Tag Archives: nonfiction

Book review: The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues

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cThe Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues by Susan Griffin. Not recommended.

In The Book of the Courtesans, Susan Griffin tries to capture the magic that made courtesans some of the most noteworthy and notorious women of their times. According to Griffin, a courtesan would need to have several virtues to succeed, including: timing, beauty, cheek, brilliance, gaiety, grace, and charm. Mixed with these virtues are seven “erotic stations”: flirtation, suggestion, arousal, seduction, rapture, satiety, and afterglow.

Griffin uses biographies to illustrate how various courtesans exhibited these virtues, for example, courtesan and poet Veronica Franco’s beginnings and career are covered under the chapter on “Brilliance.” Griffin, who earlier separated the concept of courtesan from those of mistress and prostitute, runs into trouble, for many of her plentiful examples do not fit her definition of courtesans. For example, she talks at great length about Mme. de Pompadour (mistress to Louis XV), Marion Davies (mistress to William Randolph Hearst), and “Klondike Kate” (gold rush saloon dancer). The point of naming these virtues is lost if a courtesan cannot be found who exemplified them.

Griffin’s information is untrustworthy. She states that Jeanne du Barry’s father was a monk as though this is an accepted historical fact. Most biographical information on du Barry, however, states that her father is unknown but could have been a cleric. There are numerous instances of this kind of misleading information throughout. She talks of a suggestive sculpture in the Musée d’Orsay based upon a body cast of courtesan Apollonie Sabatier, but art sources say this story is unconfirmed and originated from a rumour circulated at the salon where the sculpture debuted. It is difficult to separate Griffin’s blithe statements from the established facts.

The author doesn’t stop there, however. She engages in flights of fancy that sound poetic but have little basis in fact or reality. As a child, Mogador and her mother lived in fear of one of her mother’s former lovers. She escaped him twice, and, according to Griffin, “the exhilaration of these two escapes must have livened her [dance] steps” later in life. How the terror of running from being beaten and brutalised as a child could lead to “exhilaration” while dancing is clear only to Griffin. She uses “exuberance” in a similar context.

In addition, Griffin stretches metaphors past their limits, to the point where they are ludicrous rather than apt or poetic. For example, “even while destiny was robbing Céleste [Mogador] of any sense of safety, like the careening rise and fall of the polka, it also conspired to tempt her with something grander than simple security.” She says Marie Dorval “nearly asphyxiated herself for each performance,” which seems comparable to being a “little pregnant.” She states that, like the other poor people of Paris, Mogador saw the melodramatic events of her own life reflected [on stage]” and that “even today a pulse can be felt to vibrate back and forth between the stage and the audience.” What is lost here is that the members of today’s audiences are unlikely ever to have been poor in the same sense as Mogador.

Courtesans is replete with these kinds of disconnects. When discussing beauty, Griffin gives an example of a canyon, then claims that beauty “needs” to be enhanced — but fails to explain why or how one can enhance the natural beauty of a canyon. In other words, she demonstrates the opposite of her point — beauty does not need to be enhanced, and her concept of beauty is phony and ephemeral. She also says Blanche d’Antigny, at age 10, hid in the attic because of a “desperate longing” to stay in the “beautiful countryside.” The obvious never occurs to Griffin — that small children are rarely eager to leave the only stable home they have ever known, even an ugly one.

Another leap of logic occurs later when Griffin says, “Many men would have been threatened by such potency in a lover.” Perhaps this is generally true, but Griffin seems oblivious to the fact that “many men” aren’t Louis XV, king of France. His sense of security about du Barry’s “potency” is hardly remarkable, since he is the primary source of it.

Mostly, Griffin idealises the courtesan’s career, and much of Courtesans seems to reflect her personal regret that this lifestyle opportunity belongs to history. She quotes Veronica Franco as writing, “You can do nothing worse in this life . . . than to force the body into such servitude . . . to give oneself in prey to so many, to risk being despoiled, robbed or killed . . . what fate could be worse?” Franco’s advice is quite clear — except to Griffin, who says, “In fact, the impassioned tone of her letter does not contradict the passionate defense she made of courtesanry [where?], but instead outlines the perils courtesans faced . . .” “What fate could be worse?” than subjecting one’s will and body completely to others seems a very specific condemnation of the lifestyle, but not to Griffin. We can’t expect anything more of the author who peppers this “history” with page after page of fiction and who says, “But that is why fiction exists — so we may see the undocumented moments that would otherwise pass out of history, and thus out of our understanding, unwitnessed.” In other words, don’t file The Book of the Courtesans under “History/Women’s History,” as the cover suggests. Shelve it under “Susan Griffin’s idealist imagination.” Better yet, consider reading a different book altogether. Grandes Horizontales by Virginia Rounding has been recommended as an alternative.

As an aside, there is no index, which also detracts from any value this book may have had as a reference.

12 May 2004
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

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Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis. Not recommended.

In Founding Brothers, Joseph Ellis uses six vignettes to show how the thoughts, acts, and interactions of the leaders of the “Revolutionary Generation” reveal their uncertainty about the new republic’s ability to survive and about the issues that threaten that survival, including slavery and the two parties’ fundamental differences. The “Brothers” of the title are Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton (one vignette examines their famous duel), George Washington, Benjamin Franklin (who is skimmed over, partly because of his age and lack of highest-level participation in the new government and partly, one suspects, because Ellis openly holds him in low regard), James Madison, John (and Abigail) Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

Ellis is a highly biased historian and, as a result, can be a sloppy one. He fares best with Hamilton and Burr, showing Hamilton’s concerns about Burr’s character at a crucial time when character mattered because so much was at stake. While, given the evidence of Burr’s lifetime, it is difficult to turn Burr into a sympathetic figure, Ellis does show that Burr and Hamilton were very much alike and, later, that many of the Revolutionary Generation had legitimate concerns about Hamilton’s character in the context of a republic.

