Tag Archives: history

Lincoln and the Power of the Press: the War for Public Opinion, by Harold Holzer ****

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Once more.

seattlebookmama's avatarSeattle Book Mama

lincoln and the pressThis book is for the serious reader. Well researched and creatively conceived, it traces the influence of the newspaper on young Lincoln, and then follows its role in his emergence as a politician, as a contender for the presidency, and later the complicated relationship between Lincoln and the press during the American Civil War. It raises thorny, thoughtful issues regarding censorship; when do we hold the First Amendment dearest above all, and when may its authority be abrogated for the security and integrity of the Union?

It starts a bit slow, and I began wondering whether this would be one of those rare books that I skim and then review, as opposed to reading every word. Still…LINCOLN. I stayed the course and was rewarded. Just be aware that the narrative doesn’t really wake up until about the 30 percent mark.

Lincoln had amazingly little formal schooling. Though this was common…

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And There Was Light: Autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, Blind Hero of the French Resistance, by Jacques Lusseyran *****

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  and there was light Lusseyran was sighted at birth, but a childhood accident caused him to lose his vision. Neither Lusseyran nor his parents–comfortable members of the petit bourgeoisie–let his blindness define him in the way that most people living in the more developed nations of the early 20th century would have done. Instead, they promoted his mental and physical development and sacrificed some of their own comfort to be sure their son continued to receive an education, although the law didn’t guarantee him one. In return, he gave not only his parents but the world a hero, one who became a leader of the French Resistance.

I have heard it suggested that those who lose one sense make up for it with the others, and so those whose eyes no longer see, or see nothing except shadow and light, hear, smell, touch and taste more acutely. Lusseyran claims that even as a child, he navigated his home town largely by smell; the baker was this way, and the creamery that way. And so the foundation was laid.

Though his education was challenged by instructors who were reluctant to have a blind student present, and who sometimes threw up nearly impossible requirements, such as reluctance to permit him the use of the braille typewriter his parents bought for him, yet others inspired him and moved him forward. Teachers, many of us at least, aspire to be someone like Jacques’s history teacher. He describes this man’s fire, and the bond that his passion for his subject and his vocation created:

“He wanted us to be exactly as we really were, funny if we couldn’t help it, furious if we were angry…his learning made us gasp. He made numbers and facts pour down on us like hail…the syllabus for history stopped at 1918…but for him this was no obstacle, for he would go ahead without any syllabus. He went past all the barriers…”

The teacher would continue to teach at the end of the school day, excusing anyone who wanted to leave (and here I think of the yellow school buses that constrict the schedules of US public school students so often now). He says that everyone stayed. “Naturally.”

The dynamic time in which he lived no doubt was responsible for much of their enthusiasm; history was clearly being created with each breath they took. Their history teacher told them–relying upon texts he had read in the original Russian–of the Bolshevik Revolution and of the Stalinism that had taken hold thereafter, of the purges. He spoke of the United States, Roosevelt, of initiative and imagination triumphant.

And so Lusseyran was not yet past adolescence when he felt he had a duty to change the world, to participate in driving out the Nazi occupiers. He tells us that it was understood for some time among himself and the friends he trusted to keep their dangerous knowledge confidential, that he would be the leader of their youth Resistance movement. Others would listen and observe to see what other individuals might join them, but of course, there were spies and each person they trusted could instead lead them to their own deaths. It was very dangerous.

And in such a circumstance, blindness became an unusual asset. New potential recruits would be led to their interview, but instead of an office or home, they were led through a labyrinth of boxes and crates in a completely unlit warehouse. Their interviewer waited at the end of this maze, and he interviewed them in the dark. He could detect falseness of character or fear of exposure from those who would betray the Resistance by listening to the nuances of their voices, and those individuals who weren’t deemed worthy were left to find their own way back out. Of course, the location sometimes had to change, but the setup was the same.

Lusseyran’s heroism is a testament to initiative and idealism. The reader will have to learn the rest of his story the way I did; the narrative is as skilled and engaging as the political work that preceded it. It is one of the most unusual and inspirational autobiographies I have encountered.

Highly recommended.

Lincoln and the Power of the Press: the War for Public Opinion, by Harold Holzer ****

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lincoln and the pressThis book is for the serious reader. Well researched and creatively conceived, it traces the influence of the newspaper on young Lincoln, and then follows its role in his emergence as a politician, as a contender for the presidency, and later the complicated relationship between Lincoln and the press during the American Civil War. It raises thorny, thoughtful issues regarding censorship; when do we hold the First Amendment dearest above all, and when may its authority be abrogated for the security and integrity of the Union?

