Steve Goddard's History Wire

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- We Have the War Upon Us / Scotland / Why Growth Matters

We Have the War Upon Us -- The Onset of the Civil War by William J. Cooper, Knopf '13, $30, 332 pages, ASIN #1400042003. Index, notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled through text.

Early reviews of William J. Cooper's latest are an author's dream. "Thorough and unbiased," says Publishers Weekly, "....Cooper leaves no stone unturned."

And Kirkus Reviews describes how Cooper "exposes the players who drew the country into war...

"President James Buchanan's attempts to diffuse the tensions only postponed a crisis. After South Carolina's secession, he concluded a gentleman's agreement with Gov. Francis Pickens not to reinforce Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor as long as there was no interference. Though historians often claim that slavery was not the true cause of the war, the Southern states demanded their right to reclaim escaped slaves and the rights of the new territories to establish themselves as slave or free.

"Abraham Lincoln was adamantly against extending the right of slavery in the territories, a true deal breaker for the South. The Republican Party, rejoicing upon gaining the White House in November 1960, was determined to control the South, and they were unwilling to compromise, thwarting every attempt in Congress and using debate and delay methods that are all too familiar today....Drawing on his wide knowledge of the time period, Cooper clearly enumerates the many ways the Civil War could have been avoided and how many people were clueless as to the real threat, especially Lincoln."

Author William J. Cooper is a Boyd Professor at Louisiana State University and a past president of the Southern Historical Association.

Scotland -- A Concise History by Fitzroy Maclean, Thames & Hudson '12 paperback, on glossy stock. $19.95, 260 pages, ASIN #0500289875. Index, list of illustrations, b&w images sprinkled through text

A brief excerpt reflects the fluid style the author brings to his latest book:

"The early history of Scotland, like that of most countries, is largely veiled by what are known as the mists of antiquity, in this case a more than usually felicitous phrase. From piles of discarded sea-shells and implements of bone and stone, from monoliths and megaliths and mounds of grass-grown turf, from crannogs and brochs and vitrified forts, painstaking archaeologies have pieced together a handful of basic facts about the Stone and Bronze Age inhabitants of our country and about the first Celtic invaders who followed them in successive waves a good many centuries later.

"But it is not until the beginning of our own era that we come upon the first written records of Scottish history. These are to be found in the works of the Roman historian Tacitus, whose father-in-law Cnaeus Julius Agricola, then Governor of the Roman Province of Britain invaded what is now southern Scotland with the Ninth Legion in the year A.D. 81."

Author Fitzroy Maclean held a number of senior posts in the Diplomatic Service, the Armed Forces, and the government.

Why Growth Matters -- How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Countries by Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya. PublicAffairs '13, $28.99, 304 pages, ASIN #161039271X. Index, references, notes, four appendices, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the dust jacket:

"In the 1950s, economists viewed China and India as certainties to pioneer development strategies that would be role models for the world. In reality, the state-controlled Chinese economy is hard to replicate anywhere else.

'The reverse is true of India. Since Independence in 1947, India has experimented with a wide diversity of economic strategies -- from Jawaharlal Nehru's pragmatism to Indira Gandhi's rigid state socialism to the brisk liberalization of the 1990s -- within a democratic system. India is, therefore, a data-rich economic story from which it is now possible to address the central moral challenge facing the world today: what strategy will lift the greatest number of people out of extreme poverty?"

C-author Jagdish Bhagwati is university professor of economics at Columbia, and a longtime fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States. Co-author Arvind Panagariya is a professor of economics and Indian political economy at Columbia University and was a past chief economist of the Asian Development Bank.

FOCUS: A Potpourri -- Margaret Fuller / Strange Rebels / Wash

Margaret Fuller -- A New American Life by Megan Marshall, HMH '13, $30, 474 pages, ASIN #0547195605. Index, notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled through text.

If you've never heard of Margaret Fuller, it may be because the 19th century journalist and intimate friends of the leaders of her profession died tragically in a shipwreck shortly after Fuller's 40th birthday. But during her too-short life, she was Henry David Thoreau's first editor, Ralph Waldo Emerson's close friend, first female war correspondent, and tragic heroine.

In a brief Q&A, acclaimed biographer Megan Marshall discusses the writing of her new book:

What's new in Margaret Fuller -- A New American Life?

A. Margaret Fuller's life story is as dramatic and inspiring as any I can think of -- she was a brilliant thinker and writer, the comrade of Emerson and Thoreau, a pioneering journalist and daring feminist who lived out her ideals on a global stage. Then all of this ended for her in shipwreck and scandal at age 40....

Relying on scholarship of the past three decades, which has made Fuller's letters, journals, and all her published writing easily accessible, I drew cononections between private correspondence and public testimony that helped me recreate key moments in her life in vivid new ways -- her controversial relationship with Emerson, her secret love affair with Giovanni Ossoli, her anguish over leaving her infant son with a wet nurse in the Italian countryside while she covered the Roman revolution as the first woman war correspondent. All of these episodes stood out to me clearly, at last, as I worked directly with her words from so many sources.

Q. What Were the Conversations?

A. You could say these classes for adult women that Fuller led in the 1840s in Boston were a combination of a solid college-level humanities course and a radical feminist consciousness-raising group. There were no colleges for women then, and Fuller saw women's need for higher education as well as for a kind of rigorous self-examination that she believed could liberate them from conventional feminine roles. "What were we born to do?" she asked. Here, too, I had new information. While researching The Peabody Sisters, I found a rare record of the first sessions kept by a woman who attended them -- one of the reasons I felt I had to write about Fuller next.

Megan Marshall is the author of The Peabody Sisters, who won the Francis Parkman Prize.

Strange Rebels -- 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century by Christian Caryl, BasicBooks '13, $28.99, 407 pages, ASIN #04655018386. Index, bibliography, notes, unillustrated.

In a brief Q&A, author Christian Caryl discusses the writing of his new book:

Q. What made 1979 so momentous?

A. After WWII, the world was dominated by a secular, progressive consensus. By 1979 these utopian quests seemed only to have yielded static, imbalanced systems. A global counterrevolution challenged these systems, and in some cases, replaced them with new ones fueled by markets and religion, fundamentally transforming politics and economics across the world.

Q. What is the legacy of 1979?

A. Our modern age would not exist were it not for the events of 1979. Indeed, 1989 itself could not have happened without the counterrevolutions of this fateful year. Among other things, we can trace globalization, the fall of the Soviet Union, and even the Arab Spring back to this one moment.

Christian Caryl is a senior fellow at the Legatum Institute and a contributing editor at Foreign Policy. He lives in Bethesda, MD.

Wash -- A Novel by Margaret Wrinkle, Atlantic Monthly Press '12, $25, 405 pages, ASIN #0802120660.

From the dust jacket:

"In this luminous and spirited debut, Margaret Wrinkle takes us on an unforgettable journey across continents and through time, from the burgeoning American South to West Africa and deep into the ancestral stories that reside in the soul. Wash introduces a remarkable new voice in American literature.

