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2010-08-26T05:29:00.000-07:00

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New history books: 26th July

2010-07-26T04:42:00.000-07:00

The Irrepressible Churchill, ed. Kay Halle (Conway)
A new edition of this classic collection by Kay Halle, a Churchill family friend, which records Churchill's military and political careers and his life, both public and private, mainly in his own words.

The Magnificent Mrs Tennant, David Waller (Yale University Press)
This biography of Gertrude Tennant (1819-1918), famous for the salon that she established in her early fifties which attracted celebrities such as Gladstone, Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, places the London hostess at the heart of a multi-generational, matriarchal family epic but also at the centre of European social, literary and intellectual life.

Potsdam Station, David Downing (Old Street)
This novel features the Anglo-American journalist John Russell and his German girlfriend Effi Koenen. In April 1945, Russell is in Moscow, his son Paul is on the Oder front line awaiting the Soviet’s final onslaught, and his girlfriend Effi has a Jewish orphan to care for in Berlin. Potsdam Station tells the story of Russell’s attempt to travel to Berlin to save his girlfriend and son before the arrival of the Red Army.

American Foreign Relations Since 1898, Jeremi Suri (Wiley-Blackwell)
This study brings together more than 50 primary documents to reveal how Americans have interacted with the wider world since 1898 and provide an insight into the personalities, arguments and events that shaped conflict and cooperation.

To puchase any of the above books, click on the following links:
The Irrepressible Churchill
The Magnificent Mrs Tennant [Runner-up, Biographers' Club Prize, 2009]
Potsdam Station
American Foreign Relations Since 1898: A Documentary Reader (Uncovering the Past: Documentary Readers in American History)

New history books: 20th July

2010-07-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization, Paul Kriwaczek (Atlantic Books)
This account of the rise and fall of Mesopotamian civilization, from the earliest settlements around 5400 BC to the eclipse of Babylon by the Persians in the sixth century BC, focuses on the glory of Babylon whilst also examining its numerous material, social and cultural innovations and inventions.

The Glenn Miller Conspiracy, Hunton Downs (JR Books)
A famous star of the Big Band era, Glenn Miller disappeared in 1944 while supposedly travelling to entertain US troops in France. The official story has always been that his plane crashed and that his body was never found. Based on his extensive study of declassified documents, the author reveals that Miller was never on that plane and tells the story of his work for the US in the Psychological Warfare Division and the events surrounding his death.

The Fields of Death, Simon Scarrow (Headline)
The last volume in Simon Scarrow’s quartet of novels charting the lives of Napoleon and Wellington, The Fields of Death tells the story of the final confrontation between the two military commanders at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18th, 1810.

The House with Blue Shutters, Lisa Hilton (Corvus)
Set in Castroux in France in 1939, this novel tells the story of Oriane, whose world is thrown into chaos following the German invasion of France. She finds work in a Nazi barracks while her fiancé joins the Resistance.

Reader Review: The Media and the Far Right in Western Europe

2010-07-15T02:09:00.000-07:00

Giles Marshall reviews The Media and the Far Right in Western Europe by Antonis A. Ellinas.

By Giles Marshall,

How important is the media to the advance of western European far right parties? This is the crucial question asked by Antonis Ellinas in The Media and the Far Right in Western Europe. The British perspective might seem quite encouraging. Subjected to an hour of questions on the BBC’s ‘Question Time’, Nick Griffin emerged, during the programme, as a far weaker national leader than he entered it. The failure of his British National Party in the 2010 general election would seem to endorse this happy state of affairs. However, the British experience is at variance with the European ones analysed by Ellinas, just as the British polity seems, in any case, rather more resistant to far right advances.

Focusing on the role played by the media, Ellinas provides a close examination of the operation of the far right in four European countries – Austria, Germany, Greece and France – and considers the reasons for their success, or lack thereof. His study cases are carefully chosen, ranging from countries which represent undoubted high water marks of far right advancement in national politics (Austria through the Freedom Party, and France through the Front National), to a clear low water mark in Germany, and a more erratic path in the case of Greece.

Despite the difficulties of generalising from four such disparate examples, Ellinas successfully identifies common areas of analysis and cuts a swathe through the many other factors that arguably determine far right success. His history of the trajectory of the different far right parties is detailed and fascinating and his focus on the impact of the media is key to understanding the success of the far right. Ellinas’ explanation of media actions and pressures, and his overview of the changes in the media industry outlined in his first chapter are amongst some of his most important findings. He itemises what we might only hitherto have grasped in general terms – that the media have a ‘push-pull’ impact on the advance of the far right. They provide the publicity that allows many far right parties the initial impetus to leap into mainstream consciousness, and then provide the sensationalist approach to national identity issues that continues to give them the oxygen to survive. It is a lethal and thoughtless mix, and Ellinas’ identification of it should be required reading in every media company and study centre in Europe.

The strength of this impeccably researched book lies in its lucid use of an extremely wide range of sources, and its focus on a clearly defined aspect of far right success. It is a clearly academic book, and eschews any form of sensationalising, managing to project an admirable academic objectivity throughout. Although it can be heavy going for the general reader, the author’s analysis of the trajectory of the far right in each of his chosen countries is clearly articulated and adds much to any reader’s knowledge of the state of modern European politics. The capture by the right of the once liberal minded Freedom Party in Austria, for instance, provides a cautionary tale of far right tactics in their combination of effective opportunism provided by media reporting, and their tactical outmanoeuvring of more staid internal party opponents.

On a stylistic note, one might wish for fewer lengthy citations in parentheses that break up the flow of sentences in the book’s opening chapter and, occasionally, for simpler sentence structures. However, these are, on the whole, minor inconveniences. Most importantly, The Media and the Far Right in Western Europe represents a significant and valuable addition to the body of work available to study the rise of far right parties in western Europe, whilst also providing considerable food for thought about the way the media treat this phenomenon.

The Media and the Far Right in Western Europe, Antonis A. Ellinas (Cambridge University Press)

Giles Marshall is Head of Politics and Head of Sixth Form at Sutton Grammar School for Boys in London.

Reader Review: Forgotten Voices of Dunkirk

2010-07-13T03:48:00.000-07:00

Clare O’Brien reviews Forgotten Voices of Dunkirk by Joshua Levine.

by Clare O’Brien,

If you are in search of a detailed historical account of the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk early in the Second World War, this book is not for you. Aside from a brief foreword by Peter Snow and a short factual introduction to each of the book’s ten chapters, Forgotten Voices of Dunkirk provides no factual overview or analysis of the events that sparked Operation Dynamo.

Nevertheless, the primary source material provided here presents a particularly vivid picture of what it was like to be caught up in history in May-June 1940. The latest in a series of historical anthologies drawing on the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive, the book transcribes accounts by those who personally experienced the events of the time – from the military rank-and-file to officers, nurses, medics, sailors and civilians. Accompanied by contemporary photographs, the reminiscences range from short terse paragraphs, which are more fearsome for what they do not say, to long vibrant accounts by men whose memories have been permanently scarred by their experiences.

Presented in rough chronological order, the accounts reveal how attitudes among ordinary people gradually developed from the preamble of the phoney war to the shock of this first major military defeat. At first, old-fashioned jingoism and xenophobia mingles with a very real excitement at the prospect that ‘something might happen’ to put an end to the drabness of poverty and unemployment at home. Once it does, the tone abruptly changes. Horrors are steadily heaped on horrors and naïve British boys are confronted with a daily nightmare of mutilation, misery and death.

An entire chapter is devoted to the massacre of British prisoners by the Waffen-SS at Le Paradis and Wormhout. However, the smaller horrors are almost harder to take in than such widescreen atrocities. As always, the devil is in the details: a young medic assisting at a hurried amputation (‘what has stayed with me is the weight of that arm. I carried it out into the night, and threw it into a ditch, and it was the weight of it’), a French refugee giving birth in the back of an army truck to the sound of gunfire, a wounded man trying to commit suicide by holding a bullet against his head and detonating it with another.

The accounts of the rescue itself touch upon cowardice and selfishness, as well as bravery and heroism. Men were shot for trying to jump the queue, and some smaller boats sank as they were swamped by panic-stricken soldiers. Surreal episodes abound – men trying to shave before embarking for home, dogs rescued from the beach at Dunkirk, a phalanx of kilted Scots refusing to be taken to Dover and turning around to continue the battle.

Author/compiler Joshua Levine is a playwright and TV scriptwriter. Although his assemblage of ‘forgotten voices’ may not provide much in the way of original thought or new analysis, it nevertheless offers the reader an account of human experiences of Operation Dynamo, which is more personal than history and more powerful than fiction.

Forgotten Voices of Dunkirk, Joshua Levine (Ebury)

Clare O'Brien is a retired teacher of History and English. She now works as a freelance writer.

If you would like to win and review one of the latest history books, see our latest selection of books for reader review.

New History Books: July 12th

2010-07-12T03:49:00.001-07:00

Secret Affairs, Mark Curtis (Profile Books)
Drawing on declassified government files, Secret Affairs reveals how British governments since the 1940s have supported radical Islamic and terrorist groups in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, the Balkans, Syria, Indonesia and Egypt to control oil resources and overthrow governments.

The Liberty Bell, Gary B. Nash (Yale University Press)
The Liberty Bell was originally cast in England in 1751. Now on display in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, it attracts over two million visitors every year. Charting the impetus behind the bell’s creation, as well as its evolutions in meaning through successive generations, this cultural history explores how the Liberty Bell has become a symbol of the American identity.

The Last Gasp, Scott Christianson (University of California Press)
The Last Gasp charts, for the first time, the history of the gas chamber in the United States. From its construction in Nevada in 1924 as a ‘humane’ method of execution, to the first uses of the gas chamber after the First World War, the author also explores American and German collaboration in the production and use of hydrogen cyanide and Hitler’s adoption of gas chamber technology developed in the United States.

The Kingdom and People of Kent, AD 400-1600, Stuart Brookes and Sue Harrington (The History Press)
This chronological account of the history of the kingdom and people of Kent draws on written, toponymic and archaeological sources to offer insights into the continuities, changes and transformations that produced Anglo-Saxon England out of the remains of Roman Britain.

You may purchase any of the above books, by clicking on the following links:
Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam
The Liberty Bell (Icons of America Series)
The Last Gasp: The Rise and Fall of the American Gas Chamber
The Kingdom and People of Kent, AD 40-1066: Their History and Archaeology

New History Books: July 5th

2010-07-05T02:16:00.000-07:00

Merchant Kings, Stephen R. Brown (Conway)
Including Robert Clive of the English East India Company and Cecil John Rhodes of the British South Africa Company, the story of six merchant adventurers, who, from 1600 to 1900, founded the world’s greatest monopoly trading corporations. Combining commerce and conquest, they ruled millions of people and vast tracts of land, from Hudson Bay, Dutch Manhattan and southern Africa to India, Indonesia and Russian Alaska.

H.G. Wells: Another Kind of Life, Michael Sherborne (Peter Owen)
This biography draws on published and unpublished sources, including the long-suppressed ‘skeleton correspondence’ with his mistresses and illegitimate daughter, to tell the life story of H.G. Wells, who remains a controversial figure to this day, attacked by some as a philistine, sexist and racist, but also praised as a great writer, a prophet of globalisation and a pioneer of human rights.

Caravaggio, Andrew Graham-Dixon (Penguin)
This biography of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio charts the dark and dangerous life of the painter in the worlds of Milan, Rome and Naples in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Graham-Dixon reveals the identities of the ordinary people that Caravaggio used for his depictions of classic religious scenes and provides an account of the circumstances of Caravaggio’s death, aged 38, when he fell victim to a vendetta attack.

Model Nazi, Catherine Epstein (Oxford University Press)
A biography of Arthur Greiser, the man who initiated the final solution in Nazi-occupied Poland, from his birth in the German-Polish borderlands, to his pre-war rise to Nazi prominence in Danzig, his actions as party leader in the Warthegau, and his trial and execution in postwar Poland.

If you wish to purchase any of the above books, click on the following links:

H.G. Wells: Another Kind of Life
Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane
Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland (Oxford Studies in Modern European History)

July selection of books for reader review

2010-07-01T05:38:00.000-07:00

Every month, we offer our readers the opportunity to review some of the latest history publications and to have their review published on the History Today Books Blog. Here is our summer selection. To submit a review, please send an email to Kathryn Hadley (k.hadley[at]historytoday.com) specifying your choice of book. We will then send you the book with a one-month deadline to send us your review. Books will be sent on a first come first served basis. (Unfortunately, we are unable to send out books to the USA).

Young Mandela, David James Smith (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
This biography of Nelson Mandela charts his political and personal life before his imprisonment. Drawing on the testimonies of Mandela’s closest friends and family, the author focuses on Mandela as a person, and a young radical – a side of him which is often overshadowed by his reputation as one of the world’s greatest idols.

H.G. Wells: Another Kind of Life, Michael Sherborne (Peter Owen)
This biography draws on published and unpublished sources, including the long-suppressed ‘skeleton correspondence’ with his mistresses and illegitimate daughter, to tell the life story of H.G. Wells, who remains a controversial figure to this day, attacked by some as a philistine, sexist and racist, but also praised as a great writer, a prophet of globalisation and a pioneer of human rights.

The Stalin Epigram, Robert Littell (Duckworth Overlook)
A fictionalised account based on the true story of one of Russia’s most prominent 20th century poets, Osip Mandelstam, who was arrested when his poem the Stalin Epigram, an indictment of Stalin and his collectivisation programmes written in 1934, was discovered by the secret police.

The Excellent Mrs Fry, Anne Isba (Continuum)
A bigraphy of the Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845), which focuses on her lifelong work to improve the welfare of female prisoners and convicts bound for Australia in Britain and continental Europe.

Warlord, Carlo D’Este (Penguin)
This paperback version of D’Este’s biography of Winston Churchill traces Churchill’s life through his military adventures, from his days as a schoolboy to the young man captured in the Boer War, and from his 1915 Dardanelles campaign as first Lord of the Admiralty to his triumph in the Second World War.

The Most Powerful Idea in the World, William Rosen (Random House)
Focusing on the invention of the steam engine, this account charts the experiments and accomplishments of inventors that led to the Industrial Revolution, as they first came to own and profit from their ideas.

The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824, Harvey Sachs (Faber & Faber)
A study of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which places the premiere of the composition, in 1824, in its historical context to explain how it was emblematic of the High Romantic period and represented a magisterial humanistic statement.

The Silent Duchess, Dacia Maraini (Arcadia Books)
Set in Sicily in the mid-18th century, this historical novel tells the story of the noble Ucria family, seen through the eyes of the deaf-mute Duchess Marianna.

Caravaggio, Andrew Graham-Dixon (Penguin)
This biography of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio charts the dark and dangerous life of the painter in the worlds of Milan, Rome and Naples in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Graham-Dixon reveals the identities of the ordinary people that Caravaggio used for his depictions of classic religious scenes and provides an account of the circumstances of Caravaggio’s death, aged 38, when he fell victim to a vendetta attack.

June 28th: New History Books

2010-06-28T02:27:00.000-07:00

Young Mandela, David James Smith (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
This biography of Nelson Mandela charts his political and personal life before his imprisonment. Drawing on the testimonies of Mandela’s closest friends and family, the author focuses on Mandela as a person, and a young radical – a side of him which is often overshadowed by his reputation as one of the world’s greatest idols.

Seneca; Anger, Mercy, Revenge, Translated by Robert A. Kaster and Martha C. Nussbaum (University of Chicago Press)
Part of ‘The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca’, a series of new English-language translations of the philosopher’s works in eight volumes, this volume includes his moral essays On Anger and On Clemency and the satire Apocolocyntosis.

The Silent Duchess, Dacia Maraini (Arcadia Books)
Set in Sicily in the mid-18th century, this historical novel tells the story of the noble Ucria family, seen through the eyes of the deaf-mute Duchess Marianna.

The Berlin-Baghdad Express, Sean McMeekin (Penguin Books)
An account of the German attempt during the First World War to exploit Ottoman pan-Islamism in order to destroy the British Empire. The Berlin-Baghdad-Express re-examines the consequences of Western interference in the Middle East, whilst also telling the story of the German construction of the Berlin-to-Baghdad railway, which, on its completion would have allowed the Germans to transport troops to Asia, invulnerable to British naval power.

You may purchase any of the above books by clicking on the following links:

Young Mandela
Anger, Mercy, Revenge (Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Silent Duchess, The
The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for World Power, 1898-1918

New history books: June 21st

2010-06-21T03:15:00.001-07:00

Warlord, Carlo D’Este (Penguin)
This paperback version of D’Este’s biography of Winston Churchill traces Churchill’s life through his military adventures, from his days as a schoolboy to the young man captured in the Boer War, and from his 1915 Dardanelles campaign as first Lord of the Admiralty to his triumph in the Second World War.

The Most Powerful Idea in the World, William Rosen (Random House)
Focusing on the invention of the steam engine, this account charts the experiments and accomplishments of inventors that led to the Industrial Revolution, as they first came to own and profit from their ideas.

The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824, Harvey Sachs (Faber & Faber)
This study of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony places the premiere of the composition, in 1824, in its historical context to explain how it was emblematic of the High Romantic period and represented a magisterial humanistic statement.

England’s Forgotten Past, Richard Tames (Thames & Hudson)
An exploration of the forgotten episodes and overlooked people of British history from the ancient Romans to the 20th century.

