Steve Goddard's History Wire

Photography's First 100 Years: A "Trim, Instructive Survey"

The New Yorker:

"You might want to argue with the Metropolitan Museum’s choice of the thirteen 'masters' who represent the high points of photography’s first hundred years (1840 to 1940) in 'Framing a Century,' if only because the premise of this trim, instructive survey has all the excitement of an intro-level art-history course. But step into the galleries and look around: every picture is astonishing,and the curator Malcolm Daniel’s choices are sure and sophisticated.

"Combining famous and little-known images, each carefully annotated grouping doesn’t attempt to sum up a career; rather, it suggests the broader scope of the artist’s range. The exhibition sets choice pieces from the Gilman Collection, acquired by the Met in 2005, alongside other works to emphasize the rarity, quality, and sheer beauty of the museum’s holdings. What sounds like an exclusionary exercise ends up as a pleasure trip—from Roger Fenton’s image of sunlight suffusing the mist above a rushing stream in 1854 to Brassaï’s shot of street lights glowing through the Paris fog in 1932."

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Out in Paperback / The Art Museum

The Art Museum -- From Boullee to Bilbao by Andrew McClellan, UCal. Press '08 paperback, 351 pages, ISBN #0520251261. Index, list of illustrations, source notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

The increasingly frenetic pace of contemporary life, argues Tufts University art historian Andrew McClellan, makes the "oases of beauty and calm" offered by art museums not only desirable by essential tonics for the soul. In this new paperback, McClellan examines the history of the art museum from the 18th century to the present.

Among the topics the author treats in his survey are the ideals and missions of art museums, their architecture (yes, Bilbao is amply covered -- not only the Gehry design itself but the backlash against it), collecting, classification, and display; the public; commercialism; and restitution and repatriation.

Color photographs would have enriched the volume, but that's made up for by the scores of black and white images scattered throughout. McClellan is also author of Inventing the Louvre.

Book Alert / Cure Unknown

Cure Unknown -- Inside the Lyme Epidemic by Pamela Weintraub, St. Martin's Press '08, $27.95, 408 pages, ISBN #0312378122. Index, notes and references, unillustrated.

"At first," writes science journalist Pamela Weintraub, "the vague headaches, joint pains and bone-weariness seemed like minor inconveniences but, as years passed, these symptoms intensified and multiplied, burgeoning into gross signs of disease: swollen knees, limbs that buzzed as though wired to a power grid, violent mood swings, extreme fatigue, and disabling pains."

If you're one of the 200,000 afflicted each year, you probably know Weintraub is relating classic signs of Lyme Disease. Her passion to relate the history of the disease, its effects and treatment are fueled by the fact that Lyme ravaged her own family. In her new book, she cites "five things you need to know about Lyme Disease (but don't):"

l. The key to complete cure is early diagnosis and treatment; of those infected for more than a year before diagnosis, some 20% will remain sick after standard treatment for the disease and may never get well.

2. The signs of Lyme are not limited to a simple rash and joint pain, but can include a host of serious neurological, cardiac and psychiatric effects as well as systemic complaints like pain and fatigue.

3. Currently, there is no reliable form of testing that can accurately pinpoint Lyme disease, so getting a proper diagnosis and a prompt course of antibiotic treatment is often extremely difficult.

4. No current course of treatment has been proven effective against all cases of late-stage Lyme disease.

5. Lyme and associated tick-borne infections are not restricted to the traditional "Lyme zones" in New England, the Midwest, or California and Oregon but, in aggregate, have spread throughout the country and the world.

Scientists Probe Link Between Olympiad And Antikythera Mechanism

The New York Times:

"After a closer examination of the Antikythera Mechanism, a surviving marvel of ancient Greek technology, scientists have found that the device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games.

"The new findings, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, also suggested that the mechanism’s concept originated in the colonies of Corinth, possibly Syracuse, in Sicily. The scientists said this implied a likely connection with the great Archimedes.