"Along the Tennessee frontier in the early 1800s, two men find themselves locked in an intimate power struggle. Richardson, a troubled Revolutionary War veteran, has spent his life fighting not only for his country but also for wealth and status. But when the pressures of westward expansion and debt threaten to destroy everything he's built, he embarks on an audacious plan.

"He sets Washington, a young man he owns, to work as his breeding sire. Wash, the first member of his family born into slavery, struggles to hold on to his only solace: the spirituality and faith inherited from his shamanic mother. As he navigates the treacherous currents of his position, despair and disease lead him to a potent healer named Pallas. Their tender love unfolds against this turbulent backdrop while she inspires him to forge a new understanding of his heritage and his place in it. Once Wash and Richardson find themselves at a crossroads, all three lives are pushed to the brink."

Raised in Birmingham, AL, author Margaret Wrinkle is a writer, filmmaker, educator, and visual artist. Publishers Weekly gave this book a starred review.

FOCUS: American History -- Why We Fight / Richmond Must Fall / Bending Toward Justice

Why We Fight -- Congress and the Politics of World War II by Nancy Beck Young, Kansas UPress '13, $39.95, 366 pages, ASIN #0700619178. Index, bibliography, essay on sources, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

While author Nancy Beck Young concentrates on the advent of the Second World War in her new book, she discusses the First World War (or the "Great War", if you choose) in discussing the effect of political factions during the run-up to both wars and how seemingly irreconcilable differences were bridged by a faction -- moderates -- that is hardly even a player in today's Congressional debates.

While the author doesn't compare the intransigence of isolationists in battling against America's entry into the world wars to today's Tea Party conservatives in resisting any change proposed by the White House, it's an interesting issue to ponder. But while moderate Democrats and Republicans seem incapable today of reining in the right-wing conservatives, moderates in both parties were instrumental in formulating policy compromises, not only over the wars but over social policies spawned by the New Deal.

For example, Young writes that "scaling back on certain domestic reforms was an essential compromise liberals and moderates made in order to institutionalize the New Deal economic order. Some programs were rejected -- including the Civilian Conservation Corps, the National Youth Administration, and the Works Progress Administration -- while others, like the Wagner Act and economic regulation, were institutionalized. But on other issues such as refugee policy, racial discrimination, and hunting communist spies, the discord proved insurmountable."

Nancy Beck Young chairs the Department of History at the University of Houston and has written several books about American politics.

Richmond Must Fall -- The Richmond--Petersburg Campaign, October 1864 by Hampton Newsome, Kent State UPress '13, $65, 447 pages, ASIN #160635132X. Index, bibliography, notes, two appendices, grouping of b&w glossy images, other b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the book jacket:

"In the fall of 1864, the Civil War's outcome rested largely on Abraham Lincoln's success in the upcoming presidential election. As the contest approached, cautious optimism buoyed the president's supporters in the wake of Union victories at Atlanta and in the Shenandoah Valley. With all eyes on the upcoming election, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant conducted a series of large-scale military operations outside Richmond and Petersburg, which have, until now, received little attention.'

"In Richmond Must Fall, Hampton Newsome examines these October battles in unprecedented scope and detail. The narrative begins with one of Lee's last offensive operations of the war at the Darbytown Road on October 7, 1864, and ends with Grant's major offensive on October 27 to seize the South Side Railroad, the last open rail line into the Confederate stronghold at Petersburg. The offensive would spark sharp fighting at Burgess Mill south of Petersburg and on the Williamsburg Road east of Richmond.....

"Drawing on an array of original sources, Newsome focuses on the October battles themselves, examining the plans for the operations, the decisions made by commanders on the batttlefield, and the soldiers' view from the ground. At the same time, he places these military actions in the larger political context of the fall of 1864. With the election looming, neither side could afford a defeat at Richmond or Petersburg. Nevertheless, Grant and Lee were willing to take significant risks to seek great advantage. These military events set the groundwork for operations that would close the war in Virginia several months later."

Hampton Newsome is an attorney from Arlington, VA and an editor of Civil War Talks.

Bending Toward Justice -- The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy by Gary May, BasicBooks '13, stated First Printing. $28.99, 314 pages, ASIN #0465018467. Index, notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the dust jacket:

"When the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870 granted African Americans the right to vote, it seemed as if a new era of political equality was at hand. Before long, however, white segregationists across the South counterattacked, driving their black countrymen from the polls through a combination of sheer terror and insidious devices such as complex literacy tests and expensive poll taxes. Most African Americans would remain voiceless for nearly a century more, citizens in name only until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act secured their access to the ballot.

"In Bending Toward Justice, celebrated historian Gary May describes how black voters overcame centuries of bigotry to secure and preserve one of their most important rights as American citizens. The struggle that culminated in the passage of the Voting Rights Act was long and torturous, and only succeeded because of the courageous work of local freedom fighters and national civil rights leaders -- as well as, ironically, the opposition of Southern segregationists and law enforcement officials, who won public sympathy for the voting rights movement by brutally attacking peaceful demonstrators.

"But while the Voting Rights Act represented an unqualified victory over such forces of hate, May explains that its achievements remain in jeopardy. Many argue that the 2008 election of President Barack Obama rendered the Act obsolete, yet recent years have seen renewed efforts to curb voting rights and deny minorities the Act's hard-won protections. Legal challenges to key sections of the Act may soon lead the Supreme Court to declare those protections unconstitutional."

Author Gary May is a professor of history at the University of Delaware and author of four previous books. He lives in Newark, DE.

 

FOCUS: A Potpourri -- How to Live / Democracy of Sound / Gunfighter in Gotham

How to Live or a Life of Montaigne -- In One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell, Other '10, $25, 389 pages, ASIN #1590514931. Index, list of illustrations, sources, notes, chronology, b&w images sprinkled through text.

"This idea -- writing about oneself to create a mirror in which other people recognize their own humanity," writes scholar Sarah Bakewell, "has not existed forever. It had to be invented." In her highly innovative biography, she recounts the life and philosophy of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, "a nobleman, government official, and winegrower who lived in the Perigord area of southwestern France from 1533 to 1592."

"Montaigne created the idea simply by doing it," argues Bakewell. His reflections on his life, whether through overseeing his estate, assessing court cases as a magistrate, or administering Bordeaux "as the most easygoing mayor in its history," form exploratory, free-floating pieces to which he gave such simple titles as "Of Cannibals," "Of Smells," "of the Custom of Wearing Clothes," and "How we cry and laugh for the same thing."

Montaigne's essays boil down to answers to a universal question. Among his answers to the question "How to live?" are: 1) Don't worry about death. 2) Read a lot, forget most of what you read, and be slow-witted. 3) Question everything. 4) Do something no one has done before. 5) Reflect on everything; regret nothing. 5) Let life be its own answer.

