Steve Goddard's History Wire

Book Alert / The Man Who Made Lists

The Man Who Made Lists -- Love, Death, Madness and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus by Joshua Kendall, $25.95, 297 pages, ISBN #0399154620. Index, no bibliography, source notes or illustrations.

Were Peter Mark Roget and his extended family alive today, one of their chief concerns would be securing health insurance to cover the medical and psychiatric treatment and therapy their various maladies required. And they'd no doubt be a healthier lot than they were in the mid- 1800s: Roget's grandmother spent most of her life in "an almost vegetative state." His uncle, a member of Parliament, slit his own throat. Paranoia kept his mother from properly nurturing her own children. Roget's sister and daughter fought disabling bouts of depression.

Roget -- yes, the same Roget who increased our grades on college term papers with his Thesaurus -- wasn't exactly a picture of health himself. He suffered since childhood from what today would be called obsessive-compulsive disorder, yet managed to become a physician. And when he tired of that, he channeled his making of lists of everything in the world around him into hundreds of categories, which eventually he would group together into Roget's Thesaurus at age 73, 65 years after he had begun compulsively making lists. As Kendall explains, listmaking helped make sense of the world to a man who lacked the social cues available to most of us.

Today, such psychiatric maladies as obsessive-compulsive disorder keep ballations of therapists gainfully employed. As the grandfather of a 7-year-old autistic child, I've been fortunate to watch up close the ministrations of those who purport to "rewire the mind from the outside." We are indeed fortunate to live in a time in which people with serious mental disorders can hope to live productive self-sufficient lives.

Not so in Roget's time, which makes his own story so remarkable. For while he had a condition that  caused him to see the world in some ways as two-dimensional and which would have disabled many people, he was able to channel his particular skill set to a use so productive that his Thesaurus is still popular nearly two centuries after its compilation.

As Joshua Kendall reminds us in his graceful narrative, "Roget's was not a project that Peter Mark Roget ever chose -- his obsessions and compulsions hardly gave him the latitude not to work on it. Ever since childhood, burying himself in words was the only survival strategy available to him. Ultimately, Roget's -- along with all the decades of preparatory work -- did much more for its creator than it has done for its hundreds of millions of users across the centuries; it enabled Roget to live a vibrant life in the face of overwhelming loss, anxiety, and despair. This personal feat was an equally impressive achievement." Successful and engaged through his later life, Roget died peacefully shortly before his 91st birthday.

Author Joshua Kendall, a summa cum laude Yale graduate, is a language enthusiast and Boston-based freelance journalist.

Book Alert / A History of the Modern Chinese Army

A History of the Modern Chinese Army by Xiaobing Li, UKentucky Press, $39.95, 413 pages, ISBN #0813124387. Index, bibliography, source notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

It has become conventional wisdom in recent years that the American (20th) Century will be followed by the Asian (21st) Century. And by far the most formidable nation in Asia is China, which promises to be a major player in, if not dominate, global economic affairs in the years ahead. Consequently, studies of any major aspect of Chinese life assume increased importance.

In his new book, Xiaobing Li, former member of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, traces the Chinese Army from the Qin dynasty of 221-210 B.C. up to the present, although concentrating on the years from the 1940s on. An army exists not unto itself but must relate to the political realities of the society it is designed to protect, and events of 20th century China both stressed and challenged the Chinese military infrastructure.

While the army gained combat experience during the Korean War and in Cold War skirmishes, its level of sophistication was woefully inadequate, with army members having, on average, a 9th grade education. Only four percent of the 224 top Chinese generals, the author writes, had any college credit hours. This changed, however, in 1995, when massive reforms sought to infuse new technological might into the Chinese Army and to institute advanced training and recruiting efforts. The author teaches history at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Out in Paperback / Indians in Yellowstone National Park

Indians in Yellowstone National Park -- Revised Edition by Joel C. Janetski, Utah UP '02, $15.95, 143 pages, ISBN 0874807247. Source notes, no bibliography or index, b&w images sprinkled through text.

