Advise and Consent

Advise and Consent #1

by Allen Drury

ADVISE AND CONSENT is a study of political animals in their natural habitat and is universally recognized as THE Washington novel. It begins with Senate confirmation hearings for a liberal Secretary of State and concludes two weeks later, after debate and controversy have exploded this issue into a major crisis.

"I can recall no other novel in which there is so well presented a president's dilemma when his awful responsibility for the nation's interest conflicts with a personal code of good morals." (The New York Times)

Genres: Fiction, Politics, Historical Fiction, Classics, Literature, Novels, Literary Fiction

616 pages, Paperback

First published July 11, 1959

About the author

In late 1943, Allen Stuart Drury, a 25-year old Army veteran, sought work. A position as the Senate correspondent for United Press International provided him with employment and insider knowledge of the Senate. In addition to fulfilling his duties as a reporter, he kept a journal of his views of the Senate and individual senators. In addition to the Senate personalities, his journal captured the events of the 78th & 79th Congresses.
Although written in the mid-1940s, his diary was not published until 1963. "A Senate Journal" found an audience in part because of the great success of "Advise and Consent," his novel in 1959 about the consideration in the Senate of a controversial nominee for secretary of state. His greatest success was "Advise and Consent," was made into a film in 1962. The book was partly inspired by the suicide of Lester C. Hunt, senator from Wyoming. It spent 102 weeks on the New York Times' best-seller list. 'Advise & Consent' led to several sequels. 'A Shade of Difference' is set a year later. Drury then turned his attention to the next presidential election after those events with 'Capable of Honor' & 'Preserve & Protect'. He then wrote two alternative sequels based on a different outcome of an assassination attack in an earlier work: 'Come Nineveh, Come Tyre' & 'The Promise of Joy'. In 1971, he published 'The Throne of Saturn', a sf novel about the 1st attempt at sending a manned mission to Mars. He dedicated the work "To the US Astronauts & those who help them fly." Political characters in the book are archetypal rather than comfortably human. The book carries a strong anti-communist flavor. The book has a lot to say about interference in the space program by leftist Americans. Having wrapped up his political series by '75, Drury began a new one with the '77 novel 'Anna Hastings', more about journalism than politics. He returned to the timeline in '79, with the political novel 'Mark Coffin USS' (tho the main relationship between the two books was that Hastings was a minor character in 'Mark Coffin USS's sequels). It was succeeded, by the two-part 'The Hill of Summer' & 'The Roads of Earth', which are true sequels to 'Mark Coffin USS' He also wrote stand-alone novels, 'Decision' & 'Pentagon', as well as several other fiction & non-fiction works. His political novels have been described as page-turners, set against the Cold War, with an aggressive USSR seeking to undermine the USA. Drury lived in Tiburon, CA from '64 until his '98 cardiac arrest. He'd completed his 20th novel, 'Public Men' set at Stanford, just two weeks before his death. He died on 9/2/98 at St Mary's Medical Center in San Francisco, on his 80th birthday. He never married.--Wikipedia (edited)

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Circle Reads 25

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: ADVISE AND CONSENT is a study of political animals in their natural habitat and is universally recognized as THE Washington novel. It begins with Senate confirmation hearings for a liberal Secretary of State and concludes two weeks later, after debate and controversy have exploded this issue into a major crisis.

"I can recall no other novel in which there is so well presented a president's dilemma when his awful responsibility for the nation's interest conflicts with a personal code of good morals." (The New York Times)

My Review: They's fags in this book! Ack-chew-ull hom'sexshulls!! Myrtle, git the Babble an' we'uns'll exercize it!

Allen Drury was a conservative. He thought World Commanizm was a-gonna ruin the New Nited States of Murrika!! They's a-gonna take us over!!

Ahem.

As one might surmise from my initial response above, I have zero respect for conservatism, equating it with ignorance and intolerance. I should know, as I was raised by parents whose politics were to the right of Hitler. McCarthy was a fine, fine man and an upstanding American patriot to my mumsy and daddums. Goldwater was a bit too liberal for them.

So when I take exception to Drury's preachifyin' and speechifyin', it is from an insider's point of view. The Senate process of advising the President on his cabinet nominees and consenting to the appointment of officers of state is never more brilliantly illuminated (in all senses of that phrase) than in this novel. Drury, who very much knew whereof he wrote, brings a harsh actinic glare to the role of personal charisma and individual power in the business of the Senate. The small, collegial nature of the Senate focuses the astounding power of the body onto a few key players: The Majority and Minority Leaders, in particular, are vitally important to any legislation or appointment passing through the body.

Drury reported on the Senate for United Press International. When he came to write this book, he used two decades' worth of knowledge to weave believable characters and put them in actual situations that have occurred in the Senate, and my gawd it is grim reading. Human nature run rampant, greed and viciousness running roughshod over the needs of We-The-People, and craven poltroons running for re-election from the second they take the oath of office.

Sound familiar? It should. But this came out in 1959, and was based on men in office from 1939 to 1959. Nothing changes. Never will. All we-the-people can hope for is to elect a better class of scumbag (read: beholden to voters not banksters and billionaires) once in a while.

Drury is telling a story of a man's, well, tawdry and tacky infidelity as it figures into the national conversation. *cough*Clinton*cough* The plot in many ways hinges on this private peccadillo, and even though it's never exactly made public, it's the linchpin of the events that follow...a suicide, an international crisis that reaches into space, and the death of a key player at a very delicate moment all come together to make the outcome seem inevitable from the outside.

The genius of the story is that we, who have seen it all unfold, know that it was in no way inevitable. It was an ad hoc decision based on an unforeseen turn of events by way of a surprise occurrence packaged as perfect control by the media.

Sound familiar? It should. It was ever thus. Always will be thus.

Read this and weep. Read this and realize that inaction on your part has huge costs. Vote YOUR conscience, educate YOUR mind. (Unless you're conservative, in which case succumb to despair and sit out every election for evermore, nothing you do will matter or help.)

And for those who enjoy bemoaning a good novel's death at Hollywood's hands, there's a 1962 film of the book. It is every bit as good as the book, in my never-humble opinion.

[Alexw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lets see- a controversial appointment to Secretary of State is voted on by the Senate-seems I have heard that somewhere before-LOL
Dialogue was brilliant which is how I judge most books- well deserving of the Pulitzer it won and was based on a Wyoming US Senator who shot himself after his son was caught in a homosexual sting with police in the 1950;s.
Strongly recommend this and not just for political junkies.

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Advise and Consent by Allen Drury was first published in 1959 and awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1960. It has been thought of as a landmark piece of political fiction, and I must say, I found myself riveted to this amazing book. So much so, that I am now going to read the sequel Preserve and Protect. After working as a reporter and columnist for papers in California and Washington, Allen Drury then joined The New York Times in 1954 as a reporter in the Washington bureau. He was only forty years old when the novel that he had been banging out in between deadlines when the book was published, going on to critical acclaim. Drury knew politicians well and he gave each of his protagonists rich, although complicated, emotional histories and ideals. But at it core, it is a sweeping tale of corruption and ambition as it cuts across Washington, D.C.

Allen Drury’s Senate is a passionate and full-throttle place with these mid-twentieth century senators displaying oratory skills and talents that one would think current legislators would pale in comparison. Add to this the excitement of the print reporters in the gallery all rushing to report their news-breaking stories. The author penetrated the world’s stormiest political background as we are in the smoke-filled committee room of the United States Senate,

“. . . each is aware that the Senate is about to engage in one of the battles of a lifetime; and each is wondering what it will mean for him in terms of power, reputation, advantage, political fortune, national responsibility, and integrity of soul.”

“A universal guilt enshrouded the middle years of the twentieth century in America; and it attached to all who participated in those times.”

