Steve Goddard's History Wire

A Spanish Victory And Celebration Worth 44 Years Of Waiting

The New York Times:

"Vienna Austria (AP) — A championship 44 years in the waiting is worth a special celebration.

"Spain made sure it did not disappoint any of its fans Sunday night, both during its 1-0 victory against Germany to win the European Championship and after it. Fernando Torres scored in the 33rd minute and the Spaniards never backed down against such a formidable opponent. Their last significant title came in the 1964 Euros at home.

“'It is to me the most important day in Spanish football in many, many years,' Torres said. Against the highly accomplished Germans, the Spaniards were not intimidated. They got the one goal they needed — from a slumping striker, no less — and set off chants of 'ES-PAÑA!' and 'Ole, Ole, Ole!' at the final whistle."

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On The Trail Of California's Mexican Past

The Los Angeles Times:

"Welcome to Mexicalifornia. And no, I'm not talking about immigration policy or demographic trends or domestic hiring habits. I'm talking about that spell from the early 1820s to the late 1840s, when California, Alta y Baja, was Mexican.

"All it takes to bring those years back, touristically speaking, is three or four days on the road, roaming between the rolling, wine-rich Sonoma hills and the cool, foggy coastline of the Central Coast. Even without the historical underpinning, the route makes for a classic California road trip. But this way, you end up with an inkling of what went on after Junípero Serra retired and before that guy found gold at Sutter's Mill.

"Depending on how you count, California's Mexican era lasted 24 to 27 years. Longer than the Pony Express did business, longer than Billy the Kid lived, longer than Walter Alston managed the Dodgers.

"It was enough time for Mexico's leaders to banish Spanish Franciscans from control of the mission system they began in the late 18th century; time for cattle-ranching to create a new economy from 8 million acres of land grants.

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Book Alert / Global Fever

Global Fever -- How to Treat Climate Change by William H. Calvin, Chicago UP '08, $22.50, 337 pages, ISBN #0226092046. Index, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

The earth, according to retired University of Washington Prof. William H. Calvin, has begun what is nothing less than a death spiral. The time has long past for considering how much sacrifice we're willing to make -- not if we want to save the planet we inhabit.

"Every decade since 1950 has seen more floods and more wildfires on every continent," Calvin observes. "Deserts are expanding, coral reefs are dying, fisheries are declining, hurricanes are strengthening. The debate about climate change is over: there's no question that global warming has made the Earth sick, and the outlook for the future calls for ever-warmer temperatures and deadlier results."

Given the stridency of his warning, it's not surprising that this environmental Cassandra calls for nothing less than a "third industrial revolution" to save the planet. This one, Calvin writes, would be "one of clean technologies -- while simultaneously expanding our use of existing low-emission technologies, from nuclear power to plug-in hybrid vehicles, until we achieve the necessary scientific breakthroughs."

Book Alert / Architect of Global Jihad

Architect of Global Jihad by Brynjar Lia, Columbia UP '08, 510 pages, ISBN #023170030X. Index, bibliography, footnotes, unillustrated.

In the 1980s, Abu Mus'ab al-Suri, a Syrian originally known as Mustafa Sethmarian Nasar, published a 1,600-page book entitled, The Global Islamic Resistance Call, which supplied the younger generation with a blueprint to follow to build an Islamist insurgency and guerrilla warfare movement.

While al-Suri was reportedly captured in Pakistan in late 2005, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment professor Brynjar Lia argues he "remains a potent political and ideological figure." His new book is a biography of the charismatic leader and the world that gave rise to him.

Book Alert / When Men Become Gods

When Men Become Gods -- Mormon Polygamist Warren Jeffs, His Cult of Fear, And The Women Who Fought Back by Stephen Singular, St. Martin's Press '08, 292 pages, ISBN #0312372485. Grouping of b&w glossy images.

Texas law enforcers' raid in April on the ranch owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints and led by Warren Jeffs transfixed the nation, as young women, dressed in 19th century clothing and hairstyles to match, begged for return of the 419 children removed from the ranch and placed in protective custody.