You may purchase any of the above books by clicking on the following links:

Warlord: The Fighting Life of Winston Churchill, from Soldier to Statesman
The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry and Invention: Water, Fire, and the Most Powerful Idea in the World
The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824
England's Forgotten Past: The Unsung Heroes and Heroines, Valiant Kings, Great Battles and Other Generally Overlooked Episodes in Our Nation's Glorious History

New history books: June 14th

2010-06-14T04:00:00.000-07:00

Dragon Rampant, Donald E. Graves (Frontline Books)
Told largely in the words of the men of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, the women who marched with them and those who fought alongside them, the story of this fighting unit during the wars with France, 1793-1815.

Travels in the Reich, 1933-45, ed. Oliver Lubrich (University of Chicago Press)
An portrait of daily life in Germany under Hitler based on the accounts of writers and public figures, such as Virginia Woolf, Isak Dinesen, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, who visited Germany in the years 1933-45.

The Civil Rights Movement, William T. Martin Riches (Palgrave Macmillan)
The third edition of Riches' introduction to the Civil Rights movement, which analyses how African Americans developed a mass movement after the Second World War and overthrew state-enforced racial segregation despite resistance from whites.

Colonialism and Postcolonial Development, James Mahoney (Cambridge University Press)
A comparative historical analysis of Spanish America which offers a new theory of colonialism and postcolonial development: differences in the extent of colonialism are best explained by the potentially evolving fit between the institutions of the colonising nation and those of the colonised society.

You may purchase any of the above books by clicking on the following links:

Dragon Rampant: The Royal Welch Fusiliers at War
Travels in the Reich, 1933-1945: Foreign Authors Report from Germany
The Civil Rights Movement: Struggle and Resistance (Studies in Contemporary History)
Colonialism and Postcolonial Development: Spanish America in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)

Reader review: Growing up in England

2010-06-08T04:25:00.000-07:00

Paul Doolan reviews Growing up in England by Anthony Fletcher.

by Paul Doolan,

When Philippe Aries published his Centuries of Childhood in 1960, the history of childhood was still very much in its infancy. The publication of Anthony Fletcher’s latest work demonstrates that the history of childhood has reached maturity.

Growing up in England is the result of a professional lifetime spent in archives and libraries, researching the meaning of childhood and the construction of gender in early modern England. Fletcher has read everything published on the subject, but it is his use of published and unpublished primary sources that distinguishes his work. Over a dozen years of research went into this study. Fletcher travelled the length and breadth of England and beyond, locating archival material, including diaries and letters, that allows the men and women, but particularly the children themselves, to share their experiences of childhood over the course of three centuries.

To a large degree, Fletcher’s study makes for depressing reading. Unlike many previous studies, Fletcher dismisses any changes in the experience of childhood as being largely superficial. He stresses instead the continuities, arguing that the essence of childhood for the English upper classes remained the same throughout the period 1600-1914. For boys, this meant regular beatings from fathers, teachers and bullies and the merciless killing of animals – all in an attempt to inculcate in boys a sense of manliness. There were fathers, especially in the late 18th century, who disliked the physical abuse they had to mete out to their little boys. But that was what the English public school was for. When the idea that boys should be beaten was questioned by the liberal theories of Locke and Rousseau, the solution was to send sons to a good public school where they would be beaten and later, as prefects, do the beating themselves, and thereby learn how to become men. Girls, on the whole, experienced childhoods of terrible constraint; at home, under the ever watchful eye of a governess, and later at a finishing school, in order to prepare them for an adult life of submissiveness and obedience.

The book is divided into three parts. Fletcher examines, first of all, the literature that prescribed how to raise a child. Pre-eighteenth century literature described children as sinners, who needed to be beaten in order to learn self-discipline. This view changed somewhat with Locke’s idea of the child as a ‘blank slate’, leading to a number of liberating developments in child rearing. The Romantics almost sanctified childhood, which became increasingly sentimentalised and commercialised in the Victorian period.

In the second and longest section of the book, Fletcher explores the actual experience of childhood from the points of view of both parents and children. He writes with considerable empathy and his sensitive use of primary sources provides insights into the lives of the historical actors that are, at times, almost painful. Lonely little boys are sent away to be bullied in boarding schools; mothers suffer the separation from their children and often from their husbands; and fathers are moved to tears by the suffering of their children. Fletcher is especially vivid in his analysis of motherhood. One mother in particular, Melisina Trench (born 1768), is portrayed as a true heroine and radical, breastfeeding her children, promoting children’s literature and condemning corporal punishment as ‘disgusting’ and ‘degrading’.

In the final section, based primarily on the diaries of three teenage girls, Fletcher tries to reveal the voice of childhood itself. Unfortunately, the diaries of boys reveal very little about their feelings and inner lives, and Fletcher admits that ‘boys let us down’ and, on the whole, ‘defy the historian’. We are left with a small handful of diaries from the end of the period written by upper class teenage girls. We cannot help but question, however, how representative these young female voices are of the overall experience of childhood over three centuries.

Fletcher’s ambitious, detailed and powerful work is essential reading in the historical study of childhood. However, I remain unconvinced by his overarching thesis that the experience of childhood was largely the same throughout the period 1600-1914. The existence of diaries from the end of the period alone could be an indication of how childhood had changed. The Victorian sentimentilisation of childhood, with its children’s literature, holidays at the seaside and growth in the production of toys, would further indicate that, despite the recurrent beatings, growing up in England in 1900 was different to 1600.

Paul Doolan is Head of History at Zurich International School in Zurich, Switzerland.
http://www.pauldoolan.com/

June 7th: new history books

2010-06-07T03:30:00.000-07:00

The Stalin Epigram, Robert Littell (Duckworth Overlook)
This fictionalised account is based on the true story of one of Russia’s most prominent 20th century poets, Osip Mandelstam, who was arrested when his poem the Stalin Epigram, an indictment of Stalin and his collectivisation programmes written in 1934, was discovered by the secret police.

God’s Philosophers, James Hannam (Icon Books)
This account of medieval scientific discovery presents the Middle Ages as an era of rapid technological change during which the mechanical clock, compass, printing press and gunpowder were invented, for example, and debunks the popular belief that the Church restricted scientific enquiry and development.

The History of the Medieval World, Susan Wise Bauer (Norton)
A history of the world, from the Americas to Japan, in the years between the fourth and twelfth centuries, when rulers worldwide increasingly turned to religion to justify their power and political and military actions.

The Excellent Mrs Fry, Anne Isba (Continuum)
This biography of the Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) focuses on her lifelong work to improve the welfare of female prisoners and convicts bound for Australia in Britain and continental Europe.

You may purchase any of the above books by clicking on the following links:
The Stalin Epigram
God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science
The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade
Excellent Mrs Fry: The Unlikely Heroine

Reader review: The Highland Clans

2010-06-03T07:29:00.000-07:00

Clare O’Brien reviews The Highland Clans by Alistair Moffatt.

By Clare O’Brien,

This excellent little book serves as an ideal introduction to the history of the Scottish Highlands and its clans. It addresses every important episode with poetic sensitivity and imagination, whilst never indulging in the kind of crass chocolate-box sentimentality that too often obscures the real story of the region.

Alistair Moffatt is also the author of Before Scotland, which explores the country’s geology and early settlement up to the end of Pictish supremacy in the 9th century. He covers a little of the same ground here, describing the emergence of the Highland landscape from under the vast snow spheres of the last Ice Age as the retreating glaciers carved out the familiar mountains, sea-lochs and rivers.

To an extent, Moffatt begins his history of the Highland clans at the end – with the rout of the Jacobites, who sought to restore the Stuart dynasty, at the battle of Culloden in April 1746. In a passage of great compassion and poetic power, he describes how the doomed clansmen summoned ‘the army of the dead’, evoking their lineage and the lands from which they had sprung to give strength to their purpose.

‘...the clansmen had stood quietly in their ranks and remembered who they were
and why they had come with the Prince to fight. Many men recited their
genealogy: Is mise mac Domhnaill, mac Iain, mac Iain Ruadh...... they needed to
remember them, to summon up all the memory of their people, all of their ancient
prowess, to come to the moor to fight beside them.’

Moffatt then retraces the long slow story which culminated in the destruction of the clan-based way of life, from the earliest Celtic settlers through resistance to Roman rule, to the so-called golden age of Somerled’s leadership of the Scottish Isles in the 12th century, and the Lords of the Isles, the nobles who descended from a series of mixed blood Viking/Gaelic leaders of the west coast and islands of Scotland in the Middle Ages.

The book provides some fascinating insights into the culture of the Highland clans. The early 17th-century bardic song which celebrates the drinking of a fallen warrior’s blood to preserve his spirit for generations to come, for example, must have seemed barbaric to an outside world fast placing its trust in Enlightenment philosophy and Renaissance politics. The author carefully charts the ascendancy of clan culture and its numerous internal rivalries, highlighting examples of English opportunism battening onto old feuds. One such example was William of Orange’s tacit support for the Massacre of Glencoe in February 1692 in an attempt to humble the pride of the ‘savages’ in the north.

The second part of the book, which traces the disintegration of the society that Moffatt described with such elegiac power, is particularly poignant. The familiar story of the evictions, clearances and political and cultural oppression suffered by the remnants of the clans in the aftermath of the battle of Culloden is movingly but simply told. One also senses a simmering anger in the author’s analysis of the bowdlerisation of Highland culture in the Victorian era, once the genuine threat from its people had been extinguished.

The book ends with an account of the diaspora, describing the territories settled by the Highlanders as well as how they later fought alongside the armies of their historical foes. Highlanders provided staunch cannon fodder in numerous colonial wars. Horrified by republicanism and unshakeable in their loyalty to notions of kingship, former Jacobite exiles from Skye and the west Highlands also fought for the Hanoverian monarchy in the American war of independence.

Throughout the book, Moffatt writes with his customary understanding of the power of landscape to shape human history, as well as a strong instinct for a good story, concisely but sensitively told.

Clare O'Brien is a retired teacher of History and English. She now works as a freelance writer.

If you would like to win and review one of the latest history books, see our latest selection of books for reader review.

June selection of books for reader review

2010-06-01T09:25:00.000-07:00

The Media and the Far Right in Western Europe, Antonis A. Ellinas (Cambridge University Press)
This book examines the interplay of party and media behaviour, in particular how political parties and the mass media have dealt with growing public concerns over national identity, to explain the rise of Far Right parties in Austria, Germany, Greece and France since the 1980s.

American Insurgents, American Patriots, T.H. Breen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
This account of the insurgency of ordinary Americans, who mobilised against British imperial authority two years before the Declaration of Independence, places them at the heart of the fight for American independence revealing a lesser known side to the story of American political origins.

The University of Oxford, G.R. Evans (I.B. Tauris)
The latest instalment of G.R. Evans’ major two-volume history of the rival institutions of Oxford and Cambridge, a history of the University of Oxford from its foundation in the late 12th century, to the political upheavals caused by the radical ideas of John Wyclif and John Ruskin’s innovative lectures on art.

For Business & Pleasure, Mara L. Keire (The John Hopkins University Press)
This survey of the business of pleasure in the United States, from the 1890s to the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, considers the popular culture that developed within red-light districts, as well as efforts to contain vice in cities such as New Orleans, New York City, San Francisco and El Paso.

When Money was in Fashion, June Fischer (Palgrave Macmillan)
This biography by Henry Goldman’s granddaughter traces his career with Goldman Sachs, a firm founded by Henry’s father Marcus and passed on to his brother-in-law Samuel Sachs, and charts the growth of Goldman Sachs from a small commercial paper company to the international banking business it is today.

God’s Philosophers, James Hannam (Icon Books)
This account of medieval scientific discovery presents the Middle Ages as an era of rapid technological change during which the mechanical clock, compass, printing press and gunpowder were invented, for example, and debunks the popular belief that the Church restricted scientific enquiry and development.

New June History Books

2010-06-01T03:52:00.000-07:00

Forgotten Voices of Dunkirk, Joshua Levine (Ebury)
Drawing on material from the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive, an account of Operation Dynamo and the evacuation of Dunkirk in the words of both the rescuers and those rescued.

Hoboes: Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps and the Harvesting of the West, Mark Wyman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The story of the lives of hoboes, the transient harvest workers who worked in the Garden West, the vast expanse of territory which was developed following the expansion of the railroad across the American West in the 1870s.

Murder in the Metro, Gayle K. Brunelle and Annette Finley-Croswhite (Louisiana State University Press)
In 1936, the Italian immigrant and spy Laetitia Toureaux successfully infiltrated the French secret right-wing organisation known as the Cagoule, which sought to overthrow France’s Third Republic. In May 1937, she was found murdered in the Paris Metro. This account of Toureaux’s life and murder assesses her complex identity within the popular culture and turbulent politics of 1930s France.

American Insurgents, American Patriots, T.H. Breen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) An account of the insurgency of ordinary Americans, who mobilised against British imperial authority two years before the Declaration of Independence, which places them at the heart of the fight for American independence and reveals a lesser known side to the story of American political origins.

You may purchase any of these books by following the links below.
Forgotten Voices of Dunkirk
Hoboes: Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of the West
Murder in the Metro: Laetitia Toureaux and the Cagoule in 1930s France
American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People

May 24th: New History Books

2010-05-24T04:12:00.000-07:00

The Media and the Far Right in Western Europe, Antonis A. Ellinas (Cambridge University Press)
This book examines the interplay of party and media behaviour, in particular how political parties and the mass media have dealt with growing public concerns over national identity, to explain the rise of Far Right parties in Austria, Germany, Greece and France since the 1980s.

For Business & Pleasure, Mara L. Keire (The John Hopkins University Press)
This survey of the business of pleasure in the United States, from the 1890s to the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, considers the popular culture that developed within red-light districts, as well as efforts to contain vice in cities such as New Orleans, New York City, San Francisco and El Paso.

Living Liberalism, Elaine Hadley (The University of Chicago Press)
A revisionist account of liberalism, the first British political movement to depend more on people than property, in mid-Victorian Britain, which focuses on the key concept of individuation to consider how the subjects of liberal politics actually lived liberalism.

The University of Oxford, G.R. Evans (I.B. Tauris)
The latest instalment of G.R. Evans’ major two-volume history of the rival institutions of Oxford and Cambridge, the story of the University of Oxford from its foundation in the late 12th century, to the political upheavals caused by the radical ideas of John Wyclif and John Ruskin’s innovative lectures on art.

You can purchase any of these books by clicking on the links below:

The Media and the Far Right in Western Europe: Playing the Nationalist Card
For Business and Pleasure: Red-Light Districts and the Regulation of Vice in the United States, 1890--1933 (Studies in Industry and Society)
Living Liberalism: Practical Citizenship in Mid-Victorian Britain
The University of Oxford: A New History

Reader review: Beauty Imagined

2010-05-18T05:20:00.001-07:00

Paul Doolan reviews Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry by Geoffrey Jones.

by Paul Doolan,

The obvious terrain of the art historian, beauty has recently become something of a stomping ground for social historians and philosophers, such as Arthur Marwick and Roger Scruton. Surprisingly, despite the growth of the beauty industry, the field has been relatively unexplored by business historians. However, Geoffrey Jones argues that one of the most intriguing developments in modern business history is the transformation of the beauty industry ‘from humble moral nuisance to a global brand-driven powerhouse offering products essential to daily life’. In Beauty Imagined, he seeks to explain the development of the beauty industry.

Professor at Harvard Business School and with many scholarly works to his credit, including The Oxford Handbook of Business History, Jones comes to the task well-qualified. Beauty Imagined is clearly the result of in-depth research into business archives and trade journals and of interviews with industry leaders. It is accompanied by extensive footnotes and a bibliography in three languages.

Jones examines the history of the beauty industry through three lenses: the founding entrepreneurs, the construction of a market through branding, and the issue of legitimacy, or how the industry shapes our perceptions of what it means to be beautiful. The book is divided into three parts: the origins of the industry, its geographical and social spread, and the contemporary changes in the industry. According to Jones, it is impossible to deny the globalisation of the beauty industry. He argues, however, that its globalisation is accompanied by a contradictory movement, which he labels ‘tribalization’. Although he briefly addresses some of the criticisms that the industry has faced (that it enslaves women to an impossible ideal, for example), the author concludes that the history of the beauty industry is ultimately one of ‘democratization’ whereby providing people with the opportunity to change their hair colour ‘enriches the daily lives of people’.

The book highlights many intriguing facts: until the end of the 19th century, perfumes were drunk and used on clothing but rarely on the skin; Europeans had a strong fear of washing with water, seldom used soap and almost never washed their hair with water; it was an epidemic of tooth decay caused by an increase in sugar consumption that led Europeans to start brushing their teeth in the late 19th century (Colgate cleverly provided the tooth paste). The most interesting part of the book is the story of this significant change in habits of hygiene between the late 19th century and the outbreak of the First World War.

These changes were partly a result of developments outside the industry – colonialism as well as developments in transportation, technology and science, but Jones also stresses the role of the entrepreneurs who built the industry. He highlights the fact that many were ‘outsiders’ (foreigners, women, African-Americans) and that a disproportionate number were Jewish. He also stresses their creativity, a word that is repeatedly used throughout the book, and even refers to their ‘genius’. Jones never quite explains what he means by these concepts, however. One entrepreneur, Francois Coty, is described as creative and possessing genius, although the main evidence seems to be that he dropped his surname and took his mother’s maiden name in order to market his product.

Jones addresses some of the criticisms of the industry (its use of toxic chemicals, for example) and also considers recent alternative voices, such as Anita Roddick of The Body Shop. However, Roddick is not described as a ‘genius’ or ‘creative’, and feminist critics of the industry such as Naomi Wolf are given short shrift. Surely no history of the beauty industry can be considered truly global when there is hardly any mention of Africa, nor of the destruction of the rainforest for the sake of growing palm oil for Unilever/Dove. The only mention of the industry’s deliberate targeting of young girls is: ‘The pre-teen market of 9- to 12-year olds girls was seen as particularly promising by many companies’.

