Steve Goddard's History Wire

Book Alert / Defend the Realm -- The Authorized History of M15

Defend the Realm -- The Authorized History of M15 by Christopher Andrew, Knopf '09, stated First U.S. Edition, $40, 1032 pages, ISBN #0307263630. Index, bibliography, source notes, grouping of b&w glossy images, other b&w images sprinkled through text.

So secretive is Britain's Security Service, writes historian Christopher Andrew, that when Rab Butler was appointed Home Secretary with responsibility for the Security Service in 1957, he didn't even know where its headquarters was located. On the centennial of this historically-clandestine organization, an independent historian "describes the distinctive ethos of M15, how the organization has been managed, its relationship with the government, where it has triumphed, and where it has failed."

In the course of its 1,032 pages, this landmark book recounts "how it (M15) was so astonishingly successful in turning German agents during the Second World War; and that it had much greater roles than has hitherto been realized during the end of Empire and in responding to recurrent fears by successive governments (both Conservative and Labour) of Cold War Communist subversion."

Here's a brief sampling:

"For most of its history the Security Service (M15) has seemed to outsiders a deeply mysterious organization. Successive governments intended it to be so. The Service, like the rest of the intelligence community, was to stay as far from public view as possible. The historian Sir Michael Howard declared in 1985: 'So far as official government policy is concerned, the British security and intelligence services do not exist. Enemy agents are found under gooseberry bushes and intelligence is brought by the storks.' The past as well as present of the Security Service remained officially taboo. Even at the end of the Cold War, staff could scarecely have imagined that the Service would mark its hundredth birthday in 2009 by publishing this Centenary History."

Andrew is professor of modern and contemporary history, and former chair of the faculty of history at Cambridge University. He has written 14 previous books, including a number of groundbreaking studies on the use and abuse of secret intelligence in modern history.

Book Alert / Trust Confections -- A Novel

True Confections -- A Novel by Katharine Weber, Shaye Areheart Books '10, $22, 274 pages, ISBN #0307395863.

Whoever, except during Halloween week, put "candy bars" on their grocery list? Basically, no one. So how does one explain the goodly proportion of those same shoppers who exit the store with bags containing one or more of those succulent products? It's called impulse buying, and a century ago, the candy manufacturing industry was one of its key pioneers.

Those who read Triangle, Katharine Weber's novel about the 1911 Manhattan Shirtwaist Factory fire, won't be surprised that, again, Weber is fictionalizing a history lesson. In her latest, sited in her New Haven backyard, the author unveils for her readers a rockem' sockem' world in which local family enterprises try to compete with such manufacturing giants as Hershey, Mars and Peter Paul.

Weber's newest works on several levels -- as a first-person narrative chock full of both humor and pathos, as a history of an enduring American industry, as a brilliantly-conceived, four-generation family saga, and as a century of changing race consciousness and its effect on a national industry.

New Havenite Alice Tatnall wanted to go to Middlebury, but things didn't work out. She snags an entry-level job at a local company, Zip's Candies, where Sam Ziplinsky, the company's second generation Jewish owner, sees Alice as a refreshing contrast to his daughter, Irene, who couldn't care less about the family business. He takes Alice under his wing and introduces her to his son, Howard, who ultimately marries Alice. Sam's wife, Freida, is wary of goyim getting too close to the family business and, unfortunately, Sam -- Alice's protector -- dies soon thereafter.

The reader can see what's coming as the autodidactic Alice soon knows more about the manufacturing, merchandising and marketing of Zip's candies than anyone. Weber's novel is actually a 274-page affidavit filed in a probate court case filed by Irene once the family learns that Alice stands to gain more from Sam's will than any family member.

Weber dumps more factual detail into the reader's lap than the novel requires; presumably, the overload is designed to show how obsessive Alice has become about her chosen occupation. That said, reading of the origins of certain candies, how the company deals with its larger competitors, and the demands the local community makes upon it makes fascinating reading.

