Steve Goddard's History Wire

Book Alert / Age of Betrayal

Age of Betrayal -- The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900 by Jack Beatty. Knopf '07, $30, 483 pages, ISBN #1-4000-4028-0. Index, source notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled through text.

Jack Beatty has written a tendentious screed in the tradition of Matthew Josephson, Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, that seems somewhat quaint, since the Robber Baron stories have all been told and retold. Then, as a start to scratch my head wondering why another retelling is necessary, I realize that Beatty intends his book to be a parable for the modern age -- that the widening gap between rich and poor in America is more akin to the late 19th century than any time since.

Beatty doesn't merely tar big business but government as well. He quotes Congressional scholars Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann saying that the House of Representatives's responsiveness to business lobbyists "more closely resembles the House of the 19th century than that of the 20th, of the Gilded Age more than the Cold War era."

The era Beatty describes in his book came about because of the advent of big business, first embodied by America's railroads. At one point, the net revenues of the rail industry was many times the size of the federal government's budget, raising the fear that business might simply swallow up government. That, in the end, this didn't happen is a tribute to the Founders' foresight in creating checks and balances and in empowering citizens to petition for redress of grievances.

The Robber Baron era, carried through the period of reaction to its excesses, is a hopeful story but one that Beatty largely doesn't tell. Take the railroads, for instance. In reaction to their watering stock and charging customers "what the traffic will bear," the U.S. Grange for the Patrons of Husbandry created 2,000 chapters throughout the midwest and west and, ultimately, secured creation of not only state railroad commissions but the Interstate Commerce Commission.

The ICC, at first, was a toothless tiger but was a correct response to the regulatory impulse suggested by the U.S. Constitution. Within 20 years, Congress built the backbone to create the Hepburn Act in 1906, which not only told railroads what they could haul and where they could go but -- heaven forfend! -- what they could charge. The ICC was designed as a stand-in for a capitalistic competitor, competition being the best antidote to monopolistic excesses. By the mid-20s, the auto industry had assumed that role, and the ICC should have then stopped regulating the railroads. Unfortunately, rail regulation continued until the Staggers Act of 1982, which brought about deregulation.

So for those who'd like to get their juices up revisiting Daddy Warbucks and company, have at it. But younger readers especially need to know that, just as with the Robber Baron era, American government has at its disposal, if it has the will to use them, tools to redress the current imbalances just as they did a century ago.

Book Alert / GhettoNation

GhettoNation -- A Journey Into The Land Of Bling And the Home Of The Shameless by Cora Daniels by Doubleday '07, $23.95, 185 pages, ISBN #978-0-385-51643-3. No index, bibliography, source notes or illustrations.

In essence, GhettoNation relates the process by which a noun became an adjective. Remember the tales of the Warsaw Ghetto in World War II, when Jews were split off from the wider society and forced into squalid camps? Or the American Civil Rights Movement, which campaigned for fair housing laws, hoping for blacks to break out of urban ghettos, to live where they chose? Many did so, others remained. That was the noun phase.

But in recent decades, many urban youngsters "have learned to value money, sex and fame over education, social advancement and the institution of marriage," says Daniels, herself an African-American. "Ghetto has now become a way of life. It has invaded our airwaves, malls, schools and homes" in a "bling-infested hysteria."

Moreover, Daniels asserts, the expression "That's so ghetto" has become a crossover term used by rich white suburbanites as well as poor black urban teenagers. To Daniels, ghettoization is more than a passing fad but, rather, "a major social problem bound to effect (sic) generations." She blames its success and longevity on bottom-line focused media executives as well as rappers and music videos. Daniels's is a sobering critique that should be understood by every American.

Book Alert / Finding Oprah's Roots, Finding Your Own

Finding Oprah's Roots, Finding Your Own by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Crown '07, $19.95, 191 pages, ISBN #978-0-307-38238-2. Index, Resources For Building Your Family Tree, b&w images sprinkled through text.

At his death in 1894, Frederick Douglass was the most famous black man who had ever lived. Yet the last entry in his diary, shortly before he died, reads "Still no evidence of my birth date." Such an irony was the inspiration for Alex Haley's Roots three decades ago and now for Prof. Henry Louis Gates's latest book.

