Gordon S. Wood (ed.), The American Revolution: Writings from the Pamphlet Debate 1764-1776

Liberty is the greatest blessing that men enjoy, and slavery the heaviest curse that human nature is capable of. – This being so, makes it a matter of the utmost importance to men, which of the two shall be their portion.  Absolute Liberty is, perhaps, incompatible with any kind of government. – The safety resulting from society, and the advantage of just and equal laws, hath caused men to forego some part of their natural liberty, and submit to government.  This appears to be the most rational account of it's beginning; although, it must be confessed, mankind have by no means been agreed about it:  Some have found it's origin in the divine appointment:  Others have thought it took it's rise from power:  Enthusiasts have dreamed that dominion was founded in grace.  Leaving these points to be settled by the descendants of Filmer, Cromwell, and Venner, we will consider the British constitution, as it at present stands, on revolution principles; and, from thence endeavour to find the measure of the magistrate's power, and the people's obedience.

This glorious constitution, the best that ever existed among men, will be confessed by all, to be founded by compact, and established by consent of the people.  By this most beneficent compact, British subjects are to be governed only agreeable to laws to which themselves have some way consented, and are not to be compelled to part with their property, but as it is called for by the authority of such laws:  The former is truly liberty; the latter is really to be possessed of property, and to have something that may be called one's own.

– ("The Rights of Colonies Examined.", Stephen Hopkins, Providence, Rhode Island, 1765, vol. I, p. 125)

The American Revolution, as distinct from the War for American Independence, did not begin with a musket shot in Lexington, Massachusetts in April 1775.  Rather, it began a decade before with a war of ideas fought in newspapers and in pamphlets sold for a shilling.  There, colonial and imperial leaders held forth on issues of liberty, representation, and the limitations and virtues of the British constitution (and Parliamentary power) as it related to the original thirteen North American English colonies.  Both sides, the nascent Patriot and Loyalist/Imperial, often alluded to Greco-Roman orators as being the ultimate source for their arguments on these topics.  In hindsight, what was transpiring just over 250 years ago is rather amazing, as civil discourse became increasingly intertwined with violence (tarring and feathering, burning of officials' houses, the Boston Massacre of 1770, etc.) and yet until the very end the rhetoric never truly (with a few notable exceptions) directly alluded to these violent acts.  It was as though there were two conflicts being acted out simultaneously and yet never truly in concert with each other.

American historian Gordon S. Wood (author of the award-winning The Radicalism of the American Revolution) in this two-volume Library of America set, The American Revolution:  Writings from the Pamphlet Debate 1764-1776, has chosen 39 pamphlets published during the period between the passage of the Sugar Act and the Declaration of Independence that present the breadth and depth of the arguments made in favor or in opposition to increased American autonomy in the aftermath of the French and Indian War.  He prefaces each pamphlet with a short précis of the pamphlet's general arguments and later actions of the author.  These 1-2 page summaries help non-specialists get the gist of the arguments being presented, as there are times that the authors make so many allusions to classical writers and to legal aspects of the documents that comprise the British constitution that it can be difficult for some readers to grasp what exactly is being argued and why.

Yet a closer examination of these pamphlets and how Wood has juxtaposed them reveal some fascinating undercurrents.  In the preface to the pamphlet quoted above, Wood references Rhode Island's rather unique political system (rotation of the colonial capital among five towns, semiannual voting for assemblymen, a "modern" two party/faction system).  The information there makes Hopkins' observation about how absolute liberty might be incompatible with any form of government seem not just the abstract musing of a quasi-anarchist but rather a wry commentary from someone who is intimately versed in decentralized politics. 

Immediately following Hopkins' pamphlet is Martin Howard Jr.'s "A Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax, to his Friend in Rhode-Island, Containing Remarks upon a Pamphlet, Entitled, The Rights of Colonies Examined."  This pamphlet is not just a point-by-point response to "Rights of the Colonies Examined," but it also is one of the earliest and most forceful defenses of the Imperial viewpoint that the colonies by their very foundation by people of English descent have submitted themselves to the strictures of the English constitution:

Our personal rights, comprehending those of life, liberty and estate, are secured to us by the common law, which is every subject's birthright, whether born in Great-Britain, on the ocean, or in the colonies, and it is in this sense we are said to enjoy all the rights and privileges of Englishmen.  The political rights of the colonies, or the powers of government communicated to them, are more limited, and their nature, quality and extent depend altogether upon the patent or charter which first created and instituted them.  As individuals, the colonists participate of every blessing the English constitution can give them.  As corporations created by the crown, they are confined within the primitive views of their institution.  Whether therefore their indulgence is scanty or liberal, can be no cause of complaint; for when they accepted of their charters, they tacitly submitted to the terms and conditions of them. (I, pp. 150-151)

Howard, as part of a faction that wanted to revoke Rhode Island's charter and have its radically democratic colonial assembly come under direct royal control, came under direct attack during the Stamp Act protests and he later had to flee to England to avoid physical harm.  These threats, including those made to the royal governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, lie as a dark shadow upon the arguments presented during this time.  In the case of Hutchinson, a native of Massachusetts, he became one of the most hated men in North America because of his principled stance in favor of continued union with England, even as more and more colonial leaders and thinkers, especially after 1770, began to advocate autonomy, if not outright independence, as a solution for the problems surrounding representation and taxation.  In his January 1773 speech to the Massachusetts Assembly, Hutchinson outlines his opposition to this increasingly popular viewpoint:

If what I have said shall not be sufficient to satisfy such as object to the Supreme Authority of Parliament over the Plantations, there may something further be added to induce them to an Acknowledgment of it which I think will well deserve their Consideration.  I know of no Line that can be drawn between the supreme Authority of Parliament and the total Independence of the Colonies.  It is impossible there should be two independent Legislatures in one and the same State, for although there may be but one Head, the King, yet the two Legislative Bodies will make two Governments as distinct as the Kingdoms of England and Scotland before the Union.  If we might be suffered to be altogether independent of Great-Britain, could we have any Claim to the Protection of that Government of which we are no longer a Part?  Without this Protection should we not become the Prey of one or the other Powers of Europe, such as should first seize upon us?  Is there any Thing which we have more Reason to dread than Independence?  I hope it will never be our Misfortune to know by Experience the Difference between the Liberties of an English Colonist and those of the Spanish, French or Dutch. (II, p. 10)

As reasoned as Hutchinson's speech may be, he could not fathom truly the depth of desire for separation.  For him and other future Loyalists, Parliament was the protector of freedoms and to reject parliamentary suzerainty was tantamount to abandoning security in a wild goose chase for liberty unmoored from centuries of traditions accreting around the acts and documents that comprised the English constitution.  Therefore, the response made by certain members of the Massachusetts Assembly, including future American leaders John Hancock and John Adams, likely baffled him in their rejection of this view of Parliament being the protector of English and colonial freedoms:

We fully agree with your Excellency, that our own Happiness as well as his Majesty's Service, very much depends upon Peace and Order, and we shall at all Times take such Measures as are consistent with our Constitution and the Rights of the People to promote and maintain them.  That the Government at present is in a very disturbed State is apparent!  But we cannot ascribe it to the People's having adopted unconstitutional Principles, which seems to be the Cause assigned for it by your Excellency.  It appears to us to have been occasioned rather, by the British House of Commons assuming and exercising a Power inconsistent with the Freedom of the Constitution, to give and grant the Property of the Colonists, and appropriate the same without their Consent. (II, p. 24)

This grounding of the main points of contention within this perceived usurpation of constitutional power by Parliament set the framework for later arguments during the people immediately preceding and following the Battles of Lexington and Concord two years later.  Most of the subsequent pamphlets in the second volume follow, in their support or dissent, upon the premises established here.  By 1776, the argument had switched from a direct focus on Parliament's regulatory power in the colonies to a debate on the source from whence liberty and popular representation commenced.  Wood does an excellent job in weaving these strands together to present a powerful argument that the American Revolution did not begin with a shot but instead with a thorough debate, via printed media, on the origins of political powers and human rights.  Although this debate had occurred over a century before during the English Revolution through the use of broadsides (and later, the English Civil War), these ideas found their mature expression during the 1764-1776 gestation period that led to the birth of the Declaration of Independence, one of the most important documents written in world history.  What followed after was messy, with consequences that still affect us today.  The American Revolution:  Writings from the Pamphlet Debate 1764-1776 serves as a excellent look at these written documents that spawned the modern representative republic form of government now seen in much of the world today.

