History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History - Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward (The New Press, 2004)
After a few drinks (and sometimes even before), I have been known to wax philosophical about the role of education in shaping our attitudes and beliefs about our country, our history, and the world. I wrote research papers on it in grad school, it was a big part of why I spent my 20s working in civic education, and I continue to find it utterly fascinating.
So no surprise that a book like this would make its way to me. Honestly, I would have liked the monograph version of this book. The one that was rich with analysis about the different ways international textbooks tell our nation's story, and what that says about their own national identity. And how the differences illustrate what our textbooks say about our own. Instead, Lindaman and Ward present lightly annotated excerpts -- oodles of them -- from an array of nations. They let the books tell the story, which is enlightening, but raised way too many questions for me. How well am I remembering the details of American textbooks? They books are mostly from the mid- to late-1990s -- how are American textbooks of that era different from the ones I read a decade earlier? How are they different today? And how much am I particularly interested in Canadian textbooks and Caribbean ones? How much is their national identity shaped by their different relationship with the United Kingdom? And with the United States itself?
(Oh, and also how interesting was the editors' note, which discussed the difficulties in translating adjectives that literally mean UnitedStates-ian and what relationship do other countries have with the adjective American?)
All of which is to say that this book was really cool. I liked it. But now I want much much much more.
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Monday, March 24, 2014
Wednesday, October 02, 2013
And it really felt like 27 years
History of the Peloponnesian War - Thucydides, trans. Rex Warner (Penguin Books, 1972 sorta)
Ten years ago, in my first week of grad school as a doctoral student in history, I was assigned both Thucydides and the Histories of Herodotus. For one class. Maybe I could have done that by the following semester, but it was essentially a non-starter. I got some ways into Thucydides, realized I could either finish it or start Herodotus, and so switched over.
And just like Sparta and Athens took a break of about eight years in the middle of their war, I took a nice long break before coming back to it. (And of course, re-starting from the beginning.)
This book is a beast. In short, starting in 431 B.C. the Greeks had their own World War. The Athenian and Spartan "empires" went at each other, often using proxy armies and invading/fomenting revolution in various other cities. They "laid waste the land" pretty much all the time. And there were lots of pretty speeches laying out reasons for and against various actions.
Eventually, Athens loses their upper hand by deciding it's a bang-up idea to go invade Sicily. This turns out to be a very bad idea, and eventually (although the work is unfinished and actually ends with an Athenian victory at sea) they fall entirely. But lots of detail in between.
Thucydides wrote essentially contemporaneously, although over the course of 27 years he had time to clean things up and insert additional information. Fortunately, his goal was to write an enduring work, so he really took time in crafting it (and hopefully in getting the details correct).
There are so many cities and politicians and generals and most of the time I couldn't remember who was on which side. Which makes for poor work in really understanding the ins and outs of the war, but was fine for providing a general arc of the brutal and complicated war and the set of shifting allegiances that brought Athens down. It took forever to read -- and required lots of stops and desires for lighter fare (I actually picked up Breaking Dawn last night) -- but I'm glad I finally did it. Now onto the next challenge.
Ten years ago, in my first week of grad school as a doctoral student in history, I was assigned both Thucydides and the Histories of Herodotus. For one class. Maybe I could have done that by the following semester, but it was essentially a non-starter. I got some ways into Thucydides, realized I could either finish it or start Herodotus, and so switched over.
And just like Sparta and Athens took a break of about eight years in the middle of their war, I took a nice long break before coming back to it. (And of course, re-starting from the beginning.)
This book is a beast. In short, starting in 431 B.C. the Greeks had their own World War. The Athenian and Spartan "empires" went at each other, often using proxy armies and invading/fomenting revolution in various other cities. They "laid waste the land" pretty much all the time. And there were lots of pretty speeches laying out reasons for and against various actions.
Eventually, Athens loses their upper hand by deciding it's a bang-up idea to go invade Sicily. This turns out to be a very bad idea, and eventually (although the work is unfinished and actually ends with an Athenian victory at sea) they fall entirely. But lots of detail in between.
Thucydides wrote essentially contemporaneously, although over the course of 27 years he had time to clean things up and insert additional information. Fortunately, his goal was to write an enduring work, so he really took time in crafting it (and hopefully in getting the details correct).
There are so many cities and politicians and generals and most of the time I couldn't remember who was on which side. Which makes for poor work in really understanding the ins and outs of the war, but was fine for providing a general arc of the brutal and complicated war and the set of shifting allegiances that brought Athens down. It took forever to read -- and required lots of stops and desires for lighter fare (I actually picked up Breaking Dawn last night) -- but I'm glad I finally did it. Now onto the next challenge.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
One woman's 20th century
Personal History - Katharine Graham (Vintage Books, 1998)
If some scholar from the far off future wanted a single source for understanding 20th century America, he or she could do far worse than Graham's memoir. Born in 1917 and writing on the cusp of her 80th birthday, Graham was a player - or next to the players - in many of the most dramatic moments of the century. Daughter of two luminaries, wife to a man who took to advising Kennedy & Johnson as a side gig, publisher of The Washington Post during Watergate.... the list goes on and on.
This thing is a brick, and chock full of detail. She begins with her parents' histories, and how they met. She both does and doesn't hold back - there is plenty Graham leaves off the page, but she is also pretty direct about the failings of those around her. For instance, I found myself wondering if the reader will end up believing that her relationship with her mother was actually more fraught than it really was. And I saw complaints on Goodreads about all the name dropping. And yes, the names are really EVERYWHERE. You do occasionally wonder if there were ever moments in her life without other famous people around. And this sometimes seems to hide how much she doesn't tell. There is lots of "and we spent many dinners/vacations/whatevers quite pleasantly together," and plenty of pointing out rumors of her romances with various beaux. I have to believe that some of the rumors here and there may have been founded, although she doesn't say much. But the line "and I can attest to his virility," tossed off about some luminary, left me almost desperate to find out more.
There's plenty about life in the Washington elite, and about being a young wife during World War II. And about her mother's, father's, and husband's various political activities. In all honesty, up almost to the point of her husband's death, the "Kay Graham" character in the memoir has little agency. I can't tell whether this was truly the case, or whether it's how she perceived her own life, but it does mean that the book picks up quite a bit of speed after the mid-1960s.
For one thing, there's Watergate. Information about the newspaper - how it was acquired, what the business was like, how it grew, etc. - is all throughout the book, but once she takes over, you get all of the excitement of politicians' hostility to Post coverage and how that culminated in Watergate. And then the chapter on Watergate ends and you immediately move into a huge labor crisis. I didn't find Graham a wholly reliable narrator on this matter, but her treatment of it was fascinating.
Historians of feminism could find much to consider in this memoir too. Graham broke glass ceilings, but consciously reflects back upon what it meant to be a woman throughout the decades, and ways in which it changed over time. She speaks for a specific race and class, but it's enlightening all the same.
Reading this was an undertaking, and I'm sincerely glad to have it behind me. But it was a fascinating read, and I'm looking forward to trying to find the book the right new home.
If some scholar from the far off future wanted a single source for understanding 20th century America, he or she could do far worse than Graham's memoir. Born in 1917 and writing on the cusp of her 80th birthday, Graham was a player - or next to the players - in many of the most dramatic moments of the century. Daughter of two luminaries, wife to a man who took to advising Kennedy & Johnson as a side gig, publisher of The Washington Post during Watergate.... the list goes on and on.