Zip's wisely restricted its line to three products: Mumbo Jumbos, Tigermelts and Little Sammies, evoking the nursery story of "Little Black Sambo." That may have played in the marketplace of 1924, when Zip's began, but it was decidedly politically incorrect by the 1960s, when design and packaging had to adjust to altered realities. In more recent years, the company decided to experiment with white chocolate, causing community furor when buyers opened packages with three naked figures of dubious gender, the white one flanked by two blacks.

And I haven't even touched on the Madagascar angles, which yield raw materials for Zip's products, possible slave labor to spark protests at home, and new relatives named Newton and Edison to broaden the genetic pool. In this, her fifth novel, Weber continues to be equal to her ambitions. We heartily recommend True Confections.

Honoring Heroes of the Civil Rights Era

The New Yorker:

"A few weeks before his Inauguration, Barack Obama called the Reverend Joseph Lowery, Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s ally in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who was now eighty-seven years old. Obama left a message and asked him to call on his cell phone. Lowery had introduced Obama at the pulpit of Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, in Selma, Alabama, at a commemoration of Bloody Sunday, the 1965 march during which policemen clubbed and gassed hundreds of protesters.

"He had campaigned with Obama in Iowa and Georgia. Unlike some leaders of the civil-rights generation, Lowery had set aside his relationship with the Clintons and had been with Obama from the start. Returning Obama’s call, he said, 'I am looking for the fellow who is going to be the forty-fourth President.'

"'Well, I believe that would be me, Brother Lowery,' Obama replied.

"When Obama asked him to give the benediction on January 20th, Lowery said, 'Let me check my calendar.' Then, after a long pause, he said, 'Hmm, I do believe I am free that day.'

”News of the honor spread quickly. Some of Lowery’s friends wanted to know why Rick Warren, an evangelical leader with conservative views on homosexuality, abortion, and stem-cell research, had been granted the honor of giving the invocation. ''Don’t worry,' Lowery told them. 'This way, I get the last word.'”

     (Click above link to read more)

The "Red Riding Trilogy" Reviewed -- Like "The Wire" But British

Slate.com:

"Red Riding TrilogyThe Red Riding trilogy, a three-part crime thriller that aired as a television series in Britain and is now being released in the United States both theatrically and with IFC On Demand, is so sprawling that it takes a full paragraph just to describe its provenance. All three parts were adapted by Tony Grisoni from a series of novels by David Peace about the Yorkshire Ripper case—a string of murders that took place in Northern England over a 10-year period. The first segment, set in 1974, is directed by Julian Jarrold (Becoming Jane); the second, set in 1980, by James Marsh (Man on Wire); and the third, set in 1983, by Anand Tucker (Shopgirl).

"There are a lot of visible influences in Red Riding. Like The Wire, it's a long-form study of institutional corruption and the way mediocrity and venality will always rise to the top. Like Prime Suspect, it's a smart procedural soap opera that also offers a glimpse into the lives of the British underclass. And like The Godfather, it's a sweeping multigenerational epic about chickens coming home to roost. A churl might point out that everything noteworthy about Red Riding derives from somewhere else. It borrows its grainy look from '70s thrillers and its mood of fateful, poetic gloom from a long tradition of British noir. But it's not hard to forgive this series its lack of innovation, because it manages, for long stretches at least, to be something few serial-killer dramas ever are: really, really good."

   (Click above link to read more)

Book Alert / Modern American Environmentalists -- A Biographical Encyclopedia

Modern American Environmentalists -- A Biographical Encyclopedia, Edited by George A. Cevasco & Richard P. Harmond, Foreword by Everett I. Mendelsohn, Johns Hopkins '09, $110, 557 pages, ISBN #0801891523. Index, contributors, bibliography, time line, endnotes, unillustrated.

In this impressive compendium, the editors have amassed biographical sketches of American environmental achievers across the ages, from agriculturists and botanists to ornithologists and phylogeneticists.  Not simply a paean to Birkenstock-clad treehuggers, this work is broadminded enough to honor the contributions of the likes of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Laurence Rockefeller.

A sampling of those profiled here include photographer Ansel Adams, biologist Edward O. Wilson, conservationist David Brower, educator George Washington Carver; Al Gore and Gifford Pinchot from the political world, museum founder Paul Mellon, ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson, and writers Rachel Carson, Thomas Merton, and Wallace Stegner.