Jones’ extensive overview of the beauty business is undoubtedly useful and interesting; his conclusion, however, is a foregone conclusion. Interviews with critics of the industry and research beyond the trade journals would have provided a more critical history.

Paul Doolan is Head of History at Zurich International School in Zurich, Switzerland.
www.pauldoolan.com

May 17th: New History Books

2010-05-17T04:16:00.000-07:00

When Money was in Fashion, June Fischer (Palgrave Macmillan)
This biography by Henry Goldman’s granddaughter traces his career with Goldman Sachs, a firm founded by Henry’s father Marcus and passed on to his brother-in-law Samuel Sachs, and charts the growth of Goldman Sachs from a small commercial paper company to the international banking business it is today.

Wilfred Thesiger in Africa, Alexander Maitland (Harper Press)
Published to coincide with the centenary of Wilfred Thesiger’s birth in Ethiopia in 1910, this collection of essays accompany around 200 of Thesiger’s photographs of the Africa he experienced as one of the last great gentleman adventurers and chart his lifetime of exploration throughout Africa as well as his achievements as a photographer.

The Mexican Wars for Independence, Timothy J. Henderson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The paperback edition of Henderson’s account of the Mexican Wars of Independence (1810-1821), a battle for social and political reform rather than mere political independence, which traces the major leaders and conflicts and explores the complicated meaning of independence for Mexico’s past and present.

Making Haste from Babylon, Nick Bunker (Random House)
An account of the Mayflower project, the Pilgrims’ journey across the Atlantic in 1620 and the first decade of the settlement which they built in New Plymouth, laying the foundations for Massachusetts, New England and a new nation.

To purchase any of the above books, click on the links below:
When Money Was In Fashion: Henry Goldman, Goldman Sachs, and the Founding of Wall Street
Wilfred Thesiger in Africa
The Mexican Wars for Independence
Making Haste from Babylon: The "Mayflower" Pilgrims and Their World - A New History

Reader review: Defying Empire

2010-05-11T04:49:00.000-07:00

Continuing our series of reader reviews, James Batty reviews Defying Empire by Thomas M. Truxes.

By James Batty,

Defying Empire throws into sharp relief a period prior to the American War of Independence, when traders in the young British city of New York found profit in trading with merchants in the Caribbean, who either directly or indirectly supplied the French war effort during the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763). The subject matter makes for interesting enough reading on its own, and is full of tales of daring men venturing their fortunes on cargoes that had a large chance of floundering at sea or being taken by privateers or ships of the line. But the book goes beyond these fascinating stories, considering the wider implications of the trade, and ends up drawing a clear line between these increasingly autonomous traders and the eventual schism that occurred during the American War of Independence (1775-1783).

New York University’s Thomas M. Truxes weaves together both the narrative of these stories and the broad historical argument perfectly. One could read his book in just one session and I had difficulty putting it down. The reader is transported into a vibrant world of traders and administrators, soldiers and sailors, at a time when New York remained a frontier town in a largely hostile continent, but was also developing its own identity and breeding a populace that, while still largely English and empire focused, was increasingly frustrated with the actions of its imperial overlords in London.

During the 18th century, the trading and mercantile community of New York was in the ascendant. An elite of rich and powerful merchants controlled the town, obeying the military and administrative dictates from London only when it suited them. During the first part of the century, this situation worked quite well as London allowed the traders to operate unhindered by much central control; however, the Seven Years’ War changed this fragile but agreeable status quo. As the French and British military machines swung into action, the trading communities up and down the Eastern Seaboard saw opportunity in the melee and pursued a lucrative trade with both the French directly, but also with neutral countries including Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark.

Nevertheless, the authorities in New York and other trading towns were too closely linked to the trade by kin and business relationships to put an end to it. It was only when British military commanders in North America began amassing more troops but were unable to purchase sufficient goods to supply them, that the authorities in New York and London finally started to crack down on the trade. They singled out a few high-profile traders to stand trial for crimes that had been going on undisturbed for a number of years.

Amid the narrative are a number of characters who played significant roles in the future War of Independence and the fledgling United States of America that emerged a couple of decades later. None more so than the original but failed whistleblower of the illegal trading during the late 1750s and early 1760s, George Spencer. A native New Yorker and fellow merchant, Spencer sought to expose the trade early on in the war, but was arrested and incarcerated for 27 months on fabricated bankruptcy charges. He continuously tried to alert the authorities to the illegal trade – and to secure for himself a slice of the prize money to be had in bringing the perpetrators to justice. He failed, but on his release he sailed back to England and never gave up his attempts to bring his fellow merchants to book for their ‘pernicious trade’. Spencer’s petitions to the British Treasury in Whitehall included plans to increase taxes on certain widely traded goods in the colonies in an effort to bring the merchants under more control. One of his last suggestions proved to be one of the most momentous – he urged the government to put a duty on tea.

Details such as this, and especially their repercussions, make this book well worth reading. A real pleasure from cover to cover.

Defying Empire, Thomas M. Truxes (Yale University Press)

James Batty is a History Today reader. He has lived in New York and is particularly interested in the history of the city.

If you would like to review and win one of the latest history books, see our selection of books for reader review.

May 10th: New History Books

2010-05-10T05:26:00.000-07:00

The Making of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr (Pan Macmillan)
Andrew Marr charts 45 years of British history from the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 to the end of the Second World War, when Britain moved from being an empire to a democracy and ‘modern Britain’ was born.

A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet, Asa Briggs and Peter Burke (Polity Press)
A revised edition of this overview of communication and media and of the social and cultural contexts within which they emerged and evolved over time. Drawing on the latest developments in the field, the third edition notably charts the media developments of the early 21st century, including the rise of social media and the impact of digitalisation.

Sophistication: A Literary and Cultural History, Faye Hammill (Liverpool University Press)
Drawing on historical documents, magazines, adverts, films and novels, a literary, linguistic and cultural history of ‘sophistication’ from the Romantics, via the emergence of the dandy and then of modernism, to the meaning of sophistication in the 21st century.

Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900, Clive Emsley (Pearson)
The fourth edition of this introduction to the history of crime in the 18th and 19th centuries, which examines the developments in policing, the courts and the penal system as England became increasingly industrialised and urbanised.

If you wish to purchase any of the above books, click on the links below:

The Making of Modern Britain
Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet
Sophistication: A Literary and Cultural History
Crime and Society in England 1750-1900

Review and win one of the latest history books

2010-05-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

Every month, we offer our readers the opportunity to review some of the latest history publications and to have their review published on the History Today Books Blog. Here is our selection for May. To submit a review, please send an email to Kathryn Hadley (k.hadley[at]historytoday.com) specifying your choice of book. We will then send you the book with a one-month deadline to send us your review. Books will be sent on a first come first served basis. (Unfortunately, we are unable to send out books to the USA).

The Making of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr (Pan Macmillan)
Andrew Marr charts 45 years of British history from the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 to the end of the Second World War, when Britain moved from being an empire to a democracy and ‘modern Britain’ was born.

Sophistication: A Literary and Cultural History, Faye Hammill (Liverpool University Press)
Drawing on historical documents, magazines, adverts, films and novels, a literary, linguistic and cultural history of ‘sophistication’ from the Romantics, via the emergence of the dandy and then of modernism, to the meaning of sophistication in the 21st century.

Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900, Clive Emsley (Pearson)
The fourth edition of this introduction to the history of crime in the 18th and 19th centuries, which examines the developments in policing, the courts and the penal system as England became increasingly industrialised and urbanised.

The KGB’s Poison Factory, Boris Volodarsky (Frontline Books)
In this study of KGB poisoning operations, former Russian military intelligence officer Volodarsky argues that the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko in London in late November 2006 was just one episode in a series of murders carried out by the Russian security services which began with Lenin and the Cheka in 1917.

The Mexican Wars for Independence, Timothy J. Henderson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The paperback edition of Henderson’s account of the Mexican Wars of Independence (1810-1821), a battle for social and political reform rather than mere political independence, which traces the major leaders and conflicts and explores the complicated meaning of independence for Mexico’s past and present.

A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet, Asa Briggs and Peter Burke (Polity Press)
A revised edition of this overview of communication and media and of the social and cultural contexts within which they emerged and evolved over time. Drawing on the latest developments in the field, the third edition notably charts the media developments of the early 21st century, including the rise of social media and the impact of digitalisation.

Growing up in England, Anthony Fletcher (Yale University Press)
Drawing on personal testimony from contemporary diaries and letters of both parents and children, a study of the upbringing of English children in upper and professional class families in the period between 1600 and 1914.

The Highland Clans, Alistair Moffat (Thames & Hudson)
A history of the Highland clans of Scotland, from their Celtic origins to the coming of the Romans, through the great battles of Bannockburn and Flodden, to the Clearances and the present day.

Poland: A History, Adam Zamoyski (Harper Press)
A full revision of the author’s classic history of Poland, first written in the 1980s, when the country was in a state of subjugation and its living culture survived only underground or in exile.

Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Peter Longerich (Oxford University Press)
The first English translation of Peter Longerich’s account of the Holocaust. Focusing on the perpetrators and exploring closely the process of decision making, he argues that anti-Jewish policy was a central tenet of the Nazi movement’s attempts to implement and secure National Socialist rule.

New history books for May

2010-05-05T03:23:00.000-07:00

Growing up in England, Anthony Fletcher (Yale University Press)
Drawing on personal testimony from contemporary diaries and letters of both parents and children, a study of the upbringing of English children in upper and professional class families in the period between 1600 and 1914.

Alamein, Iain Gale (HarperCollins)
In this historical novel, Iain Gale tells the story of the battle of El Alamein through nine characters, almost all based on real people, drawn from both sides of the conflict.

A History of Greece, Nicholas Doumanis (Palgrave Macmillan)
In this account of the fortunes and transformations of Greek culture and society from early antiquity to the present, Nicholas Doumanis argues that the resilience of Greek culture has a lot to do with its continual interaction with other cultures throughout the centuries.

The Journey of Anders Sparrman, Per Wastberg (Granta)
A novel based on the life of the Swedish naturalist Anders Sparrman, who in the second half of the 18th century became the last and youngest disciple of the scientist Carl Linnaeus, joined Captain Cook on his second voyage to Antarctica and Tahiti and made a pioneering journey on foot into the South African interior.

This week's new books

2010-04-26T05:20:00.000-07:00

Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Peter Longerich (Oxford University Press)
The first English translation of Peter Longerich’s account of the Holocaust. Focusing on the perpetrators and exploring closely the process of decision making, he argues that anti-Jewish policy was a central tenet of the Nazi movement’s attempts to implement and secure National Socialist rule.

Barnum Brown, Lowell Dingus and Mark A. Norell (University of California Press)
Drawing on his field correspondence and unpublished notes and on the writings of his daughter and two wives, this biography of Barnum Brown (1873-1963), the man who discovered Tyrannosaurus rex, discloses for the first time details about his life and travels, from his youth on the western frontier to his spying for the US government.

The KGB’s Poison Factory, Boris Volodarsky (Frontline Books)
In this study of KGB poisoning operations, former Russian military intelligence officer Volodarsky argues that the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko in London in late November 2006 was just one episode in a series of murders carried out by the Russian security services which began with Lenin and the Cheka in 1917.

Medieval Clothing and Textiles, ed. Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocke (The Boydell Press)
This sixth volume of Medieval Clothing and Textiles ranges widely across England and Europe and includes two groundbreaking articles in novel areas of textile and dress scholarship: an introduction to decorative manuscript repair, a previously unexamined class of embroidery, and an English-language overview of scholarly research on historical dress in Latvia.

Reader review: Enchanted Europe

2010-04-22T05:31:00.000-07:00

Clare O’Brien reviews Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason and Religion, 1250–1750, by Euan Cameron.

by Clare O’Brien,

Despite its marketable title, Euan Cameron’s Enchanted Europe is not the kind of poetic non-linear exploration of history made popular by cultural historians and psychogeographers such as Peter Ackroyd, Iain Sinclair or Andrew Hussey.

Its style and frame of reference are scholarly, its structure and language rigorously academic. Opening with a 28-page introductory discussion of methodology and culminating in a note section which takes up fully one-third of the book, it is a detailed philosophical examination of the issues surrounding faith – Christian or otherwise – in the years between the early medieval period and the Enlightenment.

Author Euan Cameron’s background is in church history, specifically that of the Reformation, and his book is an admirable account of the development of ideas during that period. After first delineating the scope and origins of pre-modern superstitious beliefs – those which ‘live and breathe on the irrational association between perceived effect and assumed cause’ - he proceeds to a study of how emergent intellectual and religious authorities gradually sought to explain and contain their chaotic power.

The picture that emerges from his analysis is not as simple as one might believe. Although many think of the journey towards Enlightenment as one of, literally, ‘disenchantment’ – a slow erosion of faith in magic in favour of scientific rationalism - Cameron shows how clerics and religious thinkers on both sides of the Catholic/Protestant divide long maintained a belief in the supernatural. However, whereas clerics of all denominations were determined to divide the universe into sharply polarised realms of good or evil according to their own particular dogma, the lay population inhabited a far more morally ambivalent world based upon more practical needs. As Cameron explains, ‘ordinary poor people [...] feared the loss of health or property and sought whatever remedies might work’ – whether approved by ecclesiastical authority or derived from forbidden folk remedies and rituals.

Although this is hardly an anecdotal work, some interesting stories emerge along the way. In the earliest days of Christianity, St Augustine mounted a vigorous offensive against the fading Roman pantheon by literally ‘demonising’ the gods. The original meaning of the Greek word daimon (daemon), in terms of a tutelary spirit, was gradually overlaid with negative connotations, reaching its zenith in medieval hysteria relating to demonic possession. (Interestingly, the original definition of the word was only to be widely rediscovered and rehabilitated in our own age via the novels of Philip Pullman).

Perhaps the overall lesson of Cameron’s book is that any attempt to impose a rigid external order on human culture and imagination will have only limited success. As he points out in the final chapter, by the 18th century, Europe’s intellectuals had ‘lost their fear’ of witchcraft, demons and superstitions and therefore expended much less energy in keeping them at bay. In the centuries that followed, post-Enlightenment thinkers actually began to embrace what they had previously sought to explain away and acknowledged the power of superstitious belief as part of a rich cultural tapestry of ethnic heritage. He suggests that the Romantic era, renewed Victorian interest in spiritualism and occultism and more recent New Age thinking have much in common in this regard, aided and abetted by nation states’ lack of interest in enforcing religious discipline on their subjects, at least in the West.

As Cameron concludes, ‘the quest to control and domesticate superstition was, in the end, a futile one [...] nevertheless it remains a profoundly instructive lesson and case study in humanity’s efforts to make sense of our predicament.’

Clare O'Brien is a retired teacher of History and English. She now works as a freelance writer.

New books released this week

2010-04-19T03:47:00.000-07:00

Colour of Paradise, Kris Lane (Yale University Press)
In this history of the emerald, a gemstone revered in Islamic culture, the author traces the web of global trading networks that funnelled emeralds from South America to populous Asian capitals between the 16th and 18th centuries and reveals the conquest wars and forced labour regimes that accompanied their production.

The Highland Clans, Alistair Moffat (Thames & Hudson)
A history of the Highland clans of Scotland, from their Celtic origins to the coming of the Romans, through the great battles of Bannockburn and Flodden, to the Clearances and the present day.

A King’s Ransom, Simon Burrows (Continuum)
A biography of Charles Theveneau de Morande, one of the most important figures in pre-revolutionary France, who extorted the French monarchy, turned coat, and thereafter became France’s leading political spy in London during the War of American Independence and throughout the 1780s.

Poland: A History, Adam Zamoyski (Harper Press)
A full revision of the author’s classic history of Poland, first written in the 1980s, when the country was in a state of subjugation and its living culture survived only underground or in exile.

New Wednesday Paperbacks

2010-04-14T04:00:00.000-07:00

When Our World Became Christian, Paul Veyne (Polity Press)
An English translation of Paul Veyne’s study of how Christianity managed, between 300 and 400 AD, to impose itself upon the whole of the western world.

Hobbes: Prince of Peace, Bernard Gert (Polity Press)
This introduction to the work of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) provides an account of the philosopher’s political and moral philosophy and refutes the commonly accepted view of Hobbes as holding psychological egoism.

Household servants in early modern England, R.C. Richardson (Manchester University Press)
This socio-cultural survey of household service presents servants as major agents of change, who assisted in the spread of new fashions, tastes, habits and mores, and portrays household service as a field of employment that impinged on most aspects of the economic and social organisation of the time.

Into the Heart of the Mafia, David Lane (Profile Books)
An account of the author’s journey round the cites and villages of the Italian South which shows how globalisation has transformed the Mafia into more than simply a local phenomenon and describes the daily accommodation to Mafia pressure endured by priests, politicians and prosecutors, businessmen and ordinary citizens, whilst also providing a portrait of the region’s history.

This week's new books

2010-04-12T04:06:00.000-07:00

Building Radar, Colin Dobinson (Methuen)
This study of the patterning and design of Britain’s early-warning radar stations of the Second World War traces the evolution of the network from its beginnings in 1935 to its maturity a decade later.

Enlightening the World: The Creation of the Statue of Liberty, Yasmin Sabina Khan (Cornell University Press)
An account of the design of the Statue of Liberty and the lives of the people who created it, which also considers how its creation was influenced by events in the aftermath of the American Civil War and France’s grief over the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

In the Ranks of Death: The Irish in the Second World War, Richard Doherty (Pen & Sword)
The story of the Irishmen and women who, despite the neutrality of the Republic of Ireland, voluntarily joined the British Army during the Second World War. The book considers both the deeds of the individual soldiers, sailors and airmen, as well as the actions of the Irish regiments.

