Steve Goddard's History Wire

Book Alert / The Classical World

The Classical World -- An Epic History From Homer To Hadrian by Robin Lane Fox, Basic Books '07,  $35, 656 pages, ISBN #0-465-02496-3. Index, Commentary on the Illustrations, Selected Bibliography, Source Notes, B&W images sprinkled through text.

If you thought this one volume summarized world history, you'd say it couldn't be done. But since it's only Greece and Rome -- Yikes! In one book? Right, and leave some time for the author's comical asides as well. Robin Lane Fox, A University Reader in Ancient History at Oxford, manages to entertain as well as enlighten his readers in this breezy survey of politics, drama, art, philosophy and architecture, as they lay the basis for the civilization we know today.

"From the Peloponnesian War through the creation of Athenian democracy, from the turbulent empire of Alexander the Great to the creation of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Christianity," Fox holds the reader's attention with ease. He divides his historical sweep into six sections: "The Archaic Greek Workd," "The Classical Greek World," "Hellenistic Worlds," "The Roman Republic," "From Republic to Empire," and "An Imperial World."

Does Size Matter? Maybe Not To Historians

The Chicago Tribune:

"It is a relief to encounter a Civil War book that fails as a doorstop on a windy day. The tomes that anchor the canon -- all 3,000 magnificent pages of Shelby Foote, most notably -- are essential, but smart, tight writing is also a delight. It's hard to write short. This is why Joseph Ellis' 'Founding Brothers' is so excellent. He elucidates a great theme of the founding of this country in a mere chapter, and tells what matters about the Revolution in about 250 pages.

"So let us now praise James McPherson, our premier living Civil War historian, for a bracing collection of essays titled 'This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War' (Oxford University Press, 272 pages, $28), that covers a lot of military and political ground in less than 300 pages. It will seduce anyone, Civil War neophyte or fanatic, for its authority and judgments.

"In 16 essays, McPherson tackles issues such as 'The Lost Cause' hagiography among Southerners about the war's roots. He exposes the cultural and historical censorship applied to public school history textbooks in the South that continued well into the 20th Century. His deconstruction of Southern myths invites challenge, so it will be interesting to see what kind of broadsides he receives to his well-wrapped conclusions."

Shakespeare Didn't Say It But It's True: "Change Is Inevitable -- Growth is Optional

The Modesto (CA) Bee:

"Ashland, OR: -- 'Change is inevitable -- growth is optional.' The popular observation applies as much to institutions as to individuals -- maybe more. Though many institutions resist change or gamely talk about it only in the abstract, the forward-thinking Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland has embraced real transformation as it moves confidently into the future.

"The festival's makeover comes in the person of 43-year-old Bill Rauch, the new artistic director, who begins his duties full time in June. Rauch's hiring represents a bold move for an arts organization that's one of the largest, most prestigious and most successful in the country. In its eight-month 2007 season, OSF will present 11 plays: four by Shakespeare and seven by classic or modern playwrights in rotating repertory in its three theaters. That's 774 performances employing more than 450 theater professionals.

"The artistic levels are high; the economics of the organization are enormous. OSF's 2007 budget is $23.5 million, of which nearly 80 percent comes through earned income. Last year, 387,474 tickets were sold, and the three theaters operated at 87 percent capacity. OSF reports that the economic impact of its operations on the state of Oregon in 2006 was nearly $150million. It's big art, big business and big pressure on Rauch, who seems to take it all in stride.

"'There's so much history in this incredible 72-year run that we're going to try and build on,' Rauch said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, where he was putting the finishing touches on the 2008 OSF season. 'For all my predecessors, it's been an incredible balancing act, and I think it will be for me in terms of continuing the work audiences know and love, and also trying new things. How you balance that is the art of the job.'"

Hispanics Upset At Latino Omission in Ken Burns WWII Documentary

Associated Press:

'Washington, D.C. - Hispanic groups unhappy with an upcoming Ken Burns documentary on World War II are stepping up pressure on PBS because they say the series omits mention of the role Latinos played in the war. The latest group to take their grievance to PBS is the American GI Forum, a Hispanic veterans group that has waged numerous civil rights battles for Hispanics and Hispanic veterans.

"The American GI Forum is appealing to Hispanic veterans and other Latino groups to write members of Congress and their local PBS affiliates about the documentary that has been six years in the making. This week, GI Forum President Antonio Morales of Fort Worth, Texas, and other Latino leaders met in Washington with PBS President Paula Kerger to lodge their complaints about the 14-hour Burns documentary set to air this September, Hispanic Heritage month. 'We are not going to tolerate this omission,' Morales said after the meeting.