"The entries recount how each individual became active in environmental conservation, detail his or her significant contributions, trace the influence of each on future efforts, and discuss the person's legacy." The book also includes a time line of key environmental events, a bibliography of groundbreaking works, and an index organized by specialization.

George A. Cervasco was a professor of English at St. John's University and author or editor of numerous books. Richard P. Harmond was an associate professor of history at St. John's College and co-author or co-editor of two books in the field of environmentalism.

Book Alert / We Ain't What We Ought To Be

We Ain't What We Ought To Be -- The Black Freedom Struggle From Emancipation To Obama by Stephen Tuck, Belknap/Harvard, '10, $29.95, 528 pages, ISBN #0674036263. Index, source notes, no bibliography, several groupings of b&w images.

Within the American pantheon, the cement is already hardening around the idea that the Southern non-violent civil rights movement was the heart of African-Americans' 20th century crusade for freedom and equality. So it may be just in time that Oxford University historian Stephen Tuck arrives on the scene, to demand that this iconic series of events be portrayed on a wider canvas.

In his new book on the history of the movement, Tuck doesn't erase such Southern images as Rosa Parks and Selma. But he introduces discrimination of the North and West ("as far reaching and at times as brutal as that in the south") and argues that "race riots forced concessions from the state at least as often as did nonviolent demonstrations." Not content to stick to stories related by movement leaders, he seeks out the views of "men and women, young and old, educated and illiterate, Christians and agnostics, urban and rural..."

The author's title is drawn from an old slave's prayer often quoted by black protest leaders: "We ain't what we ought to be, We ain't what we want to be, But thank God Almighty, we ain't what we used to be." Tuck is University Lecturer in American History at Pembroke College, Oxford University.

Nelson Mandela's Captive Audience

The New York Times:

"On Feb. 11, 1990 — 20 years ago this Thursday — Nelson Mandela walked through the gates of a South African prison after 27 years of confinement. His release was celebrated the world over. But it had a particular effect on those who were being held as political prisoners by other repressive regimes. The Op-Ed editors asked seven of these former captives to describe what it was like when they heard the news of Mr. Mandela’s liberation.

"Freedom’s Dominoes

By JACK MAPANJE
Mr. Mandela’s release heralded the eventual freedom of political prisoners in Malawi.

"Silly Men, Sharp Knives

By WEI JINGSHENG
In China's Hebei Prison, the news called to mind an old Chinese maxim: a knife must be ground to be sharpened.

"Path of Most Resistance

By NGUYEN DAN QUE
A humanitarian under house arrest was inspired to issue a manifesto for the basic rights of the Vietnamese people."

(Click above link to read more)

Book Alert / The Epic Struggle For Wealth, Power And Civilization

The Los Angeles Times:

   The Epic Struggle For Wealth, Power And Civilization

        By Steven Solomon

"Harper: 596 pp., $27.99

"It's not news to residents of Southern California that the management of water resources has far-reaching economic and political ramifications, but even they may be surprised by the pivotal role journalist Steven Solomon assigns to water throughout human history. It is 'Earth's most potent agent of change,' Solomon asserts in his sweeping book, which begins with the birth of civilization, is midwifed by large-scale, irrigated agriculture, and closes in our current 'age of water scarcity, [when] water's always paramount, but usually discreet role in world history is visibly taking its place at center stage.'

"Solomon's intelligent, well-informed assessment of the challenges we face today grows naturally from the comprehensive analysis that precedes it in the first three sections: 'Water in Ancient History,' 'Water and the Ascendancy of the West,' 'Water and the Making of the Modern Industrial Society.' The author astutely synthesizes a vast amount of scholarship to spotlight recurring patterns."

(Click above link to read more)

Out in Paperback / Old South, New South, or Down South?

Old South, New South, or Down South? -- Florida and the Modern Civil Rights Movement, Edited by Irvin D.S. Winsboro, W. Virginia UPress '09, $24.95, 352 pages, ISBN #1933202440.

Through a series of essays, historian Irvin D.S. Winsboro aims to illuminate the process by which the State of Florida transformed itself from a virulently racist backwater to a racially moderate state in the modern era. Rather than attempting to tell the story entirely himself, Winsboro employs a variety of scholars with a multiplicity of viewpoints and from a number of different locales within the Sunshine State.