What is so magical and appealing about this book is that Allen Drury was taken with men whose political ambitions and convictions spring from other passions. The most colorful of these men was the senior senator from South Carolina in the era of Woodrow Wilson, Senator Seabright Cooley spending his long time in office lording over the Senate Appropriations Committee with a shepherding of political ideals and goals. And then there is Brigham Anderson, a young senator from Utah whose wartime affair in Honolulu leads to a suicide in his office just hours before a crucial vote in the Senate. But the hero of the book was my personal favorite was Senator Orin Knox from Illinois. This was a man that put it all on the line for his moral convictions, his career be damned. And there was the Majority Leader, Robert Munson who is pressured by the President to pressure Brigham Anderson. With all of these threads in the mix, it is a page-turner. As one who has always been a part of the political world as I engaged in debates with my father many years ago, this was a beautiful book.

[Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Allen Drury was, for some years, the U.S. Senate correspondent for United Press International. This gave him a deep background of inside knowledge about the Senate, the Washington press corps, and the larger national and international political contexts of that day (this was published in 1959) in which they operated. And like many fiction authors before him, journalism honed his professional writing skills. In these respects, for him writing political fiction was a natural evolution; and with my budding interest in politics as a teen, I was naturally likely to read his book. (My curiosity was whetted by having seen the 1962 movie adaptation, starring Walter Pidgeon and Henry Fonda, on TV --the book, of course, proved to be considerably deeper and more substantial than the film, and the latter simplifies a great deal and takes various liberties to ratchet up the drama.)

Unlike most of his press colleagues, Drury self-identified with the political Right, mostly in terms of a strong anti-Communism and a preference for a hawkish foreign policy based on a Cold War perception of the Soviet Union as existential menace to humanity and the U.S. as the natural guarantor of the world's freedom and justice. (Today, he would be identified as a neoconservative.) This outlook constitutes the basic message of the book, and grows organically out of the Senate-centered plot, with a president nominating a liberal intellectual perceived as favoring appeasement of the Soviets for Secretary of State, and the Senate having to vote on his confirmation. But the novel succeeds as fiction because here Drury doesn't allow the message to take over and replace the story; his primary focus is on the characters and their relationships, and the study of the dynamics of political decision-making. He lets his viewpoint be a seasoning for an artistic confection, not an in-your-face obsession that would turn the book into a tract; and the characters on all sides of the issues are realistic, flesh-and-blood humans, not political cartoons.

The novel is divided into four major parts ("books"), each with a different Senator as viewpoint character (and a short final section that's a sort of epilogue). All of these men (the Senate of that day was still almost exclusively a boy's club), and the secondary cast as well, are excellently drawn --some are more likeable than others (Orrin Knox was the one I liked best, and could identify with to a degree), but all have foibles. Drury's portrayal of the culture of the 1950s Senate, the political climate of the Cold War, and the kinds of political intrigue that operate when principles are intermixed with personal ambition and self-interest, strike me as spot-on. (So does his unflattering portrayal of the press corps, which was already shaping up as an ideologically monolithic propaganda machine.) Some aspects are dated: for instance, Democrats with a position like Drury's on foreign policy would no longer be largely represented in the Senate (the terms "Democrat" and "Republican" aren't used in the book, but the two parties are still clearly identifiable), nor would we find Dixiecrats, like Seab Cooley, from the Jim Crow South there today. But for the time that the book was written, it's realistic. The author writes well, and crafts a genuinely involving story. He earned his Pulitzer Prize (at a time when it still meant something).

Goodreads lists this as #1 in an Advise and Consent series. I'm not sure Drury actually named the series as such, but he did write some five sequels over a period of 16 years, all of which I've read and most of which I've rated at one star. They suffer, for one thing, from the fact that they all supposedly take place within a period of about two or three years of each other; but during the long real time of the writing, U.S. political culture changed epochally, and it's not possible to see the later books as really part of a consistent setting with the earlier ones. Also, they move away from the central focus on the Senate, the realm Drury knew first-hand and was most at home in describing, to arenas he knew less well and captures less plausibly. But they suffer most from a steadily decreasing literary quality, and a steadily rising inverse increase in ideological stridency and loss of temperance and nuance, with the characters becoming caricatures and the plots being subsumed by message-driven tracts. IMO, it's a pity the author attempted to write sequels, rather than quitting while he was ahead. (Riffing on the title here and one of the later ones, a high school classmate of mine observed that someone should tell Drury "Cease and Desist," which I thought wasn't a bad idea.) But this first novel remains a worthy achievement that I'd recommend.

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the burdens of My Big Fat Reading Project (see the Writing page on my profile) is slogging my way through long tomes like Advise and Consent. It was the #4 bestseller in 1959 and went on to be the #1 bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner in 1960. The New York Times Book Review stated, "Advise and Consent will stand as one of the finest and most gripping political novels of our era..." The book stayed on that paper's bestseller list for over 100 weeks!

It is the story of a fictional American President's attempt to put a new Secretary of State into his cabinet, an action which requires confirmation by the Senate. Robert Leffingwell, the nominee, is seen as an appeaser of Communist Russia by the more conservative senators but is a darling of the liberals. The fight to get Leffingwell confirmed is down and dirty, ruining lives and causing great upheaval in the Senate.

Interestingly, though I was being taught the forms of United States government in high school during the same time the book was popular, not much of it stayed with me. I had to do a quick review of Congressional terminology and positions, but once I got a grip on ranks such as Majority Leader, President of the Senate, Senior Senator, etc, the characters and their battles came alive. Reading the book then became an education in how the Senate works; its relationship to the Presidency, the media, and the voters back home; as well as the daily life of a Senator. (You could not pay me enough to be a Senator and I was confirmed in my belief that democracy in practice differs widely from its high flown ideals.)

Advise and Consent is not the pageturner its fans claim it to be, but it is a dramatic story still read today and is considered to have started a genre: political novels set in Washington, DC. Allen Drury, who started his professional life as a US Senate correspondent for United Press International, became a ponderous fiction author. His attention to detail drove me to distraction, his characterizations are complex but artless, and he repeats himself. Compared to a civics textbook however, the book is wildly exciting and humanized the Congressional men and women we hear about in the news.

I am glad I read it. The novel did more to explain the 1950s and 1960s American views on communism that almost anything else I have read so far.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those who loved The West Wing or House of Cards, this book should be high on your to-be-read list. Drury treats us to the first of a long series (6 books!) of political intrigue based on suppositions of a 'what if' based on a contentious Senate vote to confirm a presidential nominee - the president in the course of dying of natural causes (rather than being assassinated) - and a scandal about a closeted gay Senator. It is a great story full of twists and surprises, good writing, and a mind-boggling gallery of characters - the author created an entire fictional government here without once referring to either Republicans or Democrats. I found it to be a fun and interesting read. I think I'll go back later and read another book or two in the series to see what happens next!

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Because of Bob Leffingwell, the Administration was going to have a hard time. Why couldn’t he have picked any one of ten thousand other outstanding Americans? Why the one most likely to cause trouble?”

Sound familiar? It’s a paragraph that could have been written in today’s climate.

Alan Drury received the Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for his fictional account of the detailed interactions of the Senate and the White House around a Secretary of State cabinet confirmation. More importantly it is a story of the carnage that ensues. Advise and Consent is unquestionably a work of some real import. Drury was both a journalist and prolific author. The book exhibits great attention to detail and is based on the author’s inside knowledge covering the DC political beat as a reporter for some years.

Despite being written almost sixty years ago, there are some obvious parallels in this book to the recent cabinet and Supreme Court nominee hearings in the Senate. Without giving the plot away in this book there are tragedies that result, despite the appearance of decorum and respect. It’s politics after all. The book is seeing a bit of a relevance revival based on the 24/7 news cycle coverage of the confirmation hearings during the Trump presidency.

Robert A. Leffingwell is the fictional nominee and his confirmation process is the basis for the book. We actually don’t hear much from him though as he prefers silence as he doesn’t want to inadvertently tank his own appointment. Rather it is the four ranking senators and the President and Vice President who the story keys on and where 90% of the dialogue is attributed. The press also plays a big role in getting the scoop, but most of the journalists are simply referred to by the newspaper they represent.

