I had hoped that this book - Peaceful Neighbor, by Michael G. Long - would be a biography of the beloved children's television host, Mr. Rogers. It's more of an analysis of how the TV show itself matched up with a pacifist's view of cultural events.
Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister, and Long makes a pretty good argument that Mr. Roger's Neighborhood was essentially his ministry, and his flock all the children watching. Several episodes are recounted in lengthy detail, and the author spends a lot of text making connections between those episodes and news items of the time (Vietnam, the civil rights riots of the '60s, police brutality), along the way insisting how "radical" those notions were. That may be true, but some of the connections between episode beats and radicalism are exaggerated. One gets the impression at times that Long is putting words in Rogers' mouth, straining to match him with ideological pacifist purity, and he doesn't need to - that Rogers was a deep-thinking, committed pacifist Christian and innovative teacher is obvious and admirable.
The reader does get some good biographical information in the second half of the book, including clearing up some myths about him. For example, I had read numerous accounts of how Rogers had come to his point of view after serving as a bomber pilot in the war (and then horrifed, turned his back on it). Turns out he was never a bomber pilot, although he did learn to pilot a plane.
In short, flawed, but worth a read.
I received a free copy of this book frofm Netgalley in return for a review. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.
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