Francis Parkman, France and England in North America

The springs of American civilization, unlike those of the elder world, lie revealed in the clear light of History.  In appearance they are feeble; in reality, copious and full of force.  Acting at the sources of life, instruments otherwise weak become mighty for good and evil, and men, lost elsewhere in the crowd, stand forth as agents of Destiny.  In their toils, their sufferings, their conflicts, momentous questions were at stake, and issues vital to the future world, – the prevalence of races, the triumph of principles, health or disease, a blessing or a curse.  On the obscure strife where men died by tens or by scores hung questions of as deep import for posterity as on those mighty contests of national adolescence where carnage is reckoned by thousands.

The subject to which the proposed series will be devoted is that of "France in the New World," – the attempt of Feudalism, Monarchy, and Rome to master a continent where, at this hour, half a million of bayonets are vindicating the ascendency of a regulated freedom; – Feudalism still strong in life, though enveloped and overborne by new-born Centralization; Monarchy in the flush of triumphant power; Rome, nerved by disaster, springing with renewed vitality from ashes and corruption, and ranging the earth to reconquer abroad what she had lost at home.  These banded powers, pushing into the wilderness their indomitable soldiers and devoted priests, unveiled the secrets of the barbarous continent, pierced the forests, traced and mapped out the streams, planted their emblems, built their forts, and claimed all as their own.  New France was all head.  Under king, noble, and Jesuit, the lank, lean body would not thrive.  Even commerce wore the sword, decked itself with badges of nobility, aspired to forest seigniories and hordes of savage retainers. (Introduction, p. 13 Library of America edition, vol. I of France and England in North America)

When I was growing up in the 1980s, I frequently would check out old histories from the local library.  There was something exhilarating to read 50-100 year-old histories where there was a sense of momentousness to tales of daring and doing, of brave souls whose choices seemed to change the course of the world.  The prose might have been purple in places, but oh God was it glorious to read.  Years before I knew what "historiography" and "monograph" meant, long before I delved into primary source material, read pardon tales and experienced "fiction in the archives," I wanted to be a historian, just so I could read and re-read these fascinating tales of heroes and villains who actually lived, breathed, and died, with their actions affecting the lives of millions. 

Of course, the reality of studying history in the late 20th century at the University of Tennessee was far different from my youthful expectations.  There the focus was on trends and societal moldings of individuals and not the inverse.  I discovered a love for cultural and religious histories, seeing in preserved documents such as the trial of an Italian miller for heresy something more real and intriguing than tales of Frederick the Great's campaigns in Central Europe during the 1740s (that being said, Frederick did lead a fascinating life, full of conflicts both internal and external).  Histories that purportedly had a "theme" or moral to explore just seemed a bit too trite to me, too full of confidence in national and self-delusions to be worth anything more than a diverting look into the world-views of those who composed them in the years just prior and concurrent to Leopold von Ranke's famous maxim, "Wie es eigentlich gewesen" ("How it really was"), being composed to describe his focus on a more rational, fact-based approach to historiography.  Yet there is still something powerful to these older, more Romantic histories that still calls to me.

This certainly was the case when I recently read Francis Parkman's 1865-1893 seven volume history of France's involvement in North America, collected into two volumes by the Library of America and published as France and England in North America.  Parkman's introduction is a bracing read, especially if the reader, like myself, finds himself reacting to almost every line with questions of how something in a similar vein might never see the light of day in early 21st century "professional" journals.  One just does not talk about destinies and civilizations as being fonts of either good and/or evil without being ridiculed these days.  And yet, in re-reading just now Parkman's 1865 introduction (and realizing that he's thinking heavily upon the American Civil War and the fight to remove slavery from the land) there is a life to it that makes these 3000 pages seem fresh even 151 years later.

Parkman's prose certainly helps the curious reader settle quickly into the story he aims to tell.  Despite the lush, almost turgid quality of his introduction, much of the actual histories he tells are concise yet full of vivid descriptions, such as this observation on French resiliency after an English raid on the early settlement of Acadia (now parts of the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) in 1613:

In spite of their reverses, the French kept hold on Acadia.  Biencourt, partially at least, rebuilt Port Royal; while winter after winter the smoke of fur-traders' huts curled into the still, sharp air of these frosty wilds, till at length, with happier auspices, plans of settlement were resumed. (p. 239, vol. I)

The subject matter, the invasion/settlement of North America, lends itself well to being viewed as an adventure of wills, of villains and heroes struggling for dominance.  Never mind that Parkman, even more so than many of his contemporaries, often portrays the local nations as being oft-perfidious "savages," whose lust for scalps and mutilations makes them frequent foils for these intrepid explorers.  While there are some exceptions to be found in these volumes, for the most part this is a history that downplays the intricacies of Franco-Native interactions.  This is most apparent in the final volume, Montcalm and Wolfe, as the nations are reduced to little more than waves of savages who aid the French (minus the notable exception of the Six Nations).

Yet despite this major flaw (at least for a one-time historian living in the early 21st century), this narrative approach does make the events of 1535-1763 a compelling read.  This is especially true in two volumes, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West and Montcalm and Wolfe, where Parkman's penchant for describing key historical figures as though they were characters in a novel makes for an absorbing, quick read.  La Salle in particular is a quasi-saint among ruffians, as his single-minded vision for establishing a true French empire in the forests of North America makes him a truly tragic hero whose denouement, long-foreshadowed, is nonetheless more poignant for its seemingly inevitability. 

However, Parkman is more than a one-trick pony.  Vivid and as well-constructed as his tales of historical heroes and villains might be, his use of primary sources is also important.  For the most part, leaving aside his almost calumnious depictions of Native Americans, his histories contain a plethora of citations of letters, diaries, and official documents.  While it might be inconvenient for monolingual readers, Parkman frequently cites, untranslated, various observations by the historical figures and their contemporaries, in his footnotes and appendices.  These citations lend a gravity to the texts that might otherwise have been missing.  His research is extensive and while some of his conclusions can be debated (such as viewing New France versus the English colonies as an extension of feudal/clerical powers vs. incipient liberty-seeking yeomen), the documents themselves do provide a lot of support for other arguments of his, namely the inherent weaknesses in establishing a colony that was based more on the exploitation of natural resources (especially furs) than on the cultivation of these resources.

On the whole, France and England in North America is a well-written, relatively well-researched mid-to-late 19th century history that was written during a time when historiography was being to switch from a narrative-heavy, ideological view of the past toward a more document-based, "scientific" approach toward studying past events.  While some of Parkman's terminology and conclusions might be cringe-worthy today, his fast-paced, person-centered tales create a vivid, complex tapestry of events and people that makes for a gripping read.  It certainly is one of the better examples of 19th century American histories available today for readers curious about colonial settlements but who may not wish to be bogged down with thorough examinations of contemporary societal trends.

National Book Awards longlist for Non-Fiction

The longlist for the 2014 National Book Awards for Non-Fiction was just announced this morning.  Yet I find myself somewhat disappointed in the selections, despite not having read any of them so far.  Maybe I'll be able to find some compelling tales and excellent histories here, but it seems less diverse and representative of what's being produced this year compared to the Young People's Literature and Poetry longlists.  Am going to read one at least, the Roz Chast, and maybe the John Demos, but uncertain how many of the others I'll read.  Maybe something from the shortlist, but this might be the category I don't really cover this year.  Anyways, here's the longlist:


Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (also a graphic novel)

John Demos, The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic
  
Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes

Nigel Hamilton, The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941 – 1942

Walter Isaacson, The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh

Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

Ronald C. Rosbottom, When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944

Matthew Stewart, Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic

Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

In many ways, likability is a very elaborate lie, a performance, a code of conduct dictating the proper way to be.  Characters who don't follow this code become unlikeable.  Critics who criticize a character's unlikeability cannot necessarily be faulted.  They are merely expressing a wider cultural malaise with all things unpleasant, all things that dare to breach the norm of social acceptability.

Why is likability even a question?  Why are we so concerned with whether, in fact or fiction, someone is likable?  Unlikable is a fluid designation that can be applied to any character who doesn't behave in a way the reader finds palatable.  Lionel Shriver notes, in an essay for the Financial Times, that "this 'liking' business has two components:  moral approval and affection."  We need characters to be lovable while they do right. ("Not Here to Make Friends," p. 70, iPad iBooks e-edition)

I have been following Roxane Gay on Twitter ever since I read and reviewed her debut novel, An Untamed State, back in June.  It is a different experience witnessing a writer and cultural critic holding forth on a variety of issues "in real time" before sitting down and reading her debut collection of thirty-eight essays, Bad Feminist.  Many of the issues raised in her essays I first experienced in truncated form on Twitter, but in both media, what immediately becomes apparent is Gay's wit and honesty.

