A century uplifted, a century crushed in The Third Horseman

From the week of June 9th, 2014

Finding truth in history is a difficult and often treacherous pursuit. Empowered by our hunger to understand our ancestors, and to learn from the mistakes they made, we read into the bits and pieces we are able to unearth about them narratives which are invariably distorted by our own values, our own biases. We savage the Catholic church for its backwards treatment of Galileo; we cringe at the murderous zeal of Henry VIII; we sadly shake our heads over the unimaginable loss of life during its wars and famines. And for most of us, this is done without context, without comprehending the deeply entrenched customs that motivated actions that, to us, range from abhorrent to bewildering.

This is why history cannot be reduced to narratives. It is the gestalt of countless lives, across countless generations, making contributions to countless cultural constructs. History is like the weather. It is not moved or shaken by any one disturbance. It is a complex system whose constant shifts require constant re-evaluation. And it is an acknowledgement of this underlying reality that makes this micro-history from William Rosen so captivating.

Popularized by opponents of Climate Change, who deploy it as ammunition against acknowledgement of the Anthropocene, the Medieval Warming Period was a roughly 400-year warming of the European climate that began in the tenth century and ended dramatically in the early years of the 14th. Between, Europe and the British Isles, experienced a significant increase in temperatures which not only expanded the total acreage of cultivatable land, but allowed for the existence of crops in areas that formerly could not support them. Northern England, for instance, possessed fruitful vineyards during this uptick. And as has been true since the dawn of civilization, more available food allows the population to expand, in this case, by tens of millions.

This expanse in the Carrying Capacity of Europe would come to have dire consequences in the 1300s when, with the end of the Medieval Warming Period, widespread flooding in the 1320s destroyed much of the continental harvests. The shrinking of the food supply led to starvation, famine and death. With scientific thought in its infancy, and the ruling powers too preoccupied with their own disputes to engineer solutions, these crippling conditions killed many, in peace and in war and authored more than a century of anguish highlighted by plague and darkness.

A history of both the climate and the people who endured it, The Third Horseman is a gripping examination of the Medieval Warming Period, the systemic forces that likely caused it and the human events that characterized it. From the Norman Invasion of England to the Scottish wars of Independence, from the floods in western Europe to the barley crops in Norway, Mr. Rosen gathers together the disparate, dangling threads of this consequential time and weaves them into an entertaining tapestry that is as enlightening as it is terrifying.

From the perch of modernity, where we possess technologies to literally remake the face of our planet, we rarely think about fundamental elements like food that are necessary for not only human survival but the continuance of human civilization. Today, food is not only bountiful, it is ubiquitous, so much so that some have fetishized its consumption while the rest take its presence for granted. Not so in Medieval Europe where food's cultivation was a difficult and arduous process, requiring a significant percentage of the available human capital to actualize, leaving margins for error razor thin.

But while, thanks to advancements in farming technology in specific and science in general, we have more margin for error, it is swiftly shrinking. Seven-billion humans now walk our planet, a many-fold increase over Medieval Europe. Should harvests fail thanks to our reckless distortion of the climate system, untold millions will die and plunge our civilization into the greatest famine we've ever known. And given that the failure of past civilizations is often caused by the social upheavals that result from the scarcity of basic necessities like food and water, it is not difficult to imagine that such a disruption would be the end of us too.

Mr. Rosen, however, is neither a nag nor a pessimist. The Third Horseman is not a polemic against human wastefulness, nor climate skeptics. It is, rather, the study of the disruption of life during consequential changes in those fundamental things we take for granted. It does not prod us to change our ways, nor does it seek to blame us for our faults. It merely invites us to remember how, despite our science and our liberation, despite our triumphs and our beliefs, we are still, in totality, reliant upon Earth and its climate to sustain us, systems of which our knowledge is laughably incomplete. Whatever step we take as a result of this key insight is ours to execute on our own.

A review of this fine work would be incomplete if it glossed over the author's treatment of the Scottish wars which have a ringing relevance for 2014, the year in which Scotland again faces the prospect of becoming sovereign. Famous historical figures like Robert the Bruce, William Wallace and the Englishmen they faced to gain their freedom are given fine, if unspectacular biographies. The passion, and indeed the enlightenment, comes in how these men were affected by the broader, global systems that they gave not even a passing thought.