Sarah Bakewell was a curator of early printed books before becoming a full-time writer. She now lives in London, where she teaches creative writing at City University.

Democracy of Sound -- Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century by Alex Sayf Cummings, Oxford UPress '13, $29.95, 257 pages, ASIN #0199858225. Index, no bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

"Copyright -- both as a concept and as law -- is the attempt to balance an artist's interest in profiting by his labors with the natural impulse of consumers to share the resulting culture," writes historian Alex Sayf Cummings. "As a result of that tension, ever since there has been copyright, there has been illegal copying (piracy, bootlegging, counterfeiting); in the relatively young music industry, it's been a part of doing business since the days of wax cylinders."

Time was when music fans copied and traded recordings without permission, until "an outraged music industry pushed Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation. Cummings traces piracy from the dawn of recorded music through the phonograph epoch of the 1930s, reel to reel tapes of the 1950s, cassette tapes of the 1970s, and the era of Napster in the 1990s.

In his new book, author Cummings "follows the American music business over the turbulent century of its existence. Beyond the frequent technological curveballs which changed the game, Cummings looks at phenomena like sampling and bootleg concert recordings, which blur the lines between consumption and creation; in these cases, the illegal reproduction of copyrighted music has clearly advanced the American culture. This book forms a probing historical inquiry into a question that's more fraught than ever in the Internet era."

Alex Sayf Cummings is assistant professor of history at Georgia State University.

Gunfighter in Gotham -- Bat Masterson's New York City Years by Robert K. DeArment, Oklahoma UPress '13, $29.95, 304 pages, ASIN #0806142634. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the dust jacket:

"The legend of Bat Masterson as the heroic sheriff of Dodge City, KS, began in 1881 when an acquaintance duped a New York Sun reporter into writing Masterson up as a man-killing gunfighter. That he later moved to New York City to write a widely followed sports column for 18 years is one of history's great ironies, as Robert K. DeArment relates in this engaging new book.

"William Barclay 'Bat' Masterson spent the first half of his adult life in the West, planting the seeds for his later legend as he moved from Texas to Kansas and then Colorado. In Denver his gambling habit and combative nature drew him to the still-developing sport of prizefighting. Masterson attended almost every important match in the United States from the 1880s to 1921, first as a professional gambler betting on the bouts, and later as a promoter and referee.

"The prizefighters he knew are still household names, among them Jack Dempsey, Jim Corbett, and Jack Johnson. Anyone interested in the sweet science will relish DeArment's account of Masterson's interactions with these famous pugilists. Ultimately, Bat stumbled into writing about the sport."

Robert K. DeArment has written or edited a score of books and numerous articles on law and order in the American West.

FOCUS: 20th Century History -- Communism on Tomorrow Street / Plutopia / Thinking the Twentieth Century

Communism on Tomorrow Street -- Mass Housing and Everyday Life After Stalin by Steven E. Harris, Woodrow Wilson Center/Johns Hopkins UPress '13, stated First Printing. $60, 394 pages, ASIN #1421405660. Index, bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

In 1953, Nikita Khrushchev transitioned abruptly from the "bloody regime" of Josef Stalin to a new day for the Soviet Union. Emblematic of that shift was the new leader's massive program to allow millions of Soviet citizens to move from overcrowded, communal dwellings to separate apartments, "encouraging a thaw in state-society relations, and reviving the country's quest for communism."

The new day dawning for Soviet citizens may not have been as earthshattering as historian Steven E. Harris paints it. The sacrifice demanded of ordinary folk in dozens of nations during the Second World War led to a desperate hunger for a better life in the aftermath of war. Even in the United States, the average citizen didn't own his own home before WWII; the massive programs of the Federal Housing Administration to build millions of suburban homes in the 1950s ushered in a whole new lifestyle, not too different from the concept of the one family--one apartment idea championed by Khrushchev. (This is not to suggest that the communism of the Soviet Union is equivalent to America's capitalistic way of life.)

The author argues that the widespread experience of having one's own apartment was contrary to conventional wisdom that this phenomenon was for the elite, not for the average family. "Communism on Tomorrow Street," writes Harris, "also demonstrates the relationship of Soviet mass housing and urban planning to international efforts at resolving the 'housing question' that had been studied since the 19th century and led to housing developments in Western Europe, the United States, and Latin America, as well as the USSR."

Author Steven E. Harris is an associate professor of history at the University of Mary Washington.

Plutopia -- Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters by Kate Brown, Oxford UP '13, $27.95, 406 pages, ASIN #0199855765. Index, no bibliography, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

Historian Kate Brown's new book underscores the fact that the story of the Cold War hasn't nearly been finished, as she deconstructs the plutonium disasters of the United States and the Soviet Union.

From the dust jacket:

"In Plutopia, Brown draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the extraordinary stories of Richland, Washington; and Ozersk, Russia -- the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias - communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities.

"Fully employed and medically monitored, the residents of Richland and Ozersk enjoyed all the pleasures of consumer society, while nearby, migrants, prisoners, and soldiers were barred from plutopia -- they lived in temporary 'staging grounds' and often performed the most dangerous work at the plant.....In four decades, the Hanford plant near Richland and the Maiak plant near Ozersk each issued at least 200 million curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment -- equaling four Chernobyls -- laying waste to hundreds of square miles and contaminating rivers, fields, forests, and food supplies."

Kate Brown teaches history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; is the author of one previous book,and was a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow.

Thinking the Twentieth Century by Tony Judt with Timothy Snyder, Penguin Press '12, $36, 424 pages, ASIN #0143123041. Index, works discussed, no notes or illustrations.

The dust jacket summarizes the content of the final book of Tony Judt, perhaps the most influential public intellectual of the last generation, prior to his death in 2010:

"The twentieth century comes to life as an age of ideas -- a time when, for good and for ill, the thoughts of the few reigned over the lives of the many. Judt presents the triumphs and the failures of prominent intellectuals, adeptly explaining both their ideas and the risks of their political commitments. Spanning an era with unprecedented clarity and insight, Thinking the Twentieth Century is a tour de force, a classic engagement of modern thought by one of the century's most incisive thinkers.

"....In restoring and indeed exemplifying the best of intellectual life in the 20th century, Thinking the Twentieth Century opens pathways to a moral life for the 21st. This is a book about the past, but it is also an argument for the kind of future we should strive for: Thinking the Twentieth Century is about the life of the mind -- and the mindful life."

Tony Judt was educated at King's College, Cambridge; and the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris; and taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Berkeley. He wrote or edited 14 books, one of which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He died in 2010 at age 62. Timothy Snyder studied at Brown and Oxford and teaches history at Yale. He has written five books of European history.

FOCUS: Historical Fiction -- Ghana Must Go / Flame Alphabet

Ghana Must Go -- A Novel by Taiye Selasi, The Penguin Press '13, $25.95, 318 pages, ASIN #1594204497.

