Tag Archives: history

Hallowed Ground: An Illustrated History of the Walk at Gettysburg, by James McPherson*****

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hallowed groundHallowed Ground packs a great deal of information regarding Gettysburg, past and present, into a tight package. I own an earlier edition, and I used the photographs in it as part of my lectures when I was teaching a unit on the Civil War.

McPherson is a renowned author, winner of the Pulitzer for Battle Cry of Freedom. That volume should be the go-to book for anyone looking for a first highly literate glimpse of the American Civil War. This book is only about Gettysburg, as it is today and as it was then. McPherson has not only walked every square inch of the area involved, but also takes his students on tour there. He tells the reader what parts of the standard park guide tour script are actually incorrect, which is particularly useful for those visiting the park. In fact, this guide is primarily targeted for those planning to walk the large area encompassed, but I haven’t been there, and most likely won’t, and I never regretted the purchase of that earlier edition. If I were teaching still, or mobile enough to be able to do that tour, I’d buy this one as well.

I am delighted to be able to review the DRC for the newer edition, which contains even more digital photographs. I couldn’t see a lot of them–got a blank, gray box instead, which happens with galleys sometimes–but the quality of what I could see was excellent. Put this together with a lot of other primary sources, including battle plans, letters written by those involved at the time, and photographs that were already in the earlier edition, and it’s clear this is a volume that belongs on the shelves of every Civil War buff or instructor, as well as any other interested party.

Highly recommended.

Our Man in Charleston, by Christopher Dickey *****

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OurmanincharlestonThis is the most fascinating book I’ve read in a long time! Equal parts biography and American Civil War nonfiction, it details the experiences of Britain’s foremost spy, Robert Bunch, who was living in Charleston, South Carolina when the Civil War began and for its duration. I am truly grateful to Crown Publishers and Net Galley for permitting me to read the DRC in advance. And perhaps it is just as well, in a way, that my kindle fell in the potty when I was done and with it went hundreds (genuinely) of notations that I made as I wended my way through it; I had procrastinated writing this review because there was so much I wanted to say. Too much, in fact! Sometimes I have to remind myself I am writing a review for would-be readers who might want to discover a few things on their own. Part of my writing mind is still wired in the direction of academic analysis, which is too ponderous for most readers to slog through, and not really necessary for our purposes.

I was riveted almost from the get-go. At first I had the bizarre notion that a British view of the Southern Rebellion would be objective. If I’d thought harder, I would have realized that isn’t true; Britain had a tremendous amount of interest in the outcome of this fight. But its interest was completely different from either the Union’s or that of the Confederacy. There were a couple of horrifying instances in which it might have chosen to recognize the Confederacy, but those moments quickly passed.

Even before war broke out, tension had been quietly mounting over the treatment of British seamen that landed in Charleston. On one occasion a single Black sailor had instigated a relatively small uprising on a plantation, and this act—the most fearful nightmare of the Southern ruling class, self-styled aristocrats who lived as a tiny minority among an enormous number of Black laborers who had every reason to hate them—gave birth to the Negro Seaman Act. The law stipulated that any Black sailors from another country that worked on board a ship that docked in Charleston, must be kept in jail until it was time to leave again. This was the stuff of which international incidents were born. Britain would attempt to solve the problem through Washington, D.C., only to find that Charleston had already begun to flout Federal law and that the nation’s promises were not kept. Eventually, a quiet negotiation began with Charleston authorities. When they continued to behave badly, Britain had little recourse, since it did not want it known in Washington that they had been dealing with the government of South Carolina as if it were sovereign. This probably also fed the delusions of Southern grandeur and may have encouraged them to believe they did not need the national government at all.

Robert Bunch was originally stationed in the north, but found himself in Charleston more and more often. His habit, as Britain’s agent, had been to head north during the unbearably humid, tropical summers of the deep South, but as events polarized the nation and northerners were no longer welcome, his own position became more and more tenuous. His job was to send reports to Britain, but whenever he went in public, as he had to do a great deal in order to pick up information, he was questioned increasingly closely about Britain’s view of the Confederacy. Which side would Britain take? Was he a spy? (Gracious, no!) Maybe, were he on the side of the Union, he should be locked up! (Please, please no!) He would have preferred, at one point, to go north and stay there, but his orders were to stay put, so that’s what he did.

In order to maintain his role and save his own neck, his behavior became increasingly misleading. The dispatches he sent to England were so adamantly opposed to recognition of the Confederacy that he was reproached a time or two for trying to make policy when his job was simply to provide information. However, when he was asked by local folk whether surely, Britain would soon recognize the Confederacy, and wouldn’t he encourage this, he gave misleading smiles, made ambiguous remarks, and agreed that of course he would be happy to slip the British nanny’s letter home in his diplomatic pouch so that it could reach the U.S. mail from which they were otherwise cut off.

