Steve Goddard's History Wire

Book Alert / How Cities Won the West

How Cities Won the West -- Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America by Carl Abbott, UNew Mexico Press '08, $34.95, 376 pages, ISBN #0826333125. Index, source notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

On the canvas on which urban studies expert Carl Abbott paints his new work, you won't find any roaming buffalos. That's because his latest book isn't your father's history of the American West. In his fascinating survey, Abbott explains that while frontier cities often aped Eastern metropolises from which many of their founders had emigrated, they matured over time into sites of a genuine Western culture (think Denver's Unsinkable Molly Brown).

To appreciate how Western cities became so influential, consider that "Cities reach far into the countryside for food, clean water, energy, and building materials. They restructure the lives of rural residents in 'weekendlands.' For better or worse, they reshape valleys and hillsides and impinge on the lives of deer and condors, mountain lions and sea lions."

The author is professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University and the co-editor of the Pacific Historical Review.

Book Alert / The Clash

The Clash -- The Original Clash Book -- Strummer, Jones, Simonon, Headon, Grand Central Publishing '08, coffee table sized, $45, 384 pages, ISBN #0446539732. Index, scores of color and b&w images.

Fans of these incandescent punk rockers from the '70s and '80s will appreciate the fact that this massive tribute volume is not the work of either syrupy, adoring fans or bitter enemies but of the band itself. And who would have greater access to their archives or a better recollection of the circumstances of the group's founding and of times good and bad.

Clash surfaced in Britain in 1976, and their book's chapters run chronologically, one per year, ending with the group's demise in 1983. "The beginning of the end was the sacking of Topper in 1982," they write. "Mick leaving a year later saw the final dissolution of the legendary Clash line-up. While Joe and Paul did go on to recruit three new members to replace Topper and Mick in 1984, Joe says firmly in his interviews for this book that the end of The Clash began with that loss of Topper."

This doorstop volume also includes generous chapters on each original band member -- Joe Strummer ("I called myself Joe Strummer because I can only play all six strings at once, or none at all."), Mick Jones ("I decided that I'd go to art school in order to meet other musicians and get a grant so I could buy some equipment."), Paul Simonon ("I wanted to be Pete Townshend, the bloke who throws his arms around and jumps up and down."), and Topper Headon ("Drumming became my first addiction. I'd play for eight hours a day.").

Book Alert / Lancaster Against York

Lancaster Against York -- The Wars of the Roses and the Foundation of Modern Britain by Trevor Royle, Palgrave MacMillan '08, $29.95, 353 pages, ISBN #1403966729. Index, select bibliography, appendix, unillustrated.

So bitter and protracted was the conflict that first divided Britain's Royal House of Plantagenet, lasted generations, and ultimately caused the rise of the Tudors that "the War of the Roses" label has been used to characterize any over-the-top bloody battle since, whether domestic, political or military.

But, as historian Trevor Royle skillfully describes, the original conflicts were multiple, so that a more apt identifier would be "the Wars of the Roses." The House of York had a white rose as one of its badges, and red was associated with the House of Lancaster. So luminous was the long collapse of the Plantagenets that William Shakespeare devoted eight plays to the telling of the tale -- Richard II through The Two Parts of Henry IV, Henry V, and The Three Parts of Henry VI to Richard III. Author Royle is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and an Associate Editor of the Sunday Herald in Edinburgh, Scotland,

Book Alert / Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes

Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes -- Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett, Pantheon '08, $26.95, 283 pages, ISBN #0375425020. Color and b&w images sprinkled through text.

As Christian missionary, Daniel L. Everett's mission was pretty straightforward when he landed in Brazil three decades ago: to spread his faith among 350 tribespeople, the Piraha (pee-da-HAN), living in the Brazilian rain forests, and to study their ways. What he, his wife and three children discovered instead was that they were on a transformational trip of a lifetime, one that would ultimately cause this missionary to abandon his faith.

Everett had no way of anticipating what he would discover: that the Piraha live entirely in the present -- "they have no creation myths or tradition of oral storytelling, and only believe in what they themselves have seen." So efforts to introduce tribe members to Jesus fell flat, since no one alive had ever met him.

The Piraha, Everett found, "have no words for color or numbers, no recursion (a way of building sentences within sentences), and one of the smallest sets of speech sounds in the world." The author is chair of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Illinois State University.

Book Alert / Wellsprings

Wellsprings by Mario Vargas Llosa, Harvard UP '08, $17.95, 202 pages, ISBN #0674028368.

In this new recollection, veteran Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa steps back from his prolific novelistic career (The Feast of the Goat, The Storyteller, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, The Bad Girl) to introduce his readers to the animating forces which impel his writing career.

One of his major influences seems to be the inferiority complex shared by writers of Spanish heritage, such as Ortega y Gasset, who though on a par with Sartre and Russell, Llosa believes, has been ignored because "he was only a Spaniard." No matter that Columbian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez became a Nobel laureate as long ago as 1982.

In this slim volume, Llosa revisits fiction of Jorge Luis Borges and Isaiah Berlin, examines the challenge of nationalism among Spanish writers, and gives his take on fiction and reality in Latin America. His leadoff essay, perhaps his strongest, discusses the four centuries of interpretation of the Don Quixote legend. Let's eavesdrop on a bit of his narrative:

"...although the comic slant of Don Quixote's adventures and the beatings and abuse he usually receives soften this aspect of him, there is a feature of his personality which, outside the realm of fiction is troubling: Don Quixote is a fanatic. he has the one-sided vision of the dogmatic believer, the absolute owner of the truth, incapable of learning from his mistakes, having doubts or accepting that reason and intelligence are sometimes better tools for understanding reality than are faith and passion. He is never wrong. When Sancho tries to make him see that the enemies he attacked were merely goatskin wine bags, or a flock of goats, or simple pilgrims or shepherds, he berates his squire..."