"PBS said it would respond in two weeks. In the meantime, the publicly funded network issued a statement: 'While PBS has been a leading forum for these voices to be heard, there is more that needs to be done. We will expand upon our commitment, particularly around the creation and delivery of content that better represents the diversity of the audiences we serve.' In a statement issued by his publicist, Burns and co-producer Lynn Novick said they were 'dismayed and saddened' by any assumptions they intentionally left out any group. 'Nothing could be further from the truth,' they said."

A Visit to Manischewitz With The Matzoh Maven

Associated Press:

"Jersey City, N.J. --Except for a poster of grains from around the world, the office of Yaakov Horowitz at Manischewitz looks like a typical rabbi's study. Heavy books with Hebrew script are stacked on the shelves, portraits of other rabbis adorn the walls, and Horowitz displays a shofar, or ram's horn, that he blows on his company's production floor before the Jewish High Holy Days.

"As chief rabbi at the kosher food company Manischewitz, the world leader in matzoh production, Horowitz is the matzoh maven. Grain used to produce matzoh is a big part of his life. 'It's not just the most important kosher food,' says the 51-year-old Horowitz. 'It is also the most important Jewish food and the last link to Jewish heritage. I feel the responsibility very profoundly.' He oversees the company's annual production of 75.6 million sheets of matzoh, the unleavened bread eaten by Jews around the world during the eight-day Passover holiday and the centerpiece of the seder.

"The first seder, or Passover dinner, begins Monday night as Jews commemorate the biblical account of their ancestors' liberation from slavery in ancient Egypt. They eat matzoh on Passover to remember the hasty departure, which didn't leave enough time for bread to rise. The fourth-generation Hasidic rabbi has traveled around the world to consult about matzoh production at factories in Mexico, Moscow, Kiev, England, and Israel and is now embarking on a new task: designing the first new matzoh ovens for Manischewitz in nearly 70 years."

It's Park Rangers' Job To Make Bloody Antietam A Pleasant Visit

Virginia Herald-Mail:

"Antietam National Battlefield  --  On Sept. 17, 1862, two Union regiments under the command of Gen. Ambrose Burnside charged down a rocky hillside to capture the stone bridge below - a feat that took several attempts over the course of 3 1/2 hours. It will probably take about 10 to 15 minutes for visitors to Antietam National Battlefield to travel halfway up a new trail in the park to see the modern view of what Burnside saw before that charge.

"That particular view of what became Burnside Bridge hasn't been seen by many people, Park Ranger Brian Baracz said. As park officials were determining what new trails to create, this spot was a popular suggestion by park rangers who had taken some hiking groups off the beaten path to this view. The Union Advance Trail, already open, is one of three new trails expected to be open by the end of June at Antietam. The other two are a West Woods Trail and a trail that passes Sunken Road, aka Bloody Lane.

"The trails provide a nice walk, and the park is a birder's paradise with eagles, hawks, bluebirds and finches among the sightings, said John Howard, battlefield superintendent. 'We'll always be the battlefield, but we'd also like to get folks to come out and enjoy it for the resource it is,' Howard said.

Smithsonian's StoryCorpsGriot on National Tour -- Next Stop Newark

CourierNewsOnline:

"StoryCorps Griot, a year-long initiative to gather and preserve the life stories of black families across the country, will visit Newark for a six-week stay beginning today. The StoryCorps Griot initiative is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is in association with the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It is the first major national collaboration for the museum, which is expected to open in under a decade as the 19th museum of the Smithsonian Institution.

"StoryCorps Griot is the largest oral history project of its kind since 2,300 former slaves were interviewed in the mid-1930s as part of the WPA’s Federal Writers Project. In Newark, Griot will partner with public radio station WBGO. Mayor Booker and Dr. Clement Price, a professor in the history department at Rutgers University and Newark’s resident historian, will record the first story for the archive. The Griot StoryBooth will be located on the northeast side of Military Park, across the street from 54 Park Place.

"A 'Griot' is part of a West African tradition of storytelling and is a highly respected member of the tribe who acts as a living repository of births, deaths, marriages and significant events in the community. Griots are responsible not only for transmitting oral history through the generations but also for ensuring that people find meaning in their own lives."

