Faubus: The Life and Times of an American Prodigal [Hardcover]

Roy Reed (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Certain images connected with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s are branded in the collective consciousness of the nation: dogs and firehoses turned on African American protesters in Birmingham, the faces of the four young girls killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, and the National Guard escorting black teenagers into Little Rock's Central High School in September of 1957. At the time of Little Rock's desegregation, Arkansas governor Orval E. Faubus ensured his place in history by defying federal court orders and blocking integration, thus forcing President Eisenhower to call out the National Guard. Faubus was certainly not the only southerner who vociferously opposed integration--George Wallace of Alabama and Lestor Maddox of Georgia (among others) also jumped on the bandwagon--but what's unusual about Faubus is that he started out as a racial liberal. Surprises abound in Faubus, a fascinating biography by Roy Reed.

Reed's book does double duty, revealing the personal history of Orval Faubus and exploring the labyrinthine ties between politics and business still operating in Arkansas today. Faubus is a cautionary tale about good intentions gone bad, principles subsumed by ambition. How Orval Faubus, a one-time racial liberal, could have invoked the race card in 1957 and continued to play it for another decade is but one of many intriguing questions Reed attempts to answer. But Faubus has implications beyond the life of just one man; its lessons about the corrupting influence of power, money, and big business could as easily be applied to any number of the political scandals rocking the nation today. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

In Faubus, Roy Reed has written one of the best political biographies of recent years, yet in many ways his subject's significance is quite limited.... [Reed] makes no exaggerated claims in this mature and measured biography for Faubus's importance. Rather, his aim is to explore what he calls "the layers of context, nuance, and irony that lift a person's life from the mundane to the extraordinary and make it interesting." He has succeeded. -- The Atlantic Monthly, Benjamin Schwarz

Product Details

• Hardcover: 408 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Arkansas Pr (June 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557284571
• ISBN-13: 978-1557284570
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,940,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent account of an interesting character, May 14, 2005

By 

Schmerguls "schmerguls" (Sioux City, Ia USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Faubus : The Life and Times of an American Prodigal (Paperback)

This is a well-done biography of an important character in the civil rights struggle. It gets only four stars, though, since it has no bibliography and its source notes are skimpy and not indicated by footnote numbers. Faubus was born in poverty and named Orval Eugene, with the Eugene being in honor of Eugene Debs, prominent Socialist leader admired by Orval's father. In Orval's youth he flirted with socialism and later lied about it in his political campaigns. When he saw the fierceness of reaction involved with the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, he ignored the rightness of the integration decision and plumped onto the side of the racists. If he had done otherwise he no doubt would not have been governor of Arkansas for 12 years (1955-1967) even though he would have been on the side of decency and right The years when Faubus was governor were hard years for fair-minded people, though a bit later, Dale Bumpers showed that decent people could be elected in Arkansas. It is interesting to contrast Faubus' career with that of Dale Bumpers (told with a light touch in Bumpers' engaging memoir, The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town), but Bumpers came along a bit later and was able to be elected despite the racist tenets of some of his constituents. This book is well worth reading.