new book possibly of interest

[Arnold Isaacs]

This is to alert you to a new book that collects various memories of
Senator Charles (Mac) Mathias, including a chapter that some on this
list might appreciate about his involvement at a critical moment in
the creation of the Vietnam war memorial in DC.

The book is titled Mathias of Maryland: Remembering a Lincoln
Republican in the Senate. It was coedited by my old friend Fred Hill,
a former Baltimore Sun colleague who later was on Mathias's Senate
staff for a couple of years, and Monica Healy, another former Mathias
staffer. (She wrote the chapter about the VN memorial.) The book, just
released by McFarland Publishing, pulls together an assortment of
essays by the editors and a range of other folks who were connected
with Mathias over the years.

As the title suggests, Mathias was a Republican of a kind that barely
exists today, deeply committed to working across partisan divides,
supportive of civil rights and environmental protection and other good
causes and principled policies on arms control and other international
issues. A very good guy. So reading about him now gives something of a
pang when you think about the present state of his party and political
life in this country.

Hope some of you will consider reading the book and perhaps passing
this note along to others who might like to know about it. Amazon link
is https://www.amazon.com/Mathias-Maryland-Remembering-Lincoln-Republican/dp/1476694206/

Skip Isaacs