Steve Goddard's History Wire

All The Best To History Wire's Readers in 2010!!

As we approach our 5th anniversary on January 22, we wanted to thank the people who make it possible. Your support and encouragement is vital to our success. Tomorrow, on the first day of what we hope will be a banner year for all of us, we'll print the 10 books we enjoyed most during 2009 and invite your feedback, along with your own favorites!

 

Book Alert / Islam In America

Islam in America -- Second Edition by Jane I. Smith, Columbia UP '09 paperback. $24.50, 304 pages, ISBN #0231147112. Index, resources, notes, glossary, chronology, b&w images sprinkled through text.

As an educative tool to help open-minded Americans learn more about a misunderstood minority in their midst, this new paperback fills the bill. But it also lets the reader inhabit the skin of the average Muslim, as it focuses "on the difficulty of living faithfully and adhering to tradition while adapting to an American way of life and addresses the role of women in Muslim culture, the raising and education of children, appropriate dress and behavior, and incidences of prejudice and unfair treatment."

Since the first edition of Jane I. Smith's book was published in 1999, it seems obvious why a second edition is in order. Additions to the latest edition include "infringement on civil rights and profiling, participation in politics, transformations in Islamic law, pluralism and identity issues, foreign influences, anti-Islamic sentiment, intra-Islamic tensions, and the quest for a moderate Islam."

Smith is senior lecturer in divinity and associate dean for faculty and academic affairs at Harvard Divinity School and has written books and essays on Muslims in the West, and particularly America.

Book Alert / The People's Artist -- Prokofiev's Soviet Years

The People's Artist -- Prokofiev's Soviet Years by Simon Morrison, Oxford UP '09, $29.95, 491 pages, ISBN #0195181670. Index, glossary, notes, no bibliography, two appendices, grouping of b&w glossy images.

As the years go by, the Soviet Era is understood more and more as a dark age of the Russian soul. So after brilliant composer Sergey Prokofiev managed to escape from the Soviet Union to France, preserving his unfettered right to create great music, it has baffled the musical community that he inexplicably returned there 20 years later.

In his new book, Princeton University Music Prof. Simon Morrison limns Prokofiev's hope, disillusionment and eventual death behind the Iron Curtain and the fallout from that fateful decision on those he loved.

But there's a silver lining to this story. For in his research on the life of the composer of Peter and the Wolf, Morrison gained access to his sealed files in the Russian State Archives and uncovered his first version of Romeo and Juliet, containing previously-unheard music and a happy ending. It is now being performed, with upcoming tour dates in London, Urbana, IL; Norfolk, VA; New York, and Chicago.

Morrison is author of Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement and editor of Prokofiev and His World.

Russians Lap Up The Tale Of A Shadowy Sky Couple

Mikhail and Yelizaveta Mukasey with their children Ella and Anatoly in front of their Los Angeles home in the early 1940s.

The Los Angeles Times:   

By Megan K. Stack

"Reporting from Moscow - For five years, as the world convulsed with war, the unassuming Soviet couple rubbed elbows with the likes of Walt Disney and Orson Welles. They took in a private screening of 'The Great Dictator,' at the invitation of Charlie Chaplin.

"Their son's earliest memories are set in Los Angeles -- the yellow house nestled in flower beds with a view of the Griffith Observatory; the animal crackers bought with the proceeds of a sidewalk lemonade stand; the author Theodore Dreiser drinking so much vodka he crawled under the table.

"Their handlers called them Zefir and Elza, and from Los Angeles they went on to roam undercover through dozens of countries, from Israel to Czechoslovakia, Soviet spies all the way. Lost for decades in the shadows of Cold War spookery, the tale of Mikhail and Yelizaveta Mukasey has been blasted over state-controlled media this year. Yelizaveta's death this fall, as a 97-year-old widow, gave Russian officials the chance to trumpet the derring-do of the two star agents."

"The story has found an eager audience. If there's one thing Russians love, it's a spy thriller -- especially one that conjures up the proud days of the Soviet Union and the fading glory of World War II. Add a touch of Hollywood stardust, and so much the better.

  

      (Click above link to read more)

In 'Ransom,' David Malouf Retells Iliad's Story From 'The Iliad'

The New York Times:

"For hundreds of years writers have been looking for new meaning in the lives and literature of the classical period. Chaucer and Shakespeare recast ancient tales. Alexander Pope translated Homer, turning Homeric verse into heroic couplets and neat apothegms.

"The 20th century Marguerite Yourcenar wrote 'Memoirs of Hadrian' and Robert Graves penned 'I, Claudius' (both about Roman emperors). A. E. Housman, an English classics professor, drew on 'The Greek Anthology' for his poems in 'A Shropshire Lad.' Mary McCarthy translated from French Simone Weil’s brilliant philosophical essay, 'The Iliad, or Poem of Force.' And playwrights like Jean Giraudoux ('Amphitryon 38,' 'The Trojan War Will Not Take Place') and Eugene O’Neill ('Mourning Becomes Electra') found an inexhaustible source of inspiration in the classics, often updating them."