It starts a bit slow, and I began wondering whether this would be one of those rare books that I skim and then review, as opposed to reading every word. Still…LINCOLN. I stayed the course and was rewarded. Just be aware that the narrative doesn’t really wake up until about the 30 percent mark.

Lincoln had amazingly little formal schooling. Though this was common among pioneer families at the time, with settlements sparse and young males needed to help with a tremendous amount of hard physical labor, but knowing not only that he became US president, but that he was an attorney before that, I was surprised to learn that most of his reading skills were obtained by reading every single newspaper he could get his hands on, no matter how old it was by the time it made its way to Illinois, which was then considered the northwestern USA. A sister later recounted seeing him turn a chair over and lean against it while he sat on the floor and used the firelight to read by. How many people are sufficiently motivated today to teach themselves reading skills through this sort of very difficult total immersion?

He later fed his newspaper habit by becoming postmaster, and he used this office to read the newspapers being sent by mail before they were delivered to their intended recipients. (He would later use the franking privilege bestowed upon postmasters to send out his own campaign materials free of charge.)

Newspapers were tremendously influential, approaching the zenith of their importance during this time. There was no radio or any other media to spread the news of the nation besides word of mouth. Litigation for libel or slander had not yet blossomed, and so newspapers were often very loose with the facts, and this made it all the more important to read as many of them as possible in order to tease apart truth and rumor.

Young Lincoln left home hoping to become a journalist himself. He was well known as a gregarious fellow who always had a great story ready for whoever wanted to listen. I envision his parents throwing their arms up in the air: all that work to be done at home and where is their son? Off somewhere talking, talking, talking. I also found this tidbit interesting because it contrasts sharply with the haunted and often depressed man he would later become when authority and personal tragedy marked him.

As a congressman and also as a frequent writer of freelance articles and letters to editors, Lincoln marked out his position against the extension of slavery early and with great passion. He called the war with Mexico for what it was: a land grab that would primarily benefit the feudal rulers of the south. At one point he even suggested that the attack against US citizens by Mexican soldiers was a hoax, demanding to know exactly where on the map this had occurred. Folks in Washington DC, Illinois, and even New York sat up and took notice.

Holzer also traces the beginnings of the most notable newspaper publishers of the time. The unfortunate Elijah Lovejoy is dispatched with haste, just as he was in life. Greeley, the bootstrap newsman and fervent abolitionist, at least most of the time, at first spurned Lincoln. For most of both of their careers, they had a strong working relationship, but Greeley was both quixotic and a bit unstable, and he turned on Lincoln at some pivotal times, most noteworthy when the latter was running for re-election. Bennett, founder of the Herald and innovator of a number of the institutional practices that are still in place today, was conservative politically and represented Manhattan’s pro-secessionist, pro-slavery majority. Raymond was Lincoln’s most steadfast supporter and campaign manager the second time around, though he wavered for a brief but terrible time when the tide seemed to turn in favor of the Copperhead Democrats, who wanted to give the secessionist states independence in order to end the war.

In the land of Dixie, there was no debate about Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and the press; newspapers who even hinted at Union sentiments were quickly suppressed without qualm. Despite Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus and at times the suppression and/or closure of newspapers that either leant aid to the enemy by publishing battle plans before the fights had taken place, or by less overt and therefore more controversial antiwar editorials, he won his office in a fair fight, not attempting to tamper with the electoral process or outlaw the printed word that ran in favor of McClellan, a former general whom this reviewer regards as a treasonous scoundrel.

I confess it gave me a good deal of food for thought. I was a child during the 1960’s and a teen during the 1970’s, but I recall well the controversy regarding free speech, the Vietnam War, and Nixon’s enemies list. If I am in favor of free speech and press during contemporary times, why should it have been different during the Civil War? But I eventually concluded that it was indeed different, and the exasperation of General Sherman toward the press that gave away critical secrets all in the interest of a scoop and the bottom line was entirely correct.

But that’s just one reviewer’s opinion; thanks to Net Galley for the ARC. If you are willing to devote the time and attention this tome demands, you are sure to come away with a viewpoint of your own.

To those interested in the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, or the history of the American newspaper, highly recommended.

Confederate Bushwhacker: Mark Twain in the Shadow of the Civil War, by Jerome Loving *****

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confederate bushwhacker Good things come to those who wait. Jerome Loving established his credentials as an academic and historian a long time ago. I haven’t read the other biographies he has written, but they’re going on my list now.

Here’s what you have to know going into it: if you are looking for the sound bite, the cut-to-the-chase, you can’t have that wish. Loving uses induction rather than deduction, and brick by brick he builds toward his conclusion, taking the time to set context in a way that only a specialized biography such as this one, which focuses on the single year 1885, can do. And since I received this gorgeous little hardcover book as a Goodreads.com First Reads giveaway, I was impatient at first. “What the heck. Where’s the bushwhacking? Where’s Grant?”