A less canny scholar than Harvard's Gates might have chosen as his subjects for a work on black genealogy a few people off the street. But seeking to gain and hold his readers' attention, Gates chose the best known African-American woman in the world -- you guessed it, Oprah Winfrey. Together, he journeys with her back into her slave past and, ultimately, to Africa, where her DNA links the television host to the Kpelle people of Liberia.

It's easy for you, me or Oprah to conclude our successes are the fruit of our efforts alone until we dig into the lives of our great, great-great, and great-great-great grandparents. In Oprah's case, she discovers a slave ancestor so determined to teach himself to read that he strikes a bargain with his white landowner, a auto-didactic great-grandmother who, against all odds, becomes the sole female trustee of her town's first school, and a grandfather who defied local authorities and the Ku Klux Klan by harboring civil rights workers. Oprah didn't fall far from the tree.

Now that he's hooked his reader by stories of inspiration, Dr. Gates sets forth a "how to" guide to the use of DNA and genealogy to trace one's own heritage. In so doing, he has set down a challenge not only to African-Americans but to all, to make their own lives more meaningful by learning from what roots they have sprung. Dr. Gates is the director the the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African ahd African-Americna Research at Harvard University.

Robert Warner Dies -- Led National Archives to Independence

The Washington Post:

"Washington, D.C. - Robert Warner, who led the National Archives to independence even while dealing with Reagan-era budget cuts and uproar over the release of Oval Office recordings, died of a heart attack April 24 at a hospice in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was 79.

"As the sixth archivist of the United States, Warner oversaw the high-profile cathedral for the Constitution and Declaration of Independence as well as the cloistered stacks where writer Alex Haley and countless amateur genealogists discovered their roots.

"When he was appointed archivist by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, the agency labored under the oversight of the General Services Administration, which regarded it primarily as a warehouse and records repository. Through a persistent behind-the-scenes campaign waged through historical and genealogical associations, Warner sprung the archives free. President Ronald Reagan signed legislation making the agency the National Archives and Records Administration just as it celebrated its 50th anniversary."

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Remembering Lincoln Kirstein: "America's Cultural Swizzle Stick"

The New York Times:

"Lincoln Kirstein was, for most of the 20th century, America's mightiest cultural swizzle stick. He was a skilled critic, historian, art collector and diarist, and a not-bad poet and novelist. But his real gift was for flushing out and nourishing the talent he spotted all around him. Throughout his long life he functioned, as one contemporary put it, 'like a setter pointing out the coveys of genius.'

"Kirstein (1907-96) is best remembered as a ballet visionary. He believed the art could thrive in America, and he forced it to bloom here. In 1933, when he was just a few years out of college, Kirstein brought the 29-year-old Russian choreographer Georgi Balanchivadze — George Balanchine — to America. Their collaboration would lead, 13 years and innumerable financial and spiritual crises later, to the founding of what became the New York City Ballet. Kirstein called ballet 'one of the miracles of life.' It took brute effort and deep reserves of charm, but he got the rest of the country to see it that way, too — he pulled dance to the vital center of American arts.'

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Irene L. Frost Dies: Woman On A Wartime Mission

The Boston Globe:

"Irene L. (Knight) Frost fought a different kind of war during World War II. Her mission was to make sure that US troops on their way to the front lines or in between assign ments in Europe were well rested, well fed, and emotionally well.

"'For the soldiers, she always had some funny comment to make, something to cheer them up,' said her son, the Rev. Edward A. Frost of Atlanta. 'She was a happy, smiling face for these kids who were on their way to Europe. I think she thought an important part of what she did was to cheer them up and give them a reminder of somebody from home.'

"Mrs. Frost, a member of the American Red Cross in England, died March 31 in Cape Cod Nursing Center in Bourne. She was 93 and had lived in Wareham for more than 35 years. She was born in Weymouth to a family that included 14 children. She attended Weymouth schools until she was 13 and started working to help support her large family, her son said."

McCain With Kissinger: Bad Photo-Op?

The Nation:

"On his way to formally announcing his latest bid for the White House, John McCain stopped to consult with the most high-profile supporter of his campaign to become the oldest first-term president in American history. Perhaps it was a desire to look young and fresh by comparison that led McCain to pose for pictures in New York with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

"But the image of the two unreconstructed Cold Warriors giggling with one another about some inside joke -- a whispered rendition of the senator's 'Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran' song, perhaps -- did nothing to inspire confidence. It is a measure of the extent to which McCain has lost his political wits that he thought lining up with the embodiment of America's corrupt and dysfunctional past and present foreign policies would somehow make him a more appealing replacement for George Bush.

