The Line Upon a Wind: The Great War at Sea, 1793-1815
Noel Mostert
History
When you start reading a book that's 800 pages long, you kind of know what you're in for. You know, for example, that it's not going to be a general overview for the novice. You also know that the quality of the writing will make a difference: 800 pages of good writing can be a challenge, but 800 pages of dull writing is torture.
By this measure, The Line Upon a Wind qualifies as "good enough." I'm a non-specialist, and I finished it. I didn't rush through it in big gulps, but I didn't stall out either.
Having said that, you need at least a Horatio Hornblower or Aubrey-Maturin level of engagement before you start TLUaW. There's a certain amount of nautical terminology, for instance, that isn't always explained. There are a lot of characters. There are descriptions of battles, but not enough maps of same, and those that there are aren't terribly good.
Moreover, you need a certain level of tolerance for the Great Man School of History. In Noel Mostert's case, the Great Man is Horatio Nelson. When Nelson is on-stage, the book leaps; when he isn't, it tends to plod. Since the book has ten years left in it when Nelson dies, the wind (as it were) rather goes out of its sails in the last third. There are a couple of chapters, intriguing in themselves, that nonetheless read like outtakes from other books (e.g., the material on discipline in the R.N.). Nor does the whole thing add up to a cohesive geopolitical synthesis.
I'd describe the result, then, as useful background reading. If you want to get a lot of information, newspaper-style, The Line Upon a Wind delivers. It won't kill you to skip it, though.
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Friday, July 12, 2019
Book Review: The Story of Greece and Rome
The Story of Greece and Rome
Tony Spawforth
History
It's an expansive title, but it's not a very thick book. You might suspect, then, that The Story of Greece and Rome would be a general overview without much depth. And you would be correct. It's not the Cliff Notes version, but it's necessarily a synopsis.
This would be a good book for someone who didn't know much of the history in question. I know a fair amount, so I'm not the ideal reader. I enjoyed it, though, for what that's worth. The Story of Greece and Rome does what it sets out to do, and does it pretty well. Tony Spawforth is good at drawing parallels and contrasts between his two titular civilizations. He's also good at providing understandable summaries of complex questions, and scrupulous about indicating where academics disagree. The writing is both clear and learned--I suppose it would be too much to expect that it would be witty as well, but it's at least never dull.
So: a perfectly decent read for the knowledgeable, and a valuable introduction for the curious. The Story of Greece and Rome doesn't quite achieve must-read status, but it's a pretty decent achievement.
Tony Spawforth
History
It's an expansive title, but it's not a very thick book. You might suspect, then, that The Story of Greece and Rome would be a general overview without much depth. And you would be correct. It's not the Cliff Notes version, but it's necessarily a synopsis.
This would be a good book for someone who didn't know much of the history in question. I know a fair amount, so I'm not the ideal reader. I enjoyed it, though, for what that's worth. The Story of Greece and Rome does what it sets out to do, and does it pretty well. Tony Spawforth is good at drawing parallels and contrasts between his two titular civilizations. He's also good at providing understandable summaries of complex questions, and scrupulous about indicating where academics disagree. The writing is both clear and learned--I suppose it would be too much to expect that it would be witty as well, but it's at least never dull.
So: a perfectly decent read for the knowledgeable, and a valuable introduction for the curious. The Story of Greece and Rome doesn't quite achieve must-read status, but it's a pretty decent achievement.
Sunday, May 12, 2019
Book Review: The Devil's Dinner
The Devil's Dinner: A Gastronomic and Cultural History of Chili Peppers
Stuart Walton
History, food
What irritated me most about The Devil's Dinner was the organization. The chapters are arranged without any real narrative flow, information is sometimes repeated, and the whole thing comes off as something of a muddle. Nor did I think that the research that went into the book was especially deep or complete; Walton seems to have relied heavily on a small number of interviews and a lot of second-hand reportage.
That said, there's some interesting stuff in here. The "burning" sensation of chili, for example, really does activate some of the same neural pathways as actual burning. Also, there's a real thing out there called Male Idiot Theory, which has been used to explain chili-eating contests. I'll buy it.
Rather surprisingly, there's no recipe section.
Overall verdict: mildly interesting. But with a title and topic like this, "mild" shouldn't be the descriptor! I'd pay good money to see John McPhee do for the chili pepper what he did for Oranges, for example.
Stuart Walton
History, food
What irritated me most about The Devil's Dinner was the organization. The chapters are arranged without any real narrative flow, information is sometimes repeated, and the whole thing comes off as something of a muddle. Nor did I think that the research that went into the book was especially deep or complete; Walton seems to have relied heavily on a small number of interviews and a lot of second-hand reportage.
That said, there's some interesting stuff in here. The "burning" sensation of chili, for example, really does activate some of the same neural pathways as actual burning. Also, there's a real thing out there called Male Idiot Theory, which has been used to explain chili-eating contests. I'll buy it.
Rather surprisingly, there's no recipe section.
Overall verdict: mildly interesting. But with a title and topic like this, "mild" shouldn't be the descriptor! I'd pay good money to see John McPhee do for the chili pepper what he did for Oranges, for example.
Monday, April 29, 2019
Book Review: Making Music American
Making Music American: 1917 and the Transformation of Culture
E. Douglas Bomberger
History, music
In December 1916, "real" music in America meant music that was (a) classical, and (b) European--most especially, German. With the entry of the U.S. into World War I, that changed. Whether it changed so much or so dramatically as Making Music American wants us to think is open to doubt.
The things I liked best about this book are structural. Bomberger picks a limited cast of characters, emblematic of the changes he's talking about. He gives good introductions of those characters. He doesn't pretend to be inclusive. Each chapter of the book is a single month, and each chapter follows several of those characters through the month. It's a nice format.
The narrative, by contrast, takes a while to get going. There are only so many lists of concerts and repertoire that a body can take before the message starts getting repetitive. Things pick up as the year goes on; the U.S. fell into a depressingly contemporary-seeming slough of jingoism, cheap patriotism, xenophobia, and rabid flag-waving, and the "Germanophile" musical establishment had to cope with it. The depth of animosity, and the speed with which it developed, must have seemed bewildering at the time. The same must have been true of the shallowness, provincialism, and downright stupidity of the so-called patriots. Then, as now, there are plenty of people who imagine that genuine patriotism is interchangeable with symbolic, performative patriotism.
On the American side of the equation, the narrative is less clear-cut. Yes, jazz was clearly in the ascendant in popular culture. It's not particularly evident that the events of the year either advanced or retarded it, though. Nor is there any sign that individual listeners switched from Wagner to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, or even put the two in the same category. Here, I think, the small cast is a double-edged sword; Bomberger omits a lot of significant figures, and can't quite tie his anecdotes into the larger narrative of American music.
I didn't dislike Making Music American, but I thought it oversold its promise. It's well-written enough, but not so compelling as to drag in a reader who's not already invested in the subject matter. The research is very deep, but not very broad. If you're a serious musicophile, in other words, give Making Music American a look. If not, it's skippable.
E. Douglas Bomberger
History, music
In December 1916, "real" music in America meant music that was (a) classical, and (b) European--most especially, German. With the entry of the U.S. into World War I, that changed. Whether it changed so much or so dramatically as Making Music American wants us to think is open to doubt.
The things I liked best about this book are structural. Bomberger picks a limited cast of characters, emblematic of the changes he's talking about. He gives good introductions of those characters. He doesn't pretend to be inclusive. Each chapter of the book is a single month, and each chapter follows several of those characters through the month. It's a nice format.