From the dust cover:

"Kweku Sai is dead. A renowned surgeon and failed husband, he succumbs suddenly at dawn outside his home in suburban Accra. The news of Kweku's death sends a ripple around the world bringing together the family he abandoned years before. Ghana Must Go is their story. Electric, exhilarating, beautifully crafted, Ghana Must Go is a testament to the transformative power of unconditional love, from a debut novelist of extraordinary talent.

"Moving with great elegance through time and place, Ghana Must Go charts the Sais' circuitous journey to one another. In the wake of Kweku's death, his children gather in Ghana at their enigmatic mother's new home. The eldest son and his wife; the mysterious, beautiful twins; the baby sister, now a young woman; each carries secrets of his own. What is revealed in their coming together is the story of how they came apart: the hearts broken, the lies told, the crimes committed in the name of love. Splintered, alone, each navigates his pain, believing that what has been lost can never be recovered -- until, in Ghana, a new way forward, a new family, begins to emerge.

"Ghana Must Go is at once a portrait of a modern family and an exploration of the importance of where we come from to who we are. In a sweeping narrative that takes us from Accra to Lagos to London to New York, Ghana Must Go teaches that the truths we speak can heal the wounds we hide.

Taiye Selasi was born in London, raised in Massachusetts, and holds a B.A. in American Studies from Yale and an M. Phil. in International Relations from Oxford.

The Flame Alphabet -- A Novel by Ben Marcus, Knopf '12, $25.95, 289 pages, ASIN #030737937X.

From the book cover:

"In The Flame Alphabet, the most maniacally gifted writer of our generation delivers a work of heart-break and horror, a novel about how far we will go, and the sorrows we will endure in order to protect our famllies.

"A terrible epidemic has struck the country and the sound of children's speech has become lethal. Radio transmissions from strange sources indicate that people are going into hiding. All Sam and Claire need to do is look around the neighborhood: In the park, parents wither beneath the powerful screams of their children. At night, suburban side streets become routes of shameful escape for fathers trying to get outside the radius of affliction.

"....The Flame Alphabet invites the question: What is left of civilization when we lose the ability to communicate with those we love? Both morally engaged and wickedly entertaining, a gripping page-turner as strange as it is moving, this intellectual horror story ensures Ben Marcus's position in the first rank of American novelists."

Ben Marcus has written three books of fiction and his stories have appeared in leading magazines, as well as wiinning several awards. He lives in New York City and Maine.

FOCUS: American History -- Overdrive / Seeing Red / The War of 1812

Overdrive -- L.A. Constructs the Future 1940--1990, Edited by Wim de Wit and Christopher James Alexander, The Getty Research Institute, in oversized format, 302 pages, ASIN #1606061283. Index, illustration credits, contributors, notes follow chapters, b&w and color images, some full page.

Conventional wisdom has it that the city of Los Angeles is one chaotic sprawl....and let's not forget the smog. De Wit Alexander's momentous new book is a corrective to that way of thinking and is the print companion to a new exhibition from April 9 to July 21, organized by the Getty Research Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The purpose of Alexander's book and exhibition is to describe how the metropolis of Greater Los Angeles evolved, based on extensive collections of archives, drawings, and models.

"The sun, sea, and mountains, which play such an integral role in the city, barely persuade people of its appeal," writes Foreword contributor Thomas W. Gaehtgens. "The feeling of disorientation is so powerful, it can seem difficult to surmount....Los Angeles seems to challenge all European customs of experiencing a city. Where is the center? Where are the cathedral and town hall that mark the heart of a community? Los Angeles also has these structures, yet they have shaped neither the geographic nor the urban center of the city. From a European perspective, the absence of this core is one obvious reason why many visitors feel lost."

Countering the notion that Los Angeles developed willy-nilly is the reality that Los Angeles actually did develop in orderly fashion even though at unusual speed. The editors quote Anton Wagner, a German geologist and geologist, whose comprehensive study of Los Angeles in 1935 analyzed "the shocking speed with which the metropolis had reached a population of two million immigrants in just a few years." By the 1960s, Los Angeles had tripled in size.

The editors divide their text into three sections: 1) Transformative Lancscapes, 2) Engaging Modernism, and 3) Developing Communities. Each section has several essays within it, written by authorities in their respective fields. Collectively, they cover everything from the development of the L.A. freeways, Los Angeles's role as a catalyst for architectural change in East Asia, and architects and builders in postwar Los Angeles.

Co-editor Wim de Wit is an architectural historian and head of the Department of Architecture and Contemporary Art at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Co-editor Christopher James Alexander is assistant curator of architecture and design at the Getty Research Institute.

Seeing Red -- Hollywood's Pixeled Skins, Edited by LeAnne Howe, Harvey Markowitz, and Denise K. Cummings, Michigan State UPress '13, $29.95, 225 pages, ASIN #1611860814. Contributors, further reading, notes follow chapters, b&w images sprinkled through text.

From the back cover:

"At once informative, comic, and plaintive, Seeing Red--Hollywood's Pixeled Skins is an anthology of critical reviews that reexamines the ways in which American Indians have traditionally been portrayed in film. From George B. Seitz's 1925 The Vanishing American to Rick Schroder's 2004 Black Cloud, these 36 reviews by prominent scholars of American Indian Studies are accessible, personal, intimate, and oftentimes autobiographic. Seeing Red offers indispensable perspectives from American Indian cultures to foreground the dramatic, frequently ridiculous difference between the experiences of Native people and their depiction in film.

"By pointing out and poking fun at the dominant ideologies and perpetuation of stereotypes of Native Americans in Hollywood, the book gives readers the ability to recognize both good filming and the dangers of misrepresenting aboriginal peoples. The anthology offers a method to historicize and contextualize cinematic representations spanning from the blatantly racist to the well-intentioned to more recent independent productions, Seeing Red is a unique collaboration by scholars in American Indian Studies that draws on the stereotypical representations of the past to suggest ways of seeing American Indians and indigenous peoples more clearly in the 21st Century.

Co-editor Leanne Howe teaches American Indian Studies, English and Theater at the University of Illinois. Co-editor Harvey Markowitz teaches sociology and anthropology at Washington and Lee University. Co-editor Denise K. Cummings teaches critical media and cultural studies at Rollins College.

The War of 1812 -- Writings from America's Second War of Independence, Donald R. Hickey, Editor, Library of America '13, $40, 928 pages, ASIN #1598531956. Index, notes, notes on the text, biographical notes, chronology, unillustrated.

From the dust jacket:

"On June 18, 1812, the United States formally declared war for the first time, a controversial decision that provoked outpourings of patriotic fervor and vigorous -- some said treasonous -- domestic opposition. Over the next three years, the War of 1812 would prove as divisive as it was rich in national myth-making. Now, for the bicentennial, the leading expert on the war presents a fascinating collection of eyewitness accounts by Americans, Britons, Canadians, and Indians.