The book is a bit dated and at 600+ pages is a tad too lengthy for my taste. The book features few women characters of any depth and as a result upon reading there is a decidedly male vibe. One can envision the cigarette smoke and nicotine stained stuffed shirts worm their way through the Senate offices. Despite the men’s only atmosphere Drury deftly captures in a very realistic way, and with all of the correct lingo, the Senate during the 1950’s. Along with the imagery he managed to both educate and tell a few interesting stories in the process.

3.5 to 4 stars

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book one other time, many decades ago, probably in high school or when I was in the Navy. All I remembered about it was that I had read it once, and that it was a political novel about a Senate confirmation battle in Washington, which could be guessed from the title. Well, I read it again and enjoyed it thoroughly. The novel was originally published in 1959 and won the Pulitzer in 1960. Drury does a masterful job of writing a novel about post-war America with a complete fictional cast of characters, and he really does capture a number of timeless elements about representative democracy. The only part that clanked was his treatment of the race to the moon, which was understandable because that part was still a decade in the future when he wrote. His treatment of that was really off. The rest of it was gripping.

[Julio Pino · Rating 4 out of 5]

If Donald Trump could write, and according to his advisers he almost never reads, ADVISE AND CONSENT is the novel he would have published and won the Pulitzer Prize, just as Allen Drury did in 1960. When Trump promised to "Make America Great Again" Drury-land is what he had in mind; a country with no race problem because there are no races besides the whites, political wives are at their best in being silent but supportive and submissive to their husbands, and the American government is so well organized that when the Russians land on the moon the Americans get there one day later! The Plot? It involves a sleazy, scheming U.S. president (modeled on Franklin Roosevelt, whom Drury loathed) using sexual blackmail to destroy the career and life of a U.S. Senator who opposes his nominee for Secretary of State. Drury dedicated this novel to his beloved U.S. Senate, yet every politician in these pages is a lawbreaker and hypocrite. I would dismiss this novel as a weird historical artifact except that it contributed mightily to the American public's distrust of the political class---exactly the opposite of what Drury intended.

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange and thoughtful novel about the nomination of a Secretary of State. This is perhaps not an obvious subject for a page-turner, but this book won the Pulitzer back when it was published in 1959 and was quickly turned into a successful (and worthwhile) film. At moments it even approaches greatness.

The book focuses on a handful of Senators and their struggles over the confirmation of someone about whom they have their doubts. It is clear that Drury used his time reporting on the Senate in the early 1940s to create well-rounded characters based on real people, and sometimes the book approaches a roman a clef: The world-weary but dedicated Majority Leader Bob Munson mirrors the real former Majority Leader Alben Barkley; the ornery South Carolina Senator Seab Cooley mimics the real-life Appropriations chair Kenneth McKellar; and the nominee himself has attributes of both Alger Hiss and David Lilienthal, namely, a proud progressive with a vaguely communist past (there's even a kinda womanizing Kennedy stand-in).

Perhaps most surprising, Drury takes the story of Lester Hunt, the real Senator who killed himself in 1954 when it was revealed his son was gay, and turns him into Utah Senator Brigham Anderson, a character who is in fact gay, and who wrestles with his sexuality and others' attempts to exploit it. The drawing of Anderson is touching and heartfelt for any age, but cannot help but be more so for being part of a book written for a popular audience in the 1950s.

Every once in a while Drury's love of the Senate overtakes him, and reading the book becomes not a little like reading pages of the Congressional Record (something I do enough of already), and sometimes his anti-communist fervor becomes too prominent, but on the whole this is a balanced, intelligent and loving look at the Senate and the country it represents, as told through characters that one really cares about.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allen Drury's Advise and Consent chronicles a hectic confirmation battle in the nation's capital. The President, secretly dying, wants to cement his legacy by appointing the progressive Bob Leffingwell as Secretary of State. The nomination instantly ignites a firestorm that sucks the entire Senate into its orbit, leading to contentious hearings, personal backstabbing, blackmail and even two deaths. Long considered the classic novel about American politics, it's still an engrossing, if sometimes clumsy and overwritten work. Drury worked as a political reporter in DC and his detailed accounts of Washington life and Senate decorum and protocols certainly exhibit this. Unfortunately, this also means the novel frequently bogs down in tedious descriptions of Washington landmarks and Senate colloquies that seem less like a novel than a slightly dramatized C-SPAN transcript. Considering how blatant (and insane) Drury's right wing politics became in the book's sequels, it's nice to see that they're relatively minor here; only in a few passages, like Orrin Knox bemoaning the wimpiness of Modern America or the scenes with a grossly stereotyped Soviet Ambassador, do they really stand out. What works about the novel, and why it's still worth reading all these years later, is Drury's effective portrait of men (written in 1959, the Senate is almost exclusively male) exercising power, the cynical view of political maneuverings, and its central characterizations: the courtly Southerner Seab Cooley, Leffingwell's arch foe; the harried Majority Leader Bob Munson and the principled conservative Orrin Knox; the reckless demagogue Fred Van Ackerman (who became an outright Soviet collaborator in the sequels); and, most affectingly of all, Brigham Anderson, an idealistic young Senator destroyed by a revelation that he's a closeted homosexual. Followed by several mostly terrible sequels, and a generally good film adaptation that mostly sands off the book's rougher edges.

[Scott Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

The United States Senate has the constitutional right to “advise and consent” to the nomination of the President’s selection for Secretary of State. This rigorous approval process is the basis for Allen Drury’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Throughout this massive (656 pages) work, Drury endeavors to posit both the good and the bad, the “hectic and shabby, but sometimes the moving and noble” aspects to America’s politicians as well as our governmental system of checks and balances. One reason for the novel’s length is the development needed for each of Drury’s multiple first person narrators. The escalating story is told by at least four main characters, each of which are fully developed. It is tempting to try to link some of the fictitious characters to famous 20th century politicians. For example, the nominee for Secretary of State can easily be confused with the historical Alger Hiss case in 1948. And the president’s health concerns were reminiscent of those with which Franklin Delano Roosevelt struggled during his tenure. However Drury provided some important “twists” to historical characters. The hot-headed Wyoming senator seems much akin to Joseph McCarthy, however he is consumed not by anti-communism, but rather with a rabid liberal worldview. And some aspects to this story seem timeless. Politicians are still prone to seek to win the day and destroy their opponents using underhanded and vicious personal attacks. The press is portrayed as myopic and one-sided in their “objective profession” (“Why shouldn’t we throw everything we can at anybody who gets in the way?”). However the novel also gives hope that there are still those who will not sell their soul for personal gain and who can be civil even in their disagreements. Drury reminds the reader that if our legislative system is reduced to solely “Power and Ambition,” then there is not much difference between American and totalitarian regimes and machinations. This novel was powerful and gripping . . . highly recommended!

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are good parts of this book--it won a Pulitzer (overturning the committee, as it would 13 years later to deny Gravity's Rainbow, so, grain of salt), and some of the descriptions of pain and fatigue of the politickLing life are very evocative and telling.

Overall, though, politically it's detestable, and even if I agreed with it, its lionization of Senators Doing American Things with honor and dignity is incredibly stupid, especially considering the outcome--reasonable people disagree, but one senator, a shouting, unhinged lunatic, is without nuance and exists to be castigated by absolutely everyone, as does the mustache-twirling villain (?) of the piece. The others don't see real consequences of their actions--well, they do, and feel bad about it, which absolves them.

Overall it's a portrait of the special glory of American Politics, unironically, which is a joke considering that the President blackmails a principled Senator to death.

FOREIGN RELATIONS: This is a book about the dangers of being too soft on the Soviets, a bold and shocking position to take in 1959 (it wasn't), and the jeered strawman slogan is "I would rather crawl on my knees to Moscow than die under an atom bomb!" Which....I would? We all should? Nuclear war isn't just killing people. It's total ecological devastation of all species and their futures, and the destruction of earth. I think being reasonable with the Russians--demonic beings that crave only America's total destruction--should have been a goal of foreign relations, not a derided plea from unreasonable cowards.

