Steve Goddard's History Wire

FOCUS: American History -- Harlem / Moonshine / American Spring

Harlem -- The Unmaking of a Ghetto by Camilo Jose' Vergara, foreword by Timothy J. Gilfoyle, UChicago Press '14, in oversized format on glossy stock, $55, 364 pages, ASIN #0226853365. Bibliography, notes, scores of color images, many full-page.

 

 

Those readers with a special interest in the deterioration of urban America and, where appropriate, the rebirth of cities will find inspiration in this coffee table-book by photographer Camilo Jose' Vergara. Which is not to say that Vergara takes on this project with rose-colored glasses, but he does focus on the myriad ways our urban population centers can find their way out of desperate poverty.

Vergara's volume isn't primarily a history of Harlem; to be so, it would have text and photos on the Harlem Renaissance of the early 20th century, which for millions of Americans helped erase the notion of Harlem as "just another slum." Instead the author concentrates on the last four decades, not incidentally, the scope of his photographic career.

Vergara started in 1970 on a mission "to document the gradual collapse of this inner-city community. But the neighborhood refused to play the role he expected. Instead, the residents of Harlem taught him that the destiny of depopulated, decaying neighborhoods is not simply a story of continuous decline, culminating in a  return to nature:

"In today's Harlem, luxury co-ops and condos stand on what were recently empty lots serving as unofficial junkyards and garbage dumps. Blocks long characterized by violence and the illegal drug trade are now among the most prosperous, safe sections of Harlem."

The community the author reveals is one of "constant evolution -- some areas decline as longtime businesses give way to empty storefronts, graffiti, and garbage, while others gentrify with corporate chain stores competing with local mom-and-pop enterprises."

Author Camilo Jose' Vergara is a photographer and writer, a MacArthur fellow, and the author of many books. In 2013, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal. 

Moonshine by Jaime Joyce, Zenith Press '14, $25, 224 pages, ASIN #0760345848. Index, photo and music credits, notes and sources..

 

The author wishes to disabuse the reader of the notion that moonshine -- shine to the initiated -- originated with hillbillies in the American South. Actually the home-distilling techniques associated with shine originated in Scotland and Ireland and continued with the Whiskey Rebellion of the late 1700s.

The comely author  (What is a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?)discusses at length the taxing of liquor and defiance of the law in the 1800s, what happened to shine before and after Prohibition, the renaissance of the beverage, and its effect on popular culture.

"Moonshiine runners were NASCAR's first marquee drivers," writes Jaime Joyce, "white whiskey was the unspoken star of countless Hollywood film and TV productions; and numerous songs inspired by making shine have come from such musicians as Dolly Parton, Steve Earle, Metallica, Ween, and others."

The selling of moonshine -- once available only in the backwoods at night, by the light of the moon, to avoid detection by law enforcement -- is now legal in some states and illegal in others. My home state of Connecticut allows it, and some packies feature sipping sessions for those unfamiliar with the taste. For myself, I've tried white lightning, like it, and plan to buy some more.

Author Jaime Joyce earned her master's degrees at Bank Street College of Education and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She is an editor at Time, Inc. and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

American Spring -- Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution by Walter R. Borneman, Little, Brown '14, $30, 469 pages, ASIN #0316221023, Index, bibliography, notes, grouping of b&w glossy images, b&w maps.

 

 

From the dust jacket:

"When we reflect on our nation's history, the American Revolution can feel almost like a foregone conclusion. In reality, the first weeks and months of 1775 were very tenuous, and a fractured and ragtag group of colonial militias had to coalesce rapidly to have even the slimmest chance of toppling the mighty British Army.

"American Spring follows a fledgling nation from Paul Revere's little-known ride of December 1774 and the first shots fired on Lexington Green through the catastrophic Battle of Bunker Hill, culminating with a Virginian named George Washington taking command of colonial forces on July 3, 1775.

"Focusing on the colorful heroes John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Benjamin Franklin, and Patrick Henry, and the ordinary Americans caught up in the revolution, Walter R. Borneman uses newly available sources and research to tell the story of how a decade of discontent erupted into an armed rebellion that forged our nation."

Author Walter R. Borneman has written eight works of nonfiction and lives in Colorado.

 

FOCUS: Across the Pond -- Paris Reborn / Churchill's Secret War / Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters

Paris Reborn -- Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Quest to Build a Modern City by Stephane Kirkland, Picador '14 paperback. $18, 327 pages, ASIN #1250042682. Index, endnotes, footnotes, grouping of b&w and

 

color or glossy images.

History Wire seems to be awash with histories of Paris this year; not that we're complaining, you understand -- we'd welcome double the number we've received. Can't get enough of how that iconic city came to be. Two notable volumes that came over our transom are How Paris Became Paris by Joan de Jean and Edward Rutherfurd's doorstop volume, entitled simply Paris.

Those two combined with Paris Reborn have one curious theme that binds them together. They all have in common that they're depicting the era in which a primitive Paris evolved into a modern city, not because of military conflict but as a result of major innovations in such domestic areas as transportation, architecture, street construction, art, public health, commerce, and governance, among others. And yet, curiously, the eras they're claiming as transformative are very different one from the other.

The transformative era of de Jean's book is largely the 1600s and 1700s, especially the reigns of King Louis XIV, the iconic Sun King; and Louis XV. Rutherfurd's book is encyclopedic in scope, but its evolution of Paris takes place over a longer period. And Stephane Kirkland's "Paris Reborn" took place over a mere generation in the last half of the 19th century. Also, factually, the authors' takes vary as well. So take each with a grain of salt, I suppose.

The back cover encapsulates Kirkland's thesis:

"Traditionally known as a dirty, congested, and dangerous city, Paris was transformed in an extraordinary period from 1848 to 1870, when the government launched a huge campaign to build streets, squares, parks, churches, and public buildings. The Louvre Palace was expanded, Notre-Dame Cathedral was restored, and the masterpiece of the Second Empire, the Opera Garnier, was built. A very large part of what we see when we visit Paris today originates from this short span of 22 years."

Author Stephane Kirkland holds advanced degrees in architecture and art history and has worked as an architect and consultant. He shares his time between Brooklyn and Paris.

Churchill's Secret War -- The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II by Madhusree Mukerjee, BasicBooks '11 paperback. $16.99, 332 pages, ASIN #0465002013. Index, notes, bibliography, small grouping of b&w maps, otherwise unillustrated.

Author Madhusree Mukerjee has researched Winston Churchill's "questionable decisions and destructive actions that led to the death of some 3 millikon Indians during WWII." Mukerjee sheds light on what he considers the avoidable devastation that was justified as a means to defeat the Axis powers and maintain colonial control over India.

"Due to myriad factors associated with the UK's -- and Churchill's -- wartime aspirations, adequate provisions were withheld from India in the summer and fall of 1943. While all of the contributing forces cannot be identified, Mukerjee asserts three main explanations for the UK's inaction:"

    *Churchill had an aversion to austerity when it came to his people, so he did not want to impose restraints on the quantity and variety of food available.

    *Churchill was committed to maintaining a stockpile of food for the Balkans, whom the UK intended to liberate, "so shiploads of wheat from Australia passed by famine-stricken India en route for storage."

    *Ego. "Churchill wanted to avoid the embarassment of admitting to American officials that he controlled enough resources, in terms of ships and grains, to relieve a colony imperiled by hunger."

    "Bottom Line: Some three million people died in a man-made famine."

Author Madhusree Mukerjee won a Guggenheim fellowship to write her previous book, The Land of Naked People, and lives near Frankfurt, Germany.

Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters -- An Eccentric Englishwoman and her Lost Kingdom by Philip Eade, Picador '14, $30, 362 pages, ASIN #1250045894..

 

 

From the dust jacket:

"Sylvia Brooke was one of the more exotic and outrageous figures of the 20th century. Otherwise known as the Ranee of Sarawak, she was the wife of Sir Vyner Brooke, the last White Rajah, whose family had ruled the jungle kingdom of Sarawak on Borneo for three generations. They had their own flag, revenue, postage stamps, and money, as well as the power of life and death over their subjects -- Malays, Chinese, and headhunting Dyak tribesmen.

