Steve Goddard's History Wire

American History Rests On English Bedrock -- Or Does It?

Hispanic Trending:

'Coursing through the immigration debate is the unexamined faith that American history rests on English bedrock, or Plymouth Rock to be specific. Jamestown also gets a nod, particularly in the run-up to its 400th birthday, but John Smith was English, too (he even coined the name New England).

"So amid the din over border control, the Senate affirms the self-evident truth that English is our national language; 'It is part of our blood,' Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, says. Border vigilantes call themselves Minutemen, summoning colonial Massachusetts as they apprehend Hispanics in the desert Southwest. Even undocumented immigrants invoke our Anglo founders, waving placards that read, 'The Pilgrims didn't have papers.'

"These newcomers are well indoctrinated; four of the sample questions on our naturalization test ask about Pilgrims. Nothing in the sample exam suggests that prospective citizens need know anything that occurred on this continent before the Mayflower landed in 1620. Few Americans do, after all."

                                                      (Click above link to read more)

Book Alert / The Card

The Card -- Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History's Most Desired Baseball Card by Michael O'Keefe and Teri Thompson, Morrow '07, $24.95, 245 pages, ISBN #0061123927. Source notes, no index or bibliography, grouping of b&w glossy images.

Econ 101 teaches that economics is the study of scarcity. A 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card is the most expensive baseball trading card because only a few dozen are believed to exist. But most advertise Sweet Caporal cigarettes on the reverse side, making them much less valuable than the mere few that advertise Piedmonts.

The Card is the saga of the the world of card collecting, the one factor that keeps alive the name of Honus Wagner, the Pittsburgh Pirate shortstop many consider the best who ever lived. But who wants to read about a ballplayer who goes home ever night, kisses his wife and tucks his kids into bed? Babe Ruth -- now there was somebody interesting -- he drank, he caroused, he philandered.

American Tobacco Company issued the Honus Wagner card, depicting the "Flying Dutchman" in a Pittsburgh uniform with a rich yellow background, the year he helped Pittsburgh win its first World Series. Despite its provenance in the tobacco industry, Wagner told American Tobacco he did not want his card distributed in packs of cigarettes or loose tobacco.

The authors, both New York Daily News sportswriters, relate the card's 98-year long journey as part of what card collectors call the T-206 series. Worth $50 in its earliest days, it was sold in 1985 for $25,000 to dealer Bill Mastro, who might better be named Maestro for his influence on card collecting over the decades. Mastro sold it two years later for $110,000 to a sporting goods merchant, who sold it to hockey great Wayne Gretsky in 1991 for $451,000. Now known as the Gretsky T206 Wagner because of the renown of "the great one," the card changed hands several times over the next 16 years and sold this year to an anonymous collector for $2.35 million.

The authors describe in some detail why not only scarcity but condition of a baseball card matters. Because so much money is riding on turnover of cards, collectors go to great expense to restore cards (in the trade, cleaning is deemed OK, alteration is not), and the more unscrupulous become expert forgers, who are able to hoodwink even veteran collectors. All in all, a delightful romp in a little-known industry.

Book Alert / The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh

The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh -- A Woman in World History by Linda Colley, Pantheon '07, $27.50, 363 pages, ISBN #037542153X. Index, manuscript sources, notes, two groupings of color and b&w glossy images.

Elizabeth Marsh's life is truly the stuff of novels. Had she been of high birth, her exploits would have still been remarkable. That she rose from low ranks as a shipwright's daughter makes her achievements nearly unbelievable.

Conceived in Jamaica, possibly of mixed racial parentage, Elizabeth migrated with her family to the Mediterranean in 1755, living in Menorca and, later, Gibraltar. She "barely escaped sexual enslavement" in Marrakech after being taken to Morocco by force. While having little formal education, she ended up writing and publishing on the Maghreb in English.

Taking time out for marriage and child rearing, Elizabeth joined her husband in India, then set out by sea for Madras and spent 18 months visiting towns, temples and settlements in eastern and southern India, then disembarking from Calcutta to England, only to return to the subcontinent. No easy passage, for she ran up against French and Spanish warships and privateers fighting for the United States.

Historian Linda Colley hasn't simply written a biography of a special woman, however, for she spins her narrative against a background of global change at a pivotal time in world history. And she peppers her story with colorful characters, such as runaway slaves and Sephardic Jewish traders while documenting Jamaican slave revolts, Moroccan politics and cod-fishing in the Shetlands.

National Archives Foundation Prize Eases Sting Of Nobel Passover For Dr. John Hope Franklin

The Weekly Standard:

"Almost a year ago THE SCRAPBOOK took genuine pleasure in noting the award of the Library of Congress's first John W. Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity ($1 million) to historian John Hope Franklin, author of the classic From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (1947). This award, as we noted, could be added to a 'hundred-plus honorary degrees, organizational presidencies, visiting lectureships, and appointments to advisory boards, delegations, and commissions' for Dr. Franklin, as well as a bewildering array of prizes, gold medals, and professional citations.