He became so convincing in his subterfuge that at one point, he was nearly brought up on charges of treason against Britain. U.S. Secretary of State Seward, a difficult, punctilious man, had a number of bones to pick with Britain, and at one point tried to foment war with them, convinced that if it broke out, the South would drop their ridiculous posturing and rush to defend the red, white and blue. Lincoln felt differently, however, and made it clear to Seward and to Britain that he was only interested in fighting one war at a time. To save face, Seward latched onto Bunch’s dismissal as the single demand he would press. Surely, in order to avoid international tension, Britain wouldn’t mind hanging one of their lowly agents out to dry? Send the boy home and there’s an end to it. Get him gone.

Lord Palmerston, a man with power disproportionate to most in his position, had eclectic tendencies, and was having no part of firing Bunch. He liked the guy, and wasn’t really interested in being shoved around by the former colonies of Britain. If the US of A had to have its capitol torched a second time to get the point as to whose navy was better? Fine. Hopefully not, but Bunch was staying. And that is how it was.

There are two things that popped out at me in reading this compelling work. My vantage point, for those who haven’t read my reviews before, is that of a former history teacher. It was my job to teach teenagers about the American Civil War, or as much as teens can learn in ten weeks at one hour a go. It was by far my favorite quarter of the school year, but I was so overwhelmed with work and meetings that I didn’t have a lot of time to read in my field. I could use my six weeks off in the summer to read whatever I chose, if I wanted to, and that was about it. So although I could have used this information back then, it is nevertheless satisfying to have one nagging question answered, however belatedly.

My question, and my students’ question sometimes, was if Europe was able to rid itself of slavery by the government’s buying slaves from slave owners, why didn’t that work in the USA? And the only response I had—one provided by reading James McPherson and a Marxist historian named George Novack—was that they refused. They just wouldn’t do it.

But why? Surely it was obvious they were living in a feudal economy that the rest of the industrializing nations had abandoned. Surely they had to know they could not freeze history. Why cling to it beyond all reason?

Questions related to war are always rooted in economics, and so to simply say they were irrational, which is more or less my answer apart from I-don’t-know, felt incomplete. A number of other historians gave that reason, but it felt like a puzzle piece forced into the wrong hole. And Dickey provided me with the missing piece. Although I had read vague things about speculation in slaves and that uniquely American, horrific practice, slave breeding, which brought us international shame before all was said and done, I didn’t recognize the link between speculation and the tiny handful of wealthy plantation owners that made the choice to go to war rather than let it go.

Those that have followed the financial news in the USA and many other nations over the past decade are aware that a lot of home owners are losing their houses when they can’t pay mortgages, especially balloon mortgages, and more dreadful still is the fact that they are “under water”, meaning that after the bank takes the house back, or it is sold, they will still owe payments on it. They’ve borrowed more against it than it is worth, and only bankruptcy will solve their problem. When they lose that house, they lose everything.

And so it was with a large number of plantation owners. They had borrowed against their slaves. That was where their equity was: in human capital. If they allowed the government to buy their slaves at their current market value, they would become bankrupt, and having gained their social standing on nothing more than wealth and pale pigmentation, they would be ruined socially and financially. As long as there was any other choice, they would take it. They would send their own sons to die for it, though generally they chose to pay someone else to go in their own places.

They were underwater.

Britain’s perspective at the outset was that if one side had slaves and the other did not, then of course they would not recognize the upstart nation. When the border states were permitted to keep their slaves, it was still considered wiser to back the winning horse in any race, and so unless it appeared the Confederacy was about to win the war and gain international status as an independent nation anyway, there was nothing to be gained by antagonizing Lincoln’s administration.

I had wondered, in past years, whether Britain might not have yearned for the South to become independent. If one looks at a map of the USA as it was then, and the size of British possession of Canada, if it also dominated the Southern USA economically, and if it had a navy in the Atlantic that could pound the coastline, could it not overturn the American revolution? That slice of the Union is small compared to Canada, when the Confederate states are added in like the bottom bun of a hamburger. How delicious!

Not so, says Dickey. Britain had other fish to fry. It had been absorbed in fighting the Crimean War, and at the time, events in Europe were considered vastly more important than our own emerging outpost. It might be nice to have, but they didn’t need it badly enough to weigh in with the slaveocracy. The South had been so smugly sure that Britain needed their cotton for its mills, but in fact, they had planned well against such an eventuality, and had over a year’s worth of cotton socked away in storage. To the impertinent Southern men and women that sashayed up to their representatives to announce that Britain would simply have to recognize them, the response was generally somewhat courteous, muted, non-committal. If pressed, they suggested that cotton could indeed be grown in India. No worries.

And here I am three pages later according to Microsoft, and I have really only skimmed the surface. Think if I’d had my notes available! Believe me when I say I have just scratched the surface. I had so many delicious quotes, and now you’ll have to go ferret them out for yourself!

This magnificent book comes out July 21, 2015. For once I can tell you that whether or not you are conversant with the finer details of the American Civil War, you will be able to read this with no trouble. A knowledge of the broad contours of the war will make it more satisfying, but not strictly necessary. Those who enjoy history in general, or biographies in general, will likewise find it a must-read.

You have to get this book!

Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, by David J. Garrow *****

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protestatselmaThis newly released digital version of Garrow’s outstanding, comprehensive recounting and analysis of the famous Selma demonstrations carried out by Martin Luther King Junior, other civil rights leaders, along with masses of African-American civil rights activists could not be more timely. In 2013, the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965 after a lot of effort and sacrifice was gutted. The US criminal “justice” system has drawn the eyes of the world, and they aren’t friendly eyes. Thank you, and thank you once more to Net Galley and Open Road Media for making the DRC available for me to read, and for publishing this excellent book digitally for you to access also.
Please be aware that this is not a popular biography of the struggle, but a scholarly one, and will be most appreciated by those who, like your reviewer, have a strong interest in the topic, or who are doing research. In that spirit, I encourage those who also read it to access the endnotes. Garrow has some really interesting remarks, and his references and cross-references will make any researcher bow in awe.
Many people don’t know that Dr. King entered the struggle as a civil rights novice, newly out of graduate school and just 26 years old. (Open Road has also just released the digital version of Garrow’s Pulitzer-winning biography, which I have also reviewed.) Initially his hope was to shame segregationists into integrating schools and providing equal services to Black Southerners. The failure of the movement to make any in-roads in Albany, Georgia convinced King and other leaders that this method would not work. Instead, the eyes of the nation must be made to witness the injustices being meted out in Dixie. For the media, both print and television, a relatively recent mass media source, to pick up events there, they needed to demonstrate in a nonviolent fashion, not back down, and do so in a place where a nasty, violent response on the part of Caucasian cops could be counted upon. In other words, no change could take place without confronting Black America’s worst nightmares head on and intentionally.
Birmingham was the first place this was attempted. Bull Connor was known for gratuitous violence, and the footage of some really ugly aggression, especially the widely-circulated photo of the cop holding an unarmed demonstrator in place while siccing a huge German Shepherd on him, prodded the consciences of Caucasian viewers in the North. (Many Northerners of color were already funding the movement; musician Harry Mancini was one important fundraiser.)
But the attempt of Birmingham demonstrators to effect change was limited. Although it drew international attention, the Kennedy administration seemed more intent on finding ways to shut King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference down than they were on creating adherence to Federal laws that gave Black folks equality.
Garrow reminds us (or informs us, depending on the reader’s age) that in the late 1960’s, one in three white Americans polled said they would not want to sit next to a Black person on a train or bus, and similar figures also showed that they didn’t want African-Americans living near them, at their kids’ schools, or even trying on the same outfits in department stores that they themselves might later try on.
Young people that are tired of hearing the Dream speech and watching Eyes on the Prize footage (for which Garrow also receives a portion of the credit) don’t seem to understand exactly how brave these people were. My own father told me, when I asked about the footage on television, that the policemen on the evening news were just doing their jobs. He shook with rage as he pointed at the screen and told me, “These people are breaking the law!” I was six years old at the time.
So some people up North needed to either change their minds, or be so repelled by the violence being done to innocent people who obviously wanted something reasonable that they would insist that the right thing be done. And although the movement never did change my father, it changed the thinking of a lot of people.
Birmingham failed to do the job for two reasons, says Garrow . First, they were not able to maintain a completely nonviolent atmosphere on the part of the Black participants. While demonstrators were nonviolent, thousands of African-Americans, some of whom dared not demonstrate actively lest they lose their jobs, became enraged at the maltreatment of the demonstrators; some threw pieces of bricks, concrete, and bottles at the cops from the sidelines.
When I think about this, it doesn’t seem like an even contest to me. Swarms of cops in riot gear; huge attack dogs; fire hoses; lethal weaponry of just about everything except tanks and missiles were accessed by the cops. And a few locals pitched a few bottles. Big damn deal.
But media loves to try to portray both sides of an issue, however uneven they may be. My own years spent participating in, organizing, and sometimes leading demonstrations taught me that if one demonstrator or supposed supporter shows aggression and can gain the media’s attention, the demonstration will magically turn into a “riot” on the news the next day. Or a “conflict”. We can find synonyms all day long, but you get the picture. When there are ten thousand peaceful demonstrators and ten people that break windows, the evening news will give as much time, or more, to the window breakers as the ten thousand. If a member of the lunatic fringe shows up with a forty-foot bloody cross, they’ll goddamn interview the nut and the demonstration’s goals may not get any time at all.
But the people that trained me in struggle were largely educated by their own participation in the Civil Rights movement. The methods of the Civil Rights movement would become valuable lessons for those that led the movement against the Vietnam War. The SCLC, SNCC, CORE, and other organizations that led this movement had to invent most of it, or at least Americanize it; many of the basic tenets were borrowed from Gandhi when he led the movement to kick Britain out of India.
So, there were a few folks that were not strictly nonviolent in Birmingham; the other problem, says Garrow, is that there was no one, clear goal in Birmingham. So much was so wrong that they went in with a laundry list. When it got into the news, it seemed muddy. Those who loved justice could see what was wrong; but every struggle needs a single, clear demand in order to start those waters of justice rolling. In Birmingham, it wasn’t plain what they were there to do.
Selma was the tipping point. All those lessons came into play. The single goal, one that the Democratic administration had pledged (privately of course) to support, was for Black folks to be able to walk into the courthouse and register to vote. No literacy tests; no poll fees; no goddamn alley entrance for people of color. Just walk through the front door; register; and vote.
This time discipline was perfect; the marchers were absolutely, completely nonviolent. Sheriff Clark, the mad dog that the movement sought to bring out of his ugly hole snarling and swinging, did not disappoint. People were sent to the hospital, and a Caucasian clergyman who answered Dr. King’s call to come support the Civil Rights of Southern Blacks was killed by the cops. This time it was clear what the goal was, clear who was wrong and who was right. And the telegrams (an ancient technology since replaced by e-mail) rolled into the Capitol.
Black intelligentsia and working class, I; crazy Southern Bubbas, 0.
President Lyndon Johnson was a crafty old bastard, a politician who knew what side his bread was buttered on. At first he too sought to shut the whole thing down, get people out of the streets and home to their own hearths. But when events unfolded and it became clear that a sea change was occurring, he got on television and gave the best damn speech possibly since the days of Lincoln. Garrow reprints the entire masterpiece. It was viewed by seventy million Americans.
If you are still with me—and my five star reviews are almost never brief—then you may also have sufficient interest to read Garrow’s history of the movement and particularly of Selma, Alabama and the crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. His research is impeccable, his organization easy to follow (or to access a portion of, for those doing research of their own), and his narrative is really compelling.
Once you are done, I hope you will give some time and attention to the new Civil Rights Movement unfolding before us right now. It’s everyone’s job to be sure everyone can vote. And until African-American men and teenagers can drive, walk, and work without harassment or violence from cops and vigilantes, #ICAN’TBREATHE.