The essays that appear in Bad Feminist are culled from columns that have appeared in the past few years at places such as The Rumpus, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Salon, among others.  Grouped into five categories ("Me," "Gender & Sexuality," "Race & Entertainment," "Politics, Gender & Race," and "Back to Me"), Bad Feminist's essays explore a variety of topics, ranging from the personal to cultural flash points such as the depiction of blacks in American cinema ("Surviving Django" and "Beyond the Struggle Narrative").  In these essays, Gay is not a polished, aloof critic.  Instead, she allows her virtues and flaws to be on full display, showing an individual who is deeply engaged with her subject matter, sometimes to the point of self-conscious subjectivity.  This, however, is not a flaw but a feature in her essays, one that makes Bad Feminist an absorbing read.

One shining example can be found in "What We Hunger For."  Starting as an admission that she cannot critique The Hunger Games effectively due to her fannish attachment to it, Gay proceeds to write a passionate essay that touches upon a traumatic time in her life (a gang rape in middle school) before proceeding to tie this in to the question of "darkness" in contemporary YA fiction:

In June 2011, Meghan Cox wrote, in the Wall Street Journal, about how Young Adult fiction has taken too dark a turn, has unnecessarily exposed young readers to complex, difficult situations before they are mature enough to make sense of those situations.  She wrote,

If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is.  There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader – or one who seeks out depravity – will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds. 

She is correct in noting that there is darkness in some Young Adult fiction, but she largely ignores the diversity of the genre and the countless titles that aren't grounded in damage, brutality, or loss.  More troubling, though, is the suggestion that somehow reality should be sanitized for teen readers. (p. 115)

The remainder of "What We Hunger For" discusses this desire for sanitizing YA literature, making it somehow "safer" for readers and how it is a misleading goal in light of those young readers, much more than what one might presume, who find solace and strength in these accounts of others battling difficulties and horrendous moments in order to come out on the other side.  Gay argues her point persuasively, using personal experience to flesh out her points without ever denigrating those who believe otherwise.  This ties in directly to the next essay, "The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion," in which Gay explores her unease about the notions that lie behind the usage of the label "Trigger Warning."  She is compassionate toward those who have suffered traumatic flashbacks, but she nonetheless sees an issue of not feeling protected, not feeling safe, when such warnings are issued.  It is a view with which I have a deep sympathy for, as what she says on it jibes with my experiences:

This is the truth of my trouble with trigger warnings:  there is nothing words on the screen can do that has not already been done.  A visceral reaction to a trigger is nothing compared to the actual experience that created the trigger.

I don't know how to see beyond this belief to truly get why trigger warnings are necessary.  When I see trigger warnings, I don't feel safe.  I don't feel protected.  Instead, I am surprised there are still people who believe in safety and protection despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (p. 122)

An interesting feature of Gay's essays is that while she sets up interesting discussion matters, she rarely, if ever, concludes them with strong, assertive stances.  Instead, these pieces feel like conversation starters, presenting a topic through a deeply personal lens (albeit one that is informed with critical theory as well as knowledge of pop kitsch), but leaving enough "space" for the reader to leave his or her comment as an appendix.  Several times, I felt like I wanted to write a response, to ask a question or inquire about the source material, and this sucked me further into Gay's essays than if they had been polished, academic affairs.  Their structure betrays their original purpose as columns, many of which would have been online and have featured a Comments section.  Some might not like this, but for myself, this works wonderfully because it allows the reader space to draw her own conclusions about the topics raised.

The breezy nature of these essays might not appeal to everyone, but for the most part, Gay displays a sharp, introspective mind that is constantly asking questions about the world and its peoples.  The topics are engaging and while there might be a perceived dearth of firm conclusions, this actually ties into her opening and concluding sections, in which Gay explains why she has labeled herself as a "bad feminist."  If Montaigne's Essais were the foundation for the essay genre, Bad Feminist is an excellent example of the early 21st permutation of that form.

Joanna Rakoff, My Salinger Year

For a moment, I paused in front of the wall of Salinger books and looked at the titles, the familiar spines.  My parents owned most of these:  paperbacks of The Catcher in the Rye and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour – an Introduction; a pristine hardback of Franny and Zooey.  But I had read around them.  Why?  Why had I skipped Salinger?  Partly due to happenstance.  My high school English teacher never assigned Catcher.  No older sibling put a copy in my fourteen-year-old hands and said, " You have to read this."  And then my Salinger moment – the window between twelve and twenty, when everyone in the literate universe seems to go crazy over The Catcher in the Rye – had passed.  Now I was interested in difficult, gritty fictions, in large, expansive novels, in social realism.  I was interested in Pynchon, Amis, Dos Passos.  I was interested in Faulkner and Didion and Bowles, writers whose bleak, relentless styles stood in stark opposition to what I imagined Salinger to be:  insufferably cute, aggressively quirky, precious.  I had no interest in Salinger's fairy tales of Old New York, in precocious children expounding on Zen koans or fainting on sofas, exhausted by the tyranny of the material world.  I was not interested in characters with names like Boo Boo and Zooey.  I was not interested in hyper-articulate seven-year-olds who quoted from the Bhagavad Gita.  Even the names of the stories seemed juvenile and too clever-clever:  "A Perfect Day for Bananafish."  "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut."

I didn't want to be entertained.  I wanted to be provoked. (pp. 51-52 iPad iBooks e-edition)

Memoirs are tricky beasts to tame enough in order to review them.  Trying to lasso a writer's experiences and perspectives in, to place them within the context of your own assessments is more difficult than merely assessing plot, prose, characterization, and theme.  A memoir can be filled with beautifully-flowing sentences and gorgeous images and be as full of life as a vomit-covered toilet after a night of vapid partying.  Some stories just need more than technical brilliance in order to justify their raison d'être.  Perhaps it is as little as a fleeting encounter with another human being, a little yet profound twist in one's life narrative direction, but something is needed to help the reader to latch onto something, anything while reading about the minutiae of another's life.

Joanna Rakoff's memoir of her 1996 experience working at a New York literary agency (which she refers to throughout as simply, "the Agency"), however, has several things about it that make it an interesting and entertaining memoir.  Her descriptions of life working for one of the oldest literary agencies and their rather antiquated office procedures provides a fascinating look into New York publishing just as it was changing higgledy-piggledy into the digital age.  It is also an examination of the casual sexism that many young professional class women experienced in the era in which the debate raged over what type of suit/dress to wear.  Yet these are only part and parcel of her overall experiences during this defining, transformational year.  It was the year that she became acquainted with J.D. ("Jerry") Salinger.

Salinger only directly appears in a few scenes of My Salinger Year, mostly in the context of the numerous fan mails that Joanna, as literary assistant/secretary, has to answer with a form letter informing them that Salinger does not read nor reply to his fan mail.  Yet it is in these letters, from adolescents in North Carolina to World War II veterans in Nebraska, that reveal Salinger the writer's influence much more than anything the man himself says in the course of his periodic and brief phone conversations with the Agency's workers.  Reading these scenes reminded me of Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran in its discussion of how literature can impact readers' social perspectives and be an agent for change.

And yes, Salinger (or the combination of his endearingly awkward phone conversations, the fan mail, and Rakoff's eventual reading of his œvre) acts as a catalyst on Rakoff.  Her relationships with two men, her former fiancée and the failed novelist live-in boyfriend she had that year, changes as she reads Salinger's stories and sees elements of his characters in them, particularly Franny in relation to Lane.  These revelations are organic, never appearing to be forced or stretched.  By memoir's end, Rakoff has changed from the nervous and determined to be proper young professional described in the opening Winter section to the resolute, independent-minded young woman who resigns her position in order to continue her personal and professional development elsewhere.  My Salinger Year is the story of Rakoff's development, due in part to her belatedly encounter with Salinger's writing, and it is a fascinating one for how adroitly she mixes the literary and the personal to create a breezy yet at times profound read.  Highly recommended.

Greg King and Sue Woolmans, The Assassination of the Archduke

Originally posted on World War I Literature, Art, and Cinema.

