Steve Goddard's History Wire

Book Alert / Helen of Troy

The subtitle of Bettany Hughes's new book, Helen of Troy -- Goddess Princess, Whore, sums up what has made Helen such a compelling figure in literature across the ages. In Hughes's words: "Helen exists in many guises: a matriarch from the Age of Heroes who ruled over one of the most fertile areas of the Mycenaean world; Helen of Sparta, the focus of a cult that conflated Helen the heroine with a  pre-Greek fertility goddess; the home wrecker of the Iliad, the bitch-whore of Greek tragedy; the pin-up of Romantic artists."

Hughes tells Helen's story through the eyes of a young Mycenaean woman rather than great military leaders and statesmen (with accent on "men"). The 458-page book is especially rich in accoutrements: indexed, with a substantial bibliography, extensive endnotes, several maps of the areas discussed in the text, and a helpful timeline of events. Two full-color murals adorn the front and end papers, and several dozen photos -- some glossy in full color -- are grouped into three photo sections. All in all, an impressive product.

Pinochet May Not Be Above the Law

"Ex-Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet has had his fingerprints and mug shots taken, a first for the 90-year-old former ruler," says KMTR News Source 16.

"His lawyer says it's "an affront" to a one-time president. But a government spokesman says the booking of Pinochet shows that all Chilean citizens are "equal before the law." Pinochet ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990. He's under indictment for the killing and disappearance of nine dissidents during his dictatorship. The Pinochet regime says the nine were killed in clashes between rival opposition groups.  Health problems have kept Pinochet from being tried on human rights charges four times in a row."

Deportation of Demjanjuk, 85, Appealable

"An immigration judge has ordered an Ohio man accused of being a Nazi concentration camp guard deported to his native Ukraine," according to the Associated Press. The judge, in Cleveland, ruled that there is no evidence to substantiate that John Demjanjuk's claim that he would be mistreated if deported to his homeland. Demjanjuk can appeal the decision.

"An 85-year-old retired autoworker, Demjanjuk has been fighting for nearly 30 years to stay in this country. Demjanjuk lost his U.S. citizenship after a judge ruled in 2002 that documents from World War Two prove he was a Nazi guard at various death or forced labor camps."

Book Alert / The Last Expedition -- Stanley's Mad Journey Through the Congo

Literary deconstruction of the British Empire has proceeded without letup for a half century or more. In The Last Expedition -- Stanley's Mad Journey Through the Congo, Dr. Daniel Liebowitz and Charles Pearson put their oar in and give it a few stiff stirs.

Their book recounts a costly (in lives as well as pounds) trek across Africa to rescue Emin Pasha, a valued lieutenant of General Gordon, British diplomat/soldier and governor of Equatoria. Suffice it to say that Henry Morton Stanley, the man chosen to head the expedition, was a troubled character, a man who by age seven had been rejected by his mother, her family and a subsequent foster family. Not an auspicious start to life.

Like so many horrific early beginnings, these traumas helped shape Stanley into the man he would become and left a dark underside to the man that diaries of his expedition members reveal. "The expedition took whatever it wanted from the Africans, and when the Africans were killed defending their possessions, they didn't even rate an entry in Stanley's journal," the authors say.

Some called Stanley "the greatest explorer in African history," but his last expedition was such a disaster, involving disease, savagery, desertion and rebellion, that rather than advancing Stanley's career, it brought the 100-year era of European exploration of Africa to a screeching halt.

The 355-page book contains an index and bibliography, is modestly illustrated but is unsourced.

Oasis of Chicago History Evaporates

"It's hard not to feel a sense of Chicago's history inside the 107-year-old Berghoff Restaurant, where hand-painted murals depict the 1893 World's Fair and the city's first post-Prohibition liquor license proudly hangs," according to CBS News.

"But in a few months The Berghoff _ one of this food-loving city's oldest and most beloved restaurants _ will become history itself, leaving its hordes of devoted patrons crying in their German lager. Third-generation owner Herman Berghoff, 70, announced Wednesday that he and his wife, Jan, will close the restaurant in February. Their retirement will dim the lights on a Chicago institution that has quenched cravings for warm apple strudel and cold beer for generations of tourists and trade workers, politicians and lawyers."

