What Ever Became of America?

THE QUITE LEGITIMATE excuse for Holmes Alexander’s somewhat haphazard but intensely readable book, The Famous Five (Bookmailer, $3.50), is that living Senators and a panel of unspecified historical scholars chose Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Robert M. La Follette and Robert A. Taft as most worthy among departed Senators to have their portraits hung in vacant wall spaces of the Upper House’s reception chamber.

I have conned Mr. Alexander’s admirably brisk biographical sketches for a clue to precisely why these particular and admittedly famous statesmen should have been voted into what amounts to a Senatorial Pantheon. Such a clue is missing. I have likewise sought for a generality, a common denominator binding the five in a historical frame. That, too, is absent. I must assume, given the lack of congruity, that Clay, Webster, Calhoun, La Follette and Taft were marked for memorial eminence because of individual qualities apart from policy or the weight of their imprint on their times.

FD

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Forrest Davis

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THE QUITE LEGITIMATE excuse for Holmes Alexander’s somewhat haphazard but intensely readable book, The Famous Five (Bookmailer, $3.50), is that living Senators and a panel of unspecified historical scholars chose Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Robert M. La Follette and Robert A. Taft as most worthy among departed Senators to have their portraits hung in vacant wall spaces of the Upper House’s reception chamber.

I have conned Mr. Alexander’s admirably brisk biographical sketches for a clue to precisely why these particular and admittedly famous statesmen should have been voted into what amounts to a Senatorial Pantheon. Such a clue is missing. I have likewise sought for a generality, a common denominator binding the five in a historical frame. That, too, is absent. I must assume, given the lack of congruity, that Clay, Webster, Calhoun, La Follette and Taft were marked for memorial eminence because of individual qualities apart from policy or the weight of their imprint on their times.