This thing is a brick, and chock full of detail. She begins with her parents' histories, and how they met. She both does and doesn't hold back - there is plenty Graham leaves off the page, but she is also pretty direct about the failings of those around her. For instance, I found myself wondering if the reader will end up believing that her relationship with her mother was actually more fraught than it really was. And I saw complaints on Goodreads about all the name dropping. And yes, the names are really EVERYWHERE. You do occasionally wonder if there were ever moments in her life without other famous people around. And this sometimes seems to hide how much she doesn't tell. There is lots of "and we spent many dinners/vacations/whatevers quite pleasantly together," and plenty of pointing out rumors of her romances with various beaux. I have to believe that some of the rumors here and there may have been founded, although she doesn't say much. But the line "and I can attest to his virility," tossed off about some luminary, left me almost desperate to find out more.
There's plenty about life in the Washington elite, and about being a young wife during World War II. And about her mother's, father's, and husband's various political activities. In all honesty, up almost to the point of her husband's death, the "Kay Graham" character in the memoir has little agency. I can't tell whether this was truly the case, or whether it's how she perceived her own life, but it does mean that the book picks up quite a bit of speed after the mid-1960s.
For one thing, there's Watergate. Information about the newspaper - how it was acquired, what the business was like, how it grew, etc. - is all throughout the book, but once she takes over, you get all of the excitement of politicians' hostility to Post coverage and how that culminated in Watergate. And then the chapter on Watergate ends and you immediately move into a huge labor crisis. I didn't find Graham a wholly reliable narrator on this matter, but her treatment of it was fascinating.
Historians of feminism could find much to consider in this memoir too. Graham broke glass ceilings, but consciously reflects back upon what it meant to be a woman throughout the decades, and ways in which it changed over time. She speaks for a specific race and class, but it's enlightening all the same.
Reading this was an undertaking, and I'm sincerely glad to have it behind me. But it was a fascinating read, and I'm looking forward to trying to find the book the right new home.
Tuesday, April 02, 2013
Boo...
Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society - Jean-Claude Schmitt, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan (University of Chicago Press, 1998)
Why hello historical monograph. I carved out time to do a quick read (not quite a skim, but close) of this very scholarly work over the last few days. It exercised the muscles I developed in grad school the first time around, when I was reading at least 1000 pages weekly of history, philosophy, primary texts, etc. I was so good at reading for content and argument then. But in the intervening years, those skills have waned quite a bit.
But not so much that I couldn't get into the text. Schmitt is exploring the role of ghosts in medieval culture, primarily how they (or rather the way people talked about them) evolved. The church played a primary role, of course, but there was some amount of room for older traditions of the dead. Anyway, there was a lot of souls stuck in purgatory, asking those still living to do something (pray, make financial arrangements) to better their lot in the afterlife. And somehow there was a tie-in to the tradition of charivari, which was more typically related to marriages that threatened society in some way (widowers taking young wives, widows remarrying unexpectedly, cuckolding). But the point is clearly that ghosts exist because of the function they serve for the living.
As a fan of the social construction of pretty much everything, I am down with this. And it's convincing. And yet, as a believer in ghosts - or at my most skeptical, an agnostic - I find myself working facing a bit of a quandary. If ghosts manifest in response to social expectations and constructions, can they still have an objective reality? I vote yes, although I can't imagine Schmitt agrees with me.
Why hello historical monograph. I carved out time to do a quick read (not quite a skim, but close) of this very scholarly work over the last few days. It exercised the muscles I developed in grad school the first time around, when I was reading at least 1000 pages weekly of history, philosophy, primary texts, etc. I was so good at reading for content and argument then. But in the intervening years, those skills have waned quite a bit.
But not so much that I couldn't get into the text. Schmitt is exploring the role of ghosts in medieval culture, primarily how they (or rather the way people talked about them) evolved. The church played a primary role, of course, but there was some amount of room for older traditions of the dead. Anyway, there was a lot of souls stuck in purgatory, asking those still living to do something (pray, make financial arrangements) to better their lot in the afterlife. And somehow there was a tie-in to the tradition of charivari, which was more typically related to marriages that threatened society in some way (widowers taking young wives, widows remarrying unexpectedly, cuckolding). But the point is clearly that ghosts exist because of the function they serve for the living.
As a fan of the social construction of pretty much everything, I am down with this. And it's convincing. And yet, as a believer in ghosts - or at my most skeptical, an agnostic - I find myself working facing a bit of a quandary. If ghosts manifest in response to social expectations and constructions, can they still have an objective reality? I vote yes, although I can't imagine Schmitt agrees with me.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
16 y.o. Erin's dream job
Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN - James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales (Little, Brown and Company, 2011)
When I was a teenager, I desperately wanted to work at ESPN. Statistics preferably, but whatever. I was completely enthralled by the world of sports, and how could I not want to work for the Worldwide Leader? There was this small thing about being located in Bristol, but I figured I could sort that out.
At any rate, I've always had a soft spot for the network, one that has survived despite their callous disregard for hockey in the years since they lost broadcasting rights. So this huge (roughly 750 page) oral history felt like it was right up my alley.
And in so many ways, it was. Different voices - often conflicting - tell the story of ESPN's genesis and rise to glory. It was a peek behind the scenes, and a helpful glimpse of the ways it was amazing, and the ways it really wasn't.
But still, I had such a time getting through this beast. I started it two months, and it languished often enough on my nightstand, because I craved narrative. I needed a story. And this wasn't the right book to give it to me. Which in no way is meant to disparage Miller's & Shales' work, which is incredible. But it just felt overwhelming, and endless, and sad.
That said, it was fun to hear about the first decade, the one I never knew. And then the 90s, when I discovered sports, and started setting my TV to turn on SportsCenter every morning as an alarm clock, and watched pretty much anything that was on, even (dread) boxing. And there was hockey on then! And then shows that I had all but forgotten, or whatever. To realize how many of these names I recognized without really noticing that I knew them.
I'm nothing but glad that I read this, but I'm also shockingly relieved that I'm finished.
When I was a teenager, I desperately wanted to work at ESPN. Statistics preferably, but whatever. I was completely enthralled by the world of sports, and how could I not want to work for the Worldwide Leader? There was this small thing about being located in Bristol, but I figured I could sort that out.
At any rate, I've always had a soft spot for the network, one that has survived despite their callous disregard for hockey in the years since they lost broadcasting rights. So this huge (roughly 750 page) oral history felt like it was right up my alley.
And in so many ways, it was. Different voices - often conflicting - tell the story of ESPN's genesis and rise to glory. It was a peek behind the scenes, and a helpful glimpse of the ways it was amazing, and the ways it really wasn't.
But still, I had such a time getting through this beast. I started it two months, and it languished often enough on my nightstand, because I craved narrative. I needed a story. And this wasn't the right book to give it to me. Which in no way is meant to disparage Miller's & Shales' work, which is incredible. But it just felt overwhelming, and endless, and sad.
