Part photo album, part nonfiction, part poetry, part appropriated radio language (wartime voice procedure is detailed with appalling clarity), Public Figures is a compelling read from every and any angle.
If then-senator Obama hadn't specifically made the point on the campaign trail that discharging gay and lesbian military personnel on the basis of sexual orientation during wartime, especially Arab-language speakers, was an intolerable abuse of resources, Dan Choi's case might have been less striking.
Antiwar opinions and activities have now been driven to the peripheries of the political system along with a word like, say, "peace," which you will be hard-pressed to find, even rhetorically, in the language of "wartime" Washington.
One such devotee was Winston Churchill, who cared greatly about language, even in wartime.
He had grown up a devout Christian, and like other militia members, he had defended his wartime activities by using religious language, with the support of priests.
"Newsprint rationing in wartime Britain enforced economy in language and a conciseness not required in American print journalism, where acres of space invited gentle grazing," he writes.
There were plenty of Italian-American shons on the radio, especially the soap operas that she loved, but she did not trust the news, as reported in her language, because she believed the wartime censorship was greater for the Italian audience.
It's almost a cliché by now to cite the superficial similarities between Lincoln and Mr. Obama — two tall, thin men from Illinois with a gift for language forced by circumstance to be wartime presidents.
The occasion was the English-language publication of Tivadar Soros's wartime memoir, "Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi-Occupied Hungary," which was first published in 1965 in Esperanto, one of six languages in which Soros père was fluent.