Among the topics covered by these essays are the evolution of the Civil Rights Movement in Florida, the desegregation of the state's public schools, "the illusion of moderation," the notion that "justice delayed is justice denied," Haydon Burns's 1964 gubernatorial race, and the evolution of civil rights in Miami public spaces. Editor Winsboro contributes two essays himself.

Winsboro is professor of history, African-American Studies, and Florida Studies at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Out in Paperback / A Cultural History of Climate

A Cultural History of Climate by Wolfgang Behringer, Polity '09, 295 pages, ISBN #0745645291. Index, further reading, source notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From a cosmic perspective, German historian Wolfgang Behringer regards the Little Ice Age of several hundred years ago as a dress rehearsal for global warming, with regard to the reaction of affected populations to climate change. Whereas the Al Gores among us believe that such phenomena as polar ice melts are a direct result of human activity, repentance preachers of the Middle Ages blamed the sins of humanity for climate cooling.

The mission of Behringer's book is to show that current angst about climatic change is no new phenonmenon. It's been going on for millenia and has caused, in some instances, major social, political and religious upheavals. Among the vast array of topics examined in his sweeping study are wine harvest data, adoption of heavier clothing, and the spirit of invention, as peoples adapted to new realities.

Behringer is Professor of History and chair of Early Modern History at Saarland University, Germany. 

Book Alert / A Bubble in Time

A Bubble in Time -- America During the Interwar Years, 1989--2001 by William L. O'Neill, Ivan R. Dee '09, $27.50, 427 pages, ISBN #1566638062. Index, source notes, no bibliography, grouping of b&w glossy images.

Perhaps it's the effect of 9/11, but the year 2000 somehow seems a lot longer than a decade away. In his latest book, retired Rutgers historian William L. O'Neill recalls that not-so-long-ago decade marked -- unlike the present one -- with prosperity and an absence of fear.

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union disintegrated, meaning the fear of nuclear annihilation was absent in American lives for the first time in 40 years. Although a brief recession rippled through the economy in the early '90s, a productivity-driven wave of economic well being followed.

Instead of the Bomb and a falling stock market, Americans turned their attention to riveting issues of popular culture: "If it don't fit, you must acquit" and "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." Perhaps the dot.com crash of 2000 should have been a warning to us that the next decade wouldn't be quite as placid.

Some historians feel a generation must elapse before sufficient perspective can be gained to write the history of an era. Whether the '90s will look different to us all in a generation or so is anyone's guess, but it's certainly fascinating to view the Bush/Clinton years from the vantage point of our sadder, wiser time.

William L. O'Neill is professor emeritus of history at Rutgers University and author of several books on mid-20th century America.

Out in Paperback / The Last Days of the Romanovs

The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg by Helen Rappaport, St. Martin's Griffin '08, $16.99, 254 pages, ISBN #0312603479. Index, bibliography, source notes, three groupings of b&w images.

Upon publication of the hardcover edition a year ago, Publishers Weekly called it "an absorbing, lucid and authoritative work. How the last czar and his family died was one of Russia's best-kept secrets for decades, and Rappaport spares none of the gory details of the panicked bloodbath (it took an entire clip of bullets to finish off the czarevitch because an undergarment sewn with jewels protected the boy's torso) and botched burial of the corpses."

St. Martin's Press has now released the paperback edition of this gripping work. Helen Rappaport is a specialist in Russian and 19th century women's history and the author of two other books.

Howard Zinn's History

The New Yorker:

"Every fall, the freshmen troop into town tugging laundry bags stuffed with extra-long fitted sheets and trunks packed with aspirations, Scrabble, and socks. The next week, when they gather around the seminar table with their laptops cocked, the brashest are the kids who read Howard Zinn’s 'A People’s History of the United States' in high school.

