bookpagedev

History

A fateful crossing

Review by bookpagedev

Tom Holland’s academic credentials are flawless: he’s a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge as well as an acclaimed radio personality and author. In his fourth book, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, Holland charts the decline of the Roman Republic, anticipating the age of emperors ushered in when Julius Caesar, then governor of Gaul, commanded his loyal legions to march on Rome. The resounding legacy of his symbolic crossing of the Rubicon river into Italy persists today as the code word for any irreversible step in history. Holland traces the rise of the world’s greatest empire from its inception through bloody civil war to a Golden Age under Augustus, and provides sensitive insight into the sociological and ideological workings of the early republic in all its contradictory complexity. This was an empire whose very foundation myth was based on the fratricidal killing of Remus by Romulus; whose political system thrived on competition and cutthroat ambition; and whose sons laboured under the threat of civil war. Rome, the mighty city that would hold most of the civilized world beneath its sway, was doomed to tear herself apart from within.

History lends its own cast of epic characters: heroes, murderers, kings and queens condemned to grovel before the might of Rome. A pantheon of illustrious figures Cicero, Augustus, Cleopatra are brought to life by a narrative that is lucid, stylish and witty, and interesting in its analysis. Rubicon surveys an age of military expansion that saw the decline of some of history’s most powerful empires, underpinned by persistent internal power struggles that drenched the streets of Rome with the blood and horror of civil war, wars immortalized by the greatest generation of Roman poets.

Informative, balanced and accessible, Holland’s compelling brand of narrative history is a praiseworthy rendition of one of the most complex periods in history. Perhaps not academically groundbreaking, but a timely look at a civilization whose similarities to modern-day America are becoming increasingly relevant. Justin Watts earned a degree in classics from Oxford University.

Tom Holland's academic credentials are flawless: he's a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge as well as an acclaimed radio personality and author. In his fourth book, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, Holland charts the decline of the Roman Republic, anticipating the…
Children's & YA

Cinderella

Review by bookpagedev

Cinderella is perhaps the fairy tale most often retold. For her part, Barbara McClintock was inspired to retell and illustrate Cinderella after a trip to Paris. Using the Charles Perrault version as her starting point, McClintock has based her palace on Versailles, and all the costumes in the book reflect France in the era of Louis XIV. While young readers may not recognize these details, they are sure to be enthralled by the humorous depiction of the stepsisters, as well as the lavish gown Cinderella wears to the ball. McClintock, who has illustrated The Gingerbread Man and Goldilocks and The Three Bears, was also inspired by her cat, Pip, who makes appearances on many of the pages of this lovely book.

Deborah Hopkinson’s picture book, Apples to Oregon, was recently named a finalist for the Oregon Book Award.

Cinderella is perhaps the fairy tale most often retold. For her part, Barbara McClintock was inspired to retell and illustrate Cinderella after a trip to Paris. Using the Charles Perrault version as her starting point, McClintock has based her palace on Versailles, and all the…
Biography

Jane Addams: an American pioneer

Review by bookpagedev

In 1931, a panel of notable American men named Jane Addams first on a list of the 12 greatest living American women. That same year she won the Nobel Peace Prize, the first American woman to be so honored. At her death in 1935, she was the country’s most widely lauded woman in public life.

Today we remember Jane Addams as the founder of Hull-House, an innovative settlement house in Chicago, but her path-breaking work as a social and political reformer and thinker, and her leadership in peace and justice are largely unrecognized. Jean Bethke Elshtain, professor of political and social ethics at the University of Chicago and one of our foremost public intellectuals, hopes to change that. In a major new intellectual biography, Elshtain helps us to understand her subject in the context of her times, in large part by a careful and compelling study of Addams’ own writings.

Addams was not an ideologue of the political left or right and was involved in a wide range of issues, including "every major social reform between 1890 and 1925." Although often praised, Addams was also frequently the subject of controversy and misunderstanding. This was especially so because of her pacifist position during World War I and her defense of immigrants.

Elshtain writes that "All of Hull-House’s many activities pointed toward one goal: the building up of a social culture of democracy." Addams was not interested in "sweeping" theories and never talked about the proletariat or the bourgeois. Instead, Elshtain notes, she believed that "certain experiences are shared on a deep level by all human beings" and that understanding others is essential for social change.

This biography is rich with interpretation and analysis of the life and works of a brilliant woman, and it will fascinate anyone interested in America’s social history.