As of this writing, hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of Americans are standing at airline ticket gates to fly to overseas destinations, subjecting themselves to hefty price increases because of dollar devaluation. Ask them if they've ever visited Yellowstone Park, and most shake their heads "no." Take their names and send them a copy of Janetski's book, not simply because of the historical role of Indians the Park but because of its collective wonders.

Brigham Young anthropology professor Janetski examines such matters as when the first humans visited what we now know as the Park, what happened to them, how the Nez Perce escaped U.S. troops in the Park in 1877, and how did Indians perceive the Park's geysers and hot springs.

As one whose son worked as a chef in Yellowstone Park for seven years, I can recommend it for reasons that may not occur to many of us. Following a massive forest fire in the Park, I was astounded to find fallen trees by the thousand lying like random matchsticks in the forest. It made sense only when I realized that it reflected nature's own rhythms and that manmade instincts to tidy it up were, at best, artificial.

Book Alert / Rostropovich

Rostropovich -- The Musical Life of the Great Cellist, Teacher and Legend by Elizabeth Wilson, Ivan R. Dee '08, $35, 387 pages, ISBN #1566637767. Index, bibliography, footnotes, two appendices, grouping of b&w glossy images.

The first time I experienced the ecstacy of listening to the aria from Bachianas Brasileiras, it was sung not by such a memorable diva as Galina Vishnevskaya but, improbably but impressively, by American folk diva Joan Baez. Wilson's new book describes the transport felt by students of Mstislav Rostropovich in performing it in Moscow at the height of his teaching career.

But Rostropovich was so much more than a teacher; he was equally renowned as a performer and conductor. Wilson, herself a cellist and student of Russian life, studied at the Moscow State Conservatory with "Slava" Rostropovich from 1964 to 1971 and is the biographer of Dmitri Shostakovich and Jacqueline du Pre'. She relates her saga against the background of tumultuous 20th century Russian politics and describes Slava's relationships with such musical legends as Pablo Casals, Benjamin Britten, Sergei Prokofiev and Aram Khatchaturian.

Dith Pran Dies: Noted Photographer Of Vietnam War

The New York Times:

"Dith Pran, a photojournalist for The New York Times whose gruesome ordeal in the killing fields of Cambodia was re-created in a 1984 movie that gave him an eminence he tenaciously used to press for his people’s rights, died in New Brunswick, N.J., on Sunday. He was 65 and lived in Woodbridge, N.J. The cause was pancreatic cancer, which had spread, said his friend Sydney H. Schanberg.

"Mr. Dith saw his country descend into a living hell as he scraped and scrambled to survive the barbarous revolutionary regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, when as many as two million Cambodians — a third of the population — were killed, experts estimate. Mr. Dith survived through nimbleness, guile and sheer desperation.

"He had been a journalistic partner of Mr. Schanberg, a Times correspondent assigned to Southeast Asia. He translated, took notes and pictures, and helped Mr. Schanberg maneuver in a fast-changing milieu. With the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, Mr. Schanberg was forced from the country, and Mr. Dith became a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communists."

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Rev. Wright's Condemnation Springs From Black Prophetic Tradition

The  Los Angeles Times:

"Chicago -- On the Sunday in 2003 when Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. shouted 'God damn America' from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ, he defined damnation as God's way of holding humanity accountable for its actions. Rattling off a litany of injustices imposed on minorities throughout the nation's history, Wright argued that God cannot be expected to bless America unless it changes for the better. Until that day, he said, God will hold the nation accountable. And that's when Wright uttered the three words that have rocked Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

"Not long after a Democratic front-runner emerged from the pews of Wright's church, the pastor's long-winded oratory found itself at odds with the sound-bite culture that feeds the 24-hour news cycle and YouTube. Thirty-second snippets of 30-minute sermons led pundits to question how Obama could remain a member of Wright's flock.