An excellent micro-history that leaves no doubt of just how perilous our perch is on our little blue dot... (4/5 Stars)

A tortured man in a tormented land in Lawrence In Arabia

From the week of June 9th, 2014

Mythology plays a strange and complex role in the legacies of history's legendary figures. Heroes and villains both find themselves subjected to its whimsical powers, the former elevated out of the mists of obscurity to shine like the essence of virtue, an example to all those who follow, and the latter shrouded in the darkness of devilry, their cruel deeds used to assure present-day citizens that they aren't so barbaric. Without mythology to generationally resurrect the stories of the past, we might never have heard of such figures, let alone learned their lessons. And yet, this historical airbrushing is so deeply rooted in the cultural prejudices that have shaped and carried them that, often, very little of the actual person is left for us to study. Fortunately, for Mr. Anderson, his subject has only suffered a century of such treatment. The rest of the mythological sediment the author himself expertly scrapes away to reveal a character of endless fascination.

Born into less than reputable circumstances, at least by the measure of his Victorian era, T. E. Lawrence rose from the obscurity of a difficult childhood to become arguably the most famous figure of World War I. An archaeologist with a particular fondness for the Arab world, he was initially tapped by the British Government to survey the Middle East which became a battleground in the Great War when the Ottoman Empire refused to side with the Entente powers. Keen to protect its colonial interests in the region, not to mention the vital oil reserves necessary to fuel their ships, Britain needed to understand not only the strategic situation in the region but the cultural one as well.

Lawrence might have remained a historical footnote, nothing more than a consultant on Arabic affairs, were it not for Britain's shambolic defeat at Gallipoli, a foolish engagement that not only swept into the sea the lives of thousands of young men from both Commonwealth and Turkey, but robbed Britain of any territorial advantage. Forced to rely on key figures in the Arab world, Britain turned to Lawrence to liaison with the region's tribal leaders. Not only would Lawrence come to cherish these relationships, they would serve to highlight the faithlessness of his own imperialistic government, truths that would permanently change his view of the western world. Lawrence would persist in his task, however. For he believed in an Arab world for the Arabs. And to achieve that, the ottomans would have to be defeated, the doing of which would make him a legend of history.

A superlative work of non-fiction, Lawrence in Arabia is a thorough, spellbinding account of the man, the myth and the world that spawned him. Scott Anderson, an author and journalist, exhibits, here, prose of the first order that not only drills down into Lawrence and the lives of the regional figures who encountered him, but also more-than-capably withdraws to a more global remove to discuss the political and militaristic maneuverings of the involved powers. His descriptions of Lawrence's labors are so wonderfully enmeshed into the overarching narrative of imperialistic exploitation and notions of smug, European superiority that the reader, made breathless by western perfidy, looks on in wonder at an unfolding tragedy of the first order, horrific events that, though they occurred a hundred years ago, nonetheless maintain sad echoes of the present. That the author so ably and effortlessly evokes such comparisons is a credit to his grasp of the subject.

There are actors here, other than Lawrence himself, that garner attention. William Yale, the prospector for Standard oil; Faisal Ibn Hussein, a warlord and Lawrence's primary ally; and Mark Sykes, an infamous British noble and diplomat whose corrosive whimsy wound up destroying Arab faith in the west. Each man, in his own right, is a creature of fascination and complexity. And yet, none hold a candle to Lawrence whose problematic-unto-abusive childhood drove him to lengths of ascetic self-denial that verged on the fanatical. His capacity to endure suffering is as breathtaking as his transformation from creature of self-contained interests and passions into an individual possessed of both the arrogance and the will to believe that his view of what was just could be imposed upon the western world. That he failed is not surprising. But that he thought he might succeed says more about the man than all his trials combined.