Women and the shaping of British Methodism, Jennifer Lloyd (Manchester University Press)
The first book to deal with British Methodist women preachers over the entire 19th century, with special emphasis on the Primitive Methodists and Bible Christians.

Reader review: Hitler by Ian Kershaw

2010-04-09T08:30:00.001-07:00

Continuing our series of reader reviews, Paul Doolan reviews Hitler, the latest paperback edition of Ian Kershaw’s two-part biography.

by Paul Doolan,

Ian Kershaw’s aim is to answer two questions: how could ‘a bizarre misfit ever have been in a position to take power in Germany’ and how could this ‘unsophisticated autodidact […] so swiftly dominate the established political elites and go on to draw Germany into a catastrophic high-risk gamble for European domination, with a terrible, unprecedented genocidal programme at its heart?’

The present volume is an abridgement of the massive two-volume study that Kershaw published in 1998 and 2000. Over 650 pages of text as well as references and notes have been cut. Nevertheless, it still weighs in with over 1,000 pages.

The author rightly insists that Hitler’s rule needs to be continually studied for it provides us with a warning on ‘how a modern, advanced, cultured society can so rapidly sink into barbarity’. He recognises that Hitler’s immense historical impact was achieved by a man who was ‘no more than an empty vessel outside his political life’, describing Hitler as a ‘black hole’, an ‘unperson’. Consequently, he does not focus on Hitler’s personality, but on the nature of his power and how this power worked on others. To this extent, Kershaw argues, Hitler’s charismatic leadership depended as much on others – Nazi fanatics, non-Nazi elites and ordinary Germans – as it did on any talents that Hitler himself might have had. Kershaw places Hitler at the centre of the story of the Nazi assault on civilisation, but claims that Hitler was not the sole or prime cause of this assault.

Kershaw argues that, until the First World War, Hitler’s life had been one of failure and indolence. However, 1919 saw him cast into the maelstrom of right-wing politics. He was trained by the army as an anti-Semitic, anti-communist instructor and was ordered by his superior to join the German Worker’s Party (the Nazi Party) – Kershaw thus claims that the army made Hitler. The failure of his 1923 putsch should have been the end of his career. Instead, he was allowed to become a national celebrity and was released from prison within 11 months. Thus, the judiciary was also responsible. The economic conditions of the early 1930s triggered Hitler’s quick rise, but the conservative right was responsible for putting him in power, while by 1933 the army, agricultural interests, big businesses and ordinary Germans had, according to Kershaw, destroyed democracy. Only organised labour and politicised Catholics still opposed him.

Once in power, Hitler was helped by the thousands of careerists who did their best ‘working towards the Fuhrer’, trying to anticipate his will and implement his wishes. Few criticised anti-Jewish legislation and doctors and nurses readily participated in the murder of thousands of the physically and mentally ill. When the government orchestrated a nationwide pogrom against Jews during ‘Kristalnacht’, ‘the leaders of the Christian Churches […] kept quiet’ and did not even issue a protest. By the end of the decade, Hitler had become the most popular politician of the 20th century, never surpassed.

Most Germans feared war, but were delighted with the early German victories. The war that was prosecuted against the Poles in 1939 was of extraordinary brutality. Hitler had provided a license for barbarism, but, in Kershaw’s words, there ‘was no shortage of ready hands to put it into practice’. Even worse was to come when, in 1941, Hitler unleashed upon the USSR the ‘most destructive and barbaric war in the history of mankind’, a war that led to genocide.

The author claims that many within the army leadership doubted the wisdom of this war; none, however, had the courage to make their doubts public. This is one of the important lessons that emerge from Kershaw’s work, one that anyone working in a hierarchical organisation should take to heart. Many in the army, party and civil service ‘worked towards the Fuhrer’, and feared being accused of defeatism; few openly opposed his unrealistic schemes and they thereby fed his destructive optimism.

Kershaw uses the word optimism/optimistic to describe Hitler no less than 23 times in the final quarter of the book – pages that describe the gradual destruction of Germany after Stalingrad. Pessimism was always regarded as defeatism. Hearing of Roosevelt’s death in April 1945 Hitler still had ‘a sudden shaft of optimism’, with the Russians just a few miles from his bunker. The criminal silence of those around him was symptomatic; the physical and moral ruination of Europe was not the work of one man alone, but ‘collectively’ German citizens had been prepared ‘to place their trust in the chiliastic vision of a self-professed political savior’. Many had helped to make Adolf Hitler.

There is much to be learned from Ian Kershaw’s Hitler. It makes for disturbing reading. And so it should.

Paul Doolan is Head of History at Zurich International School.
www.pauldoolan.com

New Wednesday Paperbacks

2010-04-07T05:19:00.000-07:00

The Riddles of Wipers, John Ivelaw-Chapman (Pen & Sword)

An appreciation of The Wipers Times, the Private Eye of the Ypres Salient during the First World War, which was written by soldiers who fought in the trenches, was edited by a battalion commander in the Sherwood Foresters, and was distributed by ration-wagon and ammunition-mule.

England’s Schools: History, architecture and adaptation, Elain Harwood (English Heritage)

A history of the development of school buildings in England from the Reformation to the millennium, which explores how social attitudes have been expressed in their architecture and planning and considers which may be worthy of preservation.

Gay Life and Culture: A World History, ed. Robert Aldrich (Thames & Hudson)

In this illustrated history of gay life and culture, historians from nine different countries draw on memoirs, letters, archives, and works of art and literature to consider the evidence for same-sex relationships throughout the centuries.

Nurse on Call, Edith Cotterill (Ebury Press)

The author’s memoirs of her experience training as a nurse in Standon Orthopaedic Hospital and Margaret General and District Hospital in the 1930s and her work as a district nurse in Tipton, Staffordshire, in the 1950s.

Review and win one of the latest history books

2010-03-19T04:04:00.000-07:00

Every month, we offer our readers the opportunity to review some of the latest history publications and to have their review published on the History Today Books Blog. Here is our selection for March. To submit a review, please send an email to Kathryn Hadley (k.hadley[at]historytoday.com) specifying your choice of book. We will then send you the book with a one-month deadline to send us your review. Books will be sent on a first come first served basis. (Unfortunately, we are unable to send out books to the USA).

The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism, Joyce Appleby (Norton)
This introduction to capitalism, from its origins in a series of isolated changes in farming, trade and manufacturing in early-modern England to the present, approaches capitalism as a culture, as important for its ideas and values as for its inventions and systems.

Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry, Geoffrey Jones (Oxford University Press)
This history of the global beauty industry, from its emergence in the 19th century to the present day, charts the growth of today’s global giants, such as Avon, Coty, Estee Lauder and L’Oreal, revealing how successive generations of entrepreneurs built brands which shaped perceptions of beauty and the business organisations needed to market them.

Kennedy vs. Carter, Timothy Stanley (University Press of Kansas)
This reexamination of the primaries of the 1980 US presidential election contends that Edward Kennedy’s insurgent campaign was more popular than historians have presumed and was defeated primarily by historical accident rather than by its perceived radicalism.

Defying Empire, Thomas M. Truxes (Yale University Press)
An account of illicit trading by New York City merchants, some of whom became America’s Founding Fathers, during the Seven Years’ War, also known as the French and Indian War (1754-63).

Morris Minor, Martin Wainwright (Aurum)
To mark the 60th anniversary of the Morris Minor, designed by Sir Alec Issigonis in 1948, a history of Britain’s first mass-appeal car.

Parties and People: England, 1914-1951, Ross McKibbin (Oxford University Press)
A reinterpretation of British politics in the first days of universal suffrage, which explores the political culture of the time and reveals how class became one of the principal determinants of political behaviour.

Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250-1750, Euan Cameron (Oxford University Press)
This account of Western Europe’s long, complex dialogue with its own folklore and popular beliefs charts the rise, diversification, and decline of popular superstition in the European mind, from debates over the efficacy of charms and spells, to belief in fairies and demos.

Caesar’s Druids, Miranda Aldhouse-Green (Yale University Press)
This history of Europe’s ancient Druids explores the various roles that Druids played in British and Gallic society during the first centuries BC and AD, as a highly complex, intellectual and sophisticated group whose influence transcended religion and reached into the realms of secular power and politics.

The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Tim Judah (Yale University Press)
This third edition of Tim Judah’s account, first published in 1997, is updated to cover the overthrow of Milosevic, the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindic, the proclamation of independence by Kosovo and the arrest of Radovan Karadzic.

Catherine the Great, Simon Dixon (Profile Books)
Dixon’s biography of Catherine II of Russia (1728-1796) was shortlisted for the 2009 Longman-History Today Book of the Year Award.

New Wednesday Paperbacks

2010-03-17T05:33:00.000-07:00

Catherine the Great, Simon Dixon (Profile Books)
Dixon’s biography of Catherine II of Russia (1728-1796) was shortlisted for the 2009 Longman-History Today Book of the Year Award.

Approaching Chaos, Lucy Wyatt (O Books)
This study explores the origins of civilisation, including the origins of farming and urbanisation, the use of metaphysics, ultrasound and alchemy in ancient Egypt and the rise of Monotheistic religion and Christianity, highlighting what we can learn from the ancient past to help us reverse the economic, ecological and spiritual meltdown of the 21st century.

Maxime Weygand, Barnett Singer (McFarland & Company)
A biography of Maxime Weygand (1867-1965), who served as chief aid to Marshal Foch during the armistice proceedings and at the Peace Conference after the First World War and was commander in chief of the French army during the Second World War, which draws on French archival sources, oral testimony and Weygand’s private papers.

Defying Empire, Thomas M. Truxes (Yale University Press)
An account of illicit trading by New York City merchants, some of whom became America’s Founding Fathers, during the Seven Years’ War, also known as the French and Indian War (1754-63).

Reader Review: New York Undercover

2010-03-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

James Batty reviews New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era by Jennifer Fronc.

by James Batty,

This fascinating but frustrating book shines a light on the murky, seething, metropolitan world of New York City in the early 20th century. Jennifer Fronc, an assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, delves deep into the records kept by various social and moral activist organisations that formed and dissipated in these formative years for modern New York.

The book is fascinating for the detail it gives of the lives of ordinary working class people during this period. Organisations such as the Committee of Fourteen, the Committee of Fifteen and the National Civic Federation hired both professional private investigators and lay men and women to walk the streets of the city looking for vice or behaviour considered ‘disorderly’ and ‘immoral’ by the standards of these activist groups. This mainly involved going into bars, hotels, entertainment venues and other places of public gathering in the more insalubrious parts of town and either observing or actively encouraging vice-like or other lewd behaviour.

What emerges is a world full of vice, trickery and deception. The investigators themselves show through their reports that they took full part in this world, and noted down their experiences in a dispassionate detached voice. Fronc rightly questions the veracity of a number of these reports. In their dealings with prostitutes, for example, the investigators record that they go so far as to pay the women and wait until they get undressed before they make their excuses and leave. Some, however, omit to mention that they left at all – leaving a telling silence in the record, or perhaps just being more truthful that the others.

The characters are the most fascinating part of these reports. Fronc recounts the story of a gang war in Chinatown during this period, when the local criminal ‘godfather’ and sometime ‘mayor’ of Chinatown, Tom Lee, is challenged in his supremacy by the fantastically named Mock Duck. In another set of reports one investigator, Edward Barrows, emerges as a hero of child welfare in the notorious Hell’s Kitchen district. Barrows, working for the People’s Institute, moved into the area to become a ‘denizen of the street corners’, living there for an extended period of time and ingratiating himself to the locals. This way he was able to see the ‘criminal’ children for what they really were, just bored kids looking for something to do.

The reader is kept enthralled by such details, which run throughout the book. The only concern is that the argument can appear quite forced at times. The information is arranged well into different investigative areas and gently guides the reader through the period from the end of the 19th century to the 1920s. At times, however, the main argument can get lost in the detail, leaving the reader struggling to understand how one section is linked to another.

Nevertheless, the sheer vividness of these investigative reports shines through, begging even more questions about the lives of the investigators and the investigated in this lively and corrupt world. One particularly zealous investigator who begs for more attention is David Oppenheim, a specialist in getting into African American establishments, often by arguing at the door that he isn’t white but Cuban, and soliciting any prostitutes that might be on the premises. His skills at attracting these ladies of ‘low moral standards’ appeared strong at the beginning, but by the end, in 1919, Oppenheim was reduced to walking the deserted streets of Brooklyn at night desperately looking for prostitutes to entrap.

James Batty is a History Today reader. He has lived in New York and is particularly interested in the history of the city.

If you would like to review one of the latest history books, see our selection of books for reader review.

Last books for March

2010-03-15T09:30:00.000-07:00

Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250-1750, Euan Cameron (Oxford University Press)
This account of Western Europe’s long, complex dialogue with its own folklore and popular beliefs charts the rise, diversification, and decline of popular superstition in the European mind, from debates over the efficacy of charms and spells, to belief in fairies and demos.

Parties and People: England, 1914-1951, Ross McKibbin (Oxford University Press)
A reinterpretation of British politics in the first days of universal suffrage, which explores the political culture of the time and reveals how class became one of the principal determinants of political behaviour.

Finding Poland, Matthew Kelly (Random House)
By retracing the journey of his great grandmother and her two daughters from Siberia to Pakistan, when they were deported to the East following the partitioning of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, the author tells the story of his ancestors and of the thousands of other Poles who shared their fate of exile and displacement.

Caesar’s Druids, Miranda Aldhouse-Green (Yale University Press)
This history of Europe’s ancient Druids explores the various roles that Druids played in British and Gallic society during the first centuries BC and AD, as a highly complex, intellectual and sophisticated group whose influence transcended religion and reached into the realms of secular power and politics.

This week's new books

2010-03-15T09:24:00.000-07:00

Unequal Britain: Equalities in Britain since 1945, ed. Pat Thane (Continuum)
Addressing topics such as race, religion, gender identity and disability, this book considers both how far Britain has come, since 1945, in recognising inequalities that were previously rarely discussed or challenged, and how far we still have to go.

Lenin’s Brother: The Origins of the October Revolution, Philip Pomper (Norton)
The story of Alexander Ulyanov, Lenin’s brother, who, in 1886, joined a small group of students at St. Petersburg University to plot the assassination of Tsar Alexander III, but was hanged following the failure of their mission.

Kennedy vs. Carter, Timothy Stanley (University Press of Kansas)
This reexamination of the primaries of the 1980 US presidential election contends that Edward Kennedy’s insurgent campaign was more popular than historians have presumed and was defeated primarily by historical accident rather than by its perceived radicalism.

Monuments of the Incas, John Hemming (Thames & Hudson)
A new edition of this photographic and narrative survey of the major sites of the Inca Empire, first published in 1982, which incorporates results from the latest archaeological excavations and discoveries about Inca masonry techniques.

This week's new books

2010-03-15T06:13:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon, Michael O’Brien (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Early in 1815, Louisa Adams left St. Petersburg and set out on a voyage to meet her husband, John Quincy Adams, in Paris. The story of her journey through Eastern Europe, across the battlefields of Germany, and into France, which was experiencing the tumultuous events surrounding Napoleon’s return from Elba.

I Was Hitler’s Chauffeur, Eric Kempka (Pen & Sword)
A new edition of the memoirs of Erich Kempka, who served as Hitler’s personal driver and as one of the original members of Hitler’s bodyguard. His recollections begin in 1932, when he drove the Fuhrer around Germany during the election campaigns, and conclude with Hitler’s suicide on April 30th, 1945, and Kempka’s own attempt to escape Berlin.

A Tenth of a Second, Jimena Canales (University of Chicago Press)
In the mid-19th century, clocks recognised, for the first time, a tenth of a second. This book charts the history behind this infinitesimal interval and considers the lasting reverberations of this ‘perceptual moment’ for science, philosophy and mass media and its impact on our lives, history and culture.

The King’s Smuggler, John Fox (The History Press)
A biography of Jane Whorwood (1612-84), one of Charles I’s closest confidantes. When the court moved to Oxford, in 1642, she helped the royalist cause by spying for the king and smuggling gold to help pay for his army, and whilst Charles I was held captive, from 1646 to 1649, Whorwood set up correspondence networks, raised money and organised several escape attempts.

Reader review: Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed

2010-03-11T09:27:00.001-08:00

Continuing our series of reader reviews, Zbysek Brezina reviews Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed by Mary Heimann.

By Zbysek Brezina,

Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed, a book with a slightly provocative title written by American historian and senior lecturer at the University of Strathclyde, Mary Heimann, is a controversial revisionist account of the history of Czechoslovakia, from its birth in the fall of 1918 to its peaceful disaggregation in the winter of 1992.

Heimann’s educational background (DPhil in Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford) and scholarly opinions better fit the British revisionist school than the American one. She describes the Czech nation as ‘a mystical entity’ that has been wrongly represented in western historiography as a nation that was morally, economically and culturally ‘better’ than other nations in Central and Eastern Europe. In her own assessment of Czechoslovak history, based primarily on her two-year research effort in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Heimann argues that the Czechs were nationalists, if not chauvinists, who from the birth of the Czech Republic deliberately discriminated against minorities including Germans, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Hungarians, Jews and Gypsies with the goal of creating a homogenous society.

