Steve Goddard's History Wire

Out in Paperback / Everlasting Flower

Everlasting Flower -- A History of Korea by Keith Pratt, UChicago Press '07, $27, 320 pages, ISBN #1-86189-335-3. Index, sources and further reading, discography, no notes. b&w image sprinkled through text.

The author, a historian at the University of Durham, issues a disclaimer at the outset: "This is not the kind of in-depth study that comes from concentrated research and a well-earned PhD thesis. Rather, it is a personal impression of a country, formed over half a lifetime's subjective and loving (if sometimes frustrated) acquaintance with it."

Pratt breaks his narrative into three parts: The Creation of State Identity, including Korea's earliest days through the Silla, Koryo and early to mid Choson periods; A Century of Insecurity, featuring the Hermit Kingdom and incursion, modernization and reform; and A Century of Suffering, including a culture under threat, partition and war and post-War Korea. Sadly, particularly for those living in North Korea, that suffering continues.

Book Alert / A Slave No More

A Slave No More -- Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation by David W. Blight, Harcourt '07, $25, 307 pages, ISBN #0151012326. Index, source notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled through text.

A new work by a Yale historian brings home the rueful truth that slaveholders not only kept their charges in servitude but in ignorance as well, accounting for the fact that of the four million slaves emancipated after the Civil War, only a hundred or so wrote first-person accounts of their experiences because the vast majority didn't know how to write. In A Slave No More, David W. Blight draws from the journals of two slaves who escaped from their masters and gained their own freedom.

The journal of Wallace Turnage, who fled Alabama for New York and New Jersey, illustrates the bleak choices facing those for whom enslavement had become impossible to bear: "It was death to go back and it was death to stay there and freedom was before me; it could only be death to go forward if I waas caught and freedom if I escaped."

Both Turnage and John Washington, an urban slave from Virginia, served as cooks and camp hands during the Civil War and secured stable employment up North and then were able to send for their families. Washington worked as a house and sign painter in Washington, D.C. Historian David Levering Lewis calls Blight's discovery of the two men's diaries "two of the most significant finds in the entire genre of slave narratives and of the primary material from the Civil War."

The Lorraine Motel Feeling The Memphis Blues

The Nation:

"If Beale Street could talk, as James Baldwin famously imagined, then somewhere around Memphis's South Fourth Street it would let out an agonizing cry. Facing east, the garish neon commodification of the blues stands behind you--a trap for tourists and an insult to the legacy of a great musical tradition. Commerce here is thriving from a culture it doesn't respect. Ahead sprawls the desolation and poverty of the communities that gave blues its meaning and to whom the blues returned some dignity.

"A block away at the Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center, around eighty people have gathered to prevent the pilfering of yet more local black heritage. Twenty years ago, the Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated, was turned into a National Civil Rights Museum. The chair of the executive committee of its board, J.R. 'Pitt' Hyde III, is a wealthy white Republican.

"Charged with safeguarding a vital landmark in the nation's racial history, Hyde lobbied for the defeat of Harold Ford Jr.'s bid for the vacant Senate seat from Tennessee in what was widely regarded as the most racist campaign of the 2006 election. While Hyde has been representing the civil rights museum, the company he founded, AutoZone, has been embroiled in a longstanding EEOC racial discrimination lawsuit."

The board, on which blacks are a minority, is packed with those who dedicate their lives not to civil rights but to corporate profits. And they know how to do business. Recently the board discussed exercising an option to buy the museum building from the State of Tennessee, which owns it, for $1. (Apparently they never made a formal offer, as they knew it would be rejected.) Black history on sale at bargain prices."

                                                 (Click above link to read more)

Rep. Henry Hyde Dies; Helped Lead Clinton Impeachment

The New York Times:

"Former Representative Henry J. Hyde, the powerful Illinois Republican who won battles to prohibit federal financing of abortions and to impeach President Clinton but who failed to persuade the Senate to convict and remove him from office, died yesterday in Chicago. He was 83.  The cause was complications of heart surgery, his son Anthony said.

"With his heavyset build and snow-white hair, Mr. Hyde was an imposing figure on the House floor and a persuasive speaker whose arguments could change votes, a rarity in the House in the years he served, from 1975 to 2007. While his public image was largely defined first by the abortion issue and then by impeachment, within the House Mr. Hyde had a more complex political persona. He supported extending the Voting Rights Act in 1981, championed many foreign aid measures and family leave legislation, and backed Mr. Clinton over a ban on assault weapons. But he also supported aid to the Nicaraguan contras and backed constitutional amendments requiring a balanced budget and prohibiting abortions, flag-burning and same-sex marriages.

"Mr. Hyde’s efforts against abortion began in 1976, when he proposed an amendment to an appropriations bill to prohibit Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor, from paying for abortions."

                                                     (Click above link to read more)

Book Alert / Tutankhamun's Armies

Tutankhamun's Armies -- Battle and Conquest During Ancient Egypt's Late 18th Dynasty by John Coleman Darnell and Colleen Manassa, Wiley '07, $25.95, 286 pages, ISBN #0471743585. Index, further reading, source notes, b&w images  sprinkled through text.