That said, it was fun to hear about the first decade, the one I never knew. And then the 90s, when I discovered sports, and started setting my TV to turn on SportsCenter every morning as an alarm clock, and watched pretty much anything that was on, even (dread) boxing. And there was hockey on then! And then shows that I had all but forgotten, or whatever. To realize how many of these names I recognized without really noticing that I knew them.
I'm nothing but glad that I read this, but I'm also shockingly relieved that I'm finished.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
10 days, 100 stories
The Decameron - Giovanni Boccaccio (trans. G.H. McWilliam (Penguin 1972, orig. 13??)
It may have struck you that I've been reading a lot of lighter fare recently (although now that I have discovered Hart of Dixie on Netflix all my soapy attention may be placed there) but in addition to whatever other books have passed over my nightstand, since around Thanksgiving I've also been working through a "big book."
Yes, nothing says holiday season reading like a fourteenth-century collection of stories themed around a group of young people trying not to succumb to the Black Death. Wooooo!
And yet, I forgot for hundreds of pages at a time that plague lurked around every page of this book. In some respects, this may have been the lightest reading of all. Ten young folk (plus servants) set out from Florence to escape not only the disease itself, but the obsession with it that has struck everyone. To amuse themselves, they wander and frolic, sing and dance, eat... and tell stories. Each day, each member of the party shares a story. Ten days, ten people = one hundred tales.
Most days have a theme. And this is when you learn that Italy in the 1300s was a pretty rocking place. My lingering cold makes me too lazy to go through and count statistics, but stories generally involved one or more of the following: wives and husbands cheating on each other (usually wives); corrupt priests, nuns, or other members of the clergy; people scheming to steal and play tricks on one another; individuals pinballing wildly between extreme wealth and fortune and abject poverty. But really mainly sex. So much sex. And described in such hilariously euphemistic ways.
For the first several (3?) "days" I was utterly enthralled by this, and recounted each story to my indulgent boyfriend. But after a while, I grew accustomed to the return of these same topics, and the remaining days passed by in a strangely soothing rhythm. (This girl likes structure.)
A couple points. Just because I'm not going into the details of the stories doesn't mean that many of them weren't awfully enjoyable. (I have told the First Day, Second Story to probably 10 different people.) And just because it took over a month to get through the 830 pages doesn't mean it was dull or slogging. It was actually a surprisingly quick read. But with holiday stuff and my desire to jump around and experience other stories, it just got spread out across a longer period of time. Anyway, recommended with more enthusiasm than I might have expected. Good work Boccaccio :)
It may have struck you that I've been reading a lot of lighter fare recently (although now that I have discovered Hart of Dixie on Netflix all my soapy attention may be placed there) but in addition to whatever other books have passed over my nightstand, since around Thanksgiving I've also been working through a "big book."
Yes, nothing says holiday season reading like a fourteenth-century collection of stories themed around a group of young people trying not to succumb to the Black Death. Wooooo!
And yet, I forgot for hundreds of pages at a time that plague lurked around every page of this book. In some respects, this may have been the lightest reading of all. Ten young folk (plus servants) set out from Florence to escape not only the disease itself, but the obsession with it that has struck everyone. To amuse themselves, they wander and frolic, sing and dance, eat... and tell stories. Each day, each member of the party shares a story. Ten days, ten people = one hundred tales.
Most days have a theme. And this is when you learn that Italy in the 1300s was a pretty rocking place. My lingering cold makes me too lazy to go through and count statistics, but stories generally involved one or more of the following: wives and husbands cheating on each other (usually wives); corrupt priests, nuns, or other members of the clergy; people scheming to steal and play tricks on one another; individuals pinballing wildly between extreme wealth and fortune and abject poverty. But really mainly sex. So much sex. And described in such hilariously euphemistic ways.
For the first several (3?) "days" I was utterly enthralled by this, and recounted each story to my indulgent boyfriend. But after a while, I grew accustomed to the return of these same topics, and the remaining days passed by in a strangely soothing rhythm. (This girl likes structure.)
A couple points. Just because I'm not going into the details of the stories doesn't mean that many of them weren't awfully enjoyable. (I have told the First Day, Second Story to probably 10 different people.) And just because it took over a month to get through the 830 pages doesn't mean it was dull or slogging. It was actually a surprisingly quick read. But with holiday stuff and my desire to jump around and experience other stories, it just got spread out across a longer period of time. Anyway, recommended with more enthusiasm than I might have expected. Good work Boccaccio :)
Saturday, October 06, 2012
All's fair in love, war, and politics
Queen Margot - Alexandre Dumas (Hyperion, 1994)
In high school, my friends and I watched the film adaptation of this novel a whole bunch of times. the people in it were all too beautiful. It was ... well, memorable. So while I found the book at some book sale, I bought it. And it languished on my shelf. Until a couple weeks ago.
"Queen Margot"is Marguerite de Valois, daughter of one French king, sister of two more, and wife (pre-annulment) of a fourth, Henri de Navarre. But the novel, thick as it may be, covers only two years in her eventful life. It begins with her marriage to Henri, intended to settle unrest between Catholics and Protestants, and ends when Henri flees back to Navarre, to stay safe until he can one day assume the throne. In between: the St. Bartholomew Massacre, several assassination attempts (most engineered by the queen mother, Catherine de Medicis), and a couple pretty fantastic love affairs.
The most memorable part of the film (well, to 16-year-old Erin at least) was the love between Marguerite and a lesser noble, La Mole. (There is also an unintentional murder that was pretty amazing.) But in the book, this relationship is almost surpassed by a strange and enduring friendship that extends unto death. And also much more about the machinations of Queen Catherine. In the book, it becomes a point of humor. She started to remind me of Wile E. Coyote, devising ever more certain plots to take out Henri de Navarre, and having each go awry.
I had far too much fun reading this, as I'm sure did the 19th-century audience that first encountered it in serial form. First of all: history! I mean, I'm not sure entirely where Dumas' imagination takes over, but still... And then romance and intrigue and beautiful costumes and and and. Does it come as any surprise that I have the DVD waiting for me to watch this evening?
In high school, my friends and I watched the film adaptation of this novel a whole bunch of times. the people in it were all too beautiful. It was ... well, memorable. So while I found the book at some book sale, I bought it. And it languished on my shelf. Until a couple weeks ago.
"Queen Margot"is Marguerite de Valois, daughter of one French king, sister of two more, and wife (pre-annulment) of a fourth, Henri de Navarre. But the novel, thick as it may be, covers only two years in her eventful life. It begins with her marriage to Henri, intended to settle unrest between Catholics and Protestants, and ends when Henri flees back to Navarre, to stay safe until he can one day assume the throne. In between: the St. Bartholomew Massacre, several assassination attempts (most engineered by the queen mother, Catherine de Medicis), and a couple pretty fantastic love affairs.
The most memorable part of the film (well, to 16-year-old Erin at least) was the love between Marguerite and a lesser noble, La Mole. (There is also an unintentional murder that was pretty amazing.) But in the book, this relationship is almost surpassed by a strange and enduring friendship that extends unto death. And also much more about the machinations of Queen Catherine. In the book, it becomes a point of humor. She started to remind me of Wile E. Coyote, devising ever more certain plots to take out Henri de Navarre, and having each go awry.
I had far too much fun reading this, as I'm sure did the 19th-century audience that first encountered it in serial form. First of all: history! I mean, I'm not sure entirely where Dumas' imagination takes over, but still... And then romance and intrigue and beautiful costumes and and and. Does it come as any surprise that I have the DVD waiting for me to watch this evening?