In the introductory chapter, the author outlines the history and geography of the Bohemian Crown Lands from the medieval age until the beginning of the Great War. The following chapter focuses on the political activities of the founder of Czechoslovakia, Tomas G. Masaryk, and of his two closest colleagues, the Czech Edvard Benes and the Slovak Milan Rastislav Stefanik, during the First World War. According to the author, the trio consciously tricked the western powers and therefore received their sympathy, and later their full political support, in Masaryk’s effort to establish the Czechoslovak Republic on the ruins of the Habsburg monarchy. Chapter three charts the establishment and interwar development of the First Republic, from the fall of 1918 until the infamous Munich Agreement in September of 1938. Although the Czechoslovak Republic was the only one that could be called democratic in that region at the time, Heimann fails to adequately credit this historical reality. In chapter four, the author deals with the so-called Second Republic and tries to convince the reader that Czech anti-semitism was not very different to German anti-semitism. She suggests that the West has only recognised Czech racism or xenophobia in recent years. In her description of the lives of Czechs in the German Protectorate and of the Slovaks in their First Republic, in the following chapter, Heimann concludes that, despite some dramatic moments, the lives of the majority of Czechs and Slovaks remained, on the whole, relatively unaffected.

The sixth and seventh chapters examine national cleansing, focusing on the cleansing of Sudeten Germans, which was particularly widespread in the immediate postwar period, and the unique Czechoslovak road to the communist dictatorship that followed. In the author’s opinion, both events were silently supported by the majority of Czechs. In chapters eight and nine, she argues that the events leading up to the well-known Prague Spring and later to the Soviet invasion were nothing other than a power struggle among the Czechoslovak communist leaders and explains how the nation was thereafter rapidly put ‘back to normal’ without any serious resistance. In chapter ten, Heimann considers the political, economic and cultural situation in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s, a time of political apathy, economic stagnation and of inner immigration amongst the majority of the non-communist population. She also analyses the steps that led to the Velvet Revolution, arguing that the revolution was not planned and ended happily only because international events took over domestic ones, rather than because there was a Czech readiness to get rid of communism. Heimann evaluates, in the final chapter, the various causes of the division of Czechoslovakia into two republics. She concludes that the 74-year-long Czechoslovak existence was relatively unsuccessful.

If Heimann’s views are correct, historians may need to redefine what we know about the origins of Czechoslovakia, democratic Czechoslovakia in the interwar period, the Protectorate, the brief semi-democratic period after the Second World War, the origins of the communist dictatorship, the Prague Spring, Normalization, the Velvet Revolution, and the Velvet divorce. However, this is not the case. Prior to the Second World War, the British Ambassador to Germany, Neville Henderson, considered the Czechs ‘a pig-headed race’ and Heimann’s views of the Czechs gives the reader a similar feeling. This is unsatisfactory for a historical study supposed to be written by an objective historian.

Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed, Mary Heimann (Yale University Press)

2010-01-29T03:10:00.000-08:00

New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era, Jennifer Fronc (University of Chicago Press)

A study of the private investigators employed by social activists in Progressive-era New York to uncover the roots of society’s problems and combat behaviour they viewed as sexually promiscuous, politically undesirable or criminal.

America, Empire of Liberty, David Reynolds (Penguin)

This one-volume history of the United States brings to life presidents from Washington to Obama, whilst also drawing on the voices of ordinary men and women. It reveals the grandeur and paradoxes of a country that offered liberty on a scale unmatched in Europe, but founded its prosperity on the labour of black slaves and the dispossession of the Native Americans.

Mobilizing Youth, Susan B. Whitney (Duke University Press)

An account of the formative years of the Young Communists and Young Christian Workers in France in the two decades following the First World War when they moved to the forefront of French politics, which also examines the ideologies of the movements, their major campaigns, their styles of political and religious engagement, and their male and female branches.

Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War, Marc Egnal (Hill and Wang)

A reinterpretation of the American Civil War from the 1820s through Reconstruction, which moves beyond the reigning orthodoxy that the American Civil War was waged over moral principles, to argue that economics was instead the main factor that moved the country to war.

The Classic Maya, Stephen D. Houston and Takeshi Inomata (Cambridge University Press)

This synthesis of the Classic Maya, who in the first millennium AD created courtly societies in and around the Yucatan Peninsula, reports on kings, queens, nobles, gods and ancestors, as well as the millions of farmers and other figures who lived in societies predicated on sacred kingship and varying political programs.

Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic, Paul A. Rahe (Cambridge University Press)

This study of John Milton, Marchamont Nedham, James Harrington and Thomas Hobbes, champions of the republican experiment conducted in England between 1649 and 1660, situates them with regard to the novel species of republicanism first promoted in the early 1500s by Machiavelli and examines the debt that they owed the Epicurean tradition in philosophy and the political science crafted by the Arab philosophers Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes.

New Paperbacks

2010-01-27T05:15:00.000-08:00

The Classic Maya, Stephen D. Houston and Takeshi Inomata (Cambridge University Press)
This synthesis of the Classic Maya, who in the first millennium AD created courtly societies in and around the Yucatan Peninsula, reports on kings, queens, nobles, gods and ancestors, as well as the millions of farmers and other figures who lived in societies predicated on sacred kingship and varying political programs.

Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic, Paul A. Rahe (Cambridge University Press)
This study of John Milton, Marchamont Nedham, James Harrington and Thomas Hobbes, champions of the republican experiment conducted in England between 1649 and 1660, situates them with regard to the novel species of republicanism first promoted in the early 1500s by Machiavelli and examines the debt that they owed the Epicurean tradition in philosophy and the political science crafted by the Arab philosophers Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes.

Awards of the George Cross, 1940-2009, John Frayn Turner (Pen & Sword)
This history of the George Cross, instituted by King George VI in September 1940 for non-combatant gallantry, charts each of the 160 acts of selfless courage by individual men and women that have earned the George Cross.

Hitler and Nazi Germany, Stephen J. Lee (Routledge)
A second revised edition of this introduction to Hitler’s rise to power and Nazi domestic and foreign polices through to the end of the Second World War, which includes new chapters on the Nazi regime, the SS and Gestapo, and the Second World War.

Reader review: Journalism's Roving Eye

2010-01-27T03:12:00.000-08:00

Nell Darby reviews Journalism’s Roving Eye by John Maxwelll Hamilton.

by Nell Darby,

Academic and former journalist John Maxwell Hamilton, in his latest book, attempts to explore the way the American media has reported foreign affairs since the days of the early settlers up to the period of the second Iraq War. It is a dense and meticulously researched book, but is perhaps inhibited rather than freed by its wide-ranging subject matter. Hamilton glosses over pre-20th century reporting, and is especially brief with 18th and early 19th century subjects, which is a shame, as this section has the scope to be particularly interesting.

Hamilton’s study focuses on white male reporters, editors and newspaper proprietors. The author justifies this approach by explaining that ‘the role of reporter was chiefly a man’s part’. However, he names enough female reporters, editors or publishers in passing to make one wonder why they are only mentioned in brief. The Associated Press’ Edith Lederer, as well as Marguerite Higgins and Katherine Graham, get a few mentions, but otherwise, women are grouped together in a single chapter, which is given the unfortunate heading ‘Send The Whole Bunch Of Them Packing’. Journalists such as Martha Gellhorn are virtually ignored, and female correspondents are marginalised from the main narrative.

Likewise, just one chapter is devoted to black reporters. This is equally inexcusable; Hamilton states that the first black newspaper in America was established in 1827, yet there is no mention of it in the somewhat cursory section of the book dealing with pre-20th century media, where a description of its establishment would have been timely and interesting. Rather than being part of the book’s roughly chronological sequence, it is instead relegated to one paragraph in the single chapter dedicated to ‘black journalism’. It is sad that race and gender are not seen as part of mainstream history.

The emphasis of the book is, inevitably, on war. John Maxwell Hamilton is particularly assured in his writing in the section of the book that covers the relatively recent events of the Vietnam War. Focusing on the events of the war, rather than on a particular personality, this chapter flows with greater ease than others. It considers a variety of reporters over a broader period of time, establishing their similarities and differences and how views shifted over the course of the war. The chapter also examines government propaganda and attempts by Kennedy, for example, to influence the media’s depiction of the war.

Because Hamilton began writing this book in 2000/2001 relatively little time is spent looking at modern conflicts such as Iraq or Afghanistan. The coverage of earlier wars cries out, however, for a detailed comparison of how modern conflict differs. In the last chapter, there are, nonetheless, references to citizen journalism and to modern examples of news bloggers, such as Iraq’s Salam Pax, which hint at the state of foreign reporting today. This chapter thus forms a natural epilogue, stressing the fact that journalism is in flux and that traditional forms of reporting are being replaced to a certain degree by internet-based dissemination of material and the use of accounts by non-media workers.

At times, the author’s style makes the narrative jerky. His use of separate boxes, alongside the main text, detracts from the narrative. Hamilton also includes certain statistics, which often lack contextualisation and adequate explanation as to how they contribute to the chapter and main argument. In some chapters the narrative is organised chronologically, but other accounts jump around in time, which also breaks up the narrative. Lastly, certain excerpts of original newspaper reports featured within the main text are overly long and would have benefitted from further editing.

The main problem with this book is that it is overly amibitious. It tries to cover too much; both too broad a period and too many types of media. It is still interesting; but would have been a more fulfilling read if Hamilton had focused on what he is more comfortable writing about, such as the Vietnam War. It is a history of US foreign reporting; but not a wholly satisfactory one.

Nell Darby is a freelance journalist, specialising in history and media. She is the author of Foul Deeds And Suspicious Deaths In The Cotswolds (Pen & Sword, 2009).

This week's new books

2010-01-25T09:45:00.000-08:00

A Very Brief History of Eternity, Carlos Eire (Princeton University Press)
In this history of the idea eternity in Western culture, from ancient times to the present, that author examines the rise and fall of five different conceptions of eternity, exploring how they developed and how they have helped shape individual and collective self-understanding.

New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era, Jennifer Fronc (University of Chicago Press)
A study of the private investigators employed by social activists in Progressive-era New York to uncover the roots of society’s problems and combat behaviour they viewed as sexually promiscuous, politically undesirable or criminal.

There Is No Freedom Without Bread, Constantine Pleshakov (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux)
A revisionist account of 1989 and the revolutions that took place during the same year challenges the conventional story of the end of the cold war, which focuses on the geopolitical power struggle between the United States, and argues that 1989 was as much about national civil wars and internal power struggles as it was about Eastern Europeans throwing of the yoke of Moscow.

Rethinking History, Dictatorship and War, ed. Claus-Christian Szejnmann (Continuum)
Focusing on European experiences of the First and Second World Wars and totalitarian dictatorships in the first half of the 20th century, this collection of essays explores three important themes of historical studies: the way history is or ought to be written, the nature of dictatorships and the nature of wars.

New review: The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome

2010-01-22T04:11:00.000-08:00

Paul Dukes reviews Roland Chambers' The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome.

by Paul Dukes,

When asked at Scotland Yard in 1919 what his politics were, Arthur Ransome answered ‘fishing’. Among his many publications were several on the same subject – competitors no doubt for the much-advertised book by J. R. Hartley. A similar English gentleman of the old school, Ransome is best known for his series on sailing and adventure in the Lake District, beginning with Swallows and Amazons, while his Old Peter’s Russian Tales will also be familiar to many readers. Rather less celebrated are his other Russian writings, in particular on aspects of the Revolution, which are the reason for ‘The Double Life’ subtitle of this most recent study by Roland Chambers who, following in the wake of other biographers, notably Hugh Brogan and Ted Alexander, subjects Ransome to further searching scrutiny. Undoubtedly, this is a most readable account and well-researched (if without notes or references). But there is one serious flaw.

Chambers errs in his assertion that Ransome was an uncritical apologist for the Bolshevik regime, romanticising Lenin and his associates rather than recognising them as ‘a gang of cut-throats’. More tellingly, he was a responsible reporter for the Manchester Guardian, describing what he witnessed, even if he provided a positive account radically different from that of nearly all other British observers. Thus, Ransome caught ‘that strange, incalculable x of revolutionary enthusiasms which… continuously provided miracles for the discomfiture of logicians’ as he himself put it in an article on the Russian Revolution that he wrote for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1926. To be sure, he was probably influenced by his love for Trotsky’s secretary. Possibly, too, as Chambers suggests, this nonconformity might well have stemmed from his youthful relationship with his father. For his own part, as Ransome wrote in the epilogue to his autobiography he had been ‘like a shuttlecock bandied to and fro by lunatics’. The events of which he wrote between 1917 and 1924 were indeed crazy as far as the traditional rules of his upbringing were concerned. Later, as Chambers eloquently argues, Ransome tried to reinvigorate those rules in Swallows and Amazons.

Paul Dukes is joint author (with Graeme P. Herd and Jarmo Kotilaine) of Stuarts and Romanovs: The Rise and Fall of a Special Relationship.

Reader review: Battle for the Castle

2010-01-20T10:02:00.000-08:00

In the latest of our reader reviews, Zbysek Brezina reviews Battle for the Castle by Andrea Orzoff.

by Zbysek Brezina,

Battle for the Castle: The Myth of Czechoslovakia, 1914-1918 is a result of the author, Andrea Orzoff’s, deep research interest in 20th-century East and Central European history. In particular, she explores the use of mass media in propaganda, the role of nationalism, and the origin and continuance of national mythologies in Czechoslovakia in the interwar period at home and abroad.

The book’s title, Battle for the Castle, refers not only to the Prague Castle, but also to an unofficial group of significant people (and sometimes to the organisations to which they were affiliated). More specifically, Orzoff considers the role that intellectuals played in supporting various national policies and programs created in interwar Czechoslovakia mainly by Tomas G. Masaryk (1850-1937), the founder and the first President of the Republic, and Edvard Benes (1884-1948), the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

In chapter one, the author argues that it was primarily professor Masaryk who, during his time in exile from December 1914 to 1918, created a positive image of Czechoslovakia as a politically and culturally progressive and pro-western nation in the eyes of the French, British and American intellectual elite. He was able to successfully seed these messages largely through propaganda concentrated in the hands of an assiduous Edvard Benes. This war propaganda strategy was thereafter brought home to the newly established Czechoslovak republic; keeping it alive was one of the most important tasks of the Castle group.

Chapter two explores the informal Castle organisation itself. In particular, the author examines the presidential chancellery, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the pro-Castle press and pro-Castle intellectuals (such as Karel Capek and Ferdinand Peroutka), as the main centres for gathering, evaluating, analysing and disseminating the Castle’s ideological, political and cultural ideas. Orzoff also emphasises the fact that although the Castle was an unofficial centre of power, it played one of the most vital roles in shaping Czechoslovak domestic politics, primarily through its struggle with Parliament and the party leaders who fully controlled the constitutional body.

In chapter three, the author addresses the complex issues of Czech (and partly Slovak) interwar nationalism and the key role that the Castle played in portraying Czechoslovakia as pro-western and almost transnational. This was in direct contrast to the Czech political Right, which put forward a chauvinistic and national model of Czechoslovak history. It is not surprising that newspapers and journals became major battlefields for this ideological exchange between the Castle intellectuals, led by Masaryk himself and his intellectual lieutenant Karel Capek, and opponents of the Castle. Furthermore, the rapidly growing popular support and ‘cult’ of Masaryk was another important part of this ‘mythical combat’.

Chapter four charts the development of Czechoslovakia’s position on the international scene, which, in the 1930s, in the face of the growing threat of Nazism, became increasingly complicated. The Czechoslovak position weakened not only in London, but also in France, Czechoslovakia’s key western supporter and guarantor of its security and independence. The 1920s and 1930s were times of hectic media duals between Czechoslovak and foreign propaganda, in which Czechoslovakia was constantly criticised for its artificiality and hypocrisy.

Orzoff concludes, in the final chapter, that the Munich Diktat meant the end of the interwar Czechoslovak myth about both itself and the nobility and trustworthiness of the West. However, as she persuasively demonstrates, Czechoslovakia was not just based on myth. Without doubt, in the interwar period, it was the most democratic and socially progressive country in its region. The Republic had its flaws, but in the end, the ‘Czech democracy failed because Europe failed’.

This well-written and researched study will be essential to anyone interested not only in Czechoslovak interwar history, but also in the impact of various national myths on our recent history. Orzoff’s study could have profited from more of her deep knowledge of her subject instead of using space to recapitulate well-known events. Another minor omission is a bibliography to supplement the book’s detailed notes. It will be very interesting to see the Czech readers’ reaction, if Orzoff’s work is ever translated and published in the Czech Republic. It may notably raise controversial questions and new ideas about Czech perceptions of the country’s recent history.

This week's new books

2010-01-18T03:42:00.000-08:00

Deadly Communion, Frank Tallis (Random House)
Set in Imperial Vienna, the story of Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt and psychoanalyst Dr Max Liebermann’s attempts to understand the behaviour of a ‘lust murderer’.

Regency Cheshire, Sue Wilkes (Robert Hale)
This portrait of Cheshire society at the beginning of the 19th century explores the scandals and pastimes of the elite families of the county, as well as the living conditions of farmers and factory workers. It charts the changes in the surrounding landscape with the development of the county’s transport system and considers how reform and revolution threatened the stability of the old social order.

The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City, Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak (Yale University Press)
This history of the Warsaw Ghetto, published for the first time in English, charts the ghetto’s evolution, detailing the daily experience of its thousands of inhabitants from its creation in 1941 to its liquidation following the uprising of 1943. It explores a range of topics from food supplies to education and religious activities to the structure of the Judenrat.

A Companion to American Military History, ed. James C. Bradford (Wiley-Blackwell)
Featuring over 60 scholarly essays, an analysis of the historiography of United States military events and experiences that have helped shape the character and culture of American society, from the colonial era to the present.