The narrative, by contrast, takes a while to get going. There are only so many lists of concerts and repertoire that a body can take before the message starts getting repetitive. Things pick up as the year goes on; the U.S. fell into a depressingly contemporary-seeming slough of jingoism, cheap patriotism, xenophobia, and rabid flag-waving, and the "Germanophile" musical establishment had to cope with it. The depth of animosity, and the speed with which it developed, must have seemed bewildering at the time. The same must have been true of the shallowness, provincialism, and downright stupidity of the so-called patriots. Then, as now, there are plenty of people who imagine that genuine patriotism is interchangeable with symbolic, performative patriotism.
On the American side of the equation, the narrative is less clear-cut. Yes, jazz was clearly in the ascendant in popular culture. It's not particularly evident that the events of the year either advanced or retarded it, though. Nor is there any sign that individual listeners switched from Wagner to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, or even put the two in the same category. Here, I think, the small cast is a double-edged sword; Bomberger omits a lot of significant figures, and can't quite tie his anecdotes into the larger narrative of American music.
I didn't dislike Making Music American, but I thought it oversold its promise. It's well-written enough, but not so compelling as to drag in a reader who's not already invested in the subject matter. The research is very deep, but not very broad. If you're a serious musicophile, in other words, give Making Music American a look. If not, it's skippable.
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Book Review: The World of the Shining Prince
The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan
Ivan Morris
History, Sociology
An extraordinarily complete and encompassing view of something odd and beautiful. Heian-period Japan--c. AD 1000--developed a court society that was, in some ways, unique. For the tiny aristocratic elite, what counted was aesthetics (and lineage, but that's not the unique part). Not the warrior virtues, not competence, not money, not power, but beauty and culture were the currency. The nominal government didn't govern. The police and the army were largely ineffectual. Nobles spent their days in composing poems for one another, judging perfumes, conducting polygamous affairs (according to ritualized patterns), and honing their appreciation of the transitory nature of life. I find it hard to imagine that such a society could have survived long except on an island.
Ivan Morris's prose isn't brilliant, but it's serviceable. He does an amazing job bringing the Heian court to life in all of its details; you can open to any random page and find something worth knowing. Page 137: "One of the most important and active offices in the Ministry of Central Affairs was the Bureau of Divination". Page 80: "Emperor Ichijo's pet cat was awarded the theoretical privilege of wearing the head-dress (koburi) reserved for members of the Fifth Rank and above." Page 235: "The official concubine may be chosen in various ways." Morris is also pretty good at pointing out parallels from more familiar Western examples, as well as pointing out where the parallels are misleading or nonexistent.
I read The World of the Shining Prince because I was going to see an exhibition on The Tale of Genji (he's the Shining Prince, for those of you keeping score at home). It didn't make my must-recommend list, but for anyone trying to understand Heian Japan it's indispensable.
Ivan Morris
History, Sociology
An extraordinarily complete and encompassing view of something odd and beautiful. Heian-period Japan--c. AD 1000--developed a court society that was, in some ways, unique. For the tiny aristocratic elite, what counted was aesthetics (and lineage, but that's not the unique part). Not the warrior virtues, not competence, not money, not power, but beauty and culture were the currency. The nominal government didn't govern. The police and the army were largely ineffectual. Nobles spent their days in composing poems for one another, judging perfumes, conducting polygamous affairs (according to ritualized patterns), and honing their appreciation of the transitory nature of life. I find it hard to imagine that such a society could have survived long except on an island.
Ivan Morris's prose isn't brilliant, but it's serviceable. He does an amazing job bringing the Heian court to life in all of its details; you can open to any random page and find something worth knowing. Page 137: "One of the most important and active offices in the Ministry of Central Affairs was the Bureau of Divination". Page 80: "Emperor Ichijo's pet cat was awarded the theoretical privilege of wearing the head-dress (koburi) reserved for members of the Fifth Rank and above." Page 235: "The official concubine may be chosen in various ways." Morris is also pretty good at pointing out parallels from more familiar Western examples, as well as pointing out where the parallels are misleading or nonexistent.
I read The World of the Shining Prince because I was going to see an exhibition on The Tale of Genji (he's the Shining Prince, for those of you keeping score at home). It didn't make my must-recommend list, but for anyone trying to understand Heian Japan it's indispensable.
Sunday, January 13, 2019
Book Review: Capitalism in America
Capitalism in America: A History
Alan Greenspan, Adrian Wooldridge
Economics, history
Capitalism: Alan Greenspan is for it!
No, that's not the whole review. For the first half of Capitalism in America I thought that it might be, though. That's the half that's purely descriptive. It's stuffed full of statistics, sure enough, and not badly written, but it's a fairly standard economic history of the U.S. into the early 20th century. I already knew that railroads were important, that slavery was bad, that Standard Oil was big; Capitalism in America added only some numbers to my knowledge, which I have since largely forgotten.
The book gets more interesting when the authors finally start constructing an argument, instead of a play-by-play. Thank the reformers, such as Theodore Roosevelt, who put the brakes on the laissez-faire free-for-all. Greenspan and Wooldridge have to come to grips with what they did, which forces them to assess the system's successes and failures. The result is a pretty good argument for capitalism, broadly speaking, as an engine for innovation and as a proven way of lifting people out of poverty.
That's not to say that I think their analysis is a complete success. On the contrary, I think it's open to some fairly serious criticism. For example, Capitalism in America rightly contains some ringing denunciations of the slave economy. Good for you, gentlemen! But nowhere--literally nowhere--does it acknowledge that this country's 19th-century prosperity was based on spending down a metaphorical trust fund, consisting of land that had been looted from its native inhabitants. It's easy to make one group (white settlers) prosperous by making another group (Native Americans) poor. How much should we credit that to the success of capitalism vs. the profits of theft? Greenspan and Wooldridge are silent.
Similarly, G&W are decidedly . . . let's say "myopic" . . . when it comes to their critique of the New Deal. They make a fuss, several times over, about the fact that the New Deal recovery under FDR was interrupted by a second downturn in 1937. They do not see fit to mention that many other economists blame that downturn on FDR's premature decision to end a lot of New Deal spending in favor of balancing the budget. They also fall into the classic trap of saying that "It wasn't government spending that ended the Depression; it was World War II." Okay, and World War II did this how? Hint: who paid for all of those tanks, airplanes, salaries, jeeps, Liberty Ships, prophylactics, bullets, cans of Spam, uniforms, etc.? Could it have been the U.S. government? Why, I believe it could!
Perhaps the most telling small indicator of this myopia comes near the very end of Capitalism in America. "There were good reasons for complaining" about the effects of industrial capitalism, the authors concede. . "Deaths from industrial accidents in Pittsburgh per 100,000 residents almost doubled . . . between 1870 and 1900." Then, in the very next sentence, "Politicians such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson whipped up all this discontent into successful political movements" (emphasis added). Note that verb phrase. Now, "whipped up" is a dismissive phrase. The strong implication is that those people who were complaining about the doubling of the death rate were a bunch of slow-witted hoi polloi malcontents, who--instead of being property grateful for the beneficence of their betters--were so crass as to actually agitate for a larger share of the fruits of their labor. The nerve! What right did they have to interfere with the process of accumulating wealth, by questioning the purposes for which the wealth was accumulated?
What's particularly ironic is that it's a version of an argument that southern slaveholders used. Chattel slavery (they avowed) made the country richer as a whole. If some people were the losers in that process, well, too bad for them. Greenspan and Wooldridge would surely have no truck with that version of history; but when it comes to more recent developments they are blind to the parallel.
In the end, Capitalism in America is what I'd call tactically convincing. Its final argument--in favor of "creative destruction" (a cliche that the book rather overuses), and against the growth in entitlements and regulation--is well put, and well-supported by facts. I'm not unsympathetic. It's easy to close the book thinking, "well, that makes sense." But I've read other books that take the same facts, put a different slant on them, and evoke the same reaction towards a quite different set of policies. It's worth reading, but not worth accepting uncritically.