'Frankly, our i/ntent at the time was to drop a not-so-subtle hint to the Nobel Peace Prize people over in Oslo that Dr. Franklin, then 91 years old, was not getting any younger, and surely was past due for the honor accorded Jimmy Carter, Le Duc Tho, and Rigoberta Menchú. We regret to say that the folks at Nobel headquarters chose to ignore our advice, but THE SCRAPBOOK's disappointment is alleviated, to some degree, by the news (announced in the Washington Post last week) that this year's recipient of the Records of Achievement Award, given by the Foundation for the National Archives, and sponsored by the Boeing Company, is--yes, John Hope Franklin.

"The award is described as 'a celebration of history and those who preserve it,' and Dr. Franklin now joins an honor roll of distinguished past recipients, including our particular favorite, Tom Brokaw (2005). THE SCRAPBOOK's congratulations to all involved."

9 Teenagers Who Made History 50 Years Ago Ponder What It All Means

South Mississippi Sun Herald:

"It is rare when anyone younger than 18 is named among the people who shaped American history. So the nine black teenagers who integrated Little Rock Central High School on Sept. 25, 1957, are in a class by themselves. They did not expect the abuse they got from white students and adults and did not suspect the governor of their state and the Arkansas National Guard would not protect them.

"'I really didn't understand at 14 we were helping change the educational landscape here in America,' Carlotta Walls LaNier recalls. 'All we wanted to do is go to school.' LaNier, Melba Patillo Beals, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, Minnijean Brown Trickey, and Thelma Mothershed Wair were determined to get a good education.

"They did were not forced to test the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional. They volunteered. They took that step with the help of their families and ministers, the guidance of Arkansas NAACP President Daisy Bates, and the skill of NAACP lawyers Wiley Branton and Thurgood Marshall."

"We were all expected to achieve and education was the key to success," LaNier says. "So you were to get your education no matter what. To sit next to a white person was not the reason for doing that, to go into Little Rock Central High School. It was an access to an opportunity."

                                                    (Click above link to read more)

Book Alert / Down The Nile

Down The Nile -- Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff by Rosemary Mahoney, Little, Brown '07, $23.99, 273 pages, ISBN #0-316-10745-X. Bibliography, no index, source notes, or illustrations.

Women, and particularly foreign women, simply do not row on the Nile River. Well, many American female women rowers would say, I guess that's the end of that dream. But not if your name is Rosemary Mahoney, self-proclaimed loner and author of the acclaimed Whoredom in Kimmage. Her new book is the saga of the strategies she used to get around those cultural prohibitions "all for the exhilharation of ancient ruins appearing suddenly on the horizon."

Wrapping her head in a white cotton shirt by day, she "took on the intense Egyptian glare without sunglasses to escape detection." If up close and personal with a crocodile isn't your cup of tea, you may not want to replicate Mahoney's experience or ditto, if you dislike many hours in the blistering Egyptian sun.

But the author wanted more than to row on a river; she sought to meet Egyptians you won't encounter on a tour bus. Like Amr, a Muslim felucca captain, who helped Rosemary obtain a seven-foot fisherman's boat; and his lonely but endearing sister, Hoda. She could have done without meeting some threatening Egyptian men, unused to seeing a woman on men's turf, who scorned her and made "predatory sexual verbal advances," giving her a window onto  the lives of women in a Muslim country.

Book Alert / How to Read the Bible

How to Read the Bible -- A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now by James L. Kugel, Free Press '07, $35, 819 pages, ISBN #0-7432-3586-X. Verses cited, index, source notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled through text.

These days, it's hard to imagine a biblical scholar at Harvard being a rock star in the classroom. But recently-retired Prof. James Kugel drew 900 students a year to his introductory course on the Bible, just barely trailing Economics 10. The year his course enrollment topped his competitor, The Harvard Crimson ran the headline: "God Beats Mammon."

A traditional Jew, Kugel for decades has wrestled with the reality that while fundamentalists believe that Adam and Eve were flesh and blood people and the apple was real fruit, modern scholars' study of available evidence suggests that many biblical stories are allegories or parables written centuries after the fact and meant to illustrate a truth or moral lesson.

"As for the stories of Cain and Abel, Abraham and Sarah, and Jacob and Esau," Kugel holds, "these narratives were not, at their origin, about individual people at all but, rather, explanations of some feature of Israelite society as it existed centuries after these figures were said to have lived." His book is comprised of 36 chapters of 10 to 20 pages, each dealing with a particular biblical event. A sampling: the Exodus, the Tower of Babel, The Psalms of David (he didn't write them), and the Call of Abraham.

