Steve Goddard's History Wire

Happy New Year!!

We at History Wire want to wish everyone a bountiful and fulfilling 2009 and plenty of good reading. Why not take a minute and e-mail us, singling out the best book in the field of history that you read during 2008. Feel free to add a sentence or two about why you liked it. We'll print the best of them and send the writers a hot-off-the-press book.

Book Alert / 7 Deadly Sins

7 Deadly Sins -- A Very Partial List by Aviad Kleinberg, Belknap/Harvard '08, $22.95, 192 pages, ISBN #0674031415. Index, source notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

"Human actions and passions become sins only in a given moral and cultural context," argues Israeli author Aviad Kleinberg. "As contexts and rules shift, so does the definition of sin." In illustrating his premise in this wide-ranging work, the author delves as far back as Horace ("You must avoid sloth, that wicked siren.") and as far forward as Wall Street's Gordon Gecko ("Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.")

Kleinberg's work, which was a best-seller in Israel, is at once scholarly and puckish, though its prose can be a bit wooden. In deconstructing the seven deadly sins, one by one, he asks some provocative questions:

"What is wrong with a little sloth? Where would haute cuisine be without gluttony? Where would we all be without our parents' lust? Has anger really gone out of style in the West? Can consumer culture survive without envy and greed? And with all humility, why shouldn't we be proud?"

Kleinberg teaches history at Tel Aviv University and is the author of two previous books.

 

Book Alert / Becoming King

Becoming King -- Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Making of a National Leader by Troy Jackson, Introduction by Clayborne Carson, UKentucky Press '08, $35, 248 pages, ISBN #0813125200. Index, bibliography (primary sources/secondary sources), source notes, unillustrated.

The most striking thing about this latest of many Martin Luther King, Jr. biographies is its lack of photographs. To try to relate the saga of this transformational American leader without depicting the lynchings, beatings and civil right marches that brought King to the fore as well as the majesty of the 1963 March on Washington without pictorial illustrations is a challenge to any author.

Author Troy Jackson, senior pastor at University Christian Church in Cincinnati, OH, relies heavily on the King Papers Project, an effort to collect and publish King's papers, sermons and speeches and to which Jackson contributed. But so much has been written about King's development as a preacher and civil rights leader that one wonders how much another biography can add.

He concentrates, for example, on the support King received from the city of Montgomery, AL during the city's fabled bus boycott, so vividly portrayed already by historians Taylor Branch, Douglas Brinkley, David Levering Lewis and others. Much of his book is a retelling of oft-told tales.

Not to say there won't be a market for Jackson's book. During the writing of my first book on the historic clash between the auto and rail industries, my editor sought to have me write instead a biography of Henry Ford. "That story has been fully told 100 times," I protested. "But people love to read it, so it sells," he said.

"Doing It" -- A New Edition of "The Joy of Sex"

The New Yorker:

"In 1961, the British scientist and physician Alex Comfort wrote a novel (his fifth) called 'Come Out to Play,' in which his alter ego, Dr. George Goggins, opens a clinic with his girlfriend to teach patients advanced sexual techniques. There he develops a compound called 3-blindmycin, which has the power to turn people on: 'not raise the libido,' Comfort later told a journalist, 'but thaw the superego, the part of the mind that says ‘mustn’t.’ '

"In a climactic scene, an explosion releases a cloud of 3-blindmycin over Buckingham Palace, leaving throngs of uninhibited Englishmen in its wake. Years afterward, Comfort said he’d always hoped that Peter Sellers would play him if the book were made into a film; for his leading lady, he pictured Sophia Loren.

"Hollywood seems not to have been interested in the story. But if someone were to make a bio-pic of Comfort’s own life it might well feature a scene intercutting that aphrodisiacal cloud with images from Comfort’s most famous book, the 1972 best-seller 'The Joy of Sex.' That, too, was a kind of explosion, intended to unleash its readers’ sexual potential by counteracting their ignorance and shame.

'The Joy of Sex,' which has sold more than twelve million copies worldwide, was an 'unanxious account of the full repertoire of human heterosexuality,' according to its author. It was the English answer to Japanese pillow books, illustrated texts designed to show couples where to put what, and was further enhanced by helpful advice: for instance, 'Never, never refer to pillow-talk in anger later on (‘I always knew you were a lesbian,’ etc.).”

                                             (Click above link to read more)

The Magnificent Rhetorical Legacy of the Founding Fathers

Slate.com:

"On Christmas morning, my husband found a CD of The Greatest Speeches of All Time in his stocking. It was, if I may say so, an inspired gift. The title did prove somewhat misleading: Richard Nixon's 'I am not a crook' speech really didn't belong, and I might not have chosen Winston Churchill's 1940 radio address as the sole example of his wartime rhetoric ('I have invincible confidence in the French army and its leaders').

"There is also a fundamental problem with any such audio collection, which is by definition limited to the 20^th century and can't include Lincoln, let alone Cicero. Anything called 'the greatest speeches of all time,' thus, has to be taken with a grain of salt.

"Still, in the wake of a presidential campaign marked by an unusually high standard of political rhetoric, it was weirdly revealing to listen to Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Reagan, JFK and RFK, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and even Nixon, one after the other, out of chronological order. For one thing, their themes were surprisingly consistent over the years, across parties, at different events and occasions.

"To some degree, this is to be expected: It's clear, when you listen to them together, that the authors of Ronald Reagan's 1987 Berlin Wall speech ('We come to Berlin, we American presidents, because it's our duty to speak, in this place, of freedom') had carefully re-read JFK's 1963 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech ('lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin … to the advance of freedom everywhere')."

