Steve Goddard's History Wire

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- Scheherazade's Feasts / Report From the Interior / Roman Britain

Scheherazade's Feasts -- Foods of the Medieval Arab World by Habeeb Salloum, Muna Salloum, and Leila Salloum Elias, UPenn. Press '13, 218 pages, ASIN #081224477X. Index, bibliography, notes, unillustrated..

        

Trade and conquest might, at first blush, seem unrelated to fine food, but as the authors write in their combination history/cookbook to introduce the reader to the medieval Arab culinary empire, they are. "With trade and conquest," they explain, "came riches, abundance, new ingredients, and ideas."

This new culinary culture also inspired an extensive body of literature, they say: "Poets penned lyrics on the beauty of asparagus or the aroma of crushed almonds; nobles documented the dining customs obliged by etiquette and opulence; manuals prescribed meal plans to deepen the pleasure of eating and curtail digestive distress."

Much like a restaurant menu, the authors have divided their book into five sections: appetizers, soups, entrees (including food for vegetarians as well), desserts, and beverages; as well as sample menus for special occasions. A Christmas dinner, for example, might feature fava beans with yogurt and garlic to start off, followed by an aromatic soup with rice and pomegranate seeds, spiced lamb with walnuts or chicken stew, and fried stuffed pancakes for dessert.

About the authors:

Habeeb Salloum has written many books, largely on Arabian cooking. Muna Salloum and Leila Salloum Elias are co-authors of The Sweets of Araby: Enchanting Recipes from the Tales of the 1001 Arabian Nights.

Report from the Interior by Paul Auster, Henry Holt '13, $27, 271 pages, ASIN #0805098577. One hundred seven b&w images, grouped as an "album."

        

Acclaimed novelist Paul Auster has turned his attention in recent years to non-fiction, especially memoirs, most recently with Winter Journal, in which he relates the development of his physical self. In Report from the Interior, Auster relates his encounters of his interior self with the outer world.

His first section, dealing largely with his babyhood and developing childhood, is especially well-written and will evoke both fond and harsh memories among anyone of retirement age from the postwar fifties and sixties. Unlike most such memoirs, Auster caps his off with an album of more than 100 black and white images, objectifying some of his written memories -- for example, a dish running away with a spoon to illustrate a nursery rhyme; photos of Hopalong Cassidy and Gabby Hayes, to bring alive his teenage memories of the Wild West as seen on the silver screen; and a photo of  N.Y. Yankee pitcher Whitey Ford, to accompany a tale of the author meeting (he thinks) the Hall of Famer.

Roman Britain -- A New History by Guy de la Bedoyere, Thames & Hudson '13, $26.95, 288 pages, ASIN #0500287481. Index, bibliography, notes, chronology..

        

From the back cover:

"This illuminating account of Britain as a Roman province sets the Roman conquest and occupation of the island within the larger context of Romano-British society and how it functioned. For this revised edition, the text, illustrations and bibliography have been updated to incorporate new research and recent discoveries, including the Frome Hoard, the largest Roman coin hoard ever fouond in Britain; evidence at Silchester of possible lavish building work after the Boudican Revolt; the 30 decapitated male skeletons found in York; and the magnificent Crosby Garrett parade helmet.

"The superb illustrations include reconstruction drawings, dramatic aerial views of Roman remains, and images of Roman villas, mosaics, coins, pottery and sculpture."

Author Guy de la Bedoyere has written numerous books on the period, including Eagles Over Britannia, Roman Towns in Britain, and Cities of Roman Italy.

 

FOCUS: British History -- Portraiture and British Gothic Fiction / Britain Begins / The Discovery of Middle Earth

Portraiture and British Gothic Fiction, The Rise of Picture Identification, 1764-1835 by Kamilla Elliott, Johns Hopkins UPress '12, $60, 336 pages, ASIN #1421407175. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

        

"Picture identification has been for millenia bound up with authority and entitlement: with access to spaces, resources, and privileges -- and with denying assess to these...," writes author Kamilla Elliott in the Introduction to her new work.

"While narratives of picture identification can be read in many ways, my research indicates that their most prominent function in Britain between 1764 and 1835 was to support the ascendancy of the ordinary middle classes in competition with the aristocratic, honorific, and wealthy middle classes, which had been represented by named portraits for centuries." Shortly after this time span came photography, which would complete the identification process, but that is beyond the scope of Ms. Elliott's book.

Kamilla Elliott is senior lecturer at Lancaster University and author of Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate.

Britain Begins by Barry Cunliffe, Oxford UPress paperback in oversized format on glossy stock, $29.95, '13, ASIN #0199679452. Index, illustration sources, guide to further reading, b&w and color images sprinkled through text.

        

"Most, if not all, civilizations have myths," writes archaeologist Barry Cunliffe, in his new book. "Whether they mythologize the passage of time, the weather or their biological origins, human tribes have always had a tendency to embellish the boring facts of life with powerful, fictitious stories. However, as time progresses and scientific advancements afford us more definite perspectives on biological and social evolution; our reliance on myth diminishes in lieu of historical truth."

Cunliffe details "the monstrous disruptions and environmental changes the early settlers of Britain had to endure, like near tidal-waves on the coast of Scotland and a 20-year winter that froze the ground six-feet deep. The dogged conditions they suffered make the threat of modern-day climate change look obsolete."

In the author's sweeping survey of the first settlements in early Britain, he details who the first British islanders were, what they looked like, where they came from, and how they interacted with each other; the most current DNA and archaeological methods that trace the origins of the first settlers; early Britain/Ireland's rich mythology; and "the migration, social relations, conflicts, economies, and ideas of the early British and Irish people."

Author Barry Cunliffe is a renowned scholar and archaeologist. For 35 years, he was professor of European archaeology at Oxford University and wrote Facing the Ocean: the Atlantic and its Peoples.

The Discovery of Middle Earth -- Mapping the Lost World of the Celts, by Graham Robb, Norton '13, $28.95, 387 pages, ASIN #039308163X. Geographical index, general index, works cited, notes, chronology, b&w images sprinkled through text..

        

From the inside front cover:

"Fifty generations ago the cultural empire of the Celts stretched from the Black Sea to Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. In 600 years, the Celts had produced some of the finest artistic and scientific masterpieces of the ancient world. In 58 BC, Julius Caesar marched over the Alps, bringing slavery and genocide to western Europe. Within eight years the Celts of what is now France were utterly annihilated, and in another hundred years, the Romans had overrun Britain. It is astonishing how little remains of this great civilization.