Uh uh uh. No. Go back, reread. Everything that is in this book is there for a reason. If you hustle through the first part to get to the second, you may leave too many holes in the foundation. Do you want the wall to fall down? Of course not.

What I noticed, as I marched through with my sticky notes, is that the clusters were initially sparse, as the stage was set, and then suddenly ramped up around page 100, and by the end of the biography I was putting a sticky on every page and sometimes on facing pages.

I could tell you what he has to say; I went back and looked at all of those notes, but then, why would I wreck it for you? An author who builds up to the last page does not need a reviewer to hand over his punch line for him.

Instead, I can tell you that this is a careful, painstaking, well-documented analysis of a complex character. Twain’s ideas evolved between his 20’s and the end of his life, and of course, for most of us they do, but perhaps because his mind was open and searching, or perhaps because of his great fondness for “Sam” Grant, he watched what took place–including the Haymarket martyrdom, which I never knew had been an interest of his–and revised his ideas accordingly. Smart people can do that.

Perhaps the greatest measure of the success of this work is that it not only makes me want to see what else Loving has written, it also makes me want to revisit Twain. I had avoided much of Twain’s philosophical writing because of his anger toward the “damn human race”, to which I am much attached, thanks. But I want to see more about the connection between the events that played out during this time period and his changing perspectives.

One small correction is in order to Loving’s work, though I know this is a tiny, picky detail: Loving states that a huge redwood tree had been named for Grant. Ahem. It is a Sequoia tree. It is immense, but it is General Sherman’s that is the largest in the entire world. Sequoias belong to the same family as redwoods, but they are different. Having driven several days from Seattle to Southern California to see the tree; survived a four-car pile-up, rescued my luggage, bandaged and iced myself and my children, hired a rental car and driven onward to fulfill my mission, I can’t let it go by without mentioning it. Two great huge trees in honor of my two favorite American generals of all time. Sequoias. A hint is that they are located in Sequoia National Park. Makes sense, no?The biggest tree in the world! 50%

If you are reading this exclusively for the Civil War aspect, I will tell you that most of the book is not devoted to that time period; it says it is about 1885, not 1865, and when examining the book’s jacket, a knee-jerk reaction will leave you dangling. There is a small but meaty portion in which Twain discusses his part in the American Civil War, but this is not a Civil War history.

For those who read memoirs and biographies as rapaciously as I do, this is a must-read. For those who enjoy American history and literature, and most of all Twain, it is highly recommended. If you like Grant and maybe have even plowed through his remarkably readable autobiography, even better! But you can easily understand this book without it.

Many of my Goodreads.com First Reads will eventually be given away to my daughter’s school or some other good cause. Not this one; it will retain a place of pride in our home library. Thank you for writing it, Mr. Loving, and thanks to the University Press of New England for the free copy.

War On the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 by James McPherson *****

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This was my Mother’s Day gift from waronthewatersmy spouse last May, and boats are HIS thing. I thought, Psssh. RIGHT. But since I strive to be a scholar of the American Civil War and the navy is about the only stone (as opposed to gravel, metaphorically) that I’ve left unturned, I started in. No, I FELL in.

First of all, it has to be recognized that McPherson is undeniably the USA’s #1 living Civil War scholar. His status as professor emeritus at Princeton has been well earned. When he decides to delve into some aspect of Civil War history, he finds his primary sources wherever he has to go. So, though he is an old man, he went on those waters. He walked where soldiers trod in order to get to the forts he, too, visited. He believes that in order to understand how any battle unfolded, on land or sea, you’d better get a sense of the geography. This is what a serious scholar looks like.

Then he tracked down the letters and journals of the key players. Once his tools were out and he was ready to go, he stated his bold thesis and then methodically proved it. And it is something of a startling thesis to me. He says that without the navy’s contributions, the war could not have been won.

When Grant says it, one wonders if it was a diplomatic gesture toward the seamen who so tenaciously pounded away during the siege of Vicksburg. How many times have you heard someone who is receiving an award say, “I would not be here tonight if it were not for the support of…” (whoever)?

When McPherson says it, I sit back and say, “Whoa.”

He takes his case and spins it into an enjoyable narrative, for those interested in the American Civil War. There are maps with just exactly the right amount of detail to prove the point. Photographs are clear as a bell (remember that this is the first U.S. war in which photography was available, though not so much for action shots…but for a naval battle? Certainly!).

So although my husband never reads anything on this site, Honey? Sorry to have misjudged you. And I forgive you for stealing it back to read when I was thirty pages from the end. Do you forgive me for stealing it back? You can finish it now if you like!