One of the best books on finance out there is Liaquat Ahamed's The Lords of Finance, focusing specifically on the role of central bankers and the gold standard in bringing on the Great Depression. Broader, and also excellent, is Nicholas Wapshott's Keynes/Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics.
Also, G&W refer several times to Richard White's The Republic for Which It Stands. I didn't like the latter book much, but I have to say that future historians could be pardoned for thinking that it was describing a completely different country than the one in Capitalism in America.
Alan Greenspan, Adrian Wooldridge
Economics, history
Capitalism: Alan Greenspan is for it!
No, that's not the whole review. For the first half of Capitalism in America I thought that it might be, though. That's the half that's purely descriptive. It's stuffed full of statistics, sure enough, and not badly written, but it's a fairly standard economic history of the U.S. into the early 20th century. I already knew that railroads were important, that slavery was bad, that Standard Oil was big; Capitalism in America added only some numbers to my knowledge, which I have since largely forgotten.
The book gets more interesting when the authors finally start constructing an argument, instead of a play-by-play. Thank the reformers, such as Theodore Roosevelt, who put the brakes on the laissez-faire free-for-all. Greenspan and Wooldridge have to come to grips with what they did, which forces them to assess the system's successes and failures. The result is a pretty good argument for capitalism, broadly speaking, as an engine for innovation and as a proven way of lifting people out of poverty.
That's not to say that I think their analysis is a complete success. On the contrary, I think it's open to some fairly serious criticism. For example, Capitalism in America rightly contains some ringing denunciations of the slave economy. Good for you, gentlemen! But nowhere--literally nowhere--does it acknowledge that this country's 19th-century prosperity was based on spending down a metaphorical trust fund, consisting of land that had been looted from its native inhabitants. It's easy to make one group (white settlers) prosperous by making another group (Native Americans) poor. How much should we credit that to the success of capitalism vs. the profits of theft? Greenspan and Wooldridge are silent.
Similarly, G&W are decidedly . . . let's say "myopic" . . . when it comes to their critique of the New Deal. They make a fuss, several times over, about the fact that the New Deal recovery under FDR was interrupted by a second downturn in 1937. They do not see fit to mention that many other economists blame that downturn on FDR's premature decision to end a lot of New Deal spending in favor of balancing the budget. They also fall into the classic trap of saying that "It wasn't government spending that ended the Depression; it was World War II." Okay, and World War II did this how? Hint: who paid for all of those tanks, airplanes, salaries, jeeps, Liberty Ships, prophylactics, bullets, cans of Spam, uniforms, etc.? Could it have been the U.S. government? Why, I believe it could!
Perhaps the most telling small indicator of this myopia comes near the very end of Capitalism in America. "There were good reasons for complaining" about the effects of industrial capitalism, the authors concede. . "Deaths from industrial accidents in Pittsburgh per 100,000 residents almost doubled . . . between 1870 and 1900." Then, in the very next sentence, "Politicians such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson whipped up all this discontent into successful political movements" (emphasis added). Note that verb phrase. Now, "whipped up" is a dismissive phrase. The strong implication is that those people who were complaining about the doubling of the death rate were a bunch of slow-witted hoi polloi malcontents, who--instead of being property grateful for the beneficence of their betters--were so crass as to actually agitate for a larger share of the fruits of their labor. The nerve! What right did they have to interfere with the process of accumulating wealth, by questioning the purposes for which the wealth was accumulated?
What's particularly ironic is that it's a version of an argument that southern slaveholders used. Chattel slavery (they avowed) made the country richer as a whole. If some people were the losers in that process, well, too bad for them. Greenspan and Wooldridge would surely have no truck with that version of history; but when it comes to more recent developments they are blind to the parallel.
In the end, Capitalism in America is what I'd call tactically convincing. Its final argument--in favor of "creative destruction" (a cliche that the book rather overuses), and against the growth in entitlements and regulation--is well put, and well-supported by facts. I'm not unsympathetic. It's easy to close the book thinking, "well, that makes sense." But I've read other books that take the same facts, put a different slant on them, and evoke the same reaction towards a quite different set of policies. It's worth reading, but not worth accepting uncritically.
One of the best books on finance out there is Liaquat Ahamed's The Lords of Finance, focusing specifically on the role of central bankers and the gold standard in bringing on the Great Depression. Broader, and also excellent, is Nicholas Wapshott's Keynes/Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics.
Also, G&W refer several times to Richard White's The Republic for Which It Stands. I didn't like the latter book much, but I have to say that future historians could be pardoned for thinking that it was describing a completely different country than the one in Capitalism in America.
Saturday, December 22, 2018
Book Review: Race to Hawaii
Race to Hawaii: The Dole Air Derby and the Thrilling First Flights That Opened the Pacific
James Ryan
History, aeronautics
This isn't a bad book. The subject matter is interesting, and the writing is clear (if rather simple). On the down side, Ryan is too digressive; perhaps it's an attempt to give context to the air madness of 1920s, but if so it's too unfocused and too anecdotal. The picture of just how big a deal this all was gets presented very effectively--tens of thousands of people showed up just to watch the airplanes take off. The significance of these events in the larger history of air travel and technology isn't.
What does come through is the absolute star-struck passion that the early aviators had. It's no wonder that primordial science fiction had as one of its staples the half-crazy, half-inspired rocket jockey who aims his untried craft at the moon: that's exactly what these guys were like. Their death rate was absurdly high. While they lived, though, they were touched with fire.
James Ryan
History, aeronautics
This isn't a bad book. The subject matter is interesting, and the writing is clear (if rather simple). On the down side, Ryan is too digressive; perhaps it's an attempt to give context to the air madness of 1920s, but if so it's too unfocused and too anecdotal. The picture of just how big a deal this all was gets presented very effectively--tens of thousands of people showed up just to watch the airplanes take off. The significance of these events in the larger history of air travel and technology isn't.
What does come through is the absolute star-struck passion that the early aviators had. It's no wonder that primordial science fiction had as one of its staples the half-crazy, half-inspired rocket jockey who aims his untried craft at the moon: that's exactly what these guys were like. Their death rate was absurdly high. While they lived, though, they were touched with fire.
Monday, December 17, 2018
Book Review: In the Hurricane's Eye
In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown
Nathaniel Philbrick
History
Nathaniel Philbrick is an outstanding writer. This is a good book. It's not Philbrick's best work, however.
The aim of In the Hurricane's Eye is to tell the real, de-mythologized story of the Battle of Yorktown. In particular, the battle would never have taken place without the intervention of the French fleet, and it wouldn't have succeeded without French troops. None of what happened was inevitable. Philbrick does a nice job of making a narrative out of the various strange contingencies--the arguments between Washington and the French, the misjudgments on all sides, the titular hurricane, and many more--that led to the astounding result.
All the same, there are so many aspects in play here that the book is somewhat fragmented. The main story has to do with the naval strategy, and the main theme concerns just how much the Americans owed the French; but there are a great many excursions and side trips, and the story of Yorktown itself is curiously divorced from the rest of the book. Perhaps it's necessary to understand the war in the southern colonies in detail, along with Benedict Arnold, Lafayette, the siege of New York, and so forth, in order to fully understand Yorktown. Yet in a narrative history, the narrative has to be king.
Don't get me wrong. I read this book in a couple of gulps, enjoyed it, and will be back for more. It's a good read for anyone with a basic grounding in the facts of the American Revolution. If it's a little undirected at times, that at least accurately reflects the confusions and concerns of Washington and his contemporaries.
Nathaniel Philbrick
History
Nathaniel Philbrick is an outstanding writer. This is a good book. It's not Philbrick's best work, however.
The aim of In the Hurricane's Eye is to tell the real, de-mythologized story of the Battle of Yorktown. In particular, the battle would never have taken place without the intervention of the French fleet, and it wouldn't have succeeded without French troops. None of what happened was inevitable. Philbrick does a nice job of making a narrative out of the various strange contingencies--the arguments between Washington and the French, the misjudgments on all sides, the titular hurricane, and many more--that led to the astounding result.