"The regime of the White Rajahs was long romanticized, but by the 1930s, their power and prestige were crumbling. At the center of Sarawak's decadence was Sylvia, author of 11 books, mother to three daughters, and an extravagantly dressed socialite whose behavior often offended and usually defied social convention.

"Sylvia did her best to manipulate the line of succession in favor of her daughters, but by 1946 , Japan had invaded Sarawak, sending Sylvia and her husband into exile, ending one of the more unusual chapters of British colonial rule."

Author Philip Eade graduated from Bristol University and was briefly a criminal lawyer before turning to journalism. He has authored a biography of Prince Philip and one forthcoming on Evelyn Waugh. He lives in London and the Welsh Marches.

FOCUS: Wartime History -- The Month That Changed the World / D-Day Through French Eyes / Hotel Florida

The Month That Changed the World -- July 1914 by Gordon Martel, Oxford UPress '14. $34.95, 484 pages, ASIN #0199665389. Index, list of works c

 

ited, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text..

 

Readers don't need a centennial observance to recognize the name of unlucky Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who was assassinated at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, for we all learned about him in school. The importance of that event, of course, was that it led directly to a military conflict historians called the Great War (never realizing they'd have to change that to World War I to accommodate further carnage down the road).

Scholar Gordon Martel is one of a raft of authors on the subject who have published books this season to commemmorate the horrific event and to describe its outcroppings and importance. In his work, the author "goes back to the human dimension, to the contemporary diplomatic, military, and political records, in order to recount the twists and turns of the crisis afresh, with the aim of establishing just how the cataclysm was unleased."

Painfully, Mantell stresses that the motivating factor to the Great War "is the story of a terrible, avoidable tragedy -- a mystery that can be solved only by retracing the steps taken by those who took the world down the road to war." That story brings into view such historic personalities as Kaiser Wilhelm II, Emperor Franz Joseph, Tsar Nicholas II, Sir Edward Grey, and Raymond Poincare.

Mantell tells his story chronologically, devoting a chapter to each day of the infamous "July Crisis." Tragically, he stresses that "almost every day it seemed possible that the crisis could be settled as so many had been over the past decade." But, alas, it was not to be.

Author Gordon Martel is a specialist on the origins of the First and Second World Wars, modern imperialism, and the nature of diplomacy. He has taught at a number of Canadian universities and has been a visiting professor or fellow in England, Ireland, and Australia.

D-Day Through French Eyes -- Normandy 1944 by Mary Louise Roberts, UChicago Press '14, $25, 211 pages, ASIN #022613699X. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

A brief excerpt from the author's Introduction:

"At the mention of D-Day, most Americans summon the image of GIs landing on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. These first steps onto Nazi-occupied soil, immortalized in a photograph often attributed to Robert Capa, dominated our perceptions of World War II. But did you ever wonder how the landings looked from the opposite direction -- to the French onshore? What was D-Day like for the Normans?

"U.S. historians have told and retold the story of the Normandy Invasion. But in most accounts, the focus remains on the day-to-day fighting of the Allied forces, particularly the American GIs. As a result, the experience of the Normans has been almost completely ignored. To remedy this, the collection of documents gathered in this book will widen our view by presenting D-Day and the Normandy Campaign through French eyes. Among these documents are temoignages, or testimonies, of the campaign culled from French archives and publications."

Author Mary Louise Roberts is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in WWII France.

Hotel Florida -- Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War by Amanda Vaill, Farrar, Straus, & Giroux '14, $30, 436 pages, ASIN #0374172994. Index, bibliography, glossary, notes, grouping of b&w glossy images, several b&w maps.

 

It is basic to the craft of writing history that readers respond to personal stories quicker than to anything else. In her latest work, historian Amanda Vaill employs the personal dramas of six people: Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, Arturo Barea, and Ilsa Kulcsar -- "whose lives all crossed paths at Madrid's Hotel Florida as they bore witness to the war."

From the dust jacket:

"Beginning with the cloak-and-dagger plot that precipitated the first gunshots of the war and moving forward month by month to the end of the conflict, Hotel Florida traces the tangled and disparate wartime destinies of three couples against the backdrop of a critical moment in history: a moment that called forth both the best and the worst from those caught up in it.

"In this noir landscape of spies, soldiers, revolutionaries, and artists, the shadow line between truth and falsehood sometimes became faint indeed -- your friend could be your enemy, and honesty could get you (or someone else) killed."

Author Amanda Vaill is author of the best-selling Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy -- A Lost Generation Love Story, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography. She has written other books as well and written features and criticism for a range of pubications. She lives in New York City.

 

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- Liberty's Torch / The Invention of Wings / Identity and the Failure of America

Liberty's Torch by Elizabeth Mitchell, Grove Atlantic '14, $27, 310 pages, ASIN #0802122574. Notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.

 

 

You've passed (and hopefully been inspired by) New York harbor's Statue of Liberty, sailing or flying in or out of Manhattan. You've also visited it and perhaps walked to its top as well as viewing TV documentaries on it from time to time. So you may think you know just about all there is to learn about Lady Liberty.

All the more reason to read journalist Elizabeth Mitchell's new book on its history, which may hold a surprise or three in store for you. Here are a few tidbits:

    *The Statue of Liberty was not a gift from France. "We have all heard that the statue was a gift from France to America, but that implies that the government of France gave it to the government of America. In fact, the statue was the brainchild of one lone artist, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, who went through extraordinary efforts to raise all the funds to build the statue, his masterpiece."

    *Americans were very slow to welcome Bartholdi's statue. "Initial fundraising and support was extremely lackluster and it took about 15 years, with the statue completed and assembled in a neighborhood of Paris, before the American citizenry finally began to embrace it."

    *Many notable people including Joseph Pulitzer, Gustave Eiffel, and Ulysses S. Grant were involved in Bartholdi's scheme.

           ---"President Grant met with Bartholdi to offer his support for the project and blessed his plan to use Bedloe's Island as the site of the statue."

           --"(Publisher)Joseph Pulitzer raised a large sum of money for Bartholdi's project....by printing the names of all donors, even if they just gave a penny."

            --"Gustave Eiffel, the ingenious France engineer, figured out how to create the support structure for Lady Liberty and how she could withstand the extreme changes in temperature and high winds in the harbor."

    *Thomas Edison once had plans to make the statue talk. "When Edison introduced the phonograph to the public in 1878, he told the newspapers that he was designing a 'monster disc" for the interior of the Statue of Liberty that would allow the statue to deliver speeches that could be heard up to the northern part of Manhattan and across the bay." However, that plan came to naught.

Author Elizabeth Mitchell is an editor, a journalist, and author of two nonfiction books.

The Invention of Wings -- A Novel by Sue Monk Kidd, Viking '14, $27.95, 369 pages, ASIN #0670024783..

 

In her latest novel, the acclaimed Sue Monk Kidd's imagination travels to early 19th century Charleston, S.C., where she depicts the difficult life of an urban slave named Hetty "Handful" Grimke'.  "The Grimke's' daughter Sarah, possessed of a ravenous intellect and mutinous ideas," writes the author, "has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women."

Those new to Kidd's writing may not be acquainted with her ability to inhabit the characters she depicts. Here's a brief excerpt, displaying Kidd's enviable talents:

"There was a time in Africa the people could fly. Mauma told me this one night when I was 10 years old. She said, 'Handful, your granny-mauma saw it for herself. She say they flew over trees and clouds. She say they flew like blackbirds. When we came here, we left that magic behind.'

"My mauma was shrewd. She didn't get any reading and writing like me. Everything she knew came from living on the scarce side of mercy. She looked at my face, how it flowed with sorrow and doubt, and she said, 'You don't believe me? Where you think these shoulder blades of yours come from, girl?