It is impossible to read such books without being enriched by them, not only in the events themselves but in how they characterize the broader tides of history. There's a palpable sense of tragedy that hangs over this work, a perpetual sense that human civilization, for all its brilliant advancements, is heart-breakingly prone to collective acts of senseless violence. From the indescribable idiocy of the Great War itself, down through all the self-interested decisions spawned by it, we come to understand some measure of the cultural disdain and suspicion the Middle East has for the West. It is there, for all to see, in the actions of our fathers and our forefathers, what we are capable of doing so long as our interests appear to demand it. Until we break that habit, until we establish, for all time, the notion that there are simply actions too manipulative, too duplicitous, too heinous, to carry out for the sake of necessity, we will just repeat these mistakes over and over. This is the lesson of the Great War, or it ought to be.

Splendid work. First-rate biographical history... (5/5 Stars)

The problem of income inequality in Capital in The 21st Century

From The Week of May 1st, 2014 Wealth has become one of society's most enduring obsessions. Its acquisition preoccupies our musicians, its distribution fascinates our economists, and its possession enables our powerbrokers. Perhaps, this is unhealthy. After all, to ascribe so much value to something is to virtually guarantee that it will become a point of serious societal contention. But while some may successfully convince themselves to deny its seductions, wealth, and the money it represents, is much too deeply embedded in human civilization to simply shrug off. For it not just conveys prestige, its pursuit has endowed our greatest minds with the will and the drive to strive against all risk, a truth that has revolutionized our world and brought us wonders our agrarian ancestors couldn't have imagined. But for all of its unimaginable influence, wealth still starts more arguments than it ends. How much is too much? How much should be freely given away? How much should be taxed? How much should be invested? Wealth is hardly a new invention, and yet, even after all these centuries, it remains controversial, a state not at all alleviated when it is examined by the inquisitive regard of Thomas Piketty who attempts to explain wealth, in all its forms, in his dense and sprawling work. For centuries, economists have understood that economic growth comes in two basic varieties: income and capital. The former is any wage that one might receive for services returned, money that one can then spend on wants and needs. The latter, meanwhile, is the equity that one has invested in what one owns, anything from shares in companies to the roof over one's head. Over time, both of these forms of wealth can accumulate value; technological advances can make products cheaper and thus cause one's money to possess more buying power than it once did while land can become more scarce, as the human population expands, increasing its value sometimes overnight. These forms of growth have allowed human civilization to rise beyond subsistence farming and into the rarified air of industry and technological innovation. Traditionally, economists have equally connected the value of capital and the value of income to the health of national economies. After all, it seemed safe to assume that, in the event a national economy fell into recession, the value of a factory would suffer as much as the value of one's wage. Conversely, should a national economy grow at an auspicious rate, the values of both capital and income would grow equally. But on this vital point, Mr. Piketty begs to differ. Drawing upon 300 years of economic data from numerous western nations, he has reached the conclusion that the growth of capital, thanks to its greater durability, its capacity to weather purely financial shocks, and its concentration in the hands of the wealthy, is considerably more than the growth of income which is not only far more destructible, its value is much more subject to the fluctuations of national fortune. Charged with this insight, Capital In The 21st Century becomes more than a 700-page slog through a veritable forest of charts and research. It becomes a work of disturbing intensity that coalesces around a single, compelling argument, that capitalism is fundamentally flawed. Drawing on centuries of data, Mr. Piketty, a decorated French economist, argues that because the value of capital is more stable than the value of income, and because most of the available capital is owned by the rich and not by the many, the wealth of the few is accelerating away from the wealth of everyone else and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In this way, the author has set himself in opposition to prevailing opinion, that the fortunes of capital and income are linked, rising and falling together. This bold stance is no doubt part of the reason for such a lengthy laying out of his case. There's no doubt that Mr. Piketty's argument is intriguing. He contends that economists have been tricked into believing growth of capital and income are linked because of the peculiarities of the 20th century which experienced two colossal world wars which destroyed much of the capital of Western Europe. Additionally, this blood-soaked century also labored through decades of Left-leaning governments whose socialist tendencies caused them to implement steeply progressive income taxes which harnessed the profits of the wealthy, thereby precluding their wealth from racing away from the pack. After Europe recovered from WWII, and once the policies of these governments were rolled back in the 1970s and 1980s, the growth of capital returned to its more typical state, of outstripping income growth two to one. If Mr. Piketty is right, and assuming the 21st century avoids capital-destroying calamities like those experienced by the 20th, then the chasm between the haves and the have nots will only continue to dangerously widen. But however much we may be exercised by his assertions here, there is far less excitement for his proscription, a global tax on wealth, between one and two percent, aimed at redressing the imbalance between capital and income, thereby narrowing income inequality. Only a fool would declare this an impossibility, but neither would anyone but a fool think it probable. The United Nations doesn't even harbor a full complement of the world's nations. And if a body designed to unite the world in a single, diplomatic congress can't even agree on membership, how are we to implement a truly global tax on wealth that would undoubtedly prove even more controversial than a global tax on carbon emissions which are arguably just as consequential to civilization? The hope for such movement seems dim unto darkness. In some respects, it is foolish of me to have penned this review; I am by no means a trained economist. And it is clear, to anyone who reads even a dozen of the pages herein, that no less a figure is required to properly assess Mr. Piketty's case on economic grounds. But as a work of literature, it is profound. Yes, it is difficult, yes, it is stifling, but when one comes to understand the man's contention, the implications elevate the text into something well worth exploring. A fascinating and disturbing slog... (3/5 Stars)

