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Canada and the United States
brings fresh insights in his account about how different
images of Asians were constructed in the United
States. He creatively and imaginatively draws on the
idea of Antonio Gramsci that ideology can be hegemonic and can subordinate groups such as Asian
Americans. Critical of liberalism and capitalism, he
calls for a heightened political consciousness that can
challenge and resist Orientalist representations. What
this means is not explicitly spelled out, however; how
Asian Americans can act to free themselves from these
vexing stereotypes is far from clear. Nonetheless, Lee
has written a pioneering study about the representation of Asians in American popular culture that will he
an important resource for other scholars.
FRANKLIN NG
California State University,
Fresno
RALPH DIETL. USA and Mittelamerika: Die Aaf3enpolitik
von William J. Bryan. 1913-1915. (Beitrage zur Kolonial- und Uberseegeschichte, Number 67.) Stuttgart:
Franz Stein er. 1996. Pp. 496. DM 161\.
A book of some 500 pages on American policy toward
Central America between 1913 and 1915 must cause
astonishment, but Ralph Dietl has a far more ambitious agenda than his title suggests. Though he limits
himself to policies toward four countries around the
Caribbean, he seeks nothing less than to refurbish
William Jennings Bryan's reputation as a statesman by
portraying him as the principal architect of the missionary diplomacy generally associated with Woodrow
Wilson.
He begins with an overview of conflicting perceptions of America's world role that are traceable to
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson and shows
how these were played out during the Manifest Destiny
years of western expansion and found their expression
in the Spanish-American War and the national debate
over imperialism that followed it. Bryan, who had
come to prominence as the Populist champion of the
cause of free silver, emerged during that dehate as a
dedicated anti-imperialist. His opposition to further
American expansion rested squarely on his domestic
views and led him to favor an optimistic, utopian, and
moralistic foreign policy designed to promote democracy in other countries and to foster not foreign
investments by "special interests," but trade in products produced by American farmers and workers. By
the time he was named secretary of state in 1913,
Bryan had become a dedicated opponent of the prevailing dollar diplomacy and "undemocratic means"
such as armed intervention and, according to Dietl,
had a clear agenda to revise American foreign policy
toward Latin America, and to some extent also toward
the world at large.
When dealing with Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico-in that order-Dietl
chooses to recount the generally unhappy history of
each country from the achievement of independence
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
to 1912. Combined with his extraordinarily detailed
account of diplomatic activities from 1913 on, however, this unfortunately undercuts his primary thesis by
showing that Bryan, whatever his intentions, had only
a modest practical impact on U. S. policy toward Latin
America. Only spottily supported by the president who
shared his views with regard to Latin America but had
other priorities and a Senate that ratified few of the
agreements he negotiated, and ill-served by colleagues
and subordinates who were either incompetent or
hostile to his ideas, he was frequently forced to react to
fast-moving events by following the paths of least
resistance. Bryan, the foe of dollar diplomacy and
military intervention, came to support both when
circumstances seemed to warrant it. From Nicaragua,
for example, the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty secured
leases of territory and the right to establish a naval
base on the Gulf of Fonscca, and it would have
included the Platt Amendment had Bryan had his way.
Only in Mexico did Bryan have the chance to implement at least some of his ideas, and even there his
proposed policies were overtaken by global exigencies.
It is not far-fetched to suggest, as Dietl does, that
Bryan's 1915 resignation was prompted not only by the
second Lusitania Note but also by the simultaneous
derailing of his proposed Mexican policy. But that
surely speaks to his inability to reshape American
policy effectively.
When Dietl discusses Bryan's relationship to both
the Grosse Politik and World War I, it becomes evident
once more that although Bryan opposed much of
American policy, he was never able to control or to
change it. He accepted Wilson's move toward the side
of Great Britain in return for a free hand with his
beloved cooling-off treaties, and he actively supported
Wilson for re election in 1916. That support may have
provided the campaign slogan, "He kept us out of
war," which reflected Bryan's priorities, but Wilson's
victory surely ended all possibility that what Bryan
disliked might yet be changed.
In the nature of things, a book as complex and
detailed as this one-there are over 1,200 footnotesmakes for heavy going, but there are added difficulties
here that detract further from the persuasiveness of
Dietl's thesis. The book's organization requires frequent references across both time and space, which
tend to breed confusion. Dietl, moreover, is enamored
of English phrases and overuses them in ways that are
not always self-explanatory and sometimes misleading.
"Bryan's good-neighborhood policy" is perhaps the
most egregious example. Nor does it help that numerous proofreading errors remain. It is disconcerting to
find Theodore Roosevelt identified as Undersecretary
of the Navy or the WCTU as the National Woman's
Temperance Union. It does not breed confidence to
find a newspaper listed as both the Newark Evening
News and Evening Post on the same page, or to have
prominent individuals endowed with given names
other than their own. Winfried Scott, Joshua Strong,
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2000
948
Reviews of Books
Graham Sumner, and Jeremiah Beveridge simply
won't do, especially not in the "Personenindex."