"Those skinny bones stuck out from my back like nubs. She patted them and said, 'This all what left of your wings. They nothing but these flat bones now, but one day you gon get 'em back.

"I was shrewd like mauma. Even at 10 I knew this story about people flying was pure malarkey. We weren't some special people who lost our magic. We were slave people, and we weren't going anywhere. It was later I saw what she meant. We could fly all right, but it wasn't any magic to it."

Sue Monk Kidd is the author of the novels The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair along with several memoirs, including the New York Times bestseller Traveling with Pomegranites, written with her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor. She lives in Florida.

Identity and the Failure of America -- From Thomas Jefferson to the War on Terror by John Michael, UMinn. Press '14 paperback. 301 pages, ASIN #0816651442.

        

English professor John Michael has divided his narrative into three parts: 1) "Failed Virtues," including "Jefferson's Headache: Race and the Failure of a Benevolent Republic (and) Ahab's Cannibals: Vicissitudes of Command and the Failure of Manly Virtue;" 2) "Failed Sympathies," including Lydia Maria Child's Romance: Cosmopolitan Imagination and the Failure of Gender Reform (and) John Brown's Identities: Nat Turner (and) the Fear of Just Deserts;" and 3) "Failed Judgment," including Emerson's Activism: The Trials and Tribulations of an American Citizen (and) Douglass's Cosmopolitanism: American Empire and the Failure of Diplomatic Representation."

From the back cover:

From Thomas Jefferson to John Rawls, justice has been at the center of America's self-image and national creed. At the same time, for many of its peoples -- from African slaves and European immigrants to women and the poor -- the American experience has been defined by injustice: oppression, disenfranchisement, violence, and prejudice.

"In Identity and the Failure of America, John MIchael explores the contradictions between a mythic national identity promising justice to all and the realities of a divided, hierarchical, and frequently iniquitous history and social order. Through a series of insightful readings, Michael analyzes such cultural moments as the epic dramatization of the tension between individual ambition and communal complicity in Moby Dick, Ralph Waldo Emerson's antislavery activism, and Frederick Douglass's long fight for racial equity.

"Focusing on exemplary instances when the nature of the United States as an essentially conflicted nation turned to force, Michael ultimately posits the development of a more cosmopolitan American identity, one that is more fully and justly imagined in response to the nation's ethical failings at home and abroad."

Author John Michael teaches English and visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester. He has written two previous books. 

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- Securing the West / Jackson Pollock's Mural / On Love

Securing the West -- Politics, Public Lands, and the Fate of the Old Republic, 1785-1850 by John R. Van Atta, Johns Hopkins UPress '14, $54.95, 294 pages, ASIN #1421412756. Index, essay on sources, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

        

"In any culture, the distribution, use, and political significance of the most basic economic resource -- land -- must be a central part of the design," writes author John R. Van Atta in his Introduction. "In the aspirations of the earliest New World settlers and for long thereafter, America represented above all the opportunity for people to their own land.

"Institutions, sanctions, rituals, regulations, social structures -- in short, the foundational elements of a civil society -- all related to who controlled land, the manner in which they controlled it, and for what purposes. From the start, while the land in the New World may have been vacant, to some eyes, it was never empty."

The author elaborates on this point on the front cover:

"Americans expected the country to grow westward, but on the details of that growth they held strongly different opinions. What part should Congress play in this development? How much should public land cost? What of the families and businesses left behind, and how would society's institutions be established in the West? What of the premature settlers, the 'squatters' who challened the rule of law while epitomizing democratic daring?

"Taking a broad approach, Van Atta addresses three interrelated queries: First, how did competing economic beliefs and divergent cultural mandates influence the various outcomes of this broad debate over the means, timing, and purposes of settling the trans-Appalachian West? Second, what alternative visions of western society lay behind the battles among policy makers within the government and the interested parties who would sway them? Third, why did settlement of the West take such a different course in the end from that which the earliest leaders of the republic intended?"

Author John R. Van Atta teaches history and constitutional law at the Brunswick School in Greenwich, CT. He is the author of The Wolf by the Ears: The Missouri Crisis, 1819--1821, forthcoming from Johns Hopkins.

Jackson Pollock's Mural -- The Transitional Moment, with essays by Yvonne Szafran, Laura Rivers, Alan Phenix, Tom Learner, Ellen G. Landau, and Steve Martin. Getty Publications '14, in oversized format, on glossy stock, $29.95, 124 pages, 78 color and 13 b&w illustrations, many full-page, ASIN #1606063235. Index, bibliography, appendix, notes follow each essay.

 

Will wonders never cease? Award-winning comedian and actor, accomplished musician, novelist and art collector -- Steve Martin -- seems to have done it all. But he's obviously not finished as he now delivers a serious, though brief, critique on Jackson Pollock's work, Mural.

"A CinemaScope blast of canvas, Mural debuted in Peggy Guggenheim's expansive hallway at a party after Pollock's gallery opening in 1943," Martin writes. "I suppose Guggenheim thought that if she was going to throw an art party, then she might as well do it with one of the strangest paintings 1943 had ever seen. The picture was viewed obliquely as guests carrying heavy coats passed beside it, heading for the cocktails necessary to endure the behavior of Mural's creator, Jackson Pollock.

"While installing the painting, he had wandered into an afternoon party nude and drunk, with what may be called an extreme case of opening night jitters. Mural had the perfect rhythm for a party -- or a nightclub, or a subway station -- with vertical lines that were very nearly human dancing across what Pollack called 'that goddam surface.' Just four years later, those figures in his work would be gone, and he would have found in his drip pictures an expression of artistic emotion equal to opera's high C...."

The authors offer an informative timeline, from 1943, when Peggy Guggenheim commissioned Pollock to paint a mural for her townhouse to 1956, when Pollock dies in an auto accident; to interesting asides from Guggenheim along the way, to 2012, when Mural arrived at the Getty Center in Los Angeles for technical study, conservation, and cleaning. And a foldout near the front of the book offers a reduction of the oil painting, the original of which measures 95 5/8" by 237 3/4".

Besides Steve Martin's introductory sketch are essays entitled "Still Learning from Pollock" by Ellen G. Landau; "Jackson Pollock's Mural: Myth and Substance" by Yvonne Szafran, Laura Rivers, Alan Phenix, and Tom Learner; and "Deconstructing Mural: A Guide to Reading Pollock's Paint" by Alan Phenix.

About the authors:

Yvonne Szafran is senior conservator of paintings and Laura Rivers an associate conservator of painting at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Alan Phenix is a scientist and Tom Learner a senior scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute. Ellen G. Landau is Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emerita of the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University. And Steve Martin is Steve Martin.

On Love -- A Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century by Luc Ferry, Polity Press '13, 180 pages, ASIN #0745670172. Index, footnotes, unillustrated.

 

From the dust cover:

"All the great ideals that gave life meaning in earlier societies -- God, the nation, revolution, freedom, democracy -- are in disarray today, widely questioned, and rejected outright by the many people who have lost faith in them.

"But there is another value, rooted in the birth of the modern family and in the passage from traditional to modern marriage, which has transformed our lives in profound and often unrecognized ways: love. It affects not only our personal lives but many aspects of our social and collective life, too, from art and education to politics.

"In this book, Luc Ferry shows how the quiet rise of love as the central value in modern societies has created a new principle of meaning and a new definition of the good life that requires a completely different kind of philosophical thinking. It forms the basis for a new philosophy for the 21st century and a new kind of humanism for the modern world -- not a humanism of reason and rights, but a humanism of solidarity and sympathy."

Luc Ferry is a French philosopher who served as Minister for Youth, National Education and Research in France from 2002 to 2004. He has written many books in English.

 

FOCUS: Conservation History -- Walden Warming

Walden Warming -- Climate Change Comes to Thoreau's Woods by Richard B. Primack, Chicago UPress '14, 253 pages, ASIN #0226682684. Index, further reading, appendix, b&w images sprinkled through text.

 

.

