Customer Reviews

The Arkansas Rockefeller

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John Ward was a newspaperman who went to work for Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller and later became both editor of the Conway Log Cabin Democrat and a senior official at the University of Central Arkansas. His The Arkansas Rockefeller is the first-hand account of a true intimate, but it is not exactly what could be called an intimate account. While not a spin-job by any means -- Ward tells it like it is -- it reads much like the sort of biography that late 20th Century Presidential candidates have produced as campaign tracts: aimed at the masses, short, lacking deep detail.

This is not a criticism of Ward. Ward wrote precisely the book he set out to write, and it's a good one. This is, rather, a criticism of those (myself included) who by now should have written a scholarly biography of the man who represents the greatest turning point in the political history of Arkansas. We have all dropped the ball (though there is more information available these days than before, including my thesis, "Winthrop Rockefeller and the Enfranchisement of Arkansas Blacks, 1960-1966"), and we should all be ashamed of ourselves.

But in the meantime, we are stuck with The Arkansas Rockefeller as the only definitive biography of the great man. It's a good, enjoyable, informative read. It just shouldn't be alone.