                                             (Click above link to read more) 

Book Alert / The War Behind Me

The War Behind Me -- Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth About U.S. War Crimes. Inside the Army's Secret Archive of Investigations by Deborah Nelson. $26.95, 296 pages, ISBN #0465005276. Index, two appendices, no bibliography, source notes, b&w images.

Those of a certain age recall the shocking unfolding of the 1969 My Lai massacre, spearheaded by Army Lt. William Calley, Jr. Of course, My Lai's lasting impact on the American psyche resulted less from the extent of carnage there than from the fact that United States authorities worked strenuously to cover it up. That fact, together with the Nixon coverup of Watergate only a few years later, helped set the stage for a national cynicism toward government that continues to the present day.

Now Pulitzer Prize-winner Deborah Nelson weighs in with a book of interviews with Vietnam veterans looking back on those transformational days. Her findings are grim: the war crimes in question weren't rogue actions of a few bad apples; rather "these abuses were systemic, tolerated, and even ordered by military leaders." While the Army did a five-year study of war crime allegations, "the Pentagon kept the project secret and the nine thousand pages of reports lay hidden for most of the past 30 years."

Nelson used the Army reports as background in interviewing such veterans as: Jamie Henry, who reported to military officials that members of his company killed 19 children and adults a month before MyLai, only to be accused of lying; Robert B. Stemme, Jr., who reported that he witnessed the use of the equivalent of waterboarding, but while the Army substantiated his allegations, it did nothing to the perpetrators; and Brig. Gen. John Johns, who tried to alert 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry that his own service on a war crimes committee told him the Swift Boaters were "totally inaccurate" but could get no one from the campaign to call him back. Some say the Swift Boaters effectively denied Kerry the election.

Book Alert / Hazel Scott

Hazel Scott -- The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist From Cafe Society to Hollywood to HUAC by Karen Chilton, UMich. Press '08, $29.95, 288 pages, ISBN #0472115677. Index, bibliography, filmography, discography, source notes, grouping of b&w images.

It's remarkable that there has never, before now, been a biography of African-American Hazel Scott -- teenage jazz knockout at Manhattan's first fully-integrated nightclub 70 years ago; wife of obstreperous Harlem Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.; and Parisian expatriate.

As a black child prodigy, Scott auditioned at Julliard as an 8-year-old, played at Town Hall at 14, and played jazz renditions of some of the greatest works of Bach, Rachmaninoff and Chopin. Her marriage to Rep. Powell led to her outspoken advocacy of civil rights in an age before that was accepted and which made the Congressional HUAC paste a target on her back.

And yet, before age 35, Hazel Scott considered her life a failure and sought to end it. In her new book, New York writer/actor Karen Chilton "traces the fascinating arc of this brilliant and audacious American artist from stardom to ultimate obscurity."

Publisher Cancels Holocaust Memoir

The New York Times:

"Berkley Books, a unit of Penguin Books, has canceled the planned February publication of 'Angel at the Fence,' a memoir by Herman Rosenblat, a man who said he met his wife while a prisoner at a concentration camp during the Holocaust.

"In Mr. Rosenblat’s story, he said he met his wife Roma Radzicki while he was a teenage prisoner at a sub-camp of the Buchenwald camp in Germany. He wrote in 'Angel at the Fence' that she was living on a nearby farm disguised as a Christian and would sneak him apples at the camp’s fence, and that they reunited in Coney Island more than a decade later.

"Several Holocaust scholars attacked the story in the blogosphere and in a recent article in The New Republic, noting among other things that it would have been impossible for the pair to meet at a fence because of the camp’s layout.

"In a statement Saturday evening, Berkley Books, which had earlier defended the book, said it decided to cancel publication 'after receiving new information from Herman Rosenblat’s agent, Andrea Hurst.' Craig Burke, director of publicity at Berkley, declined to elaborate. Berkeley said it was demanding that Mr. Rosenblat and Ms. Hurst return all money received so far.

                                             (Click above link to read more)

'40s Femme Fatale Star Ann Savage Dies At 87

The Los Angeles Times:

"Ann Savage, who earned a cult following as a femme fatale in such 1940s pulp-fiction movies as 'Detour,' has died at 87. The actress died in her sleep at a nursing home on Christmas Day from complications following a series of strokes, said her manager, Kent Adamson.

"Her Hollywood career had largely been over since the mid-1950s, but she had a resurgence over the past year with a starring role in Canadian cult filmmaker Guy Maddin's 'My Winnipeg.'

"Starting with her 1943 debut in the crime story 'One Dangerous Night,' Savage made more than 30 films through the 1950s, including Westerns ('Saddles and Sagebrush,' 'Satan's Cradle'), musicals ('Dancing in Manhattan,' 'Ever Since Venus') and wartime tales ('Passport to Suez,' 'Two-Man Submarine').

                                             (Click above link to read more)

Out in Paperback / Discovering God

Discovering God -- The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief by Rodney Stark, HarperOne paperback, $14.95, 456 pages, ISBN 0061626015. Index, bibliography, source notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

"If God was present from the beginning of time, why did he wait to reveal himself to humans through Moses, the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad and so on?" In answering the question he poses himself, sociologist Rodney Stark "examines why a variety of world religions all sprang up at the same time, and why so many religions share similar features."

Stark's latest book is the paperback edition of the hardcover, published in 2007. Stark is Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences at Baylor University and has written 27 books on the history and sociology of religion.