Today it is easy to look back upon the years before 1914 with a kind of gauzy, romantic nostalgia.  It seems a simpler time, when innovation enthralled and peace predominated.  The truth, though, was somewhat different.  All major powers had fought in at least one war since 1860, usually several, and the modern arms race had begun in earnest; incursion, revolution, revolt, and repression were rife.  The fifty years preceding that golden summer of 1914 witnessed constant violence.  Assassination was common:  The sultan of Turkey was killed in 1876; American President Garfield and Tsar Alexander II of Russia in 1881; President Sadi Carnot of France in 1894; the shah of Persia in 1896; the prime minister of Spain in 1897; the empress of Austria in 1898; King Umberto of Italy in 1900; American President William McKinley in 1901; King Alexander and Queen Draga of Serbia in 1903; Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia in 1905; King Carlos of Portugal and his son Crown Prince Luis Felipe in 1908; Russian prime minister Peter Stolypin in 1911; and King George of Greece in 1913.  Royalty and politicians alike fell in precipitous numbers to bombs, bullets, and knives in these “golden” years of peace. (Introduction, p. 21, iPad iBooks e-edition)

June 28, 2014 marks the centenary of the fateful assassination of Austrian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo, Bosnia.  This event, long considered to be the flash point that triggered the horrific violence of World War I, did not actually generate as much initial attention as the events that followed in July 1914.  After all, tragic as the event was, it was for some at the time yet another assassination, one that removed a troublesome heir and this removal could potentially reap benefits for the Austrian crown.  For others, with their deaths, the hope for a federalization of the Habsburg-Lorraine realms crashed with the report of Gavrilo Princip’s bullets.  For most of the past century, historians have focused more on the events surrounding the assassination and on the social and political pressures present on the eve of the assassination than on the actual killing of the Archduke and his wife.  In the wake of tens of millions dead, wounded, or displaced, those two initial deaths meant little more than just the beginning of this massive wave of deaths.  But what is the story behind their arrival in Sarajevo?  Is there something to be gleaned from their lives that would make their deaths worth considering in a context other than the beginning of a deluge of war-caused deaths?

In their 2013 book, The Assassination of the Archduke:  Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance That Changed the World, Greg King and Sue Woolmans take a close look at the doomed couple, seeing in their controversial romance and marriage, as well as their deaths and its aftermath, the clash of an old and new Europe, a conflict destined to engulf millions.  Theirs was a marriage of unequals, at least in the eyes of the Austrian court.  The future heir to the Habsburg-Lorraine possessions, consorting with a minor Bohemian countess?  Even though there had been some liberalization of attitudes during the 19th century, the marriage of a royal heir to a member of the lower nobility was considered to be scandalous.  The aged Emperor Franz Joseph refused to recognize Countess Sophie as equal to his nephew and despite his and the court’s every attempt to split the couple, the court finally agreed to allow the two to marry, but only through what is known as a morganatic marriage, in which Sophie could not receive the traditional title’s of the royal Archduke’s consort and any children of hers would be barred from the line of succession.  The litany of petty snubs and insults is strange to contemplate a century later:

This set the tone for the rules Montenuovo laid down governing Sophie’s life.  As a morganatic spouse, she was excluded from nearly every privilege enjoyed by other Habsburg wives; on the rare occasions when concessions were made, they were done in such a way as to ensure that her unequal position was reinforced.  Sophie was not allowed to appear with her husband in public.  If he attended a race, opened a museum, toured a factory, or dedicated a school, she had to remain at home or linger in the distant shadows, unacknowledged.  If an honor guard saluted Franz Ferdinand, she had to leave, for as a morganatic wife she was not entitled to receive the salutes meant for a Habsburg.  If the national anthem greeted the archduke, she had to withdraw, as she was not a member of the imperial family.  If officials made a formal welcoming address or presentation, she was not allowed to stand near her husband and give the impression that she in any way warranted official recognition.  Franz Ferdinand was forbidden from ever mentioning his wife in any official speech.  Sophie could not even accompany Franz Ferdinand to the races, for she was deemed unfit to share his place in the imperial box. (pp. 82-83, Ch. 5)

In several chapters, King and Woolmans juxtapose this ill-treatment with the Archduke’s fondness for his wife and young children.  The Franz Ferdinand that they depict is a person of contrasts, a stern, aloof figure in public who was a loving husband and father in private.  Utilizing several letters that the couple’s descendents lent to them, King and Woolmans make the case for the Archduke being, if not quite a liberal, someone who considered a federal model, based on that of the United States (which the Archduke had toured in the 1890s), as a possible solution for the growing radical nationalist organizations in various parts of the Dual Monarchy.  He particularly saw the fissioning of Hungary into Magyar, Ruthenian, and South Slav constituencies as a way of lessening the power of the landed Hungarian nobility. (p. 130, Ch. 10)

Unfortunately, King and Woolmans do not devote much space to exploring the possibilities that these proposed policies could have had on future imperial politics, as this could have illustrated more strongly their thesis that the Archduke could have been a good ruler who might have staved off some of the nationalistic excesses that took place in 1918 and afterward.  In addition, the relative lack of opposing sources to contest their portrayal of Franz Ferdinand makes it hard at times to contrast their rosy image of the assassinated heir with contemporary accounts of his demeanor and actions.  Their use of the Archduke’s preserved communications with his wife and others is valuable, but at times it appears that they rely too much on them, risking a distorted image of Franz Ferdinand in their attempt to show him and his wife as tragic figures in the conflagration to come.

The events in Sarajevo in June 1914 are perhaps the most arresting of the book.  The efforts the authors make in establishing the characters of the Archduke and his wife pay off in how the Archduke’s conflicts with his military staff and his taking advantage of a situation to have his wife travel openly with him in a public, official position led directly to their deaths on June 28, 1914.  King and Woolmans also utilize recently-released records to show that there seem to be very strong connections between the Serbian nationalist group the Black Hand, Serbia, and through Serbia to Russia.  The conspirators’ origins and planning are laid out in clear, concise fashion, with enough detail to make the reader curious to know more.  This paragraph in particular is intriguing:

If Austria attacked Serbia, Artamanov assured Dimitrijević, “you are not going to be alone.”  This is what Dimitrijević said he was told.  Was this Russian sanction for the assassination?  Or was it merely some vague diplomatic assurance that the Tsarist empire would stand by its Balkan ally?  The answer depends on what Artamanov told St. Petersburg.  A veil of plausible deniability cloaked everyone involved.  Official Russian documents concerning the buildup to World War I were later falsified before publication or disappeared altogether.  On balance, it is not unlikely that Dimitrijević told Artamanov of the plot.  Nor is it unlikely that Artamanov shared this information with others.  However, the murky connections and destruction of official papers makes it impossible to offer any definitive evidence on this critical question. (p. 165, Ch. 14)

King and Woolmans’ discussion of the immediate aftermath makes quite clear that the assassination was not necessarily viewed then as a casus belli:

Then suddenly the music ceased as word of the assassination spread.  Many people, believing the worst about Franz Ferdinand, reacted with relief.  “There was,” recalled Stefan Zweig, “no special shock or dismay to be seen on the faces of the crowd, for the Heir to the Throne had not by any means been popular.”  Theatrical performances were canceled and shops closed to maintain the mood of mourning, but many Austrians almost welcomed the news.  “The town takes it all very quietly,” noted Sir Maurice de Bunsen.  “There is not a sign of emotion anywhere.  They must be a very apathetic people.”  In the Prater, one man saw “no mood of mourning” as the round of festivities continued.  “God meant to be kind to Austria,” recorded famed diarist Josef Redlich, “by saving it from this Emperor.”  In many political and official court circles, Eisenmenger said, word of the assassination “was received with ill-concealed satisfaction.  They were relieved to be rid of so powerful and dangerous an opponent.”  One courtier greeted the news with the simple “The ogre is dead.” (p. 188, Ch. 17)

The authors immediately contrast this seeming apathy in Vienna with violent street fights in Sarajevo, as Turks and Croatians carried black-ribboned mourning pictures of the Emperor and began looting the houses of Serbs, treating them all as complicit in the assassination. (p. 190)  The investigation into the murders led to the arrests of most of the conspirators.  Mounting evidence indicted that the Serbian government in some fashion either knew beforehand of the assassination attempt or they may have actively aided and abetted the conspirators.  Although King and Woolmans make a compelling case for this, the paucity of discussion prior to the final few chapters serves more here to create an intruding discussion into the main narrative regarding the warm relationship between the Archduke and his wife.  It is not an unwelcome intrusion, but nonetheless, it does feel foreign to the narrative they had established for the previous four-fifths of the book.