In 1931, a panel of notable American men named Jane Addams first on a list of the 12 greatest living American women. That same year she won the Nobel Peace Prize, the first American woman to be so honored. At her death in 1935,…

HistoryBlack History

The soul of a vibrant community

Review by bookpagedev

Known in the early 20th century as the site of a black cultural renaissance and later as a symbol of urban decline, Harlem has long been considered a center of African-American life. This unique community is showcased in an attractive new photo-essay book, Spirit of Harlem: A Portrait of America’s Most Exciting Neighborhood. The collection was created by writer Craig Marberry and photographer Michael Cunningham, the duo who previously collaborated on Crowns, a surprise hit book about the church hats worn by black women.

In their latest effort, Marberry and Cunningham steer clear of celebrities and focus their attention on the everyday people who live and work in Harlem. This storied neighborhood on the northern end of Manhattan, which the poet Langston Hughes described as an “island within an island,” is home to people of diverse ethnicities and occupations. Spirit of Harlem profiles many of these residents with black-and-white photos and brief essays based on Marberry’s interviews with the subjects. We meet a literary agent, a preacher, a nun and a saxophonist, among others, who share their vision of the neighborhood they call home. “I love Harlem,” says hat shop owner Junior “Bunn” Leonard, a native of Trinidad who makes one-of-a-kind hats for his customers. “If I took my hat shop downtown, I could get two, three times, what I get in Harlem. But it’s not about that.” As Gordon Parks notes in a foreword, these voices taken together produce a varied portrait of this changing and revitalized community, reflecting “the vivid soul of Harlem, light refracted into a rainbow of colors.”

Known in the early 20th century as the site of a black cultural renaissance and later as a symbol of urban decline, Harlem has long been considered a center of African-American life. This unique community is showcased in an attractive new photo-essay book, Spirit…
Children's & YA

Alice Through the Looking Glass

Review by bookpagedev

Helen Oxenbury is one of the foremost illustrators working in children’s books today. She has received many awards, including the Kate Greenaway Medal for her 1999 illustrated retelling of Alice in Wonderland. Now she brings the same warmth and charm to her illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s companion volume, Alice Through the Looking Glass, which was originally published in 1871. Here is Alice once again, dressed in her bright blue jumper and ready for adventure. Oxenbury’s art is the perfect accompaniment for children encountering Carroll’s comical and magical masterpiece for the first time. Full-color illustrations and whimsical line drawings bring readers right into the Looking-Glass world with its amazing characters, including Humpty Dumpty and Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Deborah Hopkinson’s picture book, Apples to Oregon, was recently named a finalist for the Oregon Book Award.

Helen Oxenbury is one of the foremost illustrators working in children's books today. She has received many awards, including the Kate Greenaway Medal for her 1999 illustrated retelling of Alice in Wonderland. Now she brings the same warmth and charm to her illustrations for Lewis…

Eyewitness to an atomic apocalypse

Review by bookpagedev

On a clear midsummer morning, Toyofumi Ogura was walking home along a dusty road when he saw a huge flash of light. "Off to my right, the sky split open over the city of Hiroshima. I instinctively flung myself facedown upon the ground. I lay there without moving. Then I raised my head and looked up over the city." It was August 6, 1945, and neither Ogura nor most other residents of the Japanese city understood what had just happened. Only in the days to come would they learn that the United States had dropped an atomic bomb over the heart of Hiroshima, making it the first city in the world to be obliterated by a nuclear weapon.

Ogura’s gripping account of the bombing and its aftermath is recounted in Letters from the End of the World, newly released in paperback by Kodansha, a publisher that specializes in English language books on Japanese culture. Ogura’s haunting story is told in the form of letters to his wife, Fumiyo, who was standing outside a downtown department store when the bomb exploded. She died two weeks later of radiation sickness, and her grieving husband coped by writing letters that described the horrific events he witnessed. A professor at Hiroshima University, Ogura manages to convey the confusion, shock and terror of the time in a style that ranges from matter-of-fact to beautifully lyrical. His letters, written in the months just after the bombing and first published in Japan in 1948, have lost none of their immediacy or power in the ensuing five decades.

Read from the perspective of our own troubled times, Letters from the End of the World offers disturbing evidence of the horrors of warfare and a poignant portrait of man’s capacity to endure.