The Oregon Trail: An American Journey, by Rinker Buck *****

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theoregontrailBuck is a journalist and author who replicated (to the extent possible in modern times) the covered wagon crossing of the old Oregon Trail, much of which still contains the original wagon ruts. A creature of the Pacific Northwest myself, I thought I had the whole Oregon Trail story down cold, but I learned a lot from Buck’s wonderful memoir, which threads his own experience with the historical information he gleaned from a variety of sources into a fluent, fascinating, accessible yet hyper-literate narrative. My great thanks go to Simon and Schuster and Net Galley for the ARC. The book will be available to the public in August of this year.

Buck discusses his experience, and the book, here:

The germ of Buck’s idea to travel the old Oregon Trail in a covered wagon came from a favorite childhood experience. Buck’s father took his large family on a covered wagon vacation during the late 1950’s. They traveled in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and it is one of the author’s fondest memories. His brother Nick, who sounds like a real character, decided to join him on this adventure, and their skills complemented each other wonderfully in most instances, with Rinker having done a great deal of research and put up the considerable sum it took to buy the wagon, the mules, and so forth, and Nick having a wealth of eclectic knowledge about covered wagons and mules as well as tremendous mechanical aptitude in general.

Our author is one hell of a writer. His down to earth metaphors made his story accessible for modern people. For example, he says that the Conestoga wagon was the semi truck of the mid-1800s while the prairie wagon used by most families, which was made by Sears Roebuck, Studebaker, and John Deere, were more like the station wagon. The whole narrative is peppered with this sort of figurative language, and it’s both amusing and helpful. And I loved seeing the ways in which the problems of the early pioneers often became his problems also, sometimes in ways that would have halted an ordinary traveler right then and there. But Rinker and his brother are serious badasses, and they kept on going.

Think for a moment how high up the driver’s seat on a covered wagon is, for example, and how immensely soporific the repetitive clopping of hooves are on a very warm spring day. There is no safety belt; there is nothing whatsoever to keep a man from falling off and being crushed beneath the wagon.

Narcissa Whitman, one of the early settlers who together with her husband, founded the Whitman mission in Eastern Washington (part then of the Oregon Territory) made the trip on horseback. But she had no safety belt either.

The Mormons, or Latter Day Saints, did a whole lot of it on foot and pushing carts; those that lived through the experience populated Utah. But I agree with Buck that Devil’s Gate was not solely part of the Mormon experience, and President Bush had no business turning federal park lands over to the LDS Church. Frankly, it steams my clams all over again just writing about it…moving on.

I also have one small bone to pick with Buck’s research, though it isn’t enough to lop a star off my rating: he says that the 400,000 pioneers that crossed the Oregon Trail was the greatest overland migration in history. To be fair, when he wrote this, it was widely accepted as truth. But in 2010, Isabel Wilkerson documented an overland migration of 6 million African-Americans from the South to Northern Industrial cities and also to California between 1915 and 1970. The Oregon Trail, then, may be the second largest, but not the largest.

I also might have liked to see a citation accompany controversial facts tossed in, such as the claim that it was covered wagon makers, not Henry Ford, who started the mass assembly line. Generally I liked the flow of the text made possible by avoiding footnotes, but if one is going to butcher a sacred cow, one should back the assertion with a source.

