Steve Goddard's History Wire

Out in Paperback / Herman Melville -- A Biography, Vol. 1, 1819-1851

Herman Melville -- A Biography, Vol. 1, 1819-1851 by Hershel Parker, Johns Hopkins '05, Paperback Edition, $29.95, 941 pages, ISBN #0-8018-8185-4. Index, "documentation," including source notes and bibliography, two groupings of b&w glossy images.

When this volume was first published, The New York Times Magazine called it "unquestionably the most searching biography ever written on Herman Melville." In Volume 1 of two books, Hershel Parker, the Fletcher Brown Professor Emeritus at the University of Delaware, covers Melville's first 32 years, covering his early days in Manhattan, Albany, and Boston; and his work as clerk, farmer, teacher and polemicist, sailor and schoolteacher. Parker takes us to sea with Melville as he learns whaling, looks over the shoulder of the young writer as he labors to find a publisher, shares his love life and New York marriage, and introduces us to Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of Melville's early influences as he works on the manuscript that would become Moby Dick.

Fact-Checking: What Will Be Its Place In History?

The Washington Times:

"The most notable victim of fact-checking in recent years was Emory historian Michael Bellesiles, who won the prestigious Bancroft Prize in American history with a book claiming that gun ownership was not widespread in colonial America. That claim obviously pleased partisans on one side of the debate about gun control. But James Lindgren ... found that some of his key statistical claims appeared to be based on fabricated evidence. After an investigation by his own university, Bellesiles resigned from his tenured position, and for the first time in its history the Bancroft Prize was withdrawn.

"The growing spontaneous order of empiricism is the answer to those who worry that political movements or interest groups can take advantage of the empirical trend by manipulating facts to their advantage. Marxism styled itself scientific, and Marx and Engels did try to support their theories with data. But in their time, the strong culture of replicating the database and calculations underlying theories did not exist. Nor were there powerful statistical tests designed to shed light on social claims from multiple angles. In today's culture, the factual claims of Marx and Engels would not have withstood the light of empirical scrutiny."

Boston's Old State House -- Beacon for Endangered Historic Sites

The Boston Globe:

"The urgent need to repair the Old State House should awaken Bostonians to the needs of other endangered historical sites. It should also serve as a pointed reminder of what tremendous cultural resources these irreplace.

"If you've walked through downtown Boston in recent months, even on the hottest summer days, you couldn't have missed the people -- tourists, students, families -- trekking from site to site along the Freedom Trail. Some were with costumed interpreters or with Park Service rangers, others were on their own. People continue to seek out what makes the city special. Boston is a city rich in history. While some of its corporate institutions have moved out, and some of its department stores have closed, it still has the greatest historical treasures in North America.

"Boston contains the cultural legacy of more than four centuries of American history, from the remnants of Native-American fishing weirs and shell middenson the harbor islands, to the Blake House in Dorchester and the Paul Revere House in the North End,to Roxbury's elegant Shirley-Eustis House and Dorchester's Clapp House, to Castle Island and Dorchester Heights in South Boston, to Bunker Hill and the USS Constitution in Charlestown, to the African Meeting House and the Vilna Shul on Beacon Hill. If many cities had even one of these places, they would make it the focus of civic attention. This is why Chicago wanted to buy and move the Old State House there in 1881. No other American city has able buildings providing so many stories to tell, or so many surviving places in which to tell them."

Book Alert / Democracy -- A History

Democracy -- A History by John Dunn, Atlantic Monthly Press '06, $24, 246 pages, ISBN #0-87113-931-6. Index, source notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

Most people with a high school education can tell us that democracy originated with the ancient Greeks 2,500 years ago. But we tend to forget that this powerful governing principle seemed to take a vacation for two millenia or so before surfacing in Europe during the end of the last one.

Why, asks author John Dunn, "is democracy so important today? Why should it hold such sway over the political speech of the modern world? What does its recent prominence really mean? Why does democracy, as both a word and an idea, linger so large in the current political imagination?" Dunn, political of political theory at Cambridge University, seeks to answer these questions and others in his new book. In a world in which democracy is only one of several options open to developing countries, the answers are more important than ever before.

Recalling 10 Greatest Natural Disasters One Year After Katrina

American Heritage:

"There is something uniquely chilling about a natural disaster, the uncontrolled, unpreventable fury of normally benign elements: a blue sky now black exploding in water and electricity; the air around us suddenly quick, weaponized; a resort lake bewitched into a ferocious wall of water; the solidity of the very ground belied. In these moments nature proves its dominance, as if to remind us that there are some things in its arsenal before which we will always be powerless.

