Tag: history

Day 600: My Father’s Eyes

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Cover for My Father's EyesWhen she was in high school, author Sheila Allee discovered that her father had a brother she didn’t know existed. Melrose Allee, nicknamed Pie, was born with profound intellectual disabilities. Once Allee’s father “Dub,” who had taken much of the burden for Melrose’s care, left home in 1937, his parents placed Melrose in Austin State School. Even though her father was angry with his parents and swore to get his brother out, he never did, and Melrose eventually became an unmentioned subject.

Sheila could not understand how her family could have institutionalized her uncle in the first place and even worse, how they could have left him for years, unvisited. When she moved to Austin as an adult, she set about finding Melrose, eventually locating him in Travis State School in 1991.

This short book is the touching story of Allee’s own self-discovery through the agency of her impaired uncle. It is also the story of her discovery of the profoundly disturbing beliefs and practices surrounding the mentally handicapped that were practiced in this country in the first half of the 20th century.

In the interests of full disclosure, I know Ms. Allee, and I received a copy of her book in return for an honest review.

Day 560: Shah of Shahs

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Cover for Shah of ShahsI remember the Iranian revolution very well, so when my book club selected any book by Ryszard Kapuściński, I chose Shah of Shahs.

Before the revolution, I dated an Iranian student who called himself a revolutionary. Since I never knew him to work toward a revolution in any way, I always figured that he thought he was doing something fashionable or expected by espousing the cause. (I’m not saying that many weren’t sincere or that they didn’t have reason to want a change in government.) Still, I never believed that the Iran those students got was the one they wanted.

Shah of Shahs is an odd book, not exactly journalism, not as incisive and fact-based as, say, an essay by Hitchens, full of opinion and supposition. The book jacket refers to Kapuściński as a mythographer and to the book as a combination of journalism and literature. Perhaps it is this combination that I have trouble with.

What the book does provide is plenty of information about the roots of the people’s discontent—and they were truly a mistreated and abused nation. Kapuściński starts by describing his room in a Teheran hotel, where in 1985 he is the only remaining occupant. His room is cluttered with photographs and scraps of notes from interviews. He puts them in order, describes the photos—beginning with one of the Shah’s grandfather—and relates bits of the history of Iran. Later, he describes his interviews with intellectuals who returned from abroad, people whose relatives were tortured by the Savak, people who were afraid to speak or act for fear of torture, people who took part in protests at the risk of their lives, and so on. In one case, he tells the story about an old man who complains about the heat at a bus stop, calling it “oppressive.” He is hauled off by the Savak for using the word “oppressive,” and he probably wasn’t seen again.

The book is sparely written. It also contains fascinating material that brought me to a better understanding of the dilemmas of Iran. But especially toward the end of the book, it indulges itself in flights of philosophical rumination about the causes of revolutions, which I did not find as interesting.

Day 555: Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking

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Cover for Mastering the Art of Soviet CookingAlthough Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is billed as a memoir, it is written with the help of the author’s mother and begins long before Von Bremzen was born, with the start of the Soviet Union. It is an unusual memoir, tracing as it does the history of the Soviet Union, decade by decade, through the meals cooked by one family.

In an entertainingly wry writing style, Von Bremzen relates the changes in Soviet approaches to government over time and the way these changes affected the populace. She begins by explaining how Lenin’s asceticism nearly eliminated Russian cuisine because of the idea that food was decadent (and hardly any food was available).

Von Bremzen ironically and knowingly traces the history of Soviet Russia through famine and glut, for each decade featuring a dish that seems to represent it (although one decade features ration cards). The recipes are at the end.

Von Bremzen relates her own mother’s history as the rebellious daughter of a prominent Soviet military officer, her mother totally rejecting the party line. Larisa was terrified throughout the Stalinist era and longed to leave the country. Anya, herself with a difficult start as a child not allowed to join the Young Pioneers or visit Lenin’s tomb (things she secretly yearned for), had finally found a comfortable place when her mother dragged her off to Philadelphia.

This amusing book is fascinating for people who are interested in Russia, which I have always been. Darkly funny are the countless contrasts between the official views of the country and Von Bremzen’s descriptions of the actual plight of the population. It is difficult to describe the divided viewpoint of the author, who obviously loves Russia and the 60’s vision of what it was, while at the same time being deeply skeptical of everything about it.

This book is unusual, intelligent, and well-written, about a woman’s attempts to reconcile her feelings about her country and upbringing.