Those still dubious or agnostic on the issue of climate change beware -- prepare to have your mind changed. In his review of Richard B. Primack's new book, a Thoreau biographer writes, "Primack's book is important in three ways: it is a report on what global warming has already done to a much-loved bit of American space -- Walden Pond; it is a detailed warning about what we are now facing; and it is a stirring call to arms, especially to young Americans and students about how they can help."

From the dust cover:

"In his meticulous notes on the natural history of Concord, MA, Henry David Thoreau records the first open flowers of highbush blueberry on May 11, 1853. If he were to look for the first blueberry flowers in Concord today, mid-May would be too late.

"In the 160 years since Thoreau's writings, warming temperatures have pushed blueberry flowering three weeks earlier, and in 2012, following a winter and spring of record-breaking warmth, blueberries began flowering on April 1 -- six weeks earlier than in Thoreau's time. The climate around Thoreau's beloved Walden Pond is changing, with visible ecological consequences.

"In Walden Warming, Richard B. Primack uses Thoreau and Walden, icons of the conservation movement, to track the effects of a warming climate on Concord's plants and animals. Under the attentive eyes of Primack, the notes that Thoreau made years ago are transformed from charming observations into scientific data sets."

Author Richard B. Primack is professor of biology at Boston University, has written two previous books on conservation biology, and is editor-in-chief of the international journal Biological Conservation.

FOCUS: Across the Pond -- Capital -- The Eruption of Delhi / Edgar Degas -- Drawings and Pastels / The Romanov Sisters

 

Capital -- The Eruption of Delhi by Rana Dasgupta, Penguin Press '14, $28.95, 466 pages, ASIN #1594204470. Index, notes, no bibliography or illustrations, except for two b&w maps.

        

Globally, it's conventional wisdom that wealth has poured into India during the past generation. In Capital, Rana Dasgupta writes that Delhi has led the parade in that regard, qualifying the city as hosting an "eruption." But it hasn't all been pretty:

"The boom following the opening up of India's economy plunged Delhi into a tumult of destruction and creation: slums and markets were ripped down, and shopping malls and apartment blocks erupted from the ruins. Many fortunes were made, and in the glossy stores nestled among the new highways, customers paid for global luxury with bags of cash. But the transformation was stern, abupt and fantastically unequal, and it gave rise to strange and bewildering feelings. The city brimmed with ambition and rage. Violent crimes stole the headlines."

In a brief Q&A with India Ink, author Rana Dasgupta discusses the writing of his book:

Q. There's a point in the book where you write about how people are not curious about those who belong to different classes and castes. Is Delhi becoming an insular city?

A. In some sense, all big cities are insular. They have their own drama which animates conversation and people who know how the city works get pleasure out of sharing that with other people. So cities are inevitably self-involved to some extent because they're very dramatic -- there's a lot of texture and depth.

Q. In the book, you write about a lot of things that are common to urban India -- among them, the corporatization of medical health care, collapsing marriages and the aspiration to get very rich. Is Delhi, then, the ultimate pan-Indian city of the 21st century?

A. I think I'm sort of careful to point out those things that are unique to Delhi -- particularly, the relationship it has with Partition and with being a capital. Those things are very important to its culture, which is why it's different from Bombay and Calcutta, and I think that the fact that's the seat of federal politics explains nearly everything about what it's become, which is obviously not the case for other cities. The issues of political corruption, of immense car ownership of a new middle class are common to all.

Author Rana Dasgupta won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book for his debut novel, Solo. Capital is his first work of nonfiction. Born in England in 1971, he now lives in Delhi.

Edgar Degas -- Drawings and Pastels by Christopher Lloyd, Getty Publications '14 on glossy stock, $39.95, 320 pages, 250 color illustrations, ASIN #1606063278. Index, picture credits, bibliography.

"Edgar Degas was one of the outstanding draughtsmen of the nineteenth century," writes author Christopher Lloyd at the outset of this remarkable book. Continuing and perhaps with notice to the reader that he has not produced an objective study of the artist, he states, "More than that, he falls into that rare category of artists -- Leonardo da Vinci, Durer, Raphael, Michelangelo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Watteau -- of whom it can be said that every mark they make on paper is worthy of consideration.

From the front cover:

"As Christopher Lloyd demonstrates in this illuinating study, the sheer volume and variety of the artist's works on paper, in addition to the singular importance Degas accorded the act of drawing itself, allows his stylistic evolution to be recounted through a examination of his drawings and pastels alone. Following a broadly chronological approach while setting Degas within the culture context of his times.

"Including his relationship with Impressionism, Lloyd combines a general account of the artist's life with a close scrutiny of various subject areas, from the iconic images of dancers -- which form over half of Degas's oeuvre -- to nudes, laundresses, milliners, and the less well-known racehorse and landscape drawings.

"The entire career is presented: the early study of Ingres and Delacroix, the conventional youthful drawings, and the historical works of the early 1860s, followed by the shift to the modern subjects and stylistic concerns that would occupy Degas for the rest of his career."

Author Christopher Lloyd worked at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford from 1968 to 1988, combining curaorial duties with teaching and was surveyor of The Queen's Pictures in the British Royal Collection from 1988 to 2005. He has curated numerous exhibitions worldwide and published extensively on Western art.

 The Romanov Sisters -- The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra by Helen Rappaport, St. Martin's Press '14, stated First U.S. Edition, First Printing. $27.99, 492 pages, ASIN #1250020204. Index, bibliography, notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.

        

From the dust jacket:

"Helen Rappaport brings the four daughters of the last tsar to life in their own words, illuminating the opulence of their doomed world and their courage as they faced a terrible end.

"They were the Princess Dianas of their day -- perhaps the most photographed and talked about royals in the early twentieth century. The four captivating Russian grand duchesses -- Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia Romanova -- were much admired for their happy dispositions, their looks, the clothes they wore, and their privileged lifestyle.

"Over the years, the story of the four Romanov sisters and their tragic end in a basement at Ekaterinburg in 1918 has clouded our view of them, leading to a mass of sentimental and idealized hagiography. From a treasure trove of diaries and letters written by the grand duchesses to their friends and family, we learn that they were intelligent, sensitive, and perceptive witnesses to the dark turmoil within their immediate family and the ominous approach of the Russian Revolution, the nightmare that would sweep their world away, and them along with it."

Author Helen Rappaport studied Russian at Leeds University and specializes in Imperial Russian history and the reign of Queen Victoria. She lives in Dorset.

 

 

FOCUS: A Potpourri -- The Nude in Photography / Train / Pacific Payback

The Nude in Photography by Paul Martineau, Getty Publications '14 in oversized format on glossy stock, $24.95, 112 pages, 88 color illustrations, ASIN #1606062662. Plate list, dozens of color and black and white glossy images, many full-page.

        

 "Born like Venus on the half shell from the centuries-long tradition of the nude in painting," writes author Paul Martineau, "the nude first appeared as subject matter in photography with the introduction of the medium itself, between 1837 and 1840, and has continued as an ever-evolving theme through changing technical developments and cultural mores to the present day."

The scope of Martineau's survey ranges from "the earliest surviving photographs of Greek and Roman sculpture through studies of living nude models for aesthethic or scientific purposes to the burgeoning practice of exploring the human body as pure form."

The identity of the 64 contributing photographers may be surprising to some because of the inclusion of artists better known for their work in other media, such as painters Edgar Degas and Thomas Eakins. Among other contributors are such well-known names as Robert Mapplethorpe, Diane Arbus, Man Ray, and Alfred Steiglitz. And although all the subjects are all naked, relatively few portray openly erotic themes.

Author Paul Martineau is associate curator in the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the author of Herb Ritts: L.A. Style; Eliot Porter: In the Realm of Nature; Paul Outerbridge: Command Performance, and Still Life in Photography.

Train -- Riding the Rails that Created the Modern World -- from the Trans-Siberian to the Southwest Chief by Tom Zoellner, Viking '14, $27.95, 346 pages, ASIN #0670025283. Index, endnotes, footnotes, unillustrated.