All the same, there are so many aspects in play here that the book is somewhat fragmented. The main story has to do with the naval strategy, and the main theme concerns just how much the Americans owed the French; but there are a great many excursions and side trips, and the story of Yorktown itself is curiously divorced from the rest of the book. Perhaps it's necessary to understand the war in the southern colonies in detail, along with Benedict Arnold, Lafayette, the siege of New York, and so forth, in order to fully understand Yorktown. Yet in a narrative history, the narrative has to be king.
Don't get me wrong. I read this book in a couple of gulps, enjoyed it, and will be back for more. It's a good read for anyone with a basic grounding in the facts of the American Revolution. If it's a little undirected at times, that at least accurately reflects the confusions and concerns of Washington and his contemporaries.
Saturday, December 1, 2018
Book Review: On Grand Strategy
On Grand Strategy
John Lewis Gaddis
History, politics, warfare
It's not often that I have a hard time describing my reaction to a book. On Grand Strategy is not exactly a military-history book, not exactly a philosophy book (in spite of heavily referencing Isaiah Berlin), not exactly a political-theory book, not exactly a descriptive book, not exactly a prescriptive book, not exactly an analytical book. I'm not entirely sure who the intended audience is, in fact; it's too popular to appeal to academics, and too academic to appeal to the public. Smart undergraduates, maybe?
Gaddis's thesis is that large scale strategy--whether political, military, economic, or what have you--is always a balancing process. If you fix your eyes on your ultimate ambition, you can lose sight of the practical necessities. If you keep your mind firmly on what's realistically achievable, you can narrow your vision to the point where you don't actually achieve much. Aspirations can be limitless; resources can't; to engage in grand strategy is to establish a meeting point. Or, in Berlin's famous formula, "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."
To this end, the book proceeds largely as a series of parallel lives. Usually Gaddis picks out one historical personage who failed to negotiate this balancing act, and contrasts him with another one (either a contemporary, or someone else in a similar situation) who succeeded. These case studies are interesting, but they don't add up to a conclusion. That the tension cited exists is plain; a series of examples doesn't constitute any kind of explanation, much less a theory. Woodrow Wilson at the end of World War I, for instance, was obviously a prisoner of his ambitious ends. He didn't compromise on his means, and so his ends went unachieved. Okay, true. And . . . ?
The real weakness, to put it another was, is that it's all hindsight. Given a taxonomy and 20-20 postdiction, it's always easy to fit your cases into your structure. Whether that really explains anything, much less accurately reflects how the real historical figures thought or worked or acted, is a much more doubtful question.
I should stipulate that there's much to admire in On Grand Strategy. The scholarship is deep, wide, and erudite. The writing is quite fluid. The content is intellectually challenging, ambitious, and thought-provoking. All the same, when you write a thick book that effectively boils down to "good leaders know how to match means and ends," you haven't quite fulfilled your promises.
John Lewis Gaddis
History, politics, warfare
It's not often that I have a hard time describing my reaction to a book. On Grand Strategy is not exactly a military-history book, not exactly a philosophy book (in spite of heavily referencing Isaiah Berlin), not exactly a political-theory book, not exactly a descriptive book, not exactly a prescriptive book, not exactly an analytical book. I'm not entirely sure who the intended audience is, in fact; it's too popular to appeal to academics, and too academic to appeal to the public. Smart undergraduates, maybe?
Gaddis's thesis is that large scale strategy--whether political, military, economic, or what have you--is always a balancing process. If you fix your eyes on your ultimate ambition, you can lose sight of the practical necessities. If you keep your mind firmly on what's realistically achievable, you can narrow your vision to the point where you don't actually achieve much. Aspirations can be limitless; resources can't; to engage in grand strategy is to establish a meeting point. Or, in Berlin's famous formula, "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."
To this end, the book proceeds largely as a series of parallel lives. Usually Gaddis picks out one historical personage who failed to negotiate this balancing act, and contrasts him with another one (either a contemporary, or someone else in a similar situation) who succeeded. These case studies are interesting, but they don't add up to a conclusion. That the tension cited exists is plain; a series of examples doesn't constitute any kind of explanation, much less a theory. Woodrow Wilson at the end of World War I, for instance, was obviously a prisoner of his ambitious ends. He didn't compromise on his means, and so his ends went unachieved. Okay, true. And . . . ?
The real weakness, to put it another was, is that it's all hindsight. Given a taxonomy and 20-20 postdiction, it's always easy to fit your cases into your structure. Whether that really explains anything, much less accurately reflects how the real historical figures thought or worked or acted, is a much more doubtful question.
I should stipulate that there's much to admire in On Grand Strategy. The scholarship is deep, wide, and erudite. The writing is quite fluid. The content is intellectually challenging, ambitious, and thought-provoking. All the same, when you write a thick book that effectively boils down to "good leaders know how to match means and ends," you haven't quite fulfilled your promises.
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Book Review: Rocket Men
Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon
Robert Kurson
History, space
Rocket Men is a good illustration of the difference between "a good book" and "a good book for a specific audience." The specific audience, in this case, is space nuts (of whom I am one). If you grew up drinking Tang and knowing the difference between a Redstone and an Atlas booster, so are you, and you'll like this book. It's got rockets, heroic astronauts, heroic engineering, and the Moon: enough said.
A more detached view takes in some of Rocket Men's limitations. The chief of these is that Kurson spends the bigger part of his book on the smaller part of his story. He starts out by making a strong case that the decision to send the Apollo 8 mission--it was aggressively brought forward--was a daring one, taken to respond to pressure from the Soviets, and requiring considerable technical bravado. Having done that, he spends most of his page count on an hour-by-hour recounting of the mission itself, which went as smoothly as such things ever did. The real drama, in other words, is in the preparation, and Kurson shortchanges it.
It's the enthusiast's dilemma. What gets Robert Kurson's pulse pounding is the adventure in space, in the same way as a sports enthusiast is excited about the game itself. That leads him to overbalance the book. It edges his astronaut biographies near to starry-eyed hero-worship. It makes his writing a little more fervent than the facts may warrant--he overuses, for example, the would-be-dramatic single-sentence paragraph.
None of this is meant as a slam. Rocket Men is an enjoyable read. It's just that it's much more enjoyable if you're already a fan.
Robert Kurson
History, space
Rocket Men is a good illustration of the difference between "a good book" and "a good book for a specific audience." The specific audience, in this case, is space nuts (of whom I am one). If you grew up drinking Tang and knowing the difference between a Redstone and an Atlas booster, so are you, and you'll like this book. It's got rockets, heroic astronauts, heroic engineering, and the Moon: enough said.
A more detached view takes in some of Rocket Men's limitations. The chief of these is that Kurson spends the bigger part of his book on the smaller part of his story. He starts out by making a strong case that the decision to send the Apollo 8 mission--it was aggressively brought forward--was a daring one, taken to respond to pressure from the Soviets, and requiring considerable technical bravado. Having done that, he spends most of his page count on an hour-by-hour recounting of the mission itself, which went as smoothly as such things ever did. The real drama, in other words, is in the preparation, and Kurson shortchanges it.
It's the enthusiast's dilemma. What gets Robert Kurson's pulse pounding is the adventure in space, in the same way as a sports enthusiast is excited about the game itself. That leads him to overbalance the book. It edges his astronaut biographies near to starry-eyed hero-worship. It makes his writing a little more fervent than the facts may warrant--he overuses, for example, the would-be-dramatic single-sentence paragraph.
None of this is meant as a slam. Rocket Men is an enjoyable read. It's just that it's much more enjoyable if you're already a fan.