"Archimedes, who lived in Syracuse and died in 212 B.C., invented a planetarium calculating motions of the Moon and the known planets and wrote a lost manuscript on astronomical mechanisms. Some evidence had previously linked the complex device of gears and dials to the island of Rhodes and the astronomer Hipparchos, who had made a study of irregularities in the Moon’s orbital course.

"The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the first analog computer, was recovered more than a century ago in the wreckage of a ship that sank off the tiny island of Antikythera, north of Crete. Earlier research showed that the device was probably built between 140 and 100 B.C."

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New Spanish Literature: "Remarkable Flowering Of Formal Literary Experimentation"

The Los Angeles Times:

"One of the particular joys of this golden age in translation is the fact that we now enjoy routine access not only to other languages' literary fiction and poetry, but also to a rich array of entertaining popular works.

"In the years since Francisco Franco's death, Spanish literature has undergone both a remarkable flowering of formal literary experimentation and an explosion of first-rate works written for a broad audience. If you haven't sampled the historical detective fiction of Spain's bestselling author, the former journalist Arturo Pérez-Reverte, for example, it's worth looking for his novels, 'The Fencing Master,' 'The Club Dumas' and 'The Seville Communion' -- all available in fine English translations.

"Somewhat harder to locate, but worth the trouble, are the hard-boiled detective novels of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, whose protagonist -- Pepe Carvalho -- is a former Marxist, ex-CIA agent with a wisecracking assistant, who works as a hooker.

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Book Alert / Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost -- Smyrna 1922 by Giles Milton, Basic Books '08, $27.95, 426 pages, ISBN #0465011195. Index, notes and sources, grouping of b&w glossy images.

The millions of lives lost to ethnic cleansing, from the Holocaust to Darfur and Bosnia, seem to have numbed us to similar horrific incidents through history. So Giles Milton's tale of the 100,000 residents of Smyrna, a Christian city on the west coast of Islamic Turkey, who were systematically decimated in 1922, will elicit a mere shrug from many people.

But Milton writes that the same kind of shrug, from American and European warships in the city's harbor when the Turkish cavalry marched into Smyrna has had ramifications that ripple forth today. Preoccupied with Europe in the wake of the First World War, warships that could have prevented Smyrna from being wiped off the map felt the conflict had little to do with them.

In so doing, argues Milton, they allowed "dangerous fissures to quickly develop and deadly rivalries to form. The annihilation of Smyrna and its non-Muslim population was one of the first catastrophic results of this new modern landscape and it foreshadowed the disastrous clash between East and West that defines our own age today."

London Journalist Giles Milton has written five previous works of non-fiction.

Book Alert / Gandhi

Gandhi -- The Man, His People, and the Empire, UCalifornia Press '08, 738 pages, ISBN #0520255704. Index, glossary, further reading, source notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

Biographies of famous people written by their relatives are a mixed blessing: their authors often have access to family archives closed to scholars, but asking them to maintain the evenhandedness of an objective journalist is a lot to expect. This latest Gandhi biography, first published in 2007 to critical acclaim in India, is written by his grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi -- author, University of Illinois professor, and former member of the Indian Parliament's upper house.

Here's how the author describes his iconic relative: "While there is romance in the aura of the struggle he exudes, Gandhi is different from, say, Che Guevara. He is a foe of the unjust but also, strangely, their friend. Like Nelson Mandela in his post-militant phase, Gandhi is a man for all races. In him we imagine struggle but also warmth, conflict but also conflict resolution, and we long for his equivalent when bombarded with news of unceasing violence in, for example, the Middle East."

The chapter titles of this gracefully-written doorstop volume suggest the journey of Mahatma Gandhi's life:  Boyhood, London and Identity, South Africa and a Purpose, Saryagraha, Hind Swaraj, A Great March, Engaging India, The Empire Challenged, Building Anew, Assault -- With Salt, Negotiating Repression, Dream Under Fire, "Quit India!", Rejected, Walk Alone..., To Rama.