"In 2OOO, when McCain challenged Bush for the Republican nomination, he ran as an the outsider. The senator presented himself as an open-minded maverick who, while his stances on most issues might err on the right, refused to fit into the neat ideological i n which Bush wedged himself. Americans responded well to McCain. He won key primaries and was only prevented from securing the GOP nomination by Karl Rove sleazy, race- and religion-baiting attacks. Had McCain secured the Republican nod in 2OOO, he might well have been able to do something Bush could not: win the support of a majority of American voters."

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Lincoln Medal Goes To Donald And Goodwin

PRNewswire:

"Dr. David Herbert Donald and Doris Kearns Goodwin have been named the 2007 recipients of the Ford's Theatre Lincoln Medal. Given by Ford's Theatre, the site of one of the most significant events in American history, the Ford's Theatre Lincoln Medal is an annual award given to individuals who through their body of work, accomplishments or personal attributes exemplify the lasting legacy and mettle of character embodied by the most beloved president in our nation's history, President Abraham Lincoln.

"As the kickoff to milestone cultural programming and events leading up to the Bicentennial of President Abraham Lincoln's birth in February of 2009, the President and Mrs. Bush hosted the 25th Ford's Theatre Lincoln Medal award ceremony and celebration at the White House on Sunday, February 11, 2007. One of Washington's most generous supporters of the arts and
education, the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation served as sponsor.

The evening consisted of a cocktail reception and dinner in honor of the recipients, and the presentation of the Ford's Theatre Lincoln Medals by President and Mrs. Bush with acceptance speeches-including favorite anecdotes about President Lincoln-by David Herbert Donald and Doris Kearns Goodwin. The evening's celebration concluded with a performance by Yolanda Adams and the United States Army chorus. This year and continuing through the Lincoln Bicentennial in 2009, Ford's Theatre will bestow the Ford's Theatre Lincoln Medal on those whose work has illuminated President Abraham Lincoln's life, legacy, and death in unparalleled ways through scholarship or in support of the institution."

Critics Target Romney For Link to Henry Ford

International Herald Tribune:

"A Republican presidential candidate's choice of a museum honoring auto pioneer Henry Ford to launch officially his presidential campaign. The critics were angered by Ford's history of anti-Semitism.  Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, who has scheduled the formal announcement of his candidacy on Tuesday from the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan, was taken to task by the National Jewish Democratic Council.

"The council 'is deeply troubled by Governor Romney's choice of locations to announce his presidential campaign,' executive director Ira Forman said in a statement. 'Romney has been traveling the country talking about inclusiveness and understanding of people from all walks of life,' Forman said. 'Yet he chooses to kick (off) his presidential campaign on the former estate of a well-known and outspoken anti-Semite and xenophobe.'

"Forman said Romney's 'embrace of Henry Ford and association of Ford's legacy with his presidential campaign raises serious questions about either the sincerity of Romney's words or his understanding of basic American history.'

NOTE: Undisclosed is the fact that former Gov. Romney's father was George Romney, who served as governor of Michigan and ran for president as a Republican in the 1970s after serving as president of American Motors.

Book Alert / Feather in the Storm

Feather in the Storm -- A Childhood Lost in Chaos by Emily Wu and Larry Engelmann, Pantheon '06, $26, 336 pages, ISBN #0-375-42428-8. No index or notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.

The Jewish Holocaust in wartime Germany has been kept alive in the minds and souls of succeeding generations by those who believe that reliving the horror will inspire mankind to make sure such a cataclysm will never happen again. Now Emily Wu, daughter of a prominent Chinese scholar, and her co-author Larry Engelmann introduce us to another holocaust, this one during China's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution in the late 20th century, in which she says millions of children and their families died.

Mao Tse Tung's regime had designated Emily's father an "ultra-rightist" and class enemy because of his academic work. "From watching helplessly as the family apartment is ransacked and her father carted off by former students to be publicly beaten, to her own rape and the hard labor and primitive rituals of life in a remote peasant village," Wu was persecuted as a "child of the damned."