Of course, the foreign relations here aren't exactly nuanced. The British ambassador--the only Brit, as the other ambassadors are the only ones of their nationality--is a distant, quippy artistocrat, the Indian ambassador is a nosy, craven appeaser, the Russian ambassador is a hostile and shitty ambassador with no pretense of diplomacy with the US.

At the end of the day, the honorable men make honorable stands. I think the Senate has one woman, one Latino (maybe) and one Hawaiian guy, from Hawaii, but otherwise it's all men, all white, all paternalistic as hell. When the handsome, too-perfect young Senator has a crisis, his wife, to whom he has been emotionally distant for like a decade, is narratively chastised for being upset by his continued failure to open up to her, rather than supporting him unequivocally as he continues to lie to her in the face of anonymous threatening agents. Women exist as wives to support husbands. They may do so intelligently and compassionately, but men are at the forefront.

Overall there are no other people of color. There is surprising sympathy for a probably-gay man whose wartime affair is revealed, but not denounced (although it's in such oblique language it's a little "too awful to mention), although he isn't happy about the consequences.

It strikes me that the hero of the final stretch of the book--a tart, straight-talking Illinois senator who is the President's old rival--denounces the current state of America. You know, the golden age we're supposed to hearken back to?

Do you want a war, Senator?” Of course he didn’t want a war; he just wanted an end to this flabby damned mushy nothingness that his country had turned herself into. And he particularly wanted an end to the sort of flabby damned thinking that the nominee and his kind represented—the kind of thinking, growing out of the secret inner knowledge that a given plan of action is of course completely empty and completely futile, which forces those who embark upon it to tell themselves brightly that maybe if the enemy will just be reasonable the world will become paradise overnight and everything will be hunky-dory. It was quite obvious to Senator Knox that the enemy would never be reasonable until the day he could dictate the terms of American surrender, and it was with an almost desperate determination that he returned again and again to the task of trying to make this clear to his countrymen. It was doubly frustrating because it was quite obvious that his countrymen knew it. They knew it, but they didn’t want to admit they knew it, because that would impose upon them the obligation of doing something about it, and that might bother them, and they didn’t want that."

COME ON.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

Phew!

This book put me in quite the slump for the first half. Between all the names and not much plot development, I could only stomach about 20 pages a day. However, once Book 3 rolled around (a little past the halfway point), things took a turn, and the trivialities, scandals, and inner workings of Washington DC were on full display.

Having dozens and dozens of names thrown at me in the beginning was initially jarring, but I grew to appreciate the central characters in their own ways over time. At points I felt somebody was a good, honest politician, and all of a sudden a new chapter unfolded. While I found the ending slightly predictable, it was satisfying, and I'm curious what the other books in the series are like.

[Barb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read over 40 years ago...and Tim Russert said that anyone who read and loved this book would forever be a political junkie. So true. I very much doubt that Allan Drury or Tim Russert could ever imagine a political system as divisive and corrupt as the one we’re currently experiencing.

[Nooilforpacifists · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another review vaporized.

This 1958 writing has an Eisenhower feel (and I Liked Ike), without the Fletcher Knebel (for that is the closest comparison) pacing. It’s primary plot point is showcased early, so there is little surprise. Worse, he tacks on 50 extra pages at the end, exactly as if his editor said, “Add more meat, should you want to be taken seriously.” Worse still, the extra material is a victory lap—written largely from a different persona than the two dominating the first 3/4th of Drury’s novel—which ties everything together in a red, white, and blue ribbon.

Yet, there’s a strange MacGuffin that’s wonderfully worked-up, then wasted. You see, the son of one Senator is about to get married to the daughter of another. And we frequently are allowed to peek into their (chaste) pre-wedding lives. But the two Senators spend most of the book looking to align on opposite sides of the issue. Indeed, I seem to recall they in fact do. But nothing is made of this: the marriage takes place, off-stage, without the wrecking ball of politics interfering. Why?

It’s difficult to believe this was taken seriously as a political thriller, much less that he wrote a handful more. But I never did understand the appeal of the movie “The Manchurian Candidate”—this has a similar air of implausibility. Perhaps I’m being too critical; still, I read 1,000 pages of history books between the time I opened this and finally finished.

[Grace]

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER: 1960
===
Putting this one on indefinite hold at about 60%

This is brilliantly written, and while it's a bit wordier than it probably needs to be, the story is compelling and I've honestly been sucked right in. It's a fascinating portrayal of the US cabinet nomination process and in the inner workings of the Senate, and the pacing is great. Lots of well-connected white men, which isn't generally my bag, but generally really interesting characters. Unfortunately, I started to suspect that something awful was going to happen to one of the characters that I've grown quite fond of, so I spoiled myself and sure enough, "kill your gays" is in full effect and the thought makes me feel quite sick, and I just can't bear to read it any longer, even if I'm actually really invested in the story and do think it's probably a realistic depiction of what could happen, particularly given the office and the time period. Maybe someday I'll pick it back up, but I doubt it, as I've skimmed through the rest. Not gonna rate because I don't feel right rating something I've not finished and it probably would have been a four-star read for me if not for my inability to stomach that particular trope at this particular time.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Completely captivating and full of surprises.

[Carly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really fun read. Much like House of Cards. But in America.

And a Pulitzer!

[Emory Katz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution provides that the President of the U.S.A. shall nominate and appoint officers of the United States “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.”

Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent explores this rule to create a fascinating political thriller. Winning the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Drury’s work thrived due to his history as a reporter in the Senate during the terms of Roosevelt and Truman. Advise and Consent is a sort of political alternate universe, diverging from our history as the tensions rise between America and the Soviet Union. What initially seems to be just a story about a controversial Senate appointment soon reveals itself to be a critical and surprisingly progressive evaluation of United States politics and the forces that govern it.

In the height of the Cold War, the President replaces his Secretary of State to promote peace with the Soviet Union, sparking a Senate uproar that threatens to destroy lives as the fate of the United States hangs in the balance.

While many characters shape the novel’s intrigue—how could there not be, with 100 senators—a few stand out. Bob Munson, the Majority Leader, allies with the President to push the nomination. Seab Cooley, the president pro tempore, leads the opposition driven by professional and personal grudges. Orrin Knox, a principled Illinois senator, grapples with the morality of the appointment. But in my opinion, the most compelling is Brigham Anderson, the young Utah senator chairing the subcommittee evaluating the nominee.

Haunting the narrative for the first half is the Secretary of State nominee Bob Leffingwell. Absent from the novel for approximately the first half, all the reader knows is that he is deeply controversial but adored by the media. When he appears, he seems affable and charismatic, but rapidly becomes a somewhat more sinister figure as the skeletons in his closet start to emerge.

The novel unfolds in four books: Bob Munson’s, Seab Cooley’s, Brigham Anderson’s, and Orrin Knox’s, in that order.

Bob Munson’s section draws readers into supporting Leffingwell, aligning with the first protagonist’s perspective. The President appears sincere yet reliant on Bob, and political maneuvering initially appears entertaining and lighthearted.

Seab Cooley’s book delves into Leffingwell’s confirmation hearings, uncovering his past ties to a Communist cell at the University of Chicago. Three others were supposedly involved: a dead man, Herbert Gelman, called to testify, and a mysterious man going by the pseudonym James Morton. Although Leffingwell handily discredits witness Herbert Gelman, Cooley receives a private call from Morton, thus confirming Leffingwell’s involvement.

This is when Brigham Anderson’s book begins, marking the most compelling section of the novel. After hearing the truth privately from Morton, he begins to oppose Leffingwell, but obscures the reasons in order to preserve the reputation of the President. Accordingly, Brig faces intense media attacks as he moves to convince the President to withdraw Leffingwell’s nomination.

