The Courtier

Arthur Schlesinger’s journals are predictably sycophantic—and surprisingly good. A review by Hitch in this month's Atlantic. Some juicy, insider-type stuff like, "I would not have known, without reading the fascinating pages about the election of 1980, just how much Schlesinger and his circle had come to despise Jimmy Carter and to hope, in effect, for the election of Ronald Reagan." And, "Schlesinger had written the Kennedy campaign’s anti-biography of Nixon for the election of 1960, and had come to the view that he was 'the greatest shit in 20th century American politics (the “20th century” bit is pure scholarly caution; I cannot at the moment think of anyone in the 19th century quite meeting Nixon’s combination of sanctimoniousness and squalor).'" Good stuff.