 

"Milk": Freedom Fighter In Life Becomes Potent Symbol In Death

The New York Times:

"One of the first scenes in 'Milk' is of a pick-up in a New York subway station. It’s 1970, and an insurance executive in a suit and tie catches sight of a beautiful, scruffy younger man — the phrase 'angel-headed hipster' comes to mind — and banters with him on the stairs.

"The mood of the moment, which ends up with the two men eating birthday cake in bed, is casual and sexy, and its flirtatious playfulness is somewhat disarming, given our expectation of a serious and important movie grounded in historical events. 'Milk,' directed by Gus Van Sant from a script by Dustin Lance Black, is certainly such a film, but it manages to evade many of the traps and compromises of the period biopic with a grace and tenacity worthy of its title character."

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Book Alert / Giants

Giants -- The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln by John Stauffer, Twelve '08, $30, 432 pages, ISBN #0446580090. Index, source notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled sparsely through text.

On the surface of things, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln would appear to be worlds apart -- one a black man who grew up as a slave and the other, the white lawyer who became president of the United States. But as Harvard historian John Stauffer writes, the two men bore great similarities, ones that ultimately led Lincoln to invite Douglass three times to the White House and to make him his partner in eradicating slavery.

Involuntary servitude prevented Douglass from gaining formal schooling -- "in fact, his masters forbade him to read or write" -- yet he became a formidable writer, captivating orator and persuasive activist. In fact, however, Lincoln was born dirt poor and had only one year of formal schooling himself. 

Lincoln invited Douglass to the White House -- an unthinkable act at the time -- less from friendship than from shared purpose: "Lincoln recognized that he needed Douglass to help him destroy the Confederacy and preserve the Union; Douglass realized that Lincoln's shrewd sense of public opinion would serve his own goal of freeing the nation's blacks."  

 

Out in Paperback / Treasure in the Cellar

Treasure in the Cellar -- A Tale of Gold in Depression-Era Baltimore by Leonard Augsburger, Maryland Historical Society '08, 207 pages, ISBN #0-938420-97-6. Index, source notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

The author, an engineering manager in the telecommunications industry and a lifelong coin collector, suggests you may not be a dyed-in-the-wool numismatist if you haven't heard of the story of two boys, playing in a Baltimore basement in 1934, who unearthed a fortune in gold coins.

Apparently, in coindom, everybody knows about the story but no one can tell you how the coins got there and what happened to the boys, other than that one died young and the other ran afoul of the law. Tormented by not knowing, Augsburger set out to research and discover the answers, which he has incorporated into this book. Nothing brings people out of the woodwork like money, as the author found, in chronicling a courtroom drama in which descendants of several former property owners staked their claims to the missing loot.

Book Alert / The Oxford Companion to the American Musical

The Oxford Companion to the American Musical -- Theatre, Film and Television by Thomas Hischak, Oxford UP '08, $39.95, 923 pages, ISBN #0195335333. Index, bibliography, guide to recordings, awards, chronology of musicals, b&w images sprinkled through text.

As one who's seen A Chorus Line seven times, I readily plead guilty to being a Broadway junkie. Word this week that the recession is darkening four Manhattan stages by the end of the year put my staff at half-mast. Nothing in American culture will ever replace that hushed moment when the house lights dim, the conductor's baton rises, and the overture begins.

For the like-minded among us, how does one place a dollar value on a book that compresses into one encyclopedic volume all things relating to the Great White Way, grouped in alphabetical order. So one section of the index reads "Kiss Me, Kate," "Kiss of the Spider Woman, Eartha Kitt, Kevin Kline, and Knickerbocker Holiday."

Along with capsule plots of musicals and brief bios of actors, producers, directors and choreographers, the editors have thought to include such sections as "Long runs on and Off Broadway": longest running Broadway musical -- Phantom of the Opera -- 8,000 performances; longest running Off Broadway musical -- The Fantasticks -- 17,162 performances.

Fellow lovers of the theater district will find evocation galore in this book. The first musical my folks took me to was Ray Bolger's Where's Charley? at the St. James Theatre in 1948. I've often wondered why the song, "Once in Love With Amy," sticks out in my mind from that era. This book reminds me it's because Bolger made it an audience sing-along.

Visual images are fewer and smaller than the enthusiastic theatergoer would like, but hey, this is an encyclopedia, which has been gathered lovingly and creatively by Thomas Hischak, theatre professor at SUNY Cortland.

Echoes of Yesteryear in Frederick, MD

The New York Times:

                                     BY JOSHUA KURLANTZICK             

"Driving out of Baltimore, my home, I felt like the urban sprawl of shopping centers and rows of blighted homes would never end. But less than an hour west of the city, outside Frederick, Md., strip malls gave way to strips of giant trees turning autumn crimson, and the vista opened into broad plains, rolling hills and the occasional barn. By the time I crossed Frederick’s outskirts, where I saw brick colonial-looking homes and signs for local farms, I felt I’d arrived in a place far from the megacities of the Eastern Seaboard — like the frontier, but just off Interstate 70.

"For many years, in fact, Frederick was the frontier. The town grew up as a trading post along America’s first trade arteries, and in the early days of the roads Frederick was as far west as you could go without worrying about highwaymen and battles between colonials and Native Americans."

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