Reader Review: Dilly: The Man Who Broke Enigmas

2010-01-14T09:24:00.000-08:00

Catherine Flinn reviews Dilly: The Man Who Broke Enigmas by Mavis Batey.

by Catherine Flinn,

Although the literature on Second World War code-breaking, Bletchley Park, Enigma and Alan Turing and his peers is prolific, Dilly is a significant contribution to the existing scholarship. Mavis Batey is a former code-breaker who worked at Bletchley Park quite closely with her subject, Alfred Dillwyn Knox (1884-1943). However, the book is not – and does not read as – memoir. Rather, this is a noteworthy analytical work in its own right: it is well-written, thoughtful and thoroughly researched.

It is likely that there is no better author to have taken on the challenge of presenting the life and work of Knox, who has been both under-appreciated and overlooked. Mavis Batey was hired to work in the Government Code and Cipher School at the beginning of the war. Soon after, she was sent to Bletchley Park to work with Knox on breaking early Enigma messages. Batey worked with him until his death, in 1943, and continued to work at Bletchley Park until after the end of the Second World War.

The book successfully chronicles “Dilly” Knox’s important place in British history, documenting his ground-breaking work without over-glorifying his life, yet still giving proper credit where due. Readers are taken from his origins as a minister’s son who grew up solving logic problems, to his work as a Classics scholar with important publications in Greek literature, to the translation of that work into his interest in and talent for deciphering and code-breaking. Batey is able both to understand and detail his code-breaking theory and methodology. She also successfully contextualises Knox’s interest in the author, mathematician and logician Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), having published on the subject herself.

Although Alan Turing (1912-1954) has received most of the code-breaking acclaim, the reader comes to understand that Knox should have shared such recognition equally. Yet for many years - and still today - much of the relevant documentary evidence remains unavailable. Batey also provides a bigger picture, which highlights the importance of Dilly’s contributions to the war in general, from the British naval victory at Matapan to the role of code-breaking in the campaigns in North Africa and the Normandy landings.

Additional themes in the story continue to have contemporary significance: Dilly stressed the importance of sharing intelligence so that it got into the hands of those who needed it most and was useful. This same theme is in the forefront of today’s news, as the United States has admitted that security issues brought to light via the “Christmas Day bomber” (2009) resulted from a lack of cooperation within government intelligence organisations. Of current importance also is the ongoing science of encryption and decryption, used daily in modern communications, with scientists having recently demonstrated an ability to break mobile phone security. A final recurring theme is Dilly’s awareness – so often overlooked – that all the operators transmitting the coded messages were human, and made mistakes, and it was often the exploitation of these mistakes that gave the “way in” to getting a break.

Ralph Erskine’s introduction is very helpful if somewhat inflammatory: he is highly critical (though probably rightly so) of the British government’s over-classification and continued secrecy over documents, which could help set the record straight, rather than endanger current national security. The appendices – contributed by Ralph Erskine and Frank Carter – are a cryptanalyst’s dream and extremely helpful for anyone interested in the details of breaking Enigma. It would have been even more useful to have included photographs of the “rods” used, but this is a minor point.

The only real shortcoming of the book lies in the lack of scholarly sourcing. This is presumably not the author’s fault, since the editor is the journalist Michael Smith (who himself has published interesting work on both code-breaking and Bletchley Park), and the book is perhaps not intended to be used as a resource. Nevertheless, the hit-and-miss nature of the sourcing and style (no in-text numbers or notes) was very frustrating for an academic historian. Yet on the whole, this first publication off the new “press” of Dialogue is very impressive: historically significant and worthwhile reading for both historians, and anyone interested in problem-solving, code-breaking and certainly the Second World War.

Dilly: The Man Who Broke Enigmas, Mavis Batey (Dialogue)

Catherine Flinn is a PhD candidate in history at Oxford Brookes University. She is writing a thesis on the reconstruction of blitzed city centres in Britain after the Second World War.

New Wednesday Paperbacks

2010-01-13T03:32:00.000-08:00

America, Empire of Liberty, David Reynolds (Penguin)
This one-volume history of the United States brings to life presidents from Washington to Obama, whilst also drawing on the voices of ordinary men and women. It reveals the grandeur and paradoxes of a country that offered liberty on a scale unmatched in Europe, but founded its prosperity on the labour of black slaves and the dispossession of the Native Americans.

Mobilizing Youth, Susan B. Whitney (Duke University Press)
An account of the formative years of the Young Communists and Young Christian Workers in France in the two decades following the First World War when they moved to the forefront of French politics, which also examines the ideologies of the movements, their major campaigns, their styles of political and religious engagement, and their male and female branches.

Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War, Marc Egnal (Hill and Wang)
A reinterpretation of the American Civil War from the 1820s through Reconstruction, which moves beyond the reigning orthodoxy that the American Civil War was waged over moral principles, to argue that economics was instead the main factor that moved the country to war.

The Church of England in the Twentieth Century, Andrew Chandler (Boydell)
This study of the evolution of the Church of England in the second half of the 20th century examines the work of its archbishops and bishops, but also considers the Church’s relationship with the State, the changes within its central institutions, and the responses of the wider community to those changes.

This week's new books

2010-01-11T04:04:00.000-08:00

Sibelius: A Composer’s Life and the Awakening of Finland, Glenda Dawn Goss (University of Chicago Press)
A biography of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), set against the backdrop of Finland’s national awakening. It considers the composer’s relationships with his creative contemporaries with whom he worked to usher in a golden age of music and art that would endow Finns with a sense of national pride in their heritage and encourage their hopes for the possibilities of nationhood.

Ancient Rome: The Fall and Rise of an Empire 753 BC-AD 476, Patricia Southern (Amberley)
This ‘long’ history of Ancient Rome, from a settlement of primitive huts to a sophisticated city ruling and then losing an Empire, considers the lives of figures such as Julius Caesar, Augustus, Caligula and Nero, the successes and set-backs and what the Romans learned on their way to Imperial rule and final disintegration.

The Herald in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Katie Stevenson (Boydell)
A study of the diverse roles and experiences of heralds in foreign and domestic relations and chivalric culture in the late middle ages, which covers a range of European regions including Florence, Scandinavia, Poland, the German Empire, the Burgundian Low Countries, Brittany, Scotland and England.

The Fighting Temeraire, Sam Willis (Quercus)
This history of HMS Temeraire, portrayed in J.M.W. Turner’s iconic painting, provides a detailed picture of Britain’s maritime power at the climaxes of both the Seven Years War (1756-63) and the Napoleonic Wars (1798-1815) and covers various aspects of life in the sailing navy, including amphibious warfare, disease, victualling, mutiny and fleet battle.

New Year Paperbacks

2010-01-06T04:23:00.000-08:00

The State in Early Modern France, James B. Collins (Cambridge University Press)
This revised edition of Collins’ analysis of early modern Europe’s most important continental state, first published in 1995, examines recent debates on ‘absolutism’, presents a fresh interpretation of the Fronde and of French society in the 18th century, includes additional information on French colonies and overseas trade and ties recent theoretical work into a new chapter on Louis XIV.

Thomas Paine: A Collection of Unknown Writings, ed. Hazel Burgess (Palgrave Macmillan)
From personal correspondence and poetry to a piece revealing his thoughts on the monarchical system of Britain, this collection of hitherto unknown writings by Thomas Paine offers glimpses of the man of whom history still knows relatively little.

Tree of Rivers: The Story of the Amazon, John Hemming (Thames & Hudson)
An account of the struggles between explorers, missionaries, indigenous Indians, scientists, political extremists, prospectors and many more, that have taken place in order to utilise, protect and understand the Amazon region, illustrated with maps, contemporary engravings, paintings and sketches, as well as portraits of the main protagonists and modern-day photographs.

A Part of History: Aspects of the British Experience of the First World War, ed. Michael Howard (Continuum)
This collection of essays considers the British experience of the First World War, from debates about military revisionism, to the literature and music that the War inspired, the ways in which the theme of remembrance haunts our collective memory and, as the last survivors of the 1914-18 generation die out, how the British experience of the war is likely to be researched and written about in future.

New selection of books for reader reviews

2009-12-21T05:16:00.000-08:00

Every month, we offer our readers the opportunity to review some of the latest history publications and to have their review published on the History Today Books Blog. Here is the selection for December. To submit a review, please send an email to Kathryn Hadley (k.hadley[at]historytoday.com) specifying your choice of book. We will then send you the book with a one-month deadline to send us your review. Books will be sent on a first come first served basis. (Unfortunately, we are unable to send out books to the USA).

Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France, Ernest R. May (I.B. Tauris)
This study of the years leading up to the weeks of the Wehrmacht’s attack on Paris, in the spring of 1940, weaves together decisions of the high commands with the confused responses from exhausted and ill-informed officers in the field, to provide new insights into the tragic paradoxes of the battle for France.

A History of Modern Latin America: 1800 to the Present, Teresa A. Meade (Wiley-Blackwell)
This study of post-colonial Latin America analyses the major and minor political events that shaped Latin American history, while portraying the everyday lives of men and women from a variety of class, racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Hugh Brogan (Profile Books)

A biography of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), who wrote incisively on the nature of liberty and democracy and is now known as the prophet of democracy.

Journalism’s Roving Eye, John Maxwell Hamilton (Louisiana State University Press)

This history of American foreign news reporting, from its inception to the present day, chronicles the economic and technological advances that have influenced overseas coverage, as well as the personalities who shaped readers’ perceptions of the world across two centuries.

Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed, Mary Heimann (Yale University Press)
This political history of Czechoslovakia, from its founding in 1918 to partition in 1992, rejects the simplistic Western view that Czechoslovakia was simply a victim of its nationalistic German and Soviet neighbours, arguing, instead, that it was also a perpetrator of intolerant nationalism.

Kingmakers, Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac (W.W. Norton & Company)
The story of how the modern Middle East came to be, told through the lives of the Britons and Americans who shaped it, some of whom are famous (Lawrence of Arabia and Gertrude Bell) and others who have been largely forgotten (Sir Mark Sykes and A. T. Wilson).

The Killer Trail: A Colonial Scandal in the Heart of Africa, Bertrand Taithe (Oxford University Press)
The story of the Voulet-Chanoine mission (led by French army captains Voulet and Chanoine), which set out from Dakar to Lake Chad in November 1898 to establish territorial boundaries between the French and British empires, but degenerated into violence, pillage, murder and enslavement when Voulet and Chanoine declared their independence and set about establishing their own African kingdom.

This week's new books

2009-12-21T04:46:00.000-08:00

Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War, Alan Allport (Yale University Press)
Drawing on personal letters and diaries, newspapers, reports, novels and films, an account of the darker side of the homecoming experiences of ex-servicemen, their families and society at large, in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Famous Faces of the Spanish Civil War, Steve Hurst (Pen & Sword)
The story of the Spanish Civil War, from the Generals’ rebellion in the summer of 1936 to the destruction of Guernica, Barcelona and Franco’s victorious march, through the eyes of famous writers, artists and musicians who were involved in the conflict, such as Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Federico Lorca.

The Red Rose and the White, John Sadler (Longman)
This military and political account of the Wars of the Roses provides an analysis of key commanders and senior figures and explores troop movements and military thinking during the wars, as well as influential issues of the time such as morale, propaganda, disease and betrayal.

The Passage to Cosmos, Laura Dassow Walls (University of Chicago Press)
To mark the 240th anniversary of the birth of Alexander von Humboldt, this book explores his ideas for Cosmos, the book that crowned his career, and in which he offered to the world his vision of humans and nature as integrated halves of a single whole.

New Wednesday Paperbacks

2009-12-16T07:21:00.000-08:00

Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France, Ernest R. May (I.B. Tauris)
This study of the years leading up to the weeks of the Wehrmacht’s attack on Paris, in the spring of 1940, weaves together decisions of the high commands with the confused responses from exhausted and ill-informed officers in the field, to provide new insights into the tragic paradoxes of the battle for France.

A History of Modern Latin America: 1800 to the Present, Teresa A. Meade (Wiley-Blackwell)
This study of post-colonial Latin America analyses the major and minor political events that shaped Latin American history, while portraying the everyday lives of men and women from a variety of class, racial and ethnic backgrounds.

The English Civil War: A Historical Companion, Martyn Bennett (The History Press)
This history of the English Civil War covers the run-up to the conflict, the wars themselves and the aftermath. It provides an introduction to the main debates surrounding the Civil War, from the St Giles riots in Edinburgh in 1637 to the restoration of Charles II in May 1660, and includes biographies of all the key personalities, events, battles and military institutions.

Inside the Neolithic Mind, David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce (Thames & Hudson)
A study of the intricate web of belief, myth and society in the Neolithic period, when agriculture became a way of life and the society that we know today was born, which proposes new theories about the causes of an ancient revolution in cosmology and the origins of social complexity.

This week's new books

2009-12-14T07:58:00.000-08:00

Journalism’s Roving Eye, John Maxwell Hamilton (Louisiana State University Press)
This history of American foreign news reporting, from its inception to the present day, chronicles the economic and technological advances that have influenced overseas coverage, as well as the personalities who shaped readers’ perceptions of the world across two centuries.

In Defence of the Enlightenment, Tzvetan Todorov (Atlantic Books)
In this analysis of the heritage of the Enlightenment, Todorov defends the role of the Enlightenment as the philosophical cornerstone of the modern world and argues that the wisdom of the Enlightenment thinkers is as relevant today as it was in the 18th century.

Covert Action in the Cold War, James Callanan (I.B. Tauris)
Drawing on unpublished government records and documents, Callanan charts the growth of the CIA’s covert action arm, created to counter the challenge posed by the Soviet Union and its allies and to bolster American interests worldwide.

Cracking the Einstein Code, Fulvio Melia (University of Chicago Press)
An account of the events leading up to Roy Kerr’s cracking of the Einstein code, in 1963, forty years after the publication of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

Reader review: The Hemingses of Monticello

2009-12-10T04:08:00.000-08:00

Matthew Kilburn reviews The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed.

by Matthew Kilburn,

A society where one sector of the population were entitled to be owners of another sector principally on the grounds of skin colour and their, or their recent ancestors', continent of origin is remote from 21st-century Britain. It exists, nevertheless, in close historical proximity to it. Slavery and the slave trade were part of the foundations of the British colonial economy. The social implications of this were that a poor white man from Lancashire could leave Britain to become a domestic servant in Virginia, train for a profession there and become a slave-owner himself. Additionally, a white British sea captain could make an enslaved African woman pregnant and then be denied the possibility of living with his child and that mother. In Virginian law, it was a woman who transmitted her status, enslaved or free, to her offspring; and it is this enslaved African matrilineal descent which formally defined the Hemings family.

Annette Gordon-Reed’s The Hemingses of Monticello extends her work begun in her previous book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, on the sexual relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings – the enslaved, matrilineally black half-sister of his white wife Martha Wayles - and the identities of their children. In exploring the origins of the immediate ancestors of Sally Hemings, she carefully unhooks the veils placed across relations between black and white in the southern United States during and after the slave era.

Sally Hemings’s mother Elizabeth was the daughter of an African woman and a man identified in family tradition only as a 'Captain Hemings'; her father was Elizabeth Hemings’s owner at the time, the aforementioned Lancashire emigré John Wayles. Annette Gordon-Reed underlines, first of all, how slavery prevented the emergence of what would be regarded now and at the time as a normal family situation. When he married Martha Wayles, Thomas Jefferson became the inheritor of his father-in-law’s slaves, including his wife’s half-siblings. However, in the eyes of the law, this family relationship could not exist and it obscured and denied the kind of relationship which was part of everyday life in the south. For some male slave-owners like Jefferson their position as father and brother-in-law and uncle of an extended slave family, whose kinship with them could not be acknowledged publicly, offered an ideal ‘private’ patriarchal authority over men and women, free and unfree. In practice, it institutionalised denial and brutality.

The author’s background as a legal scholar leads much of the book to examine the Hemings family’s conundrum as a series of studies of the operation of the law in society. Slaves and their owners were human beings and displayed more human interrelationships than the law allowed. Jefferson seems to always have been conscious that the Hemingses were his wife's family; nevertheless, he placed an equal emphasis on their being his social and, in his view, racial inferiors too. His ties to the Hemingses were emotional, but also personally convenient. In maintaining their connection with him and keeping his brothers-in-law, Robert and John Hemings, as companions and confidential servants, Jefferson negotiated with the legal position of African Americans in Virginia, where after 1782 free blacks could be re-enslaved.

However, Gordon-Reed also explores gender relations as much as she does enslavement. Jefferson’s patriarchal understanding of his role in his 'family' has already been mentioned. Gordon-Reed could perhaps have emphasised that this was not just an idea peculiar to a slave society; in describing his slaves as his ‘servants’ in his family, perhaps Jefferson was adopting a translation convention, for an 18th-century Englishman would have considered his waged servants to be his ‘family’ too. There is a powerful irony in how far the term in the American south suggests to modern readers the biological ties which it partly masked in Sally Hemings’s day. Gordon-Reed furthermore notes, in several cases, Jefferson’s embarrassment with the female. In making Sally Hemings both his ‘concubine’ and his femme de chambre he was enabled to feel more like a man, not just because he had a regular – and subservient – sexual partner, but also because he could withdraw from part of the female sphere of the household.