Unfortunately, as a result of Anderson’s secrecy, Munson and the President doubled down on their support of Leffingwell. When Brigham is finally able to speak with them and reveal the truth, the President promises to rescind the nomination but secretly resolves to silence Brig. The solution comes from Munson, in the form of photographic evidence of a relationship he had with another soldier while stationed in Honolulu during the war. Although Munson begs the President not to use the photo to hurt Anderson, the President refuses to make the promise. Thus, handing the photo to Fred Van Ackerman, the President sets Anderson up for political and social ruin. Torn between his duty to his country and the secret that promises to tear his life apart, Anderson writes a letter explaining everything and sends it to Orrin Knox before committing suicide inside his office.

Orrin Knox’s book begins with Anderson’s suicide sending shockwaves through the Senate. Driven by anger toward the President, Knox becomes determined to stop Leffingwell’s confirmation. In the climax, the President offers to back Knox for the presidency if he supports Leffingwell, but Knox, after a fierce internal struggle, chooses principle over ambition, rejecting the offer to protect the country’s integrity.

Most notable in the novel is Drury’s portrayal of Brigham Anderson. In the 1960s, homosexuality was illegal in every state and still classified as a mental disorder by the APA. Nevertheless, Brigham Anderson—a gay man—is depicted not as a villain, but as an ideal: an attentive father, faithful husband, and “one of the few men in American politics with sufficient courage and integrity.”

Brigham’s arc parallels Bob Leffingwell’s: both are rising political figures with secrets threatening their careers. Yet where Leffingwell lies and scapegoats others to hide his Communist ties—framed as a moral failing—Brigham’s homosexuality is treated by Drury as morally neutral. Brig is a fundamentally good person. When his ex-lover, who sold him out, confesses, Brig forgives him. (It doesn’t matter. “A tall young man with haunted eyes got drunk in a shabby café in a little town in Indiana jumped off a bridge… No banner headlines heralded his demise, and far away in the beautiful city where ruthless men had used him ruthlessly for their purposes no one even knew that he was gone.” His lover dies too. They are both tragedies.) Drury once explained Anderson’s characterization, noting that “any kind of financial speculation or corruption would be so utterly foreign to Brig’s nature that he wouldn’t be Brig any more and the whole story would be wrenched so violently out of shape.” If his secret was any sort of immorality or wrongdoing, it would utterly betray Brig’s character, proving that his sexuality was not demonized by the novel.

Even in his death, his sexuality is not retracted out of some attempt to preserve his honor. Just before he commits suicide, Anderson contemplates, “in one last moment of rigid and unflinching honesty, he realized that it was not only of his family that he was thinking as he died. It was of a beach in Honolulu on a long, hot, lazy afternoon.”

Throughout the novel, Drury never condemns Brigham; instead, his death incenses the Senate, which attributes his murder the President and Fred Van Ackerman. This tragedy becomes a key reason Orrin Knox refuses to support Leffingwell’s nomination, sacrificing his own ambitions to achieve the goal that Brig died for. Even the President, whose cowardice and patheticness drove Brigham to suicide, resolves that he would “give anything now to have [Brig] alive just because he was a good man.” When the President dies of a heart attack at the end of the novel, there is little love lost for him.

At the end of these musings on how progressive Drury’s work seems to be, I do have to acknowledge the admittedly few grounds with which he fails. There are very few female characters, and even fewer with any substance. This is not entirely surprising due to it being written in the 1960s, but nevertheless is a drawback. There are, of course, many antiquated beliefs about Communism and Russia, but that has hardly changed much today. The only other downside that I encountered with this novel is the immense demand of the reader to memorize the names of characters and relationships, but the book does come with a helpful list at the front.

Overall, Drury’s work was a fascinating insight into the political creatures of the 1960s, and a deeply worthwhile read. Although the plot takes a while to begin, it quickly seizes you up in the tide as it truly begins to move. I shed a few tears over Brig’s suicide, and found myself deeply invested in Orrin Knox’s moral debate. While there were truly some evil characters, there were also many who could inspire hope and pride.

Tragically, the state of political affairs today has degraded. In many ways, his Senate seems to be a fanciful, idealized dream that cannot truly represent the government of today. Drury’s Senate works across the aisle for the service of the country, but today I truly cannot bring myself to believe that politicians work for anything that is not their own gain.

As stated in the novel, “every once in a while the electoral process tosses to the top someone smart and glib and evil, without basic principle, without basic character, and without restraints.” It is hard to imagine a quote that is more apt to describe the current political situation than this. I wish I believed in the novel’s message that Fred Van Ackerman might face retribution from those dedicated to justice, but it is hard to maintain such optimism these days.

It seems a bit ludicrous to say that I long for the Senate of the 1960s, but perhaps Advise and Consent offers a bit of perspective that has been lost in modern America.

alternatively: i can’t believe the soviets won the space race in this universe. 0/5 stars.

[Christopher MacMillan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The majority of "Advise and Consent"'s mammoth 760 pages are intelligent, explosive, and magnetic, and would have warranted nothing less than a 5-star rating -- a very rare quality for what is essentially a page-turner.



But in the last 200 pages, author Allen Drury begins to lose focus and lose steam, and as a result, the book starts to lag. This is so frustrating, given the sheer magnitude and awesomeness that the book began with and carried straight through towards the end. What a shame.



"Advise and Consent" tells the story of what happens in the US Senate when the President of the United States startles the world by nominating a controversial wild-card named Robert A. Leffingwell to the position of Secretary of State. It's a decision that sends shockwaves through Washington, and the flabbergasted senators are left with the task of either supporting Leffingwell or attempting to stop him. To add to the confusion, soon information is brought forth that Leffingwell may - or may not - have been involved with the Communist Party at one point (remember: this book came out at the height of the Cold War).



"Advise and Consent" is told through the points-of-view of four main characters: Democrat Bob Munson is the President's always-loyal right-hand-man who the President entrusts to see that Leffingwell's nomination gets passed; Seab Coolley is an ageing battle-axe Republican Senator whose firebrand ways cause lots of tumult on Capitol Hill, despite his essential faithfulness to his fellow senators, regardless of what side of the aisle they sit on; Brigham Anderson is a Democrat who nonetheless is driven by acting out of fairness first and foremost -- and his fairness tells him to go against the President and try to defeat Leffingwell; and Orrin Knox is a senator who does what's best for the senate and for the country, but who can't shake the bitterness over losing the Democratic Presidential bid against the President who he is now forced to obey. While Munson's, Coolley's, and Anderson's books burst with electricity from page one, Orrin Knox's book is much less interesting, much less realistic, and becomes stricken with sentimentality. It is also - inexplicably - the longest of the four sections, and as such, it is such a disappointment to blast through over 500 pages of unique literary excellence only to be brought down with a thud for the last chunk of the novel.



But this is still a great novel, and one which must have raised a few eyebrows in its day (I won't say why, but let's just say that Brigham Anderson has quite the secret). Drury has based much of what has happened in "Advise and Consent" on the lives and actions of real US politicians, but even so, the man has a knack for creating characters that we are interested in and who we come to care about. Even Seab Coolley - so set in his right-wing ways, and causing so much trouble for the Democrats - is likeable. In fact, he's lovable, and was my favourite character in the whole book, for his Zeitgeist bravado, his cunning intellect, and his surprisingly humane side that continued to pierce through again and again as the book progressed.



With over 100 characters in total, "Advise and Consent" in a one-of-a-kind book which, in the end, falls short of being a perfect novel, but most of it actually was perfect. The first 500 pages of Drury's Pulitzer Prize-winner are something I will remember fondly and carry with me as being one of the most biting, gripping, and enjoyable reading experiences I've ever had, and this is still a novel I would recommend - without hesitation - to everyone. It's a true time capsule of the 1950s political climate in America.

[Jimmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably a 2.5 star rating. It’s better than “Gone with the Wind.” But not much. This is not to say that I didn’t have moments where I enjoyed the book. I did. But I thought the flaws of the book were just too egregious to gloss over when rating the work as a whole. Here are some of my major problems with the book: (1) It’s too smug and insidery and this comes out in the narration. (2) The characters, to a one, are all pompous asses. All of them. I found nothing redeeming in them, even when it is clear that Drury lionizes some of them as heroes. None of them are heroes. All of them are insufferable egoists. Bob Munson is a coward. Seab Cooley is a crotchety old prick in the worst southern stereotype of a good-ol’-boy patriarch. (I swear, if Drury didn’t overuse the word “sleepy” to describe Seab Cooley’s placid facial expression a hundred times, I’ll be damned!) Brig Anderson is a self-righteous do-gooder who is supposedly so firm of conviction but who gives up the ghost, literally, without so much as an effort to fight or a concern at all for others. I thought Brig ended up being pathetic and weak, though Drury presents his seedy suicide as the foundation of his sainthood and martyrdom. And Orrin Knox is an insufferable egocentric bulldozer who hides his base ambition behind some idealistic nobility. Bob Leffingwell is a crafty and weasely operator whose relationship with truthtelling is mercenary. (3) The role of kids and spouses in the story is 1950s Leave-It-To-Beaver caricatures. Pidge, Brig’s daughter, is insufferable. Mabel is an emotional wreck. Beth/Bee/Hank, Orrin’s wife, is the obviously superior, but secondarily (and happily) subordinate June Cleaver-like character. (4) There was absolutely no purpose whatsoever of the various diplomats who made cameo appearances. Same with Hal Knox and Crystal Danta. Their stories could have been cut out completely from the novel without losing anything in the plot. And (5), finally, the subtlety of political maneuvering in the end gave way to unabashed, full-throated, anti-communist, Soviet-hatred, moralist patriotic nationalism. The ending completely ruined any kind of procedural nuance and wrangling within the Senate. So, no, this book I found unworthy of the Pulitzer. I suspect it won in 1960 only as a paean to Cold War patriotic nationalism, because it certainly didn’t win for its literary quality of writing and storytelling, which I found to be pedantic and amateurish throughout.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought it was hot stuff then. Now its just sad that it's so mild compared to current Washington politics.

[Michael Stutzer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The current 50-50 split in the US Senate has raised the visibility of some of its extensive rules. Those so interested can do worse than read this blockbuster best seller that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960. It chronicles two-weeks of Washington intrigue surrounding the U.S. Senate’s process to advise and consent to (or, as it turns out, not to) a liberal president’s choice of an experienced bureaucrat named Robert Leffingwell to be Secretary of State. Don’t let the 616 large pages in the hardcover edition deter you from either starting or finishing the book. It is a real page-turner of interacting ambitions, jealousies, power and (perhaps surprisingly today) intellectual discussions among Senators. After reading, one share’s the author’s respect for the role of our legislative branch and its sometimes arcane procedures as a check on unfettered Presidential power.

The backdrop for this book is late 1950s cold-war politics, when the Soviet Union was not only bad ass but ahead in the space race with its potential military significance. The prospect of catastrophic war was high in the minds of the public. In the book, the liberal party in control of the White House and the Senate became favorably disposed toward more accommodation (some would say appeasement) with Soviet leaders. Leffingwell wrote a popular book espousing this view, which convinced the President to nominate him for Secretary of State in order to advance his desired Reset with the Russkies.

The Senate majority was headed for quick confirmation of the President’s nominee, until evidence arose that Leffingwell had enthusiastically participated in a small, intellectual Communist cell during his few years as a college instructor. When confronted with this evidence during the Senate’s hearings, Leffingwell denied it. It was later determined that he had lied (under oath, of course). This became the main issue concerning his suitability for the job – not his actual participation in a Communist cell.

Apparently one feature of the political milieu hasn’t changed a bit since the 1950s depicted in the novel. The mainstream media are depicted as overwhelmingly liberal, continuing to heavily favor the nominee throughout while pilloring his senatorial opposition, no matter what. Current Russian government behavior doesn’t differ much from that depicted in the book, either. The author depicts an Empire so Evil that when it succeeds in a manned space mission to the moon, it immediately broadcasts to the world that it intends to leave a military contingent there to defend its ownership claim to the entire Moon. That the first manned mission to the Moon would be Russian was plausible, because they were ahead in the space race at the time. But the author and his original readers appear to have watched too many of that decade’s science fiction movies, and thereby found plausible that the first manned mission to the Moon would be massive enough to establish a working military base there.

But the 1950s backdrop shows its age in other aspects of the plot. The McCarthy Era (Joe, not Eugene) had recently ended. The widely accepted view by the late 1950s was that his Communist Witch Hunts reflected a broader reality in which there was little evidence of Communist infiltration of the Federal Government. In light of this it isn’t surprising that the author depicts most senators as unconcerned about the nominee’s distant past participation in a Communist cell, dismissing this as a brief youthful, intellectual exuberance that could now be forgiven. Had the author written this book after Mikhail Gorbachev’s reign, he would have had to consider that Gorbachev released KGB records establishing that many diehard communists had, in fact, infiltrated the Federal Government and spied for the Soviets. Yes, Virginia, Julius Rosenberg really was a spy, along with lots of others – just not all those individuals fingered by McCarthy and his ilk. There is no doubt today that more senators would connect the dots between Leffingwell’s early communist leanings and his later advocacy of accommodation with The Evil Empire, and oppose him on those grounds. It appears that in the late 1950s it was somewhat politically incorrect to do so, making Leffingwell’s cover-up the main issue.

It appears that the working duties of senators have also changed since the 1950s. Senators are depicted spending many hours alone in their offices, answering correspondence and poring over transcripts of committee hearings. Currently this is done by a senator’s battalion of staffers, while the senator meets with campaign consultants and attends photo ops. Also changed is the expectation that senators make up their own minds when voting. Currently the Majority and Minority Leaders make up their minds for them, with only an occasional renegade like Joe Manchin or Mitt Romney willing and able to nonconform.

Perhaps the most glaring contrast between then and now is the importance placed on the Secretary of State. The author depicts this as perhaps the most important official in the Federal Government, writing as-if the future of the free world depends on it. If still true today, it is sobering to consider that President Obama once appointed Hillary Clinton to this post. The free world did survive her stint, although the Ambassador to Libya did not. Encouraged by this, Obama then surmised that the free world would also survive John Kerry. Of course it did, although he left our Middle East allies madder-than-hell, as the current Secretary discovered. The foreign policy apparatus is more extensive and not “run” by the Secretary of State anymore, unless the Secretary is transcendant. Kissinger, where art thou?

But I digress. Back to the plot: the Russian belligerent broadcast didn’t aid the nominee’s case when the President finally stood on his hind legs and barked back at them, whipping up public sentiment against the Reds. Then the coup de grace to the nominee came by revelation within the Senate of a conspiracy involving the otherwise honorable Senate Majority Leader, the ruthless President, a liberal Supreme Court Justice (really?) and an ambitious young, take-no-prisoners leftist senator (from Wyoming!!) to blackmail (votemail?) a respected opposing senator with evidence of his (WW II) wartime homosexuality. This led to his suicide before the vote was taken, and a desire by his colleagues to honor his memory by joining the opposition.

I giggled when the author reports that the media gets wind of the wartime homosexuality but does not report it out of respect for the gay senator and his family. Apparently “all the news that is fit to print” has now become “all the news that can be Tweeted to get a rise out of the public”. I’ll leave it to readers to nominate a current politician who could play the role of the ambitious, take-no-prisoners leftist senator. Perhaps a sequel would depict that senator as a female from a coastal state, instead of a male from Wyoming.

Some of the book’s considerable length is attributable to the author’s extensive character development of the key Senators, their political/social lives, and their thought processes as the two-week process unfolds. Another factor is the author’s extensive narrative of the Senate proceedings. This is so page-consuming that I sometimes felt like the story was unfolding in real time. Still I often could not put it down, especially when the alternative was to watch political opinion shows on cable.

You may find the book online in several formats, but I enjoyed a used hardcover found at a small used bookstore conveniently located near my dog groomer.

[The Immersion Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

'What a strange life we all lead in this town,' he said, 'and all because we think we're doing the right thing for the country.'