On a clear midsummer morning, Toyofumi Ogura was walking home along a dusty road when he saw a huge flash of light. "Off to my right, the sky split open over the city of Hiroshima. I instinctively flung myself facedown upon the ground. I lay…

HistoryBlack History

A hero gets her due

Review by bookpagedev

When they think of Harriet Tubman, most adults probably imagine a woman holding a rifle and leading slaves to freedom by following the North Star. Tubman’s heroics, summarized and simplified for children’s books and young adult texts, have long been a staple of book reports and Black History Month observances in schools. While those stories convey the courageousness of her life as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Catherine Clinton’s new biography, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom, reveals they have only scratched the surface of the fugitive slave’s remarkable courage and mystique.

Touted as the first serious biography of Tubman, Clinton’s book reads more like an adventure tale than a history lesson. The author depicts Tubman’s extraordinary role with the Underground Railroad, where she was the only fugitive slave and the only woman who dared attempt “abductions,” the term for entering the South to lead slaves North. Tubman’s faith, planning and intuition yielded a perfect record of successful liberations. Some attributed her success to divine intervention, further contributing to the Tubman mystique.

Though many readers know Tubman conducted fugitives to freedom, few know about her largest liberation effort, in which she freed hundreds of slaves while assisting the Union army during the Civil War. Harriet Tubman details Tubman’s Civil War service as well as more personal aspects of her life, including the heartbreak of her first marriage and the mystery surrounding Tubman’s “kidnapping” of an eight-year-old girl. Clinton also offers overviews of slavery, the abolition movement and the Civil War to help readers put Tubman’s experience in context.

Throughout her life, Tubman worked to help others, through dangerous missions as well as by working for the comfort of ex-slaves in a society that still locked them out of most services and opportunities. Clinton’s biography provides an in-depth look at Tubman and holds moments of wonder for readers. Bernadette Adams Davis is a playwright and reviewer in Florida.

When they think of Harriet Tubman, most adults probably imagine a woman holding a rifle and leading slaves to freedom by following the North Star. Tubman's heroics, summarized and simplified for children's books and young adult texts, have long been a staple of book reports…
Religion & Spirituality

A pope’s legacy

Review by bookpagedev

<b>A pope’s legacy</b> Known largely for her work as a speechwriter for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush during the late 1980s, Peggy Noonan is also a devout Catholic who regained her religious faith during those same years partially through watching the ministry of Pope John Paul II, the Great, as she and millions of others referred to him. Her new book, <b>John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father</b>, is not a political tome (though politics comes into it, as faith and politics often collide). Nor is it a biography of Karol Wojtyla, though his life story permeates the book. Instead it is a study of faith John Paul’s faith, Noonan’s own faith and the faith of the world and how one man’s love and conviction spurred the hearts of others. It was John Paul’s faith, says Noonan, that led her to embrace the Catholicism she had largely abandoned in her youth. It was John Paul’s faith that inspired the people of Poland to stand against their tyrannical leaders, that chiseled the crack that eventually crumbled the Iron Curtain, and that led people to see the Roman Catholic Church as a real and vibrant presence in the modern world. Noonan does not sugarcoat John Paul’s era. The pope and the church had (and still have) flaws, she says, and she deals with them forthrightly but always with a love for her faith and the pope she revered.

<b>A pope's legacy</b> Known largely for her work as a speechwriter for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush during the late 1980s, Peggy Noonan is also a devout Catholic who regained her religious faith during those same years partially through watching the ministry of Pope…

NonfictionTrue Crime

Brutal slaying leads to redemption

Review by bookpagedev

The social reverberations from most murders are so constricted and short-lived that they alter comparatively few lives or institutions. But when three young, white ne’er-do-wells murdered James Byrd Jr., a black man in Jasper, Texas, by dragging him for three miles behind their truck, the shock waves rolled around the world. USA Today correspondent Dina Temple-Raston spent more than two years probing and assessing the personalities, events and histories surrounding this conspicuously brutal 1998 crime for her new book, A Death in Texas. Two of Byrd’s killers now sit on death row, and the third is serving a life sentence.

Race is central to this story, not simply because two of the killers were avowed white supremacists, but because Jasper had its own history of racism sometimes blatant, but more often subversively subtle. Determined that their town would not conform to stereotype, the citizens of Jasper were virtually unanimous in their demand that Byrd’s killers be caught, convicted and given the maximum punishment. But, as Temple-Raston notes, deep-seated suspicion and resentment on both sides soon leaked through the public displays of racial harmony.