The Assassination of the Archduke is one of those historical books that contains a wealth of sources and footnotes, yet is more accessible for the general layperson who might not be familiar with current research.  Certainly King and Woolmans do a good job in presenting a different side to the long-reviled Archduke, but there are times that they come across more as advocates for his defense than as historians writing a historical biography.  Leaving this aside, this book is valuable not just for its portrayals of the doomed couple, but also for its cogent presentation in the concluding chapters of possible factors that led to the Austrian government using an ultimatum to Serbia, an ultimatum that was not met and one that led to the catastrophe of World War I.  It may not be the best-argued and presented book on the Sarajevo assassination, but it certainly is one that adds to our collective understanding of the people who died there a century ago.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

"A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of Communism."  With this line, one of the most famous and enduring political pamphlets, the 1848 The Communist Manifesto, co-written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, begins. So much is associated with Marx and Engel's names, ranging from wars to authoritarian regimes to revolutionary zeal.  Leaving aside what was (and still is) inspired by their political writings, The Communist Manifesto may be the most important literary work of the 19th century in terms of its impact on socio-political thinking.

I want to begin with a few quotes from Section I of the Manifesto:

"Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power?  Where the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?" (p. 8)

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." (p. 9)

"The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe.  It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-laborers." (p. 11)

"The 'dangerous class,' the social scum (Lumpenproletariat), that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue." (p. 20)

With just a few twists in phrasing, each of these statements can find their mirror images in current political discourse.  From accusations tossed about by conservative Anglo-American political parties to their opponents who seek to establish/maintain national health care to the 2011 Occupy movements to the plight of teachers (and their occasional demonization by certain elements of society) to the xenophobic rhetoric that rises in times of economic hardship, each of these find a faint echo in Marx and Engel's Manifesto.  Although Marx and Engels were influenced by Hegel's thoughts on thesis/antithesis=synthesis, they altered this dialectic approach to fit in with the materialistic age in which they lived.  While The Communist Manifesto is more of a précis than a substantive thesis (for that, see the various volumes of Marx's Capital), its concise, energetically-written summary of the plight of worker (proletariat) in the early Industrial Age introduced several concepts, especially that of class struggle, that have been influential ever since.

When I was studying history at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, it was impossible to avoid using Hegelian/Marxist dialetics in explaining what was transpiring in a particular age/country/village.  From the struggle to establish an official "language" to the use of riot as a symbolic and material expression of class discontent to evolving gender roles to the erosion of belief in the divine right of rulers, Marx's marriage of change to material matters has proven to be enduring because it is the simplest and most effective means of describing what had transpired.  Even the weakest parts of the Manifesto, Sections II and III, are valuable in outlining the historical divisions of those who sought to change the emerging bourgeois model of power/production.  Although these sections were not as germane to my studies, they too were important in outlining the modes of opposition that Marx and Engels experienced in their lifetimes.

Should readers read The Communist Manifesto today?  It depends on how open-minded they are.  If they are able to divorce Marxism from the Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist warpings of Marx and Engel's thoughts on how class struggle would proceed to proletariat revolution, then within their concise yet elegant arguments those readers might find elements of comparison to what is transpiring today on the streets and boardrooms of every major city (and most minor ones) in the world.  One does not have to agree wholeheartedly (or at all) with their prescriptions to see that their diagnosis of industrial society's ills has had a profound influence on how we view those issues nearly two centuries later.

2012 National Book Award finalist in Non-Fiction: Robert Caro, The Passage of Power

The 1960 bill, Rauh says, was "a pile of rubbish and garbage" disguised as a statute.  It "was a joke," he says.  "Everybody knew it was a joke.  Nobody who was really for civil rights then could have supported it," much less have pushed it through the Senate.  And Johnson was not really for civil rights, Rauh felt.  Not that he was against civil rights; he was simply for anything – on either side – that would help him become President.  "It wasn't that he was a conservative or a radical or anything else; it was simply that he was trying to be all things to all people."  The revered liberal senator Paul Douglas of Illinois went further.  Johnson had remained at least ostensibly neutral in the cloture fight only because he had known the South would win, Douglas said; had the result been in doubt, Johnson would have thrown his full weight behind the fillibuster. (p. 176 e-book, Ch. 3)

Nearly 50 years after the tragic events of 11/22/1963, much of the American populace is still entranced by the "Kennedy mystique."  The glamor, the smiles, the speeches, the sense of hope and optimism.  All of these are associated with a Presidency that lasted roughly 1000 days.  Yet perhaps what is most enduring about 1960s governmental policy (itself a far less "sexy beast"), even despite the arguments presented during the 1996 and 2012 Presidential elections that its programs should be reduced, is the Great Society program of President Kennedy's successor, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, or LBJ.  For over 40 years, the mere initials "LBJ" have sparked fierce reactions from Americans old enough to remember his Presidency (or his earlier stint as Senate Majority Leader).  Some have lauded him for passing the most sweeping social policy reforms since the 1930s New Deal programs.  Others have lambasted him for his increasing militarism and the Vietnam War escalation of 1965-1968.  A few have mocked his thirst for power, claiming that he had no vision other than what would garner him power; for those, Senator Douglas's comments doubtlessly would reinforce their opinions of LBJ.

In his fourth volume of his critically acclaimed biography series on Johnson, Robert Caro explores a critical time in Johnson's life.  The Years of Lyndon Johnson:  The Passage of Power focused on the period between 1958 and 1964, when Johnson transforms from a powerful Senate Majority Leader (perhaps one of the most powerful in the Senate's history) whose dedication to civil rights was at best viewed as dodgy by the Northern liberals in Congress and at worst seen as a blind meant to obscure his solid history of supporting Southern causes (not just those directly related to segregation) to a President who managed to get the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, cloture rules governing filibusters changed, and whose adept maneuvering of congressional leaders assured the passage of several important programs (minimum wage expansion, WIC, school lunch program, to name just a few).  This period has long fascinated Americans and historians of the period alike.  What motivated a man often disparaged by Kennedy staffers as "Rufus Cornpone" to get Congress to pass legislation that he himself rarely supported when he was in the Senate?  Was it simply political opportunism, the chance to put "his mark" on the Presidency?  Or was there something deeper, more sincere, about his sweeping policy proposals?  And what led to these noble programs being subsumed by the escalation of American involvement in Vietnam?

The Passage of Power originally was meant to cover all of these issues, but due to the amount of space needed to cover just Johnson's actions from his failed bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1960 to the seven weeks following Kennedy's assassination in November 1963 leading up to his historic declaration of a "war on poverty" in his January 1964 State of the Union address, Caro found it prudent to just focus on this period in which Johnson's behavior was at odd with his earlier (and later) public stances.  In exploring LBJ's motivations, Caro presents a complex, conflicted soul, a person who remembered his family's descent into "genteel" poverty in the 1920s and who favored the underdog, while also possessing a meanness of character that would lead him to humiliate those who worked for him and whose desire for acceptance would often lead to such fawning over those who could give him what he needed politically that his ability to "brown nose" is still remarkable even in a career where ingratiation is a necessity.

Caro's biography is divided into five parts:  the lead up to the 1960 Democratic Convention and Kennedy's surprise choice of him as Vice President; Johnson's humbling (and humiliating) time as Vice President; the assassination; the immediate aftermath of the assassination; and the transition period from the initial shock fading in early December 1963 to the historic January 1964 State of the Union address.  In each of these sections, Caro exhaustively explores Johnson's actions and interactions with people he had known for years, both in Texas and in Congress, and those he now had to deal with as an increasingly marginal player in the Kennedy administration.  Caro's sources include an impressive amount of primary sources, particularly interviews he or others had conducted with those involved with the events of the day (there were a few who refused to be interviewed by Caro, but for the most part the key players' reminisces were cited).  Yet a biography could contain a plethora of excellent primary sources and be weak if the biographer does not shape a compelling narrative from them.

Caro, however, is just that sort of biographer that can take these excellent sources and construct an even superior narrative from them.  Caro's LBJ is presented in all of his facets, with each sparkling in turn as the situation demands.  Caro does an outstanding job speculating as to what might have motivated Johnson to break with his past political record and to display personality traits during the crisis following Kennedy's assassination that very few who had known him for decades could have ever suspected that he possessed.  LBJ's faults are not neglected; they are present within even his greatest triumphs and Caro's willingness to take Johnson as he was rather than what he wished others to view him as being makes The Passage of Power a gripping political biography.

For those (such as myself) who have not read Caro's three previous LBJ volumes (each of which won prestigious American awards for non-fiction/biography), The Passage of Power contains enough references to events Caro discussed in those volumes that there is little sense that the reader is picking up Johnson's life in media res.  As a biography, it is one of the best that I have ever read of a political leader.  As noted above, Caro's sources are impressive and he presents conclusions that are cogent and which offer possibilities for historians to consider for years, especially when there likely will be a flood of new Kennedy/Johnson-related books released in the immediate aftermath of the 2017 unsealing of the final classified documents related to the assassination.  The National Book Award shortlist in Non-Fiction is a very strong list of finalists, but The Passage of Power perhaps is the best of a very stacked field of strong biographies and very good to excellent histories.

