Linda S. (GoneToTheDogs) reviewed on 4/13/2009 + 625 more book reviews

With candor and wit, Frohmayer recalls the events of his stormy two and a half years as the fifth chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA). A former head of the Oregon Arts Commission, seasoned trial lawyer and accomplished singer Frohnmayer sought the chairmanship because he believed in the arts in America. Here he reveals his own errors in judgment, painting a disturbing picture of the politics of art during the Bush administration. Forced into the impossible position of dodging criticisms "from the right for his permissiveness and from the left for seeming to espouse conservative prohibitions," he saw his attempts at the NEA finally fail. Reminding us that "contemporary art deals with contemporary issues, and therein lies the rub," he has become a free-speech radical at the hands of these modern cultural terrorists.

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