. Teasle becomes the stand-in for generals who cannot understand the enemy they created. The deputies and Guardsmen Rambo kills become the local version of the bodies left in the trees. Rambo is a monster. Like Frankenstein’s creature, he was shaped by the arrogance and carelessness of the people who made him.

No wonder Teasle feels sorry for him in the end.

2 Horror Books For The Weekend (10/3/26)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you’re looking to get into spirit of Halloween with the help of zombies, allow me to make two reading recommendations.

First published in 2006 and edited by Jay Slater, Eaten Alive is a book that has played a huge role in developing my own horror sensibility.  Whenever anyone asks me how I managed to learn so much about Italian horror, this book is one of the sources that I always cite.  The film features reviews of films that are both well-known (like Fulci’s Zombi 2 and The Beyond trilogy) and obscure (like 1979’s I’m A Zombie, You’re A Zombie, She’s A Zombie).  The book features a wonderful list of guest reviewers.  Lloyd Kaufman writes about Cannibal Holocaust.  Ramsey Campbell demolishes Nightmare City.  Giovanni Lombardo Radice both reviews a cannibal movie and is also interviewed throughout the book.  Catriona MacColl discussed what it was like to work with the notorious Lucio Fulci.  Ian McCullough, star of Zombi 2 and Zombie Holocaust,  is also interviewed and he comes across as being just as eccentric and British as one could hope for.  This is the book that really introduced me to filmmakers like Lucio Fulci, Jess Franco, Ruggero Deodato, and Michele Soavi.  I would not be the horror fan that I am today if I hadn’t stumbled across it at Recycled Books all those years ago.

Jamie Russell’s Book of the Dead is another book that definitely helped to shape me as both a reviewer and a horror fan.  The book takes an in-depth look at the development of the horror genre, from the cheap B-movies of the 30s to Romero to the Italian zombie boom to the rise of SOV filmmakers and Resident Evil.  Along with providing a fascinating history, this book also includes a comprehensive appendix that lists and reviews hundreds of zombie films.  If you’re searching for a previously unseen zombie film to watch, this book is essential.

Happy reading!

 

 

Horror Book Review: The Funhouse by Dean Koontz, writing as Owen West

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1980, Dean Koontz was hired to write a novelization of The Funhouse. At the time, he was not yet a household name. He still regularly worked as an author-for-hire under a string of pseudonyms; for this book, he originally published as Owen West. While Tobe Hooper was in pre-production, Koontz was assigned to turn Larry Block’s screenplay into a fast, accessible novel. He was not particularly impressed by Block’s story, but he liked the idea of writing about a carnival. Production delays meant the novelization reached stores in late 1980, months before the film. It sold well at first. When the movie finally opened in 1981 and did disappointing business, the book’s sales collapsed. Years later, after Koontz had become a bestselling author in his own right, The Funhouse was reissued under his real name.

The first thing that stands out is how little the novel has in common with Hooper’s film. The movie, of which I am a fan, is a fairly straightforward, atmosphere-heavy slasher. Teenager Amy and her three friends hide in the funhouse after the carnival closes, witness a murder, and find themselves hunted by a carny and his son. Those elements are all present in Koontz’s book, but he adds a large amount of backstory, most of it centered on Amy’s alcoholic mother, Ellen.

In the novel, Ellen is the ex-wife of Conrad the carny. A runaway, she married him without realizing he was a Satanist who hoped she would give birth to the Antichrist. When their demonic infant attacked her, Ellen crushed the baby. Conrad swore revenge: he would let her go so he could hunt her down later and destroy whatever family she built. What plays as random bad luck in the film becomes something very different here. Over the years, Conrad and his second son, the deformed Gunther, take their carnival from town to town in search of Ellen and her new family. The other carnival workers are drawn as sympathetic figures, people on the margins who have formed a family of their own and have no idea how depraved Conrad and Gunther really are.

Family is the novel’s real subject. Ellen has remarried and has two children, Amy and Joey. In the film, Amy is a typically naïve final girl, and Joey is an annoying brat who sneaks out to the carnival. Ellen appears only briefly and makes little impression, though she is seen drinking as Amy leaves the house. In the book, Ellen hits Amy when her daughter says she is pregnant, then pays for the abortion because she fears Amy might give birth to the Antichrist. Joey is terrified of Ellen and runs away to the carnival because, like Ellen before him, he wants an escape from a dysfunctional home. The contrast between the carnies’ supportive found family and Amy and Joey’s abusive “respectable” household is easy to spot, but it still works.