Any attempt at objectivity ends with Hamilton and Burr, however. For Ellis, George Washington is the sole reason we are here today. While outlining his physical flaws (unimportant as these are in the context), Ellis believes that Washington had a prescient idea of what the nation needed, including a strong leader like himself — a leader who could write to the Cherokee “in this path I wish all the Indian nations to walk” (referring to his advice to them to stop fighting white expansion and to adopt white economics and culture). Ellis avoids the arrogance of this suggestion and any reference to what would happen when many of the Cherokee did exactly what Washington told them to do — the infamous Trail of Tears. For all of Ellis’s belief in Washington’s prophetic abilities and insight, he deliberately leaves out that which does not fit with his view of history — the fact that the Indians, whether compliant Cherokee or defiant Comanche, were going to suffer similar fates, whether they took Washington’s advice or not. Being further east and situated on prime land, the Cherokee merely faced theirs sooner.

Later, when listing the Founding Brothers’ individual faults, the worst Ellis can say of Washington is that he was not well read, did not write well, and was a poor speller (as though spelling ability is a critical quality in a leader — and as though the rest of the Revolutionary Generation were much better). He also notes that Washington was more of an actor than a leader, failing to acknowledge that leadership is largely a matter of acting out the role and performing for the public.

Ellis is similarly protective of John Adams, whose presidency is remembered as a bad one because that is what Jefferson wanted. Ellis points out that Adams’s best decision — to send a peace delegation to France — was made while Abigail was sick in Quincy, while his worst choices — support of the Alien and Sedition Acts — were made under her direct influence. When he says that Adams did well when all the votes were counted, despite “bad luck, poor timing, and the highly focused political strategy of his Republican enemies,” Ellis disingenuously blames circumstance, Abigail, and Jefferson for Adams’s failings. Ellis can gloss over the evidence, but he cannot explain away Adams’s personal choice to support bad legislation. He, not Abigail or Jefferson, was responsible for his own actions and his own presidency.

This is not the case with Jefferson’s presidency. While it is barely mentioned (it merits part of a paragraph on page 212), Ellis says that Jefferson’s first term “would go down as one of the most brilliantly successful in American history.” This passive statement implies that this success had nothing to do with Jefferson or his actions, but just happens to be how history has recorded it. Ellis hurries on to state that his second term “proved to be a series of domestic tribulations and foreign policy failures.” Ellis leaves the reader with the impression that Adams is not to blame for his mistakes and that Jefferson can take credit only for his failures.

At this point, Ellis enhances Adams’s quoted assessment of Jefferson by noting that “Jefferson was an elegant stylist, to be sure . . . But he was not a mover-and-shaker, only a draftsman.” This seems an odd point for Ellis to make, given his focus for much of the book on Jefferson’s tireless efforts to eliminate Adams and the Federalists as threats and to have his version of history emerge as the one remembered.

While Ellis’s view of Jefferson as a conniving, borderline psychotic may explain Jefferson’s behavior and pattern of denial, it does so partly because Ellis contorts the evidence to lead to his conclusion rather than letting the evidence lead him to the conclusion. At one point, he states that Adams must surely have seen an exchange of letters between Abigail and Jefferson and that “we can be reasonably sure that Abigail was speaking for her husband as well as herself” and goes on to elaborate that the “Adams team” was charging Jefferson with two serious offenses. One page later, Ellis contradicts himself when he says, “Although Jefferson probably presumed that Abigail was sharing their correspondence with her husband, Adams himself never saw the letters until several months later.” He quotes Adams as writing, “The whole of the correspondence was begun and conducted without my Knowledge or Suspicion.”

Later, Ellis reads Jefferson’s mind, asserting that his use of the “collective we” in a letter was “inadvertent acknowledgment of the coordinated campaign of the Republican party.” How Ellis draws this conclusion is unclear; Jefferson uses “we” three times in the sentence. There is nothing “inadvertent” about Jefferson’s statement; he is telling Adams outright the collective Republican leadership’s perception of his role.

Ellis has come up with an interesting interpretation of Washington as indispensable; Jefferson as treacherous, traitorous, and seemingly disturbed; and Adams between the two — a fiery but decent man, hamstrung by Washington’s aura and reputation and by Jefferson’s disingenuous deviousness. Jefferson’s version of history, which Ellis believes was consciously created, has won. The underlying problem is that, given the level of contortions, distortions, and outright mind reading it requires for Ellis to come to this point, his version of history is as suspect as that of the Thomas Jefferson he portrays.

If you want to learn about the aftermath of the American Revolution and the relationships of its leaders, read Founding Brothers — but read it critically and with an awareness that Ellis is guiding you not to where the evidence leads, but where he directs it to lead. It’s interesting, entertaining, and thought provoking — but then so is historical fiction. Trust Ellis’s objectivity as much as he trusts Jefferson’s.

5 May 2004
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History

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Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History by Barbara A. Hanawalt. Not recommended.