But all these things are minor compared to the value, both in education and entertainment provided by the story of the Rinker brothers’ modern day reenactment, which is nothing short of spellbinding. I had just begun it when I came down with a case of flu, and I can’t tell you how comforting it was to curl up under my covers with my glass of orange juice and this book and immerse myself in their journey, which commenced in Missouri and like the original pioneers, continued across six states. And although I have never done the trail itself (and if I were to do so, I’d be one of the Winnebago set that made him half-crazy with their giant rigs that spooked the mules and their never-ending cameras winking at him and blocking his way), I have driven through all of the states he crossed through except Kansas.

It was useful to have traveled through most of the region that Buck described, yet his descriptions were so palpable that I think even if you have never been there and never plan to, you will see much of it in your mind’s eye.

I’m not sure what is the most remarkable part of this wonderful memoir: the novel aspect of the covered wagon trip during the 21st century, or Rinker’s voice, which switches seamlessly from that of historian, to that of family member with family issues, to that of the humorist who can appreciate life’s ironies even in adverse circumstances. All I know is that you don’t want to miss out on this one. What a terrific story!

Lucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life, by Sally McMillen ****

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lucystonealifeThis well-documented, balanced yet sympathetic biography serves to advocate for the inclusion of Lucy Stone among the statues of great Americans at the Capitol rotunda in Washington DC. Currently there is a suffragist statue that includes Stanton, Cady, and Mott. McMillen makes a strong case that Stone should be there as well.

Thank you to Oxford and Net Galley for the ARC. The book will be available at the end of January.

The history of the American feminist movement is a cause near and dear to this reviewer’s heart. I have studied it, taught it, and lived it. I have marched on that Capitol numerous times in defense of the right of women’s reproductive freedom, despite the fact that most of my life has been on the West Coast of the USA, and that is one long ride. And so, having recently veered out of my historical comfort zone, here I found myself right back in it. And most of the information in this book, while useful, is not new to me.

The reader should know that although there is extraneous material that ought to be edited out, it is all at the beginning of the book. If you are interested in the history of the suffrage movement and/or American feminist history in general, get a copy of this book, and don’t be discouraged by the initial ten percent. It does get better. It probably won’t change the statues in DC., but regardless, what McMillen imparts here is (for the last 90%)thorough, well documented, scholarly, and unflinching when less attractive issues arrive (such as the race-baiting, anti-immigrant speech-making, and the squabbling after the split in the organization occurred).

Stone was a remarkable woman, strong, charismatic, and imbued with many ideas that were well ahead of her time. Unlike most of the women who participated in and lead the women’s movement of the nineteenth century, her own origins were not petit bourgeois, or middle class. She was born into a farm family that struggled financially, and still she attended Oberlin College, the first in the nation to accept women and permit them to attend college with men. Her education was not a gift doled out from parental largesse; she taught school in order to pay her way. (Her father relented when she was a senior and paid for the last year).There were a number of restrictions on women there that seem ridiculous now and that Stone fought against and sometimes won. Her steely determination, keen intelligence, and personal magnetism led her to be the first woman to enter the then-popular public speaking circuit.

In these days before the American Civil War and after the Industrial Revolution, there was of course no media beyond the printed word. Many people were hungry for new information and ideas, but books were very expensive and newspapers, though plentiful, were often incorrect and for many, insufficient. (This paragraph is not in the book; this is me speaking.) So it isn’t really surprising that those who had the time and the means would turn up to hear speakers on important issues of the day.

Many were shocked, McMillen tells us, to hear that a woman, a single, unescorted woman, had taken this path. Stone was considered a radical, but her musical, sweet-sounding voice and her petite countenance, which she deliberately dressed in black silk and lace to take off the edge, took many off guard, and newspaper reviews were often quite favorable. Over the course of time she became famous. She proposed things suggested by no one else, such as the advantage of a woman’s remaining single so that she could keep her own money and property rather than to turn it all over to her husband, as the law required should she wed. Further, she suggested, the law ought to be changed so that such a choice need not be necessary.

Later she met Susan B Anthony, and the two were, for a time, close friends, addressing one another by their first names at a time when only the most intimate of acquaintances did so. And just as their political agreement formed the basis for what appeared to be an unshakeable friendship, so it would later cause a rift, not only personally, but in the movement itself.

For those interested in women’s history, American history, contemporary history, or Stone herself, consider this a must-read. Skim through the extraneous bits at the beginning and once the narrative truly takes wing, it will keep your attention.

Napoleon: A Life, by Robert Andrews *****

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napoleonalifeRobert Andrews has created an historical masterpiece in this massive tome, a biography of Napoleon. Thank you and thank you again to Net Galley and Viking Adult Publishers for the ARC.

Andrews is well known among historians; his scholarship and experience firmly establish him as an expert in the field of European history, especially military history and biography. The recent availability of a vast treasure-trove of primary documents made this biography possible, together with a tremendous amount of work and travel. He visited libraries all over the world and battle sites where Napoleon had been before him, before all of us. (And he set off the alarm in Napoleon’s throne three times!)

How long did this take, I wonder? By the time it was published, Andrews must have felt an overwhelming sense both of loss and of satisfaction.

As for your humble reviewer, I came to read about Napoleon, whose military career, rule, and downfall I had studied only at the shallowest level during my undergraduate years a whole long time ago, through the back door. My field is the American Civil War, but I was intrigued by the number of Civil War heroes (and others) who had studied Napoleon’s methods in detail, and referred to them when creating their own battle plans. What was it about Napoleon?

Generally, my advice to those contemplating reading a lengthy biography is to get the basics down first, but I didn’t follow my own advice here. I had the opportunity to get the ARC at the end of November, and it was now or never. I decided to plunge in, poorly prepared though I might be. When I was finished, I found I had bookmarked or made notes in over 700 places in this 926 page work. So whereas I won’t use all of my references, I can truthfully say that there is no filler, no fat. If you haven’t the patience for almost a thousand pages of Napoleon, then don’t go there, but for heaven’s sake don’t pretend that more is included here than is necessary for a thorough, scholarly, yet interesting treatment.

Having said that much, I also have to confess that I struggled somewhat with the ARC. My knowledge of European geography is pretty basic. I know where most of the countries are, what their climates are like, and for the most part, where the borders are located. When we morph into the Napoleonic era, I really, really needed maps, and that’s the price one sometimes pays for an ARC: your “map” is [map insert] noted. There will be a map; I don’t get to see it. So I gamely brought myself to my desktop for the first four Coalition Wars, and was lucky enough to find an interactive map that gave me part of what I needed to know. In some places, Andrews explained what took place so well that I could see most of the battle inside my head. But as of the fifth coalition forward, I quit trying to find my own maps when I couldn’t follow the action, and just read what was in the book.

All told, Andrews corrected some misperceptions I had developed regarding Napoleon. My own view had been that there was a heroic French Revolution, followed by what are usually termed “excesses” by the Jacobins who began the Revolution. (Today these en masse trips to the guillotine would be called atrocities.) But could the whole thing be salvaged? It seemed such a terrible waste to have a popular revolution, throw out not only a monarchy but one unusually lacking in decency toward the peasants and urban poor of France, and then have it all come tumbling down. And it also seems like a waste to have an autocrat take over. This was my perspective before reading Andrews’s biography.

Though his approach is both scholarly and balanced, Andrews offers a positive portrait of Napoleon, whom he treats with a fond, almost affectionate narrative. He points out that Napoleon kept the Bourbons off the throne for over twenty years, and it’s true that they returned in 1815 after Napoleon’s first abdication. Things got really ugly then. And he also points out that Napoleon’s career was unusually complicated. The point is well taken.

For example, who invades neighboring nations, overthrows their leaders, presumes to rewrite their constitution without consulting anyone that lives there…yet bestows upon them more civil rights than they have ever had before? And who else would insist in his terms for peace not only remuneration so that he can pay his troops and the annual benefits of military widows, but also demands that great works of art, privately owned, be turned over to him…whereupon he places them in a gallery where all visitors can enjoy them?

Mind you, the man is no Robin Hood. Far from it! He makes it clear from the beginning that he has no use for the ‘hoi polloi’, and whenever he ceases privately held property, he also sees to it that the previous owner is compensated.

The word “hubris” is often applied to Napoleon, and if not him, then who? Andrews argues that he might have been successful…if only. And there’s the rub, right? Because initially, he and his troops travel fast and hard. In the beginning, he asks nothing of them that he would not do himself. His opponents, on the other hand, are spoiled and effete. They travel with vast amounts of personal baggage and servants. They can’t move until they personally have this, that, the other. And in the end, that is the guy that Napoleon becomes.

The text is made more lively throughout with quotations of Napoleon himself, a prolific writer and a brilliant, articulate speaker.

The chapters are organized according to place, generally speaking, and this is very useful when the reader needs to go back and fact-check.

Andrews argues that Napoleon’s autocracy-as-meritocracy might have been successful if he had applied the standard to all of the dynasties he created after toppling their rulers that he applied to France. Nepotism created endless problems, and though Napoleon somehow thought that he personally might make up for the failings of his relatives, there is only so much one man can do. The many, many worthless siblings and other relatives he installed as instant royalty drained his resources and made problems that didn’t have to happen. His first wife, Josephine, was such an obsessive spender that one hates to think of the number of children under age six who might have lived had the wealth been more widely distributed.

Napoleon’s most loyal base of support was within the military, but he fought so aggressively that too many soldiers died, and the backlash was bound to come sooner or later. Yet the military base he so depended upon wanted him back again after just ten months of Bourbon reign.

Could Napoleon have been successful if he had left the Iberian peninsula alone? If he had avoided attacking Russia? Napoleon himself, upon looking back while in exile during his last years, recognizes that trying to best Britain, with its unstoppable navy, was folly; yet he certainly kept them busy for a good long while.