A book by a couple of Yale Egyptologists about the Amarna period of the New Kingdom (1550--1335 B.C.E.) figures to be a yawner. So it is welcome to find prose like the following (even if it is a bit over the top):

"The furious thunder of thousands of hooves, the clatter and sheen of bronze armor sparkling in the desert sun, the crunch of wooden wheels racing across a rock-strewn battlefield -- and leading this terrifying chariot charge, the gallant Pharaoh, the ribbons of his blue war crown streaming behind him as he launches yet another arrow into the panicking mass of his soon-to-be-routed enemies."

We've come to know a good deal about Egypt's "boy king," King Tut, through discovery of his tomb in the last century. But less well known is his father, the "heretic king" Akhenaten, equally a subject of this engaging history. The authors' aim is to put the reader into the action, as the nature of warfare evolved because of the invention of the chariot and the composite bow, developments that also transformed military strategy and tactics.

John Darnell and Colleen Manassa, who teach in Yale's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, also profile Egypt's enemies, including the Hittite Empire, which thrived where Turkey is today, and the city-states of Palestine and Syria. Also portrayed is the subject state of Nubia, home of Egypt's gold.

NFL's Brett Favre -- They Said He Was History

Los Angeles Times:

"NBC has 'Bionic Woman.' The NFL has Brett Favre, the bionic man. Guess which one is having the better season? I don't know what you're eating, Mr. Favre, but pass the candy dish. You're maybe the last American hero. A postmodern DiMaggio. A Wyatt Earp. You're about 140 years old, with the smile of an 8-year-old and a gun like Zeus.

"You do all the things the other superstars don't. You play in that city by the bay, an obscure little place with more chipmunks than people, more deer rifles than cellphones. Up there in northern Wisconsin, you don't ride in limos; they just send over Santa's sleigh. You're us, which isn't so bad -- at least if you ask us. You're not some natty dude, a blingy gold-toothed Liberace. No three-pointed kerchief in your suit pocket, like the male mannequins back in the Fox studio. No sir. You wear your hair like the 18th green, short and fast. You could comb it with a golf towel.

"Yep, we appreciate your sense of style -- the plain gray T-shirts and the faded jeans. You've got that same lovely wife you started with. Your beard's getting a little frosty, the jowls a little puffy, but she's stuck by you, that woman. Through your tough times. And you through hers. Love your loyalty, love your work. The cynics claimed you were done. 'Retire, fool,' they said last season. 'Put a fork in Favre. His popper has popped.'

"Turns out they were the fools. They forgot you were part Choctaw, part '56 Chevy. You're having your greatest season yet, playing like a legend. And like a scrub who just appreciates the chance to suit up."

                                                     (Click above link to read more)

Bill Hartack Dies; Tied With Eddie Arcaro As 5-Time Kentucky Derby Winners

Associated Press:

"Freer, Texas - Bill Hartack, a Hall of Fame jockey and five-time Kentucky Derby winner, died while on a hunting vacation. He was 74. Hartack died Monday night from natural causes due to heart disease, said Dr. Corinne Stern, the chief medical examiner in Webb County in Texas.

"Mr. Hartack and fellow Hall of Fame rider Eddie Arcaro are the only jockeys to win the Kentucky Derby five times. Known for his burning desire to win every single race, Mr. Hartack won his first Derby with Iron Liege in 1957. He then won with Venetian Way in 1960, Decidedly in 1962, Northern Dancer in 1964, and Majestic Prince in 1969.

"In winning the '57 Derby, he was the beneficiary of perhaps the greatest goof in racing history - when Bill Shoemaker misjudged the finish line aboard Gallant Man and stood in celebration as Iron Liege passed, winning by a nose.

"'He was my idol,' said trainer Mike Stidham, whose father, George, was Mr. Hartack's agent. 'I was at the '69 Derby when he won with Majestic Prince. He was a great person to grow up around. He was a kid at heart.'

"Mr. Hartack, considered among the fiercest riders in the game, rode until 1974 and had 4,272 wins from 21,535 mounts, winning nearly 20 percent of his races. He won the Preakness aboard Fabius in 1956, Northern Dancer in 1964, and Majestic Prince in 1969. He won the Belmont Stakes once, with Celtic Ash in 1960. He later rode in Hong Kong from 1978 to 1980.

"After his retirement, he worked on network television as a racing analyst, then later was a racing official in California, Illinois, and Louisiana and spent some time as a jockey agent. He had recently worked as a steward at Harrah's Louisiana Downs racetrack in Bossier City, La. 'When I first came to this country and met him, it was like meeting a superstar - he was a jockey everyone had heard about,' said Angel Cordero, another Hall of Fame jockey. 'He was very smart. And he was amazing with the whip - he could hit a horse left-handed coming around the turn, and the horse would never go out.'"

                                                    (Click above link to read more)

Book Alert / City Lights

City Lights -- Stories About New York by Dan Barry, Foreward by Alice McDermott, St. Martin's Press '07, $25.95, 297 pages, ISBN #031236718X. B&W images sprinkled through text.