Friday, September 28, 2012
Struggling with the concept of "never forget"
Sarah's Key - Tatiana de Rosnay (St. Martin's Griffin, 2007)
Let me start with the frivolous. I somehow found myself, in conversation with a friend, comparing this book to The Da Vinci Code. And then feeling terrible. What I meant is that both novels employ the use of short chapters to create a propulsive effect. You're driven to continue reading.
And secondly, I was drawn to the use of font (typeface? I never know when to use which term). The narrative cuts back and forth between a little girl in 1942 - and her efforts to save her brother when all the Jews in Paris were rounded up before being sent to death camps - and a middle-aged American expat reporter in 2002, whose investigation into the events of July 1942 unearths secrets that remained hidden for six decades. Um... where was I before I got caught up in that rambling sentence? Oh, right, the font. Each of these narrative lines employs a different font, which somehow both emphasizes the difference between them and adds internal coherence within each plotline. If that makes sense. (Also, can you do this on an e-reader? I'm guessing yes, but would like confirmation.)
This novel deals with some pretty horrific stuff. (Obviously.) But there's a lot of room for beauty without it being some sort of paean to the triumph of the human spirit. People act out of love, fear, hate, decency, confusion, and pride. Not everyone gets a happy ending. (Again, obviously.) But there's catharsis, and above it all rises American Julia's insistence that the truth should - must - out.
I feel sorta babbly. Like all the above were comments I would make in a book club discussion, rather than forming some sort of coherent reaction to the novel. This book, by the way, has Book Club written all over it. Which reminds me that I want to join a book club. All of which brings me back to the "babbly" point, and leads to the question of whether this is the sort of book that one must talk around, rather than through.
Let me start with the frivolous. I somehow found myself, in conversation with a friend, comparing this book to The Da Vinci Code. And then feeling terrible. What I meant is that both novels employ the use of short chapters to create a propulsive effect. You're driven to continue reading.
And secondly, I was drawn to the use of font (typeface? I never know when to use which term). The narrative cuts back and forth between a little girl in 1942 - and her efforts to save her brother when all the Jews in Paris were rounded up before being sent to death camps - and a middle-aged American expat reporter in 2002, whose investigation into the events of July 1942 unearths secrets that remained hidden for six decades. Um... where was I before I got caught up in that rambling sentence? Oh, right, the font. Each of these narrative lines employs a different font, which somehow both emphasizes the difference between them and adds internal coherence within each plotline. If that makes sense. (Also, can you do this on an e-reader? I'm guessing yes, but would like confirmation.)
This novel deals with some pretty horrific stuff. (Obviously.) But there's a lot of room for beauty without it being some sort of paean to the triumph of the human spirit. People act out of love, fear, hate, decency, confusion, and pride. Not everyone gets a happy ending. (Again, obviously.) But there's catharsis, and above it all rises American Julia's insistence that the truth should - must - out.
I feel sorta babbly. Like all the above were comments I would make in a book club discussion, rather than forming some sort of coherent reaction to the novel. This book, by the way, has Book Club written all over it. Which reminds me that I want to join a book club. All of which brings me back to the "babbly" point, and leads to the question of whether this is the sort of book that one must talk around, rather than through.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
So that other thing that happened during the Russian Revolution....
Enchantments - Kathryn Harrison (Random House, 2012)
I knew I had read a book by Harrison before, except it turns out I had things all sorts of confused, and the book I knew I had read (Envy) wasn't the book I thought it was. Oops. Anyway, here's what I said about that novel: in progress, and completed. And this answers all the confusion I had about how the same author was responsible for books with such different fingerprints.
But I digress, which is what I do. Enchantments is mostly set in the months following the February Revolution and the tsar's abdication. Masha is the son of the recently murdered Rasputin; in the wake of his death, she and her sister move in with the Romanov's, quite possibly the least awesome place in Russia that they could have been.
Except..... the tsarina thinks Masha has some of her father's healing power, so she spends most of her time with the hemophiliac tsarevich. And in this weird purgatory, young love blossoms. It's a strange, mostly innocent love between teenagers - Alyosha is just barely 14 - but made poignant by the fact that they are just sitting around waiting to die or to be saved. (A state Alyosha has experienced for pretty much his whole life.)
Masha and Alyosha fall in love amidst stories, woven by Masha to pass the time and occupy the prince. She creates a future world, retells stories of her father's past and of his parents' love story, visits scenes from her home, from Petersburg, from wherever. And when they are inevitably separated, the royal family sent East and finally executed, the novel continues with moments from Masha's life in the years to come (during which a young boy continues to hold her heart and stay 14 forever) and through Alyosha's journal from the months before his death.
At the end of the novel, a time when I was feeling particularly melancholy and sad to leave Harrison's world, there are acknowledgments, less that two pages. It explained a little, but left open several historical questions. And reminded me that while I've read broadly about this era - history, literature, etc - I haven't spent much time with the doomed royal family, or the exiled Whites who managed to eke out existences in Germany, France, America. It's enough to drive this girl back to the history books....
I knew I had read a book by Harrison before, except it turns out I had things all sorts of confused, and the book I knew I had read (Envy) wasn't the book I thought it was. Oops. Anyway, here's what I said about that novel: in progress, and completed. And this answers all the confusion I had about how the same author was responsible for books with such different fingerprints.
But I digress, which is what I do. Enchantments is mostly set in the months following the February Revolution and the tsar's abdication. Masha is the son of the recently murdered Rasputin; in the wake of his death, she and her sister move in with the Romanov's, quite possibly the least awesome place in Russia that they could have been.
Except..... the tsarina thinks Masha has some of her father's healing power, so she spends most of her time with the hemophiliac tsarevich. And in this weird purgatory, young love blossoms. It's a strange, mostly innocent love between teenagers - Alyosha is just barely 14 - but made poignant by the fact that they are just sitting around waiting to die or to be saved. (A state Alyosha has experienced for pretty much his whole life.)
Masha and Alyosha fall in love amidst stories, woven by Masha to pass the time and occupy the prince. She creates a future world, retells stories of her father's past and of his parents' love story, visits scenes from her home, from Petersburg, from wherever. And when they are inevitably separated, the royal family sent East and finally executed, the novel continues with moments from Masha's life in the years to come (during which a young boy continues to hold her heart and stay 14 forever) and through Alyosha's journal from the months before his death.
At the end of the novel, a time when I was feeling particularly melancholy and sad to leave Harrison's world, there are acknowledgments, less that two pages. It explained a little, but left open several historical questions. And reminded me that while I've read broadly about this era - history, literature, etc - I haven't spent much time with the doomed royal family, or the exiled Whites who managed to eke out existences in Germany, France, America. It's enough to drive this girl back to the history books....
Friday, March 23, 2012
Rum and coke
A History of the World in 6 Glasses - Tom Standage (Walker & Company, 2005)
I remember being positively giddy when this book came out. History? Through an element of pop culture so fundamental I don't think you can even call it pop? Love the idea.
Which of course meant I waited years to actually read it. And also possibly built it up a little too much in my head. How can a popular history possibly live up to such expectations?
