Ágætt innlegg í aðdraganda borgarastríðsins í Norður Ameríku. Remini gerir mikið úr pólitísku hlutverki Clays við að finna málamiðlanir til að sætta stríðandi fylkingar þegar allt var við það að sjóða upp úr 1850. Remini telur sennilegt að Suðurríkin hefðu unnið stríðið ef það hefði brotist út á þessum tíma því hvorki voru Norðurríkin nógu iðnvædd né var Lincoln orðinn forseti. Hann styður þessi rök sín þó lítið. ( )

This book is about the most powerful congressman in the 19th century: Henry Clay. He demonstrated the power of compromise in getting issues through Congress...a skill that I wish some had today. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun, the great triumvirate of the Senate, were trying to hold the young nation together, as slavery issues threatened to pull it apart...the great compromise of 1850. Honestly, the book is boring in places and enlightening in others. I read it to enjoy the history and not the politics. ( )

This book has been on my wishlist for some time; yesterday I found it, today I read it. As interesting and informative as it was, it was worth my wait.

Robert V. Remini writes a thankfully focused book on one event. He does take advantage to occasionally "flesh out" peripheral events to provide context of the era, but restrains himself from taking distracting tangents.

At the Edge of the Precipice details Henry Clay work to cobble together The Compromise of 1850 while serving as a senator. Also known as The Great Compromiser, his efforts were neither quick nor easy... and only by the grace of a pro-slavery Democrat, Stephen A. Douglas, did the amalgam of legislative bills pass.

Mr. Remini documents the undulating path Clay's politicking took, the help it took from fellow politicians, and the untimely death of President Taylor to overcome Clay's final hurdle. Like a sine wave, Remini's writing suffered troughs coinciding with those of Clay's struggle with his compromise. The first and most difficult lowpoint came in the first chapter. To provide some background relating to the schism between North and South, Remini related minute numbers, dollars and cents of different tariffs to a fault. Being able to tolerate - even at times, enjoy play-by-play - dryly written goings-on in the congressional butchershop, this back-and-forth over "7 cents per pound" duty recounting glazed my eyes over.

Appreciatively, the other couple of "troughs" were not so unenjoyable, but were present none-the-less.

In the end, Mr. Remini surmises that had the decade between the Compromise of 1850 and the Civil War not been facilitated by Henry Clay's work, the South would have become an independent nation, forever changing America. If this is truly the case, it is fortuitous Senator Clay's shortcomings and failures promoting his own legislation did not fail in the end. ( )