Koontz’s eye for detail and his gift for vivid characterization lift The Funhouse above the usual horror novelization. The plot is occasionally stretched thin. Conrad’s revenge scheme never quite makes sense.  What if Ellen had stayed unmarried and never had another child? Even so, Koontz keeps the action moving and is smart enough to lean into the melodrama without apology. He even lands a surprisingly moving final scene.

This is a case of a novelization that diverges sharply from its source. I like both Hooper’s film and Koontz’s novel. They are both wonderfully macabre. The film is true to Hooper’s aesthetic. The novel is pure Koontz.

 

Horror Book Review: The Amulet by Michael McDowell

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 1979, Michael McDowell’s The Amulet takes place in a small Alabama town in 1965.  It’s a town that is home to a factory that constructs rifles.  The town’s entire livelihood revolves around the business of guns and, with the Vietnam War heating up, it looks like business is going to be good.  Unfortunately, that’s little comfort to Dean Howell, a local man who is disfigured and left in an apparent vegetative state after a rifle that he’s testing explodes in his face.

Sarah, Dean’s young wife, tries to take care of Dean while also working at the factory and dealing with Dean’s incredibly spiteful mother, Jo.  Angered over her son’s disfigurement, Jo seeks revenge by giving an amulet to Sarah’s boss.  What Jo doesn’t tell anyone is that the amulet is cursed and whoever wears it will end up killing their family and then killing themselves.  The amulet passes from one hand to another, leading to more and more violent deaths.  When Sarah and her friend Becca realize what’s happening, they try to track down the amulet.  It all leads to an increasingly over-the-top bloodbath and a twist ending.

The Amulet is an enjoyably gruesome horror story that works as long as you don’t spend too much time trying to understand the logic of the amulet.  At first, it seems like a pretty simple curse.  The person who wears the amulet is driven to kill their loved ones and then themselves.  By the end of the book, though, the amulet seems to have the power to possess both buildings and machines which leads us to wonder whether or not machines actually have loved ones.  As a writer, McDowell goes more for shock than narrative consistency but, fortunately, he writes with enough style that he pulls it off.  McDowell shows a flair for macabre small town drama and the ending is appropriately unsettling.

This was Michael McDowell’s first published novel.  He would go on to write several more novels, along with working on the screenplays for Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Thinner.

The Adventures of a History Nerd: Season Finale: The Unexpected Rise and Fall of the WB and UPN by Susanne Daniels and Cynthia Littleton

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I miss the WB.

The so-called fifth television network launched in 1995 and ceased operations in 2006. That’s when the WB merged with the sixth television network, UPN, and became known as the CW. (The CW still exists, even though I haven’t watched it since they canceled Dynasty in 2022.) The WB never got much respect from the critics, even though some very important shows aired on the network. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a WB show. So were Angel, Charmed, Felicity, One Tree Hill, Supernatural, Gilmore Girls, 7th Heaven, Roswell, Smallville, and What I Like About You. Most critics usually considered those shows the exception to the rule. They were the shows that aired in between stuff like Beauty and the Geek and Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher. Well, that’s fine. For those of us of a certain age, it didn’t matter that the WB aired a lot of shows that only lasted a few weeks. What mattered is that the network was home to the shows we planned our nights around.

Critically, UPN got even less respect than the WB. I associated the channel with Star Trek and professional wrestling, neither of which held much appeal for me in the aughts. However, when Buffy switched from the WB to UPN, I followed it to its new network. I watched Veronica Mars and idolized the title character. I watched America’s Next Top Model and cheered for any model who had the guts to talk back to the judges.

The 2006 merger between the two networks hit me harder than it probably should have. I had grown up with the WB and UPN as scrappy rivals, two networks that were continually battling for fifth place. They were the networks that aired shows that seemed to actually speak to what I was going through in my life at the time. It almost felt like a sacrilege to have the two networks come together. Even though some of my favorite shows continued on the CW, things just never felt the same. If the WB and UPN felt like cocky upstarts, the CW seemed like something that had been born out of defeat.

First published in 2007, Season Finale: The Unexpected Rise and Fall of the WB and UPN is a look at the short but colorful history and rivalry of the WB and UPN. Co-author Susanne Daniels was the president of entertainment at the WB, so it’s not surprising that the book tends to go into more detail about the WB’s operations than UPN’s. It makes for an entertaining read. Daniels writes like someone who truly loves television, and the book has plenty of behind-the-scenes information about the shows I grew up with. If nothing else, the WB sounds like it was a fun place to work. UPN, meanwhile, sounds like it was a place where everyone was continually jealous of the WB and also stressed over having to defend programming like Shasta McNasty and The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer.