At one point, he reflects that if he had known he would end up defeated, he could have made different choices. He would like to be allowed to emigrate to the United States; who knows, he could have founded a state there! And here, my jaw drops as I imagine that instead of selling the Louisiana Purchase (which doubled the size of the USA) to the USA via President Thomas Jefferson, he had decided to settle it. But being Napoleon, would it have even stopped there, I wonder? He hated Britain and had nothing against US rulers; maybe he would have been able to kick the British out of Canada instead of fruitlessly attempting to rout them from their homeland.

Suddenly I can see how Andrews has become spellbound by what might have been. He has spent a lot more time with this material than I have, and it’s starting to affect me, too!

I know that some of those who read my reviews are teachers. I don’t see this as high school material; a small portion of it could be selected for honors level seniors or community college students perhaps, but then you have huge books to buy in order to use just a portion. I don’t see even the most gifted teenager sticking it out from start to finish. Though the narrative is engaging, the definitive biography is epic .It requires patience and dedication on the part of its readers. Developmentally, most young folks in their late teens and early twenties just won’t be there yet.

But if you are in doubt, buy one copy and read it yourself, then pass it around a little bit and see how it goes. Likewise, if you are homeschooling a truly extraordinary teenager that you think would gobble this up, buy it, read it (because you can’t home school anyone using a text you have not personally read), and then if you still think it may work and your student is game, give it a try.

All told, the price you will pay for this remarkable single volume biography is nothing compared to its worth in your own library, even if only used as a reference source.

Victorian Murderesses, by Mary S. Hartman ****

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victorianmurderessesIt took me awhile to decide to include this title on my blog. The problem as I saw it was that it was marketed in October as a fun-but-naughty romp through history. The reality is less interesting, and to my eye, unbelievably dry. My daughter, a high school student, saw it differently. The four stars are our compromise between my three stars and her five.

“True crime” is a big house with a whole lot of rooms. Some true crime books are deliciously prurient; others are as dusty as the top of a ten foot tall bookcase. In this case, the title (“unspeakable”) and the jacket artist lead the reader to believe we are really going to get down and dish the dirt, and what is more…it’s all true!

Instead, what we have here is a very well-written, well-documented, extremely scholarly if surprisingly dull bit of research, maybe the author’s advanced degree work. The collision between the teaser and the product are somewhat jarring. This was a First Read sent me free through the Goodreads program and the publisher. I would have abandoned it more readily had I not felt a duty to get through it.

What would have fit the bill without ruining the author’s hard work is a good piece of juicy narrative nonfiction. Put in the documentation, but pick up the pace! As is, the book is sometimes a feminist treatise that all but blames Victorian society’s social contract for slut-shaming as an understandable excuse for murder in the case of unsuitable, unmarriageable mates of the lower classes (sorry, no sympathy here), or a self-defensive maneuver against constant verbal abuse, without the loss of a high standard of living that came with the ornery groom. A baby born out of wedlock gets snuffed when an abortion can’t be obtained. The author is inexplicably sympathetic to the not-for-long-I’m-not young mother. Don’t get me wrong; I am pro-choice and an ardent feminist, which you already know if you’ve been reading my blog long. But we’re talking about an infant carried to term, birthed, then suffocated. It turns my stomach to think of it.

At other times, the pace quickens a bit, as if the author is about to get excited and take us along with her, but then her dispassionate researcher’s mind grabs hold of her–stop it right now, you’re getting worked up!–and we go back to the librarian’s hushed monotone.

The font, while suitably Victorian, is really tiny and hard on the eyes.

It may be that I am being unfair to Hartman; she has done a good deal of work here, and the fault may lie with Dover or whoever is publishing and promoting her work. All I know is that I expected this to be a fun read, and it wasn’t. I kept pushing it away in favor of other reading, as if postponing the book might make me like it better once I returned to it.

My daughter, on the other hand, took it to a corner and became disconcertingly fascinated by it, not unlike a cat who’s just found an aquarium full of fish. Hmmm! Her explanation: “It’s even better than I expected!” Well…okay. And now, it’s HER galley.

A strong, scholarly effort that should have been marketed as such. Not a Halloween read.

History of the Battle of Gettysburg, by Craig Symonds *****

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historyofbattleofgettysburg Ordinarily I have little patience for anyone who picks up a book on US military history and just wants to look at the pictures.

But I read the text. In most places it’s fine, but once you start reading McPherson and Sears on Gettysburg, there isn’t much that Symond’s text will tell you that’s new. Symonds sticks to the basics, and he gives you the brass tacks, if you want to cut to the chase. He is the retired chair of the US Naval Academy. His background speaks for itself, and he is highly lauded as a Civil War scholar.

And look at the pictures!

The American Civil War was the first US war that had photography available. No, they couldn’t take action shots yet; the subject had to remain stationary for too long at a time for that to work. But there are a lot of primary documents here, photographs of leaders, of letters and memos as they were originally written (with the text beneath them if illegible; spelling was pretty much a discretionary practice back then). There are photos of battlefields with men still lying on them. (It is now considered a breach of national security for the press to go to Afghanistan and shoot photographs of US troops, whether in action or in closed coffins, for the American public to see.) There are photographs of the weapons available at the time, and of landscapes you can visit today that look nothing like they did then.