And to other readers who are Civil War buffs: why are you still on this page? You should be on another screen, ordering the book!

Alex’s Wake: A Voyage of Betrayal and a Journey of Remembrance, by Martin Goldsmith *****

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alexs wakeHolocaust memoirs take on added urgency right now, between the revisionists who want to rewrite history and claim that the entire thing was either a hoax or dreadful exaggeration, and the fact that the eye witnesses and survivors are nearly all dead now. Martin Goldsmith retraces the journey, both academically and where possible, literally, to the places his Uncle Helmut and grandfather Alex were taken. It’s quite a story, and would be a fun read if it were not so horribly, terribly true. As it stands, Goldsmith’s narrative pulls his readers in one slim finger at a time, until we are held firmly to the text and must remain until it’s done.

The narrative starts out introspective and almost dreamlike. If I were not reading this free courtesy of Net Galley in exchange for my review, I think I might have set it aside about twenty percent of the way in and not returned, thinking to myself that of course, I know the Holocaust was real, but do I want to read about it again? It’s not an enjoyable topic, and what good can it do to revisit it? Furthermore, I started to believe that this particular narrative was not so different from other heartbreaking stories, and might be more of interest to the writer and his surviving kin than to strangers like me.

I am glad I kept reading, because just past this point is where we quit the runway and the story takes wing. The writer starts with the visits, first to the Holocaust museum, and then to Europe. He is greeted warmly in his family’s former homeland, and he makes speeches and accepts certificates and expresses appreciation to the family who now occupies what was once the family manse for their clumsy token gesture. The current owners clearly understand that circumstances have skewed things badly, and they want to make it up in some impossible way. They were wondering what he would think of a nice plaque on the building’s exterior noting its place in history and recognizing his family.

He understands these folks aren’t the ones who stole from him. He says and does the right things, but the edge is unmistakably there, as part of him longs to say that if they really want to make things right, to give him back his family’s home. Like many who lost wealth and/or family in the Holocaust, he waxes nostalgic, looking with poignancy at the beautiful place that should rightfully be his.

Here I squirm a bit. I don’t read rich people’s stories for a reason. I don’t believe anybody is entitled to vast wealth. It’s why the only memoirs I avoid are those of the ruling rich.

But another more important principle trumps my usual one: nobody, nobody, nobody should be disenfranchised of even a penny on account of their ethnicity or race. If anyone at all in Germany gets to have a big fancy house, then Goldsmith’s family should. His resentment is righteous; he has the moral high ground here. I think back to an old bumper sticker I once saw, courtesy of the American Indian Movement during the 1960’s that read, “AMERICA: love it or give it back.” And thus is the untenable yet irreparable theft of the Holocaust’s descendents. We can’t fix it, so here’s your framed letter, your trophy, your plaque, your award. His ambivalence runs deep and is clear and harsh. It should be.

From there, Goldsmith’s family saga telescopes out in a way that is so deft, I don’t even catch the transitions. This is rare. I spent years of my life teaching teenagers how to make transitions in their writing, and usually when it is well done in professional writing, I sit back and admire it, like the French paintings he describes. I love to watch good transitions happen, but the very best are noteworthy in that I am so deeply into the text that they float by unseen. It’s almost magical. And so, as the family’s tale is told, we see the larger picture of France and French fascism.

Many of us today want to believe that all of France and much of Germany was simply too afraid of the fascists to resist, but Goldsmith unflinchingly grabs us by the hair, makes us look. There are cheering throngs that are thrilled when the fascists take power. They aren’t trembling; they are overjoyed. This is how fascism works, in demonizing a sector of the population, others believe themselves lifted up.

In the end, I was glad to have joined Goldsmith on his journey. For anyone with a serious interest in World War II; the Holocaust; the face and effect of fascism; or contemporary European history, this gem is not to be missed.

I Kiss Your Hands Many Times: Hearts, Souls, and Wars in Hungary, by Marianne Szegedy-Maszak *****

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IkissyourhandsPoignant and painful; beautiful and wrenching…Szegedy-Maszak takes us through a time and place in a way nobody else could. If you are a serious historian, please consider this a must-read.

When I applied to receive this story as a Goodreads giveaway, I did so as an historian, conscious of a blind spot in my own education. I knew too little of Hungary and its past, apart from that it had become a part of the Soviet block at some point, and then became independent once more. I wanted to learn more about the country’s political and economic history, and if I had to read a love story to do that, then I would.