Drury's story exhibits not only the process of confirming a presidential cabinet member, nor does it only describe the mechanics of the American government. Rather, it forces the reader to consider the contrusction of the American ideal, the scaffolding of her principles, the application of her spirit. With just enough romanticism, suspense and intrigue, Drury depicts a plausible portrait of the American government without sensationalism. One ought to explore, however, Drury's reasoning for illustrating the daily efforts in perfecting the application of American idealism via a senatorial confirmation process for a Secretary of State nominee. Could he have expressed these ideals through a heroic president pitted against a foreign adversary? Could he have showcased the inner conflicts of a Supreme Court justice deciding on a landmark case?

He could have. However, Drury's choice to explore a confirmation process showcases the wars within America itself. He does not shy away from the fact that American idealism is exercised rather than implemented and that, very often, it rears it's ugly side. We can agree with Senator Munson, the president, Brig or Senator Knox and, simultaneously, glorify the beauty in the antagonistic processes. America, at its core, is conflict. Without it, we become stagnant; a bacteria-infested pool rather than a rushing river.

Love of country is the moral compass directing limited minds. It justifies every individual mean to a universally applied end. Rather than sanctioning the human frailties from our government, we demand their participation. Yes, this comes with devestating consequences; cunning, ruthless manipulations and conniving back-room deals. But it allows for freedom, even if that allowance leaves our democracy susceptible to deplorable and, in time, regrettable actions.

Thus comforted by his wry imaginings of the past, he would reflect that this, in essence, was the American government: an ever-shifting, ever-changing, ever-new and ever-the-same bargaining between men's ideals and their ambitions; a very down-to-earth bargaining, in most cases, and yet a bargaining in which the ambitions, in ways that often seemed surprising and frequently were quite inadvertent, more often than not wound up serving the purposes of the ideals.

If our government depends on the frailties of men and women for her ideal, it also depends on certain universal moral integrity. Yet as we've established, we cannot dictate a protection of that integrity without losing the essence of our freedom. America's design is perfect in that it allows for her people to continually design it. Utopia is experienced in the making, not the establishment. And people, with their strengths and weaknesses alike, create an America every day in the image of those strengths and weaknesses. Drury drafts this ebb and flow of strengths and weaknesses. And in any war, there are casualities and only history judge if the right side won.

In glorifying the process, executed by people with nobility and cunning, integrity and love-of-country, Drury describes America; a grand idea, like all grand ideas, best articulated through stories. We need to courageously continue creating these stories though we risk individual sacrifice and gains.

'That is America's problem right now, it seems to me: we aren't committed, and we dn't really care, about anything. Our enemies and our friends together have succeeded in paralyzing us with self-doubt, and under the tutelage of all of you we have become afraid to really care, because to really care has become unfashionable and rather laughable, and also, of course, because to really care would impose upon us the necessity of acting in support of the things we really care for; and nobody wants us to do that anymore. We don't even want to do it ourselves.'

This is how America dies; not by cabinet confirmation decisions or passing legislative bills or signing executive orders, but by disengagement.

[Mark Oppenlander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Allen Drury worked for the United Press for 20 years, reporting on Washington, DC generally and Capitol Hill specifically. In Advise and Consent, Drury uses that experience to craft a compelling and realistic tale of US politics, circa 1959.

Drury's story starts with an unnamed US President nominating Robert Leffingwell to be the next Secretary of State. Leffingwell holds liberal views and will work toward rapprochement with the Soviet Union, something many US citizens want but of which others are wary. The nomination goes to the Senate, who must confirm the nominee - or as the Constitution describes it, they must "advise and consent" to the President's selection. Majority Leader Bob Munson begins work immediately to get his votes lined up, but knows he will face at least some opposition from Seab Cooley. Cooley is an aging Southern Senator and a member of the minority party who has bad blood with Leffingwell. Cooley succeeds in throwing enough cold water on the process to send the nomination hearings to a subcommittee, where opponents dig up old dirt on Leffingwell. Brigham Anderson, a younger Senator and a rising star from Utah, leads the subcommittee through their investigations and interviews. However, things grow really ugly when the President and others start applying more serious political pressure on various members of the Senate to move Leffingwell's vote to the floor.

It's been quite some time since I have found myself so enthused by a book; I was completely drawn into the world Drury depicts. The characters are vivid and nuanced, the dialogue crackles like a Billy Wilder script, and the minute details of life in the Senate add dimension and texture to the setting. The Senators do their public work by a code of conduct that has a number of formal strictures, yet they must also answer to the dictates of their own conscience. Therefore, what occurs in public spaces - at press conferences, on the floor of the Senate, etc. - and what occurs behind locked doors, is often quite different. Drury opens those locked doors, giving us the behind-the-scenes tale of how the sausage gets made and the result is spellbinding narrative. Do you want to be in the room where it happens? Drury takes you there, whether that room is a Senator's private study, a diner out of town, the Oval Office, or a back bedroom during a party of gathered DC socialites.

Perhaps the thing I most appreciated about the novel was that no one comes across as pure hero or villain. In the early chapters of the book, I found myself aligning with certain characters as they seemed the most likeable, moral, or reasonable. However, as the story progresses, we see these players do things that disappoint, horrify, or shock us. Meanwhile, other characters who seemed unlikable or unreasonable stand up for what is right. No one is all good or all bad, and each major character struggles with moral decisions related to their personal beliefs about what is best for the country and whether the ends justify the means. I appreciated that Leffingwell's fate remains in doubt throughout the book, and that, as a reader, I wasn't always clear on whether I wanted Leffingwell to get the job or not.

The final act of the book includes several dramatic events that change some hearts and minds and decide the outcome of the confirmation vote (among other things), leading to a crowd-pleasing finish. Drury overplays his hand a bit here, wandering over the line into melodrama a couple of times. The final scenes in Advise and Consent reminded me of the speeches in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or President Ryan's tough choices in Tom Clancy's book Executive Orders. Still, perhaps we can forgive Drury his patriotic desire to see the "good guys" win. His time in the press corps may have made him a touch cynical, but he clearly still wanted to believe that a good man (or woman) had a chance to hold their own in the machine of Washington politics.

Despite being over 60 years old, this book feels timely. Given the dysfunction we've seen and experienced lately in our national politics, reading this gave me a strange kind of hope. Yes, politics is a nasty business and yes, both the system and the people within it are imperfect. Reading this book however, I was reminded that ideas still matter. An aspirational political stance might seem naive, but it may also light the only way out of the morass that is business as usual in our nation's capital.

[Marsha Altman · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had never heard of this book until about two weeks ago, when someone told me it traumatized him as a teenager because of its homophobic content. I started researching it and it turns out a number of people were horrified by the content of this book and scared out of politics or coming out of the closet, including Barney Frank, even though he did overcome that and go on to be the first openly-gay senator. When I learned it had also won a Pulitzer in fiction, was a bestseller in 1962, and had been turned into a play and a film (which is the first major motion picture to feature a gay bar) I decided I had to read it.

Drury is actually a very good writer on a sentence level, and he makes it not so impossible to keep track of the large cast of characters, which is impressive. The story is about the Senate confirmation of a new Secretary of State, which goes sideways for various reasons. Drury was a reporter in Washington at the time and when the book came out people swore up and down that this was the best portrayal of how Washington actually works. But there's more to it. Drury was fanatically anti-Communist, and the Russian ambassadors are just outright there to destroy the United States and anyone who so much as had a conversation about communism in college is morally suspect and should be at the very least forbidden from ever serving in government and preferably exiled to a small island, and I'm only exaggerating slightly. (Historically, as it turns out, the Russians were as scared of us as we were of them) He's also pretty racist, I'm guessing, from the one portrayal of a character of color (the Indian ambassador) and can't tell the difference between a Muslim and a Hindu.

But the real problematic content is the character of Brig, the senator from Utah, who kills himself after he's outed by the President as having had a gay encounter while serving in the army. This is apparently based on a real suicide (though the President was not involved) and it's a major turning point in the plot so it's hard to miss. Ironically, that's when the book gets very good in terms of being a page turner.