Fifty years ago, ABC-TV launched Naked City, a popular series about New York City, concluding each episode with: "There are eight million stories in the naked city....This has been one of them." What is so liberating to a person writing about Gotham is that no one person can ever hope to understand it all, so one is free to focus on one fascinating item at a time. Yet collectively, chroniclers from O. Henry to Joseph Mitchell, from Jimmy Breslin to Pete Hamill, have helped us gain knowledge of the ultimately unknowable.

Dan Barry of The New York Times, an able scribe, has now added his name to that distinguished list with his collection of his "About New York" columns published between 2003 and 2006. Chillingly, he observes that a dividing line has crept into New York-speak between "before" and "after." The line once might have referred to the onset of the immigrant hordes or to Pearl Harbor. With six-year-old memories so fresh, it's not even necessary to name the event.

Barry has grouped his columns into six loosely thematic sections of which our favorite is "Vanishing New York." The author is a master of the pathos of change and loss, so endemic to life in a city. His column about the closing of the 174-year-old Fulton Fish Market begins:

"It smells of truck exhaust and fish guts. Of glistening skipjacks and smoldering cigarettes; fluke, salmon, and Joe Tuna's cigar. Of Canada, Florida, and the squid-ink East River. Of funny fish-talk riffs that end with profanities spat onto the mucky pavement, there to mix with coffee spills, beer blessings, and the flowing melt of sea-scented ice."

Manhattan's Munson Diner left town, Barry writes, when the city "lost the taste for its meatloaf and gravy." We follow Edwin Torres's lonely and futile 30-year fight to save St. Brigid's Church. His headlines amuse as well; when Brooklyn's Williamsburgh Savings Bank building was turned into condos, the headline read: "A Tower Packed With Dentists, and They All Have to Come Out." The Plaza shuts its doors for transformation into condos. Howard Johnson's serves its last pistachio cone. And the final resident holds on desperately to his 4x8-foot cubicle in a Bowery flophouse.

We suggested above that it's impossible for one person to full understand this five-borough behemoth. But it is still possible to appreciate trendlines, and one disturbing one is Barry's conclusion that New York City is fast becoming "an outdoor mall for the affluent."

Book Alert / My Dearest Friend

My Dearest Friend -- Letters of Abigail and John Adams, Edited by Margaret A. Hogan and C. James Taylor, Belknap/Harvard '07, $35, 508 pages, ISBN #0-674-02606-3. Index, chronology, gorgeous, full-color spread of glossy images.

David McCullough's 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of John Adams brought to light for the first time hundreds of letters between Adams and his wife Abigail, fleshing out her intelligence, perspicacity, and character in a way never done before. During the course of their long lives, the Adamses exchanged more than 1,000 letters, now housed in the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. Collectively, they have now become the subject of a new historical work, edited by two editors of the Society's Adams Papers, that is also a love story.

This chronological rendering of the Adams's lives begins with John's flirtatious letter to 17 year old "Miss Adorable," Abigail Smith. In a day before telephone and e-mail, letters, each beginning, "My Dearest Friend," were their prime link to one another, so it's possible to tell when they spent time together by the absence of missives. During Adams's career in Washington and overseas, Abigail lived an active life at home in Massachusetts. Her letters to him then not only addressed the personal and familial but talked of affairs of state as well. In a different era, Abigail clearly could have been a Hilllary Clinton.

Out in Paperback / Mayor Erastus Corning

Mayor Erastus Corning -- Albany Icon, Albany Enigma by Paul Grondahl, SUNY Press '07, 508 pages, ISBN #0791472949. Index, sources and interviews, bibliography, no source notes, grouping of b&w images.

Writing the biography of a luminous, local figure is a selfless exercise. Projected book sales are usually limited to the subject's home territory, and often the publisher turns out to be a university press. But just as author William Kennedy's sales ranged far beyond his home town of Albany because of the transcendant quality of his "Albany cycle" of political novels, so too does Albany Times Union reporter Paul Grondahl  have an opportunity to reach beyond because of his remarkable subject and the able job he does in profiling Erastus Corning.

Born to an affluent family (not related to the Corning Glass Works, as Grondahl reminds us), Corning went to Groton with the columnist Joseph Alsop, graduated from Yale and started in politics when Albany boss Dan O'Connell tapped him to attend the Democratic state convention in place of his ailing father, New York Lt. Gov. Edwin Corning. Young Erastus would serve in the State Assembly and the State Senate before becoming mayor of Albany at age 32.

His career there -- 21 consecutive terms, or 42 years -- may be unprecedented in the nation, at least among major cities. Cordial, loyal and hard-working on the surface, Corning was famously secretive and basically fronted for Boss O'Connell, who like his contemporary Chicago's Richard Daley, made the trains run on time while apparently enriching his cronies and himself. Corning's animating force doesn't seem to have been self-enrichment -- he came from abundant money, after all -- but rather the acquisition and maintenance of political power. O'Connell, who Grondahl paints as a surrogate father to Corning, died in 1977 at 91, making Erastus Albany's political boss. But encroaching emphysema would sap his strength, leading to his death in 1983.

Fittingly, the book begins with an introduction by novelist William Kennedy, who may know the ins and outs of Albany's political machine better than anyone, alive or dead.