 

 

            "The Engine was set off at its utmost speed, thirty-five

              miles an hour, swifter than a bird flies. You cannot con-

              ceive what that sensation of cutting the air was; the

              motion as smooth as possible too. I stood up, and with

              my bonnet off drank the air before me."

Such was the transformative feeling, expressed by actress Fanny Kemble, of riding the first competitive railroad train in a British race in 1829 (From Getting There: The Epic Struggle Between Road and Rail in the American Century by Stephen B. Goddard, BasicBooks '94).

In Zoellner's impressive new book, he describes riding "from the birthplace of the locomotive in England, crosses the Andes in a rattling coal train, jams with blues musicians across America, ascends to the Tibetan plateau on the world's highest line, speeds across India on its antiquated yet magnificent trains and sips cocktails in the club car with passengers and trainmen along the way."

Actress Fanny Kemble, quoted above, immediately fell head-over-heels in love with the engineer who had designed and operated the British train she rode on. The author doesn't stop there in exploring the link between trains and sex, but also shows how locomotives became living symbols of death, power, and romance as well:

"The gifts of the railroad are everywhere: seasonal food, highway routes, the beat of rock music, huge corporations, mechanistic warfare, pleasant leafy suburbs, the very shapes of our cities, the foundations of cinema, coal-fired electricity, our continental sense of time and space and our connections with people who may live at a distance but still are neighbors."

Author Tom Zoellner has written four previous nonfiction books, including Uranium, winner of the 2011 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award He teaches English at Chapman University and lives in Los Angeles.

Pacific Payback -- The Carrier Aviators Who Avenged Pearl Harbor at the Battle of Midway by Stephen L. Moore, $26.95, 436 pages, ASIN #0451465520. Index, bibliography, notes, sources, appendix, grouping of b&w glossy images, other b&w images sprinkled through text..

 

 

From the dust cover:

"Sunday, December 7, 1941, dawned clear and bright over the Pacific....But for the Dauntless dive-bomber crews of the USS Enterprise returning to their home base on Oahu, it was a morning from hell. Flying directly into the Japanese ambush at Pearl Harbor, they lost a third of their squadron and witnessed the heart of America's Navy broken and smoldering on the oil-slicked waters below.

"The next six months, from Pearl Harbor to the Battle of Midway -- a dark time during which the Japanese scored victory after victory -- this small band of aviators saw almost constant deployment, intense carrier combat, and fearsome casualties. Many were killed by enemy Zero fighters, antiaircraft fire, or deadly crash landings in the Pacific while others were captured and spent years in POW camps.

"Yet the Enterprise's Dauntless crews would be the first to strike an offensive blow against Japanese installations in the Marshall Islands, would be the first to sink a Japanese warship, and would shepherd the Doolittle Raiders' bombing of Tokyo."

Texan Stephen L. Moore graduated from Austin State University in Texas, has authored multiple books on World War II and Texas history and a biography of his great-great-great-grandfather William T. Sadler, one of the first Texas Ranger captains in the 1830s. He, his wife Cindy, and their three children live in Lantana, TX.

FOCUS: American History -- The Last Kind Words Saloon / William Henry Harrison / Brothers Forever

The Last Kind Words Saloon -- a novel by Larry McMurtry, Liveright '14, $24.95, 196 pages, ASIN #0871407868.

I've been told that as a human ages, so does his energy diminish. One could say the same about Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Larry McMurtry as he enters his late 70s. When he wrote his signature work, Lonesome Dove, 30 years ago, he was clearly up to the task of penning a doorstop volume exceeding 1,000 pages. His latest, even with larger type, weighs in at less than 200 pages.

But that doesn't mean that McMurtry has lost anything on his fastball -- not on your life. For the 48-year-old McMurtry couldn't have written The Last Kind Words Saloon; he just didn't have the richness of experience gained from introducing and nurturing a posse of Wild West characters. He now displays that richness as he reintroduces such nonfictional and fictional characters as Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Charlie Goodnight, and Nellie Courtright, in what could be a career curtain call for McMurtry, although he shows no public inclination to call it a literary day.

The Last Kind Words Saloon begins in Long Grass, TX, where we come upon the taciturn Wyatt Earp and his buddy, dentist-turned-gunslinger Doc Holliday ("more adept at poker than extracting teeth.") "Wyatt and Doc are living out the last days of a way of life that is passing into history," writes the author, "two men never more aware of the growing distance between their lives and their legends." Can you see Larry McMurtry wince a bit as the analogy to his own career resonates?

In any event, in Long Grass, we meet such memorable characters as Lord Ernle, an English baron; and the exotic courtesan San Saba, "the most beautiful whore on the plains." But soon it's time to migrate to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Denver, then on to Mobetie, TX; and finally to Tombstone, AZ, ending with the famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

And towards the end, we realize the aging analogies don't end with Earp and Holliday and even McMurtry but with the fading Old West itself. "With the buffalo herds gone, the Comanche defeated, and vast swaths of the Great Plains being enclosed by cattle ranches, Wyatt and Doc live on, even as the storied West that forged their myths disappears," according to McMurtry.

Born and raised in Texas, Larry McMurtry is an award-winning novelist, essayist, Oscar-winning screenwriter, and avid book collector. He lives in Archer City, TX.  

William Henry Harrison and the Conquest of the Ohio Country -- Frontier Fighting in the War of 1812 by David Curtis Skaggs, Johns Hopkins UPress '14, $44.95, 303 pages, ASIN #1421405466. Index, essay on sources, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

        

 A brief excerpt from the Preface:

"About William Henry Harrison many Americans know only two facts: he campaigned for the presidency under the slogan 'Tippecanoe and Tyler too,' and he was in office the shortest time of any president. While some will tell you that 'Tippecanoe' refers to a battle with the Indians (or was it the British?) fought somewhere in the Midwest, few can list any other episodes in his life, and fewer still recognize his military contributions to the early republic.

"Many others confuse him with his grandson, Benjamin Harrison, and assume he fought in the Civil War and was one of those hard-to-distinguish-between bearded men ascanding to the presidency in its aftermath.

"William Henry Harrison deserves better than this. He is the subject of two biographies that describe his military career but do not analyze it. They also lack the perspective of nearly three-quarters of a century of scholarship and the microfilm publication of the Harrison papers. Recent studies by Robert M.  Owens and Adam Jortner on his dealings with the Indians and Henrdik Booraem's psychological study of his youth and young manhood add significantly to our understanding of an emerging political figure in the Old Northwest. Yet his military career remains little studied."

This deficit historian David Curtis Skaggs sets out to remedy in William Henry Harrison and the Conquest of the Ohio Country. Harrison, the author writes, was of a type -- the citizen-soldier on the Ohio frontier in the days when white men settled on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains at their peril.

Among the military exploits Skaggs limns are the Fallen Timbers campaign in which Harrison served on Major Gen. Anthony Wayne's staff and a description of how in that day, the military and its leaders performed in the age of a small standing army and part-time, Cincinnatus-like forces.

Author David Curtis Skaggs is a professor emeritus of history at Bowling Green State University and is author or co-author of 12 books.

Brothers Forever -- The Enduring Bond Between a Marine and a Navy Seal That Transcended Their Ultimate Sacrifice by Tom Sileo and Col. Tom Manion, USMC (Ret.), foreword by Gen. John Allen, USMC (Ret.). DaCapo Press '14, $25.99, 278 pages, ASIN #0306822377. Index, notes, two groupings of b&w glossy images.

 

Readers may recall President Obama's 2011 Memorial Day address, in which he told the nation that the friendship between U.S. Marine 1st Lt. Travis Manion and U.S. Navy LT (SEAL) Brendan Looney was the embodiment of "brotherhood," "sacrifice," and "love of country."

"In 2007, after Travis was killed while shielding his fellow Marines from enemy fire in Iraq," write the authors, "Brendan, who was training to become a navy SEAL, knew his brother in arms was still there in spirit, watching over him and pushing him to keep going. When Brendan was killed in Afghanistan three years later, both military families came together to lay them side by side and forever preserve their legacy."