"While planning a bicycling trip along the Heraklean Way, the ancient route from Portugal to the Alps, Graham Robb discovered a door to that forgotten world -- a beautiful and precise pattern of towns and holy places based on astronomical and geometrical measurements: this was the three-dimensional 'Middle Earth' of the Celts. As coordinates and coincidences revealed themselves across the continent, a map of the Celtic world emerged as a miraculously preserved archival document."

Author Graham Robb is the author of three prize-winning biographies, each one selected as a New York Times Best Book. His most recent works, The Discovery of France and Parisians, have earned several awards. Robb lives on the Anglo-Scottish border.

 

FOCUS: American History -- Careless People / Slavery's Exiles / William Wells Brown

Careless People -- Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of the Great Gatsby by Sarah Churchwell, Penguin '14, $29.95, 399 pages, ASIN #1594204748. Index, bibliography, illustration credits, notes, note on sources, b&w images sprinkled through text.

         

Readers drawn to the subject of America in the 1920s are treated to plenty of food for thought in Sarah Churchwell's new work, centered on Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and the year 1922, "a hinge point for the carefree America born out of the devastation of the First World War...and the year in which he (Scott) chose to set his masterwork, The Great Gatsby.

"Fitzgerald began drafting The Great Gatsby during the summer of 1923, while he and Zelda were living in Great Neck, Long Island," the author writes in her Preface. "He was also revising a play and writing magazine fiction, and he and Zelda were enthusiastically partying, all of which made work on his third novel sporadic. In the spring of 1924, the Fitzgeralds sailed for France, where he began writing in earnest his novel about modern America. He published The Great Gatsby a year later, in April 1925. After some hesitation about dates, he had eventually decided to set his story across the summer and into the autumn of 1922."

Thickening the stew of Roaring Twenties drinking, partying and quarreling "against the backdrop of financial crises, literary milestones, car crashes, and media scandals" is a horrific crime, which commanded the nation's attention but is almost wholly forgotten today: "a brutal double murder in nearby New Jersey, compounded by a preposterous police investigation and an array of celebrity-hungry suspects. Proclaimed the 'crime of the decade,' the Hall-Mills murder case was never definitively resolved..."

Author Sarah Churchwell is a professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of East Anglia. An American currently living in London, she is a regular broadcaster and contributor to the BBC and is author of a biography of Marilyn Monroe.

Slavery's Exiles -- The Story of the American Maroons by Sylviane A. Diouf, New York University '14, 393 pages, ASIN #081472437X. Index, select bibliography, notes, grouping of b&w images.

If you've not heard of the American Maroons, take heart -- you have plenty of company. As author Sylviane A. Diouf writes, these fugitive men, women, and children escaped from slavery and made the Southern wilderness their home, hiding in the mountains of Virginia and the low swamps of South Carolina.

From the dust jacket:

"Although well-known, feared, celebrated, or demonized at the time, the American Maroons....have been forgotten, overlooked by academic research, which has focused on the Caribbean and Latin America. Who the Maroons were, what led them to choose this way of life over alternatives, what forms of marronage they created, what their individual and collective lives were like, how they organized themselves to survive, and how their particular story fits into the larger narrative of slave resistance are questions that this book seeks to answer."

Author Sylviane A. Diouf is a historian specializing in the history of the African Diaspora, African Muslims, the slave trade, and slavery. She has written or edited several other books. She is also a curator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of The New York Public Library.

William Wells Brown -- Clotel and Other Writings, Edited by Ezra Greenspan '14, $40, 1041 pages, ASIN #159853291X. Index, notes, note on the text, chronology, b&w images sprinkled sparsely through text.

                

In the latest of Library of America offerings, William Wells Brown takes center stage. From the dust jacket:

"Born a slave and kept functionally illiterate until he escaped at age 19, William Wells Brown (1814--1884) refashioned himself first as an agent of the Underground Railroad and then as an antislavery activist and self-taught orator and author, eventually becoming a foundational figure of African American literature.

"A gripping account of his childhood, life in slavery, and eventual escape, Brown's first published book, Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave (1847) was an immediate bestseller, with four editions in its first year. Like Frederick Douglass's Narrative, the only slave autobiography to sell more copies before the Civil War, it unmasks the hypocrisy of Christian slaveholders and exposes with startling intensity the violence of slave life."

Included in this collection of several of Brown's works is "Clotel; or, the President's Daughter (1853), the first novel written by an African American and Brown's most ambitious work, (which) purports to be the history of Thomas Jefferson's black daughters and granddaughters."

Editor Ezra Greenspan holds the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahl Chair in Humanities and is professor of English at Southern Methodist University.

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- The Price of Paradise / Strange Things Happen / The Cruelest Month

The Price of Paradise -- The Costs of Inequality and a Vision for a More Equitable America by David Dante Troutt, New York UPress '13, 273 pages, ASIN #0814760554. Index, selected bibliography, notes, unillustrated.

"Let's begin with a brazen assault on paradise," writes author David Dante Troutt at the outset of his latest book. "On June 4, 2010, 18-year-old Justin Hudson was the chosen student graduation speaker at Hunter College High School, a prestigious New York City high school for 'intellectually gifted' students. He was to deliver a celebratory speech to the assembled recipients of the American Dream at its meritorious best.

"A half-black, half-Latino young man from a low-income neighborhood, Justin began by acknowledging that he had no right to be standing there before his classmates and their families. Blacks represented only 3 per cent of Hunter's students, Latinos 1 per cent. But then, Justin went on, neither did anyone else deserve the privilege.

"'We stand on the precipice of our lives, in control of our lives, based purely and simply on luck and circumstance,' he explained. 'If you truly believe that the demographics of Hunter represent the distribution of intelligence in this city, then you must believe that the Upper West Side, Bayside and Flushing are intrinsically more intelligent than the South Bronx, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Washington Heights, and I refuse to accept that."

Author David Dante Troutt is Professor of Law at the Rutgers University-Newark Law School. He is a columnist, novelist and author of several works of nonfiction.

Strange Things Happen -- A Life with the Police by Stewart Copeland, HarperStudio '09, $19.99, 329 pages, ASIN #0061791490. Stewart Copeland's Rap Sheet, Appendix, Dozens of b&w images sprinkled through text.

        

From the dust cover:

"When Stewart Copeland gets dressed, he has an identity crisis. Should he put on 'leather pants, hostile shirts, and pointy shoes'? Or wear something more appropriate to the 'tax-paying, property-owning, investment-holding lotus eater' his success has allowed him to become? This dilemma is at the heart of Copeland's vastly entertaining memoir-in-stories, Strange Things Happen.