As is common with such politically charged and media saturated cases, this one attracted its share of race-baiting opportunists, notably Jesse Jackson, Khalid Abdul Mohammed of the New Black Panthers and Michael Lowe of the Ku Klux Klan. Jasper turned its back emphatically on all of them. If the story can be said to have a hero, it is surely Sheriff Billy Rowles, who quickly solved the case, worked to unify the community, firmly quieted the rabble-rousers and provided the prosecutors with all the evidence they needed to obtain convictions. Temple-Raston is a meticulous researcher and a graceful writer. She interviewed almost everyone involved in the case (and dozens who weren’t), delved into Jasper’s dismal past and present, and kept track of what happened to each of the principal players after the verdicts were handed down. Her narration has a crisp, even, methodical tone untainted by sentimentality or sensationalism. Like all good reporters, she keeps herself and her feelings on the sidelines. She draws no grand conclusions about causes and effects. This was, after all, a crime committed on impulse, not by design. Whatever its origins, it made a socially rigid town take stock of itself in a way it never had before.

Edward Morris writes on crime, music and other social matters from Nashville.

 

The social reverberations from most murders are so constricted and short-lived that they alter comparatively few lives or institutions. But when three young, white ne'er-do-wells murdered James Byrd Jr., a black man in Jasper, Texas, by dragging him for three miles behind their truck, the…

NonfictionPolitics

Laugh, and the voters laugh with you

Review by bookpagedev

Humor in political discourse is a more potent weapon than spite. Mark Katz, who held the unusual position of presidential joke writer in the Clinton administration, proves this point decisively and with great fun in Clinton and Me: A Real Life Political Comedy. Katz begins his story in early 1995, when he tried to convince an unamused President Clinton to use an egg timer as the centerpiece of his speech before a group of Washington insiders known as the Alfalfa Club. The egg timer would serve as a comic device, allowing the president to make fun of himself for delivering an overly long State of the Union address. Clinton rejected the idea and went on to give a speech filled with spiteful, personal invectives; the evening was judged a disaster for the president.

Katz started his political life as a diehard Democrat who grew up in a household in love with the Kennedys. The book chronicles his journey from college prankster at Cornell to his work on the 1988 Michael Dukakis campaign, where he met George Stephanopoulos. Trying to make the humorless Dukakis funny proved too difficult. As the author puts it, “writing jokes for Dukakis was like being the staff photographer for The Wall Street Journal.” Katz needed a better client, and he got one with the election of Bill Clinton and the emergence of Katz’s friend Stephanopoulos as a star in White House.

With engaging style, the book describes the hurried process of writing a presidential speech. We learn that the Democratic joke writer’s principal rival is Al Franken, who is frequently enlisted to contribute presidential one-liners. Katz’s goal is to supplant Franken and avoid having Franken get credit for his work an outcome he didn’t always achieve. While the author is clearly a partisan Democrat, his book offers laughs for those on both sides of the aisle. The Democratic reader will like the jokes directed at Republicans, and Republicans should enjoy the irreverent attitude Katz uses to describe Democrats, including his former boss. In an era of vindictive politics, this book also reminds us that one of our most effective presidents, Abraham Lincoln, was also one of the funniest a worthy role model for today’s crop of candidates.

Humor in political discourse is a more potent weapon than spite. Mark Katz, who held the unusual position of presidential joke writer in the Clinton administration, proves this point decisively and with great fun in Clinton and Me: A Real Life Political Comedy. Katz begins…
Religion & Spirituality

Heartfelt readings

Review by bookpagedev

A few years ago, John Eldredge and the late Brent Curtis swept the Christian inspirational market with The Sacred Romance, a call to understand the Christian life as a story of adventure and romance, with ourselves as the objects of God’s desire and God as the true object of ours. After the death of Brent Curtis, Eldredge continued to explore this theme in subsequent books dealing with the nature of our hearts, the love of God and the beautiful yet fallen world in which we live. The Ransomed Heart: A Collection of Devotional Readings takes excerpts from all these works, presenting them as a year’s worth of daily devotional readings. While the words themselves are not new, the presentation offers an opportunity to consider key ideas in a fresh way. The result allows both fans of Eldredge and those new to his ideas to explore the deeper meanings of who we are and who God has made us to be. Uplifting, challenging and deeply refreshing, Eldredge’s words make a worthy gift.