Friday, September 14, 2018
Book Review: Germany
Germany: Memories of a Nation
Neil MacGregor
History, sociology
This book works better than it has any right to. MacGregor's thesis is that it's impossible to write the history of Germany, because for most of history there hasn't been a single "Germany". The Holy Roman Empire overlapped with "Germany", but it wasn't the same, and the empire itself was a jigsaw puzzle of little Mini-Germanies. (As late as the 18th century, most of them had their own currencies.) Various historically-German-speaking regions and cities are now parts of other countries. The German Empire only lasted from 1871 to 1918, and the middle of its three emperors only reigned for 90 days. There were two actual Germanies from 1945 to 1990. And these are just the political fragmentations!
So MacGregor wrote a book about how various things, places, people, and ideas have been used to construct an idea--the titular "memories"--of Germany. Often the same subjects are used in multiple ways: the sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider got stamps from both East and West Germany, for example, with quite different messaging. It would be frightfully easy to turn this material into a mess. How can you write one book that encompasses the Iron Cross, the VW Beetle, Charlemagne's crown, the gates at Buchenwald, porcelain, the psychology of the forest, and the defeat of the Roman Legions in AD 9?
Somehow it all works. It doesn't hurt that the individual chapters are excellent little mini-essays in the mold of James Burke's Connections, or that the theme--the manufacture and use of "memories"--is consistently sustained. It's a remarkable stained-glass-window, adding up to more than the sum of its excellent parts. If it never does resolve the twists and contradictions of this thing called "Germany" . . . .well, that's sort of the point.
Neil MacGregor
History, sociology
This book works better than it has any right to. MacGregor's thesis is that it's impossible to write the history of Germany, because for most of history there hasn't been a single "Germany". The Holy Roman Empire overlapped with "Germany", but it wasn't the same, and the empire itself was a jigsaw puzzle of little Mini-Germanies. (As late as the 18th century, most of them had their own currencies.) Various historically-German-speaking regions and cities are now parts of other countries. The German Empire only lasted from 1871 to 1918, and the middle of its three emperors only reigned for 90 days. There were two actual Germanies from 1945 to 1990. And these are just the political fragmentations!
So MacGregor wrote a book about how various things, places, people, and ideas have been used to construct an idea--the titular "memories"--of Germany. Often the same subjects are used in multiple ways: the sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider got stamps from both East and West Germany, for example, with quite different messaging. It would be frightfully easy to turn this material into a mess. How can you write one book that encompasses the Iron Cross, the VW Beetle, Charlemagne's crown, the gates at Buchenwald, porcelain, the psychology of the forest, and the defeat of the Roman Legions in AD 9?
Somehow it all works. It doesn't hurt that the individual chapters are excellent little mini-essays in the mold of James Burke's Connections, or that the theme--the manufacture and use of "memories"--is consistently sustained. It's a remarkable stained-glass-window, adding up to more than the sum of its excellent parts. If it never does resolve the twists and contradictions of this thing called "Germany" . . . .well, that's sort of the point.
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
Book Review: The Age of Genius
The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind
A. C. Grayling
History, philosophy, science
The first hint that The Age of Genius might have problems comes on page xiv, in the Author's Note.
Needless to say, I skipped nothing. I can't say that I'm much the wiser thereby, though. Military history is a demanding discipline, and A. C. Grayling doesn't show much mastery of it. He has moments of clarity, but overall he never makes sense of the Thirty Years War (which would be hard to do for anyone).
Nor, more critically, does he really tie it into the rest of the book. His warning is all too true: the first 100 pages of The Age of Genius are not only disjoint in themselves, but they fail to tie into the argument of the book. That argument--that the 17th century represents a watershed moment in human intellectual history--is a defensible one; but Grayling doesn't really make it. Too much of the book consists of a series of examples, like the "Before" and "After" shots in a magazine ad, where what's needed is some illustration of how Before became After.
Furthermore, the examples themselves are sometimes dubious. For example:
Actually, to call it a thesis is to give too much credit. The book is full of inconsequential side quests. What does it matter whether Descartes was a Rosicrucian or a Jesuit spying on the Rosicrucians? Why spend so much ink contrasting Hobbes and Locke when both of them clearly belong on the "modern" side of the philosophical divide? Grayling proposes at one point to set up a contrast between the world-view of an educated man in 1600 and one in 1700, and then fails to do so (or, if he does it, it's awfully well-hidden). In any case, the fact that a change occurred is hardly in doubt; the attempt to box it into one arbitrary calendrical period doesn't seem to add much value.
The book ends well. The last chapter is a robust defense of reason, the Enlightenment, liberal thought, and education. It's a pity that the rest of The Age of Genius doesn't really lead there.
A. C. Grayling
History, philosophy, science
The first hint that The Age of Genius might have problems comes on page xiv, in the Author's Note.
The section on the Thirty Years' War might be of less interest to some readers than the rest of the book . . . [they] may skim that section and pass on to the rest. It might be enough for them to have the bare report as here given . . .It is never a good sign when, before your book even starts, you have to tell your readers that they can skip over the first third of it.
Needless to say, I skipped nothing. I can't say that I'm much the wiser thereby, though. Military history is a demanding discipline, and A. C. Grayling doesn't show much mastery of it. He has moments of clarity, but overall he never makes sense of the Thirty Years War (which would be hard to do for anyone).
Nor, more critically, does he really tie it into the rest of the book. His warning is all too true: the first 100 pages of The Age of Genius are not only disjoint in themselves, but they fail to tie into the argument of the book. That argument--that the 17th century represents a watershed moment in human intellectual history--is a defensible one; but Grayling doesn't really make it. Too much of the book consists of a series of examples, like the "Before" and "After" shots in a magazine ad, where what's needed is some illustration of how Before became After.
Furthermore, the examples themselves are sometimes dubious. For example:
In 1606 Macbeth was stages for the first time. Shakespeare was able to rely on the beliefs of his audience . . . to portray the killing of a king as subversive of nature's order, to the extent that horses ate each other and owls fell upon falcons in mid-air and killed them. In 1649, a single generation later, a king was publicly killed, executed in Whitehall in London before a great crowd . . . The idea of the sacred nature of kingship as premised in Macbeth had been rejected . . .Leaving aside the fact that killing off the occasional king was hardly uncommon in previous centuries, Shakespeare's audience was not stupid. We can accept for the sake of entertainment the proposition that vampires walk among us, or that the Nazis won World War II. I have no doubt that seventeenth-century people were just as capable of accepting certain things in fiction, as fiction. By Grayling's logic, Goethe's Faust--written in the heart of the Enlightenment--shows that 19th-century Europeans generally believed in the literal truth of the deal-with-the-devil narrative, which (if it were true) would falsify The Age of Genius's main thesis.
Actually, to call it a thesis is to give too much credit. The book is full of inconsequential side quests. What does it matter whether Descartes was a Rosicrucian or a Jesuit spying on the Rosicrucians? Why spend so much ink contrasting Hobbes and Locke when both of them clearly belong on the "modern" side of the philosophical divide? Grayling proposes at one point to set up a contrast between the world-view of an educated man in 1600 and one in 1700, and then fails to do so (or, if he does it, it's awfully well-hidden). In any case, the fact that a change occurred is hardly in doubt; the attempt to box it into one arbitrary calendrical period doesn't seem to add much value.
The book ends well. The last chapter is a robust defense of reason, the Enlightenment, liberal thought, and education. It's a pity that the rest of The Age of Genius doesn't really lead there.
Sunday, September 9, 2018
Book Review: Energy
Energy: A Human History
Richard Rhodes
Science, engineering, history
Maybe I'm just the wrong reader; I know a lot of this story already. Or maybe my expectations were too high, based on Rhodes's prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb. For whatever reason, Energy was a bit of a let-down.
I can't really point to anything wrong with it. It's more that, for most of its length, it doesn't do anything unusually right. Rhodes treats a series of energy sources (steam, petrochemicals, nuclear, etc.) in a lucid pop-sci fashion, giving a capsule history of the development of each. It's fine. It's just not very innovative.
