Desk 88

September 15, 2019
A senior senator from Ohio highlights the careers, accomplishments, and proposals of mentors and former colleagues. Brown (Myths of Free Trade: Why American Trade Policy Has Failed, 2004, etc.) arranges his text chronologically, from Sen. Hugo Black, who served from 1927 to 1937, to Sen. George McGovern, 1963-1981. Some of the names will be familiar to readers (Al Gore Sr.; Robert F. Kennedy), but a few--Theodore Francis Green, 1937-1961; Glen Taylor, 1945-1951--are less well known. Desk 88 is the number of Brown's desk in the Senate chamber, and he reveals that senators traditionally sign the inside before they leave office. Desk 88 bears the signatures of four of the senators he writes about: Black, Gore, Herbert H. Lehman, and McGovern (and now his own). "What drew me to the names at Desk 88 was the idea that connected them: progressivism," he writes. For each of his eight men, the author provides a brisk biography and a description of his Senate career; following each chapter is a section called "Thoughts from Desk 88," ruminations about his own experiences, thoughts about issues dear to him, and comments about Republicans and Donald Trump (who, he writes, "promote a racist, phony populism"). In his "Thoughts" sections, Brown writes about his own family and background, the birth of Social Security, minimum wage laws, Wall Street corruption, race, health care issues, world hunger, and policy (with some nasty stories about GOP opposition to the Affordable Care Act--"death panels" and the like). The author argues that Democratic candidates should pound away at the GOP's opposition to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, minimum wage protections, and so on. At times, in fact, his text reads almost like a campaign biography, but in March 2019, Brown withdrew from 2020 presidential consideration. Earnest, committed, and even contentious, a text that will cause liberals to smile and conservatives to gnash their teeth.

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November 15, 2019
In this well-researched group biography, Ohio senator Brown discusses with sincerity and honesty his initial experiences on the Senate floor in 2006 and the unexpected significance of selecting a desk. Of the many senators who occupied desk 88 before him, Brown portrays eight influential progressive senators, telling the remarkable stories of Hugo Black, Al Gore Sr., Theodore Francis Green, Robert F. Kennedy, Herbert Lehman, George McGovern, William Proxmire, and Glen Taylor. In this refreshing and well-conceived work, Brown recounts political battles, tough choices, dirty tactics, key compromises, successes, and failures. As Brown looks back to the public lives of these eight distinguished senators, he notes that we have arrived at a pivotal point in our nation's life at which another progressive era could emerge. With a depth of political knowledge and understanding only participation in Congress can impart, Brown has created an uplifting set of senatorial profiles that counters the negativity of this time of political divisiveness, lies, corruption, hatred, and intimidation with factual accuracy, respect, admiration, and appreciation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

September 23, 2019
Ohio lawmaker Brown debuts with a timely history of 20th-century American progressivism told through the political careers of eight congressmen who previously sat at his desk on the Senate floor. Addressing his subjects chronologically, Brown begins with Alabama senator Hugo Black, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan who joined Congress in 1927 and became one of the most ardent supporters of FDR’s New Deal and an architect of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. Among such well-known figures as Robert F. Kennedy and George McGovern, Brown also profiles more obscure politicians, including Rhode Island senator Theodore Francis Green, who briefly became chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at age 93, and Idaho’s Glen Taylor, whose 1947 showdown with the “ultra-segregationist” Theodore Bilbo resulted in the Mississippi Democrat being denied his Senate seat. Throughout, Brown is careful not to idealize his subjects, noting, for example, that Tennessee senator Al Gore Sr. suffered from a lack of focus and that Green was “sometimes annoyingly correct in grammar and speech.” Each profile is followed by Brown’s “Thoughts from Desk 88,” in which he offers a stout defense of such progressive policies as Social Security and Medicare. This thoughtful, entertaining book will appeal to liberals and students of congressional history.