Goldwater

The Man Who Made a Revolution

By: Lee Edwards

Narrated by: John Doherty

The most comprehensive biography of Barry Goldwater ever written is back by popular demand with a new foreword by Phyllis Schlafly and an updated introduction by the author.

Lee Edwards renders a penetrating account of the icon who put the conservative movement on the national stage. Replete with previously unpublished details of his life, Goldwater established itself as the definitive study of the political maverick who made a revolution.

©1995 Lee Edwards (P)2015 Regnery Publishing

Barry Goldwater biography--excellent!

This is an excellent biography of Barry Goldwater. In 1964 as an 19 y.o. young man I was a strong supporter of Goldwater and conservatism in general. In 1964 a friend and I were touring the west coast. On our way back to North Carolina we visited the Cow Palace in San Francisco, site of the 1964 convention, and drove up to Goldwater's home in Phoenix.

One thing I learned from the biography was that Goldwater knew that he could not win in 1964. I had thought that he truly believed that he could win in 1964. I was disappointed to learn this. LBJ was one of the crookedest presidents we have ever had. He knew that he was going to send a large number of troops to Vietnam after the 1964 election, all the while lying to the American people that he was not going to increase troop strength. He never supported African Americans until the 1964 Civil Rights bill. Johnson was a complete hypocrite! I guess Goldwater knew there was no way he could win.

My only complaint of the Audible edition is that the reader reads very slowly and worse, he mispronounced many words and names. I wish they had chosen a better reader!

A great biography which I can recommend unreservedly!

Maybe you have to be a true believer...

That's really the only explanation I can come up with for the good reviews on this. There's a lot of odd conservative interludes here, for example, the whole bit about his grandfather trying to get landowners to put in board sidewalks being some sort of tyrannical governmental overreach.

Obviously the author (from the Heritage Foundation) is a fan of the man, so there's this weird thing where he never lets an opportunity pass to heap praise on the Senator. It keeps treading on the story.

I could deal with those drawbacks if it wasn't for two things.

1) This is a book on an incredibly outspoken guy who lived an extremely full and interesting life... and it somehow manages to be unbelievably boring.

2) Which isn't helped at all by awful narration that somehow manages to both be monotonous AND having the most obnoxious pronunciation I've ever heard. Think back to when you were a child and you said a word incorrectly, and some incredibly annoyed adult sighs, and then proceeds to pronounce the word slowly making a point to annunciate every single syllable. Got it? Now imagine that for 28 HOURS.

It's a bad book read badly. It's a shame, as Barry Goldwater was a fascinatingly rich subject for a biographer.