"It got them thinking and gave them something to argue about, aside from how to cram for the AP and whether the DBQ ought to count for more than the multiple choice. Zinn doesn’t come up in scholarly journals, but he introduced a whole lot of people who hadn’t thought about it before to the idea that history has a point of view. Kids can figure this out all on their own, but it’s nice to read it in a book. I suspect that reading 'A People’s History' at fourteen is a bit like reading 'The Catcher in the Rye' at the same age (history’s so goddam phony): it’s swell and terrible and it feels like something has ended, because it has.

"Zinn wanted to write a people’s history because he believed that a national history serves only to justify the existence of the nation, which means, mainly, that it lies, and if it ever tells the truth, it tells it too fast, racing past atrocity to dwell on glory. Zinn’s history did the reverse. Instead of lionizing Andrew Jackson, he mourned the Cherokee. The problem is that, analytically, upending isn’t an advance; it’s more of the same, only upside-down.

"By sophomore year, the young whippersnappers have figured that out, too, which can be heartbreaking to watch, but it doesn’t make them any less grateful for what Zinn taught them, or any less fond of him for having braved it. Come September, the freshmen will be back, Zinn on their Kindles, zeal in their striped messenger bags, and I’ll be awfully glad to see them."

     (Click above link to read more)

Book Alert / The Moment of Psycho

The Moment of Psycho -- How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder by David Thomson, Basic Books '09, $22.95, 183 pages, ISBN #0465003397. Index, reading, no notes or illustrations.

Lest we assume that Bob Dylan's 1963 song The Times They Are A'Changin' kicked off the cataclysmic change of the 1960s, rewind the tape three years to June 16, 1960, when director Alfred Hitchcock unveiled -- should we say unleashed? -- the film whose mere mention can elicit a shudder from those who recall seeing it for the first time.

"Psycho was ahead of everything." writes film critic/historian David Thomson. "We should never forget that it indulged in sex (nakedness) and violence (that knife) and told censorship to get lost." Gone forever was the father-knows-best zeitgeist of the 1960s.

Explaining how pivotal this summer thriller was, Thomson argues that "Most films of the '50s are secret ads for the American way of life. Psycho is a warning about its lies and limits." Hitchcock made the film "as a piece of insurrectionary defiance, a direct challenge to Hollywood on nearly every standard he could find." More important than the story of the film itself, Thomson says, was the challenge to Hitchcock of what he could get past the censors -- "the first postcoital scene, the nagging sexual scrutiny, the flushing of the piece of paper with the calculation, and what happens in the shower."

In spite of its title, Thomson's narrative isn't limited to analyzing one film but goes on to examine films made after Hitchcock caused the dam to break --including such classics as Dr. No, Lolita, The Manchurian Candidate, A Clockwork Orange, Taxi Driver, The Shining, Fatal Attraction, and Pulp Fiction.

San Franciscan David Thomson has written many books on film and regularly contributes film commentary and criticism to many major newspapers and magazines.

Book Alert / The Glass House Boys of Pittsburgh

The Glass House Boys of Pittsburgh -- Law, Technology, and Child Labor by James L. Flannery, Pittsburgh '09, $35, 248 pages, ISBN #0822943778. Index, bibliography, source notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

No era of democratic life has been more involved in the march of social progress than fin de siecle America. From safety regulation to workers' compensation to pure food and drug laws, reformers were in their heyday. In his new book, James L. Flannery recounts the history of another such movement, that of child labor.

By the 1890s, muckraking journalists had brought to light the plight of youngsters plucked off the street to work backbreaking hours for scant pay in a variety of industries. These disclosures led to pressure on state legislatures, including Pennsylvania, from such organizations as the National Child Labor Committee, to pass reform legislation. Among the most vociferous advocates were such reformers as Chicago's Jane Addams, who founded Hull House to help exploited youngsters.

And yet in western Pennsylvania, where "glass house boys worked night and day," Flannery writes that "child labor was deeply entrenched and Pennsylvania lawmakers lagged far behind the rest of the nation." Flannery recounts the tangled "web of collusion between union representatives, industrialists, and legislators that kept child labor reform at bay."

Together, these special interests had carved out a "glass house exception" in the law. But by 1915, reform finally arrived, not because of any change of heart by the exploiters but because of technological advances that reduced the need for child labor.

James L. Flannery is associate professor of legal writing at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.