2012 National Book Award finalist in Non-Fiction: Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain

Eastern Europe, along with Ukraine and the Baltic States, was also the site of most of the politically motivated killing in Europe.  "Hitler and Stalin rose to power in Berlin and Moscow," writes Timothy Snyder in Bloodlands, the definitive history of the mass killing of this period, "but their visions of transformation concerned above all the lands between."  Stalin and Hitler shared contempt for the very notion of national sovereignty for any of the nations of Eastern Europe, and they jointly stove to eliminate their enemies.

***
Above all, Eastern Europe is where Nazism and Soviet communism clashed. Although they began the war as allies, Hitler had always wanted to fight a war of destruction against the USSR, and Hitler's invasion Stalin promised the same.  The battles between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht were therefore fiercer and bloodier in the east than those that took place further west. (e-book pp. 54, 55-56, Ch. 1)

Each generation seeks to redefine its own past, or rather to understand through their own concerns what transpired to motivate the previous generation.  In Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, there was a lag of roughly 25 years between the end of World War II and (leaving aside early yet influential works by Alan Bullock and Hugh Trevor-Roper) the first substantive volumes on Adolf Hitler and National Socialism that did not reduce the subject to mere quasi-demonic status.  Even today, the arguments are fierce in support or detraction of the Intentionalist or Functionalist schools of thought regarding the implementation of the Holocaust.  These seemingly (and likely) eternal debates over the past is what makes history a valuable field of study, as frequently new light is shed on past events with each passing generation.

It has been 23 years since the 1989 Revolutions broke out in Eastern Europe (and China's failed uprising; the Soviet Union's dissolution followed two years later) and the time is ripe for more reflective studies regarding the formation of "the satellite nations" of post-World War II Eastern Europe.  There have been a relative dearth of histories on the formation of the communist regimes of the 1945-1948 period, which is a shame, considering how important this era is for understanding not just the successful 1989-1991 revolutions, but also the unsuccessful ones of 1953, 1956, 1968, and 1981.  Journalist Anne Applebaum's National Book Award-nominated Iron Curtain:  The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1945-1956 provides an extra primer for those who want to learn of the haphazard and often self-conflicting fashion in which communists rose to power in parts of Eastern Europe.

Although communist regimes sprung up over the 1945-1948 period all across Eastern Europe (with the notable exceptions of Greece – which managed to stave off a communist-led civil war after the end of World War II – and Turkey), Applebaum has chosen, minus asides, to limit the focus of her history to three countries:  East Germany, Poland, and Hungary.  In her introduction, she notes that she chose these three not because of their similarities, but because of their very different histories leading up to their communist takeovers and the subsequent approach that the governments there took toward internal and external protest, as well as their divergent leadership styles.  Certainly there are questions regarding this approach.  Are these three nations emblematic of the different politburos that controlled the other communist regimes?  Or could it be argued that each of the eight "satellites" differed too significantly for only three of the eight to be considered at length in a single history?

Applebaum does not come out and say it, but I suspect part of the reason why she focuses on East Germany, Poland, and Hungary is that she is more familiar with the three (and had more available sources, including interview subjects) than she is with the other nations.  It is a shame, because it would have been interesting to read more on her take of Tito's early break with the Soviet Union, which she discusses briefly at a few points in regards to the actions of the leadership in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary (another view of this split is presented within John Lewis Gaddis's 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award-winning biography of Cold War American diplomat George F. Kennan, George F. Kennan:  An American Life).  This 1948 split, predicated on a more "national" form of communism in Yugoslavia (cruelly ironic, considering the events of the past 21 years), could be viewed as a precursor to the later events that Applebaum covers, particularly the 1956 Hungarian uprising.  Yet this noticeable lack of coverage is perhaps the weakest element in a book that otherwise provides a good blueprint for other histories of the time/region to consider.

Iron Curtain is divided into thematic chapters, with the responses of the East German, Polish, and Hungarian governments covered within.  There are two roughly chronological parts, "False Dawn" and "High Stalinism," within are found chapters with labels such as "Victors," "Violence," Ethnic Cleansing," "Youth," "Reactionary Enemies," "Internal Enemies," and so forth.  A key early chapter would be the one on Violence, which argues that from the very beginning of the Soviet occupation of the former Nazi territories, that the communists' goals originated in their use of violence.  While the indiscriminate decimation that was a hallmark of the Red Army's push westward in 1944-1945 was abandoned after the war in favor of highly-targeted forms of political violence (police crackdowns on demonstrations, arrests at night, show trials, prison camps, and the occasional execution announced to the public), much of Applebaum's subsequent arguments about the problems that the communist regimes perceived centered around elements of violence, whether it be the ways that others sought to protest against them and their responses to them.  While a theorist might have attempted to tie this into Marxist notions of power relationships, Applebaum concentrates more on the personal reactions to communism, including the collaborationist and passive resistance models that archbishops in Poland and Hungary used to blunt or oppose government power.

This focus on selected individuals, both the communist leaders as well as the opposition leaders, makes for an excellent political mass biography.  However, as a history it feels somewhat incomplete in regards to structures.  Of course, this complaint is more the expression of desire that Applebaum had gone further and deeper into exploring the relationships of the regimes with each other, the Soviet Union, and ultimately how the peoples in these three countries (and the other satellite countries) than an argument that her survey of the responses that the East German, Polish, and Hungarian governments had during the crucial 1945-1956 era of political transformation is poorly-written or presented.  Iron Curtain is a solid, occasionally excellent historical survey of how the communist takeovers of 1945-1948 affected the peoples of three Central/Eastern European countries.  Compared to the other National Book Award nominees in Non-Fiction, it is very good, but the few omissions and lack of further development that I noted above make it just slightly less than the best in that category.

2012 National Book Award finalist in Non-Fiction: Anthony Shadid, House of Stone

The village market is an old tradition in the countryside, a legacy of Bedouin culture, and many towns around Marjayoun had them.  Qlayaa's was on Sunday.  Monday was Nabatiyeh's.  The most famous was Suq al-Khan, on Tuesday, near Kawkaba.  They were really no more than amalgamations of hastily erected tents and rickety stalls, where everything from scarves and screwdrivers to corkscrews and pirated CDs were hawked.  "Beautiful prices!" vendors shouted, to no one in particular.  However pronounced the tension, and even in times of war, Shiite butchers hung out their meat, willing to cut a slice and grill it, and Druze famers, in their white knit caps and baggy pants, kept coming to sell pickled wild cucumbers and cauliflower.

Shibil sometimes called himself Oklahoman, but he was really, inexorably, a son of this town, a belief confirmed as I watched him cringe when a black goat crossed our path.  Like the evil eye, it was an omen, and omens mattered.  In winter, he would never walk outside without splashing cold water on his face.  His superstitions continually announced themselves.  "Beware of split teeth and blue eyes," he warned me as he scanned the market crowd, deadly serious.  "Small foreheads, too." (p. 54)

I recall once hearing (or did I read it or is it all a dream?) that family histories are like ripples in a pond caused by a stone's throw, each wave reaching the far side before returning, diminished yet still maintaining its shape.  So many of us are products of our forebears.  We may not look exactly like them nor always act in precisely the same fashion, but there is that sense of an inheritance that leads us to look back to our ancestors in order to understand ourselves.  In his memoir, House of Stone:  A Memoir of Home, Family and a Lost Middle East (published posthumously weeks after the author's tragic death from allergy-induced asthma), acclaimed journalist Anthony Shadid recounts a pivotal point in his life, in the summer of 2006, when he returned to the Lebanese village of Marjayoun, the place where centuries of Shadids and Samaras had lived and practiced their Christian faith before the early 20th century exodus of Arab Christians (as well as Muslims and Druze, to a lesser extent) began.  It is a memoir of a family as well as of the bayt, which constitutes many things, the least of which is the physical "house."  Or perhaps "home" would be more suitable, as that contains hints of emotional and familial interactions within a physical boundary.  Regardless, House of Stone is a very touching story of Shadid's family and of Lebanon's recent history.