About the authors: Tom Sileo, a nationally-syndicated columnist, lives in Marietta, GA. Col. Tom Manion, USMC (Ret.) is chairman emeritus at the Travis Manion Foundation. He lives in Doyleston, PA.

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- Enduring Courage / China Dolls / Lex Populi

Enduring Courage -- Ace Pilot Eddie Rickenbacker and the Dawn of the Age of Speed by John F. Ross, St. Martin's Press '14, $27.99, 375 pages, ASIN #1250033772. Index, notes, note to reader, grouping of b&w glossy images.

More than any one invention, what characterized a new America at the outset of the 20th century was what author John F. Ross calls the nation's "love affair with speed," epitomized by two key icons -- the race car driver and the flying ace. Together, they utterly transformed the way Americans thought about time, space, and daring.

"No individual did more to create and intensify these raw new roles," writes Ross, "than the tall, gangly Eddie Rickenbacker, who defied death over and over with such courage and pluck that a generation of Americans came to know his face better than the president's."

Advances in the age of speed came at a cost measured in risk and often in the loss of human life. In the words of Eddie Rickenbacker, "There is no man living who has cheated the Grim Reaper as often as I have." He boasted of surviving eight near-death experiences, including the following:

    *"Atlanta Passenger Airplane Crash. While on a business trip in 1941 during his tenure with Eastern Air Lines, Eddie's plane crashed just outside of Atlanta. Only an instinctive dive to the rear of the airliner saved his life in the terrible crash. He spent an evening with his eye hanging from his cheek and multiple broken bones; indeed, he suffered wounds so grave that rescue workers initially left him for dead."

    *Wing-Stripping Event. On the Western Front in October 1918, Eddie attacked and shot down a German plane in his Nieuport 28, only to find as he sharply pulled up from his dive that the leading edge of his top wing had pulled away and was flapping like a wing. His enemy left him for dead as he struggled in an uncontrolled spin to regain control, only managing to do so at the very last moment before hitting the ground."

    *"Early car race. At the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup Race on Long Island, the 15-year-old Eddie rode as a 'mechanician' beside driver Lee Frayer. During qualifying heats, their brakes abruptly stopped working. Speeding around the track at perilous spoeeds, the duo hit a corner too fast, ran into a ditch and then a dune, at which point the car went airborne and rolled. The pair miraculuously survived, only suffering minor bruising."

Author John F. Ross also wrote War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America's First Frontier. He has served as executive editor of American Heritage and on the board of directors of Smithsonian magazine.

 

China Dolls -- A Novel by Lisa See, Random House '14, $27, 383 pages, ASIN #B00H6JFJKE.

Acclaimed author Lisa See has built a reputation for deconstructing the intimate relationships of women and "the complex meeting of history and fate." In the book's jacket copy, she sets the table for what is to come:

"San Francisco, 1938: A world's fair is preparing to open on Treasure Island, a war is brewing overseas, and the city is alive with possibilities. Grace, Helen and Ruby, three young women from very different backgrounds, meet by chance at the exclusive and glamorous Forbidden City nightclub.

"Grace Lee, an American-born Chinese girl, has fled the Midwest with nothing but heartaache, talent, and a pair of dancing shoes. Helen Fong lives with her extended family in Chinatown, where her traditional parents insist that she guard her reputation like a piece of jade. The stunning Ruby Tom challenges the boundaries of convention at every turn with her defiant attitude and no-holds-barred ambition.

"The girls become fast friends, relying on one another through unexpected challenges and shifting fortunes. When their dark secrets are exposed and the invisible thread of fate binds them even tighter, they find the strength and resilience to reach for their dreams. But after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, paranoia and suspicion threaten to destroy their lives, and a shocking act of betrayal changes everything."

Author Lisa See has reached the New York Times bestseller list for several previous books, including the critically acclaimed memoir On Gold Mountain.  The Organization of Chinese American Women named her to 2001 National Woman of the Year. She lives in Los Angeles.

 

Lex Populi -- The Jurisprudence of Popular Culture by William P. MacNeil, Stanford UPress '14, 241 pages, ASIN #0804771715. Index, references, notes, unillustrated.

        

From the dust jacket:

"This is a book about jurisprudence -- or legal philosophy. The legal philosophical texts under consideration are, to say the least, unorthodox. Tolkien, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Million Dollar Baby, and other cultural products are all referenced as exemplary instances of what the author calls lex populi -- "people's" or "pop law." There, more than anywhere else, will one find the leading issues of legal philosophy.

"These issues, however, are heavily coded, for few of these pop cultural texts announce themselves as expressly legal. nonetheless, Les Populi reads these texts "jurisprudentially," that is, with an eye to their hidden legal philosophical meanings, enabling connections such as: Tolkien's Ring as Kelsen's grundnorm; vampire slaying as legal language's semiosis; Hogwarts as substantively unjust; and a seriously injured young woman as termination's rights-bearers."

 

FOCUS: For Your Father's Day List -- The Keillor Reader / The Smoke at Dawn / Midnight in Europe

The Keillor Reader by Garrison Keillor, Viking '14, $27.95, ASIN #0670020583. Several b&w images sprinkled through text.

        

"When I was twenty and something of a romantic," writes Garrison Keillor in the Introduction to his new book, "I thought about dying young and becoming immortal like Buddy Holly or James Dean or Janis Joplin and people leaving bouquets on my grave and grieving for my enormous complicated talent lost to the world.

"But I didn't have a complicated talent, nor was it enormous. Some people thought I did because I wrote poems and was shy, didn't make eye contact, kept to myself. (Nowadays they'd say 'high-functioning end of the autism spectrum.")

As the grandpa of an autistic child, I recognize the classic traits of the disorder in listening faithfully to Keillor's Prairie Home Companion every Saturday at suppertime. It heartens me to see that an enormously successful person owes much of his success to a fairly common spectrum disorder. Bodes well for you, Toby, I think.

The person who has maintained a top-rated radio show for four decades and has written 19 books has now penned his latest. Even if Dad is only vaguely familiar with Prairie Home Companion, giving him The Keillor Reader is sure to be a Father's Day hit. With dozens of chapters -- each only 5 to 10 pages -- it's great for him to keep on his bedside table and in his generous moments, to lend to Mom.

A peek at the table of contents hints at the book's tone: Bus Children, Truckstop, Faith, Casey at the Bat (a creative takeoff on the iconic poem), Lonesome Shorty, Your Book Saved My Life, Mister; A Speech to the White House Correspondents' Assn. Dinner, Drowning 1954, and My Stroke (I'm Over it).

Garrison Keillor is founder and host of the Writer's Almanac, the editor of the Good Poems collections, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He spends his time between St. Paul and New York City.

The Smoke at Dawn -- A Novel of the Civil War by Jeff Shaara, Ballantine Books '14, $28, 495 pages, ASIN #0345527410.

Civil War buffs among us may have already read author Jeff Shaara and his series on that conflict that started with A Blaze of Glory and A Chain of Thunder. In his latest, The Smoke at Dawn, the last great push of the Army of the Cumberland sets the stage for a decisive confrontation at Chattanooga that could determine the outcome of the war.

From the dust jacket:

"Summer 1863. The Federal triumph at Vicksburg has secured complete control of the Mississippi River from the Confederacy, cementing the reputation of Ulysses S. Grant. Farther east, the Federal army under the command of William Rosecrans captures the crucial rail hub at Chattanooga. But Rosecrans is careless, and while pursuing the Confederates, the Federal forces are routed in north Georgia at Chickamauga Creek.