Day 541: Cradle of Gold

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Cover for Cradle of GoldA few years ago I reviewed The Lost City of Z, which told about Percy Fawcett’s search for a fabled city in the Amazon jungle. That book alleged that Fawcett was a possible model for Indiana Jones. It is a minor point of Cradle of Gold that Hiram Bingham III is much more likely to be the model. Bingham was the man who brought the world’s attention to Machu Picchu.

At the time, Bingham was hailed by the western world as Machu Picchu’s discoverer, despite its being known about all along by the nearby farmers. Bingham’s story also has other examples of chauvinism and controversy, including his removal of artifacts without the permission of the Peruvian government. (He more or less permanently “borrowed” them.) Peru has only recently won a law suit against Yale University for the return of the collection, including many human remains. Still, Bingham is recognized even in Peru for his contributions to Peruvian history and archaeology.

The book begins in Hawaii, where Bingham was born the son of missionaries who expected him to study theology. But Bingham did not see himself taking up his father’s mantle. He was still fairly young when he took the money saved for his education and tried to embark for San Francisco. Although he was prevented from leaving and eventually ended up attending Yale University, he soon after became an explorer.

The book is named Cradle of Gold after Choqquequirau, supposedly the home of the Virgins of the Sun, which was the first site Bingham visited. He found it had been looted long before. Instead of pursuing it further, he became interested in finding Vilcabamba, the residence of Manco Inca, one of the last rulers of the Inca who was captured and slaughtered by the conquistadors. Initially attracted because no one knew what happened to Manco Inca’s great treasure, Bingham eventually became more interested in Incan history and artifacts.

This book is the engrossing story of Binghams’ origins and expeditions, his contributions to science, and the controversy that followed. Author Christopher Heaney is a Doctoral Fellow in Latin American history at the University of Texas, Austin. He has written a clear and interesting account for the general public but supported by extensive documentation. If you are interested in stories of exploration, you will like this one.

 

Day 518: The Fall of the House of Walworth: A Tale of Madness and Murder in Gilded Age America

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Cover for The Fall of the House of WalworthJust a quick note before I get started about the Classics Club Spin #6. The spin selected #1, so I’ll be reading Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gillman!

The Fall of the House of Walworth begins in the 1950’s with Clara Walworth living in a crumbling mansion in Saratoga Springs. She obsessively goes through the possessions of her once-eminent family, not realizing that its members have hidden from her a shocking truth. Her father was once imprisoned for the murder of his own father.

The book then returns to trace the history of the Walworths, a family of prominent figures who became New York state aristocracy. In particular, it looks at the career of Reuben Hyde Walworth, the last Chancellor of New York. It was his younger son Mansfield Walworth who was murdered in a New York City hotel room by Mansfield’s own son Frank, then only 19 years old.

The book relates the story of the marriage of Mansfield and Ellen Hardin. Ellen was Mansfield’s step-sister after the marriage of his father to her mother, Sarah. As a young girl, Ellen was apparently carried away by Mansfield’s streak of romanticism. But she did not realize he had already gained a reputation as a wastrel and a bully. O’Brien theorizes that the family may have hoped the love of a good woman would help him to reform.

The book examines the history of Mansfield and Ellen’s marriage and the reasons the situation reached such heights of drama, including a strain of mental instability in the family. Mansfield was an author of overblown romantic novels, who saw himself as a misunderstood genius. O’Brien’s comments about his dreadful writing and excerpts from his novels show us how deluded Mansfield was about his own talents, even in a sentimental age. They also provide a hint of amusement to the book.

Cultural historian O’Brien has written an interesting true story of an unusual crime that shocked the country. Frank Walworth’s trial provided the test case for the new concept in law of second degree murder. The book also provides insight into the views and treatment of epilepsy, at the time considered a mental illness.

Day 513: Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson

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Cover for Fatal JourneyGiven that little is known about the final voyage of Henry Hudson, Fatal Journey‘s tag line (A Tale of Mutiny and Murder in the Arctic) seems to promise more than it can deliver. In fact, I often felt that history and anthropology professor Mancall padded this short book’s content with whatever came to hand.

Hudson’s final voyage to try to find the fabled Northwest Passage ended in 1611 in James Bay. He and his men had been forced to spend a brutal winter there, and now that the ice was starting to melt, Hudson was trying to decide whether to press on or return to England. At that point, some of his men mutinied and set Hudson, his son, and other crew members adrift in a small boat. They were never seen again. The only evidence of their fate is from the testimony of the surviving mutineers, who claimed that the engineers of the mutiny all died on the way home.