University of Minnesota history professor Barbara Hanawalt uses an array of primary sources, from court cases and Hustings Wills to contemporary books of advice, to show how typical children grew up in London during the 14th and 15th centuries, from an abbreviated childhood to early marriages and lengthy apprenticeships. Between chapters full of facts taken from her sources, she interjects composite fictions, from a schoolboy’s drowning to a case of marriage-related blackmail.

Hanawalt covers such topics as living conditions, sanitation, family and social networks, apprentice and servant contracts, relationships between apprentices and masters and servants and masters, orphans, wards, marriage, and birth. She also tries to define how an individual moved from one stage of life to another, with an apprentice or servant contract marking the transition from childhood to adolescence and the end of apprentice or a marriage marking the end of adolescence.

Although Hanawalt provides an excellent overview of how young people moved through life and the different expectations of males and females, there is little life in these pages beyond the facts, despite the fictional interjections (one of which turns the mythical “Robin Hood” into an urban blackmailer!). One comes away with a sense of a very ordered society, where citizens’ orphans are under the protection of the city through the mayor and chancellor and the guilds regulate dress, behaviour, and other potential expressions of individuality.

There is little detail, here, however, beyond the bare facts to show how children spent their days, how they felt about their parents and society, and what they aspired to. There is more about the contractual nature of apprenticeship and servanthood than about the day-to-day life of an apprentice, leaving the reader feeling that there are critical pieces missing about what “growing up” meant to the medieval mind. In many cases, Hanawalt will draw broad conclusions about how a particular situation might be treated based on only one or two records, although they may not be representative.

Hanawalt occasionally makes odd or even ludicrous statements or comments. For example, she says, “Ratus ratus, a scientific name with a redundant ring” unnecessarily, as this adds nothing of interest. Not only that, but the scientific name is Rattus rattus, and, although Hanawalt calls it the “common house rat,” it’s more typically known as the black rat. On p. 42, she says, “Growing up in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century London could not have been the same experience as growing up in more modern London.” This statement is so laughably self-evident that one wonders what Hanawalt was thinking to include it. Later, she talks about “pox, sweating sickness, flux . . .” without defining what was meant by those terms. (Is “sweating sickness” a generic term for unspecified fevers, is it a specific fever, or is it something entirely different?) She asserts that “females have a biological advantage in surviving disease” but does not provide the basis for this claim or cite a source for it. (I am curious as to what this advantage is.)

Some of Hanawalt’s examples do not seem related to the point. She says that “a visit to a physician might have been more of a hazard than a help,” then cites a case where “the child was not cured.” Logically, the supporting example should have illustrated how a physician’s treatment actually harmed the patient. She notes that “prostitutes, female servants, and singlewomen were at risk for conceiving illegitimate children.” What is a “singlewoman”? Perhaps this term has a specific medieval meaning, but without a definition, it sounds like she is saying unmarried women were at risk of having illegitimate children. At one point, she notes that “cases of forced prostitution of vulnerable young teenage girls can be multiplied in the record sources, but the repetition of such sad cases become depressing.” Does the reader need to be told this? And, since Hanawalt declares in the introduction that she has “a basic optimism about human nature that comes through,” her viewpoint is admittedly skewed.

Undoubtedly, Hanawalt has done her research and made a contribution to our understanding of the workings of London law and society as they affected children and adolescents (however defined). Unfortunately, for the general reader looking for the Middle Ages to come to life, Growing Up in Medieval London is not the best place to go.

20 March 2004
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

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Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen. Highly recommended.

Sociology professor James Loewen wonders why American history is, for many high school students, their most hated and least memorable subject. After all, given the clash of Native peoples with Europeans, Europeans with each other, a revolution and the founding of a republic, a bloody civil war, two world wars, the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, and hundreds of years of racial tensions, American history is inherently dramatic. Moreover, studies have shown that minority students who perform well in math, sciences, and other subjects consistently underperform in American history. By examining the contents of a dozen representative textbooks, Loewen discovers what’s wrong with American history as taught — it truly is boring and bland, and, in many cases, consists of lies and half-truths. Almost worse, it is written in a simplistic, declarative style more evocative of grade-school primers than of the college-level works many high school students will soon face.

The simplest example Loewen offers is that of Helen Keller, whose touching story of overcoming disability becomes the entire story of her life, as most of us know it. Like Tom Sawyer, she is stuck in perpetual adolescence in our minds. The real Keller, however, grew up and became an outspoken advocate for the working class and the poor. In fact, she became a radical socialist. As a symbol, Keller is two dimensional, almost like a character in a moving TV movie. As a real person, Keller is also a whole person, sharing why she empathizes with the lower classes, showing courage in supporting the NAACP in the 1920s, and even revealing embarrassing lapses in judgment, like her gushing support of the Russian Revolution.

The example of Keller, paired with what the history textbooks leave out about Woodrow Wilson (his racism and imperialism, and, I would guess, his feud with progressives like Theodore Roosevelt) are minor compared to what follows. There’s the “discovery” and “exploration” of America, with the pertinent question of how a land settled for centuries can be either “discovered” or “explored.”

There’s also the largely ignored question of other possible forays into the “new” world by peoples ranging from Scandinavia to Africa. American history texts treat history as a sacred text and each explorer as an archetype, ignoring Columbus’s avaricious and vicious behaviour toward the Arawaks. One explorer is portrayed overlooking his “discovery” while wearing full armor — when, in reality, he and his party had been left with nothing but rags.