"Retreating in a panic back to Chattanooga, Rosecrans is pursued by the Confederate forces under General Braxton Bragg. Penned up, with their supply lines severed, the Federal army seems doomed to the same kind of defeat that plagued the Confederates at Vicksburg. But a disgusted Abraham Lincoln has seen enough of General Rosecrans

"Ulysses Grant is elevated to command of the entire theater of the war, and immediately replaces Rosecrans with General George Thomas. Grant gathers an enormous force, including armies commanded by Joseph Hooker and Grant's friend William T. Sherman. Grant's mission is clear: break the Confederate siege and destroy Bragg's army. Meanwhile Bragg wages war as much with his own subordinates as he does with the Federals, creating dissension and disharmony in the Southern ranks, erasing the Confederate army's superiority at exactly the wrong time."

As momentous as Jeff Shaara's career has been to date, he's just following in his footsteps of his father, who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, The Killer Angels. The author was born into a family of Italian immigrants in New Brunswick, N.J., grew up in Florida, and graduated from Florida State University. He lives in Gettysburg.

Midnight in Europe -- A Novel by Alan Furst '14, Random House '14, 271 pages, ASIN #1400069491.

        

Historical spy novelist extraordinaire Alan Furst has written 13 novels, which have been translated into 18 languages. His latest, Midnight in Europe, is set in the runup to World War II. From the front cover:

"Paris, 1938. As the shadow of war darkens Europe, democratic forces on the continent struggle against fascism and communism, while in Spain the war has already begun. Alan Furst, whom Vince Flynn has called 'the most talented espionage novelist of our generation,' now gives us a taut, suspenseful, romantic, and richly rendered novel of spies and secret operatives in Paris and New York, in Warsaw and Odessa, on the eve of World War II.

"Cristian Ferrar, a brilliant and handsome Spanish emigre', is a lawyer in the Paris office of a prestigious international law firm. Ferrar is approached by the embassy of the Spanish Republic and asked to help a clandestine agency trying desperately to supply weapons to the Republic's beleaguered army -- an effort that puts his life at risk in the battle against fascism.

"Joining Ferrar in this mission is a group of unlikely men and women: idealists and gangsters, arms traders and aristocrats. From shady Paris nightclubs to whiteshoe New York law firms, from brothels in Istanbul to the dockyards of Poland, Ferrar and his allies battle the secret agents of Hitler and Franco. And what allies they are: there's Max de Lyon, a former arms merchant now hunted by the Gestapo; the Marquesa Maria Cristina, a beautiful aristocrat with a taste for danger; and the Macedonian Stavros who grew up 'fighting Bulgarian bandits. After that, being a gangster was easy.' Then there is Eileen Moore, the American woman Ferrar could never forget."

FOCUS: Imperial History -- The Last Empire / The Great and Holy War

The Last Empire -- The Final Days of the Soviet Union by Serhii Plokhy, BasicBooks '14, $32, 489 pages, ASIN #0465056962. Index, notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.

Any middle-ager can recall that Christmas Day in 1991 brought America a monumental present -- an American victory in the Cold War. It was marked by an address from President George H. W. Bush and the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev as Soviet president.

As reviewer Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer prize author, states, "....for the first time, Serhii Plokhy tells the story not just from the point of view of Moscow and not from Washington, but also from Kyiv and the other republics where many of the most important decisions were actually made."

Among the subjects the author discusses and insights he provides are:

    *How the collapse of the USSR had very little to do with US policies -- in fact, until the last minute, the US tried to save the empire.

    *How even after letting the republics go, "Russia dreamed about bringing them back into a Moscow-run sphere of influence. Putin's (current) policy has its roots in 1991."

    *Today's Ukrainian crisis could be just the beginning of the new world wide rivalry with Russia.

    *How what we see in the region today threatens to destroy the world order based on the sanctity of the borders negotiated in 1991 as the Soviet Union was falling apart.

Author Serhii Plokhy is a professor of Ukrainian History and director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University.

The Great and Holy War -- How World War I Became a Religious Crusade by Philip Jenkins, HarperOne '14, $29.99, 438 pages, ASIN #0062105094. Index, notes, illustration credits, b&w images sprinkled through text.

        

 "The war was fought by the world's leading Christian nations, who presented the conflict as a holy war. Thanks to the emergence of modern media, a steady stream of patriotic and militaristic rhetoric was given to an unprecedented audience, using language that spoke of holy war and crusade, of apocalypse and Armageddon.

"But this rhetoric was not mere state propaganda. Jenkins reveals how the widespread belief in angels and apparitions, visions and the supernatural, was a driving force throughout the war and shaped all three of the Abrahamic religions -- Christianity, Judaism, and Islam -- paving the way for modern views of religions and violence. The disappointed hopes and moral compromises that followed the war also shaped the political climate of the rest of the century, giving rise to such phenomena as Nazism, totalitarianism, and communism."

Author Philip Jenkins is a professor of history and member of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He has written several previous books.

 

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- The Histories -- Herodotus / Jack of Spies / Cured

The Histories -- Herodotus by Tom Holland, translator, with an Introduction by Paul Cartledge, Viking '14, $40, 834 pages, ASIN #0670024899. Index, notes, 27 pages of maps.

 

Seasoned readers would agree that learning about their background and early lives illuminates the work of such authors as David McCullough and Philip Roth. So it is striking that we know next to nothing about the fifth-century BC life of Herodotus. Why? Largely because it was he who invented the genres of history and biography. Remarkably, to obtain such basic details of Herodotus's life as the names of his parents we have to draw on an entry under the name Herodotus in a 10th century AD Byzantine dictionary. 

Herodotus of Halicarnassus made such an impact on his time that no less an icon as Cicero called him the "Father of History." "Working in a genre-defining amalgam of rational inqujiry and storytelling in the Homeric tradition," writes translator Tom Holland, "he ambitiously strove to document the limits of human knowledge amid a veritable clash of grand civilizations."

As a result, Herodotus's book The Histories became "the earliest surviving work of nonfiction," working its way from the Trojan War up to its thrilling climax: "an epic narrative account of the war between the Persian empire and the Greek city-states in the fifth century BC.

"Larger-than-life personages like Cyrus Xerxes, Darius and Leonidas stand tall through landmark events that ensured the development of Western culture and still capture our modern imagination," according to Holland, "including the odds-defying victory at Marathon, the heroic stand at Thermopylae and the naval triumph at Salamis."

Translator Tom Holland is the author of Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, which was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Paul Cartledge, who wrote the Introduction to this book, is A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge.

Jack of Spies by David Downing, Soho Crime '14, $27.95, 338 pages, ASIN #1616952687.

Setting the table for his newest espionage work, author David Downing writes, "It is 1913 at the beginning of Jack of Spies....and a globe-trotting luxury automobile salesman named Jack McColl is putting his military background and ear for languages to work for the fledgling Royal Navy Intelligence services. The world is on the brink of calamity, as the UK, Germany, and Europe inch closer to the First World War and Jack is about to find himself a player on the biggest of stages." Soon he'll be off to the races.

We had the rare opportunity to overhear author Downing and his Soho editor, Juliet Grames, in a brief Q&A concerning his writing of Jack of Spies:

Q. Spoiling the plot for the reader as little as possible (I hope): Jack of Spies features some fascinating and important political events that, I think, are often forgotten or overshadowed by World War I: the Irish Republican movement; the Indian independence movement; the Paterson strikes and workers' rights; the Tampico Affair. How did you decide to include these episodes in the plot?

A. Well obviously I needed somewhere to send my hero, and in 1914 there was no shortage of places where the British Empire was being threatened in one way or another. In Jack of Spies he turns up in China, the US, Mexico and Ireland, but it could have been any number of exotic destinations. And my female protagonist, Caitlin, a radical New York journalist, would have been all too aware of the Paterson strike and its aftermath in 1913-14.

Q. In the words of John Le Carre', 'Love is whatever you can still betray.' In part, the character Jack McColl is so eager to be a spy because he doesn't have anything tying him down. Falling in love with Caitlin Hanley compromises not only Jack's ability to be a spy but his loyalty to the same country he had so recently been willing to sacrifice it all for. What are your thoughts on the perfect spy, David? Can he or she have love in their life?"