Mancall’s book looks at Hudson’s other voyages in more detail and describes in a matter-of-fact, undramatic way the hardships of the final journey. He also fills in a lot of information about other voyages of exploration, maritime law, just about anything sea-related. This approach is sometimes interesting, sometimes frustrating, as when he starts out the chapter about the mutineers’ trial with ten pages on the history of the crown’s attitude toward piracy.

For the most part, I felt that the book could be replaced by a long, more interesting magazine article. Hudson hardly appears in this book and we hear nothing directly from him. So, I was especially bothered by the author’s conclusions that Hudson’s fate was due to his own hubris.

Day 499: Literary Wives! The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story

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Cover for The Zookeeper's Wife

Here it is time for another Literary Wives club meeting. Please also see the reviews of my fellow “wives!”

If you have read the book and would like to participate, you can add comments to any of our pages or to the Literary Wives Facebook page.

Let’s get right to the book!

The Zookeeper’s Wife tells the true story of Jan and Antonina Zabiński, the keeper of the Warsaw zoo and his wife during World War II. After the bombardment by the Germans and their invasion, the Zabińskis struggled to keep the zoo animals alive, but they were also responsible for providing temporary shelter in the zoo grounds and in their house to hundreds of Jews. Jan, who was a member of the Polish Underground, found ways of smuggling people out of the ghetto, and he and Antonina kept them at the zoo until they could be placed elsewhere, sometimes for a few days, sometimes for longer periods.

The book is rich with details about life in their unusual household, full of animals and of hidden people who came out cautiously at night. It tells stories of lucky escapes and frightening encounters with the Nazis. It also provides information about life in the ghetto and some of its heroic leaders. I found some of these stories extremely touching, such as that of Henryk Goldzmit, a children’s author who went by Janusz Korczak. He abandoned his literary career to found an orphanage for Jewish children, and when the Nazis decided to ship all the children to Treblinka and almost certain death, went with them so they would not be frightened.

Although some of Ackerman’s many digressions from the main story add interest and color to the book, I unfortunately found others disruptive to the flow. For example, she spends more than a page on Jacques Offenbach simply because Antonina played one of his pieces on the piano to warn the hidden residents when strangers approached. Ackerman, a nature writer, spends another very long paragraph just listing the types of bugs in an insect collection entrusted to the Zabińskis. After awhile, these digressions began to feel like padding.

I also felt that Ackerman’s writing sometimes verges a little too closely on fiction. She is prone to rather florid descriptions of things she can only be imagining, often including inapt or odd metaphorical language. Although she introduces the book by saying she got the dialogue directly from Antonina’s diaries, she fictionalizes other things, such as the thoughts of sculptor Magdalena Gross, that could not have come from her sources. This style of writing for a nonfiction subject makes me uncomfortable. In fact, I read this book when it first came out and remembered it as a work of fiction.

What does the book say about wives or the experience of being a wife?

Literary Wives logoIn what way does this woman define “wife”—or in what way is she defined by “wife?”

It is interesting to me that Jan Zabiński describes Antonina at one time as “just a housewife,” because she is clearly so much more than that. She helps him administer the zoo and take care of the animals even before the war. During the war, she takes care of a household of refugees while Jan is out until late most nights and is gone for some extended periods of time. Although he is described as authoritarian and occasionally harsh, he trusts her implicitly to run things and keep everyone safe, even through scary encounters with Nazi officials and drunk soldiers. Although she would define herself as a wife and her husband as the master of the house, it is clear that the two respect each other and trust each other to handle difficult and dangerous situations. Antonina also defines herself as a mother, with the fierce determination to protect her children and her other charges.

 

Day 489: Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

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Cover for Queen AnneHistorically, the legacy of the reign of the last Stuart monarch, Queen Anne, has been marred by allegations that Anne was a weak woman who was ruled by her favorites. The accomplishments of her reign have been attributed to men she entrusted with leadership roles, most notably John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. Similarly, the wrongs perpetrated during her reign have been imputed to the misguidance of her favorites. Historian and biographer Anne Somerset’s new book exhaustively shows that Anne, to the contrary, was a sensible and conscientious ruler, most consistent in her views and often very stubborn, although private and reserved.

Much of what was popularly known about Queen Anne came from the writings of Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough, who was Anne’s close friend and confidante for many years before becoming her bitter enemy. Even when they were close, the duchess seems to have been a demanding harridan, whose idea of her own power and desserts grew too rapacious and who treated the queen abominably for years. Having read a biography of the duchess several years ago, I approached this book believing Anne was a weak and silly woman, but it has made me change my mind.