The book only really gets interesting, in fact, when Rhodes gets around to nuclear power. This is where he stops reporting and starts analyzing. He's decidedly a Wizard, not a Prophet. He pays little or no attention to arguments that humanity needs to reduce its energy footprint--indeed, he takes it for granted that no such thing will occur. (I think he's probably right.) Without being polemical or myopic about it, Rhodes is pretty clearly on the side of more nuclear power. He makes a strong case, too. Coal kills a lot of people.
If you're looking for a good topic overview with no need for a technical background, Energy is for you. If you're looking for thoughtful argument, the last third of Energy is arguably for you. If you're looking for something groundbreaking, you might have to look elsewhere.
The Grid only partially overlaps Energy, but it's a very intriguing book. Coal, by Barbara Freese (and also subtitled "A Human History"), is a decent biography-of-a-substance book that covers related territory. For the emergence of steam as the first non-muscle-based power source, I liked Christopher McGowan's The Rainhill Trials (among others).
Richard Rhodes
Science, engineering, history
Maybe I'm just the wrong reader; I know a lot of this story already. Or maybe my expectations were too high, based on Rhodes's prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb. For whatever reason, Energy was a bit of a let-down.
I can't really point to anything wrong with it. It's more that, for most of its length, it doesn't do anything unusually right. Rhodes treats a series of energy sources (steam, petrochemicals, nuclear, etc.) in a lucid pop-sci fashion, giving a capsule history of the development of each. It's fine. It's just not very innovative.
The book only really gets interesting, in fact, when Rhodes gets around to nuclear power. This is where he stops reporting and starts analyzing. He's decidedly a Wizard, not a Prophet. He pays little or no attention to arguments that humanity needs to reduce its energy footprint--indeed, he takes it for granted that no such thing will occur. (I think he's probably right.) Without being polemical or myopic about it, Rhodes is pretty clearly on the side of more nuclear power. He makes a strong case, too. Coal kills a lot of people.
If you're looking for a good topic overview with no need for a technical background, Energy is for you. If you're looking for thoughtful argument, the last third of Energy is arguably for you. If you're looking for something groundbreaking, you might have to look elsewhere.
The Grid only partially overlaps Energy, but it's a very intriguing book. Coal, by Barbara Freese (and also subtitled "A Human History"), is a decent biography-of-a-substance book that covers related territory. For the emergence of steam as the first non-muscle-based power source, I liked Christopher McGowan's The Rainhill Trials (among others).
Thursday, August 9, 2018
Book Review: West Like Lightning
West Like Lighting: The Brief, Legendary Ride of the Pony Express
Jim DeFelice
History
The historiography of the American West is debated territory. On one side are the mythologizers; on the other, the debunkers. Good books that take the middle ground are few and far between. West Like Lightning tries, but Jim DeFelice's heart is with the mythmakers.
Mind you, it's an easy read; it's just a rather lightweight one. DeFelice structures his book by following the course of an express rider from east to west, draping it as he goes with local color, geography, stories, outtakes, and whatnot. Periodically he veers back in time to go into the Pony's founding, or forward to look at its ultimate fate. He's actually pretty scrupulous about what he claims as actual unvarnished fact; on the other hand, he's fairly liberal in including (admittedly with proper caveats) the inevitable there's-no-proof-it-didn't-happen excursions.
DeFelice, in other words, mainly wants to tell a good yarn. (He's a thriller writer, and it shows. Many academic historians eschew terms like "pucker factor" and "major badass", for example. Go figure.) He did his homework, then decorated it extensively to produce a book that's amiable, discursive, lively, and lightweight.
Jim DeFelice
History
The historiography of the American West is debated territory. On one side are the mythologizers; on the other, the debunkers. Good books that take the middle ground are few and far between. West Like Lightning tries, but Jim DeFelice's heart is with the mythmakers.
Mind you, it's an easy read; it's just a rather lightweight one. DeFelice structures his book by following the course of an express rider from east to west, draping it as he goes with local color, geography, stories, outtakes, and whatnot. Periodically he veers back in time to go into the Pony's founding, or forward to look at its ultimate fate. He's actually pretty scrupulous about what he claims as actual unvarnished fact; on the other hand, he's fairly liberal in including (admittedly with proper caveats) the inevitable there's-no-proof-it-didn't-happen excursions.
DeFelice, in other words, mainly wants to tell a good yarn. (He's a thriller writer, and it shows. Many academic historians eschew terms like "pucker factor" and "major badass", for example. Go figure.) He did his homework, then decorated it extensively to produce a book that's amiable, discursive, lively, and lightweight.
Monday, July 30, 2018
Book Review: City of Devils
City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai
Paul French
Biography, history, "true" crime
Let's start a representative quote. It's opening night at Farren's, the glittering jewel in the crown of Shanghai's hectic eve-of-war demimonde of nightclubs and gambling venues:
That's City of Devils for you. Lively, beautifully visual, fast-paced, written in the best choppy hard-boiled style, visceral, an incredible sense of place, full to the bursting of cinematic scenes and sharply-delineated characters . . . and it's bollocks. Not all bollocks. Probably a good half of it might be true. Good luck figuring out which half, though.
It's a ripping yarn, mind you. It's written like a combination of Raymond Chandler and Sebastian (The Perfect Storm) Junger. If you made a movie about it, which could easily happen, it'd be a kind of art-deco Blade Runner. Definitely read City of Devils if you like this sort of thing. Just keep in mind that some unknown fraction of it is bollocks.
Paul French
Biography, history, "true" crime
Let's start a representative quote. It's opening night at Farren's, the glittering jewel in the crown of Shanghai's hectic eve-of-war demimonde of nightclubs and gambling venues:
Here's the honorary Cuban consul, a man with his hand permanently out for cumshaw; the slimeball Portuguese commercial attaché, talking up Macao's neutrality with his arm round the honorary Brazilian consul--the Portuguese mobs paid both men three times as much as their government salaries in squeeze every month. Here also is the nest-feathering brigade of officials from swamps like Venezuela, Mexico, Chile, all with passports for sale and letters of transit falling like confetti, no worth more than gold. A Portuguese visa had been a few hundred dollars' cumshaw to a corrupt official a year before; now the price is treble, quadruple. Still they mingle--Portuguese bossman Fat Tony Perpetuo, Macassared hair slicked back with some simmering señorita on his arm, trades gossip with fellow countryman José Boletho, while the consults in white linen suits hover near and smile through nicotine-stained teeth.Here's the thing: "letters of transit" do not exist. They're a plot device made up for the movie Casablanca. Paul French either doesn't know or doesn't care; he refers to them at least twice more.
That's City of Devils for you. Lively, beautifully visual, fast-paced, written in the best choppy hard-boiled style, visceral, an incredible sense of place, full to the bursting of cinematic scenes and sharply-delineated characters . . . and it's bollocks. Not all bollocks. Probably a good half of it might be true. Good luck figuring out which half, though.
It's a ripping yarn, mind you. It's written like a combination of Raymond Chandler and Sebastian (The Perfect Storm) Junger. If you made a movie about it, which could easily happen, it'd be a kind of art-deco Blade Runner. Definitely read City of Devils if you like this sort of thing. Just keep in mind that some unknown fraction of it is bollocks.
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Book Review: The Meaning of Treason
The Meaning of Treason
Rebecca West
History, biography, literature
The Meaning of Treason is about the life and post-war trial of William Joyce, the British traitor (known as Lord Haw-Haw) who broadcast for the Nazis. I read it in my college years; I don't recall much of my reaction. Then Anthony Horowitz dropped a couple of references to it in The Word is Murder, and naturally I had to reread it.