"Here, in 140 letters, speeches, diary entries, newspaper and magazine articles, memoir excerpts, poems, sermons, songs, and military reports by more than 100 participants, are the famous -- Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Tecumseh, Dolley Madison, and the Duke of Wellington, among others-- and the less well-known, such as Laura Secord, called the 'Canadian Paul Revere,' and William B. Northcutt, whose remarkable diary provides a common soldier's view. With an introduction, headnotes, a chronology of events, biographical and explanatory endnotes, and endpaper maps.

 

FOCUS: German History -- The Faithful Executioner / Karl Marx -- a Nineteenth-Century Life

The Faithful Executioner -- Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century by Joel F. Harrington, Farrar, Straus & Giroux '13, $28, 283 pages, ASIN #0809049929. Index, notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled through text.

Sometimes you get lucky, as did historian Joel F. Harrington, by stumbling upon the journal of Nuremberg's Meister Frantz Schmidt, who writes of his 45 years as a professional executioner; a lot luckier, in fact, than the 394 individuals Schmidt put to  death by beheading, strangulation, fire, and hanging in the 16th century.

The job (profession, if you will) of executioner was not only considered unsavory; it was downright dishonorable, perhaps little better than a hod carrier. But hey, a man has to support his family, doesn't he? What is most remarkable about the journal Harrington discovered was that his subject was literate and sensitive enough to pen a literate daily entry after each execution and torture session.

With the author, "we encounter brutal highwaymen, charming swindlers, and tragic unwed mothers accused of infanticide, as well as patrician senators, godly chaplains, and corrupt prison guards.... (The author) "teases out the hidden meanings and drama of Schmidt's journal, uncovering a touching tale of inherited shame and attempted redemption for the social pariah and his children," all the while struggling "to reconcile his own bloody craft with his deep religious faith."

Joel F. Harrington teaches history at Vanderbilt University. Residing with his family in Nashville, Tennessee, Harrington is the author of three previous books. 

Karl Marx -- A Nineteenth-Century Life by Jonathan Sperber, Liveright '13, $35, 648 pages, ASIN #0871404672. Index, bibliography, notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.

From the book jacket:

"Between his birth in 1818 and his death 65 years later, Karl Marx became one of Western civilization's most influential political philosophers. Two centuries on, he is still revered as a prophet of the modern world, yet he is also blamed for the darkest atrocities of recent history. But no matter in what light he is cast, the short, broad-shouldered, and bearded Marx remains -- as a human being -- distorted on a Procrustean bed of political 'isms,' either perceived through the partially distorting lens of his chief disciple, Friedrich Engels, or understood as a figure of 20th century totalitarian Marxist regimes.

"Returning Marx to the Victorian confines of the 19th century, Jonathan Sperber, one of the United States' leading European historians, challenges many of our misconceptions of this political firebrand turned London emigre' journalist. In this deeply humanizing portrait, Marx no longer is the Olympian soothsayer, divining the dialectical imperatives of human history, but a scholar-activist whose revolutionary Weltanschauung was closer to Robespierre's than to those of 20th century Marxists."

Jonathan Sperber teaches history at the University of Missouri and has written extensively on the social and political history of 19th century Europe.

 

FOCUS: Japanese History -- Japan's Modern Divide / Operation Storm

Japan's Modern Divide -- The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto, Edited by Judith Keller and Amanda Maddox, Getty Publications '13, in oversized format on glossy stock $49.95, 224 pages, ASIN #1606061321. Index, contributors, illustration credits, notes follow each chapter, more than 100 b&w and color photos (some full page).

In this remarkable volume, two notable Japanese photographers meld realism and surrealism to portray life in their country in the mid-20th century. "Whether photographing the harsh daily life of rural Japan in the 1940s and 1950s or protests against the United States -- Japan Security Treaty in 1960," the co-author writes that he "sought to capture the objective truth of his own time."

But Kansuke Yamamoto looked at life through a different lens. Living and working in Nagoya during the same time period, he chose instead "to celebrate ideas and images that were often influenced by Western Surrealism and subsequently helped shape the avant-garde movement in Japan." Collectively, the editors argue, the two photographers "reveal the modern divide in Japanese photography through works that have been rarely exhibited or published before now."

The co-editors have divided their text into six sections: 1) Innovations in the 1930s: The Early Works of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto, 2) Hiroshi Hamaya's Snow Country: A Return to 'Japan', 3) The Locus of Sadness: Protesting the New Japan; 4) The Position of Kansuke Yamamoto: Reexamining Japan's Modern Photography, 5) Five Poems by Kansuke Yamamoto, and 6) Disobedient Spirit: Kansuke Yamamoto and His Engagement with Surrealism.

Hiroshi Hamaya (1915--1999) was born and raised in Tokyo and began photographically recording life and culture on the Coast of the Sea of Japan, before photographing New Year's rituals in a rural village, Chinese cultural changes, Japanese political protests, and landscapes around the world. Kansuke Yamamoto (1914-1987) became fascinated early by the innovative approaches used by such Western artists as Man Ray, Rene' Magritte, and Yves Tanguy. Co-editor Judith Keller is senior curator and Amanda Maddox assistant curator in the Department of Photographs at the Getty Museum. 

Operation Storm -- Japan's Top Secret Submarines and its Plan to Change the Course of World War II by John J. Geoghegan, Crown '13, $28, 478 pages, ASIN #0307464806. Index, sources, notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.

From the dust jacket:

"In 1941, the architects of Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor planned a bold followup: a classified program to build a squadron of underwater aircraft carriers designed to launch another surprise and incredibly destructive air raid -- this time against New York City and Washington, D.C. The top-secret program involved developing a special fleet of submarines -- the Sen-toku or I-400 class -- which were by far the largest and among the most deadly of World War II

"Each one carried three Aichi M6A1 attack planes armed with the largest bomb in the Imperial Navy and painted to look like U.S. aircraft. Called Seiran, the planes were concealed in a huge, watertight deck hangar and were meant to appear suddenly over the American targets, as their Japanese name suggests, like 'a storm from a clear sky.' The Mission remained unknown to U.S. intelligence, despite having broken the Japanese naval code, and even more startling is just how close the Japanese came to pulling it off."

Author John J. Geoghegan reports on unusual inventions that fail to succeed in the marketplace despite their innovative nature. His work has been printed in leading magazines and newspapers. This is his first book.

 

 

FOCUS: American History -- Born on a Mountaintop / The Delta Queen Cookbook / Lincoln's Cavalrymen

Born on a Mountaintop -- On the Road with Davy Crockett and the Ghosts of the Wild Frontier by Bob Thompson, Crown '12, $27, 375 pages, ASIN #0307720896. Index, bibliography, notes on sources, grouping of b&w images, other b&w images sprinkled through text.