When the book arrived, I gasped as I pulled it from its envelope. Beautifully bound in hardcover with folio-cut pages and a pearlescent cover featuring the family about which she writes, I held it in my hands, showed it to my family, and then swore my head would not be turned by the beauty on the cover, and the painstakingly aesthetic manner in which the interior is designed. The family tree at the start of the book actually turns out to be essential, because many people are mentioned many times here, and to keep them straight, I would have to keep flipping back. But I didn’t know that yet. I saw the literary (and as it turns out, highly appropriate) quotes that adorn each chapter’s beginning, along with images from the past, snapshots of what is no more.

So…incredibly good taste, and no expense has been spared. But can she write? Oh yes! And by the time I was done, I had no fewer than fifty sticky-noted pages, and worse, every single one of them marks a passage that seems really important. Now I must pick and choose, which is a dreadful predicament.

Be aware that this is a hyper-literate read, not necessarily accessible to every reader. And to get to the good part, you’ll have to do a lot of work at first, plodding through the dull stuff at the start and trying to remember who everyone is.

Though it tells a good deal of what took place behind the scenes before, during, and after the second world war in Hungary (albeit from the very conservative perspective of considerable material interest and self-involvement), it is also a deeply personal story, told well by an already accomplished writer with a literary pedigree a mile long and granite solid. This is her first book, but Szegedy-Maszak is already a respected writer and journalist. Her love of family and the details that governed their lives in Hungary, Europe, and the USA are what makes this memoir compelling. For many, this will be a more palatable way to learn history as well.

Because of the role of extended family, which is inextricably intertwined with that of her parents, the reader must wade through lengthy genealogy in the beginning. I have read other reviews saying that the reviewer gave up on the book because of the initial level of detail, and indeed, at first it is tempting to wonder why anyone who is not related to the author would have an interest. Though the author has doubtless already hacked away at the introductory chapters and removed portions that it hurt her heart to pull and cut, a little more pruning at the start would make this book more readable. It’s a 4.5 on my very picky scale anyway, though, because what comes after its somewhat tedious beginning is remarkable and well told. It is a very scholarly yet heart-felt telling of how world events have impacted her family, and vice versa, and it is when she describes poignant experiences in a painterly, often painful way that her family’s story becomes most absorbing.

The writer grows up in a multigenerational household in which children are almost irrelevant, seated below the salt at the long formal dinner table. Everything the elders value and discuss has come and gone. Her mother descends from the Weiss and Kornfeld (later to become “de Kornfeld”) families, and her mother’s grandfather was once the most wealthy industrial and agricultural baron in all of Hungary. Now most of the empire is gone, and the family sighs wistfully and speaks about the past, when they were someone, when a mere phone call or visit from Weiss or Kornfeld could cause a policy change, or change someone’s life.

*consider everything after this to be a spoiler alert*

Her parents had been very different people. Her mother had grown up in a vacuum of sorts created by immense wealth and privilege. Even as the Nazis stormed across Europe, Hungary was, by the author’s telling, insulated for a long time, unlike their unlucky neighbors, the Poles. Hungary wanted the land that had been lost to Czechoslovakia in the Treaty of Trianon following the First World War, an immense piece of real estate inhabited primarily by Hungarians, and which had been taken from them. When Nazi tanks rolled into Austria and boundaries were redrawn, the Hungarians held their breath. They understood that with the USSR fighting as an Allied nation, they would see no restitution of land from the Allies. Thus, they became an Axis power, at first tentatively, with the hope that if enough munitions were produced by the Manfred Weiss Works, makers of tanks, munitions, and later in the war, airplanes, the Germans would see no need to invade and supervise Hungary. And this was the Hungarian argument against occupation: we can do so much for you independently, oh Germany. Don’t trouble yourselves coming here. It’s all good.

In the midst of all this, Hanna Kornfeld, the writer’s mother, meets a brooding intellectual and politician, Aladar Szegedy-Maszak. When he signs his letters to her—first formal, then impassioned, but with the restraint decorum required—he concludes with “I kiss your hand”, which is merely the equivalent of the Western “yours truly” (when we aren’t) or “sincerely” (even less so). It was a format, until it was more.

He is an intellectual, a scholar, and a very busy man. He is anti-fascist, and trying to somehow involve the Allied forces, so that Hungary can make its separate peace with Britain and the US, but Britain holds off, regarding Hungary as not of primary importance strategically (and in fact, they are surrounded by fascists, so it would be a stretch by the time Hungary makes its entreaty), and also, Hungary is regarded as opportunist.

Here the author bristles, and I think she doth protest too much.

My sense is that the time to contact the Allies was when Hitler invaded Poland. One doesn’t offer Hitler endless munitions, and then complain to the Allies when he sends his troops in to do exactly what they’ve done everywhere else in Europe.

