Book by Duke Alum: "On Dupont Circle"

[sagegrouse]

Jim Srodes has just published a book on the Progressives who lived in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of DC in the 1910-1920 era. Jim attended Duke Law for a while and is married to a Duke classmmate of mine, Cecile. He has written a number of books, including ones on B. Franklin and Allan Dulles.

What an interesting story he tells! The people concerned include (get this!):

• Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt
• Herbert Hoover
• Walter Lippman, influential columnist and political thinker for over 50 years
• Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court Justice and FDR confidant
• John Foster Dulles, the Eisenhower Secretary of State but an international figure from World War I till his death in 1959
• Allan Dulles, a super spy in both World Wars and head of the CIA for nine years until cashiered by JFK after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. A. Dulles spoke at Duke shortly after leaving the CIA
• Eleanor Dulles, professor and author who taught at Duke during the 1960's
• Sumner Welles, brilliant and troubled, who was FDR's shaping hand behind the Atlantic Charter and the UN

And four others whom I did not really know previously: Arthur Bullitt, Hamilton Fish Armstrong and the Brits, Philip Kerr and Lord Eustace Perry.

Many of these spent time living at a house on 19th St. (they jokingly called it "The House of Truth"), where the dinner table conversation was fascinating and about growing international issues such as democracy and self-determination, peace and disarmament, free trade.

The book covers the period from 1911 to 1945 -- it's about the people rather than a history, but it surely includes much of the latter.

Random finding: Hoover, who was famous around the world for his work in feeding Europe during and just after World War I, was offered a chance to be the Democratic nominee in 1920 but decided to become a Progressive Republican instead. The Pubs were happy to have him on board, and promptly ignored him in favor of the more conservative Harding. He became Secretary of Commerce under Harding and Coolidge, which was the springboard to the presidency in 1928.

sagegrouse

[sagegrouse]

Check out reviews by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo and Laurence Barrett in the Washington Independent Review of Books.

sagegrouse