Any senior citizens among History Wire's readers -- and I'm told they are legion -- have lived long enough to have had their dreams shattered. So they'll be able to withstand the following shock to their system. Davy Crockett -- yes, of coonskin cap fame -- wasn't born on any Tennessee mountaintop! Author Bob Thompson is a truth teller and chose to reveal in his new book "the real David as he was before he became famous; the celebrity politician whose backwoods image Crockett himself created, then lost control of; and the mythic Davy we know today."

In a brief Q&A, Thompson discusses the writing of this book:

Q. What drew you to Davy Crockett as a subject for your first book?

A. The whole thing is my elder daughter's fault. One day, when Lizzie was four, she and her sister were in the backseat of the car listening to an old collection of Burl Ives songs. It included "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," the theme from Walt Disney's famous TV series -- the one that begins "Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee/ Greenest state in the land of the free." When it was over, Lizzie said, "Play that song again." A year or so later, after we'd read her everything about Davy we could lay our hands on, she outgrew her Crockett phase. But I never did."

Q. What did you learn about Davy -- or David, as he preferred to be called -- that you found particularly surprising or intriguing?

A. In general, I loved the fact that Crockett's story turned out to intersect with so much of America's -- which, of course, is one reason we remember him. He's in the middle of the bitter struggle between settlers and Indians, taking different sides at different times. He personifies the radical expansion of democracy in the age of Andrew Jackson, as well as the unstoppable westward migration that drew risk-taking Americans to places like west Tennessee and Texas. And he's the prototype of what we usually view as a modern phenomenon -- the celebrity politician. I was amazed to discover that Crockett pioneered the political book tour. In 1834, he traveled to Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and the booming mill town of Lowell, MA, to flack his newly published autobiography and bash his political opponents.

Bob Thompson was a longtime feature writer for The Washington Post and the editor of its Sunday magazine.

The Delta Queen Cookbook: The History and Recipes of the Legendary Steamboat by Cynthia LeJeune Nobles '12, in oversized format on glossy stock 282 pages, ASIN #0807145378. General Index, Recipe Index, References, dozens of color images of prepared food on multi-color pages.

From the back cover:

"The world's last authentic overnight wooden steamboat, the Delta Queen, cruised America's inland waters from 1927 through 2008, offering passengers breathtaking views, luxury accommodations, rousing entertainment, and southern-style feasts. For more than 81 years, chefs in the small galley served memorable meals -- from fried chicken and crawfish en croute to strawberry shortcake and beignets. The Delta Queen Cookbook brings the Delta Queen's story to life with an engaging historical narrative and more than 125 recipes prepared by the steamboat's former chefs during their tenures in the cookhouse.

"The Delta Queen Cookbook includes interviews with former crew, chefs, and passengers; more than 90 historical and full-color photographs; and vintage and modern menus. History buffs, steamboat lovers, and home cooks alike will revel in the memories and tastes that make the Delta Queen one of America's best-loved national treasures."

A member of the Newcomb College Culinary History Writers Group, Cynthia LeJeune Nobles contributed several chapters to New Orleans Cuisine. She lives in Baton Rouge, LA.

Lincoln's Cavalrymen -- A History of the Mounted Forces of the Army of the Potomac, 1861-1865 by Edward G. Longacre, University of Oklahoma Press '12 paperback, $26.95, 488 pages, ASIN #0806142294. Index, bibliography, notes, grouping of b&w images.

Those Civil War readers whose particular interest concerns the mounted troops of the Union Army will be drawn to this volume by a writer who has written 24 books on the Civil War. In Lincoln's Cavalrymen, author Edward G. Longacre deconstructs the organizational, administrative, and operational history of Lincoln's mounted troops. As such, it "covers the gamut of cavalry life -- not only field operations but also the recruiting, organizing, mounting, remounting, equipping, training, tactical instruction, and war-long support for this critical branch of the nineteenth-century army."

From the rear cover:

"Historian Edward G. Longacre consulted at least 50 manuscript collections pertaining to general officers of the cavalry, as well as the unpublished letters and diaries of more than 450 officers and enlisted men, representing almost every mounted unit in the Army of the Potomac.

"The result is the most comprehensive history of the Union cavalry to date. The book vividly portrays the cavalry's most influential commanders and assesses the depth and quality of its leadership. Longacre also seeks to place the Union cavalry in the context of the army and the war effort as a whole."

Edward G. Longacre has written numerous articles in addition to 24 books and has won the Douglas Southall Freeman History Award.

 

FOCUS: -- A Mini-Review -- Whitey Bulger

Whitey Bulger -- America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt that Brought Him to Justice by Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, Norton '13, $26.95, 478 pages, ASIN #0393087727. Index, notes, b&w maps, grouping of b&w glossy images.

To call the life of James "Whitey" Bulger the stuff of fiction is a massive understatement. We'll find out how many of the allegations against Bulger -- including 19 murders -- are true this Spring when he goes on trial in Massachusetts, two years after he was captured in California after being on the lam for some 16 years.

Bulger grew up in a large, working class, Catholic family in South Boston ("Southie" for the uninitiated). His father -- James, Sr. -- was a laborer who lost most of an arm in a work accident in the days before workers' compensation and managed to scrape together a hard--scrabble living for his wife and children. Besides Whitey, so named because of his extremely blond hair as a boy, the other most notable person in the family was his younger brother William "Bill" Bulger, who rose to become one of the top leaders in the Massachusetts legislature and later, president of the University of Massachusetts.

From his childhood, Whitey was a study in contradictions. A wiseass, he felt sorry for a shy younger boy, John Connolly, and bought him an ice cream cone, a favor the youngster never forgot when he became a top FBI official in Massachusetts. In spite of being raised in a somewhat straight-laced family, Whitey detested rules and regulations, yet he counted three Catholic priests among his closest friends, including Boston College Jesuit Prof. Robert Drinan, who went on to become a Massachusetts congressman.

Bulger never admitted to any of the alleged 19 murders, nor to "ratting anyone out" and had a soft spot for animals and children. He had two live-in mistresses for decades -- not unusual perhaps although he did both at the same time, and it is charged that one day he murdered a man, then returned home to a lovely family dinner with one of his mistresses and her children, to whom he lectured on working hard, studying hard, doing the right thing, and other moral topics.

Two years or so ago, when President Obama broadcast the news that American troops had killed Osama bin Laden, Whitey Bulger knew immediately that he had risen to a new height in his field -- as America's most wanted criminal. Ironically, he had done it with the help of the FBI, for whom he was for years a reliable informer. The authors report that although Whitey spent 9 years in federal prison, he was able to remain a free man for decades because he was too valuable to the FBI to take off the streets.

Co-author Kevin Cullen has written for The Boston Globe since 1985 and was the first to raise questions about Whitey Bulger's relationship with the FBI. Shelley Murphy, who has covered organized crime since 1985, has written for both The Boston Herald and The Boston Globe.