It's an exceedingly odd book. It could have been written by nobody on earth but a member of the British upper classes from before 1960. Imagine a collaboration between Tom Wolfe (the one who wrote The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities) and Lord Peter Wimsey, and you'll have some idea of the style: fluently literate, vivid, intimate, closely observed, and sometimes inane to the point of bafflement. Rebecca West (that's Dame Cicely Isabel Fairfield DBE, to you) belonged to that persuasion of writers who suppose that, once you have looked upon a man's face and clothing, and perhaps heard him speak, you are entitled to pronounce with high confidence any judgement you would care to make about his character, psychology, literary tastes, dietary foibles, or what have you. If you in addition know his ancestry, the thing becomes an absolute certainty.
So, for example, we are informed with perfect seriousness that a certain man "had a great head, bulging at the back like the head of a foetus, in a conformation often found in men of exceptional talent." Of a minor witness, West explains that
What makes this book particularly interesting, then, is not exactly its content. West's biographical eloquence is more poetical than informative, for example, and her discussion of the legal issues at question is sophomoric; by her analysis, a person who obtains a British passport by fraud or forgery would be nonetheless entitled to claim its protection. No: The Meaning of Treason is fascinating as a historical document. Rebecca West was of, in, and writing for a social class that basically ceased to exist a few years later. Notice the chummy insularity: "a black-and-lime scarf of the heavy and subtly-coloured sort that used to be sold at the expensive shops at the Croisette at Cannes." Naturally! Observe the unthinking assumption that all humanity can be sorted into fixed categories, predictable in nature, and differing in quality as they approach or fall short of the British Gentry: "He was a not very fortunate example of the small, nippy, jig-dancing type of Irish peasant." Not just an Irish peasant, you understand, but a very particular subspecies of the breed--as if there were some kind of Irish Peasant Fancy, devoted to breeding and showing Irish Peasants, wherein one might amass a modest collection of "Best In Show" ribbons to impress one's friends.
It's off-putting to a modern reader, but it's fascinating as well. The intelligent, sensitive, ex-post-facto writing of the early 21st century can never inhabit the world of William Joyce, of Rebecca West, of the immediate post-war London in which wildflowers grew in the bombed-out buildings around St. Paul's Cathedral, where everyone and everything was tired and a little grubby and still trying to adjust to what had happened. Everything seemed like it was in short supply. Everyone was trying to make sense of it all: what had happened in the War, whose fault it had been, what it might have meant to be pro-Fascist beforehand, what the new world might look like. Considered as reporting, The Meaning of Treason is persiflage. Considered as an entry into that world, it's peerless.
Rebecca West
History, biography, literature
The Meaning of Treason is about the life and post-war trial of William Joyce, the British traitor (known as Lord Haw-Haw) who broadcast for the Nazis. I read it in my college years; I don't recall much of my reaction. Then Anthony Horowitz dropped a couple of references to it in The Word is Murder, and naturally I had to reread it.
It's an exceedingly odd book. It could have been written by nobody on earth but a member of the British upper classes from before 1960. Imagine a collaboration between Tom Wolfe (the one who wrote The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities) and Lord Peter Wimsey, and you'll have some idea of the style: fluently literate, vivid, intimate, closely observed, and sometimes inane to the point of bafflement. Rebecca West (that's Dame Cicely Isabel Fairfield DBE, to you) belonged to that persuasion of writers who suppose that, once you have looked upon a man's face and clothing, and perhaps heard him speak, you are entitled to pronounce with high confidence any judgement you would care to make about his character, psychology, literary tastes, dietary foibles, or what have you. If you in addition know his ancestry, the thing becomes an absolute certainty.
So, for example, we are informed with perfect seriousness that a certain man "had a great head, bulging at the back like the head of a foetus, in a conformation often found in men of exceptional talent." Of a minor witness, West explains that
People of this type need to construct around themselves dramas in which they play the leading part, and doubtless she had made her life in a riverside suburb into a very moving and uplifting drama, using her personal relationships as a fiery but solemn argument for love and decencyAs for William Joyce in person, "All though his life he had been anxious, with the special anxiety of the small man, not to make a fool of himself". Good to know!
What makes this book particularly interesting, then, is not exactly its content. West's biographical eloquence is more poetical than informative, for example, and her discussion of the legal issues at question is sophomoric; by her analysis, a person who obtains a British passport by fraud or forgery would be nonetheless entitled to claim its protection. No: The Meaning of Treason is fascinating as a historical document. Rebecca West was of, in, and writing for a social class that basically ceased to exist a few years later. Notice the chummy insularity: "a black-and-lime scarf of the heavy and subtly-coloured sort that used to be sold at the expensive shops at the Croisette at Cannes." Naturally! Observe the unthinking assumption that all humanity can be sorted into fixed categories, predictable in nature, and differing in quality as they approach or fall short of the British Gentry: "He was a not very fortunate example of the small, nippy, jig-dancing type of Irish peasant." Not just an Irish peasant, you understand, but a very particular subspecies of the breed--as if there were some kind of Irish Peasant Fancy, devoted to breeding and showing Irish Peasants, wherein one might amass a modest collection of "Best In Show" ribbons to impress one's friends.
It's off-putting to a modern reader, but it's fascinating as well. The intelligent, sensitive, ex-post-facto writing of the early 21st century can never inhabit the world of William Joyce, of Rebecca West, of the immediate post-war London in which wildflowers grew in the bombed-out buildings around St. Paul's Cathedral, where everyone and everything was tired and a little grubby and still trying to adjust to what had happened. Everything seemed like it was in short supply. Everyone was trying to make sense of it all: what had happened in the War, whose fault it had been, what it might have meant to be pro-Fascist beforehand, what the new world might look like. Considered as reporting, The Meaning of Treason is persiflage. Considered as an entry into that world, it's peerless.
Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Book Review: The Amorous Heart
The Amorous Heart: An Unconventional History of Love
Marilyn Yalom
History, sociology
No, I haven't taken to reading Harlequin Romances. The Amorous Heart is an odd little book about . . . um . . . the way the idea and image of "the heart" have been used to symbolize romance through the ages. Sort of.
I liked The Amorous Heart. I'm not quite sure who else would like it. It's not sufficiently scholarly for an academic readership. It's not zippy enough for a popularization (though it's quite readable). It doesn't go deep on a single, identifiable subject, the way the biography-of-a-substance subgenre does. It's chronological in organization, but its material wanders around from the history of the 💗symbol to the Roman de la Rose to the Valentine's Day industry. I guess I'd recommend it to anyone who's got a certain amount of free-floating curiosity and is willing to attach it to more or less any subject.
Marilyn Yalom
History, sociology
No, I haven't taken to reading Harlequin Romances. The Amorous Heart is an odd little book about . . . um . . . the way the idea and image of "the heart" have been used to symbolize romance through the ages. Sort of.
I liked The Amorous Heart. I'm not quite sure who else would like it. It's not sufficiently scholarly for an academic readership. It's not zippy enough for a popularization (though it's quite readable). It doesn't go deep on a single, identifiable subject, the way the biography-of-a-substance subgenre does. It's chronological in organization, but its material wanders around from the history of the 💗symbol to the Roman de la Rose to the Valentine's Day industry. I guess I'd recommend it to anyone who's got a certain amount of free-floating curiosity and is willing to attach it to more or less any subject.
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
Book Review: Berlin 1936
Berlin 1936: Sixteen Days in August
Oliver Hilmes
History, biography, sports
Berlin 1936 is a rather unusual book. I can imagine it might not be to everyone's taste. I liked it a lot, though.
"The Nazi Olympics" are famous as the occasion of Jesse Owens's on-field heroics, which are (and were) widely understood as having giving Hitler the metaphorical finger. The rest of the scene is treated as background--or reported in the newspaper-like tones used for any sporting event. Berlin 1936 flips all of this around. The book is a series of vignettes, told in the present tense and taken from a broad swath of lives both famous and obscure. Some of the actors appear once and vanish. Others weave into and out of the story: the American author Thomas Wolfe, Joseph Goebbels, the club owner Leon Henri Dajou. Owens is there, but he's one among many.
