Steve Goddard's History Wire

Book Alert / The Voice -- A Memoir

The Voice -- A Memoir by Thomas Quasthoff, Pantheon '08, $24.95, 241 pages, ISBN #0375424067. Index, discography, unillustrated.

For the person on your holiday gift list who needs a shot of inspiration, you couldn't do better than the memoir of Thomas Quasthoff, one of the original thalidomide babies. In a narrative devoted to the principle of mind over matter, the author describes how he learned to walk (doctors said he never would), to attend public school (his parents battled to have him mainstreamed), and to carve out a brilliant career as a classical singer.

Emblematic of Quasthoff's persona is his lack of self-pity, unerring sense of humor, boisterous conviviality and fierce honesty. Today, his remarkable range of musicality embraces opera, lieder singing in his native Germany, jazz and American popular song, and he manages a busy schedule in spite of being barely four feet tall and having severely underdeveloped arms and legs.

 

Book Alert / Food -- The History of Taste

Food -- The History of Taste, Edited by Paul Freedman, UCalifornia Press '08, 368 pages, ISBN #0520254767. Index, bibliography, no source notes, scores of full-color glossy images.

This is a book to be enjoyed on several levels:

Historians will be captivated in visiting hunter-gatherers of prehistory and watching taste evolve through Grego-Roman times to the Middle Ages and Renaissance to the age of the restaurant. Foodies will drool at the lush color presentation of food and wine across the ages. And chefs will pick up a tip or two from eavesdropping on the kitchens of myriad cultures.

Editor Paul Freedman has gathered together chapters by ten noted academics in the fields of history, archaeology, and the classics. This lush, oversized book's front cover describes the range of its contents:

"The authors explore such fascinating topics as the early repertoire of sweet tastes and the way people learned to discriminate between different fats; the distinctive culinary combinations made by classical antiquity and China; the subtle, sophisticated, and varied food customs created by the Islamic civilizations of Iberia, the Arabian desert, Persia, and the culinary capital of medieval Islam, Baghdad, the magnificient cuisine of the Middle Ages, influenced by Rome and adapted from Islamic Spain, Africa, and the Middle East; the decisive break with highly spiced food traditions after the Renaissance and the subsequent focus on primary ingredients and products from the New World; French cuisine's rise to dominance in Europe and America; the evolution of modern restaurant dining, modern agriculture, and modern kitchen technology; and today's tastes, which employ few rules and exhibit a glorious eclecticism.

"I Can Bring Home The Bacon, Fry It Up In A Pan"

Salon.com:

"This afternoon, apropos of very little, a colleague of mine showed me an old Riunite wine commercial from 1984. The jingle goes: 'Riunite on ice/ Riunite so nice.' Gah, I can still sing it word for word. It's burned on my brain from all those evenings sitting, slack-jawed, in front of the boob tube.

"Watching the commercial, inevitably, led to a discussion of other 1980s commercials burned on the brain, and it was not long before we began speaking in loud, animated voices about such bizarre lady products of the late '70s/early '80s as Jean Naté bath splash and Love's Baby Soft. The Jean Naté commercial, posted below, is nothing short of a classic. It's such a satire of itself that I couldn't possibly make fun of it. Because, honestly, nothing is as refreshing as splashing strange chemicals on my bare skin!"

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Tony Hillerman's Mile-High Multiculturalism

SmithsonianMagazine.com:

"Editor’s note, Oct. 28, 2008: Tony Hillerman, whose bestselling mystery novels centered on the Navajo region of the American Southwest, died on Sunday at the age of 83. In 2006, Hillerman reflected on Albuquerque and its environs, where he had found a home and inspiration for 18 novels.

"Why is Los Ranchos de Albuquerque my kind of town? First, our mile-high, big-sky, cool-night, dry climate. Second, mountains in all directions, reminding you of aspens, pines and silent places. Next, there's the Rio Grande right behind our neighborhood, its shady bosque, or grove, providing habitat for coyotes, porcupines, squirrels, and parking spaces for the assorted geese, duck and crane flocks on their seasonal migrations.

"Such assets are common in the Mountain West. Nor can we claim exclusive title to the bosque, since it lines the river from its origin in the Colorado Rockies to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico. It is the longest strip of unbroken woodland in North America, and probably the narrowest."

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Out in Paperback / The Rest is Noise

The Rest is Noise -- Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross, Picador '08 paperback, $18, 682 pages, ISBN #0312427719. Index, suggested listening, source notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.

It was not by accident that the hardcover edition of Alex Ross's book garnered "best book" awards from such publications as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Time, Fortune, Newsweek and Slate, as well as being a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Music lovers will enjoy this work as much as history buffs, for it chronicles every major musical development of the 20th century against the backdrop of political, military, economic and social life and demonstrates that music isn't composed in a vacuum.

Ross, The New Yorker's music critic and a MacArthur "Genius" Fellow, divides his narrative into three chronological sections: 1900-1933, 1933-1945, and 1945-2000. In one section, he focuses in on Czech master Antonin Dvorak and his influence on African-American music or the "loneliness of Jean Sibelius," then transports his readers to the city of Berlin in the 1920s.

Hitler, Stalin and FDR all figure in Ross's account of the World War II years while his final section examines the Cold War era. A stimulating aspect of the author's narrative is how classical composers inform (or fail to inform) future generations, illustrated by a chapter entitled "Beethoven Was Wrong: Bop, Rock and the Minimalists."