FOCUS: History of Great Britain -- History of Britain & Ireland

History of Britain & Ireland -- the Definitive Visual Guide, DK Publishing '11, in oversized format on glossy stock, $40, 400 pages, ASIN #0756675553. Index, monarchs and rulers, notes in text, scores of color and b&w images sprinkled through text.

Anyone who has read one of DK Publishing's massive and monumental volumes on history should be pleased with the comprehensiveness of this work. Its scope runs from the pre-1066 era, dominated by invaders, through the election of Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010.

The editors have divided the text into six parts: 1) Britons and Invaders up to 1066; 2) Medieval Britain, 1066-1485; 3) Tudors and Stuarts, 1485-1688; 4) Rise of Power, 1688-1815; 5) Industry and Empire, 1815-1914; and 6) Modern Times, 1914 -- Present. Each part is divided into a dozen or two subsections, so that "Modern Times" contains separate several-page subsections on World War I and World War II.

In Section 5, for example, subsection "Years of Change" is presented as two facing pages, with a large color photograph, a narrative in small print discussing the 'new ways of working that started to alter everything, from timekeeping and housing to family dynamics and class relations,' and several sidebars. Typically, each section contains a sidebar on what life was like before the "Change" referred to occurred and a section briefly describing occurrences happening after the "Change."

This volume has four contributors and four editorial consultants. In a listing of "Monarchs and Rulers," the editors list not only monarchs of England, but of Britain, Scotland and Ireland. Prime Ministers are listed for Britain, Northern Ireland, Ireland, presidents of Ireland, and first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

 

FOCUS: A Little of This, A Little of That -- Being American in Europe / I Do and I Don't / Cut These Words Into My Stone / The Wanting

Being American in Europe 1750-1860 by Daniel Kilbride, Johns Hopkins UPress '13, $34.95, 230 pages, ASIN #1421408996. Index, essay on sources, notes, map but no other illustrations.

A year ago, in these pages, we reviewed historian David McCullough's latest effort, entitled The Greater Journey, about the cultural and technological cross-fertilization between the French and the Americans between 1830--1900, largely on the Parisian stage. In historian Daniel Kilbride's latest, he "tracks the adventures of American travelers (from 1750 to 1860) while exploring large questions about how these experiences affected national identity."

While the two time periods overlap somewhat, many of the adventures undertaken in both books are similar, in social background of the travelers, modes of travel, and purpose of the voyages. But McCullough's take on the whole seems more positive than Kilbride's, "whose sources are written by people who, while prominent in their own time, are mostly obscure today, making this account fresh and unusual."

Although McCullough's take appears somewhat rosier, it would be wrong to portray Kilbride's sources as sour on the opposing country. In his words, "Travelers often had diverse perspectives because of their region of origin, race, gender, and class....Kilbride describes how these travelers defined themselves while they observed the politics, economy, morals, manners, and customs of Europeans. He locates an increasingly articulate and refined sense of simplicity and virtue among the visitors and a gradual disappearace of their feelings of awe and inferiority."

Daniel Kilbride is an associate professor of history at John Carroll University in Ohio.

I Do and I Don't -- A History of Marriage in the Movies by Jeanine Basinger, Knopf '12, $30, 395 pages, ASIN #0307269167. Index, bibliography, footnotes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

Scholars of the American film genres are familiar with Wesleyan scholar Jeanine Basinger, who has written many accounts of the silver screen, including its techology, directors, producers, and actors. In her latest, she tackles the subject of marriage in the movies and the reasons why that institution has largely not been examined per se on the screen.

In commenting on I Do and I Don't, Kirkus Reviews writes:

"Marriage was a problem for Hollywood and its main business of putting people in theater seats. True, it was familiar to the audience, but famliiarity is not entertainment and escape. So Hollywood had the task of making the mundane exotic while still reassuring the audience that marriage was a good thing. The marriage film 'had to become negative about itself in a positive way,'.....Sin and tragedy might occur, but in the end, marriage would endure."

In Basinger's lively domestic survey, she traces "the many ways Hollywood has tussled with this tricky subject, explicating the relationship of countless marriages from Blondie and Dagwood to the heartrending couple in the Iranian A Separation, from Tracy and Hepburn to Laurel and Hardy (a marriage if there ever was one) to Coach and his wife in Friday Night Lights."

Jeanine Basinger is the chair of film studies at Wesleyan University and the curator of the cinema archives there. She has written nine other books on film. 

Cut These Words into My Stone -- Ancient Greek Epitaphs, translated by Michael Wolfe, foreword by Richard P. Martin. Johns Hopkins UPress '13 paperback, $24.95, 178 pages, ASIN #0307269167. Biography of the Poets, Bibliography, notes, unillustrated.

It is a familiar custom in New England, where I live, to roam country graveyards in search of unusual epitaphs carved into gravestones by families of the dead, often referring to the decedent's contributions to mankind, the tragic manner of his death, or the love his family continues to have for him.

But while the colonial era began less than four centuries ago, the epitaphs discussed in this book trace their roots to Ancient Greece. They have been divided into five sections: 1) Anonymous Epitaphs of No Known Date, 2) Late Archaic and Classical Periods (600-350 BCE), 3) Hellenistic Period (Age of Alexander, c. 323-100 BCE, 4) The Millenium (Pagan Roman Empire, 100 BCE-99 CE), and 5) Late Antiquity (Christian Roman Empire, 200--599 CE).

I especially like the anonymous epitaphs, since they allow one to envision a life for the subject of the writing. Here are a couple as samples:

                  "My name is Dionysius of Tarsus.

                  I was sixty when I died. I never married.

                  I wish my father hadn't married either."

                                           AND

                  "After many high times with friends my age.

                  "I am back in the earth I sprang from:

                  "Aristocles. Menon's son. From Piraeus."

Translator Michael Wolfe is a poet, author, documentary film producer and president of Unity Productions Foundation, a nonprofit media organization. 

The Wanting -- A Novel by Michael Lavigne, Schocken '13, $25.95, 322 pages, ASIN #0805212558.

From the dust jacket:

"From the author of Not Me, this powerful novel about an Israeli father and his daughter brings to life a rich canvas of events and unexpected change in the aftermath of a suicide bombing.

"In the galvanizing opening of The Wanting, the celebrated Russian-born postmodern architect Roman Guttman is injured in a bus bombing, causing his life to swerve into instability and his perceptions to become heightened and disturbed as he embarks on an ill-advised journey into Palestinian territory. The account of Roman's desert odyssey alternates with the vivacious, bittersweet diary of his 13 year old daughter, Anyusha (who is on her own perilous path, of which Roman is ignorant), and the startingly alive witnessings of Amir, the young Palestinian who pushed the button and is now damned to observe the havoc he has wrought from a shaky beyond.

"Enriched by flashbacks to the alluringly sad tale of Anyusha's mother, a famous Russian refusenik who died for her beliefs, The Wanting is a poignant study of the costs of extremism, but it is most satisfying as a story of characters enmeshed in their imperfect love for one another and for the heartbreakingly complex world in which that love is wrought."