A few years ago, John Eldredge and the late Brent Curtis swept the Christian inspirational market with The Sacred Romance, a call to understand the Christian life as a story of adventure and romance, with ourselves as the objects of God's desire and God as…
HistoryBlack History

Lynching: an all-American holocaust

Review by bookpagedev

No volume recounting the history of lynching could ever be fun to read. But Philip Dray’s book At the Hands of Persons Unknown is timely, impressively researched and written well the next best thing to enjoyable.

Although Dray goes back many centuries into history to demonstrate the inhumanity of the dominant culture against minority cultures, his book focuses on the years 1882 to 1962, coinciding with detailed archives at Tuskegee University, a predominately African-American college in Alabama. Researchers at Tuskegee relied mostly on newspapers and magazines to learn about lynchings, publishing a yearly tabulation that, Dray says, "came to be considered a definitive tally a kind of Dow Jones ticker of the nation’s most vicious form of intolerance." Dray, who teaches African-American history at New York City’s New School, learned about the Tuskegee archives in 1986. Before mining the archives’ awful riches, he says, "Like most people, I was aware that lynching had been an aberrational form of racial violence in the Deep South, and a means by which cattle rustlers and card cheats had sometimes received rough frontier justice." After seeing the extent of the archives’ holdings, Dray understood that lynchings were far less sporadic than he had realized. "A holocaust!" Dray heard himself saying.

That all-American holocaust is filled with flesh-and-blood human beings who transcend the horrifying statistics. The book is populated with victims, lawless lynchers and heroic outsiders like journalist Ida B. Wells and W.E.

B. Du Bois, both of whom valiantly crusaded to halt the practice. Given the near-extinction of lynchings by the mid-1960s, Dray’s by-definition depressing book ends with a hint of optimism. But as lynchings have waned, they still seem timely. Why? Partly because lynching is usually a manifestation of racism, and racism remains in 2002, and partly because every year hundreds of innocent individuals are convicted of crimes in U.S. courtrooms. Some of those wrongly convicted individuals end up on death row. That phenomenon cannot accurately be called lynching, but it is certainly lynching’s first cousin.

Steve Weinberg is a book author and magazine writer in Columbia, Missouri.

 

No volume recounting the history of lynching could ever be fun to read. But Philip Dray's book At the Hands of Persons Unknown is timely, impressively researched and written well the next best thing to enjoyable.

Although Dray goes back many…

History

Going back to Africa

Review by bookpagedev

Amplifying a little-known slice of Southern history, journalist Alan Huffman has reconstructed the riveting true story of freed slaves who fled Mississippi to establish a new home in Africa in the 1840s. Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia Today tells this stranger-than-fiction story in compelling style, capturing the hope, conflict and tragedy of the endeavor.

Isaac Ross was a Revolutionary War veteran who had established a sprawling, 5,000-acre cotton plantation in Jefferson County, Mississippi. When he died in 1836, Ross’ will stipulated that all the slaves of the Prospect Hill plantation be freed upon his daughter’s death. The plantation would be sold to finance a journey for any freed slaves who wanted to emigrate to Liberia, a province in Africa where a colony of freed slaves had already been established.

Legal battles by some of Ross’ heirs delayed execution of the will for more than a decade, but by 1849 about 200 of the Prospect Hill slaves had been freed and had settled in Liberia. (Slaves who chose to stay behind were sold at auction, but the will specified that family units could not be separated.) Some who moved to Liberia emulated what they had seen back in Mississippi, building Greek Revival-style mansions in their new African homeland.

As it turned out, the freed slaves were not welcomed with open arms by the residents of the colony and a violent, bloody and bitter battle ensued between the tribes and the colonists. As part of his research, Huffman went to Liberia in search of the group’s descendants. There he discovered that conflicts between natives and freed slaves have echoed throughout the country’s history, even up to today’s civil war.

Events move swiftly in this complex and turbulent tale, but with the skill of a Southern storyteller, Ross weaves the threads together in a clear and readable narrative. Piecing together a story he first heard about during his own Mississippi childhood, he has produced a well researched account that illuminates a distant event and its lasting legacy.

Amplifying a little-known slice of Southern history, journalist Alan Huffman has reconstructed the riveting true story of freed slaves who fled Mississippi to establish a new home in Africa in the 1840s. Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation…

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