Jonathan Alter On How History Shapes Coverage Of Candidates

Newsweek.com:

"Germany, not the Middle East, was the most important part of Barack Obama's overseas trip—and not because of the Kennedy-plus crowd and the good vibes his speech created for his presidential campaign. Germany is the true Ground Zero of world history in the last 100 years, the source of two world wars and nearly the flashpoint of a third.

"I covered both Obama and John McCain last week; spoke with former president George H.W. Bush about his greatest triumph, aiding the peaceful reunification of Germany, and took a history bath in sparkling Berlin. It's the perfect place to contemplate how any U.S. president might avoid what Obama called the world's 'greatest danger' of 'new walls' between races, tribes, religions, rich and poor.

"History drives everything, including the disparity in media coverage, with Obama (even before this week) drawing many more reporters to his plane than McCain. The grinding of economic and technological forces has disabled the traditional business models of news organizations.

"To the shock of political veterans, NBC News is the only network with on-air correspondents and NEWSWEEK the only news magazine with reporters assigned to cover both candidates full time. Ailing regional newspapers show up only occasionally, which thins the herd. With traveling costs 'inside the bubble' of more than $4,000 per reporter a week, news outlets often have to choose which candidate to cover. That's usually Obama, not because everyone assumes he should win or will win, but because he is the bigger story, historically speaking."

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U.S. House Apologizes For Slavery And Jim Crow

Salon.com:

"The House on Tuesday issued an unprecedented apology to black Americans for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow segregation laws. 'Today represents a milestone in our nation's efforts to remedy the ills of our past,' said Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

"The resolution, passed by voice vote, was the work of Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen, the only white lawmaker to represent a majority black district. Cohen faces a formidable black challenger in a primary face-off next week. Congress has issued apologies before — to Japanese-Americans for their internment during World War II and to native Hawaiians for the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893. In 2005, the Senate apologized for failing to pass anti-lynching laws.

"Five states have issued apologies for slavery, but past proposals in Congress have stalled, partly over concerns that an apology would lead to demands for reparations — payment for damages."

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Book Alert / The End of Food

The End of Food by Paul Roberts, Houghton Mifflin '08, $26, 390 pages, ISBN #0618606238. Index, bibliography, source notes, unillustrated.

Author Paul Roberts is all about scarcity. He's followed up his acclaimed 2005 book, The End of Oil, with The End of Food. Actually, Americans could stand to eat a lot less, but if we care about the rest of the 6.5 billion souls on the planet or the 10 billion expected by 2050, this is an important book to read. Even though we may think foreign famine doesn't affect us, remember that we're already going to war about oil; what prevents us having to take up arms to protect water and food? In a brief Q&A, Paul Roberts talks about some of the issues he's raised:

Q. The title of your new book, The End of Food, suggests a pretty bleak future. Are you arguing that we're running out of food?

A. That's part of the thesis, to be sure. For the last century, we've gone from success to success in terms of our ability to feed more people more cheaply. But in the last few decades, that trajectory has faltered under increasing economic, political, and ecological strain. Throw in rising energy costs, changing climate, and the fact that most of the population growth will occur in developing countries, where diets are still catching up with the west, particularly in terms of meat, and the picture gets pretty grim.

Q. So what are the solutions?

A. Every food problem we face today is already too complex for some simple, one-size-fits-all solution. An elegant little organic farm might be just the thing for a Northern California hobby farmer who supports himself with an office job, but it's meaningless for a dirt-poor farmer in Ethiopia. The point here is that we'll need thousands of solutions, tailored to specific places, times and needs. We'll need conceptual "hybrids" -- farms, for example, that use a mixture of older and newer methods to maximize output while minimizing impacts. We'll need new food systems -- new crops, perhaps, and new tools -- but we'll also need innovation in nonfood systems: for example, new land-use laws and transportation systems that can help boost local and regional production. We'll need to be more global, not less so, creating a more cooperative and fairer worldwide trading to supply those regions that need help. And, of course, we'll need a massive commitment for funding research to develop these new approaches.