The criminality of the death of the Celtic Tiger in Ship of Fools

From The Week of April 6th, 2014

For society to function properly, for it to have hope for more than chaos and discord, the people must have trust in the State. There is no other way to maintain the rule of law. The State collects taxes in exchange for providing services. If those services are corrupted or dysfunctional, then taxation becomes, in the minds of the citizenry, just a nice word for extortion. And the moment the individual realizes this, then resistance against this unfair system is the only ethical course of action.

As clear cut as this may seem, however, there are complications. After all, only the most cynical citizens want to believe the State is broken. Thus, we grant it chance after chance to convince us otherwise. It is far easier to give the government a second chance than it is to overthrow it. But one can only give so many second chances. Once those are exhausted, there are only two options, rebellion or surrender. Sadly, the latter seems to be the path in Ireland, a tragic reality stingingly illustrated in Mr. O'Toole's engaging polemic.

From 1995 to 2007, the Republic of Ireland experienced a 12-year economic boom that, for a brief time, made this moribund country the envy of the world. After centuries of oppression, misrule and sectarian discord, the Celtic Tiger, as these boom times were christened, finally seemed to be lifting the near-permanent shadow from the heart of this benighted place and giving it a glimmer of hope for a brighter future. For once, jobs were plentiful, allowing the Republic to claim one of the world's best unemployment rates. For once, real-estate developments were inviting the famed and the fortunate to Irish shores, making the emerald isles a place to see and be seen. For once, foreign investment, particularly in the IT field, appeared to be offering a higher quality of life for the average citizen. There was just one problem. It was built on a lie.

Through reckless lending policies and criminally lax procedures, private Irish banks fuelled the Celtic Tiger by extending astronomical sums to already wealthy Irish developers who in turn used that money to develop a country that did not need it. This form of trickle-down economics may have happily continued on for years to come. But when the credit crisis detonated Wall Street in 2008, quickly sweeping the globe, those German and French banks that happily lent those Irish banks money to pass on to Irish developers suddenly wanted their money back. Unable to cover their debts, these Irish banks instantly collapsed under the strain of absurdly skewed ledgers and would have drifted into oblivion but for the Irish government who, in stepping in and nationalizing the debts of these banks, instantly burdened every Irish taxpayer with additional debts of more than 50,000 Euros. How this calamity came to be, both the systems that permitted it and the government that refused to stop it, illuminates these pages and sets fire to the notion that there ever existed a reasonable, moral Irish state.

Ship of Fools is is a blistering, convincing broadside to the Celtic Tiger and the government that manufactured it. Fintan O'Toole, a journalist and public intellectual, walks the reader through the last 50 years of Irish economic policy, an adventure that ought to put his every reader to sleep. But how could a single eyelid even threaten to droop when every turned page reveals another scam, another dropped ball, another scandal by which the Irish government revealed itself to be nothing more than a public-facing shell corporation for the Republic's obscenely wealthy elites, a small cadre of men who, over decades, established an Irish gentry that not only held the reins of business, but collared the government and the regulatory bodies designed to contain them. In this, the author lays down a painfully obvious pattern of corrupt and selfish behavior that made the death of the Celtic tiger both obvious and inevitable.