Lies covers a great deal of territory, from Columbus to the whitewashing of even recent history, like the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. History texts make several egregious errors: They tell blatant untruths. They perpetuate popular myths (e.g., the first Thanksgiving). They lie by omission. They leave false impressions (e.g., the civil rights movement had no causal relationship to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965). They avoid negative images even from primary sources (e.g., the disgust Columbus’s contemporaries felt about his treatment of the Indians). They fail to portray whole people (e.g., Lincoln and Douglas are carefully edited). They distort events and attitudes (e.g., Reconstruction). They avoid conflict and controversy at all costs. They fail to make critical connections (like that between the civil rights movement and the Civil Rights Act). Fundamentally, they shun anything that would put history, people, and movements into context. 

All fail to do what intellectual inquiry should: engage students and require them to examine information and draw conclusions about its credibility and cause and effect. Instead, students memorise (badly) the archetypes and the myths built around them without thinking about their likelihood — or improbability. And, without being asked to engage themselves with the material or the people who make history, it’s no wonder students can’t remember anything and that they see history as irrelevant today.

How have history textbooks reached this point? The fault lies with everyone from absent and indifferent authors, publishers who need to sell books, interest groups, states that prefer myth to reality, review boards that have their own agendas, and, of course, each of us who learned this myths and believes them as untouchable as A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Popular culture perpetuates them.

Of course, there are the teachers who are overburdened with administrative and disciplinary tasks rather than teaching. Loewen also notes that, while math and sciences are generally taught by people with degrees in these areas, history is so low priority that it often falls to a coach, who must justify his or her sports role by holding a teaching position, whether they are qualified or not.

Loewen proposes a number of correctives. For example, he suggests teaching fewer topics. Is it necessary to memorise every European explorer who “discovered” something, or would it be more relevant to show the impact that Columbus’s expeditions had, not only on the Americas, but on the cultures, economies, and futures of Europe, Africa, and the Islamic world? Rather than regurgitating facts, students can learn the skills of criticism — how to examine the credibility of primary and secondary sources based on the writer or speaker’s viewpoint and agenda and how to put information into its broader context.

History as it happened is why we are where we are today. Rather than distort it into “feel-good” nationalism, we need to learn what it has to teach us to engage with it. I recommend this to anyone with a serious interest in American history and in the current sad state of American history education.

20 March 2004
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy

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Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy by Howard Jones. Not recommended.

In July 1839, a group of Africans that had been illegally imported into Cuba used violence to take over the Amistad while it was transporting them from Havana to Puerto Príncipe. In August, the Amistad and the Africans were seized off Long Island. These events set off a judicial, legislative, and diplomatic battle that would not be completely resolved until the Civil War ended slavery in the United States. Mutiny on the Amistad looks at the laws, issues, and people involved in this landmark case.

The key questions are: Who has jurisdiction over the case? Are the Africans legally slaves? If so, who has the rights to them? Are they “salvage,” like the Amistad? Will the case worsen the relations with Spain and strengthen Great Britain’s claims in Cuba? Will it become the catalyst the abolitionists need to give them and their cause credibility with the northern public? And how will Martin Van Buren’s administration deal with such a controversial case in a re-election year?

While the case attracted the attention of abolitionists like Arthur and Lewis Tappan and John Quincy Adams; the administration of Martin Van Buren and even those of some of his successors; and several governments, including those of Spain and Great Britain, Jones’s repetitive treatment of the story robs it of much of its drama. For example, he makes the declarative statement that the Van Buren administration’s focus was solely on re-election and ensuring the Amistad case did not interfere with that objective more than a dozen times. Some of the primary source quotes do not seem well selected to expand upon the contemporary view; in too many cases, quotes consist of one or two words, such as “gross injustice,” that are too out of context or are such common expressions that they become meaningless. The best quotes come, not from the case or the participants, but from the various southern, northern, and abolitionist publications; these headlines reveal contemporary perceptions, beliefs, and biases. As for the participants, the only voice that seems to express any passion is that of John Quincy Adams, who is clearly emotional about the abolitionist cause.

In the meantime, the voices of Joseph Cinqué and the rest of the Africans — the subjects of the entire controversy — are heard only rarely, primarily through letters to the abolitionists complaining about the poor conditions they are subjected to in prison. It is not clear if this is because their testimony was generally deemed irrelevant (they seldom speak for themselves) or if their feelings and thoughts are poorly documented because of the language and literacy barriers they initially face. Jones does try to interject them periodically, but during the long passages in which they are missing the reader feels as though the case has become an exercise in legal argument without victims.

Ultimately, it is not clear what the Amistad case accomplished. For many in the north, Cinqué and the other Africans are objects of both curiosity and sympathy, but it is not apparent that the Amistad case significantly advanced the cause of abolition — in itself an irony since Cinqué and company were never legally slaves (one point that the courts and even the district attorney agree upon). Jones asserts that the case raised public awareness of the conflict between natural law (such as man’s right to freedom and to kill to obtain it) and positive law (such as that enabling slavery and preventing slaves from rebelling). The scope of Jones’s research and quotations, save those from newspapers, does not support this; there is little presented to show that the case was discussed every day in ballrooms, parlors, and bars or that the general public’s perception was permanently altered. What is clear, however, is the racism that is prevalent throughout. Even some of the abolitionists, most of whom are spiritual leaders who find slavery an abomination against God, do not consider Africans their equals.