  (Click above link to read more)

Book Alert / Perfect Rigor -- (A Genius) + (The Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century)

Perfect Rigor (A Genius) + (The Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century) by Masha Gessen, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt '09, $26, 256 pages, ISBN #015101406X. Index, source notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

In recent years, a healthcare spotlight has focused in on the autism spectrum, especially with a new study showing one in 110 children is afflicted with the disorder. One of the more remarkable offshoots of autism is Asperger's Syndrome, whose "sufferers" have the same difficulty relating to others that is characteristic of autism but also a high-functioning savant quality whose utilization often makes onlookers stand in awe.

Masha Gessen's new book relates the saga of one such autist, a Russian mathematician named Grigory Perelman, who entered a competition in 2006, to solve an extremely complex problem in topology, called the Poincare' Conjecture. To great amazement, Perelman solved it, entitling him to a $1 million prize, which he turned down.

The "clear and rigorous thinking" about mathematical concepts, writes the author, also turned out to be his undoing. Gessen discovered "such a mind is unable to cope with the messy reality of human affairs. When the jealousies, rivalries, and passions of life intruded on his platonic ideal, Perelman began to withdraw -- first from the world of mathematics and then, increasingly from the world in general." As of now, the author writes, the only person with whom he talks is his mother.

Masha Gessen is a Russian author of three books, who has written for numerous major publications.

Book Alert / A Dangerous Liaison

A Dangerous Liaison -- A Revelatory New Biography of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre by Carole Seymour-Jones, Overlook '09, $35, 574 pages, ISBN #1590202686. Index, selected biography, source notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.

It's no secret that writer/intellectuals Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre lived a personal life quite outside the box. Now, using never-before published letters, De Beauvoir's youthful journals, and "the oral accounts of those who loved and loathed the couple," British biographer Carole Seymour-Jones fleshes out (an apt choice of words) the couple's unconventional relationship.

While Sartre and De Beauvoir carried on the kind of decades-long affair that left them able to complete each other's sentences, they never married, which was emblematic of their fiercely independent outlook on life. Seymour-Jones regards her biography as a corrective to "De Beauvoir's own misleading memoirs."

In her well-researched new book, the author explores the "dark side to this brilliant pair's otherworldly bond; Sartre's compromises with the Nazis, De Beauvoir's bisexuality, her procurement of young mistresses to share with Sartre, the pair's refusal to conform socially or intellectually, and the remarkable courage it took to break the mold of their century."

Seymour-Jones was educated at Oxford and Sussex Universities and is the author of a recent biography of Vivienne Eliot. She lives in London.

You Have More In Common With The Mother Of Jesus Than You Think

Slate.com:

"It's tough to relate to someone who's supposed to be God's mom, isn't it?

" Over the past few weeks, millions of Christians have bought, sent, and received cards prominently displaying images of Mary and her son. The most popular designs—if the cards I've received are any indication—come from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Typically Mary, an attractive young woman with light-colored hair, stares beatifically at her newborn son, whose rosy cheeks compliment his virgin mother's fair complexion. Both sport haloes and in some renderings Jesus' halo includes a cross, a foreshadowing of his suffering three decades hence.

      (Click above link to read more)

John Mackey and Whole Foods

 

"John Mackey at a store in Austin, Texas. To 'the people that really dislike us,' he says, 'Whole Foods is a big corporation, so they think that we’ve crossed over to the dark side.; John Mackey, the co-founder and chief executive of Whole Foods Market, refers to the company as his child—not just his creation but the thing on earth whose difficulties or downfall it pains him most to contemplate.

He also sees himself as a 'daddy' to his fifty-four thousand employees, who are known as 'team members,' but they may occasionally consider him to be more like a crazy uncle. To the extent that a child inherits or adopts a parent’s traits, Whole Foods is an embodiment of many of Mackey’s. A Whole Foods store, in some respects, is like Mackey’s mind turned inside out. Certainly, the evolution of the corporation has often traced his own as a man; it has been an incarnation of his dreams and quirks, his contradictions and trespasses, and whatever he happened to be reading and eating, or not eating."

  (Click above link to read more)

Out in Paperback / Eminem

Eminem -- The Way I Am by Eminem, Plume '09 oversized paperback. $25, 201 pages, ISBN #0452296129. More than 200 color images sprinkled through text, along with original lyric sheets.

From the back cover:

"He's been called too crude, too violent, too white, too black. He's been praised and vilified -- made enemies in the White House and fans around the globe. Everyone wants to know what Eminem is really like -- after the curtains go down. In The Way I Am, the world's most controversial and enigmatic rapper writes, candidly, about how he sees the world. About family and friends; about hip-hop and rap battles and his searing rhymes; about the conflicts and challenges that have made him who he is today."