I can't recommend this book except as a historical oddity. It was a book of its time, and its time has past.

[Dusty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this novel about the white fraternal order of the United States Senate on Audible — a decision I am increasingly making as I work my way through these daunting midcentury Pulitzer winners.

The book is egregiously long, with regular narrative digressions and (omg) so many characters who emphasize their points by repeating their sentences twice. I said, the characters often emphasize their points by repeating their sentences twice.

But although I might rib the book for its length and redundancy, the truth is that I enjoyed it quite a lot. Once I got to know the characters, their jobs, their relations with one another, and of course their views on the President’s nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell for Secretary of State, I settled comfortably into the story. On the one hand, it is a peek into the political work that happens behind the scenes in Washington, DC, and that tends to be invisible to the rest of us living outside of that city. On the other hand, it is a surprisingly sincere affirmation of US-style democracy, guided as the founders intended by a robust system of checks and balances at the federal level.

I thought for a while that the book was cut from the same cynical cloth as Netflix’s House of Cards series, but by the ending I reached the conclusion that it is not. It might have cynical characters, but it is not itself a cynical book. In fact, if there is one aspect of Advise and Consent that proclaims it a vestige of an earlier era, it is the unflinching faith it places in the honor of the men and women elected to the US Senate. For all his imagination, Allen Drury did not foresee that the upper chamber of one of the modern world’s most notable political bodies world would one day be comprised nearly entirely of opportunistic Fred Van Ackermans, with hardly an honest Orrin Knox or steadfast Brigham Anderson in sight.

[Grendel 23 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a Pulitzer Prize winning, fictionalized account of an insider’s view into American politics in the 1960’s. Considering today’s (circa 2022) increasingly divided politics, some of the themes about opposing parties finding common ground seems as quaint and out of touch as the mentions of the spittoons and filled snuffboxes that adorned the Senate floor decades earlier.

The plot is largely driven by the shocking nomination of Mr. Robert Leffingwell for Secretary of State. He’s controversial because of rumors he might prefer talk and peace with America’s perineal Cold War enemy. So, of course, there’s a fear that he’s been corrupted by that insidious plague - socialism! Maybe times haven’t changed all that much.

The story is told from multiple perspectives as senators try to build support for or against confirming the nominee. The back and forth, machine-gun dialogue in the combative confirmation hearings is fun. Reporters are refereed to only by the particular newspaper. They provide an ever-present chorus for the public’s opinion and express the presumed reactions and sympathies of the wider country. As one reporter notes, it’s expected because they’re the ones communicating to the nation what to think. It’s also a book of highlighting the differences between public press briefings and back room deals. It’s a book about attacks with a weaponized press, and when all else fails, the alternative of blackmail.

I enjoyed this political fairly tale, even though it was quite long-winded. Perhaps political scientists and armchair pundits would better appreciate the nuances of this detailed look at a long-passed age. For me, it was a good reminder that even Pulitzer Prize winners can be a chore to finish.

[^ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book challenges its prospective reader with an impressive 638 pages; each page of text is of 47(!) close-spaced lines (compare to 39 lines per page in a 1999 ppbk of Sebastian Faulks’ “Charlotte Gray”, and 23 lines per page in a 2005 ppbk of Frank Beddor’s “The Looking Glass Wars”. How long, I wondered, would it realistically take to actually read this American metaphorical behemoth?

I ploughed straight in and made something of a pig’s ear of the first twenty or so pages. What chance had I of acquiring sufficient familiarity of the vast cast of characters? Who was who, who was related to whom, and what were their politics and personal political motivations? Too many W’s! Leaving aside that the US Senate is no Houses of Parliament, space race and all, how exactly did the late 1950s US Washington political machine function?

Yet almost without realising it, I found myself 75 pages, or so, in, lapping up the plot, politics, and totally happily immersed in the tantalising waltz of competitive Washington political intrigue, foreign ambassadorial stooges (the pastiche British ambassador & his wife were just hilarious), senatorial gladiatorial combat, a decidedly unlovely President, and a delightful general array and disarray of senators’ wives and children.

I began to love this book. The length of time between page turns ensured that my concentration remained firmly fixed on what was rapidly becoming a compulsive read; and less and less on the distractive act of physically moving paper from right to left. How perfectly the plot caught, turned, and held aloft the ego and brute motivation, explicit and implicit, of those who are reeled into into politics. The storyline began to take hold of me. Hours regularly approached midnight. I struggled to lay the book aside & turn out the bedside light. Indeed I dared not read during hours of daylight; just another page … just another page … other jobs set aside, left undone.

Others have sketched the plot of this novel; it is needless that I should repeat them. In the edition I read there was also a very good outline printed on the page immediately before the Title page. Instead, I look to the bookmarks I placed on lines that notably drew my attention. Memorable expressions, oratory well worth learning by heart, such as:

“His face of a very old angel who had taken a detour through hell looked even more raddled than usual today, …” (p.99). My thoughts instantly went to sheep!

“… it was a hum-dinging, rip-snorting, hell-raising sockdolager and then some.” (p.120). “sockdolager” is a US word, defined by Merriam Webster as something that settles a matter: a decisive blow or answer. Saying it aloud brought forth such a wonderful sound!

“…the reporters faithfully jotted down their words in newsmen’s shorthand in the hope they might be as colourful as Seab’s [President Pro Tempore of the Senate]. They weren’t.” (p.120). Hope dashed. So true to life.

“As for honour, it honours me, but far more must I honour it. On that, the way is clear: I shall honour it by what I do, or I shall honour it not at all.” (p.185).

“I just want to say, though, that this strikes me as peculiar. The witness has explained everything except what I asked him to explain and he has been applauded for it repeatedly in spite of your ruling about demonstrations. Don’t people really understand what is going on here?” (p.222). The last sentence nails recognisably typical human wisdom-after-the-event hypocritical (or ignorant) behaviour.

“Because he was his father’s son, many doors were automatically opened to him; because he was himself, he walked through them with ease, gathering friends and supporters everywhere he went.” (p.302). Sage advice.

“Things were breaking too fast on this gorgeous spring morning, and there was no place for the majority Leader of the United States Senate to be expect right spang in the United States Senate,” (p.330). Doesn’t ‘spang’ (an American word) just LIFT that sentence?

“A bargain between desire and custom, dream and reality, wish and career, sex and society? We all make bargains in some way. You have to.” (p.358).

“Both were guilty of concealment, both were guilty of lying to the world, both had protected their reputations as best they could, and both had been discovered.” (p.463).

“…This was the ere, domestically, when everything was half done; the era, in foreign affairs, when nothing was done right because nobody seemed to care enough to exercise the foresight and take the pains to see that it was done right. This was the time when the job on the car was always half finished, the suit came back from the cleaners half dirty, the yardwork was overpriced and underdone, the bright new gadget broke down a week after you got it home, the prices climbed higher and higher as the quality got less and less, and the old-fashioned rule of a fair bargain for a fair price was indeed old-fashioned, for it never applied to anything.” (pp.501-502). Events both in the 1970s and the present day come to mind; let that be a warning to us all today!

“… the enormous vitality of free men, running their own government in their own way. If they were weak, at times, it was because they had the freedom to be weak; if they were strong, upon occasion, it was because they had the freedom to be strong; if they were indomitable, when the chips were down, it was because freedom made them so.” (p.614). “Indomitable” is truly a word to be cherished and a quality to be sought and bred-in. I can imagine (I haven’t looked) that Rudyard Kipling would use such a word.

Clearly here is a book not to be rushed. I look forward to repeated readings bringing forth subtleties that I have undoubtedly overlooked this first time through. This Collins hbk 1960 edition definitely fully justifies its 3cm bookshelf space. Would I want to read it on my e-reader? No. The tangible progress of the perfectly constructed plot marching, weaving, and, at times, racing through the fine paper pages of a fifty-three year old book is a memorable pleasure in itself.