Marcel Marceau Dies. Emulated Chaplin But Kicked It Up A Notch

The Los Angeles Times:

"Marcel Marceau, the great French mime who for seven decades mastered silence and brought new life to an ancient art form, has died. He was 84. Marceau died Saturday in Paris, French news media reported, citing his former assistant Emmanuel Vacca. The cause of death was not disclosed.

"On Sunday, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon praised Marceau as 'the master,' saying he had the rare gift of 'being able to communicate with each and every one beyond the barriers of language.' Active until late in his life, Marceau toured the world for more than half a century, giving more than 15,000 performances. Each included several pieces featuring Bip, the beloved character he created early in his career.

"Annette Bercut Lust, author of 'From the Greek Mimes to Marcel Marceau and Beyond,' said Marceau's mentor, French mime master Etienne Decroux, 'reinvented the art of mime to revive modern theater and the actor's art,' whereas Marceau 'popularized that art and brought it to the whole world.'

"Starting as a child mimic of Charlie Chaplin, whose Little Tramp character in silent films made him laugh and cry, Marceau by the age of 30 had become the singular embodiment of the ancient art of mime. He also took mime in new directions. One of the secrets of his success, some critics said, was Marceau's ability to incorporate cinematic techniques into his stories."

He could, as former Los Angeles Times critic Dan Sullivan wrote, present a montage of fleeting moments that defined a character's "age, sex, class, even clothing" that audiences who had been raised seeing the movies could easily follow.

Through the years, Marceau created dozens of adventures for Bip, the dreamy little poet whose white face, ill-fitting striped shirt, too-long pants and smashed hat topped with a jaunty red carnation are perhaps the most familiar image of mime today.

Retired Teacher Files Paternity Suit Against James Brown's Estate

Newsday:

"The woman who claims she is the oldest daughter of James Brown said she will be in court Monday to pursue a piece of the late soul singer's estate. 'I've been walking around looking like this man for 45 years,' said LaRhonda Petitt, a retired flight attendant and school teacher. 'I'm not talking no negative talk, I'm talking about what's right.'

"A judge is scheduled to go over pending issues in the ongoing court battle over Brown's will, said attorney Jim Griffin, who represents Petitt. Brown died Christmas Day of heart failure at age 73. His will, which is being disputed, names six adult children. But at least three other people, including Petitt, say DNA testing proves they are his children.

"Petitt, who was born and lives in Houston, said Sunday she would like all people claiming to be Brown's children to take a DNA test. 'Just because they're in the will doesn't mean they're all my daddy's children,' Petitt said. An attorney for those named in his will and a trustee for the estate did not return phone calls Sunday seeking comment.

"Petitt has filed a paternity action to legally establish that she is Brown's daughter, Griffin said.
'He had kids everywhere,' Petitt said. 'And each one of those kids can do something positive.'

                                                            (Click above link to read more)

Book Alert / Eden's Outcasts

Eden's Outcasts -- The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson, Norton '07, $29.95, 497 pages, ISBN #0393059642. Index, bibliography, source notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

Transcendentalists are in literary high cotton these days. A year ago, we reviewed Samuel Schreiner's The Concord Quartet, cozily chronicling the deep friendship of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau. Earlier this year, we enjoyed Susan Cheever's American Bloomsbury, replicating the above cast, with Louisa Mae sitting in for father Bronson.

In Eden's Outcasts, John Matteson focuses in on the fascinating and troubled relationship between Bronson Alcott and his better-known daughter, Louisa Mae. Bronson was loved and admired by Thoreau, Hawthorne and Emerson (who called him "a God-made priest), but was unquestionably the least successful of them all. A teacher and lecturer, he was a seeker of beauty and justice with unrealistic expectations, so that his dreams were being forever dashed.

Before his marriage to Abigail May, his beloved "Abba," her brother trenchantly observed to her: "Don't distress yourself about his poverty. His mind and heart are so much occupied with other things that poverty and riches do not seem to concern him." Such a warning would have caused many prospective brides to flee the union, but not Abba, who was a loving partner of Bronson's, repeatedly picking him up and dusting him off each time he fell.

Bronson's failures must have been painful to him, and he lacked the defense mechanism to deny or rationalize them. As Matteson, John Jay College English professor, writes, "Bronson Alcott believed that every aspect of life had a lesson to impart, and he saved documents that reminded him not only of his successes but also of his most painful defeats."

Louisa Mae and Bronson had similar idealistic philosophies, but their personalities clashed, sometime horrifically, as he seemed unable to understand Louisa Mae although he had little problem doing so with his other three daughters. While they were writers a generation apart, their best work appeared nearly simultaneously, and they died within a few days of each other. Matteson's book is gracefully written, a solid contribution to the bookshelf of New England literature.