In a new book writer Stephen Singular recounts how the sect came into being, how Warren Jeffs came to head it, and how investigators built a case for his arrest in 2007. The following brief excerpt gives a flavor of the tale:

"On January 30, 1998, Warren Jeffs spoke to a class of seventh and eighth grade females: 'A girl's emotions and feelings can be led by the wrong things if she's not careful. After all, who knows the spirit of revelation better -- you or the prophet?'

"Sometimes Jeffs demonstrated his teachings about female obedience and male leadership with cruelty. His first wife, Annette, had become Alta (Academy)'s home economics instructor, and one morning in front of boys and girls gathered in the meeting hall, Warren and his spouse were addressing the audience. he grabbed Annette's long braided hair, twisting it slowly around his hand, tightening his grip until she dropped to the floor, her face turning crimson and contorting in pain. She didn't make a sound or movement of protest. He let go and quietly left the room with no explanation to the students and no apology to his wife, who stood up, straightened her hair, and went back to teaching. She'd grasped well the concept of 'keeping sweet.'"

Book Alert / Your Government Failed You

Your Government Failed You -- Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters, by Richard A. Clarke, Ecco '08, $25.95, 416 pages, 0061474622. Index, source notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

As we learned from his best-selling Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke takes no prisoners. Appalled at the "mediocrity, entropy and collapse endemic in America's national security program," the national security expert told the families of 9/11 victims, "Your government failed you....And I failed you."

Now he's back, to tell how Vietnam's effect on the U.S. military led to failures in the Iraqi War, how the Iraq War will affect future military conduct, how and why our intelligence community has failed, how we failed to defeat Al Qaeda because we misdiagnosed the problem, why we need to reorganize Homeland Security, how global climate change will produce "the most important failure of government in human history" unless we take it seriously, and how we can plan for a concerted attack on the internet.

Clarke, who served 30 years in the federal government and who now teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School, writes "....we must act boldly to reestablish our moral leadership, respect for international law, and support for human rights abroad. And at home, we must reduce important security vulnerabilities in ways that are consistent with our Constitution and beliefs about civil liberties. We must develop a clear and specific set of goals, empower leaders to achieve them and hold them accountable when they do not."

New Production Meets Up With Faulkner's "Ragged Roots as an Artist"

The New Yorker:

"The evening I saw 'The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928),' the theatre company Elevator Repair Service’s rendition of the first section of William Faulkner’s 1929 masterpiece (at the New York Theatre Workshop), about a third of the audience left during intermission. I found this oddly gratifying, but not for the reasons that my less than enchanted fellow-theatregoers might imagine. Yes, the show, at two and a half hours, is too long.

"And, yes,it can, at times, be boring. But how marvellous it is to see that Faulkner’s radicalism as an artist—his themes and his experimental techniques, which trounce any persistent belief you may have that the world makes sense and that art should reflect that—can still put people off.

"On being told that movies should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, Jean-Luc Godard responded, 'But not necessarily in that order.' Many of Faulkner’s novels and short stories don’t even try to follow a chronology. They are attempts at the near-unattainable: reshaping the reader’s consciousness.

"Ambition like that can cause an artist to make plenty of mistakes—part of the curse of genius, it seems, is a propensity for educating oneself in public. And what the Elevator Repair Service production reveals (under the masterly direction of John Collins) is Faulkner’s ragged roots as an artist: his love of melodrama, his political weakness on the subject of blacks and segregation, and his conflicted relations with young women, on the page and off."

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Book Alert / Contesting the Past, Reconstructing the Nation

Contesting the Past, Reconstructing the Nation -- American Literature and Culture in the Gilded Age, 1876-1893 by Ben Railton, University of Alabama Press '07, 312 pages, ISBN #0-8173-1580-2. Index, works cited, source notes, unillustrated.