The premise: six drinks that both reflected and shaped the world (culturally, economically, politically) in which they were dominant. Six drinks which are still pretty bloody popular today, for that matter. First alcohol, then caffeine. Beer in Mesopotamia and wine in ancient Greece and Rome. Distilled spirits in the colonies. Then coffee comes in from Arabia and helps the growth of the professional clerical class, not to mention Habermas's "transformation of the public sphere." And tea, which looked one way in the Ancient Far East, and quite another once the British got ahold of it. And then Coca Cola, which symbolizes everything about the "triumph" of American capitalism (and our political rhetoric). (Although, if put on the spot, I found myself most interested in how carbonated drinks became popular around the turn of the last century. A world without fizzy water seems almost too terrible to imagine.)
So I wanted more rigorous scholarship. (Not saying the research wasn't vigorous, but I could have gone deeper into it with Standage.) But given the intended audience, this was pretty fun. Recommended.
I remember being positively giddy when this book came out. History? Through an element of pop culture so fundamental I don't think you can even call it pop? Love the idea.
Which of course meant I waited years to actually read it. And also possibly built it up a little too much in my head. How can a popular history possibly live up to such expectations?
The premise: six drinks that both reflected and shaped the world (culturally, economically, politically) in which they were dominant. Six drinks which are still pretty bloody popular today, for that matter. First alcohol, then caffeine. Beer in Mesopotamia and wine in ancient Greece and Rome. Distilled spirits in the colonies. Then coffee comes in from Arabia and helps the growth of the professional clerical class, not to mention Habermas's "transformation of the public sphere." And tea, which looked one way in the Ancient Far East, and quite another once the British got ahold of it. And then Coca Cola, which symbolizes everything about the "triumph" of American capitalism (and our political rhetoric). (Although, if put on the spot, I found myself most interested in how carbonated drinks became popular around the turn of the last century. A world without fizzy water seems almost too terrible to imagine.)
So I wanted more rigorous scholarship. (Not saying the research wasn't vigorous, but I could have gone deeper into it with Standage.) But given the intended audience, this was pretty fun. Recommended.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
KGB-CIA Smackdown
The Charm School - Nelson DeMille (Warner Books, 1988, 2006)
My mom tells me that she went through a phase when I was a baby where she believed it inevitable that Reagan would blow us all up. And really, am I too blasé in my conviction that the Cold War was never really going to go thermonuclear?
I grew up, for all intents and purposes, after the Cold War. Born weeks after the Miracle on Ice, I knew the USSR as a place my daddy had visited as a student. Heck, he worked for a Russian businessman who - I think? - was installing laundromats in Moscow or something. It was perestroika, glasnost, and then a Wall fell, but I was too little to understand. And then a putsch. And aftermath. Drunken Yeltsin dancing on a stage. So long Soviet Union, I hardly knew ye.
Even after I became a scholar of Soviet history, I was just that: a scholar. I never had known the USSR as an existential threat, the way my professors had. Well, many of them hadn't felt that way themselves, but they existed in a world that did. (And some did. Certainly.)
But I digress. There's a book here. A spy thriller! I don't think I've ever read one of these before. It's exciting! And during the Cold War - probably set roughly around when it was written, 1988. And it takes things so seriously. And gives the Soviets points for competence that, quite honestly, they probably didn't deserve. The allure of détente vies for primacy with the deeply rooted sentiment that the Soviets would do anything to win.
Lots more for me to think about as well. Often the action (and exciting action! KGB training "Americans" how to completely pass and infiltrate our society. Car chases! Plane crashes! Lots of doublespeak! Oh, and sex) felt like just a distraction from the questions I wanted to ponder about the importance of the Cold War as an origin myth in the construction of post-war identity in both the USA and USSR. So my point is: this was fun! Seriously. Spy novels are awesome. But it also made me want to run into the garage and dig through boxes until I found all my history books.
Monday, May 23, 2011
A Memory Palace
Great House - Nicole Krauss (W.W. Norton & Co., 2010)
Nicole Krauss blows my mind. (I have mentioned this before.) A few years back, I gushed about The History of Love, and her latest novel employs a similar plot devise, being a sort of biography of a thing. In this case it's a desk, this monstrosity of a desk that is confiscated during Nazi occupation, and touches the lives of a surprising number of people. Strangely, I kept seeing the desk as almost like an organ - all the different drawers like pipes and .... I don't know.
Her stories are lyrical and haunting, and it's no surprise that many of the narrators are either authors or loved ones of writers. They speak in a high-flown language that doesn't really bear any relationship to how most of us talk, but carries the weight of intense sadness, loneliness, emptiness, and a struggle to know those we love.
I noted less than I would have liked, and this makes me sad. I'd probably direct you to the entire (long) chapter "Lies Told by Children." The first narrator, the author who owned the desk most recently, comments on how the things she loves she is reluctant to share with others, unlike those who want to share the music and literature that makes them who they are. She also has a lovely line about her youth: "I had been young and full, bursting with feeling, overflowing with desire; I lived closer to the surface of myself."
This is, perhaps, a book better meant to be reflected upon in conversation - or silence - than in a blog. It consists of interwoven parts, and leads to interwoven thoughts. I want to talk about it, and digress, and bring up other points, and wander down tangents. (That last might have been redundant.) So go read, and then come talk to me about it, okay?
Saturday, July 31, 2010
WTF Lion
Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller (Penguin Books, 2004)
I bought this book when I came across it cheap. I had heard good things about Fuller's earlier Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and was taken with the excerpt from this work that had appeared in the New Yorker (natch). Then it sat around for years, waiting for me. And I don't know why the time was now, but it was. And let me tell you, this book blew me away.
Fuller grew up in what was Rhodesia, and then Zambia. But in this book she is in the US, married, with two small children. Except she's back at her parents' home in Zambia. And she meets this man, who she calls K, a veteran of the wars in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and Mozambique. He has demons, and she ends up with what I can only describe as severe cognitive dissonance upon her return to Wyoming. So when she ends up back in Africa a year later, and sees him again, somehow she hatches a plan that they will travel back into Zimbabwe and Mozambique, that through this he may exorcise the past, and she will understand it, understand this war that was the backdrop for her childhood.
But there is so much more going on here. I can't even describe it. I felt like I fell down the rabbit hole as I was reading. But I also felt intensely present, thanks to the minute and vivid detail. And I kept trying to work my way through the silences to understand the relationship between this man and this woman. She uses him, in this way that writers use people, but I wonder if she is using him less - or differently - than she imagines. There's just too much there.
And since I can't manage to coherently explain my reaction to these larger themes, I'll just point out of few of the other places, where Fuller's careful and cutting description shines through.
What I do know is this: the blurb on the back cover describes K as "strangely charismatic" and I can think of no better term, for him and for the book. It was troubling, terrifying, beautiful, and utterly captivating.
I bought this book when I came across it cheap. I had heard good things about Fuller's earlier Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and was taken with the excerpt from this work that had appeared in the New Yorker (natch). Then it sat around for years, waiting for me. And I don't know why the time was now, but it was. And let me tell you, this book blew me away.