The facts of the case are all here, along with much of the background. Some of the conclusions seem incomplete. Throughout, one gets the impression this could have been a shorter, more succinct, and, more importantly, a more dramatic and tightly argued book had Jones or his editor cut the repetitions, redundancies, and minutiae and focused on a more cohesive discussion of the relevant specifics of the case and its effects on the public, the U.S. government, and policy. As it is, in Jones’s hands this case appears less interesting and less important historically than it probably was, and even the source of all this, Cinqué and his comrades, lose their three-dimensionality — their humanity, as it were. If you are interested in the Amistad case and in the story of the abolitionist movement, this is probably a must-read — but don’t stop here.

16 February 2004
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil

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Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil by Ron Rosenbaum. Highly recommended.

Explaining Hitler is a misleading title, for the focus is primarily on the Jewish academic community’s attempts to explain Hitler — to put it in grossly oversimplified terms, this is somewhat like the prey explaining the motivations of the predator. The result is that, while Hitler remains a mystery, the academic and personal biases of the explainers are revealed. To each person’s theories and comments Rosenbaum adds his own analysis, finding the flaws with precision.

Hitler explanation ranges from the deeply personal (abusive father, infection by a Jewish prostitute, mother’s painful death under the care of a Jewish physician) to the inevitable influence of historical forces (post-war inflation, depression). Rosenbaum discusses the personal in depth, including Hitler’s rumored Jewish ancestor and bizarre relationship with his half-niece Geli Raubal, the convolutions each theory takes, and the lack of facts or reliable information to support any of them. For example, Rosenbaum astutely points out the only real “proof” of the abusive father is Hitler’s own assertion and sarcastically suggests that there is reason not to trust Hitler’s word. One argument that immediately comes to mind that Rosenbaum only briefly alludes to later is that millions of people have abusive fathers, bad experiences with individual members of ethnic and other groups, and so forth, yet do not turn into war criminals responsible for the deaths of millions. In short, these theories might explain Hitler’s anti-Semitism, but not the results.

What is disturbing about so many of these explanations (some of which are advocated by such noted people as Simon Wiesenthal, who favors the Jewish prostitute theory), and more sophisticated ones that appear later in the book, such as George Steiner’s, is their insistence that a Jew or a group of Jews is responsible. In these theories, a Jewish ancestor, a Jewish prostitute, an Eastern Jew with a different appearance, or the Jewish “blackmail of transcendence” and “addiction to the ideal” is responsible for Hitler — implying Hitler is not responsible at all. Although the egotistical and monomaniacal Claude Lanzmann, maker of the documentary Shoah, is too self-centered and angry to clearly articulate the basis for his belief that Hitler explanation is inherently “obscene,” it could be because so much “explanation” has found a way to point a finger at the Jews, directly or indirectly, while minimizing Hitler. Perhaps for that reason, Lanzmann is interested only in how the Holocaust was accomplished, not with the motivations of Hitler or his followers. The major flaw is that Lanzmann has missed the point by dictating that his rule of “There is no why” must apply to all other individuals — and the irony of that.

As Rosenbaum repeatedly points out, no explanations for Hitler are acceptable that excuse him — that look to a bad experience with a Jew rather than to, for example, the influence of anti-Semitism surrounding him in Austria and Germany. Again, however, it can be said that anti-Semitic influence has surrounded many people (as Rosenbaum notes, pre-war France was more anti-Semitic than either Austria or Germany) who have not killed, let alone killed millions.

Rosenbaum’s approach is excellent, pairing individuals with complementary or opposing viewpoints, e.g., Lanzmann and Dr. Micheels, the theologian Emil Fackenheim and the atheist historian Yehuda Bauer in “The Temptation to Blame God.” Even revisionist David Irving is given a chapter. Rosenbaum saves what seems to be his preference for the last chapter — Lucy Dawidowicz’s belief that Hitler decided on The Final Solution as early as 1918, based on what he said and did not say over time, and on the “laughter” that is transferred from the Jewish victims to the Nazi victors. While this does not explain the origins of Hitler’s evil, it pinpoints the time frame and removes the notion that he was ambivalent or experienced a sense of moral ambiguity. Dawidowicz’s Hitler knows early on what he wants to do and lets insiders in on the “joke” he finds it to be. Presented in this way, Dawidowicz does seem to have come closest to the truth about Hitler. After all, how can one capable of ambivalence ultimately kill millions?

To me, one critical question is not why or how any one man became evil or chose an evil course of action, for the explanation could simply be that the capacity for evil in an individual may be higher than most of us are capable of realising or accepting. That is, everyday evil like John Wayne Gacy’s is accomplished in isolation and is therefore limited in scope. The intent and the desired scope given opportunity remain unknowns. The more frightening question is why and how so many chose to follow Hitler. I do not necessarily mean the German people, per se, but the thousands of bureaucrats, managers, and soldiers who physically carried out The Final Solution, knowing exactly what this entailed and what it signified. Hitler seized the opportunity offered by the political and social situation to institutionalize his personal evil. A single man may envision and desire genocide, but it takes followers and believers to carry it out. Explaining Hitler (or Stalin or Genghis Khan) is not enough to explain the scope of this particular human evil. Without followers, there are no leaders. And without followers, millions of Jews (and Cambodians and Indians and so forth) could not have died. The evil that is so hard to face goes well beyond Hitler to a place that no one could truly wish to discover.

18 January 2004
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: Life in a Medieval Village

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Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Joseph Gies. Recommended.

Life in a Medieval Village is one of a series, including Life in a Medieval City and Life in a Medieval Castle, written by Frances and Joseph Gies. This series rarely touches upon the great people and events romanticized by Hollywood and numerous fiction writers (and perhaps even a few historians), but focuses on the basics of everyday life for the average person or even the average lord or cleric. The Gies use a number of primary and secondary sources, the latter of which reveal how the historian’s view of the medieval village has changed in the 20th and 21st centuries and how flexible historians must be in interpreting the evidence.