Aladar, however, is not offering endless munitions; he is trying to persuade anyone who will listen to him that the fascists must be resisted at all costs. He is arrested for his anti-fascist activities and sent to Dachau. He survives , partly because he is treated as a political prisoner, which for some reason is considered a relatively (RELATIVELY!) privileged category, and also because the fascists don’t cast their eye toward Hungary until near the end of the war.

And when they come, they do it in the way only fascists can. The Danube runs red with blood. This is not allegory, but a literal reference. Despite every record that was burned, every photograph that was destroyed, there is still plenty of documentation, and the author provides it all, the child of the scholar become scholar herself. The bibliography at the book’s end, along with the notes for each chapter, is impressive.

Once Aladar is free, his experience leaves him brooding, nearly broken, and overcome with survivor’s guilt. It is with trepidation, then, that he contacts Hanna once more when the war has ended, because as he tells her, he is not the same man he was before the war; he has no money and no job; yet the one thing he knows is that he loves her and wants to marry her if she is still interested. He kisses her hands many, many times.

Interestingly, Hanna is fine. Her family has swung a deal. They will sign over all of the factories, the real estate, in fact the large majority of the family fortune, in exchange for their lives somewhere outside the Nazi realm. Let us go to a neutral country, and you can have it all.

The fascists want to hold a few of the family back as hostages. It is here that the writer’s aunt blanches and almost does not sign. Yet the family understands that there is really nothing to keep the Nazis from taking everything and having every last one of them killed. With the coolness that generally characterizes the ruling class, the family cuts its losses and runs. Who can blame them? Others would surely have done the same, given the chance. They go to Portugal initially; later some will try to rebuild a life in Budapest, others in Switzerland.

But it is Aladar whose political practices and courage open the door to the United States. It is remembered after the war that he has pleaded all along, from the very beginning, for Hungary to become a part of the Allied umbrella. He had met Hitler, and he had heard him speak. He knew the guy wasn’t someone you wanted to rule your people. He did everything he could to take Hungary into Allied hands, but it didn’t happen. He nearly died in the undertaking, and now, the US gazes at him with a bit more focus. He is a friendly face in war-torn Europe, and might make an excellent liaison with the new Hungarian government

When the war is over, is appointed minister to Hungary for the USA. With a moue of distaste at the notion of leaving Europe, and understandable grief at leaving her family at such a wrenching time, Hanna agrees to marry Alastar and move to the USA. Numerous family members will later follow.

But small countries all lose when enormously powerful countries sit down, victorious, to divide the post-war map, as if it were a smallish birthday cake where everyone at the table ought to get a little piece. Hungarians will not determine the fate of Hungarians. The USSR has paid dearly in human flesh and material loss, and now it will build itself a buffer zone to protect its turf against future incursion.

The Allied nations understand the nature of Stalinism (and this is my own historical interpretation; the writer embraces the Cold War era view of “totalitarianism” with regard to the now-moribund USSR). It is ultimately conservative; the USSR was not interested in expanding across the globe, only in holding onto its own power base. Just as France gained back land it had lost, and just as the US experienced unprecedented power and influence over the globe, so would Mother Russia see to it that her own needs were met. Hungary was diced up even finer, since a fair amount of anti-Stalinist sentiment prevailed there. When they were finished, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and other satellite states stood like sentries on the Soviet perimeter.

As for the heroic Aladar, he refuses to recognize the new Hungarian government. He welcomes the wife of the deposed head of state, one who was friendly toward a capitalist system. The Smallholder Party that Aladar favored has gone down, but he is not out of the fight yet. Soon, the newspapers in the Stalinist orbit will display a photograph of the Hungarian minister kissing the hand of this woman as she leaves the US, and he is branded a traitor.

His courage gets him nothing in the US except the opportunity to remain with his family as a US citizen (small potatoes for the writer’s family, yet something that is held dearly and hard to get these days!)
I was chagrined to see that he went to work for the right-wing (my characterization, not the author’s) Radio Free Europe. He had the integrity to resign when he learned this enterprise was CIA-run, but the Voice of America cannot be regarded by a Marxist (of the non-Stalinist variety) such as myself.

The writer is at her strongest when she injects the deeply personal moments into her narrative: a family member explains to her that when she views the photographs of bodies piled high at the death camps, she searches the faces of the corpses to “see if one knows anyone.” Suddenly the Holocaust becomes up close and personal in a way only trumped by Schindler’s List and Night. Family members have died there; this was not as clean an exit for her family as it is made out to be in the press.

Though despondent over the loss of his country’s autonomy; his own survivor’s guilt, including his inability to save the members of his family in Hungary who were killed or hurt by the Stalinists in retaliation against his activities abroad; and finally, the death of his and Hanna’s first-born and namesake, Alastar still travels to Hungary with the writer, his daughter, in the late 70’s, and he is still sharp enough mentally to shush her when she naively inquires about the number of police all over the airport. Marianne Szegedy-Maszak points out that he must have been clinically depressed, but not enough medical advances had been made for him to have anything to help him beyond Valium, a drug that’s great for anxiety, but doesn’t really do much for depression.