"But if the year of recrimination over Hurricane Katrina has shown us anything, it’s the potency of human intervention in the hours and days before and after those moments. A nation that might have grown blasé was reminded late last summer how vital protective engineering and prompt relief can be—even if the lesson came in their failure. To mark the first anniversary of Katrina, here is an assessment of the 10 deadliest natural disasters to strike the United States. As a whole, they paint a sobering picture of the impermanence of human enterprise, but they also reveal some fascinating—and familiar—patterns.

"Eight of these disasters occurred within a 50-year period, a fatal nexus in U.S. history when the population had grown dense enough to be wiped out in large numbers by one localized event, but before modern meteorological tools, warning systems, and telecommunications could forecast storms and allow people ample time to flee or take cover. The one disaster that doesn’t fall in that period, of course, is Katrina."

Like Father, Like Son? You Decide

Los Angeles Times:

"Like father, like son? That's the inevitable question that animates the sharply focused new exhibition "Transmission: The Art of Matta and Gordon Matta-Clark," which opened last week at the San Diego Museum of Art.

"Roberto Matta Echaurren (1912-2002) was the Chilean-expatriate painter who went to Paris in the 1930s, joined the Surrealists, followed the first wave of artists fleeing Nazism and, in New York, emerged as a critical influence in the 1940s. Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-78), his American-born son with artist Anne Clark, was a student in Paris during the 1968 riots, worked the following year as an assistant to several artists involved with the landmark "Earth Art" show in upstate New York, and emerged as a sculptor in the Post-Minimalist generation of the 1970s. For their respective generations in New York, both father and son were pivotal figures.

"Did Roberto's ideas about painting influence Gordon's ideas about sculpture? If so, how? Was the artistic relationship between father and son in any way reciprocal? Was the child at all the father of the man?"

Reliving a World War II Battle

TheHistoryNet:

"The time was 0430 on September 19, 1944. The men of D Company of the 2nd Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment, lurked in the early morning shadows and nervously awaited the word to lead the advance into Arnhem, Holland, and relieve the surrounded paratroopers defending the bridge. Bleary-eyed and exhausted after a 14-hour forced march, they viewed the scene before them with alarm and trepidation.

"Ahead, Arnhem was convulsed in battle. The sky overhead glowed from tracer fire and the harsh light emitted from the embers of burning buildings. Smoke and haze drifted over the British positions and obscured the broad hill leading up to their first objective, the municipal museum 700 yards ahead. Immediately to the left, in stark contrast, towered the gothic bulk of St. Elisabeth's Hospital.

"In forward positions in the houses and streets west of St. Elisabeth's, most men snatched a little sleep or choked down one last bite to eat. Their officers and NCOs earnestly scurried about, making last-minute preparations for the attack, ever mindful to keep clear of the open spaces to avoid being hit by the long bursts of German fixed-line machine gun fire that regularly searched the cobblestone streets."

Out in Paperback / Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright by Robert McCarter, Reaktion Books/ UChicago Press '06, Paperback, $16.95, 224 pages, ISBN 1-86189-268-3.

Videos of architect Frank Lloyd Wright hardly make him seem warm and fuzzy. And yet, author Robert McCarter tells us, he was a highly idealistic humanist, fully dedicated to "the space of inhabitation for both the individual and the community." McCarter takes us into his life and the countervailing pressures to which he was subjected -- from other architects promoting competing ideologies, to public figures involved in his projects, to leaders of industry, art, and society -- and how these pressures affected Wright's artistic production.

Underground Railroad Freedom Center Recruits New Head

The Cincinnati Enquirer:

"Spencer Crew was lured from his job as Smithsonian's National Museum of American History curator to plan and supervise the creation of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Crew, 57, of East Walnut Hills, arrived in November 2001, before construction started on the $110 million, 158,000-square-foot museum. After the star-studded grand opening two years ago, Crew assumed responsibility for the entire operation.

"Center officials say Crew was ultimately responsible for everything inside the museum walls, and overseeing all programs, teacher training and traveling exhibits. He was instrumental in creating the lecture series that brought historian David McCullough here in May, and a Darfur exhibit in April with photos shot by Nick and George Clooney."

Oldest Person on Earth Dies at 116

Canoe Network:

"Maria Esther de Capovilla, the oldest person on Earth, according to Guinness World Records, has died at 116 years of age, her granddaughter said.

"Catherine Capovilla, 46, a property manager and real estate agent in Miami, said Capovilla died Sunday at 3 a.m. in a hospital in the coastal city of Guayaquil two days after coming down with pneumonia. Her funeral was planned for Monday. Born on Sept. 14, 1889 - the same year as Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler - Capovilla was married in 1917 and widowed in 1949.

"Robert Young, senior consultant for Gerontology for Guinness World Records, said Elizabeth Bolden, of Memphis, Tenn., is the likely successor as the oldest person. 'Guinness World Records will have to make an official announcement from London,' he said. 'For all practical purposes, the next oldest person is going to be presumed to be Elizabeth Bolden. She is 116, but she was born 11 months after Capovilla.'"