"The world knows Copeland as the drummer for The Police, one of the most successful bands in rock history. But they may not know as much about his childhood in the Middle East as  the son of a CIA agent. Or be aware of his film-making adventures with the Pygmies in the deepest reaches of the Congo, and his passion for polo (Brideshead Revisited on horses).

"In Strange Things Happen we move from Copeland's remarkable childhood  to the formation of The Police, their rise to stardom, and the settled-down life that followed. It ends with a behind-the-scenes view of The Police's extraordinarily successful reunion tour. It's a book of amazing anecdotes, all completely true, which take us backstage in a life that is fully lived."

Author Stewart Copeland and his trio have sold more than 60 million records during their career, winning five Grammys. He is the father of seven children and lives with his wife and three daughters.

The Cruelest Month -- A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny, Minotaur Books '07 paperback, $15.99, 311 pages, ASIN #0312573502.

        

From the back cover:

"Welcome to Three Pines, where the cruelest month is about to deliver on its threat. It's spring in the tiny, forgotten village; buds are on the trees and the first flowers are struggling through the newly thawed earth. However, not everything is meant to return to life...

"When some villagers decide to celebrate Easter with a seance at the old Hadley house, one of their party dies of fright. Was this a natural death, or was it murder? Brilliant, compassionate Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called to investigate, and the case will force him to face his own ghosts as well as those of a seemingly idyllic town where relationships are far more dangerous than they seem."

Author Louise Penny's first novel, Still Life, was named by Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine as one of the top five mystery/crime novels of the decade. She was the first author ever to win the Agatha Award three years in a row. Louise lives in a small village south of Montreal.

FOCUS: British History -- Ian Fleming / The Melancholy Assemblage

Ian Fleming by Andrew Lycett, St. Martin's Press '13, $29.99, 486 pages, ASIN #1250037980. Index, bibliography, grouping of b&w glossy images.

        

British readers thought nothing remarkable when, in 1953, they picked up a novel called Casino Royale, created by intelligence agent Ian Fleming. Little did they know that he had just created an industry with one James Bond at its helm.

So much has been written about James Bond that the world may lose sight that it knows relatively little about his creator's life, an oversight that author Andrew Lycett aims to redress in his new book. "Educated at Eton and Sandhurst," writes the author, "Fleming joined Britain's Naval Intelligence Division at the start of the Second World War, masterminding many covert operations and liaising at the highest level with the American secret services."

Not only did the James Bond saga make Fleming's life remarkable but the fact that "his life was peopled with such luminaries as Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Noel Coward, Evelyn Waugh, Sean Connery, and Bond film producer Albert R. 'Cubby' Broccoli." Adding spice to this mix is the fact that Fleming's life was set in such varied locations as Jamaica, Switzerland, and England, as well as the United States.

Author Andrew Lycett is an English biographer and journalist. He has written biographies of Rudyard Kipling, Dylan Thomas, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Wilkie Collins. He lives in London.

The Melancholy Assemblage -- Affect and Epistemology in the English Renaissance by Drew Daniel, Fordham '14 paperback. $28, 309 pages, ASIN #0823251284. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w and color images sprinkled through text.

        

From the back cover:

"This book considers melancholy as an 'assemblage,' as a network of dynamic, interpretive relationships between persons, bodies, texts, spaces, structures, and things. In doing so, it parts ways with past interpretations of melancholy. Tilting the English Renaissance against the present moment, Daniel argues that the basic disciplinary tension between medicine and philosophy persists within contemporary debates about emotional embodiment.

"To make this case, the book binds together the paintings of Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, the drama of Shakespeare, the prose of Burton, and the poetry of Milton. Crossing borders and periods, Daniel combines recent theories that have until now been regarded as incongruous by their respective advocates. Asking fundamental questions about how the experience of emotion produces community, the book will be of interest to scholars of early modern literature, psychoanalysis, the affective turn, and continental philosophy."

Author Drew Daniel is assistant professor of English at Johns Hopkins University.

FOCUS: American History -- Coffins of the Brave / The Museum of Extraordinary Things / What Good is Grand Strategy?

Coffins of the Brave -- Lake Shipwrecks of the War of 1812, Edited by Kevin J. Crisman, Texas A&M Press '14, $60, 440 pages, 23 color and 114 b&w photos, ASIN #1623490324. Index of ships, general index, bibliography and sources, glossary, three appendices, notes follow each essay.

      

Although of coffee table-book size, Editor/archaeologist Crisman's new work is not primarily a picture book, although it sports more than 100 black and white photos and 23 color images. It is primarily a serious narrative, gathering 14 essays by leading scholars in the field and grouped in three sections: The Naval War of 1812 on the Upper Lakes, The Naval War of 1812 on Lake Ontario, and The Naval War of 1812 on Lake Champlain.

This daunting volume features 16 separate examples of 1812-era commercial and naval shipbuilding, ranging from "four small prewar vessels to four 16- or 20-gun brigs, three warships of much greater size, a steamboat hull converted into an armed schooner, two gunboats and two postwar schooners."

"Mounting tensions and heated rhetoric over 'free trade and sailors' rights' launched the United States of America and Great Britain into a short, intense conflict known as the War of 1812," writes editor Crisman. "Both nations scrambled to build fighting vessels to contest North America's strategically vital inland seas: the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. Following the conflict in 1814, the ships were left at anchor -- "mothballed" -- in modern terms. Sadly, over the next decades, "disuse and deterioration turned most of them....into mere wrecks, sunken, neglected, and in ruins."

Editor Kevin J. Crisman is an associate professor in the Nautical Archaeology Graduate Program of the Anthropology Department at Texas A&M University. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. 

The Museum of Extraordinary Things  -- A Novel by Alice Hoffman, Scribner '14, First  Scribner Hardcover Edition, $27.99, 368 pages, ASIN #1451693567. Further reading, unillustrated.

        

Veteran novelist Alice Hoffman's latest work is a rich melange of events in the New York City of a century ago, in the era in which two catastrophic fires -- the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and the Dreamland Fire "transformed the city and the life of every New Yorker."

"Coralie Sardie is the daughter of the sinister impresario behind The Museum of Extraordinary Things, a Coney Island boardwalk freak show that thrills the masses," writes the author. "An exceptional swimmer, Coralie appears as the Mermaid in her father's 'museum,' alongside performers like the Wolfman, the Butterfly Girl, and a one-hundred-year-old turtle."