Though the writer seems perhaps most deeply attached to the female members of her family, I find myself more taken with her father, who despite his political leanings that are almost opposite to my own, was clearly a man of principle and integrity, and who knew how to roll up his sleeves and do what needed doing. In retirement, he finds that he needs to see things grow; he loses himself in the family garden, and visitors mistake him for the gardener.

There is so much more to see here, and this is clearly a work wrought from love of family and origin rather than something done primarily for fiscal gain. For those interested in the Holocaust; Hungarian history; or for women like Szegedy-Maszak (and me) who find that we understand our mothers so much better only after they grow old and die, this book should not be missed. The first few chapters are slow, but forge on, and you will be rewarded.

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair *****

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thejungleIt’s not your best beach read, but it’s an important bookmark in the history of American literature.

The second wave of immigrants who came to the USA around the turn of the century (our setting is 1905) came mostly from Eastern Europe. Political turmoil and poverty were the push factors for myriad Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Turks and others who needed to get away, and the still vivid hope of the American dream, the possibility of social mobility unthinkable in Europe, was the pull factor. The Statue of Liberty still meant something back then.

It wasn’t as simple as it seemed, though. One of the primary large cities to which immigrants flocked was Chicago, and one of the chief industries that would offer them work–as usual, work that those born here would not do–was meatpacking. It looked like good money, even after meeting coworkers who had fewer body parts at the end of their tenure at the packing plant than they’d had going in. It was bloody, nasty, inhuman, and heartless, both toward the workers and the animals. And the stuff that landed on the conveyor belt went into the product to be sold at the supermarket, whether it belonged there or not.

I’ll let that sink in a moment.

Sinclair’s novel was intended to be a workingman’s call to arms. Cast off the bonds of wage slavery. Let the people who do the work own the means of production, set the time tables, and divide the spoils. He’d been reading Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and believed his book would be a revolutionary vehicle. After all, working people read back then, and their attention spans had not been reduccd by the instant gratification that television and video games would later provide. He hoped it would be effective.

It was, but not the way he planned. When Americans read about all of the disgusting stuff that was landing in what they intended to serve for dinner, they revolted, and the Food and Drug Administration was born.

Today, meat packing workers are still among the most injured and the lowest paid, and they are still largely manned by immigrant workers.

The bottom line: read this for its historical importance and its place in American literature, but don’t expect to enjoy the experience. It’s pretty grisly material, but rightly so.

I Freed Myself: African-American Self-Emancipation in the Civil War Era, by David Williams *****

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IfreedmyselfWilliams is smoking hot when it comes to the role of African-Americans in the American Civil War. The overstatement that Lincoln freed the slaves rubs many of us, and his thesis that not only did the slaves largely set themselves free, but were pivotal to the Union’s ultimate victory, is a strong one.

In Marxist organizations, there is an expression for a political over-correction. It’s called “bending the stick too far back”. The idea is that you want the stick to be straight up, but sometimes when something has been done wrong, and once the evidence piles up until the reader cannot believe that anyone was dumb enough to think otherwise, it can cause other mitigating facts to be obscured; thus, the stick is bent too far the other way. And although I really like the work Williams has done here, and am making my 4.5 rating round up to 5 lest anyone not read this scholarly, well documented work, I do think he has made an error or two by disregarding the dynamics of the war and the decision-making process. It’s easy to do.

Actually, when I taught about this subject, I treated Lincoln and his role in it largely the way Williams does here, and that was a mistake. I used the same quotes Williams uses, and said that every American president basically does whatever he is pressured to do by those who hold the economy in their grip.

I was mistaken, and Williams is too, in this one way. Lincoln was such a friend to the Black man, in fact, that his name did not even appear on Southern presidential ballots (according to Catton, who notes it in the first volume of his trilogy). It was exactly because of this known fact that South Carolina gave notice of its secession even before Lincoln was inaugurated. And when Lincoln was being smuggled from his home to Washington, DC, plans for what to do once in office were prefaced by the qualifier, “If you live…” Because, despite the things Lincoln had to do to set the wheels in motion and set the stage for Emancipation, he was going to see the slaves freed.

The first thing Lincoln had to do, though, was protect the integrity of the Union. This was not a racist error; it’s hard to read about the things he said and did, but if the South were allowed to secede, or succeeded in its mission, it would become entirely dependent upon Britain for its manufactured goods, and largely so for its cotton market, and the slaves might well have remained in bondage much longer than they did.