The book is only 19 years old, but there are times when it feels like an artifact from a distant age. It was written before #MeToo, before woke, even before the rise of streaming. When I recently reread it, I found myself cringing when I reached the section about the creation and casting of 7th Heaven. The original choice for the role of the saintly Reverend Camden was Beau Bridges, but Bridges turned out to be too expensive. When an executive mentions Stephen Collins, the response is: “I’ve always liked him.”

AGCK!

Of course, today that’s not something anyone would voluntarily say about Stephen Collins. But in 2007 he still had that image of being the type of nice, down-to-earth guy you’d be happy to have as a neighbor. Reading the book reminded me of just how shocked almost everyone was when Collins’s ex-wife first released the tapes of him admitting to inappropriately touching a minor. At the time, I think a lot of people assumed Collins was somehow being set up because that just wasn’t the image he had at all. Of course, Collins himself later admitted it was true.

The book is full of people who have since fallen from grace, and as such it becomes very tempting to try to read between the lines. Joss Whedon is described as being talented but intense, and reading about him reminded me of just how much some of us used to really respect Whedon and his shows. (For the record, I grew disenchanted with Whedon in December of 2016 when he tweeted that it was offensive to say “Happy holidays” because, for him, “they won’t be.” Get over yourself, Joss.) Les Moonves shows up toward the end of the book, and there are frequent references to his reputation for being a hard-driving boss. Even Harvey and Bob Weinstein make a cameo appearance, sending two of their goons down to basically hold Dawson’s Creek creator Kevin Williamson hostage until he finished a rewrite on Scream 2. Reading about Collins, Whedon, and Moonves serves to make you appreciate people like Williamson, Amy Sherman-Palladino, and even Aaron Spelling, all of whom come across as relatively well-adjusted creative people.

Toward the end of the book, Susanne Daniels writes about going to the Emmys with her husband, producer Greg Daniels. The Office wins its only Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series and Suzanne watches as Greg joins his college friend Conan O’Brien on stage. It’s a sweet moment but also one that, when read today, reminds us of just how much things have changed over the past two decades. Network shows no longer win Emmys. The Office fell apart after NBC boss Jeff Zucker (in a move that feels like it could have been lifted from the early days of UPN) decided not to offer Steve Carell a new contract. The Office was eventually rediscovered when it started streaming on Netflix, and even today people are more likely to remember it as a show they binged online than one they watched every week on NBC. When the book first came out, I shared Susanne Daniels’s frustration over the WB becoming the CW. Today, when I read it, I feel bad for whoever decided to launch a new network right on the edge of the streaming era.

Season Finale is a compulsively readable portrait of the way things once were. Thanks for the memories.

 

The Adventures of a History Nerd: Candidates ’72

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1972!  Now, that’s a presidential election that I’m sorry I wasn’t around to witness!

1972, of course, was the year that the Democrats nominated George McGovern and President Richard Nixon went on to win 49 states.  McGovern was considered to be one of the most left-wing presidential candidates of all time.  He started out as a dark horse but ultimately won the Democratic nomination after the more moderate Edmund Muskie’s campaign turned to be not as strong as people assumed and after Governor George Wallace’s campaign was ended by gunfire in Maryland.  (Wallace survived being shot but spent the rest of his life in wheelchair.)  McGovern’s campaign knew how to win a primary but had no idea how to win a general election.  He ended up getting around 37% of the popular vote.  He carried Massachusetts but he lost his home state of South Dakota.

Today, it’s usually assumed that Nixon’s victory was a foregone conclusion but that’s not true.  The Republicans had a weak midterm in 1970.  The Vietnam War was unpopular.  Nixon, himself, had managed to upset both the conservative and the liberal wings of the Republican Party with some of his policies.  Much as in 2020, a record number of candidates threw their hat into the ring to take on the incumbent President.  1972 is a great “What if” election.  What if the Democrats had nominated Edmund Muskie or Hubert Humphrey?  What if the Watergate burglars hadn’t been arrested?  What if George McGovern hadn’t picked Thomas Eagleton for Vice President or later asked him to step down as his running mate?  Would history be different today?

That’s why I’m glad that I have a copy of Candidates ’72.