Look at the pictures!

My favorite is a full page photograph of Lincoln. His bow tie is dusty, faded, and crooked. His hair cut is terrible. His face is creased, and it bears the hardship of many sleepless nights, and perhaps also of the death of his son and the illness of his wife. It is a picture of a real person, long before the era when presidents became packaged goods to be marketed to the American public.

I have sometimes felt bad about the fact that I will likely never visit the Smithsonian. It is the dream of all serious students of American history. But my legs won’t let me get far now, and an airport is accessible only if I use the wheelchair service, which makes me feel quite conspicuous. It’s far easier to stay home and read.

This book, which I purchased some time ago in hard cover, will hold a place of pride on my bookshelves for many years to come. Primary sources aren’t that easily come by. Along with Sherman’s and Grant’s memoirs, this is an important addition to my Civil War library.

Soldier Girls: the Battles of Three Women at Home and at War, by Helen Thorpe*****

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soldiergirlsNow that this title has created some buzz, I thought I’d reblog this!

seattlebookmama's avatarSeattle Book Mama

I was able to read this before its publication date, courtesy of NetGalley.com. Thanks, guys!

I am usually good for half a dozen books at a time, but I have to admit that this one story has dominated my reading hours for the past week or so. I had so many preconceptions (and yes, stereotypes) that I didn’t even realize I’d developed until I read about these brave souls who have gone to Afghanistan and in some cases, Iraq.

What kind of woman leaves the home she knows and signs up for the National Guard? Sometimes (often!) it is someone who needs money quick. Sometimes it’s a woman who is desperate to get out of her current living situation. And once in awhile, it is something done, at first, when one is dead drunk and out of control; the Guard will fix that quickly!

I’ve been a Marxist my whole…

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Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam, by Stephen Sears*****

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landscapeturnedredHow familiar are you with the American Civil War? Can you tell McClernand from McClellan from McPherson? Did you know there was a General Ewell of importance for both the Union and Confederacy? One more miniquiz question: in what states would one find Shiloh, Corinth, and Fredericksburg?

What I am trying to say is that this tome, which is either the definitive work on the battle at Antietam or a strong contender, is written for those of us who are pretty well versed in the basics. It won’t explain the essentials as it moves along; there is an assumption inherent in about 400 pages regarding the approach to this battle (about the first 100 pp), the battle itself, and the consequences regarding same. Sears writes with precision and authority, but he does not write for beginners.

As you can see from the rating, I loved it.

Sears isn’t on a mission to merely recount, blow by blow, what happened when. If he were set on hundreds of pages of injury and carnage, I don’t know that anyone but a masochist would care for that many pages of horrifying detail.

Instead, he sets out to prove that General McClellan, who essentially held the Union Army hostage for the duration of his tenure as commanding general, systematically and deliberately prevented the Army of the Potomac from crushing the Confederate forces. He proves the point. Beyond any question, McClellan chose not to send his soldiers to fight because he was sympathetic toward the slaveocracy and wanted the Confederacy to achieve its goal.

He contemplated participating in a coup d’etat,unseating Lincoln and tossing out the Constitution, but the vast groundswell of demand for such a thing,which he believed existed and might carry him to power, never unfolded. Though he had carved out a base of support for himself and his views within the Army of the Potomac sufficient to cripple its use for the duration of the war, there were also soldiers in this army who were sick of not fighting for their country, and who were pleased to see him leave.

I have read other histories of the Battle of Antietam, and they served the purpose of explaining who fought where, and how much blood was shed. What no one else has done is to lay the blame where it rightfully belongs. This battle should have been an open-and-shut deal, and the Confederate forces should have been disabled and the war brought close to a conclusion. Instead, through his reluctance to fight at all and then only because it was clear that to do otherwise would cost him his job, McClellan managed to make the whole thing a bloodbath that was almost a stalemate.

Technically, it was a Union victory, and that was what Lincoln had to have to declare Emancipation and prevent Europe from recognizing the Confederacy. McClellan opposed (of course) the Emancipation, but he was already about to be fired. The question was a political one; no one wanted him to leave before the elections, lest he make a mess of them. Once Congress was once more filled with majority Republican forces on both sides, it was safe to cut the connection and send him packing.

The manner in which he was fired was done with careful attention to military procedure so that he could not contest it without clearly committing a crime.

I had long felt that too much was going unsaid about General McClellan, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I had a hunch it would not do him credit. It was a little bit like childhood, when the grown-ups around you use coded phrases designed to protect you from the terrible truth, and the longer you are aware that you can’t be told something, the worse that something appears to be. And so it was with McClellan. I don’t know whether he has a bunch of really proud ancestors that other writers feared to offend or why he hasn’t been held suitably accountable before this. Perhaps the evidence was buried too deep.

One thing is certain: Sears has built his case as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. Once the book is done, there can be no doubt whatsoever. For the serious American Civil War scholar, this outstanding volume provides information that is generally not in circulation, and that is key to understanding Antietam, as well as much of what took place before it.