Somerset makes an interesting point that Anne’s lack of charisma and physical appearance may have hurt her legacy. Although the portrait of the young Anne reveals a beautiful lady, by the time of her reign she was grossly overweight and plagued by serious physical ailments. These were diagnosed at the time as various disorders, including gout, but a modern look at her symptoms indicates that she may have suffered from lupus, a serious autoimmune disease. For the most part she soldiered on uncomplaining to do her duty for her country.

This book lucidly explains the complex issues that echoed throughout Anne’s reign, including the ouster of King James II, Anne’s father, and the refusal to acknowledge his son, Anne’s half brother James Francis Edward Stuart, as a legitimate heir to the throne because of his Catholicism; the bitter feuds between the Whigs and the Tories; and the War of the Spanish Succession. The book is thorough in its research and very well written. Although I tired at times of its dissection of a seemingly endless series of disputes among those vying for power, I think the book offers a considered and balanced look at Queen Anne’s life and reign.

I received a copy of this book free through a giveaway on Goodreads.

Day 484: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

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Cover for The Black CountTom Reiss, previously the author of the fascinating biography The Orientalist, seems to be drawn to unusual figures who were famous in their own time but have become virtually unknown. Such is the case with Thomas-Alexandre Dumas—the father of the famous author of The Count of Monte Cristo, among other classics—who reached the heights of his fame as a great soldier and general of revolutionary France.

Dumas, who went by Alex rather than Alexandre or Thomas, had a colorful past. He was born on the island of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), the son of a black slave and a French marquis, Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie. His father was a wastrel and a scoundrel who, although he apparently did not raise his son in slavery, sold him in order to raise the passage money for his own return to France after his family had thought him dead for years. After claiming his right to his title and property (which his relatives had been maintaining and improving for years at their own expense), Pailleterie redeemed his teenage son and brought him up in privilege.

However, shortly after entering manhood, Alex broke with his father, took his mother’s name, and proceeded to make his own way as a soldier. He was the first person of color to become a general-in-chief of the French army and was the highest ranking black officer in the western world of his time.

This book is an account of Dumas’ fascinating life, in which his physical courage, ability, and principled behavior won him acclaim. Unfortunately, he was not as gifted politically and inadvertently made an enemy of Napoleon Bonaparte, who perceived him as a rival and really comes off here as a jealous and power-hungry opportunist. Bonaparte’s resentment, in combination with an abrupt change in policy of the French government to remove the rights previously granted subjects of color, ended in the loss of his career and a death in neglect and poverty.

The book is written in an energetic and informal style for the general public, although it is copiously documented in the back. The Black Count is an engrossing story of an event-filled life.

Day 447: To Marry an English Lord: Tales of Wealth and Marriage, Sex and Snobbery

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Cover for To Marry an English LordTo Marry an English Lord is entertaining enough, if certainly holding few surprises for those of us who read about this era. It is about the influx of wealthy American girls as brides into England beginning after the American Civil War and ending shortly after the end of the Edwardian era. First, girls were traveling with their mothers to Europe in search of a titled husband, followed by a flood of not-so-eligible young men over to the U.S. after the discovery of gold in them-thar hills (not the metallic kind, although some of the girls’ fathers’ fortunes were made that way).

The main portion of the text focuses on the fates of several girls—Consuelo Yznaga, who became the unhappily married Duchess of Manchester is one—who were among the first to travel to Europe in search of a suitable match. The book refers to them as the Buccaneers, a reference to Edith Wharton’s novel by the same name and on the same subject. The book covers some of the later marriages as well and explains how the trend changed over time. It provides snippets of details about life in a stately home or at court and about the stuffy societal structures in old New York.

The material is given an interesting presentation, with plenty of sidebars, inset photos, double-page spreads set in the flow of a chapter—more like a magazine or a textbook. This approach occasionally made me feel as if it was designed for someone with attention deficit disorder. It looks attractive but is hard to read coherently, and sometimes there is an unfortunate effect. For example, I had just finished reading about the death of Edward VII and its impact on society when I turned the page to read about his refusal to recognize the Marlboroughs after their divorce.

Although the book seems to take the position that girls went willingly into this search for and bagging of their titled husbands because of their own ambitions, Edith Wharton, in most of her novels that deal with this subject (with the exception of The Custom of the Country), rather regards them more as lambs to the slaughter.

I don’t think anyone will get a deep understanding of the period from this book, which is rife with generalizations, but if you’re looking for an entertaining presentation of a plethora of little details, it is a fun book to read. One big complaint for me is that many of the inset pictures are reduced to such a small size, in the interest of the layout, that it is impossible for me to tell what I’m looking at, particularly for interior shots of the various houses.