Fuller grew up in what was Rhodesia, and then Zambia. But in this book she is in the US, married, with two small children. Except she's back at her parents' home in Zambia. And she meets this man, who she calls K, a veteran of the wars in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and Mozambique. He has demons, and she ends up with what I can only describe as severe cognitive dissonance upon her return to Wyoming. So when she ends up back in Africa a year later, and sees him again, somehow she hatches a plan that they will travel back into Zimbabwe and Mozambique, that through this he may exorcise the past, and she will understand it, understand this war that was the backdrop for her childhood.
But there is so much more going on here. I can't even describe it. I felt like I fell down the rabbit hole as I was reading. But I also felt intensely present, thanks to the minute and vivid detail. And I kept trying to work my way through the silences to understand the relationship between this man and this woman. She uses him, in this way that writers use people, but I wonder if she is using him less - or differently - than she imagines. There's just too much there.
And since I can't manage to coherently explain my reaction to these larger themes, I'll just point out of few of the other places, where Fuller's careful and cutting description shines through.
- During a drought in the region, that somehow skirted the little area near her parents': "in the whole of central and southern Africa they [the news teams] couldn't find people more conveniently desperate--by which I mean desperate and close to both an international airport and a five-star hotel"
- "The engine of Dad's boat, in common with almost everything mechanical on the fish farm, had quirks of temperament that required an intimate knowledge of the psychology of machines to operate."
- A bullfrog, given to Fuller's mother as food but freed by her when she can't bring herself to actually cook him, "leaped under the firewood pile and glared at us with a mixture of alarm and disdain for the next several days."
- And the frog is nothing compared to the animal that prompted the title of this post, which is the actual note I made while reading: K knows a guy who knows a guy - another war veteran, and an important character in this story - who has a "pet" lion. Mambo launches himself at Fuller, only to be stymied time and again by K, who goes all Cesar Milan on him. Mambo's efforts to get at her, which seem like something out of a cartoon (like Lucifer and the mice in Cinderella) continue intermittently for the next 50 pages. And then there is a drunken fight between two men, after which "the lion trotted out of the shadows and started rubbing against their legs, purring resoundingly." To which, I continue to maintain, WTF. The lion is the 160 lb. feline representation of how utterly incomprehensible this world is to a person coming from my background.
What I do know is this: the blurb on the back cover describes K as "strangely charismatic" and I can think of no better term, for him and for the book. It was troubling, terrifying, beautiful, and utterly captivating.
Monday, May 03, 2010
History = yay; libraries = yay. History of libraries = zzzz
I am lazy. Therefore...
History of Libraries of the Western World by Michael H. Harris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I like libraries. I like history. So there's really no reason this book should have put me to sleep so often. :(
It's not all boring though, and it particularly gets better in the second half when it moves onto modern library history.
View all my reviews >>
History of Libraries of the Western World by Michael H. HarrisMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I like libraries. I like history. So there's really no reason this book should have put me to sleep so often. :(
It's not all boring though, and it particularly gets better in the second half when it moves onto modern library history.
View all my reviews >>
Friday, March 05, 2010
Making books, old-school
Scribes, Script and Books: The Book Arts from Antiquity to the Renaissance - Leila Avrin (American Library Association, 1991)
Sometimes I read books for school. Mostly I read PDFs of journal articles, but there are books too. And I just read this one for my course on the history of the book. (Technically it's the history of books and libraries, but apparently with this instructor, just the book.)
This book is pretty cool. It's laid out like a textbook. Lots and lots of graphics -plates, figures, maps. It averaged over 1 per page. So you could see examples of the evolution of pictograms into letters, and of scrolls and writing tools. Plus, it makes the text (8 1/2 x 11 pages) seem a little less daunting.
Avrin starts with writing and the alphabet and then moves on to ancient books/scroll/manuscripts through various eras and geographic locations. We get the Greek book, the Hebrew book, the Islamic book, plus lots of handwritten codices, manuscript and papyrus making, illumination, and bookbinding. What I suppose I most enjoyed was thinking about how much the transmission of information has both changed and stayed the same over thousands of years. And how much information we've be able to glean from the objects that made it through history.
And again, lots of cool illustrations. I can't really see this book being of much use to someone who isn't, say, studying the topic, but if that happens to be you, then I'd recommend the book. :)
Sometimes I read books for school. Mostly I read PDFs of journal articles, but there are books too. And I just read this one for my course on the history of the book. (Technically it's the history of books and libraries, but apparently with this instructor, just the book.)
This book is pretty cool. It's laid out like a textbook. Lots and lots of graphics -plates, figures, maps. It averaged over 1 per page. So you could see examples of the evolution of pictograms into letters, and of scrolls and writing tools. Plus, it makes the text (8 1/2 x 11 pages) seem a little less daunting.
Avrin starts with writing and the alphabet and then moves on to ancient books/scroll/manuscripts through various eras and geographic locations. We get the Greek book, the Hebrew book, the Islamic book, plus lots of handwritten codices, manuscript and papyrus making, illumination, and bookbinding. What I suppose I most enjoyed was thinking about how much the transmission of information has both changed and stayed the same over thousands of years. And how much information we've be able to glean from the objects that made it through history.
And again, lots of cool illustrations. I can't really see this book being of much use to someone who isn't, say, studying the topic, but if that happens to be you, then I'd recommend the book. :)
Sunday, February 07, 2010
WASPS!
Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor - Tad Friend (Little, Brown & Co., 2009)
Carolline says I am obsessed with WASPs. This may be true. I have fantasies about living in a Ralph Lauren ad. (That pic is not the best example. Anyhoo...) I also really like cable knit sweaters. However, I am pretty sure I do not live well on the East Coast. So....
Tad Friend is a staff writer for the New Yorker, so obviously I like his writing. (I don't understand why he's their Calif. writer when he's based in Brooklyn, but whatever.) He's also a Wasp. (I like it better all capitalized, like in the previous paragraph, but I'll bow to his usage for the rest of this post.) He's from what may prove to have been the last generation of Wasps to actually be Waspy. The book is a memoir of his family, on both parents' sides, and the wacky, wonderful, and often tragic turns their lives took. I added it to my list based on a recommendation that made it sound hilarious. It is not hilarious. It is however entertaining and often touching.
Among the themes that appear again and again: abandonment, emotional distance, drinking, thrift, not quite living up to promises of success, divorce and remarriage, homes that had names, and lots and lots of nicknames. The narrative is told out of chronological order, which was absolutely the right way to tell it. There are ways in which there is a grand narrative of Tad moving from childhood through to his post-college years, failed relationships, and eventual marriage. But mostly we move back and forth through years and between families. I had trouble keeping people straight at times, even with the very welcome family tree at the beginning of the book.
In some ways an elegy to a world that is slipping away, I think Friend ultimately paints a hopeful picture of the future. Not because he has embraced his Wasp heritage, or rejected it, but because he has made his peace with it.
I don't read a lot of memoirs - it's not really my genre, which is strange since it's history, after all - but I liked this one. It felt like the world it described, and allowed me to feel it too.
(PS - Friend's appraisal of certain attitudes toward privilege and success and working too hard made me aware of the ways in which places like Stanford still embody parts of the Wasp ethos. This could be a longer discussion, but I'll leave it at that.)
Carolline says I am obsessed with WASPs. This may be true. I have fantasies about living in a Ralph Lauren ad. (That pic is not the best example. Anyhoo...) I also really like cable knit sweaters. However, I am pretty sure I do not live well on the East Coast. So....
Tad Friend is a staff writer for the New Yorker, so obviously I like his writing. (I don't understand why he's their Calif. writer when he's based in Brooklyn, but whatever.) He's also a Wasp. (I like it better all capitalized, like in the previous paragraph, but I'll bow to his usage for the rest of this post.) He's from what may prove to have been the last generation of Wasps to actually be Waspy. The book is a memoir of his family, on both parents' sides, and the wacky, wonderful, and often tragic turns their lives took. I added it to my list based on a recommendation that made it sound hilarious. It is not hilarious. It is however entertaining and often touching.
Among the themes that appear again and again: abandonment, emotional distance, drinking, thrift, not quite living up to promises of success, divorce and remarriage, homes that had names, and lots and lots of nicknames. The narrative is told out of chronological order, which was absolutely the right way to tell it. There are ways in which there is a grand narrative of Tad moving from childhood through to his post-college years, failed relationships, and eventual marriage. But mostly we move back and forth through years and between families. I had trouble keeping people straight at times, even with the very welcome family tree at the beginning of the book.
In some ways an elegy to a world that is slipping away, I think Friend ultimately paints a hopeful picture of the future. Not because he has embraced his Wasp heritage, or rejected it, but because he has made his peace with it.
I don't read a lot of memoirs - it's not really my genre, which is strange since it's history, after all - but I liked this one. It felt like the world it described, and allowed me to feel it too.
(PS - Friend's appraisal of certain attitudes toward privilege and success and working too hard made me aware of the ways in which places like Stanford still embody parts of the Wasp ethos. This could be a longer discussion, but I'll leave it at that.)
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Behind the Scenes
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
New York: Henry Holt, 2009
I was predisposed to like Wolf Hall for a few reasons: a) I like Tudor history; b) Man Booker Prize!; c) despite all references in the novel to Thomas Cromwell being an ugly, bulldoggish man, in my head he looks like this:
Anyway, I went on a treasure hunt just before Christmas trying to find it at the library, and got lucky (very lucky: at library #3, it was not shelved, but sitting randomly on a table. I looked around like a thief to see if someone had claimed it, then snatched it up and got it to the checkout desk as quickly as possible).
I watched The Other Boleyn Girl earlier this evening, and the experience made me really appreciate Wolf Hall even more than I already had. It (the novel) is textured and complicated, and really makes you feel the passage of time and the machinations that were involved in the dissolution of Henry's marriage. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was a pawn. Cromwell is a sympathetic character, but not entirely. He is conniving, and lucky, and flawed. But you like him well enough, so you root for him. Others have written (no links - too lazy) about how interesting it is that Mantel chose to make Sir Thomas More the great antagonist in the novel, and how this is a gutsy move. I have always found More to be a little obnoxiously holy, so this set up worked for me.
What I still don't understand is the title. Wolf Hall. A place you hear about, as Cromwell takes an interest in the pale and retiring young Jane Seymour (oh, dramatic irony!) but which only makes an appearance after the final pages of the novel. Of course, it's at Wolf Hall that everything changes. For Anne Boleyn though, not so much for Thomas Cromwell, the king's right hand man. Unless perhaps that's where the end begins for him as well...
To sum up, the story of the man who rose from nothing to become as powerful as any man in England is as thrilling as it can be, considering the story has been told again and again, and we all know how it ends. It becomes clear how the forces of popes and princes - making history - are both unstoppable and yet easily swayed by those behind the scenes. I, for one, would rather be a Cromwell.
New York: Henry Holt, 2009
I was predisposed to like Wolf Hall for a few reasons: a) I like Tudor history; b) Man Booker Prize!; c) despite all references in the novel to Thomas Cromwell being an ugly, bulldoggish man, in my head he looks like this:
Anyway, I went on a treasure hunt just before Christmas trying to find it at the library, and got lucky (very lucky: at library #3, it was not shelved, but sitting randomly on a table. I looked around like a thief to see if someone had claimed it, then snatched it up and got it to the checkout desk as quickly as possible).
I watched The Other Boleyn Girl earlier this evening, and the experience made me really appreciate Wolf Hall even more than I already had. It (the novel) is textured and complicated, and really makes you feel the passage of time and the machinations that were involved in the dissolution of Henry's marriage. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was a pawn. Cromwell is a sympathetic character, but not entirely. He is conniving, and lucky, and flawed. But you like him well enough, so you root for him. Others have written (no links - too lazy) about how interesting it is that Mantel chose to make Sir Thomas More the great antagonist in the novel, and how this is a gutsy move. I have always found More to be a little obnoxiously holy, so this set up worked for me.
What I still don't understand is the title. Wolf Hall. A place you hear about, as Cromwell takes an interest in the pale and retiring young Jane Seymour (oh, dramatic irony!) but which only makes an appearance after the final pages of the novel. Of course, it's at Wolf Hall that everything changes. For Anne Boleyn though, not so much for Thomas Cromwell, the king's right hand man. Unless perhaps that's where the end begins for him as well...
To sum up, the story of the man who rose from nothing to become as powerful as any man in England is as thrilling as it can be, considering the story has been told again and again, and we all know how it ends. It becomes clear how the forces of popes and princes - making history - are both unstoppable and yet easily swayed by those behind the scenes. I, for one, would rather be a Cromwell.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Family Histories
Rain of Gold - Victor Villaseñor
Houston: Arte Publico, 1991
A friend, recommending this to me, describes it as the book that made him want to be a history major. (For me, that was pretty much a foregone conclusion - probably because of this book from my childhood that no one else has ever heard of - but I had a similar experience reading this.) Much as I love history, these kinds of books are few and far between, so I decided I would go find Rain of Gold after my semester ended.
And then I found out it was 550 pages long. And I questioned my resolve. There's a lot I want to read coming up; was I sure I wanted to devote so much time to this book about a Mexican family that eventually settles in California? But then I sped through the book. I could barely put it down. Victor Villaseñor's parents are the two protagonists in this unlikely love story, though the lifeblood of the story likely belongs to his grandmothers, two women who battle to keep their families alive and together through upheaval and violent change. The foreword, just over 2 pages long, is important, so don't skip it. Here he explains how these stories were part of the air he breathed growing up, and how he brushed them aside as he got older, as we all do, until he had a family of his own and realized "how empty I'd feel if I couldn't tell my own children about our ancestral roots." But even more importantly, he explains why the narrative is told in a melodramatic style that is sometimes reminiscent of magical realism. It makes sense then.
What works even as everything threatens Juan Salvador and Lupe and their families again and again is that you know the end - you know that eventually there will be Victor, and then this book. And as a result, history seems fated, preordained.
And finally, while the scenes is Mexico when Lupe is a little girl are perhaps the most vivid of the entire book, I was particularly interested in life after the two families make it to Southern California sometime in the early 1920s. My family first settled in Los Angeles around 1950, so learning more about what it was like - for Californians of all races - during the Prohibition era was fascinating.
Houston: Arte Publico, 1991
A friend, recommending this to me, describes it as the book that made him want to be a history major. (For me, that was pretty much a foregone conclusion - probably because of this book from my childhood that no one else has ever heard of - but I had a similar experience reading this.) Much as I love history, these kinds of books are few and far between, so I decided I would go find Rain of Gold after my semester ended.
