cover image Bridging the Divide: My Life

Bridging the Divide: My Life

Edward W. Brooke. Rutgers University Press, $29.95 (332pp) ISBN 978-0-8135-3905-8

In 1967, Edward Brooke became the first popularly elected African-American to join the U.S. Senate. Now 86, the liberal Republican serves up an autobiography with plenty of interesting stories about the Second World War, the tumultuous post-war period and the Vietnam era in an engaging, intelligent and humble voice. In WWII, Brookes fought racist American officers more than he fought Nazis, and as Massachusetts Attorney General he led efforts to find and convict the Boston Strangler. In the Senate, Brooke opposed Richard Nixon's Supreme Court nominations and was the first Republican senator to call for Nixon's resignation (leading to his Mercedes getting keyed, he believes, by neighbor Rosemary Woods). At times, however, Brooke's humility gets in the way of his story: though he met numerous luminaries, including every US President from Eisenhower to Ford, plus Martin Luther King Jr. and Hillary Rodham (who ambushed Brooke when he spoke at her Wellesley graduation ceremony), he has surprisingly little to say about most of them. Still, Brooke's reflections on everything from his position on Vietnam (which he now sees was untenable), to his deep disappointment with Republicans who have undone his work for minorities, prove thought-provoking, even if they devolve too frequently into letters of thanks to behind-the-scenes players.