The link between The Hemingses of Monticello and Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings leads to difficulties in referencing. On several occasions the endnotes refer somewhat frustratingly to the earlier book rather than to the evidence Gordon-Reed used when writing it. Her forensic approach to weighing what evidence there is concerning the lives of the Hemings family can sit ill with some of the more circumstantial assumptions about what Gordon-Reed’s historical actors thought in given situations. Yet this is difficult to avoid where there is compelling circumstantial evidence for an event. Gordon-Reed’s emphasis on movements and the newness of particular ideas – the American Revolution an initiator rather than a symptom of prevailing 'liberal’ political thought in North America and Europe - may strike those who view the age of revolutions as resulting from deep-seated ideas and practices in European institutions as only telling part of the story, but history is full of such chicken-and-egg questions. Ultimately, the book succeeds in challenging long-established prejudices against African American narratives in the history of the United States, and exposes the social and legal realities, as well as the culture of the extended families of intermingled free and unfree Americans.

The Hemingses of Monticello, Annette Gordon-Reed (Norton)

Matthew Kilburn is an independent historian. A former research editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, he is a regular contributor to its online edition. He has also contributed to The Cambridge Handel Encyclopaedia and Time And Relative Dissertations In Space: Critical Perspectives on Doctor Who.

The first books of December

2009-12-07T05:38:00.000-08:00

What Needled Cleopatra… and other little secrets airbrushed from history, Phil Mason (JR Books)
From William Tell and Charlie Chaplin to Abraham Lincoln, Hitler, Einstein and Karl Marx, What Needled Cleopatra provides an insight into the foibles and complex personalities of some of the most famous figures of history.

Constantine: Unconquered Emperor, Christian Victor, Paul Stephenson (Quercus)
A survey of the life and enduring legacy of the emperor, who, in 312, marched on Rome to establish his control over the western half of a divided Roman Empire, converted to Christianity and ended the persecution of its adherents, and founded Constantinople as a new Christian capital set apart from Rome’s pagan past.

Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed, Mary Heimann (Yale University Press)
This political history of Czechoslovakia, from its founding in 1918 to partition in 1992, rejects the simplistic Western view that Czechoslovakia was simply a victim of its nationalistic German and Soviet neighbours, arguing, instead, that it was also a perpetrator of intolerant nationalism.

The Soldier: A History of Courage, Sacrifice and Brotherhood, Darren Moore (Icon Books)
Based on first-hand accounts of warfare from combatants across the world, an analysis of the politics, human emotions and psychology behind soldiering, which focuses on the period from the Napoleonic Wars to the Global War on Terror.

New Wednesday Paperbacks

2009-12-02T09:29:00.000-08:00

Alexis de Tocqueville, Hugh Brogan (Profile Books)
A biography of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), who wrote incisively on the nature of liberty and democracy and is now known as the prophet of democracy.

Science of Islam: A History, Ehsan Masood (Icon Books)
From Musa al-Khwarizmi who developed algebra in 9th-centry Baghdad to al-Jazari, a 13th-century Turkish engineer whose achievements include the crank, an account of the Islamic scientific revolution between 700 and 1400.

Kingmakers, Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac (W.W. Norton & Company)
The story of how the modern Middle East came to be, told through the lives of the Britons and Americans who shaped it, some of whom are famous (Lawrence of Arabia and Gertrude Bell) and others who have been largely forgotten (Sir Mark Sykes and A. T. Wilson).

Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women, Jenny Hartley (Methuen)
The story of Urania Cottage, which Charles Dickens founded in Shepherd’s Bush, in 1847, as a hostel for destitute young women in London in an attempt to rehabilitate the residents and prepare them for a normal life as domestic servants in Britain’s expanding colonies.

This week's new books

2009-11-30T04:13:00.000-08:00

The Killer Trail: A Colonial Scandal in the Heart of Africa, Bertrand Taithe (Oxford University Press)
The story of the Voulet-Chanoine mission (led by French army captains Voulet and Chanoine), which set out from Dakar to Lake Chad in November 1898 to establish territorial boundaries between the French and British empires, but degenerated into violence, pillage, murder and enslavement when Voulet and Chanoine declared their independence and set about establishing their own African kingdom.

Samuel Johnson: A Life, David Nokes (Faber and Faber)
This biography looks beyond Samuel Johnson’s public persona and beyond the Johnson that Boswell created to consider Johnson's early life and his relationships with his first wife, Tetty Porter, his family and with Mrs Thrale.

The Fighting Tudors, David Loades (The National Archives)
This history of the Tudors explores the dynasty’s major conflicts, from campaigns in Scotland and France to the crises of the Armada, revealing their public and private impact upon successive monarchs and how military action to defend the throne became a sophisticated propaganda tool.

Troubadour, Mary Hoffman (Bloomsbury)
A tale of persecution and poetry, love and war, set in southern France in 1208, when Bertran, a troubadour, witnesses the murder of the Pope’s legate and risks his life to warn others of the war that he knows will follow this act.

New Wednesday Paperbacks

2009-11-25T02:41:00.000-08:00

A Cultural History of Climate, Wolfgang Behringer (Polity Press)
An introduction to the latest historical research on the development of the earth’s climate, which focuses on cultural reactions to climate change through the ages and reveals how even minor changes in the climate sometimes resulted in major social, political and religious upheavals.

God and the Founders: Madison, Washington and Jefferson, Vincent Philip Muñoz (Cambridge University Press)
Through an analysis of Madison’s, Washington’s and Jefferson’s public documents, private writings and political actions, God and the Founders explains the Founders’ competing church-state political philosophies and provides an insight into how they would have dealt with current church-state issues such as prayer in public schools and government support of religion.

The Arts of Intimacy, Jerrilynn D. Dodds, Maria Jose Menocal and Abigail Krasner Balbale (Yale University Press)
Focusing on its arts, architecture, poetry and prose, this illustrated book explores medieval Castilian culture and the Arabic, Hebrew and Latin strands that are inextricably woven into its fabric.

The Germans on the Somme, David Bilton (Pen & Sword)
Featuring over 250 original black and white photographs, this illustrated book charts the activities of the German Army on the River Somme throughout the long years of The Great War from the German perspective.

This week's new books

2009-11-23T03:18:00.001-08:00

Five to Rule Them All, David L. Bosco (Oxford University Press)
Drawing on extensive research including interviews with serving and former ambassadors on the council, this story of the creation UN Security Council provides an insight into the political battles and personality clashes amongst its five permanent members and its role in the postwar world.

Battle for the Castle, Andrea Orzoff (Oxford University Press)
An account of how the founding myth of Czechoslovakia as an ideal democracy became enshrined in Czechoslovak and European history. The myth was forged by Masaryk and Benes, the creators of the informal political organisation known as the Hrad or ‘castle’ that fought to set the country’s political agenda and advance this myth.

Ancient Greece: A History in Eleven Cities, Paul Cartledge (Oxford University Press)
This history of Ancient Greece, from the first documented use of the Greek language around 1400BC to the foundation of the Byzantine empire in around AD 330, focuses on eleven major Greek cities to illuminate the most important and enduring themes in Greek history including politics, trade, travel, slavery, gender, religion and philosophy.

Literature and Domestic Travel in Early Modern England, Andrew McRae Cambridge University Press)
A study of the meanings of mobility and the relationship between domestic travel and the emergence of new models of nationhood and identity in the early modern period, when it was commonly viewed that people should know their places both geographically and socially and domestic travel remained highly controversial.

Send us your review and win one of the latest history books

2009-11-18T04:52:00.000-08:00

Every month, we offer our readers the opportunity to review some of the latest history publications and to have their review published on the History Today Books Blog. Here is this month's selection.

To submit a review, please send an email to Kathryn Hadley (k.hadley[at]historytoday.com) specifying your choice of book. We will then send you the book with a one-month deadline to send us your review. Books will be sent on a first come first served basis. (Unfortunately, we are unable to send out books to the USA).

Battle for the Castle, Andrea Orzoff (Oxford University Press)
An account of how the founding myth of Czechoslovakia as an ideal democracy became enshrined in Czechoslovak and European history. The myth was forged by Masaryk and Benes, the creators of the informal political organisation known as the Hrad or ‘castle’ that fought to set the country’s political agenda and advance this myth.

Five to Rule Them All, David L. Bosco (Oxford University Press)
Drawing on extensive research including interviews with serving and former ambassadors on the council, this story of the creation UN Security Council provides an insight into the political battles and personality clashes amongst its five permanent members and its role in the postwar world.

The Pyramids: Their Archaeology and History, Miroslav Verner (Atlantic Books)
An introduction to the science and history of the pyramids set in the context of ancient Egyptian culture and politics.

Inside the Kingdom, Robert Lacey (Hutchinson)
A portrait of the Saudi state and society, which recounts, for example, how Bin Laden and his Arab fighters in Afghanistan were fostered by both the US and Saudi governments, the background to the seizure of Mecca’s Grand Mosque and the tragedy of the ‘Qateef Girl’, in the voices of the Saudis themselves.

How Terrorism Ends, Audrey Kurth Cronin (Princeton University Press)
Based on a wide range of historical examples, including the anti-tsarist Narodnaya Volya, Peru’s Shining Path and the Provisional IRA, this study of the demise of terrorist groups over the past two centuries, outlines how we might strategically approach today’s terrorist groups and the fight against al-Qaeda.

A Cultural History of Climate, Wolfgang Behringer (Polity Press)
An introduction to the latest historical research on the development of the earth’s climate, which focuses on cultural reactions to climate change through the ages and reveals how even minor changes in the climate sometimes resulted in major social, political and religious upheavals.

God and the Founders: Madison, Washington and Jefferson, Vincent Philip Muñoz (Cambridge University Press)
Through an analysis of Madison’s, Washington’s and Jefferson’s public documents, private writings and political actions, God and the Founders explains the Founders’ competing church-state political philosophies and provides an insight into how they may have dealt with current church-state issues, such as prayer in public schools and government support of religion.

Reader review: Terrorism: A History

2009-11-17T05:54:00.000-08:00

In our series of reader reviews, Lee Ruddin reviews Terrorism: A History by Randall D. Law.

by Lee Ruddin,

It may well be instructive for today’s historian to look to the past for insight. Not least so the author can remind readers that jihadist terrorism is not a modern creation, but rather the latest in a long line of deadly movements. Randall D. Law says as much on the opening page of Terrorism: A History: ‘Terrorism is as old as human civilization […] and as new as this morning’s headlines’ (p.1). This is not to say, however, that Law rewrites the rulebook about ‘historians’ natural predisposition against generalising’ (p.5). Although terrorism evidently flows through the veins of history, Law abstains from providing ‘historical lessons’ (p.9), preferring instead to ‘see above, around, and behind every issue’ (viii).

Conscious of the definitional ‘minefield’ (p.2) that surrounds the term terrorism, Law opts for a three-pronged approach and illuminates the phenomenon tactically, symbolically and culturally. It is this axis, as well as individuals’ and movements’ overall historical significance, that guides the author’s selection of material and narrative, rather than the more traditional body count or their current scale of activity. For this reason, Karl Heinzen (1809-1880), Nikolai Morozov (1854-1946) and Carlos Marighella (1911-1969) feature as prominently as la Grande Terreur, the Tamil Tigers and al-Qaeda.

Taking the theme of culture, the author - unlike Michael Burleigh and his ambivalently titled Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism (2008) - presents the cultural ‘environments that gave their acts meaning’ (p.5). This is followed by an investigation into state terror (and much more recent counter-terror measures), something Law - like John Merriman, author of The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siècle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror (2009) - believes to be an essential ingredient in any historical treatment of terrorism.

There is a very good reason why most tracts begin in the late 18th century: political terrorism emerged as a concept only in 1793. However, this did not stop Brett Bowden and Michael T Davis, editors of Terror: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism (2008), from beginning their study with the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Neither, indeed, has it prevented Law from taking us back to the Sicarii in 1st-century Judea. However, unlike the aforementioned editors, whose account is dictated by dates and ends with the 2005 London bombings, Law follows details and, in particular, the terrorists’ timeless trait: ‘their willingness to see the civilians they claim to represent as ultimately expendable, necessary sacrifices to the greater cause’ (p.28). As we soon learn, this sort of cold-blooded calculation was not limited to the pre-modern world; both Russian revolutionaries in the 19th century and the FLN in Algiers in the 20th century adopted a similar strategy.

Conversely, what is most refreshing is that Law includes in his study the 19th- and 20th-century movement hitherto considered outside the remit of ‘terrorism studies’, namely white supremacist terrorism.

The author is at his passionate best when chronicling the ‘system of thinly veiled state terror’ (p.135) in America in the late 1860s and early 1920s. Notwithstanding it being one of Law’s shortest chapters, tomorrow’s author will feel compelled to include yesterday’s campaign of raping and lynching in any treatise.

Law’s sections on anarchism and Northern Ireland - to name but two - are as concise as either of the Very Short Introductions on those respective areas; the author omitting history a novice historian would more than likely incorporate.

Publisher and author alike are to be congratulated on what is an error-free and well-presented book with a sprinkling of black and white images. The only reservation would be that the author has a tendency to over-quote. That said, Law is not casual with his sources (a criticism levelled at Burleigh), nor are they dated (another criticism directed at Bowden and Davis). Surprisingly, though, some stones do go unturned. However, the exhaustive bibliography directs the reader to further reading on the boomerang policy of prisoner exchange/release and the overlooked state-sponsoring of terrorism.

Although aimed primarily at an academic audience, Terrorism: A History is not beyond the reach of the general reader. Nevertheless, written in a chronological and comprehensive fashion, Law’s study provides the main reading for any political theory or international relations course and remains particularly suited to the university student.

Terrorism: A History, by Randall D. Law (Polity Press)

Lee Ruddin is Roundup Editor at History News Network.

This week's new books

2009-11-16T05:25:00.000-08:00

Pashas: Traders and Travellers in the Islamic World, James Mather (Yale University Press)
The Levant Company was established in 1581 and, long before the age of European imperialism, Britons known as Pashas travelled to the East to seek their fortunes in the Ottoman Empire. Ranging across two and a half centuries, Pashas charts the origins of the company’s trade in the Middle East and recollects the everyday existence of Britons living there.

Inside the Kingdom, Robert Lacey (Hutchinson)
A portrait of the Saudi state and society, which recounts, for example, how Bin Laden and his Arab fighters in Afghanistan were fostered by both the US and Saudi governments, the background to the seizure of Mecca’s Grand Mosque and the tragedy of the ‘Qateef Girl’, in the voices of the Saudis themselves.

The Roman Conquests: Italy, Ross Cowan (Pen & Sword)
This first volume in The Roman Conquests series charts Rome’s earliest struggles to conquer peninsular Italy, the first stage in their domination of an empire stretching from Scotland to the Sahara desert, but one that has been often obscured by their later conquests of Gaul, for example.

How Terrorism Ends, Audrey Kurth Cronin (Princeton University Press)
Based on a wide range of historical examples, including the anti-tsarist Narodnaya Volya, Peru’s Shining Path and the Provisional IRA, this study of the demise of terrorist groups over the past two centuries, outlines how we might strategically approach today’s terrorist groups and the fight against al-Qaeda.

Reader review: Latrinae et Foricae

2009-11-12T09:53:00.000-08:00

In our series of reader reviews, here is the latest review of Barry Hobson’s Latrinae et Foricae: Toilets in the Roman World.

by Désirée Scholten,

Latrinae et Foricae opens with the question ‘why, you may ask, a book on Roman toilets?’, words which were a relief to me (no pun intended), as they reveal that the author is conscious of the oddity of his chosen topic. And yet, who can deny that the lavatory has become one of the most important rooms in our homes? My second question, ‘Why would anyone do this?’, was also answered almost immediately. The author was, until his retirement, a GP. His career combined with his studies in archaeology at the University of Bradford ‘caused an interest in hygiene and disease [in relation to] the distribution of latrines in the community and their situation within individual buildings […] and perception of the development of the provision of facilities over time […].’

However, this trend of answering questions is limited to the preface. The main shortcoming of Hobson’s book lies in its organisation. The first three chapters provide an introduction to toilets in the Roman world, Roman Britain, and Pompeii. They essentially constitute a summary of recent excavation projects during which toilets have been found. However, whilst the appearances of the objects are described and some contextualising facts provided, no interpretative conclusions are drawn. It is not until the last two chapters (chapters 12 and 13) that the reader understands the purpose of the previous descriptive chapters about relatively unfamiliar artefacts. Thus the various features of individual types of lavatories, which are described at length in the first three chapters, are eventually interpreted. To an extent, chapters 12 and 13 should be read first in order to make full sense of the preceding ones.

With the exception of the last two chapters and two others about drains and the location of toilets, the book tends to lack criticism. Hobson has carried out a lot of work in the field and his expertise is obvious from the thoroughness of the examples used. His book is also well-argued; however, in the sections where the author has to lean on secondary literature this attitude disappears. The book fails to move beyond given theories and to explain the pros and cons of a particular theory as given by other authors, or the author’s own opinion on the matter. In pages 81-82, for example, Hobson asks a very legitimate question about gender and the use of toilets and issues of privacy and modesty. He presents the views of various authors, but no real answers are given and the author reassumes his discussion on shared and separate toilets with modern assumptions on gender and embarrassment.

Moreover, Hobson tends to make references to classical literature without considering the specific genre of the works which he quotes. This is particularly true when quoting satiric plays, for example. The author’s interpretations of certain quotes are also, at times, unconvincing. Hobson quotes the Latin poet Martial (p.111), for example: ‘Philaenis wears purple-dyed garments every night and day, but she is not ostentations or haughty, she likes the odour, not the colour.’ He concludes from this quote that Philaenis wears purple because the smell of the purple dye disguises her body odour. But that is not what it says; it says that she likes the scent. In this case, Hobson’s conclusion is in my view a bit premature and needs further explanation to convince me.