Researched and written for the layperson, Life in a Medieval Village is more accurately about life in an English medieval village, with most of the detail coming from the records of Aethelintone/Aethelington/Adelintune/Aylington (Elton) in Huntingdon, one of Ramsey Abbey’s manors. The Gies provide a history of the village concept and its definition; its role in the manorial system (contrasted to the seigneurial system); a description of its people, physical structure, buildings, administration and administrators, judicial system, family and spiritual life, and work; and the background behind its decline.

The world of Elton and similar villages is not found in movies or novels. Social and economic statuses are not always clear cut, economic upward mobility is possible primarily through acquisition of land, and even the distinction between “free” and “unfree” is not distinct. Life revolves around the manor and the villeins’ and cotters’ obligations to the mostly absent lord and the manor, which come in the form of work, rents, fees, taxes, and fines. The administrative structure of the manor is somewhat like that of a modern corporation, with the lord as CEO of multiple manors (and primary consumer of goods) who “wanted the certainty of rents and dues from his tenants, the efficient operation of his demesne, and good prices for wool and grain.” His steward, or seneschal, serves as senior executive, while the bailiff, reeve, beadle, woodward, and others are the manor’s day-to-day managers and supervisors.

As the villagers acquire surnames (from where they live, what they do, the offices they hold, and personal characteristics), patterns emerge from the records. Some families become dominant economically and politically (e.g., holding many offices such as reeve or juror many times); others decline; while yet others show a propensity for violence and petty crimes. Such infractions are punished primarily with fines rather than corporal punishment; the stocks and hanging are resorted to only in the most egregious cases. The judicial system is often compassionate (or at least practical); many fines for minor trespasses are lowered or forgiven by the court because “she is poor.” When laws are broken, a jury hears the case, but the entire village decides.

The Gies also provide an excellent overview of the passing of the medieval village, which began with a sustained famine and the Black Death. The labor-intensive manorial system simply could not survive the depletion of workers, the increase in expenses, the onerous taxes brought on by wars, and, perhaps more importantly, the sense of change and discontent that began to pervade the villein class.

The challenge for the Gies as authors is to take the minimal material available (ranging from books about estate management written for lords and stewards to court and ecclesiastical records) and to bring the village to life from these records. What emerges are people who live in fragile houses; are rarely well fed from a nutritional perspective and whose food supply is always in doubt; work hard and are not above trying to wheedle out of work; who drink and fight and are sometimes brutal; fornicate (primarily a woman’s crime but not a particularly reviled one); vandalize; commit petty crimes against the lord and their neighbors; and in short live lives of struggle every day without the expectation or vision of change in the future.

The Gies focus on Elton, with supplemental material from other English villages, so the reader who is interested in village life on the continent will need to explore other works to flesh out the picture. Because the mostly illiterate villagers themselves left few personal records, it is up to the thoughtful reader to discern the village’s character and personality and to conceive of what day-to-day life must have been, based on the little that is known — to put oneself into the worn shoes of the working villein and to imagine his or her thoughts, feelings, and aspirations. Life in a Medieval Villageis a good beginning.

30 October 2003
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: Theodore Rex

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Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. Highly recommended.

Theodore Rex (from the dubbing given Theodore Roosevelt by author Henry James) is the second part of a trilogy-in-progress by Edmund Morris but is easily read on its own as coverage of Roosevelt’s presidential terms. This installment covers Roosevelt’s life from the day of McKinley’s assassination and his swearing-in to seven years, one hundred sixty-nine days later, when he departs Washington, D.C., by train and “did not show himself [at Baltimore], as if to emphasize to a small, wistful crowd that he was no longer public property.”

Roosevelt’s partial and whole terms are set during a time of unsettling transition — rapid developments in military technologies and abilities, influx of immigrants from Slavs to Japanese, growing global trade and interdependencies, spreading racial violence, uncontrolled combinations and trusts and corporate greed, and an increased awareness of the mismanagement of and need to conserve natural resources. In Theodore Rex, reflecting the logistics of Congress and the waning powers of a president not returning to office, the shorter first term covers more pages than the full second term.

During his presidency, Roosevelt adds the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, begins the Panama Canal after nudging Panamanian independence, supports the liberation of Cuba, resolves a Moroccan crisis, prevents a German-Venezuelan war and all that would imply, settles the Russo-Japanese conflict and wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, balances capital (much to its chagrin) and labor, rebuilds the U.S. Navy and solidifies the U.S. as a world diplomatic and military leader, and preserves an unprecedented amount of land (including five national parks, thirteen national forests, and fifteen national monuments — the Grand Canyon and Muir Woods among them).

Morris shows, through personal and family writings, the letters of friends and enemies, speeches, newspaper accounts, commentary (especially that of “Mr. Dooley” — Finley Peter Dunne), and other contemporary sources Roosevelt’s intelligence, erudition, strength of will, personal conviction of righteousness, foresight, and uncanny ability to manipulate everyone from the media to senators and diplomats. He is a man who knows what he wants, that what he wants is right, and how to make what he wants happen. His determination and conviction lead to greatly expanded executive power — which in his mind is not incompatible or inconsistent with democracy. He has his weaknesses, too — most notably, an utter lack of understanding of business, finance, and the markets.