A. Jack McColl is not so much a spy as an intelligence agent whose job involves some spying, and over he series he'll spend more time foiling plots than collecting information. But to answer your question -- I think a perfect spy would have to be a very imperfect human being, and in the long run at least, not a great bet as a partner in love.

David Downing, who grew up in suburban London, has written six books in the John Russell espionage series, set in WWII--era Berlin. He lives in Guildford, England. 

Cured -- How the Berlin Patients Defeated HIV and Forever Changed Medical Science by Nathalia Holt, Dutton '14, $27.95, 313 pages, ASIN #0525953922. Index, timeline, notes, unillustrated.

        

From the dust cover:

"A Young molecular biologist at the forefront of HIV research, Nathalia Holt tells the historic, multilayered, and deeply compassionate story of two patients -- each known in medical literature as the Berlin Patient -- and their young research-minded doctors. The backdrop is nothing less than a revolution in cultural attitudes and medical thinking.

"These two patients' disparate cures came 12 years apart: the first in 1996 from an experimental cancer drug administered on an unusual schedule, the other in 2008 from a bone marrow transplant of cells with a particular genetic mutation. Nathalia Holt connects the molecular dots of these two cases for the first time, providing insight into one of the most remarkable medical breakthroughs of our generation."

Author Nathalia Holt is an award-winning research scientist specializing in HIV biology. He lives in Boston.

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- All the Light We Cannot See / Redeemer / The Scorpion's Sting

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Scribner '14, $27, 530 pages, ASIN #1476746583.

        

We've written a bit in these pages now and then about the four industry review outlets (Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus, and Library Journal) that evaluate about-to-be-published books (if they feel they merit evaluation) and give a "starred review" to the best of them. So while reviewers for newspapers and other publications make note that a book has won a starred review, it's nothing that we follow slavishly.

When a new book wins two starred reviews, we tend to take increased interest. And when a new work, such as All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, cops starred reviews from all four outlets, we're sure to take it from the pile to bring home and read.

The much decorated Anthony Doerr's new book is described in short on the dust cover, designed to whet readers' interest:

"Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel.

"In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure's converge.

Author Anthohy Doerr has won numerous awards on both sides of the pond, including the O. Henry Prize, three Pushcart Prizes, the Rome Prize, and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. He lives in Idaho with his wife and two sons.

Redeemer -- The Life of Jimmy Carter by Randall Balmer, BasicBooks '14, $27.99, 273 pages, ASIN #0465029582. Index, no bibliography, notes, two appendices, unillustrated.

        

The transformation of American religious and political culture was far off when Jimmy Carter first ran for president, even though he has to credit evangelical voters, who had long avoided politics, for his election. In his new book, Randall Balmer -- a Dartmouth professor and episcopal priest -- describes how and why Carter burst upon the scene in 1976.

Among the topics Balmer discusses in his book are race, abortion, the fight for women's rights, economic equality, energy independence, and universal healthcare. He tells "how Carter, who grew up in a racially mixed environment -- and claimed that his childhood was 'shaped by black women' -- pandered to segregationists in his 1970 gubernatorial campaign, telling Vernon Jordan at the time, 'You won't like my campaign but you will like my administration....'

"Though personally opposed to abortion, Carper was publically pro-choice, and most people still believe that this was one of the major reasons evangelicals abandoned him. But it was his support for desegregation that truly riled the leaders of the religious right, who used his stance on abortion to galvanize people at the grassroots level."

Author Randall Balmer is the Mandel Family Professor in the Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth and has written more than a dozen books. He lives in Vermont.

The Scorpion's Sting -- Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War by James Oakes, Norton '14, $23.95, 207 pages, ASIN #0393239934. Index, notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

        

From the front cover:

"Surrounded by a ring of fire, the scorpion stings itself to death. The image, widespread among antislavery leaders before the Civil War, captures their long-standing strategy for peaceful abolition: they would surround the slave states with a cordon of freedom.

"They planned to use federal power wherever they could to establish freedom: the western territories, the District of Columbia, the high seas. By constricting slavery they would induce a crisis: slaves would escape in ever-great numbers, the southern economy would falter, and finally the southern states would abolish the institution themselves. For their part the southern states fuly understood this antislavery strategy. They cited it repeatedly as they adopted secession ordinances in response to Lincoln's election."

Author James Oakes has written several acclaimed books on slavery and the Civil War. He lives in New York City.

FOCUS: American History -- Down to the Last Pitch / Desire and the Divine / Storytelling, History and the Postmodern South

Down to the Last Pitch -- How the 1991 Minnesota Twins and the Atlanta Braves Gave Us The Best World Series Of All Time by Tim Wendel, DaCapo '14, $25.99, 271 pages, ASIN #0306822768. Index, selected bibliography, notes, two appendices, grouping of b&w glossy images.

        

The 2013 "worst to first" campaign by the Boston Red Sox to win its third World Series in a decade will go down in baseball annals as one of the best comebacks ever. But trying to be objective (and for this Sox fan, it ain't easy), it's not easy to rebut Tim Wendel's assertion in his newest book that the 1991 season finale between the 1991 Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves was the "Best World Series of All Time."

Why, you ask? Well, consider that both teams -- not just one -- had been cellar-dwellers the previous season. And as for the series itself....well let the author tell it:

"Five of the seven games were decided by a single run; four games, by the last at bat. It was also the first time in World Series history that three games went into extra innings. But this series' greatness lies deeper than the statistics; it was a series in which both teams took risks, followed their guts, and played, from beginning to end, with integrity and heart."

But another thing, argues Wendel, should mark 1991's as a pivotal Series in Major League baseball: "Baseball was in flux in 1991 due to corporate team ownership and its 'moneyball' mentality, fantasy leagues, and brand new retro ballparks." In total, these factors support Wendel's notion that the 1991 World Series was "the last fine time in Baseball."

Tim Wendel, a founding editor of USA Today Baseball Weekly, has written 10 previous books, including Summer of '68. Now living in Virginia, he is writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University.

Desire and the Divine -- Feminine Identity in White Southern Women's Writing by Kathaleen E. Amende, Louisiana State University Press '13, $35, 184 pages, ASIN # 080715038X..

         

From the dust jacket:

 

"In this groundbreaking study, Kathaleen E. Amende explores the works and lives of late 20th century Southern women writers to show how conservative Christian ideals of femininity shaped notions of religion, sexuality, and power in the South. Drawing from the work of authors such as Rosemary Daniell and Connie May Fowler, whose characters -- like the authors themselves -- grow up believing that Jesus should be a girl's first 'boyfriend.' Amende demonstrates many ways in which these writers commingled the sexual and the sacred.

"Amende also looks at the writings of Lee Smith, Sheri Reynolds, Dorothy Allison, and Valerie Martin to discuss how Southern women authors and their characters grappled with opposion cultural expectations. Often in their work, characters mingle spiritual devotion and carnal love, allowing for salvation despite rejecting traditional roles or behaviors.

Author Kathaleen Amende, an associate professor of English at Alabama State University, teaches American, southern, and African American literature.

Storytelling, History, and the Postmodern South, Edited by Jason Phillips, Louisiana State University Press '14, $48, 226 pages, ASIN #0807150347. Contributors, notes follow each essay..

        

 In his new book, editor Jason Phillips has gathered together essays by ten historians and literary scholars to "explore the enduring dynamic between history, literature, and power in the American South. The essay titles hint at the content of Phillips' work. Here are a few:

"Rewriting American Borders: The Southern Gothic, Religion, and U.S. Historical Narrative by Farrell O'Gorman; Poison Stories: A Rereading of Revolutionary Virginia's Baptist 'Revolt' by Jewel Spangler; Abjection and White Trash Autobiography by David A. Davis; Her Life, My Past: Rosina Downs and the Proliferation of Racial Categories after the American Civil War by Jim Downs; and The Professional Southerner and the 21st Century by Robert Jackson."

Editor Jason Phillips, an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University, is the author of Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility.