Another volume of Cold War riches from recently declassified files!  This entry follows the life of Donald McLean, one of the Cambridge Four Five.  Written by an insider, Philipps is the grandson of Roger Makins, former boss of Donald MacLean and the last person from the Foreign Office to see him before he disappeared and defected, A Spy Named Orphan is a sympathetic portrait of MacLean as a true believer whose alcoholism and personal difficulties may be traced to his split loyalties to Britain and the Soviet Union. MacLean is the star of this book, unlike others, in which he plays second fiddle to Kim Philby.  

Philipps departs from the argument made by S. J. Hamrick in Deceiving the Deceivers (2004)  that MI6 Knew about MacLean from 1949 and used him (and Philby) as a conduit of disinformation to the Soviets. Both books rely heavily on the Venona cables for evidence, but come to very different conclusions. Philipps contends that MacLean was successful in hiding his activities up until a few months before his defection, reverting to earlier arguments that the clubbiness of the British Intelligence Services blinded them to several spies right under their noses and that, combined with their unwillingness to look foolish again after Fuchs and several other debacles on both sides of the Atlantic, allowed MacLean to escape with Burgess in 1951.

Hamrick writes that we will likely never know for sure and because the principles have passed away and there are still classified documents that are unavailable, he is correct. Philipps, though, did have access to some documents declassified in 2015 as well as the personal papers of Donald MacLean’s brother Alan.  Hamrick’s argument rests largely on supposition about what is missing from the historical record and the motivation of the British Security Services for keeping mum. What Philipps gives us is a portrait of a tortured soul who spied because he couldn’t stand the rigid class society he lived in.  

Unfortunately, the sheer volume and type of secrets (atomic!) that MacLean passed during the years from 1938-1948 makes it very difficult to sympathize.  Philipps also seems to think that MacLean’s raging alcoholism did not keep him from doing both his diplomatic and espionage jobs very efficiently.  If true, the reader wonders what might have happened if MacLean had applied himself to improving Britain’s policies rather than giving its secrets to the enemy. Philipps tries to reconcile the depth of MacLean’s treachery by reminding the reader that the USSR was a wartime ally.  Sure, but Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler, too. And the political purges and Lubyanka disappearances, of even his handlers, seem not to have caused Donald to question his loyalty to the Communist cause. Philipps tries to make MacLean seem ideologically pure, and it is true that  Communism as an idea had been popular all over in the 1930s, but the Soviet incarnation, especially under Stalin, cannot possibly have been what the dreamers of the Depression had in mind. Definitely not a workers’ paradise.

This reader can only see MacLean as an anti-hero.  Flawed and destructive, but not completely without redeeming qualities. It is a shame, really, that what many of his contemporaries praised as foreign policy genius was wasted in treason and awash in liquor.  Philipps claims that he was animated by a desire for world peace.  As a senior official in the Foreign Office he could have had a seat at the table to make that a reality. What might the world have become if MacLean and other powerful people had worked as hard for their countries and by extension, the world, as they did against them?

Though meandering at times, A Spy Named Orphan is a mostly readable account of Donald MacLean’s life. Perhaps a bit too admiring of him for this reader’s taste, nevertheless it is well-researched and includes personal anecdotes and details about his relationship with his American wife, Melinda, than are in other, similar sources. MacLean himself was betrayed by Melinda once the two were in Moscow–she took up for a time with Philby, a notorious womanizer. I guess sometimes what goes around actually does come around.

Isenberg is probably more famous for White Trash (2016), but this 2007 volume is a fantastic addition to the many books about the American founders.  Gordon Wood argues in Revolutionary Characters that Burr is most useful as an anomaly, because he sheds light on the “real” founders. While admitting that Burr was cast as the villain by contemporaries, Wood claims that Burr’s lack of interesting surviving letters and his eschewing of classism and non-cultivation of his legacy have made it difficult to know much.