Although Roosevelt achieves much that directly benefits the public (such as settling the United Mine Workers strike and passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906) and earns popular support bordering on adulation, neither he nor his wisdom is perfect. Morris darkly hints that Roosevelt’s enemies may have found their privacy compromised, for examples, senators who find their correspondence has already been opened by the Secret Service, although he later casts doubt on Roosevelt’s involvement.

More importantly, he discusses the Brownsville (Texas) incident at length, which reveals what can happen when democracy is subverted and power is abused. Roosevelt orders three entire companies of black soldiers — including at least one career soldier with whom he had served in Cuba — dishonorably discharged and banned from the military for life based on an incident that may have been fabricated by resentful white townspeople. Morris writes, “Brownsville had been proof to many, and perhaps even a warning to himself, of the truth of Lord Acton’s famous dictum.”

Morris succeeds in bringing not only Theodore Roosevelt and his compelling personality to life, but those of many others as well: wife Edith Kermit Roosevelt; daughter Alice; son Quentin; House Speaker Joseph Cannon; United Mine Workers president John Mitchell; Cabinet members such as John Hay, Philander Chase Knox, Elihu Root, and George Cortelyou; long-time nemesis Mark Hanna; successor William Howard Taft (“who must have been a very pink and white baby,” according to Kate Carew); and confidantes such as Captain Archie Butt.

Theodore Rex is not limited to political life, however. Roosevelt is portrayed not only as a writer, reader, hunter/sportsman, adventurer, hiker, swimmer, and athlete. He is shown as a difficult father to Alice (who resents his silence about her own mother, the late Alice Hathaway Roosevelt), didactic disciplinarian to Quentin (along with his “White House Gang” of friends), and favourite uncle to broods of Roosevelt clan children at his Sagamore Hill summer retreat in Oyster Bay, New York. Even in his family relations, however, Roosevelt is always mindful of his image and that of his progressive platform, hence, his “posterity letters” — seemingly personal letters to family and friends, often signed with his full name, he uses to document his viewpoints for posterity.

Morris is clearly passionate about Roosevelt, and it shows in the life he brings to events that are more than one hundred years old. Whether you are interested in American history, the U.S. presidency and its holders, turn-of-the-century events, or Theodore Roosevelt himself, Theodore Rex is not to be missed for its honest portrayal of a complex man in changing times and for the light it throws on today’s political climate and workings. Be sure to read the notes, which contain many anecdotes, quotes, and other material.

18 October 2003
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: On the Rez

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On the Rez by Ian Frazier. Highly recommended.

If you are looking for structure and pat solutions to contemporary Native American problems, you won’t find them in On the Rez by Ian Frazier. Like the reservation life and stories it reveals, On the Rez is rambling and spontaneous.

Frazier uses his sometimes problematic friendship with Le War Lance, a Sioux from Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota whom he meets in New York City, to explore Pine Ridge life today along with past and present injustices. Le seems to have no home, no permanent job, no wife, and no children. He does have family on the reservation — as well as a bottomless taste for inexpensive beer. Frazier recounts their many days spent together, whether it’s watching TV while drinking beer, driving around the reservation looking for people, or facing a propane leak and potential explosion — and death. Frazier is genuinely fond of Le, but not of his drinking, and he repeatedly says how much easier it is to be around Le and his brother Floyd John once Floyd John undergoes rehab and gives up drinking. Alcoholism, diabetes, fatal car accidents, and more are part of day-to-day life on Pine Ridge.

Frazier also devotes several chapters to the life of SuAnne Big Crow, an Indian high school basketball star who led Pine Ridge’s Lady Thorpes basketball team to a state championship and traveled to Europe and Australia as part of an Indian all-star team before her death in a car accident. SuAnne serves as a uniting force between Indians and their often-prejudiced white neighbors, between the lingering Red Cloud and Crazy Horse factions, and between American Indian Movement (AIM) traditionalists and “goon” progressives on the reservation. Through her athletic feats, fame, and sheer force of personality, she becomes bigger than life.

Between describing the day-to-day adventures he has with Le, Floyd John, and their family and friends and SuAnne’s career and influence, Frazier turns to history in a broad sense to put life on the rez in perspective. He discusses the rivalry between Red Cloud and Crazy Horse (which lives today); the conflict between AIM, led by Dennis Banks and Russell Means, and then-tribal chief Dick Wilson and his “goons” (which Wilson turned into “Guardians of the Oglala Nation”); and the U.S. government’s still-unresolved theft of the Black Hills from the Sioux. He covers topics as wide ranging as Iroquois history and Mohawks as high-rise construction workers to the storied past of famous Indian bars. He covers the rise of Indian casinos and their current status in legislative limbo.

While many Americans comfort themselves for the wrongs perpetrated against Indians — from physical violence and culture destruction to land theft — with the idea that the white man rescued the Indian from primitivism and stagnation, Frazier points out Native contributions to Europeans, such as a host of agricultural riches (failing to mention the medicinal wonders being mined in South America by ethnobotanists such as Dr. Mark Plotkin).

More importantly, Indians passed on to settlers seeking escape from European political, religious, and economic tyranny their “all-around skepticism about who and who was not great” along with some basic principles of democracy. Today, however, Frazier says, “The freedom that inhered in Powhatan, that Red Cloud carried with him from the plains to Washington as easily as air — freedom to be and to say, regardless of disapproval — has become a luxury most of us can’t afford.” The Indian influence could not prevent the reinvention of Europe — “early American was European culture reset in an Indian frame.” Frazier quotes Thomas Jefferson: “It will be said, that great societies cannot exist without government. The savages, therefore, break them into small ones.” Where Frazier errs is in being too broad — while the free-ranging Sioux of the plains valued individual freedom, less nomadic groups such as Powhatan’s and the tribes of the Iroquois confederacy placed more emphasis on leadership. Powhatan’s freedom was that of a leader, while Red Cloud’s was that of a Sioux.