But what would a period novel be without romance, as Coralie is drawn to a dashing Russian immigrant photographer named Eddie Cohen? "When Eddie photographs the devastation on the streets of New York following the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire," Hoffman recounts, "he becomes embroiled in the suspicious mystery behind a young woman's disappearance and ignites the heart of Coralie."

Author Alice Hoffman is the author of a remarkable 28 works of fiction, including the recent blockbuster bestseller, The Dovekeepers. She lives in Boston. 

What Good is Grand Strategy? -- Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush by Hal Brands, Cornell UPress '14, $29.95, 288 pages, ASIN #0801452465. Index, notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

        

 

From the dust jacket:

"Grand strategy is one of the most widely used and abused concepts in the foreign policy lexicon. In this important book, Hal Brands explains why grand strategy is a concept that is so alluring -- and so elusive -- to those who make American statecraft. He explores what grand strategy is, why it is so essential, and why it is so hard to get right amid the turbulence of global affairs and the chaos of domestic politics. At a time when 'grand strategy' is very much in vogue, Brand critically appraises just how feasible that endeavor really is.

"Brands takes a historical approach to this subject, examining how four (should be eight?) presidential administrations, from that of Harry S. Truman to that of George W. Bush, sought to 'do' grand strategy at key inflection points in the history of modern U.S. foreign policy As examples ranging from the early Cold War to the Reagan years to the War on Terror demonstrate, grand strategy can be an immensely rewarding undertaking -- but also one that is full of potential pitfalls on the long road between conception and implementation."

Hal Brands is assistant professor of public policy and history at Duke University and has written two previous works.

FOCUS: American History -- The Kennan Diaries / Beyond the Call of Duty / Gettysburg -- The Last Invasion

The Kennan Diaries by George F. Kennan, Edited by Frank Costigliola, Norton '14, $39.95, 712 pages, ASIN #0393073270. Index, endnotes, footnotes, two groupings of b&w glossy images.

Historians of the American Republic would be challenged to name a more consequential diplomat than George Kennan if he had lived a mere half-century. But nearly unbelievably, Kennan lived more than a century and was active most of that time.

In his new book, historian Frank Costigliola cuts a swath of diplomatic history that would be hard for any public servant to match. In a diary begun as an 11-year-old boy, he documents such contributions as the 1946 "long telegram" and a lengthy diatribe against the Soviet Union's spreading political influence -- documents which, taken together, "laid out the philosophical perameters of the containment doctrine, which shaped the Cold War era.

"But Kennan's policy influence did not end there," Costigliola writes. "He was also a key player in the implementation of the Marshall Plan, the rebuilding of Japan, the decision to limit aid to Nationalist China, and the American response to Yugoslavia's break with Moscow. Furthermore, his political and philosophical writings garnered him two National Book Awards, two Pulitzers, a Bancroft Prize, and the Einstein Peace Prize. By the end of his life -- he died in 2005 at the age of 101 -- Kennan had established himself as one of the most important political thinkers of the 20th century."

Editor Frank Costigliola is an author and historian at the University of Connecticut, specializing in U.S. foreign relations in the 20th century. 

Beyond the Call of Duty -- Army Flight Nursing in World War II by Judith Barger, Kent State University Press '13, 285 pages, ASIN #1606351540. Index, bibliography, notes, appendix, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the dust jacket:

"At the height of World War II, five hundred Army flight nurses served with the Army Air Forces as members of 31 medical evacuation squadrons located throughout the world on both the European and Pacific fronts. Their work was not insignificant -- over one million patients were evacuated by air between January 1943 and May 1945. These specially trained Army nurses took nursing to new heights. Often decorated for their accomplishments, they exemplify the ability of a group of nurses to cope successfully with the challenges of war.

"In her comprehensive book, author Judith Barger brings together information that is becoming less accessible as the former nurses succumb to age, infirmity, and death. Barger interviewed 25 of these pioneering women in 1986, when their recall of their service experiences was still vivid and informative. Building on Barger's earlier research, their stories and the numerous complementary photographs included in the volume bring to life this long-overdue tribute to Army flight nursing in World War II."

During her 20-year career as a nurse in the United States Air Force, author Judith Barger served as a flight nurse assigned to Clark Air Base in the Philippines from 1973 to 1975, logging over 1,200 hours of in-flight nursing.

Gettysburg -- The Last Invasion by Allen C. Guelzo, Vintage Civil War Library '13 paperback, $16.95, 632 pages, ASIN #0307740692. Index, notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the back cover:

"The Battle of Gettysburg has been written about at length and thoroughly dissected in terms of strategic importance, but never before has a book taken readers so close to the experience of the individual soldier.

"Two-time Lincoln Prize winner Allen C. Guelzo shows us the face, the sights, and the sounds of 19th-century combat: the stone walls and gunpowder clouds of Pickett's Charge; the reason that the Army of Northern Virginia could be smelled before it could be seen; the march of thousands of men from the banks of the Rappahannock in Virginia to the Pennsylvania hills. What emerges is a previously untold story of army life in the Civil War, from the personal politics roiling the Union and Confederate officer ranks to the peculiar character of artillery units. Through such scrutiny, one of history's epic battles is given extraordinarily vivid new life."

Author Allen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era and Director of Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College and has written two Lincoln Prize-winning books.

FOCUS: A Potpourri [-- Mad as Hell / The Divided Mind of the Black Church / Brotherhood of Fear

Mad as Hell -- The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies by Dave Itzkoff, Times Books '14, $27, 287 pages, ASIN #0805095691. Index, notes, no bibliography, grouping of b&w glossy images. 

         

Who could have predicted the release in 1976 of the motion picture Network, whose TV anchorman lead becomes totally unhinged, shrieking out the newsroom window from high above the street, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more!"

But as ludicrous as the scenario seems to be, consider that it came not long after the United States itself appeared ready to come unhinged by the Watergate scandal. The lessons of that national episode helped screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky envision how America thinks about corporate and media power.

One thing's for sure: mention "I'm mad as hell!" to any American over 50 today, and he or she will recall for you the national sensation that Network became, together with its excellent cast, including Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, and Robert Duvall; and directed by Sidney Lumet. And lest anyone forgot, Network won four Academy Awards.

Author Dave Itzkoff is a culture reporter at The New York Times, where he writes regularly about film, TV, theater, music and popular culture. The New Yorker has written two previous books.

The Divided Mind of the Black Church -- Theology, Piety & Public Witness by Raphael G. Warnock, New York University '14, 262 pages, ASIN #0814794467. Index, bibliography, notes, unillustrated.

        

From the dust jacket:

"What is the true nature and mission of the church? As a community formed in memory of Jesus Christ and informed by the gospels, what exactly is it called to do? Is its proper Christian purpose to save souls or to transform the social order? As it seeks to bear witness to the 'kin-dom' of God, does it do that best by giving itself over to the work of personal piety or public witness?

"These questions are especially fraught when the church is one built by an enslaved people and formed, from its beginning, at the center of an oppressed community's fight for personhood and freedom. Such is the central tension in the identity and mission of the black church in the United States.

"For decades the black church and black theology have held each other at arm's length. Black theology has emphasized the role of Christian faith in addressing racism and other forms of oppression, arguing that Jesus urged his disciples to seek the freedom of all peoples. Meanwhile, the black church, even when focused on social concerns, has often emphasized personal piety rather than social protest. With the rising influence of conservative evangelicalism, biblical fundamentalism, and the prosperity gospel, the divide has become even more pronounced."

Author Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock serves as Senior Pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA.

Brotherhood of Fear by Paul Grossman -- A Willi Kraus Novel, St. Martin's Press '14, $25.99, 312 pages, ASIN #1250011590.

        

Regular readers of History Wire are often alerted to a mark of respect accorded newly-published books, well before such major awards as the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award are handed out. So it's worth noting that author Paul Grossman's debut nobel, The Sleepwalkers, won a starred review from Library Journal, and his next, Children of Wrath, won the same accolade from both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. Followers of author Grossman should keep their fingers crossed -- it wouldn't surprise us if Brotherhood of Fear was in a position to further adorn its author's trophy shelf.

From the dust jacket:

"It's Paris, 1933. A refugee with no papers, no legal status, and few resources, Willi Kraus lives in fear of deportation back to Nazi Germany. However, his reputation as a top sleuth precedes him, and he's soon enlisted to work as a private eye -- if under shady circumstances.

"Despite his apparent good fortune, he is a stranger in a very strange land. France is gripped by a fog of disillusionment, anxious about the tides of fascism rising along her borders. Seduced by a sultry but troubled young French girl and befriended by France's most flamboyant financier, Willi finds himself unwittinly drawn into their baffling world."

Author Paul Grossman is a longtime teacher of writing and literature at the City University of New York.

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- Over the River and Through the Wood / Sheva's Promise / Roman Guardsman 62-BC -- AD 324

Over the River and Through the Wood -- An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century American Children's Poetry, Johns Hopkins UPress '14 paperback. $29.95, 592 pages, ASIN #1421411407. Title Index, author index, works cited, appendix, notes, follow each chapter, b&w images sprinkled through text.

        

 When one discusses children's poetry, such names as Robert Frost, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Emily Dickinson rarely come to mind. And yet, as Editor Karen L. Kilcup writes, "most American poets wrote for children," particularly in the 19th century.

The collection she and Angela Sorby have compiled "includes work by poets from all geographical regions, as well as rarely seen poems by immigrant and ethnic writers and by children themselves....By turns playful, contemplative, humorous, and subversive, these poems appeal to modern sensibilities while giving scholars a revised picture of the 19th-century literary landscape."

The editors have grouped these poems thematically, such as "Growing Things," "Domestic Animals," "Wild Animals," "Toys and Play," "Nonsense," "Cautionary Tales," "Learning Lessons," "Slavery and Freedom," "Politics and Social Reform," "Histories," "Science and Technology," "Homework and Handwork," "Family Ties," "Dreams and Visions."

About the Editors: Karen L. Kilcup is a professor of American literature at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Angela Sorby is an associate professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee.

Sheva's Promise: Chronicle of Escape from a Nazi Ghetto by Sylvia Lederman, Syracuse UPress '13, $24.95, 232 pages, ASIN #0815610181. Illustrations.

        

 From the dust jacket:

"In this gripping memoir, Lederman tells her story of survival during one of the most horrific episodes in history. Beginning with Lederman as a young girl in Poland in 1941, Sheva's Promise traces her experience in a Nazi ghetto with her mother and sister. Resolved that she must avoid the detention camp to help her family, Lederman obtains a false birth certificate and escapes the ghetto.

"Through the courage and humanity of a few individuals, she finds work in a hospital in Germany under an assumed identity. With fierce determination and resourcefulness, Lederman manages to elude Nazi capture and eventually immigrates to the United States with her husband.

Sheva's Promise is not only an invaluable piece of historical record but also the work of a gifted writer whose keen eye for detail and skillful attention to language gives readers an unforgettable story."

Author Sylvia Lederman worked in the garment industry and spent the rest of her life in Queens, N.Y.

Roman Guardsman 62 BC -- AD 324 by Ross Cowan, Illustrated by Sean O'Brogain, Osprey '14 on glossy paperback stock, $18.95, 62 pages, ASIN #1782009256. Index, glossary, further reading, in-text notes, b&w and color images sprinkled through text.

        

 From the back cover:

"For four centuries, from the civil wars of the Late Republic to Constantine's bloody reunification of the Empire, elite corps of guardsmen were at the heart of every Roman army. Whether as bodyguards or as shock troops in battle, the fighting skills of praetorians, speculatores, singulares, and protectores determined the course of Roman history.

"Although the reputation of these elite units, especially the praetorians, has suffered over the years owing to their association with the imperial excesses of emperors such as Caligula and Nero, they had a proud fighting tradition stretching from Pistoria in 62 BC, to their heroic last stand by the Milvian Bridge in AD 312. This title will detail the changing nature of these units, their organization and operational successes and failures from their origins in the Late Republic through to their unsuccessful struggle against Constantine the Great."

Author Ross Cowan obtained a Ph.D. in research on the Praetorian Guard and Second Parthian Legion and is now a freelance writer and historian. Illustrator Sean O'Brogain has a BA (Hons) in scientific and natural history illustration from Blackpool and Fylde College (Lancaster University).

FOCUS: A Potpourri -- The Twilight of the American Enlightenment / Tradition in the Twenty-First Century / Assassination

The Twilight of the American Enlightenment -- The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief by George M. Marsden, BasicBooks '14, $26.99, 219 pages, ASIN #0465030106. Index, notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled through text.

        

Most Americans of retirement age remember the 1950s weekly TV program, Father Knows Best, which trumpeted the advantages of postwar America, when Dad went to work and Mom stayed home, when bulldozers were busy helping build the next suburban subdivision, and teenagers grooved to an endless array of rock 'n' roll music.

"In many ways," writes author George M. Mardsden in his Introduction, "the mid-twentieth century was a time of tremendous optimism. Americans were constantly being reminded that theirs was the best nation on earth....Probably no one quite believed all the hype, but still, in many ways, things (and it was especially things) were better than they had ever been.....

"As Alan Ehrenhalt, author of The Lost City, put it in that engaging look back at growing up in Chicago, it was 'not that the 1950s were a golden age....but that they were a time when life as it was seemed so much better than life might have been.' Everyone could remember or had heard of enduring the hardships of the Depression, or could look back to or imagine coming of age in 1943, when boys were sent off to an incredibly grim world war."

Against this backdrop, Marsden demonstrates why the values of the '50s "would prove hollow when buffeted by the widespread upheavals of the 1960s. Liberal consensus ideals eventually gave way to multiculturalism even as the mainline Protestant establishment collapsed. Into the resulting cultural vacuum rushed the leaders of the religious right who proposed to reestablish a consensus of American enlightened ideals, but now based on the beliefs of evangelicalism and other conservative religious."

In conclusion, the author concludes that both America's left and right wings proved unable to provide for religious diversity in public life -- "a failure that continues to define American culture and politics today."

Author George M. Marsden is Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus at Notre Dame and has written many books, largely on American history. He lives in Grand Rapids, MI.

Tradition in the Twenty-First Century  -- Locating the Role of the Past in the Present, Edited by Trevor J. Blank & Robert Glenn Howard, Utah State University Press '13, 225 pages, ASIN #0874218993. Index, about the contributors, notes follow each essay, unillustrated.

        

From the back cover:

"In Tradition in the Twenty-First Century, eight diverse contributors explore the role of tradition in contemporary folkloristics. For more than a century, folklorists have been interested in locating sources of tradition and accounting for the conceptual boundaries of tradition, but in the modern era, expanded means of communication, research, and travel, along with globalized cultural and economic independence, have complicated these pursuits. Tradition is thoroughly embedded in both modern life and at the center of folklore studies, and a modern understanding of tradition cannot be fully realized without a thoughtful consideration of the past's role in shaping the present.

"Emphasizing how tradition adapts, survives, thrives, and either mutates or remains stable in today's modern world, the contributors pay specific attention to how traditions now resist or expedite dissemination and adoption by individuals and communities. This complex and intimate portrayal of tradition in the twenty-first century offers a comprehensive overview of the folkloristic and popular conceptualizations of tradition from the past to the present and presents a thoughtful assessment and projection of how 'tradition' will fare in years to come."

About the editors:

Trevor J. Blank is assistant professor of communications at the State University of New York at Potsdam. He earned his Ph.D. in American studies from the Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, and an MA at Indiana University's Folklore Institute. Robert Glenn Howard is professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His teaching and publications span several fields, including communication, folklore studies, journalism, and religious studies.

Assassination -- A History of Political Murder by Lindsay Porter, Overlook '10 in oversized format on glossy stock, $35, 191 pages, ASIN #0500251584. Index, list of illustrations, notes, scores of b&w and color glossy images sprinkled through text.

        

Ask an American to name a political assassination and, dollars to donuts, s/he will cite that of President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald 50 years ago last November. But as historian Lindsay Porter writes, high-profile political assassinations occurred as far back in history as ancient times and aren't restricted to elected officials.

Among the killings she profiles are:

"Julius Caesar, the most famous political murder in history, and what it meant for the Roman Empire.

"Thomas Beckett, a sacrilegious killing of the head of the Church of England in his own sanctuary, the first assassination of its kind.

"Henry IV, and the first modern assassination.

"Jean-Paul Marat, whose bathtub stabbing spurred the French Revolution.

"Archduke Franz Ferdinand; how the First World War was started by a secret society of assassins.

"Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Vlla; how the public turned outlaws into icons.

"John F. Kennedy, a grieving nation and conspiracy theories."

Author and art historian Lindsay Porter has published widely on conspiracy theories and secret societies. She is the author of Who Are the Illuminati? and is a contributor to Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia.

 

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- Defiant / By the Rivers of Water / The First Treatise on Museums

Defiant -- The POWs Who Endured Vietnam's Most Infamous Prison, the Women Who Fought for Them, and the One Who Never Returned, by Alvin Townley, Dunne/St. Martin's '14, $27.99, 418 pages, ASIN #1250006538. Index, selected bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

        

While U.S. Sen. John McCain was his party's nominee for President in 2008, he is even better known as having lived six harrowing years as a Prisoner of War in Vietnam. McCain calls Defiant "a riveting tribute to the unyielding men who endured years of brutal captivity as POWs in Vietnam and the families they left behind."

From the dust jacket:

"During the Vietnam War, hundreds of American prisoners-of-war faced years of brutal conditions and horrific torture at the hands of North Vietnamese guards and interrogators who ruthlessly plied them for military intelligence and propaganda. Determined to maintain their Code of Conduct, the POWs developed a powerful underground resistance. To quash it, their captors singled out its eleven leaders, Vietnam's own 'dirty dozen,' and banished them to an isolated jail that would become known as Alcatraz. None would leave its solitary cells and interrogation rooms unscathed; one would never return.

"As these eleven men suffered in Hanoi, their wives at home launched an extraordinary campaign that would ultimately spark the nationwide POW/MIA movement. The members of these military families banded together and showed the courage not only to endure years of doubt about the fate of their husbands and fathers, but to bravely fight for their safe return. When the survivors of Alcatraz finally came home, one would go on to receive the Medal of Honor, another would become a U.S. Senator, and a third still serves in the U.S. Congress."

Author Alvin Townley of Atlanta, GA has written Legacy of Honor, Spirit of Adventure, and Fly Navy.

By the Rivers of Water -- A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey by Erskine Clarke, BasicBooks '14, $29.99, 450 pages, ASIN #0465002722. Index of names, general index, notes, no bibliography, two groupings of b&w glossy images.

        

"By the Rivers of Waters is a history set in the midst of a 19th-century Atlantic world," explains historian Erskine Clarke in his Preface. "It is a story of a strange odyssey by a young white couple from the Georgia and South Carolina Lowcountry who left plantation homes and the elegant little city of Savannah and sailed ocean highways to West Africa.

"There they lived for 17 years, first in a cottage above the pounding surf at Cape Palmas and later in a cottage by the broad waters of the Gabon estuary. Odysseus-like, they sailed along what was for them an exotic coastline and sometimes ventured up great rivers and followed ancient paths.