Latrinae et Foricae is primarily a survey rather than a well-balanced study on a new topic. Much more could have been made of it, especially since the many pictures of the sites make it easy to follow the author’s descriptions. With its detailed descriptions and illustrations, the book is of great value to those who are already familiar with the topic. However, many chapters lack critical assessment to the extent that the book remains, above all, an inventory of lavatories.

Latrinae et Foricae: Toilets in the Roman World, Barry Hobson (Duckworth)

Desiree Scholten is an MA student in Medieval Studies at the University of Utrecht.

New Wednesday Paperbacks

2009-11-11T05:31:00.000-08:00

The Pyramids: Their Archaeology and History, Miroslav Verner (Atlantic Books)
An introduction to the science and history of the pyramids set in the context of ancient Egyptian culture and politics.

100 Must-read Historical Novels, Nick Rennison (A&C Black)
This latest guide in the Bloomsbury Must-Reads series describes 100 of the finest historical novels with a further 500 recommendations and features an introduction with an overview of the genre from the time of Sir Walter Scott to the present day.

Owl, Desmond Morris (Reaktion Books)
Owl explores the natural and cultural history of owls, describing their evolution into today’s numerous species and wide distribution around the world. The author explains the folk tales, myths and legends of many native peoples in which owls occur, as well as discussing examples of owls in art, film, literature and popular culture.

History Meets Fiction, Beverley Southgate (Longman)
An account of the contentious relationship between history and fiction set in a broad historical and philosophical context. Based on case studies, the author shows how authors, such as Dickens, Proust, Virginia Woolf and Penelope Lively, often anticipated historians in their discussions of issues of truth, objectivity memory and identity.

This week's new books

2009-11-09T01:52:00.000-08:00

Dilly: The Man Who Broke Enigmas, Mavis Batey (Biteback Publishing)
A biography of Alfred Dillwyn Knox, one of the leading figures in the British codebreaking successes of the two world wars, written by Mavis Batey who worked alongside him at Bletchley Park to help him break the German Enigma ciphers.

Carmarthen Pals, Steven John (Pen & Sword)

The latest publication in the Pals series of books and illustrated with original photographs, maps, diagrams, personal accounts and letters, Carmarthen Pals charts the history of the 15th (service) battalion, one of the early units raised by Kitchener in 1914 to meet the demands of the First World War.

The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere and Modern Environmentalism, Harriet Ritvo (University of Chicago Press)
The story of the battle for Thirlmere in the Lake District between conservationists and developers in the 1870s, when the city of Manchester bought the site and converted it into a reservoir. Exploring Victorian ideas about industry, development and technology, the author shows how the lessons learned at the time can inform modern environmental campaigns.

The Fossil Hunter, Shelley Emling (Palgrave Macmillan)
In 1811, when she was twelve years old, Mary Anning discovered the first dinosaur skeleton. At a time when it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct, her discovery was considerably significant to the scientific world and sparked the debates about evolution.

Reader Review: The German Myth of the East

2009-11-04T03:45:00.000-08:00

Here is our latest reader review of Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius’ The German Myth of the East.

By Eric Limbach,

The title of this work is something of a misnomer. Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius is very clear that the past two centuries have seen no single overarching or monolithic 'German Myth of the East.' Rather, he argues, there were many such myths, some barely more than faint perceptions, others thoroughly engrained through generations of contact. Furthermore, the myths that the author considers are, more often than not, deeply contradictory. Readers with even a passing familiarity with European history will undoubtedly expect a book focused on ideas of violent conquest and German domination. On this account, Liulevicius does not disappoint, but he also presents a much broader picture.

For example, stories of the medieval Teutonic Order and its crusades against the native Prussians and other groups provided the justification for many German actions in Eastern Europe during both world wars (and many smaller wars as well). Yet for every Marienburg, Tannenberg or Barbarossa, there were many other approaches, less violent if no less prejudiced. A recurring theme is the perennial German criticism of ‘Polish management’: the perceived contrast between German skills for clearing forests, draining swamps and creating arable land and the Polish inability to make or maintain such improvements by themselves. These ideas have deep roots in German self-perceptions, and were used as a justification for German colonisation and improvement of unoccupied (and, quite often, Pole-occupied) land well into the 20th century, as well as to criticise Polish control over former German territory after the Second World War.

This contrast between an imposed Germanic order displacing Slavic disorder is thus one persistent and recurring image of the German East. However, Liulevicius notes that even such widespread sentiments were occasionally forgotten or overlooked. Many German liberals and academics supported the Polish uprising of November 1830, adopting the Poles' cause as a surrogate for their own nationalism. Others, like the Hanover-born linguist Georg Sauerwein, sought an active role among the non-German inhabitants of Eastern Europe. In Sauerwein's case, his zeal to prevent the Lithuanian language from dying out in East Prussia led him to criticise Germanisation policies enacted by Bismarck's government. In his support for Lithuanian nationalism, Sauerwein spent two decades living in the area and eventually adopted the Lithuanian name Jurgis Sauerveinas.

While the work's primary focus is on Germany and northern Europe, from the Elbe to the Baltic coast and beyond, Liulevicius does not overlook the Austrians, whose own East stretched down the Danube to Romania and south through the Balkans. In particular, it was the Imperial Austrian notion of internal conflicts along a ‘language frontier' that had a significant impact on both German-speaking states at the turn of the 20th century. This helped to shape later Austrian attitudes towards both their larger German-speaking neighbour and their former Slavic imperial subjects.

Cataloguing this wide spectrum of myths, ideas and perceptions is an ambitious task and one that several generations of German scholars have taken on, with varying degrees of success. However, as the author argues, for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, such attempts were themselves bound up with these myths, and often sought to perpetuate one or another set of views. Proponents of this 'East Research' or Ostforschung prospered under both dictatorships and democratic regimes, even as they adapted their research to the political climate of the time. Only in the past two or three decades have German-language scholars begun to come to terms with this part of their academic past.

Although he may not make such an explicit claim, Liulevicius' focus on one of the most problematic aspects of German identity has resulted in nothing less than his own brief history of Germany. While that history may be, as some scholars have argued, a 'long march west', his work shows that the occasional 'glance over the shoulder' has not been missed.

The German Myth of the East, Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius (Oxford University Press)

Eric Limbach is a PhD student at Michigan State University where he is completing a thesis on East German refugees.

New November Books

2009-11-02T02:06:00.000-08:00

Uranium Wars: The scientific rivalry that created the nuclear age, Amir D. Aczel (Palgrave Macmillan)
A history of uranium and of the competition amongst a generation of scientists to discover its properties and harness its potential, which draws on newly opened archives to reassess the role of the physicist Heisenberg in the German nuclear programme during the Second World War.

Portugal in European and World History, Malyn Newitt (Reaktion Books)

An account of Portuguese history from initial contacts with the Moors, to the development of trade with western Africa, the Salazar regime and the country’s liberal revolution of 1974.

Voices Against War: A Century of Protest, Lyn Smith (Mainstream Publishing)
Based on nearly 200 personal testimonies from the Imperial War Museum Collections, the stories of those who participated in anti-war protests over the course of the 20th century, from the First World War, to the Second World War, the Falkland Islands invasion, the Gulf War and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, William Dalrymple (Bloomsbury)
Based on the life stories of nine different people who each take a different religious path, this travel book explores how traditional forms of religious life in South Asia have been transformed in the vortex of the region’s rapid change.

New reader review: Popular Culture in Ancient Rome

2009-10-29T09:29:00.000-07:00

We published two reader reviews in September, for the first time. Here is the first of our latest selection of October reviews, a review of Jerry Toner’s Popular Culture in Ancient Rome.

by Meghan Burton,

Roman history often focuses on the elite, the movers and shakers of the Roman world. However, they represented in reality only a small proportion of the population. Rather than adding to the imbalance, in Popular Culture in Ancient Rome, Jerry Toner chooses to focus on the non-elites of the Roman world, both free men and slaves, and to examine how they may have felt and reacted to events through their own popular culture. He includes chapters exploring such unusual topics as the public mental health, their ability to solve problems, and their reaction to sensory stimuli. He considers the relations of the non-elite, and their reactions not only to the elite, but also to each other and to the circumstances that they may have encountered on a daily basis.

Jerry Toner's book is carefully constructed to appeal to both academics and non-academics. He provides great detail, theory, and many examples and endnotes, as well as humour and modern-day references in order to appeal also to those who may be less familiar with Roman history. For example, he combines the two in his chapter on popular resistance:

‘It is important to realize that resistance does not always have to be of the
heroic 'I'm Spartacus' kind. There is a sliding scale of resistance, ranging
from the occasional drama of open rebellion to the oblique and passive
opposition of everyday life.’

Similarly, in his chapter on mental health, Toner first includes a relevant and interesting example, literary records of the first Christian monk evaluated by a modern psychiatrist. He then provides a modern-day evaluation of what constitutes mental illness, and finally delves into the historical detail of non-elite Romans and their own mental health. Although these first sections may be of less interest to the professional, for the casual reader, they provide essential background information and an opportunity to understand a foreign culture through contemporary life.

The author later flips mentally instable and rude behaviour on its head to help explain non-elite Roman subversion, for example, and even writes about how Christianity in its early stages served as a peaceful point of rebellion to challenge the norms of Roman society. Acting differently - which is often all it takes to be considered insane - non-elites could take some control. Without his initial exploration of mental illness, this would not make much sense, and, more importantly, would not shed the essential light it does on how very different
Roman society was from modern society. Overall, Toner's style enables the reader to fully understand and learn throughout his intriguing book.

It is in demonstrating how vastly different, and yet eerily similar, Roman popular culture was to our own that Toner shines. In somewhat broad and impersonal terms, he highlights how incredibly difficult Roman life was by considering incomes, food shortages, and life expectancies; but the data is thereafter humanised though the inclusion of excerpts about familiar and heart-wrenching subjects such as mother's grief over losing her very young children. Throughout his history, Toner states the cold, hard facts neatly juxtaposed with these familiar examples to enable his readers to truly picture popular Roman society. He achieves his stated goal and then goes a little bit further to provide an informative and engaging history that should appeal to all readers with any interest in imperial Rome.

Meghan Burton is studying for an MA in Medieval Studies at the University of York.
Here is the link to her blog http://www.chikune.com/blog

A new selection of books in now available for reader reviews. For further information, visit the History Today Books Blog.

New Wednesday Paperbacks

2009-10-28T02:24:00.000-07:00

A History of Modern Britain: 1714 to the Present, Ellis Wasson (Wiley-Blackwell)
This introduction to the history of the modern British Isles, from the Hanoverian succession to the present day, explores the period’s major events, the relationships between Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland and the development of their unique national identities.

The House of Lords in the Age of George III (1760-1811), M.W. McCahill (Wiley-Blackwell)
This assessment of the place of 18th-century peerage and House of Lords creates a variegated portrait of the nobility and challenges the assumption that the Lords remained a creature of the crown.

Penguin Dictionary of British Surnames, John Titford (Penguin)
This new edition contains over 10,000 surnames and provides an insight into how our names reflect Britain’s past.

Chaucer’s London: Everyday Life in London 1342-1400, A.R. Myers (Amberley)
This study considers various aspects of London life in the 14th century, including working in the city, housing, entertainment, marriage and sex, religion and popular beliefs.

This week's new books

2009-10-26T01:20:00.000-07:00

Nature’s Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology, Mark V. Barrow Jr. (University of Chicago Press)
This historical narrative combines stories of endangered animals and of the individuals who have studied and struggled to protect them to reveal how the problem of human-caused extinction has haunted Americans since the early days of the republic.

Charles Dickens, Michael Slater (Yale University Press)
This biography of Charles Dickens is published 20 years after the last major account. It presents Dickens’ novels in the context of his personal and professional life and also considers his many other writings including letters, shorter fiction, essays and journalism.

A Dangerous Stir: Fear, Paranoia, and the Making of Reconstruction, Mark Wahlgren Summers (University of North Carolina Press)
This study of the events of the Reconstruction in the aftermath of the American Civil War reveals that policy was not shaped simply by politics and thoughts about the meanings of federalism, freedom and the Constitution, but also by fears, paranoia and conspiracy theories.

Captain Cook’s War and Peace, John Robson (Seaforth Publishing)
An account of Cook’s early naval career, which explains how and why he was chosen to lead the expedition to the Pacific in 1768.

New selection of books for reader reviews

2009-10-23T05:08:00.000-07:00

Every month, we offer our readers the opportunity to review some of the latest history publications and to have their review published on the History Today Books Blog. Here is this month's selection.

To submit a review, please send an email to Kathryn Hadley (k.hadley[at]historytoday.com) specifying your choice of book. We will then send you the book with a one-month deadline to send us your review. Books will be sent on a first come first served basis. (Unfortunately, we are unable to send out books to the USA).

The Hemingses of Monticello, Annette Gordon-Reed (Norton)
The story of the Hemings family, whose blood ties to the third president of America had long been expunged from American history, from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family’s dispersal after Jefferson’s death in 1826.

The Human Footprint, Anthony N. Penna (Wiley Blackwell)
This study of transnational environmental history, from the Palaeolithic to the present era, explores various themes ranging form the global impact of agriculture and urbanisation, to manufacturing, consumption and industrialising.

I Never Knew That About The Scottish, Christopher Winn (Ebury Press)
This journey of discovery around Scotland, from Edinburgh, home of Alexander Gordon Laing who was the first European to see Timbuktu, to Tain, home of the inventor of the automatic cash machine, John Shepherd-Barron, explores how every county contributes to the distinct Scottish personality.

Michelangelo: A Tormented Life, Antonio Forcellino (Polity Press)
A biography of Michelangelo which draws on the artist’s memoirs and personal correspondence to explore his life and character, times and works, as well as his changing religious views and the politics of patronage in Renaissance Italy.

Papa Spy: Love, Faith and Betrayal in Wartime Spain, Jimmy Burns (Bloomsbury)
Written by his son, the story of Tom Burns’ propaganda war against the Nazis and fight to keep Spain neutral and to protect Gibraltar and access to the western Mediterranean during the Second World War as a press attaché at the British Embassy in Madrid.

Plutonium: A History of the World’s Most Dangerous Element, Jeremy Bernstein (Cornell University Press)
This history of plutonium charts the steps that were taken to transform plutonium from a laboratory novelty, when it was first manufactured in 1941, into the nuclear weapon that destroyed Nagasaki, explaining both the science and the people involved.

Travelling Heroes: Greeks and their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer, Robin Lane Fox (Penguin)
This account of the formation of classical mythology in the eighth century charts how the intrepid seafarers of eighth-century Greece sailed around the Mediterranean, encountering new sights and weaving them into the myths of the gods, monsters and heroes that would become the cornerstone of Western civilization.

William H. Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico, introduction by J.H. Elliott (Continuum)
This book contains a substantial extract from Prescott’s major work A History of the Conquest of Mexico, which is set against the background of the growth of historical research in the introduction by J.H. Elliott.

Win copies of Robert Service's Trotsky and The Crusades DVDs

2009-10-22T04:39:00.000-07:00

Do you know where Trotsky and Lenin first met?

Which Pope, in 1095, first launched an appeal to the knights of France to travel to the Holy Land and liberate Jerusalem?

Yesterday, we launced two new competitions to win copies of Trotsky by Robert Service and The Crusades, the latest DVD released by the History Channel.

To enter, visit our competitions page.

New Wednesday Paperbacks

2009-10-21T03:11:00.000-07:00

The Human Footprint, Anthony N. Penna (Wiley Blackwell)
This study of transnational environmental history, from the Palaeolithic to the present era, explores various themes ranging from the global impact of agriculture and urbanisation, to manufacturing, consumption and industrialising.

William H. Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico, introduction by J.H. Elliot (Continuum)

This book contains a substantial extract from Prescott’s major work A History of the Conquest of Mexico, which is set against the background of the growth of historical research in the introduction by J.H. Elliott.

Plutonium: A History of the World’s Most Dangerous Element, Jeremy Bernstein (Cornell University Press)
This history of plutonium charts the steps that were taken to transform plutonium from a laboratory novelty, when it was first manufactured in 1941, into the nuclear weapon that destroyed Nagasaki, explaining both the science and the people involved.

Richard Owen: Biology without Darwin, Nicolaas Rupke (University of Chicago Press)
This biography of Richard Owen resuscitates the reputation of a scientist who, despite his prominence in the mid-1850s, became largely obscured by the shadow of Charles Darwin and publicly marginalised for his critique of natural selection.

This week's new books

2009-10-19T02:59:00.000-07:00

When the Comics Went to War, Adam Riches (Mainstream Publishing)
This illustrated history of the British war comic book genre charts the evolution of warfare as children lived through it, from the first publications to appear in the 1860s to the last wave of new titles in the mid-1980s.

The Celtic Revolution, Simon Young (Gibson Square)
This history of the Celts covers two millennia, from ancient Rome to medieval France, Germany and England, revealing our rich, albeit often forgotten, Celtic heritage and the influence of the tribal Celts in forging the modern mindset.

Highlander: The History of the legendary Highland Regiments, Tim Newark (Constable)
Based on the diaries, letters and journals of Highland soldiers, the story of the Highlanders told in their own words, from the fields of Waterloo to the deserts of Sudan, the Plains of Abraham to the mountains of Dargai and from the trenches of Flanders to the jungles of Burma.

Gladiator: Rome’s Bloody Spectacle, Konstantin Nossov (Osprey)
This revised history of gladiators explores the evolution of gladiatorial combat, the types of gladiator, their equipment and way of fighting, and their lives and social status, challenging the popular vision of slaves forced to fight to death by a cruel and violent society.