The theme of the book is not athletics, but contrast. Hilmes does a rather fine job in showing Berlin as the visitors saw it, as the Nazis wanted it to be seen--and then showing the ugly, underlying truth. The spectacle--not only of the games, but of Berlin itself--was deliberate: bait for the gaze of the world. Dangled in front of the visitors and the newsreel cameras, it pulled their eyes away from such nasty facts as Hitler's recent treaty violations, the race laws, and the burgeoning concentration camps. It worked, too.*
I can't say that Berlin 1936 is a book for everyone. It's novelistic (and should appeal to lovers of historical fiction). The present-tense prose makes the book more immediate--there's a sense of not knowing how it all comes out--but it's obviously a stylistic device. Substantively, while the book is well-researched and end-noted, it makes no pretense of completeness; it's no substitute, for example, for a straight, rigorous history book. There are no hard numbers and not much in the way of historical context. Ordinary Berliners are present, but they're at the margins, and they fade away entirely as the book continues.
. . . which, I think, is part of Hilmes's point. In Hitler's Germany, ordinary individual German didn't count for much. They were just grist for the mill--obscured by Olympic razzle-dazzle--and ultimately mere fodder for armies. In much same way, the virulently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer was kept off the streets for sixteen days, the rhetoric was muted, the press coverage was orchestrated in fine detail, the swing bands were given plenty of leeway, the nightlife was permitted to roar. Hilmes does a nice job in showing the frothy surface, while periodically puncturing it. To complain that this book reads like a guide to Berlin glitz (as one or two reviewers have done) completely misses the point.
*Comparisons with the current World Cup in Moscow are left as an exercise for the reader.
Oliver Hilmes
History, biography, sports
Berlin 1936 is a rather unusual book. I can imagine it might not be to everyone's taste. I liked it a lot, though.
"The Nazi Olympics" are famous as the occasion of Jesse Owens's on-field heroics, which are (and were) widely understood as having giving Hitler the metaphorical finger. The rest of the scene is treated as background--or reported in the newspaper-like tones used for any sporting event. Berlin 1936 flips all of this around. The book is a series of vignettes, told in the present tense and taken from a broad swath of lives both famous and obscure. Some of the actors appear once and vanish. Others weave into and out of the story: the American author Thomas Wolfe, Joseph Goebbels, the club owner Leon Henri Dajou. Owens is there, but he's one among many.
The theme of the book is not athletics, but contrast. Hilmes does a rather fine job in showing Berlin as the visitors saw it, as the Nazis wanted it to be seen--and then showing the ugly, underlying truth. The spectacle--not only of the games, but of Berlin itself--was deliberate: bait for the gaze of the world. Dangled in front of the visitors and the newsreel cameras, it pulled their eyes away from such nasty facts as Hitler's recent treaty violations, the race laws, and the burgeoning concentration camps. It worked, too.*
I can't say that Berlin 1936 is a book for everyone. It's novelistic (and should appeal to lovers of historical fiction). The present-tense prose makes the book more immediate--there's a sense of not knowing how it all comes out--but it's obviously a stylistic device. Substantively, while the book is well-researched and end-noted, it makes no pretense of completeness; it's no substitute, for example, for a straight, rigorous history book. There are no hard numbers and not much in the way of historical context. Ordinary Berliners are present, but they're at the margins, and they fade away entirely as the book continues.
. . . which, I think, is part of Hilmes's point. In Hitler's Germany, ordinary individual German didn't count for much. They were just grist for the mill--obscured by Olympic razzle-dazzle--and ultimately mere fodder for armies. In much same way, the virulently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer was kept off the streets for sixteen days, the rhetoric was muted, the press coverage was orchestrated in fine detail, the swing bands were given plenty of leeway, the nightlife was permitted to roar. Hilmes does a nice job in showing the frothy surface, while periodically puncturing it. To complain that this book reads like a guide to Berlin glitz (as one or two reviewers have done) completely misses the point.
*Comparisons with the current World Cup in Moscow are left as an exercise for the reader.
Monday, June 4, 2018
Book Review: The Year of Lear
The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606
James Shapiro
Literature, biography, history
A more recent book by the author of this excellent 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, and similarly thought-provoking. Shapiro combines conventional literary criticism with a deep knowledge of what was happening around Shakespeare when he was writing. The result is really illuminating: however "timeless" the Shakespeare plays may seem, in reality he was writing for a contemporary audience who would see reflections of contemporary events.
Some of the information seems obvious--in retrospect. In 1606, James I--newly-installed on the throne of England, but already king of Scotland--was trying to effect a union between his two kingdoms. Lear deals with the disastrous division of a kingdom; Macbeth deals with an ambitious Scottish king. It's inconceivable that people at the time wouldn't have noticed the parallels.
Other pieces are new, at least to me. I hadn't registered, for example, that Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon and its surrounds were heavily involved in the aftermath of the Guy Fawkes plot. As to how that may have worked its way onto the stage . . . read the book! We can never know what Shakespeare was thinking. But we can know what was on his mind, which is perhaps the next best thing.
James Shapiro
Literature, biography, history
A more recent book by the author of this excellent 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, and similarly thought-provoking. Shapiro combines conventional literary criticism with a deep knowledge of what was happening around Shakespeare when he was writing. The result is really illuminating: however "timeless" the Shakespeare plays may seem, in reality he was writing for a contemporary audience who would see reflections of contemporary events.
Some of the information seems obvious--in retrospect. In 1606, James I--newly-installed on the throne of England, but already king of Scotland--was trying to effect a union between his two kingdoms. Lear deals with the disastrous division of a kingdom; Macbeth deals with an ambitious Scottish king. It's inconceivable that people at the time wouldn't have noticed the parallels.
Other pieces are new, at least to me. I hadn't registered, for example, that Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon and its surrounds were heavily involved in the aftermath of the Guy Fawkes plot. As to how that may have worked its way onto the stage . . . read the book! We can never know what Shakespeare was thinking. But we can know what was on his mind, which is perhaps the next best thing.
Saturday, May 26, 2018
Book Review: The Square and the Tower
The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, From the Freemasons to Facebook
Niall Ferguson
History, politics
I've liked some of Ferguson's previous books, particularly The Ascent of Money, but The Square and the Tower is too long for its content. The first portion, describing some of the basics of network theory, is interesting but largely disconnected from the remainder. Said remainder consists of sweepingly vague statements, interspersed among a plethora of fairly unremarkable examples, delivered in orotund (read: pompous) prose. Also, Ferguson wastes chapters delivering long, thunderous denunciations of things that everybody is already against. (Apparently Stalinism and Islamic terrorism are both Bad Things. Who knew?)
A title like this begs for a strong theoretical spine. What we get is a monologue to the effect that there are networks, and there are hierarchies, and here are some examples of each. At 592 pages, that's a lot of book for a very unremarkable observation.
Niall Ferguson
History, politics
I've liked some of Ferguson's previous books, particularly The Ascent of Money, but The Square and the Tower is too long for its content. The first portion, describing some of the basics of network theory, is interesting but largely disconnected from the remainder. Said remainder consists of sweepingly vague statements, interspersed among a plethora of fairly unremarkable examples, delivered in orotund (read: pompous) prose. Also, Ferguson wastes chapters delivering long, thunderous denunciations of things that everybody is already against. (Apparently Stalinism and Islamic terrorism are both Bad Things. Who knew?)
A title like this begs for a strong theoretical spine. What we get is a monologue to the effect that there are networks, and there are hierarchies, and here are some examples of each. At 592 pages, that's a lot of book for a very unremarkable observation.
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