House of Stone operates on two levels:  that of Shadid's experiences in Marjayoula rebuilding an ancestral home and (in italics) reflections on his family's experiences ever since the first Shadids immigrated to the US, particularly Oklahoma City.  In chapters that are as much thematic as they are chronological in order, Shadid explores not just what drove his grandparents (and grand-uncle) to emigrate, but what Lebanon's history has been as the sort of crossroads between Europe and Asia, between Christianity and Islam.  Through all of this, the bayt that he is reconstructing, to the bemusement of some, to the amazement of others, looms as a central metaphor for these intertwined histories.

Shadid was a famous war correspondent in the Middle East, covering not just the 2006 Hezbollah/Israel border conflict, but also the 2011 Libyan Civil War and the 2011-2012 Syrian Civil War before his tragic death.  He possessed a keen eye for personal detail, noting local beliefs and customs, not with a wry smile and a small, sad shake of the head but instead with compassion and understanding.  Take for instance the passage quoted above.  Shadid's friend Shibil, who had lived some time in the US before returning to Lebanon, is shown to be of two worlds:  convinced that he is outside local superstitions, yet reinforcing them all of the same subconsciously.  Shadid does not mock his friend for those beliefs, but instead refers to them as a symbol of the confluence of the old and new, with the old possessing more strength than what might be expected.

The people that Shadid meet are fascinating because their concerns are at once familiar (how can we afford to pay for the things we need each day?) and foreign to affluent westerners (will the war resume?  Will the Israelis take over again?).  Shadid touches upon this in discussing the reasons why his grandparents and others from the last years of the Ottoman Empire until the present have left Lebanon (and by extension, other parts of the Middle East) in a great Arab diaspora.  At the heart of it is the duality of family and culture (including religion; a large number of the Arabs that emigrated were Christians of all of the regional sects).  Shadid touches upon these issues in his recollections of his experiences rebuilding the family bayt, noting the tragedy of the former collegiality of the local Muslims, Christians, and Druze before the French mandates of Syria and Lebanon set the powder keg of religious conflict before lighting the fuse of political/social control that finally blew up spectacularly in the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990.  There is a sense of wistfulness in his writing of the issue, a sense of loss of what was treasured in the days of his ancestors.

The "flashback" scenes where Shadid discussed his family's reasons for emigrating and their subsequent adventures in the American Southwest are integrated nicely into the memoir.  The pressure to "become American" (which involved the adoption of American nicknames, such as Abdullah/Albert and Miqbal/Mack) is contrasted with the desire to remain true to their Lebanese roots.  If anything could be pointed out as a shortcoming in House of Stones, it is that perhaps there could have been even more of these scenes added to flesh out Shadid's reasons for coming back to Lebanon to reside for a spell before resuming his correspondent duties.

House of Stones is a very good memoir.  It captures well the internal and external conflicts of the Lebanese and Lebanese-Americans when it comes to matters of home, family, and faith.  It touches upon several tragedies of the past century and it shines a light upon the myriad and sometimes conflicting attitudes that the Lebanese have in regards to the tumultuous events of the 20th and early 21st centuries.  It compares favorably with the other National Book Award finalists for Non-fiction and it certainly is a book that deserves a wide readership.  It is unfortunate that Shadid died so soon after writing this book; there is the sense that there are stories left untold.

2012 National Book Award finalist in Non-Fiction: Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers

July 17, 2008 – Mumbai

Midnight was closing in, the one-legged woman was grievously burned, and the Mumbai police were coming for Abdul and his father.  In a slum hut by the international airport, Abdul's parents came to a decision with an uncharacteristic economy of words.  The father, a sick man, would wait inside the trash-strewn, tin-roofed shack where the family of eleven resided.  He'd go quietly when arrested.  Abdul, the household earner, was the one who had to flee.

Abdul's opinion of this plan had not been solicited, typically.  Already he was mule-brained with panic.  He was sixteen years old, or maybe nineteen – his parents were hopeless with dates.  Allah, in His impenetrable wisdom, had cut him small and jumpy.  A coward:  Abdul said it of himself.  He knew nothing about eluding policemen.  What he knew about, mainly, was trash.  For nearly all the waking hours of nearly all the years he could remember, he'd been buying and selling to recyclers the things that richer people threw away. (Beginning to the Prologue, p. 10 e-book)

I was wary when I saw that Katherine Boo's National Book Award-nominated non-fiction, Behind the Beautiful Forevers:  Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, would be tackling the issue of dire poverty in one of India's largest cities.  Too often, there's this sort of "poverty porn" that I have seen crop up in relation to places like India, even though India today has one of the world's fastest-growing economies and the middle class there has expanded substantially in the past two decades.  "Feed the Children" may be OK for those who want to feel sorrow at the plight of the impoverished and give "just pennies a day," but the realities involved in these slums is much more complex than what one can gather from a single viewing of Slumdog Millionaire.

Yet it turns out that Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a very different sort of tale.  Yes, there is crushing poverty, but the poorness of material possessions is not emphasized here.  Instead, in the Annawadia slum, Boo, herself a regular reporter on urban poverty in the United States for several years before spending years in Mumbai, concentrates on telling a few family histories to illustrate the various survival mechanisms and adaptations that take place.  Normally, I would not recommend the method in which readers choose to read the text, but Boo's story is most effective if one purchases the enhanced e-book edition that contains several short clips filmed by her or the slum locals, each of which complements the text.

It is clear even within the first chapters that Boo has spent an extensive amount of time among the villagers, although she herself has never quite mastered Hindi.  She talks of Annawadians like the Muslim Abdul and his family and their precarious position in the slum.  Much of the focus of Behind the Beautiful Forevers is on the trash recycling/selling business that Abdul and his father operate and the competition that they have.  There is the tragic case of a one-legged (actually, one healthy and one stunted leg) woman who suffers third-degree burns over most of her body; Abdul and his father are blamed and several chapters toward the end are devoted to the Mumbai police system.

But there are more positive stories, like Manju, a young woman who has managed despite her family's desperate straits to be able to attend college.  In the evening hours, she runs Annawadia's quasi-school system for the elementary school-age students, before returning late at night to do her chores and get perhaps four hours of sleep before she has to rise early to begin her day again.  Boo balances the optimistic and pessimistic views of the villagers nicely, giving them a greater voice than her own commentary.  She does not judge (she never quite reveals the amount of guilt, if any, Abdul and his father had in the burning), but she observes as impartially as she is able.

Of course, there are several moments where Boo's status as an outsider precludes her from understanding the full import of what is transpiring.  She is very aware of this and in her conclusion, points out that this was a recurring issue during her time with the slum residents.  Yet on the whole, Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a fascinating look at a Mumbai shantytown, one that tries (even if it occasionally fails) to let Annawadia's residents speak with their own voices as to what is transpiring within.  There is pride and hope among the residents, coupled with the occasional bitter resignation to their fate among the indigent poor, but there is never the sense that Boo is trying to recast their lives to suit the prejudices of western audiences.  Compared to the other National Book Award finalists in Non-Fiction, Behind the Beautiful Forevers is in the middle of a very tight pack.  It is a poignant story, yet there are just enough questions as to what Boo has failed to see/refuses to discuss to make it lesser than some of the other finalists.  However, it is still a book well worth reading.

2012 National Book Award finalist in Non-Fiction: Domingo Martinez, The Boy Kings of Texas

This fight had been city versus farm, and the city had repeatedly conned its way out of a sound beating at the hands of the farm.

Dennis's mother had called Dad, had explained what happened, and Dad said he would be right over.  Since both Dan and I have been the victims of Dad's explosive and illogical temper, we both expect and dread the further punishment headed our way, when he gets there.  I think he'll have a fit over Dan losing the contact lenses, for not winning decisively, for the potential trouble from the school, the cops, anything that would occur to Dad, but it doesn't happen.

Dad is uncharacteristically understanding, comforting even, and he and Richard had dropped all they were doing that afternoon and drove to Dennis's to pick Dan up and take him to the emergency room.

They x-ray his nose (no fracture) and his wrist (hairline fracture) and his thumb (clearly fractured).  They they take Dan to dinner and buy him a beer.

Dan had fought, and survived, like a man.  He was in the club.  The club that Dad and Richard had never been able to enter.  Maybe make deliveries there, through the tradesman's entrance, but certainly never enter through the front door. (p. 178)

Machismo.  This untranslatable word contains stories within it.  Stories of pride, sure, but also stories of deep, raw hurt that threatens to burst its dams and spill over into the lives surrounding it.  It is a code, a way of life, yet so little of it could be defined precisely.  One either had machismo or not; there was no middle ground.  One bound by it could find himself doing the illogical for reasons of honor...and other things.  There is a sense of tragedy in the word, ma-chis-mo, that can make a grown man cry or stiffen up and become like stone.