Candidates ’72 was published, in 1971, by Congressional Quarterly.  It featured profiles of the many men and women who ended up running for President in 1972.  It not only detailed their backgrounds and their political stances but it also analyzed their chances of winning their party’s nomination.  For a history nerd like me, this book is wonderful because it was written without the benefit of hindsight.  It’s a chance to see what people were actually saying about the election of 1972 while it was going on.  Often times, it’s quite different from the biased analysis that was written about the election after it had already happened.

The other reason why I like Candidates ’72 is because so many memorable people ran for the Presidency in that year.  George McGovern, New York Mayor John Lindsay, U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Los Angles Mayor “Mad Sam” Yorty, George Wallace, Dr. Benjamin Spock, they are just some of the candidates profiled here.  Reading the profiles really does reveal that America was at a crossroads in the early 70s.  Much like today, a lot of people assumed that radicalism was ascendant while failing to consider just how serious the backlash would eventually become.  Some of the other Democrats running actually made George McGovern look like a moderate.  Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Nixon was challenged by an anti-war congressman named Pete McCloskey.  McCloskey eventually lost his house seat in the 80s but briefly reemerged in 2006 as an environmentalist and anti-war activist.  He was also a Holocaust denier so let’s be happy that he never got anywhere near the White House.

(It’s probably a sign of just how chaotic the 1972 election was that a few candidates — John Ashbrook, Terry Sanford — did not get profiled in Candidates ’72, presumably because they jumped into the fray after the book went to the presses.)

Here are the candidates and potential candidates who are profiled in Candidates ’72.

Republicans:

  1. Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland (elected Vice President in the General Election)
  2. Treasury Secretary John Connally of Texas (declined to run)
  3. Lobbyist John Gardner (declined to run)
  4. U.S. Rep. Pete McCloskey of California (suspended campaign during the primaries)
  5. President Richard M. Nixon of California (won the general election)

Democrats:

  1. U.S. Rep. William Anderson of Tennessee (dropped out before the primaries)
  2. Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana (dropped out before the primaries)
  3. U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm of New York (defeated at the Democratic Convention)
  4. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark of New York (declined to run)
  5. Sen. Fred Harris of Oklahoma (dropped out before the primaries)
  6. U.S. Sen. Vance Hartke of Indiana (withdrew during the primaries)
  7. Sen. Howard Hughes of Iowa (dropped out before the primaries)
  8. Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota (defeated at the Democratic Convention)
  9. Sen. Henry Jackson of Washington (defeated at the Democratic Convention)
  10. U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts (declined to run)
  11. New York Mayor John V. Lindsay (withdrew during the primaries)
  12. Lt. Gov. Lester Maddox of Georgia (withdrew during the primaries)
  13. Fmr. Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota (withdrew during the primaries)
  14. Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota (defeated in the General Election)
  15. U.S. Rep. Wilbur Mills of Arkansas (withdrew during the primaries)
  16. U.S. Rep. Patsy T. Mink of Hawaii (withdrew during the primaries)
  17. U.S. Sen. Walter Mondale of Minnesota (declined to run)
  18. Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine (suspended campaign during the primaries)
  19. Sen. William Proxmire of Wisconsin (dropped out before the primaries)
  20. R. Sargent Shriver of Maryland (nominated for vice president, lost the general election)
  21. Gov. George Wallace of Alabama (suspended campaign after being shot in Maryland)
  22. Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty (withdrew during the primaries)

Independents:

  1. Ralph Nader (declined to run)
  2. Dr. Benjamin Spock (lost the general election)

Ran, but not profiled:

  1. U.S. Rep. John Ashbrook (R-OH)
  2. U.S. Sen. Thomas Eagleton (D-MO, nominated for Vice President but stepped down from the ticket and was replaced by Sargent Shriver)
  3. State Rep. Sissy Farenthold (D-TX, ran for the Vice Presidency at the Democratic Convention)
  4. U.S. Rep. Walter Fauntroy (D-DC)
  5. U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska (D-Alaska, run for the Vice Presidency at the Democratic Convention)
  6. U.S. Rep. Wayne Hays (D-OH)
  7. Former Governor Endicott Peabody (D-Massachusetts, ran in the nonbinding Vice Presidential primary)
  8. Former Governor Terry Sanford (D-NC)
  9. U.S. Rep. John G. Schmitz (R-CA, ran as the candidate of the American Party)
  10. Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes (D-OH)

I ordered my copy of Candidates ’72 shortly after I ordered Candidates ’76.  Sadly, my copy of Candidates ’72 is not in the best condition and I doubt I’ll ever find another copy.  As a proud history nerd, though, I’m still happy to have it.