The most graphic way to see it is this way: take a very basic political map of North America. Draw a line where the states end and territory begins as of 1861. Color all of Canada, which was a protectorate of Britain, red. Now color all of the Confederate States red. Mark the Border States with red stripes. Draw red arrows toward the eastern coast of North America pointing toward the USA. And once you have done all of this, put some red question marks on all of the western territory, and color the remaining Union states blue.

The result will be a very small piece of blue in the middle of all that red. If Britain were able to dominate North America so overwhelmingly, it would only be a matter of time before she began arming the borders, to the north, to the south, occupying harbors, and proceeding to take her “colonies” back. (Remember this had been attempted just 50 years before the Civil War during the War of 1812, when Britain burned the US Capitol to the ground.) So in many ways, this war started out being about maintaining national sovereignty, and could only be about freeing the slaves—which HAD to be done in order for Feudalism to die and capitalism to move forward, as history demands—once it was clear that the Union was safe. And the starting point there was keeping Maryland and Kentucky in the Union. (Color Maryland red and you will note that the entire Capitol city is now surrounded by the enemy; with the president and Congress on hostile soil, the war ends pretty quickly, and the slaves are still slaves, at least for the time being.) So I think that Williams is too harsh in his judgment of Lincoln at the outset of the war. It was like a chess game, in which everything had to be done in order. Had the South remained in the Union, slavery would still have had to end, and perhaps with less bloodshed. Most of Europe had ended slavery through government buy-out programs, and Lincoln quietly probed for this alternative several times, even after South Carolina had announced its secession. But the southern power brokers were having none of it.

But this does not diminish (as US history texts do) the role of the slave, the role of the free Black man, the role of the former slave, in the victory of the Union. And I learned a lot from Williams, because written US history has largely suppressed slave revolts, noting only the Nat Turner rebellion, and of course, the one led by John Brown, the only Caucasian male for many, many years that would fight and die for Black people. Williams fills out this missing piece of the puzzle admirably, and to my knowledge, no one else has adequately done so.

For the vast number of incidents documented here in one body for the first time that I am aware of, and done in such a methodical and scholarly fashion, all the while drumming away at Black empowerment and the role played by people of color, this book is worth your buck. If you have any interest whatsoever in the American Civil War; American history; or Black rights, this book should grace a place in your personal library.

And oh teachers, if you don’t have a copy of this in your classrooms—never mind that there is some difficult vocabulary here; when something is important enough, students will access the material—you should definitely dip into your classroom supply kitty, or if you don’t have one, your own wallet if necessary. African-American students have such a hard time dealing with the humiliating details surrounding slavery and the Civil War. They need to see this. They need to see that those who came before them stood up.

Black American leadership started during the American Civil War. Over 200,000 African-American men served as soldiers, and countless others did manual labor, served as spies and saboteurs, or simply walked away from the plantations. Others took ownership, literally, moving into the empty plantation houses and taking what they had already more than earned. (Would that the US government had enforced Reconstruction and kept it alive; but that is another story, a different book.)

Get this book. Read it. If you can afford to do so, get two copies so you can highlight one and write in the margins, and keep the other copy clean for visitors or family members. Its place in American Civil War history is unquestionable.

Tipperary, by Frank Delaney *****

Aside

review “The most eloquent man in the world”? It’s entirely possible.

This hyper-literate narrative inside a narrative inside a narrative unfolds as a simple tale at first, then becomes more complex as this deft tale-spinner pulls the scope out one notch at a time.

In addition, we are provided with a passionate re-telling of the atrocities visited on the Irish by the Anglo and Irish-Anglo ruling class. Delaney puts such genuine feeling into the narrative of the republican movement as it progressed in the early 20th century that I am surprised the writer doesn’t find himself on the do-not-fly list. His honesty and appreciation of the struggle is refreshing, at times surprisingly witty, and disarming.

At the story’s beginning, I really do not care much for Charles O’Brien and his stalker-like behavior toward April Burke. No means no. What’s WITH this guy?

But then later, the narrator (who is a character within the story) says more or less the same thing, and in due time, I find myself warming toward this awkward but well-meaning fellow. And as the narrator’s camera zooms out and encompasses so much more, I read more closely.

Occasionally I made the error of trying to read it AFTER I took the sleeping pills, and found I had to go back the next time and reread. It is not a story for the short attention span or one who wishes to multitask; it is absorbing, and requires one’s entire focus. But I found it rewarding enough to devote the necessary time and attention, and even found myself doing web-crawls to see how much of one or another historical detail was true, and how much was fictional or unknown.

In the end, my book was jammed full of sticky notes, and I felt as if I had traveled over oceans and centuries. An eloquent story, indeed!