Though Mr. O'Toole largely keeps his critical focus on the government dysfunction that allowed the Celtic Tiger to all-but destroy the Irish state, he does not spare neoliberalism its fair share of the blame. It may well be that this business-first system of low taxes and small government has merit. Perhaps, in a vacuum, it could be executed admirably and allow every citizen a chance to succeed on their own, without aid or succor from governments. Certainly, there's appeal to economists in this scheme. After all, governments act in the interests of their constituents and from the necessities of politics, not caring what the consequences of these half-informed decisions might be. Removing this power from government removes the temptation to act which will allow a well-engineered system to operate smoothly.

However, a free market invariably evolves into one dominated by massive, conglomerated firms that use their outsized power to not only crush their competition, but to silence their opposition. The moment they've succeeded in ensuring that no one can say no to them, they act as only they see fit regardless of the consequences. It is the very definition of a doomed state.

The State cannot exist to service business interests. It cannot exist to facilitate the wealthy. It must exist for everyone, to give everyone a fair chance at life. And as Ship of Fools makes painfully clear, this has never been the case in the Republic of Ireland where self-serving economic policies and a hollowed-out government have created the worst of all worlds. A sad but powerful indictment... (4/5 Stars)

An innovative if monotonous The Book Thief

From The Week of October 1st, 2013

However much it entertains us in theatres and agonizes us in our personal lives, tragedy, more than anything else, is the revealer of true character. For it is only when pushed to the extremity of ugly circumstance and torturous emotion that we come to understand who we are. Do we buckle in the face of cruelty from both the world and our fellow humans? Do we resign ourselves to fates imposed upon us by powers far more immense than ourselves? Or do we remind ourselves that setbacks, in whatever form, are merely opportunities to learn, to grow and to be better next time? All humans, at one point or another, have been compelled to respond to tragedy by taking one of its many roads, but how many of them have comprehended just how consequential that decision was, just how much it shapes their lives and their souls? Marcus Zusak ruminates in his interesting, if problematic, work.

Growing up in the harsh, racist nationalism of Nazi Germany, Liesel is an angry girl with nothing to call her own. Her parents, communists who fear the worst from Hitler, have sent her to a foster home in Munich where she's softened by the kindness of her foster father, Hans, and stiffened by the sternness of her foster mother, Rosa. Teased for being slow to learn how to read, she proves to be fearsome with her fists, pummeling anyone who deigns to scorn her. For she is a girl determined to overcome her own shortcomings and prove everyone wrong.

With Hans' help, Liesel slowly learns her letters, knowledge that kindles a lifelong thirst for books and the wisdom contained within. Her family's relative poverty, however, leaves little expendable coin for the buying of such luxuries, so Liesel turns to stealing them from book burnings and private libraries, insatiably accumulating a collection of works that fill her with words and dreams. But no collection of books can shield her from the outside world which is convulsed by World War II and all of its civilian atrocities. Liesel may have conquered the word, but she cannot conquer the world that made them, and so she must hold on in hopes that those she's come to hold dear make it through to the new dawn.

The claimant of numerous honors and awards, The Book Thief is inventive fiction. Told from the perspective of Death, a seemingly omnipotent force tasked with the claiming of the souls of the recently deceased, it narratively dips in and out of the lives of its main actors, sometimes granting them the privacy of their own thoughts while at other times exposing, in depth, the secrets of their most closely guarded memories. In this, Mr. Zusak is able to paint a wide canvas, filling in his characters at the pace and the style of his choosing. This proves to be a fairly successful technique that affords the reader a blend of both the intimate and the removed, the soulful and the dispassionate, as we revisit the harshness of Nazi Germany and life beneath its yoke.

Despite the grimness of its setting, The Book Thief is populated by warm characters who, though they possess different motivations and occupations, share in a common desire to endure, as best they can, this life as they know it. Kindness, faithfulness and generosity from the commonfolk stand in stark contrast to the uncaring mercilessness of the Nazi machine which does its best to feed them into its voracious maw. Most everyone in Liesel's orbit exhibits a desire to protect what they have and to forge ahead despite the nightmare in which they've found themselves. Liesel, meanwhile, takes that stoicness a step further, repeatedly placing herself in danger to aid those that society has deemed unworthy. For her, kindness does not stem from pamphlets or marches. It flows from deeds, a truth she does not forget despite her own thievery.