It is true that most of Burr’s papers were destroyed or lost.  His edited papers and letters are contained in a mere two volumes where the other founders have provided posterity with much more grist for the history writing mill. Isenberg has painstakingly analyzed not only Burr’s surviving papers, but numerous letters by other contemporaries which mention Burr or are related to events in his life.  She has included sources from all over the spectrum–Burr’s friends, his enemies, his champions and detractors, in an effort to present a fuller picture of Burr than has previously imagined.

Isenberg argues successfully that Burr was a man of his time with regard to politics, even ahead of his time with regard to women’s rights–an avowed reader and respecter of Mary Wollstonecraft who educated his daughter to the same standard others of his time would have a son.  She makes clear that Burr did have a political philosophy, contrary to what some historians have written, and that though he was ambitious, his ambition was not overweening, and certainly did not override his principles, of which he had many. She successfully argues that his roles in both the 1801 election and the 1804 duel with Hamilton have largely been misconstrued both by the popular press and by the other founders, who were willing to paint Burr as a traitor in order to further their own political ambitions–Hamilton and Jefferson seem to be the most culpable, Madison less so.  It is interesting to note that Wood largely agrees with Isenberg’s assertion that Burr’s lack of care over his own legacy in contrast to the other founders’ near obsession with theirs contributed mightily to the oversimplification of Burr’s role in the early Republic. Isenberg successfully shows that Burr’s land speculation and debts, for which he was so vilified, were not altogether unusual for men of his class.  Speculation in the Western lands was a favorite pastime for those trying to make their fortunes; Burr was just not very good at it.

As James E. Lewis wrote in a review of Fallen Founder, the section on the Western Conspiracy is the weakest.  The problem is that there is almost no way to know exactly what happened. However, Isenberg does a good job presenting some evidence that would tend to exonerate Burr of the most heinous of the treason accusations.  The fact that most of the evidence against him was provided by James Wilkinson, known to have been a Spanish agent, would seem to indicate his probable innocence. Isenberg is also accurate in her recounting of the many filibustering expeditions into Texas and Louisiana during the years between 1803 and 1812.  It is possible that Burr was involved in yet another unsuccessful speculation scheme rather than an armed rebellion.  However, it was convenient for Jefferson to divert attention from his own behavior by hanging Burr out to dry (363-4). Burr’s biggest mistake seems to have been trusting Wilkinson, which is puzzling, since Wilkinson was widely regarded as possibly on the Spanish payroll as early as the 1790s (288). 

In the last section, Isenberg makes the case that Burr deserves reassessment as a founder.  He had flaws, but they all did;  he was an extraordinary man living in extraordinary times, but he was neither angel nor demon. 

I am still waiting for Burr the Musical!

Isenberg, Nancy. Fallen Founder: the life of Aaron Burr. Viking, 2007.

Lewis, James E. Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 28, no. 1, 2008, pp. 132–134. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30043577. Accessed 27 Dec. 2020.

Wood, Gordon S. Revolutionary Characters: what made the founders different. Penguin Books, 2006.

I found this browsing in Half Price Books. I had read A Reliable Wife several years ago and was unaware of Goolrick’s second novel. A Reliable Wife is one of those books that stays with you for a long time–you keep thinking about it. Heading Out to Wonderful does not disappoint. Goolrick’s prose is beautiful: slow, but not too slow; revealing just enough as he unwinds a dark tale of love and obsession. If you are looking for a happy ending, don’t pick this up. I am not giving anything away here, the reader knows within the first few pages that Charlie Beale’s tale will end in tragedy, but can’t stop reading, hoping that maybe she is wrong and that it will all work out.  If you read A Reliable Wife, you know that Goolrick is not that kind of writer.  It will be a tale well told, but it will not end well.

Heading Out to Wonderful is written in the tradition of Southern Gothic novels with a cast of small town folks who ignore eccentricities among their own, but expect a certain adherence to unwritten rules. When a hillbilly marries the wealthiest man in town, she is still a hillbilly and Sylvan is peculiar to boot.  Charlie comes to town in the wake of World War II looking for a place to call home.  He settles in working as a butcher and everyone in town loves him, but one look at Sylvan is all it takes to unravel it all. Moody, haunting and beautifully crafted, Heading Out to Wonderful brings to mind the best of the 1940s Noir.