There is an extensive bibliography, but no subject
index.
MANFRED JONAS
Union College
MElVIN G. Hou.r, The American Mayor: The Best and
the Worst Big-City Leaders. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. Pp. xi, 210. Cloth
$47.50, paper $18.95.
Professors of urban history and social science agree
about who the very best and very worst American
mayors have been. Melvin G. Holli surveyed 160
experts (sixty-nine responded) and found a strong
consensus that Fiorello H. La Guardia, Tom Johnson,
David Lawrence, and Tom Bradley are among the
nation's very best mayors, while Big Bill Thompson,
Frank Hague, Frank Rizzo, and Jimmy Walker place
among the very worst.
There could hardly have been a better scholar to
oversee this task. Holli is not only the author of Reform
in Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics (1969)
and seven other books about city politics but also the
coeditor, with Peter D'A. Jones, of the Biographical
Dictionary ofAmerican Mayors, 1820-1980 (191\1). This
book describes Holli's survey and his findings. The first
chapter offers all too brief sketches of the ten worst
mayors. Three succeeding chapters present more substantial political biographies of the ten best. (Appendixes list the next twelve worst and the next twentyfour best.)
Holli follows up with a discussion of urban leadership. Reviewing major theories of political executives,
Holli argues that V.S. cities exhibit two styles of
mayoral leadership: the "task-oriented mayor" and the
"relationship-oriented" mayor. Nearly all of the best
mayors were task oriented, with long lists of accomplishments from orchestrating little New Deals to
rebuilding down towns. Although two "relationshiporiented" mayors (Bradley and Johnson) rank among
the ten best, they too have more than respectable
credentials as leaders who got things done. Holli also
studies the post-mayoral career paths of urban executives, showing that few move on to higher office.
There is plentiful food for thought here about
mayors, professors, and voters. The "best" mayors
succeeded at the polls more than once. Several of the
"worst" mayors did, too, and three of the four worstBig Bill Thornpson, James Michael Curley, and Frank
Hague-wcrc vcry popular over long periods, Students
and teachers might well puzzle over the difference
between academic and popular judgements,
More practically, mayors and would-be mayors are
well advised to read this hook. A close reading of the
careers of the best and worst suggests the following list
of Do's and Don'ts to this reader. The sins of the worst
mayors changed over time. Every mayor ranked among
the worst before Wold War 11 was personally corrupt.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
In the postwar years, the undoing of the worst was due
to poor management (Jane Byrne, Michael Bilandic,
Wilson Geode), fiscal imprudence (Dermis Kucinich,
John V. Lindsay, Abraham Beame), and flirtation with
white suprernacist sentiment (Frank Rizzo, Sam
Yorty).
The best mayors boast significant accomplishments.
Between 1890 and the World War 11 the mayors rated
hest each cleaned corruption out of city hall and
aggressively pursued the collective good of ordinary
voters. Three-Hazen Pingree, Tom L. Johnson, and
Samuel ("Golden Rule") Jones-became national heroes by championing the three-cent street railway fare.
Daniel W. Hoan, LaGuardia, Johnson, Jones, and
Frank Murphy organized little New Deals, securing
their popularity with voters and the praise of historians.
In the years since World War Il, every mayor ranked
among the best, from Bradley to Andrew Young,
organized a growth coalition that changed the facc of
the city's downtown. Of course, the same administrations were targets for the anger and resentment of
those who suffered from growth initiatives, and several
of them also drove up municipal debt. Running for
mayor? No one promises you a rose garden.
AMY BRIDGES
University of California,
San Diego
DOUGLAS BUKOWSKI. Big Bill Thompson, Chicago, and
the Politics of Image. Champaign: University of Illinois
Press. 1998. Pp. 273. Cloth $49.95 paper $21.95.
William Hale "Big Bill" Thompson served three terms
as the last Republican ever elected mayor of Chicago
(1915-1923 and 1927-1931). Thompson was a former
"cowboy" rancher, "wildwest" showman, athlete, and
minor political figure in Chicago before his 1915
election, hardly the credentials that one might expect
for the mayor of the nation's second largest city. In this
political biography, Douglas Bukowski augues that the
man and his tenure can best be understood in the
context of industrial, immigrant Chicago's raw and
brawling past history, which continued to shape its
politics even as the city matured economically and
socially. According to Bukowski, Thompson parlayed
his vision of a city engaged in class, ethnic, and race
warfare into three mayoral terms characterized by the
lack of a coherent political agenda for the city, a
willingness to switch sides on any issue when it suited
his purpose, and blatant appeals to ethnic or race
consciousness.
Thompson's years in office were constantly marred
by political scandals that might well have driven another mayor from office, and Bukowski is most successful in depicting the man and his manipulative
rhetoric. Even after Thompson was forced by a particularly nasty graft scandal in the public schools not to
stand for re-election in 1923, he rose from the ashes to
win again in 1927. According to Bukowski, the four-
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2000