The Gilded Age stands as a pivot in American history between the eras of Civil War and Reconstruction and the advent of the American Century and all it represents. But as Fitchburg (MA) State College historian Ben Railton writes, a lot more has been written about the more recent of those two epochs, an imbalance that Railton seeks to correct.

Authors Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner coined the "Gilded Age" in their 1891 book of the same name. Railton says "the term 'Gilded' provides perfect shorthand for arguments about the period's dual and divided nature, its polished and attractive surface under which hid the at best tarnished and workmanlike and at worst false and ugly realities."

In this new study, Railton looks to the period between the world's fairs of 1876 and 1893 and examines such social issues as race, Native Americans, women and the South, deriving commentary from such classics as Twain's Huckleberry Finn, The Bostonians, Uncle Remus, and The Conjure Woman.

Book Alert / What Happened

What Happened -- Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception by Scott McClellan, PublicAffairs '08, $27.95, 341 pages, ISBN #978-1-58648-556-6. Index, no bibliography or source notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.

To some, Scott McClellan's tell-all memoir of his White House days, including a stint as press secretary, seems an opportunistic, even cynical, ploy to cash in by trashing the most unpopular presidential administration in generations. But that's not how it reads.

McClellan comes from a distinguished Texas family, particularly on his mother's side. His grandfather, Page Keeton, was a near-legendary law dean at the University of Texas and authored a textbook on tort law that, for decades, was nearly equal in stature to Paul Samuelson's Economics 101 textbook. His mother, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, served three terms as mayor of Austin, TX, and as state comptroller for public accounts.

By his telling, McClellan went to work for Gov. George Bush while in his 20s and found him to be "a uniter, not a divider," the kind of politician who readily crosses the party aisle to get things accomplished. Sensing this is the kind of president America needs, the young idealist followed Bush to the White House. Bush may or may not have been the kind of healer McClellan describes; Scott wouldn't be the first starstruck political aide who overlooks a leader's flaws in idolizing the man who hired him. And as many have written, the narrowly-defined job of Texas governor is a layup.

Enter Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, two men for whom McClellan has little good to say. He is critical of the runup to the Iraq war, the WMD kerfuffle, and the Valerie Plame outing for reasons that have become conventional wisdom. And while he feels strongly that Bush himself didn't know Saddam Hussein lacked weapons of mass destruction when he invaded Iraq and expresses affection for the president as a person, he praises almost nothing Bush has done as president.

Interestingly, McClellan's outlook and worldview is one with which most Democrats would feel comfortable. Perhaps that's because his family's roots lie with the Democratic Party. The Keetons are among millions of Southerners who jumped the political fence in the wake of Lyndon Johnson's support of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. All in all, McClellan's book is a worthwhile, substantive addition to the history of the American presidency.

Author Relates Life Of John Mortimer, Horace Rumpole's Creator

The Los Angeles Times:

"Emotionally, William Butler Yeats was a 19th century man, and so his famous dictum that the creative soul must seek 'perfection in the life or in the work' once seemed not only practical but also wise.

"What would the arch-poet have made, one wonders, of that particularly 20th century sort of artist for whom the bitter chaos of a decidedly imperfect life is the stuff of which the whole work is made? Superb snob that he was, Yeats might well have recognized the inevitability of such an art in an era in which aristocracy and peasantry/proletariat were pushed to history's margins and the sensibility of the self-absorbed upper middle classes emerged triumphant -- at least in the West.

"Such thoughts circle rather naturally around Valerie Grove's loosely jointed but engrossing biography of the British author and literary celebrity John Mortimer. Now 85, Mortimer is best known to American readers and public television viewers as the creator of Horace Rumpole, the indomitable Old Bailey hack, the very soul of every English barrister or American lawyer who ever has gloried in the honorific 'counsel for the defense.' Real Mortimer fans also will recall his two superb novel-length comedies of manners -- 'Paradise Postponed' and 'Titmuss Regained' -- which eviscerated the popular conservatism of the Thatcher/Reagan era."

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