To Lincoln, Desire For Union Trumped Abolition of Slavery

California Literary Review:

"Sixteen thousand books, it is said, have been written about Abraham Lincoln, a greater number than books about any other figure in history except Jesus Christ and Napoleon Bonaparte.  Is that perhaps an exaggerated figure?  The Library of Congress catalog lists just 2045 books on Lincoln, including those for children, although--with due respects to that noble institution--its collection may conceivably lack a few books that have been published in Georgian or Swahili.  In any case, even the average good reader has read enough about our Republic’s great President to want to know what a new Lincoln book offers.

"The work reviewed here, edited by Professor Brian Dirck of Anderson University in Indiana, provides thoughtful essays by seven academic specialists on Lincoln and his times, who go deeply into Lincoln and his views on slavery and on race.  What his views were on race, in particular, may be difficult to discern, but we need to make the attempt if we are to understand what the Civil War was all about.  This book will help us; it will also leave us with unanswered questions.

"There is no question but that Lincoln believed strongly that slavery was an evil--and a key evil.  In March 1860, a year before the Civil War began, Lincoln told an audience in New Haven that 'whether we will or not, the question of Slavery is the question, the all absorbing topic of the day.'  That was when many, perhaps most, Americans still thought civil war might be avoided. 

"In August 1862, when the war was in its second year, Lincoln wrote Horace Greeley an often-quoted letter stressing that his main intent was to save the Union, and that if he could accomplish that by freeing all the slaves he would--but if he could accomplish it by freeing no slaves, or only some slaves, he would also do that.  Indeed, his Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 freed only the slaves in rebel states, and it was only later that slavery ended in the border states that had remained in the Union; the 40,000 slaves in Kentucky were only freed by the 13th amendment to the Constitution, in 1865."

113 Print Scrapbooks Dramatize NY Bridge Construction

The New Yorker:

                                                       BY MICHELLE PRESTON

"No one in my family remembered much about my great-grandfather de Salignac. He was divorced from my great-grandmother soon after 1900, and lived the rest of his life alone, in New York City. My mother had a vague idea that he was a stockbroker; as a child, I never even saw a picture of him. So we were surprised when, a few years ago, we received a call from Michael Lorenzini, of the Municipal Archives of the City of New York. He had been examining a large collection of images—nearly twenty thousand glass negatives and a hundred and thirteen scrapbooks of prints—when he realized that they had all been shot by a single unknown photographer, Eugene de Salignac.

"De Salignac, it turned out, had worked for the Department of Bridges (later the Department of Plant and Structures) from 1903 to 1934. Vast reaches of infrastructure were laid down in those years, and his job was to provide a record: he shot the construction of the Manhattan and Queensboro Bridges and the Municipal Building; subway tunnels, trolley lines, and ferries. His images have an odd beauty and, at times, a subversive wit.

"In September, 1914, he took a picture of painters dutifully at work on the Brooklyn Bridge; the department used it in an annual report. Two weeks later, de Salignac returned, and, in what seems like a magnificent gesture of playing hooky, the painters climbed freehand, with no safety equipment in sight, spreading out on the wires as though they were circus performers, or the notes of a jazz riff playing above the skyline. Lorenzini has gathered many of de Salignac’s most compelling images in “New York Rises” (Aperture; $40); an accompanying exhibition opens May 4th at the Museum of the City of New York."

Britain Celebrates 200th Anniversary of Slavery's Abolition Amid Calls For Apology

The Weekly Standard:

"London -- There were fearful looks as a lone protestor disrupted the solemn service at Westminster Abbey marking the 200th anniversary of the Parliamentary act to abolish the slave trade. "This is an insult to us," shouted Toyin Agbetu, campaigner for an organization promoting African-British identity. "You are a disgrace to our ancestors." Attendees--including the queen, Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams--seemed stunned and anguished by the unscripted spasm of rage.

It was, in fact, an entirely predictable episode. The clamoring for apologies and reparations for slavery in England during recent weeks--stoked by steady coverage from the BBC--made Tuesday's incident almost inevitable. Last week, for example, London Mayor Ken Livingstone dismissed the contribution of parliamentarian William Wilberforce in defeating the slave trade and demanded national contrition. Livingstone called on all Londoners to repent their "squalid" evasion of guilt. In an op-ed for the Guardian, he summoned all residents to join him in "formally apologizing for London's role in this monstrous crime."

Similarly, Anglican leader John Sentamu used the BBC One Sunday program to call on the government to apologize. The second most senior cleric in the Church of England told the interviewer that Britain "should have the sense of saying we are very sorry and we have to put the record straight." (Several months ago, in fact, Tony Blair called Britain's role in the slave trade "profoundly shameful"; earlier this month he expressed "deep sorrow" for its support of the institution.)