In lesser hands, The Rest is Noise might be a turgid read. But Ross, who has long been writing for a general audience, turns in a thoroughly engaging read.

Book Alert / The Chosen

The Chosen -- The History of an Idea, and the Anatomy of an Obsession by Avi Beker, Palgrave MacMillan '08, 240 pages, ISBN #0230600484. Index, bibliography, source notes, unillustrated.

Jews among us have both a singular opportunity and burden, writes Georgetown University government Prof. Avi Beker, in accepting the mantle of God's "chosen people." His new book explains "how the Jews, of all people, have come to represent at once the epitome of both the good and the odious."

In the historical sweep of his narrative, Beker explores how Jews came to be "chosen" and efforts by Christians, Muslims and Nazis to appropriate the label. He also examines "the key role 'chosenness' plays in contemporary anti-Semitism and in the current Middle East conflict over the Land of Israel and the chosen city of Jerusalem." In an epilogue, Beker tries to answer the question "Why is the world obsessed with the Jews?"

NASA's New Space Capsule Likened To 1969 Apollo

The Los Angeles Times:

"Reporting from Edwards Air Force Base -- NASA rolled out its next-generation space capsule here Wednesday, revealing a bulbous module that is scheduled to carry humans back to the moon in 2020 and eventually onward to Mars.

"Unlike the space-plane shape of the shuttles, the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle looks strikingly similar to the old Apollo space capsule that carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon and back in 1969, with Armstrong and Aldrin becoming the first humans to walk on the lunar surface.

"There is one key difference, however. The test module, unveiled at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, is substantially bigger -- 16.5 feet in diameter compared with Apollo 11's 12.8 feet. The craft's extra girth will allow it to carry six astronauts instead of Apollo's three.

"'This is the same shape as Apollo,' said Gary Martin, the project manager for the test program at Dryden. 'But the extra space translates into twice as much volume as Apollo.'

"Still, cramming six astronauts inside will make it 'pretty cozy,' he said."

                     

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Estelle Reiner Dies at 94; Famously Said "I'll Have What She's Having"

The New York Times:

"Estelle Reiner, who as the wife of Carl Reiner and the mother of Rob Reiner was the matriarch of one of the leading families in American comedy, and who delivered one of the most memorably funny lines in movie history herself, died on Saturday at her home in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 94.

"She died of natural causes, said Rob Reiner, who was responsible for his mother’s moment of widest fame.

"That occurred in the 1989 film 'When Harry Met Sally,' when Mr. Reiner, as director, cast his mother as a customer in a New York delicatessen. In the scene, she watched as a woman at a nearby table, played by Meg Ryan, faked a very public (and very persuasive) orgasm. After Ms. Ryan subsided, a waitress approached Mrs. Reiner for her order.

“'I’ll have what she’s having,' Mrs. Reiner said.

"The American Film Institute made that line No. 33 on its list of the Top 100 quotations from movies, just ahead of Lauren Bacall’s seductive invitation to Humphrey Bogart in 'To Have and Have Not': 'You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.'”

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Book Alert / Cuba -- In the American Imagination

Cuba -- In the American Imagination -- Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos by Louis A. Perez, Jr., UNo. Carolina Press '08, $34.95, 368 pages, ISBN #0807832162. Index, source notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

The 1898 Spanish-American War helped create the image of Teddy Roosevelt as the "Rough Rider." The year 1959 marked the overthrow of dictator Fulgencio Batista by revolutionary upstart Fidel Castro. And, as writes University of North Carolina historian Louis A. Perez, Jr., the fact that both events occurred in Cuba helped cement in the American imagination the way we think about the tropical island only 90 miles off the American mainland.

In fact, Perez says, it's been more than two centuries in which Americans have imagined Cuba and its link to the United States "by conjuring up a variety of striking images -- Cuba as a woman, a neighbor, a ripe fruit, a child learning to ride a bicycle." His book is an attempt to describe the genesis of these ideations, as he draws on both texts and visual images created by individuals ranging from policy makers to poets.

Importantly, Perez points out, the referenced images "served the foreign policy interests of the United States" and "sanctioned and sustained the moral logic of U.S. power over Cuba."

Book Alert / Intrepid

Intrepid -- The Epic Story of America's Most Legendary Warship by Bill White and Robert Gandt, foreward by John McCain, Broadway '08, $26.95, 345 pages, ISBN #0767929896. Index, sources, b&w images sprinkled through text.

Few sailors saw action in both World War II and Vietnam and can promise to tell their story now and in future decades. But that's exactly what the U.S.S. Intrepid is doing. The carrier sank Japanese battleships in Okinawa and Leyte Gulf, welcomed America's first astronauts onto her decks, shot down enemy warplanes in Vietnam, and now serves as a sea, air and space museum in New York City.

This new book by Bill White and Robert Gandt describes the history of this 27,000-ton Essex-class aircraft carrier, not only by describing her dimensions, missions and such but through interviews with "those who sailed in her, fought to keep her alive, and perished in her defense." Helpfully, the authors include a timeline of Intrepid's missions, maps of its major engagements, a cutaway illustration of the ship's interior, and a guide to exhibits.

Bill White is president of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum and the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. Robert Gandt is a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot and Pan American and Delta Air Lines captain and the author of eleven books on the military and aviation.