Just over halfway done with the book now. I've had no internet the last few days, so no posting for me.
So MUCH has happened in the book. I don't even know where to begin. I've read through his term as governor of Illinois, during which his wife divorced him. It was discovered later that she was suffering from mental illness. I'm curious how this compares to the mental illness his own mother went through.
I forgot to mention in my previous post that he accidentally shot and killed a girl when he was younger. Despite that fact, it didn't seem to come up during his presidential campaign in 1952. Stevenson was one of 3 people (including Lincoln) to have ever been drafted into running for president. He had refused the nomination to Truman and many others before the convention, but it happened anyway, so he put as much energy into those 100 days as possible. During most of the campaign, he had no problems with his opponent, Eisenhower, but loathed his running-mate Richard Nixon.
After losing the election, he went on to a world tour, beginning in Asia. When asked by a group of Japanese Marxist students, "Just what is democracy, anyway?" he responded,
Democracy, is honest disagreement. It is the right to hold the opinion you believe in, and to fight for it with self-respect and determination. The virtue of democracy is not cold order. It is the heat of men’s minds rubbing against each other, sending out sparks. It is liberty with responsibility. It is a struggle that never ends and is always worth the fight...The trouble with intellectuals is that they see so much they do not always see things very clearly and, as a result, the intellectual is apt to be wobbly.
LOVE IT!
And here's a bit of trivia for you. Adlai Stevenson is the original recipient of the term "egghead". It was used by a journalist during his presidential campaign, and went on to refer to all his supporters as well. To be honest, his head DID look a bit like an egg.
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