"Examining the full content of Wright's sermons and delivery style yields a far more complex message, though one that some will still find objectionable. For more than 30 years, Wright walked churchgoers every Sunday along a winding road from rage to reconciliation, employing a style that validated both. 'He's voicing a reality that those people experience six days a week,' said the Rev. Dwight Hopkins, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a Trinity member. 'In that sense, he's saying they're not insane. That helps them to function the other six days of the week.'

"Wright preached his final sermon at his 'unashamedly black, unapologetically Christian' church in February but does not officially retire until May 31. Wright had been scheduled this week to speak publicly for the first time since debate erupted this month over his remarks, but those stops in Florida and Texas were canceled over security concerns. Efforts to interview him for this story were unsuccessful. Obama has denounced Wright's most provocative remarks, but in a speech on race this month he defended Wright as a person and refused to disown him as his pastor.

"Wright's preaching, which mixes theology with the often troubled history of race relations in America, is in the 'prophetic' tradition, one of many that have evolved in black pulpits. Shocking phrases like 'God damn America' lie at the core of prophetic preaching, said the Rev. Bernard Richardson, dean of the chapel at Howard University."

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Book Alert / A History of Palestine

A History of Palestine -- From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel by Gudrun Kramer, Princeton UP '08, $35, ISBN #0691118973. Index, bibliography, footnotes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

"It is not for nothing," writes Prof. Kramer, "that we speak of a 'tunnel vision'" when discussing the history of Arabs and Jews, for commentators and historians alike tend to see their interrelationship through the eyes of one group or the other. As a result, she argues, social, economic and cultural ties among Jews and Arabs tend to go unexamined. She sees her book as a corrective.

While many books on Palestine are dominated with discussion of the first Zionist immigrants in the 1880s, the transformation of the Jewish community in Palestine and, in 1948, the founding of the modern State of Israel, Kramer endeavors to hone in on the Arab majority and how they co-exist with Jews and Christians. Kramer teaches Islamic studies at Free University Berlin and has written other books on Middle Eastern topics.

Book Alert / They Knew They Were Right

They Knew They Were Right -- The Rise of the Neocons by Jacob Heilbrun, Doubleday '08, $26, 320 pages, ISBN #0385511817. Index, source notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

In the tongue-in-cheek prologue to his new book, journalist Heilbrun describes George W. Bush running a victory lap through foreign capitals in early 2009, as he celebrates the end of the most popular two-term presidency in modern times. Bush basks in the glow of the Iraqi invasion of 2003, which secured all WMDs, ousted Saddam Hussein, and installed, to mass public acclaim, a democratic regime in Iraq as the model for democracy throughout the Middle East.

No, you haven't lost your mind. This is the scenario, Heilbrun writes, that the neoconservatives envisioned when they helped elect Bush 43 president in 2000. This hardy and secretive band, some of them former liberals, were poised for an era of political power, only to watch it unravel like a ball of cheap string. Who were these would-be leaders, asks Heilbrunn. Where did they come from? And why did they fail?

As Heilbrun, a senior editor at The National Interest, tells it, neoconservatism has its roots in the 1930s when followers of Trotsky and Stalin diverged and continued to battle during the Cold War years. The faction that became the neocons made a home in the interventionist wing of the Democratic Party, eventually deserting it for Ronald Reagan and the Republicans, "combining the agenda of 'family values' with a crusading foreign policy."

The neocons wandered in the wilderness during the Bush 41 and Clinton years but grasped the reins of power through Bush 43. They seized 9/11 as an opportunity to entrench themselves. One cannot understand the neocons, Heilbrun argues, without  tracing their route through the Holocaust and the assimilation of Jews into American culture and politics. They won't die with George W. Bush, Heilbrun believes: "....like Old Testament prophets they thrive on adversity."

Book Alert / The Soul Thief

The Soul Thief by Charles Baxter, Pantheon '08, $20, 210 pages, ISBN #0375422528.