We Deny History At Our Peril

In almost any bookshop in the Arab world, you can buy a translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with no acknowledgement whatever that it is a malicious anti-Jewish forgery," says The Age.com. "And in any school in Japan, you can find a history textbook that portrays the country's bloody history of imperial expansion in Asia between 1890 and 1945 as a series of unfortunate but basically well-intentioned misunderstandings with the neighbours. Those who want to shape the future often start by trying to reshape the past.....

If today's Japanese were fully aware of the horrors that other Asians experienced at their country's hands in the past, as Germans are aware of what other Europeans suffered at the hands of the Nazis, they would be much less vulnerable to the scare tactics that are now being used on them, and more open to genuine reconciliation with their neighbours. But the scaremongers in power don't want that, so Japanese school history books are getting vaguer and vaguer about exactly what happened under the banner of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."

Book Alert / The Hot Kid

If I had a dollar for every novel written about the gangland era of America in the 1930s......well, you get the idea. But novelists couldn't create more compelling figures than John Dillinger, Elliot Ness and Baby Face Nelson, so you can't fault them for returning to the overflowing trough every now and then.

And when the returning novelist is a storyteller of the caliber of Elmore Leonard, you know you're in for a pretty good read. In The Hot Kid, Leonard introduces us to Carl Webster, young federal marshal (the hot kid), determined to become America's top lawman; Louly Brown, his inevitable girlfriend; and Tony Antonelli, writer for True Detective magazine.

Leonard's amazing portfolio includes more than three dozen novels, a few of which have been made into motion pictures. The Mystery Writers of America have named him, deservedly, a Grand Master.

Book Alert / Tugboats of New York -- An Illustrated History

What a feast for the eyes! For a New Yorker (or non-New Yorker), who is interested in how its port has become one of the most active in the world, George Matteson's new book, Tugboats of New York -- An Illustrated History, is a  must read.

The book is shaped like a coffee table book but has so much more than pretty pictures (perhaps 100 high-resolution black and white photos). It's a well-documented history of the tugboat industry by one who has actually worked tugboats since 1979. Chapter headings help tell the story: Steamboats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, the Rise of Coastal Towing, Transatlantic Towing, The Railroads (which transformed the role of tugboats), Trust and Honor: The Rescue of the Dalzelline, and Towing in a New Century.

A key strength of Matteson's book is the selection of its photographs. It's no mere collection of hulls, one bigger and stronger than the last. Rather, it follows tugboat crews in their quotidian duties -- hauling other boats, repairing boiler room equipment, eating lunch below decks.

The author is quite candid about how he became involved in the tugboat industry. He had opportunities to work with passenger vessels, but "I had neither the patience nor the sociability to deal with passengers and guests all the time."

Out in Paperback / Korea's Place in the Sun

Asia is very much a work in progress. Japan has gone from the manufacture of five and dime store trash to domination of the world automobile market. China, whose leaders still cling to communist ideals, has the world's largest potential market, and many feel may be the most influential economy in this new century.

So for those who read Bruce Cumings's Korea's Place in the Sun -- A Modern History when it came out in hardcover in 1997, be aware that the new paperback edition has been updated to reflect changes in this bifurcated nation in the years since, with South Korea's economy flourishing and North Korea's authoritarian regime allowing millions to starve.

Cumings's 535-page book is indexed, with a bibliography, and its sources are footnoted. Its illustrations are relatively sparse and sprinkled through the text.

Computers Will Soon Rule? Riighhtt!!

"John Diebold, a business visionary who preached computerization during the era of Elvis and Eisenhower as the future of worldwide industry, has died at the age of 79. Diebold died of esophageal cancer Monday at his home in suburban Bedford Hills, said a nephew, John B. Diebold," as reported by KATU-2 in Portland, OR.

"Although Diebold is now hailed as a prophet of the computerized future, his zeal for computers was not widely shared in the 1950s. After graduating from the Harvard Business School in 1951, he was hired by a New York management consulting firm and was fired three times for insisting that clients consider computerizing. "I was too early," he once said. "It was before the first computer was installed for business use."