Michael Lavigne, who was born in Newark and now lives in San Francisco, was educated at Millersville State College and the University of Chicago. He has written one previous book and has worked extensively in advertising.

FOCUS: 20th Century History -- Stalin's Curse / Marc Blitzstein

Stalin's Curse -- Battling for Communism in War and Cold War by Robert Gellately, Knopf '13, $32.50, 477 pages, ASIN #0307269159. Index, notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

From Gilbert Taylor in Booklist:

"Author of several histories of German and Russia totalitarianism, Robert Gellately here indicts Stalin as the primary instigator of the Cold War, marshaling evidence from Communist archives that undermines the revisionist case for Western responsibility for starting the confrontation.

"Arguing that Stalin was a hands-on director of expanding the Communist domain from 1939 to 1953, Gellately points to Stalin's ideological convictions as the driving motive in his political decisions, constrasting them with his mollifying arguments to Western diplomats about Russia's reasonable needs for security. The ground-level ramifications were, as Gellately recounts, police-state suppression of freedom and abolition of capitalism through execution, deportations, and gulags, which claimed victims by the millions.

"Amid his inventory of countries subjected to Stalin's rule, Gellately credits the red dictator with political acumen in deceiving Western leaders about his true objective of imposing one-party states. Stalin's Communist associates and acolytes knew better, and the archives preserve their orders from Stalin about local tactics for eradicating non-Communist opposition and, in Korea, starting a war."

Robert Gellately teaches history at Florida State University and recently was a visiting professor of 20th Century and Jewish politics and history at Oxford University.

Marc Blitzstein -- His Life, His Work, His World by Howard Pollack, Oxford UPress '12, $39.95, 618 pages, ASIN #0199791597. Index, notes, no bibliography, two groupings of b&w images.

From the dust jacket:

"A composer and lyricist of enormous innovation and influence, Marc Blitzstein remains one of the most versatile and fascinating figures in the history of American music, his creative output running the gamut from film scores and Broadway operas to art songs and chamber pieces. A prominent leftist and social maverick, Blitzstein constantly pushed the boundaries of convention in mid-century America in both his work and his life.

"Award-winning music historian Howard Pollack's new biography covers Blitzstein's life in full, from his childhood in Philadelphia to his violent death in Martinique at age 58. The author describes how this student of contemporary luminaries Nadia Boulanger and Arnold Schoenberg became swept up in the stormy political atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s and throughout his career walked the fine line between his formal training and his populist principles.

"Indeed, Blitzstein developed a unique sound that drew on everything contemporary, from the high modernism of Stravinsky and Hindemith to jazz and Broadway show tunes" Pollack captures the astonishing breadth of Blitzstein's work -- from provocative operas like The Cradle Will Rock, No for an Answer, and Regina, to the wartime Airborne Symphony composed during his years in service, to lesser known ballets, film scores, and stage works."

Howard Pollack teaches music at the University of Houston and has written numerous several other books.

FOCUS: A Potpourri -- Native Americans on Film / Deleuze, The Dark Precursor / Spartan Warrior 735-331 B.C.

Native Americans on Film -- Conversations, Teaching, and Theory, Edited by M. Elise  Marubbio and Eric L. Buffalohead, UKentucky Press '13, $50, 390 pages, ASIN #0813136652. Index, contributors, selected filmography, endnotes follow each essay.

The stereotypes of Native Americans as portrayed by Hollywood would be laughable if they weren't so tragic -- "the noble and ignoble savage, the pronoun-challenged sidekick, the ruthless warrior, the female drudge, the princess, the sexualized maiden, the drunk and others," in the words of the editors.

The triumph of this volume is that it portrays the work of indigenous filmmakers, which the editors argue "have both challenged these representations and moved past them, offering their own distinct forms of expression." Here, the editors have gathered a cast of interdisciplinary scholars, "to examine the numerous ways in which the Native American, First Nations, and Indigenous filmmakers weave together the narrative style of both Hollywood and of Indigenous storytelling to create new forms of creative expression."

The editors have divided their gathered essays into three sections: Section One: Theoretical Conversations; Section Two: Pedagogical Conversations; and Section Three: Conversations with Filmmakers.

Co-editor M. Elise Marubbio is associate professor of American Indian Studies at Augsburg College and director of the Augsburg Native American Film Series. Co-editor Eric L. Buffalohead, an enrolled member of the Ponca Tribe of White Eagle, Oklahoma, is associate professor and chair of the American Indian Studies department at Augsburg College.

Deleuze, the Dark Precursor -- Dialectic, Structure, Being by Eleanor Kaufman, Johns Hopkins UPress '12, laminated, illustrated cover, $60, 245 pages, ASIN #142140589X. Index, bibliography, notes, unillustrated.

From the back cover:

"Gilles Deleuze is considered one of the most important French philosophers of the twentieth century. Eleanor Kaufman situates Deleuze in relation to others of his generation, such as Jean--Paul Sartre, Pierre Klossowski, Maurice Blanchot, and Claude Levi-Strauss, and she engages the provocative readings of Deleuze by Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek.

"Deleuze, the Dark Precursor is organized around three themes that critically overlap: dialectic, structure, and being. Kaufman argues that 'Deleuze's work is deeply concerned with these questions, even when he advocates for the seemingly opposite notions of univocity, nonsense, and becoming.' By drawing on scholastic thought and reading somewhat against the grain, Kaufman suggests that these often-maligned themes allow for a nuanced, even positive reflection on apparently negative states of being, such as extreme inertia. This attention to the negative or minor category has implications that extend beyond philosophy and into feminist theory, film, American studies, anthropology, and architecture."

Author Eleanor Kaufman teaches comparative literature, English, and French and Francophone studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has written one previous book and co-edited another.

Spartan Warrior 735-331 B.C. by Duncan B. Campbell, illustrated by Steve Noon, Osprey Press '12 paperback on glossy stock. $18.95, 64 pages, ASIN #1849087008. Index, glossary, further reading, dozens of color and b&w images.

From the back cover:

"Immortalized through their exploits at the battle of Thermopylae under the legendary Leonidas, as well as countless other victories through the Classical period, the Spartans were some of the best trained, organized, most feared and lethal warriors of the ancient world. The unique Spartan society left the pure-bred men of Sparta free to concentrate all their energies on warfare.

"Forbidden from engaging in any form of manual labour, these Spartan warriors were trained from an early age in a brutal regime that gave them the necessary discipline and endurance to withstand the pressures of phalanx warfare and endure all manner of hardships on campaign.

"This title describes all aspects of the Spartan warrior's life, from the earliest days of his training through his life in peace and war, culminating in the battlefield experiences of these feared combatants during the Greek and Persian and Peloponnesian wars."

Author Duncan B. Campbell is a specialist in ancient Greek and Roman warfare. His work has appeared in several international journals. Illustrator Steve Noon has worked as a professional artist since 1985.