 

The Adventures of a History Nerd: Right From The Start by Gary Hart

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1972 presidential campaign was a strange one.

Today, it’s best-remembered for the fact that Richard Nixon carried 49 states and won 60.7% of the popular vote.  Nixon’s victory came after the Democratic nominee, George McGovern, dropped his running mate, Thomas Eagleton, from the ticket after it was revealed that Eagleton had undergone electroshock treatment for depression.  McGovern was also, at that point, one of the most liberal candidates to ever be nominated by a major political party.  Much as with the earlier Barry Goldwater campaign, many of McGovern’s campaign volunteers and aides went on to have long careers in politics but their enthusiasm did not translate into votes for McGovern.  Today, Nixon’s victory is seen as being such a foregone conclusion that people still wonder why a group of campaign operatives and White House aides even felt like they needed to break into the Watergate hotel to win.

1972 was a bit before my time but, if you look at the number of candidates who ran for the Democratic nomination, it’s obvious that, despite how thing ultimately turned out, quite a few people originally thought Nixon was vulnerable in 1972.  Over 20 Democratic office holders competed for the right to run against Nixon.  Sen. Edmund Muskie was the early favorite but, in the end, George McGovern won the nomination as the result of a largely grassroots effort.  McGovern became the first Democrat to win the nomination through the primary system as opposed to making deals with political and labor bosses.  McGovern’s campaign was fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War and an earnest idealism that got on the nerves of just about everyone outside of the campaign.  One of McGovern’s rivals, Sen. Henry Jackson, said that McGovern was the candidate of “abortion, amnesty, and acid.”

McGovern’s campaign manager was a Colorado lawyer named Gary Hart.  Hart would later be elected to the U.S. Senate and would twice run for president himself.  (Hugh Jackman played Hart in the rather forgettable film, The Front Runner.)  However, before Hart first ran for the Senate, he took the time to write a book about the McGovern campaign.  That book was called Right From The Start.  I ordered a used copy off of Amazon about ten years ago.  It cost me about twenty dollars.  If I ordered the book today, it would only cost me $16.00.

The book is an interesting historical document.  Hart writes about the day-to-day operations of the McGovern campaign.  He does a very good job of showing how McGovern came from behind to win the Democratic nomination.  Hart writes about how the campaign recruited people who were new to politics but who were passionate about the issues.  He writes about how Morris Dees (yes, the Southern Poverty Law Center guy) spearheaded the campaign’s fundraising.  He writes about the day that Governor George Wallace was shot in Maryland.  He shows how a group of committed activists were able to bypass the party bosses and win their candidate the nomination.  Where Hart struggles is with explaining why McGovern lost the general election.  Hart puts a lot of the blame on Thomas Eagleton and perhaps that’s justified.  But McGovern still lost 49 states.  To me, that would indicate there were even bigger problems then picking a bad running mate.  But, because Hart was on the same side of McGovern, it’s perhaps understandable that he would struggle to admit that the electorate simply didn’t respond to what McGovern was selling.

(Ironically, in 1984, Hart and McGovern would both run for the Democratic presidential nomination.)

The chapter where Hart discusses the process that led to Thomas Eagleton becoming, albeit temporarily, McGovern’s running mate is the book’s highlight.  As Hart explains it, he and the rest of McGovern’s aides had been so busy winning McGovern the nomination that none of them had really bothered to consider who McGovern should run with.  McGovern had his own preferences but they all declined to join the ticket.  A bunch of exhausted men ended up sitting around and tossing out names like CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite and Boston Mayor Kevin White.  Someone suggested that, since the convention was being held in Miami, the second spot should go to New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu just so the next day’s paper would read “MOON OVER MIAMI.”  In the end, Thomas Eagleton was picked not because anyone feels strongly about him but instead because he was the only one that nobody felt any passion about whatsoever.  He was serviceable and inoffensive and, when he was asked if there was anything in his past that might embarrass the campaign, he replied that they’re wasn’t.  A few weeks later, Eagleton’s psychiatric history was leaked to the press and the McGovern campaign imploded.  Maybe they should have just asked Cronkite.

Right From The Start is an compulsively readable and interesting campaign memoir, perfect for history nerds like you and me.