"....By the Rivers of Water is the story of John Leighton Wilson and his wife, Jane Bayard Wilson, the best-known and most influential American missionaries in 'West Africa during the first half of the nineteenth   century."

Author Erskine Clarke is professor emeritus of American religious history at Columbia Theological Seminary and recipient of Columbia University's Bancroft Prize for his book, Dwelling Place. He lives in North Carolina.

The First Treatise on Museums -- Samuel Quiccheberg's Inscriptions 1565 by Samuel Quiccheberg, Translation by Mark A. Meadow and Bruce Robertson, Introduction by Mark A. Meadow, Getty Publications '13 paperback, on glossy stock, 145 pages, ASIN #1606061496. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w and color glossy images sprinkled through text.

        

From the back cover:

"In 1565, Samuel Quiccheberg published the Inscriptiones, the earliest known treatise on museums. In this work, he proposes a model for the ideal princely curiosity cabinet, or Wunderkammer. He shows how the collecting of objects offered nobles a means to produce practical knowledge that would be of direct utility in governing the state.

"In mapping out the collectability of the material world, he demonstrates how grouping objects and comparing them helps make the world intelligible. Concerned with the practicalities of operating a large museum, Quiccheberg situates the Wunderkammer within a network of workshops and laboratories that produce, maintain, and study the objects of the collection.

"The First Treatise on Museums makes this work available for the first time in English translation. Quiccheberg's program for early modern collections provides a point of origin for today's museums and an implicit critique of their aims, asserting the fundamental research value of collections."

 

FOCUS: A Potpourri -- Citizen Explorer / The Queen's Dwarf / The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti

Citizen Explorer -- The Life of Zebulon Pike by Jared Orsi, Oxford UP '14, $29.95, 392 pages, ASIN #0199768722. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

     

In his Introduction, historian Jared Orsi sets a suspenseful table for his saga, drawing in his readers with cliff-hanging (sorry) drama about soldier and explorer Zebulon Pike and his team, as they struggled through mountainous terrain after days without food:

"In January 1807, deep in the snows of the Rocky Mountains, Captain Zebulon Montgomery Pike faced a wrenching decision. He was the commander of an American military expedition to explore the southwestern reaches of the Louisiana Purchase, and he had become badly lost. Since early December, the men had trudged through snow drifts and sloshed across streams. When the horses gave out, they hefted 72-pound packs into the teeth of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

"By January the party was desperate -- too weak to go on, too imperiled not to. On the 17th, several men got wet crossing Grape Creek, and by evening privates John Sparks and Thomas Daugherty were hobbling on frozen feet. Pike wrote in his journal that the men faced 'every possibility of losing them.' Further travel for the two young men was clearly impossible, and yet to leave crippled men in the wilderness promised them almost certain death. Furnishing them with as much food and ammunition as he could spare, and promising to return when he could, he left them."

Author Jared Orsi is associate professor of history at Colorado State University.

The Queen's Dwarf -- A Novel by Ella March Chase, Dunne/St. Martin's '14, $26.99, 372 pages, ASIN #1250006295.

     

From the dust jacket:

"It's 1629, and King Charles I and his French queen, Henrietta Maria, have reigned in England for less than three years. Young dwarf Jeffrey Hudson is swept away from a village chambles and plunged into the Stuart court when his father sells him to the most hated man in England -- the Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham trains Jeffrey to be his spy in the household of Charles's seventeen-year-old bride, hoping to gain intelligence that will help him undermine the vivacious queen's influence with the king.

"Desperately homesick in a country that hates her for nationality and Catholic faith, Henrietta Maria surrounds herself with her 'Royal Menagerie of Freaks and Curiosities of Nature- -- a 'collection' consisting of a giant, two other dwarfs, a rope dancer, an acrobat/animal-trainer, and now Jeffrey, who is dubbed 'Lord Minimus.'"

Author Ella March Chase earned her bachelor of arts degree from Augustana College, Rock Island, IL. She is author of The Virgin Queen's Daughter and Three Maids for a Crown, a story of the Grey Sisters.

The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti -- Amarna and its People by Barry Kemp, Thames & Hudson '14, in oversized format on glossy stock, $29.95, 320 pages, ASIN #0500291209. Index, further reading, notes, dozens of b&w images sprinkled through text.

     

The ancient site of Tell el-Amarna in Middle Egypt was the capital of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten and his chief consort, Nefertiti. "Occupied for around 16 years in the 14th century BC," writes author Barry Kemp, "the city lay largely abandoned and forgotten until excavations over the last 100 years brought it back into prominence."

It is the ancient city that Kemp describes: "A city of temples, royal palaces, civic offices and elite tombs, and simultaneously a city of small-scale mud-brick dwellings. Amarna was an 'urban village,' where most of its citizens were only two or three steps removed in the social scale from the king himself. Barry Kemp evokes the unique character of this famous capital, bringing to life its people -- from Akhenaten, Nefertiti and the royal family to priests and craftsmen -- in this brilliantly written and imaginatively conceived account of the mysterious Amarna interlude."

Author Barry Kemp is emeritus professor of Egyptology at Cambridge University and has been conducting research and excavations at Amarna since 1977.

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- Smart Cities / Crab Monsters / Killing Machine

Smart Cities -- Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia by Anthony M. Townsend, Norton '13, $28.95, 384 pages, ASIN #0393082873. Index, notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

     

A telling indication of the timeliness of the urban experience comes at the beginning of Anthony Townsend's new book, in which he uses a whole page for a quotation from Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Coriolanus: "What is the city but the people?" What, indeed. Could Jane Jacobs disagree?

"Stroll through any neighborhood today and your body sets in motion machines of every kind," writes the author in his Preface. "Approach a building and the front door slides open. Enter an empty room and a light flicks on. Jump up and down and a thermostat fires up the air conditioner to compensate for the warming air around you. Roam at will and motion-sensing surveillance cameras slowly turn to track you.

"Day after day, these automatic electromechanical laborers toil at dumb and dirty jobs once done by people. At the fringe of our awareness, they control the world around us. At times they even dare to control us. Yet they are now so familiar, so mundane, that we hardly notice." Enticed? Read on.

Author Anthony M. Townsend is an advisor to industry and government at the Silicon Valley-based Institute for the Future and directs urban research at New York University's Rudin Center for Transportation. He lives in Hoboken, N.J.

Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses, Roger Corman: King of the B Movie by Chris Nashawaty, Introduction by John Landis, Abrams '13 in oversized text on glossy stock, $35, 247 pages, ASIN #1419706691. Scores of b&w and color images sprinkled within text.

     

Don't pick up this book!! Not unless you're prepared to spend (some might say waste) previous time in B movie lore, and lurid photos ranging from an open coffin in Ray Milland's The Premature Burial to three naked actresses on the back cover flap. Not a B movie afficionado myself, I nevertheless found it difficult to skip over such low-budget cult classics such as Little Shop of Horrors (1960), Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979) and Galaxy of Terror (1981), all produced by Roger Corman, the self-proclaimed king of the B movie.

From the front cover:

"As told by Corman himself and by the showbiz legends that got their starts alongside him, Crab Monsters provides a comprehensive oral history of more than six decades of American cinema. Renowned directors and actors including Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, and Peter Bogdanovich candidly recount working with Corman in the years before their big breaks, as if trading anecdotes at a Hollywood cocktail party." Novelist Stephen King writes that "I think it would be impossible to love 20th-century film and not love this book."

Author Chris Nashawaty is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly. John Landis, who wrote the introduction, directed such classic films as Animal House, The Blues Brothers, and Coming to America.

Killing Machine -- The American Presidency in the Age of Drone Warfare by Lloyd C. Gardner, The New Press '13, $26.95, 289 pages, ASIN #159558918X. Index, notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

     

From the dust cover:

"With Obama's election to the presidency in 2008, many believed the United States had entered a new era: Obama came into office amid high expectations that he would end the war in Iraq and initiate a new foreign policy that would establish American values and the United States' leadership role in the world.

"In this shattering new assessment, historian Lloyd C. Gardner argues that, despite cosmetic changes, Obama has simply built on the expanding power base of presidential power that reaches back across decades and through multiple administrations. The new president ended the 'enhanced interrogation' policy of the Bush administration but did not abandon the concept of preemption. Obama withdrew from Iraq but has institutionalized drone warfare -- including the White House's central role in targeted assassinations. What has come into view, Gardner argues, is the new face of American presidential power: high-tech, secretive, global, and lethal."

Author Lloyd C. Gardner, now retired, taught history at Rutgers University and has written or edited more than a dozen books. He lives in Newtown, PA.

 

FOCUS: History of Wearable Printed Fabrics -- Wearable Prints, 1760-1860

Wearable Prints, 1760--1860 -- History, Materials, and Mechanics by Susan W. Greene, Kent State University Press '14, in oversized format on glossy stock, $100, 568 pages, ASIN #1606351249. Index, bibliography, nine appendices, glossary, notes follow each chapter, scores of b&w and color images.

     

"Wearable  prints are not only a decorative art form but also the product of a range of complex industrial processes and an economically important commodity," writes author/collector Susan W. Greene. "But when did textile originate, and how can we identify the fabrics, inks, dyes, and printing processes used on surviving historical examples?"

Married to a fiberartist myself, I can testify to the intensity and scope of interests of this cohort. In the author's words, "Historians, students, costumers, quilters, designers, curators, and collectors will find it an essential resource."

On the book's back cover, the author has compiled "a comprehensive guide to early methods of printing dress fabrics," which are discussed in the pages of this doorstop volume:

                                           "The India Trade

                             The first printed cottons in Europe

                                    The role of printed calicos

                Bleach, singe, brush, wash, rinse, soak, cleanse, clear

               Muslim, calico, linen, fustian, wool, delaine, challis, silk

                           Discharge, resist, blotch, pad, cover, dip

                      Fugitive, fast, mordant, direct, substantive, vat

       Spirit colors, steam colors, mineral colors, pigment colors, organic

colors" -- And, believe it or not, that's just a sampling!

Author Susan W. Greene is a collector, museum consultant, and independent scholar. Her collection of 18th and early 19th-century items now resides at the Genesee County Village and Museum in Mumford, N.Y.

                            

FOCUS: A Potpourri -- A Most Dangerous Book / The Lumiere Autochrome

 A Most Dangerous Book -- Tacitus's Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich by Christopher B. Krebs, Norton '11, $25.95, 303 pages, ASIN #0393062651. Index, notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the dust jacket:

"When, at the height of the Roman Empire, the historian Tacitus wrote a none-too-flattering book about the German tribes, he could not have foreseen that it would be distorted into claiming Germanic superiority and, ultimately, become the perfect vehicle for Nazi ideology.

"....According to Tacitus, although the German people were loyal and physically strong, they were uncultured and unsophisticated, almost primitive. Inaccurate and largely speculative, his narrative lay dormant for centuries. When the manuscript was rediscovered in the fifteenth century, however, a new reading started to emerge, focusing on his mentions of Germanic purity, loyalty, and strength.

"Over the next 500 years, the Germania was reinterpreted and misinterpreted, invoked and manipulated to promote political agendas. Meanwhile, the manuscript itself took on talismanic significance, leading scholars, nobles, and even the pope to attempt to buy or steal it."

Author Christopher B. Krebs, a classics professor at Harvard University, received numerous fellowships to pursue research for this book.

The Lumiere Autochrome -- History, Technology, and Preservation by Bertrand Lavedrine and Jean-Paul Gandolfo, the Getty Conservation Institute '13 in oversized format on glossy stock, 386 pages, ASIN #1606061259. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w and color glossy images.

     

    From the front cover:

"Although Auguste and Louise Lumiere are best known in the United States for their seminal role in the invention of cinema, their most important contribution to the history of photography was the autochrome, a technique that in the first decade of the 20th century made color photography accessible to amateurs for the first time.

"Simple in its essentials -- the autochrome plate is basically a layer of dyed starch granules covered with a black-and-white photographic emulsion -- the material is extremely complex in its detailed structure, and its commercial release in 1907 came only after a decade of research and development during which its creators sought out solutions to the problems of industrial-scale production.

"The knowledge they gained was carefully protected from competitors by a network of patents and by a policy of strict secrecy in the Lumiere factory at Monplaisir, on the outskirts of Lyon, Indeed, while the aesthetics of the autochrome have been thoroughly studied, the precise steps that led the Lumiere brothers to perfect the manufacturing process have never been fully documented or understood -- until now."

About the authors:

Bertrand Lavedrine is a professor at the Museum National d'histoire naturelle and director of the Centre de recherche sur la conservation des collections (CRCC) in Paris. Jean-Paul Gandolfo teaches at the Ecole ationale supericure Louis Lumiere in Paris.