Before the advent of identity theft, few of us probably thought much about our own identities. We simply are who we are. Novelist Charles Baxter, a National Book Award nominee in 2000 for The Feast of Love, plays off our new sensitivity to identity in his newest book. Nathaniel Mason, his protagonist, is a graduate student who is drawn to the mysterious and compelling Jerome Coolberg:

"Not only cryptic about himself, he (Coolberg) seems also to have appropriated parts of Nathaniel's past that Nathaniel cannot remember having told him about. It is Jerome who seems to trigger the events that precipitate Nathaniel's total breakdown, and Jerome who shows up thirty years later -- Nathaniel having finally reconstructed his life -- to suggest, with the most staggering consequences, that Nathaniel's identity may not in fact be his own."

In a brief interview, Baxter talks about the writing of the book:

Q. What's the Soul Thief about?

A. It's about crazy love versus domestic, ordinary love. Ever since The Feast of Love, my subject seems to have been the arrival of mania in daily life; I can't seem to get away from the subject of love and fixation.

Q. Who were your influences here?

A. Patricia Highsmith (there's a quick hommage (sic) to her in the book) and Dostoyevsky (two to him, which alert readers might notice). Also Hitchcock. Highsmith wrote a novel called This Sweet Sickness about erotic obsession, and of course the Ripley novels are about exchangeable or fungible identities. Hitchcock made a movie of Highsmith's Strangers on a Train. In a way, this is my Hitchcock novel. There are references to Psycho everwhere in it."

Book Alert / Cancer on $5 A Day (Chemo Not Included)

Cancer on $5 A Day (Chemo Not Included) -- How Humor Got Me Through The Toughest Journey in My Life by Robert Schimmel. DaCapo '08, $22, 195 pages, ISBN #0738211583.

That laughter can strengthen the immune system is a principle discovered not by scientists but by a patient. In 1964, longtime Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins deduced that if a person's negative feelings can hurt his prospects for recovery from a debilitating disease, perhaps positive feelings could be helpful. So he had jokes read to him nonstop and watched Marx Brothers movies for hours and hours in a darkened room, laughing hilariously all that time. In short order, his symptoms lessened and eventually disappeared.

Scholarly, urbane Norman Cousins and wisecracking, raunchy Robert Schimmel could hardly be more different, but they're preaching the same sermon. But humor for Schimmel isn't a hobby; as a standup comedian, it's his life's work and one senses he feels it's the reason he's been put on this earth. He has an addict's drive to make people laugh, whether it be his family, a doctor or the janitor. Some of it may be a bit gamy for some; after all, it's from a man who's a regular on Howard Stern.

Early in his treatment for Stage III non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Schimmel's doctor told him that his recovery depended on putting himself first. This he does with a vengeance. At the time of his diagnosis, the 50-year-old comedian is living with Melissa, pretty and half his age. He's been separated from Vicki, to whom he's been married and divorced an amazing three times and whose ministrations extended their cancer-ravaged son's life by eight years. Improbably, she offers to take him in and care for him during what could be a terminal illness.

With little hesitation, Robert ditches (he'd use a much softer term) Melissa and moves in with Vicki during excruciating months of chemotherapy, while he alternates crying and laughing as he loses weight along with all his hair. One of the more laugh-out-loud anecdotes is Schimmel's recounting of his meeting with a salesman who makes wigs for the pubic region.

As you've probably gathered, this memoir is a roller coaster of laughing and wincing. Tears may form as he comes to the end of his rope, seriously begging his Holocaust-survivor father to help him to the hospital window so he can throw himself off. Unable to talk his son out of his plan, resourceful dad (Schimmel's parents are genuine heroes) corrals two of Robert's children, each about 10 years old, walks them into his room and says, "Robert, tell them what you told me," which shocks Schimmel to his senses.

Still listening to his doctors by ministering solely to himself, Schimmel finally reaches the point of remission and is able to perform again. And who should cross his mind now but Melissa, whom he proceeds to woo and ultimately marries. Vicki, the long-suffering caregiver? We hear nothing further about her. Hey, after all, he's just following doctor's orders.