Today, there is Le War Lance, representing Trickster — cunning, dishonest, unpredictable, selfish, manipulative — a freedom-loving survivor. There is, or was until her death, the Indian hero SuAnne Big Crow, to whom nearly every inner-city and suburban teenager and adult alike can look — sports legend, academic star, role model for peers, and point of unity among a disparate people, even today through “Happytown, USA” — the SuAnne Big Crow Health and Recreation Center founded in her memory by her mother, Chick Big Crow.

Then there are the rest of the Sioux — struggling with poverty, unemployment, alcoholism, disease, and a host of social ills that cannot be fixed through this program or that legislation. They, like Le, are survivors.

I recommend that you read On the Rez in conjunction with American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings by Zitkala-Sa and edited with an introduction and notes by Cathy N. Davidson and Ada Norris. Zitkala-Sa was a turn-of-the-century Sioux educator, musician, writer, and activist who addressed many of the same issues Frazier raises — nearly 100 years ago.

13 September 2003
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash

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A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash by Sylvia Nasar. Recommended.

The prologue to Sylvia Nasar’s biography of Nobel Laureate John Nash, Jr., summarizes the mathematical marvel’s life thus: genius, madness, reawakening.

Nash, who was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics in a controversy that would ultimately change the nature of the prize, is the child of mostly unremarkable parents. His father, John, Sr., held a middle-manager position with the Appalachian Power Company inspecting power lines, while his mother, Virginia, was a “public-school thinker.” Despite his mother’s efforts to push him, he remains socially isolated, without any close friends. In the fourth grade, he begins to demonstrate the original approach to problems that will become his hallmark as a genius. Interestingly enough, it will be an extensive network of friends and peers that helps to ensure Nash’s place in academic and Nobel history.

Nash may have a “beautiful mind” with a unique way of looking at difficult problems, but Nasar does not portray him as a likeable man in his pre-mental illness heyday. Lacking in social skills and graces but not in ego, he is a class snob. Like many boys and young men, he plays pranks — but many of his have pathological undertones. Some cause serious physical pain and embarrassment. Others have the potential to cause death (one person recounts how a Nash prank might have resulted in electrocution of the victim). As a student and young academic, he delights in one-upmanship and in the humiliation of less-gifted men. In a recurring theme, he will flirt romantically with other bright young men. Much is forgiven Nash by his mentors and peers, however, because of his unquestioned mathematical gifts and because such behavior (at least, to some extent) is expected of great mathematical minds.

At the peak of his career, Nash succumbs to what is diagnosed as schizophrenia, which Nasar implies may have been the result of stress brought about by concerns about being drafted and Nash’s insistence on tackling near-impossible problems and the resulting frustrations. Whatever the cause, Nash becomes delusional, thinking aliens are speaking to him through The New York Times and feeling a compelling need to renounce his U.S. citizenship and to become a world citizen. For the next 30 years, Nash — and his genius — will be lost to the world, which, if it thinks of him at all, thinks him dead.

It is only a few years before he is nominated for the Nobel Prize in Economics (for his contributions to game theory) that Nash will slowly emerge from his illness. During this time, much of the mathematics community, including friends and rivals who were uncomfortable with his illness, rally behind him. Through most of his adult life, his wife, Alicia, is there to take care of him — even after marriage, divorce, and remarriage.

To write A Beautiful Mind, Nasar read and interviewed dozens of mathematicians, physicists, economists, and other academics as well as psychiatrists and mental health experts, making the book more than just a biography of John Nash, Jr. It is also an insightful overview of the tightly knit mathematics worlds of Princeton, MIT, and RAND Corporation during the 1940s and 1950s. Nash’s treatment at several private and public mental health institutions is revealing and sometimes horrifying, especially when he is treated with insulin shock therapy. The political climate — the draft for the Korean conflict, anti-Semitism, McCarthyism and its chilling effect on American academia, and the arms and space races with the Soviets — are all vivid parts of Nash’s story.

It is probably in the nature of biography that the author cannot be entirely subjective toward his or her subject; after all, he or she must have enough passion about that subject to research and write hundreds of pages about it. Nasar is clearly a fan of Nash’s; she often excuses or glosses over his youthful bad behaviour, his capacious ego, his poor treatment of those he considers inferior (including his girlfriend Eleanor and their son John David Stier), and his obsessive competitiveness. She describes him repeatedly as “handsome” with an “Olympian body” and “finely modeled” or “chiseled” features. (The photos included show Nash to have an average face and body.)

Nasar speeds through the 1970s and 1980s, no doubt because they were uneventful for the “Phantom of Fine Hall.” This leaves the reader to wonder what Nash’s official position was at Princeton (he tells a visitor he shouldn’t go into the faculty club). At this time, he appears to have had an office and is tolerated by students and staff alike.

I am always interested in genius, especially genius derailed by an enigmatic mental illness such as schizophrenia. A question (not to be answered) might be: Is Nash a genius despite schizophrenia, or is the schizophrenia an inherent part of what makes him a genius? Are the two conditions distinct, or are they inseparable? At any rate, while Nash may not have what I would consider a “beautiful mind,” it is certainly a gifted — and cursed — one.

25 June 2003
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf