Word: sorensens
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When Theodore Sorensen moved into Leverett Towers, he secluded himself in a sparsely furnished tutor's suite with some books and a few belongings. For a week...
...made his first appearance in the Dining Hall for lunch. Conversation teetered on neutral subjects--mathematical tricks and why the Leverett elevators only stop every second floor. At the end of the first meal, Sorensen was reminded that at Harvard one returns one's tray to the kitchen...
...Sorensen's major points are barren, his prose does little to amplify them and in fact conceals their lack of substance. Politics, he asserts...
Also annoying is Sorensen's sparse use of examples--although he does cite the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 seventeen times. (He does not mention the Bay of Pigs.) Despite his personal intimacy with many decisions, Sorensen repeatedly speaks in the generic ("the most formidable debater is not necessarily the most informed; the reticent may sometimes be the wisest,") instead of the specific rendering insights so vage as to be meaningless...
...When Sorensen prepared Decision-Making in the White House last July, he was constrained by the length of two lectures and his own role as an advisor. Perhaps this accounts for the preponderance of vague and insipid generalities. In conclusion he writes, "The only way to assure good presidential decisions is to elect and support good presidents;" from his unique experience Sorensen should be able to do a lot better than that. A book that could have been fascinating, succeeds only in tantalizing and frustrating the reader...