Domingo Martinez's debut book, the memoir The Boy Kings of Texas is as poignant as the rancheros and corrídos of singers such as José Alfredo Jiménez, whose "El Rey" ("The King") Martinez views as a key to unlocking the machismo code and from which he derived the inspiration for his memoir of his time growing up in Brownsville, Texas during the 1970s and 1980s and what led him and his older brother Dan to flee to Seattle by the early 1990s.  The Boy Kings of Texas is a complicated, complex affair, reading as a love/hate letter to a family bound by machismo.

The Boy Kings of Texas is roughly in chronological order, although key events are sometimes narrated years or even decades after other events narrated in prior chapters.  Martinez sets out to describe the fractious lives that he, his older brother, their three younger sisters, and occasionally his youngest brother live in a barrio on the outskirts of Brownsville with their parents, paternal grandmother, and their stepuncle, Richard.  Told more in a looping, thematic fashion, similar to what a patient might relate to his therapist, the events in The Boy Kings of Texas revolve around the ways that the Martinez family members cope with their situations.

Race certainly plays a role in the book.  The Martinezes are descended from a largely criollo background and their fairish skin allows members of the family, particular the three sisters (the three Mimis, as they were nicknamed) to pass as white, especially after they refused to wear anything but the most fashionable clothes possible and after they dyed their hair blonde.  The older brother, Dan, who is 18 months older than Domingo (the fifth out of six), is a complex soul and Domingo's recollections show this through his recounting of the fights Dan would get into, often for Domingo's sake (even if Domingo rarely asked for help and usually felt ashamed when family members would intervene), usually over matters of race or ethnic slurs thrown at the more bookish Domingo.  In passages such as the one quoted above, Martinez reveals a lot of the family dynamics and how machismo governs them:  the fight itself, the way in which it ended (with a tragic end a few months later for the other participant), the lyrical description of how their dad, Domingo Sr. (Domingo was called "Yunior" or "June" by the family) , and their step-uncle, Richard, long for the sort of acceptance that comes to Dan in the aftermath of this brutal fight.

Violence looms large in The Boy Kings of Texas.  Domingo finds it both abhorrent and fascinating.  He is not the fighter his brother is, he sometimes tries to shrink back from the violent demands that machismo puts on the boys of his barrio, but he is again and again entrapped within its web.  Casual descriptions of his father beating on his mother, brother, and self are not meant to downplay the significance of his father's actions, but instead are part and parcel of what drives this lonely "loser" of a man (as much in how he sees himself as how his family views him) to infidelities, inappropriate sexual talk with Domingo (the scene where he worries that his wife might have AIDS due to his screwing around and yet he is not the one who wants to know the result) is pitifully funny.  There's such a sadness in Domingo's prose whenever he writes about his father that it is obvious that there is much more to him than he is ready to admit; after all, openness about familial feelings don't usually mesh well with machismo.

There is also a lot of humor within these scenes, from the beer sharing, the pot smuggling, Domingo's first sexual experience, awkward dates, etc.  These humorous anecdotes leaven the narrative, relieving the depressing sense of fatality that sometimes threatened to overwhelm the narrative.  Martinez has excellent comedic timing, with the humor never feeling forced nor does it ever detract from the weightier issues being described.  But even more impressive than his melding of comedic scenes with the more brutal ones is his honesty.  There is never the sense that he covers up his feelings or reactions to events.  He does not see himself as a hero, but rather as a survivor.  This veracious portrayal makes for a fascinating read of not just a typical family, but of a Latino family caught between the dual worlds of Mexico and the United States, of white and brown, of aspiring to advance and trying to remain true to one's roots.  And through it all, machismo threads its way, coloring everything.

The Boy Kings of Texas is an outstanding memoir.  It is one that I likely will re-read in years to come.  Compared to the other National Book Award finalists in Non-Fiction, it ranks very highly, as the story told is moving, with excellent character descriptions.  If there were any quibbles that I would have with it, perhaps it could have been divided into two books, pre-move to Seattle and post-move, but that is more because I would like to have more of his story to read than any real flaw with the memoir's narrative.  The Boy Kings of Texas is simply one of the best books on a very strong shortlist.

2012 National Book Award finalist for Young People's Literature: Steve Sheinkin, Bomb: The Race to Build – and Steal – the World's Most Dangerous Weapon

HARRY GOLD WAS RIGHT:  This is a big story.  It's the story of the creation – and theft – of the deadliest weapon ever invented.  The scenes speed around the world, form secret labs to commando raids to street-corner spy meetings.  But like most big stories, this one starts small.  Let's pick up the action sixteen years before FBI agents cornered Harry Gold in Philadelphia.  Let's start 3,000 miles to the west, in Berkeley, California, on a chilly night in February 1934.

On a hill high above town, a man and woman sat in a parked car.  In the driver's seat was a very thin young physics professor named Robert Oppenheimer.  Beside him sat his date, a graduate student named Melba Philipps.  The two looked out at the view of San Francisco Bay. (Beginning to Ch. 1)

Steve Sheinkin's Bomb:  The Race to Build – and Steal – the World's Most Dangerous Weapon is the only non-fiction that appears on the 2012 National Book Award shortlist for Young People's Literature.  It is difficult for me to review because as a trained historian, things that I might typically see as shortcomings in research methodology, epistemology, etc.  just are not applicable when it comes to writing an exciting narrative history that would appeal to middle school students.  So perhaps with just a caveat that I question the strength of some of his sources, I will try to focus on how this would read as a narrative for pre-teen and early teen students.

Bomb tells the story of the attempts by German, American, and British physicists in the 1930s and 1940s to construct a fission bomb, and the attempts by the Soviets to steal the plans for this bomb.  The story surrounding the construction of the world's first atomic bomb is an espionage lover's fantasy:  clandestine meetings, operatives being sent in to attack remote facilities nestled on a sea cliff, moles within the most secretive councils.  Volumes have been written about the personalities involved, people including Robert Oppenheimer, who spearheaded the Manhattan Project, and Harry Gold, who betrayed the Americans and shared what he had gathered with the Soviets.  Yet it takes more than just a recounting of what this agent or that scientist did or failed to do in order to craft a compelling tale.  It takes the twisting of this strand and a looping of this thread in order to weave a memorable tapestry and for the most part, Sheinkin does achieve this with Bomb.

The stories within Bomb unfold in a rapid, almost breathless narrative style.  Little emphasis is placed on detailing the motives of the players involved; instead, a premium is placed on creating tension between the actors and their situations.  For example, the traitor Harry Gold is introduced early:  how will his already known fate of FBI interrogation unfold?  What pitfalls will Oppenheimer and his associates face?  Will there be false accusations in light of Gold and Alger Hiss?

These questions make the reading go very swiftly, as the reader races to find out just what happened next.  Sheinkin's vocabulary, which by necessity of theme and historical material involves the usage of several technical terms, may be a bit challenging for late primary and early middle school students, but the vocabulary should be little challenge (most of the truly technical terms, like fission itself, are explained cogently in the body of the text itself) to those in the last year or two of middle school or the beginning of high school (12-14 is probably the "target audience" here, although advanced readers from 9-11 might be able to handle the material and grasp its implications).  The narrative focus is on the people involved, scientists, politicians, and spies alike and this devotion to the personal aspect of the race to acquire "the bomb" makes it easier for even younger or "slower" readers to grasp the gist of what is transpiring without feeling overwhelmed by technical jargon.

Bomb is best viewed as an "intro" level survey of the period.  Due to its intended audience and its focus on the human side of the race to "the bomb," there is a lot of background material that is either mentioned only in passing (such as the motives of the German scientists, including Heisenberg, in their haltering approach toward research into "heavy water") or neglected at all (Einstein's theories on energy/mass conversion and how that theorem and others developed from it led to postulations about the ability to create a controlled fission of uranium or plutonium atoms to create a massive energy release in the form of a devastating bomb).  Those stories too are essential to this tale and at times, Sheinkin's narrative relied too heavily on the espionage angle, leaving holes in the narrative that were barely papered over with his vivid depictions of the actors involved.

Compared to the other 2012 National Book Award finalists in Young People's Literature, Bomb is a weaker story.  Although the actual events and the people involved make for a thrilling account, the book relies too heavily on this aspect, leaving the sense that it is a shallow history that only hints at the other memorable stories that co-occurred with the espionage and scientific brainstorming sessions.  So while Bomb likely would appeal to a broad spectrum of middle grades readers, its flaws are magnified when compared to several of the other finalists, several of which are equally gripping in terms of narrative tension, yet which also possess greater depth and breadth of personages and themes.