And then I found out it was 550 pages long. And I questioned my resolve. There's a lot I want to read coming up; was I sure I wanted to devote so much time to this book about a Mexican family that eventually settles in California? But then I sped through the book. I could barely put it down. Victor Villaseñor's parents are the two protagonists in this unlikely love story, though the lifeblood of the story likely belongs to his grandmothers, two women who battle to keep their families alive and together through upheaval and violent change. The foreword, just over 2 pages long, is important, so don't skip it. Here he explains how these stories were part of the air he breathed growing up, and how he brushed them aside as he got older, as we all do, until he had a family of his own and realized "how empty I'd feel if I couldn't tell my own children about our ancestral roots." But even more importantly, he explains why the narrative is told in a melodramatic style that is sometimes reminiscent of magical realism. It makes sense then.
What works even as everything threatens Juan Salvador and Lupe and their families again and again is that you know the end - you know that eventually there will be Victor, and then this book. And as a result, history seems fated, preordained.
And finally, while the scenes is Mexico when Lupe is a little girl are perhaps the most vivid of the entire book, I was particularly interested in life after the two families make it to Southern California sometime in the early 1920s. My family first settled in Los Angeles around 1950, so learning more about what it was like - for Californians of all races - during the Prohibition era was fascinating.
Monday, November 02, 2009
What was sexy (and what wasn't) in medieval England
The Illuminator - by Brenda Rickman Vantrease
New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005
I kinda hate it when I wait awhile between finishing a book and blogging about it. I forget things. I stop caring. But I can't just skip it, not that whatever readers actually exist out there actually care. But I digress, as usual.
The Illuminator is probably much more about the a widowed noblewoman than the title character, a former noble who know creates the beautiful illuminated illustrations on religious texts but who also works with the heretic texts of proto-Protestant John Wycliffe. Life is all sorts of perilous for everyone in late 14th-century England. And the novel's plot feels the need to reinforce the point by letting bad things happen to good people. (That's not too much of a spoiler, right?) Anyway, in order to safeguard her home and lands with the protection of a nearby abbot, Lady Kathryn takes in the illuminator and his daughter. She's a single lady, he's a single dude, and she also has twin boys the same age as the girl. Oh, and there's an evil sheriff, an evil bishop, a female religious recluse, a dwarf, and a servant girl who can read auras. Mayhem, predictably, ensues. Also lots of pride.
But lest I make this sound like fluff, it's really not. It seems fairly well historically grounded, and I didn't feel like it was too anachronistic. I found the sympathetic characters sympathetic, and rooted for them. Vantrease's style is quite pretty, and during a stressful period, I found the quite different stresses of this world a comforting escape.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005
I kinda hate it when I wait awhile between finishing a book and blogging about it. I forget things. I stop caring. But I can't just skip it, not that whatever readers actually exist out there actually care. But I digress, as usual.
The Illuminator is probably much more about the a widowed noblewoman than the title character, a former noble who know creates the beautiful illuminated illustrations on religious texts but who also works with the heretic texts of proto-Protestant John Wycliffe. Life is all sorts of perilous for everyone in late 14th-century England. And the novel's plot feels the need to reinforce the point by letting bad things happen to good people. (That's not too much of a spoiler, right?) Anyway, in order to safeguard her home and lands with the protection of a nearby abbot, Lady Kathryn takes in the illuminator and his daughter. She's a single lady, he's a single dude, and she also has twin boys the same age as the girl. Oh, and there's an evil sheriff, an evil bishop, a female religious recluse, a dwarf, and a servant girl who can read auras. Mayhem, predictably, ensues. Also lots of pride.
But lest I make this sound like fluff, it's really not. It seems fairly well historically grounded, and I didn't feel like it was too anachronistic. I found the sympathetic characters sympathetic, and rooted for them. Vantrease's style is quite pretty, and during a stressful period, I found the quite different stresses of this world a comforting escape.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Welcome to America, Comrade
K Blows Top: A Cold War Comic Interlude, Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America's Most Unlikely Tourist - Peter Carlson
New York: Public Affairs, 2009
Nikita Sergeyevich makes me strangely emotional. His embarrassing blustery buffoonery, his role in the Thaw and the Cuban Missile Crisis, his eventual downfall. (Soviet leaders in general bring out this reaction in me. Which is strange because most of them don't deserve my pity, and I am sure they wouldn't want it.) I don't know what it is, but for years I've found him utterly compelling. And tragic. And hilarious.
Anyway, so the point is that I was excited when I heard about Carlson's book. He's a former Washington Post reporter, and came across the story of Khrushchev's 1959 trip to America when he was working at People magazine in the 1980s. So while the book came out for the 50th anniversary of the trip, it was over 20 years in the making. And, Carlson relies on one of my favorite historical sources: press accounts. I was planning on building a career as a historian on the legs of the popular media, after all.
But I am digressing again. The book is fun. At least, it's fun for someone like me, who knows and likes Soviet history, and probably knows the 1950s USSR better than the USA of the same period. But I bet it'll be fun for you as well. It really is what the title suggests: a Cold War comic interlude. In a world that was likely far more dangerous than I am willing to imagine. As a historian at heart, I would have liked to have seen more rigorous scholarship, but then it wouldn't have been the same book, and the audience would have shrunk to essentially nil.
I've packed up all my Russia books in preparation for my move, but I am tempted to pull out the Khrushchev stuff now. Maybe when I'm unpacking... :)
My favorite line of the book was buried about 3/4 of the way through the book. Discussing Khrushchev's trip, and commentators' reactions to it as it finally came to a close, Carlson writes, "The trip was, if nothing else, a victory for nuance." Would that we have more of those.
New York: Public Affairs, 2009
Nikita Sergeyevich makes me strangely emotional. His embarrassing blustery buffoonery, his role in the Thaw and the Cuban Missile Crisis, his eventual downfall. (Soviet leaders in general bring out this reaction in me. Which is strange because most of them don't deserve my pity, and I am sure they wouldn't want it.) I don't know what it is, but for years I've found him utterly compelling. And tragic. And hilarious.
Anyway, so the point is that I was excited when I heard about Carlson's book. He's a former Washington Post reporter, and came across the story of Khrushchev's 1959 trip to America when he was working at People magazine in the 1980s. So while the book came out for the 50th anniversary of the trip, it was over 20 years in the making. And, Carlson relies on one of my favorite historical sources: press accounts. I was planning on building a career as a historian on the legs of the popular media, after all.
But I am digressing again. The book is fun. At least, it's fun for someone like me, who knows and likes Soviet history, and probably knows the 1950s USSR better than the USA of the same period. But I bet it'll be fun for you as well. It really is what the title suggests: a Cold War comic interlude. In a world that was likely far more dangerous than I am willing to imagine. As a historian at heart, I would have liked to have seen more rigorous scholarship, but then it wouldn't have been the same book, and the audience would have shrunk to essentially nil.
I've packed up all my Russia books in preparation for my move, but I am tempted to pull out the Khrushchev stuff now. Maybe when I'm unpacking... :)
My favorite line of the book was buried about 3/4 of the way through the book. Discussing Khrushchev's trip, and commentators' reactions to it as it finally came to a close, Carlson writes, "The trip was, if nothing else, a victory for nuance." Would that we have more of those.
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