Despite its engaging themes which ask us to contemplate both the ascendent good and the inescapable bad of humanity, The Book Thief is ultimately a disappointment that failed to hold my interest. Liesel's combativeness is, at times, engrossing, as is the sweetness of her foster father who will stop at nothing to make her dreams come true. But these virtues cannot make up for the slow, grinding relentlessness of the plot which fails to come to anything like a culmination. Our protagonists are merely presented with incident after incident, moment after moment, challenge after challenge, and asked to react to them. And so, when the novelty of Death-as-character wears off after the first few chapters, we're left with a monotonous journey that leads nowhere. This is a work animated by a wonderful idea that, for all its potence, lacks the power to carry 500 pages on its own.

At times fascinating and touching, but too much of a slog to be laudatory... (3/5 Stars)

One of the most shameful episodes in French history in The Dreyfus Affair

From The Week of September 9th, 2013

There can be no doubt that the concept of the nation state has been a net benefit to humanity. It organizes disparate populations, it implements a standard of law and personal conduct that fosters communities, and it ignites the twin fires of enlightenment and industry that are the engine of progress. However, no matter how long the nation state abides, it will forever be plagued by an unreconcilable conflict of interests that is sure to eventually doom it. For the nation state requires individuals to believe in a collective idea, an artificial construct of borders and traditions that, as time advances, as its honor, its past, and its values become ingrained in generations, its adherents will increasingly strive to protect. And given that national power is accrued at the expense of individual power, eventually, the rights of the individual will become completely subject to the whims and the needs of the state, requiring revolution and upheaval to reset the balance. This lesson is made exquisitely clear in Piers Paul Read's excellent work.

In 1894, France found itself embroiled in a scandal that, with the benefit of hindsight, seems fitting for its troubled nineteenth century. For these hundred years were, for this proud nation, some of the most turbulent in its history. Continental wars, political crises and social upheaval all had their violent moments in the sun, requiring the French people to continually adjust themselves to ever-changing circumstances. But while most of these conflicts were instigated by external provocations or internal ambitions, the Dreyfus Affair was a trauma that bubbled up from a most unexpected and well-regarded source, the grand French army.

A relatively well-off French Jew, Alfred Dreyfus was a difficult man to like. A serious officer who had attained the honorable rank of captain, he appears to have had little regard for what others thought of him, a disposition no doubt accentuated by the fact that he earned, as a result of his family's extensive holdings, a pension far in excess of the wage of most of his comrades. However, no matter his social shortcomings, he seems to have been an honorable member of an honored institution, making it all the more shocking when, in 1894, he was accused of treason.

Still smarting from defeats in the Franco-Prussian war, French relations with Imperial Germany were uneasy at best. So when evidence arose, of classified French-Army documents being passed to the Germans, an investigation was feverishly launched to find the perpetrator. Suspicion immediately fell upon Dreyfus who, despite the case against him being weak-unto-nonexistent, was hurriedly convicted, court marshalled and sent to rot in a hellish French penal colony. This injustice inspired a five-year campaign, spearheaded by his wife, his family, and certain honorable members of the Army high command, to exonerate him, an effort that was ultimately successful, though, not before damages to health, to career and to reputation were done to Dreyfus, to his allies, and to France itself, damages that would leave scars well into the next century.

A riveting tale of betrayal and determination, The Dreyfus Affair is first-rate micro-history. Drawing upon the documents from Dreyfus' two military trials, as well as the victim's personal correspondence, Mr. Read has fashioned an arresting work of injustice and dishonor that not only explicates this 120-year-old crime, but rightfully elevates it into a parable for humanity. All of the players in this repugnant incident are given life and form. Moreover, the reader is made to understand both the agonies of the wrongfully accused and the torments of solitary confinement in ways that will linger for some time. All of these virtues do merit to the memory of a shamefully persecuted man.

The Dreyfus Affair is a complex work that is at its best when speaking to the shortcomings of humanity, in general, and French culture, in particular. The men and women who fought righteously for Dreyfus are inspiring. For these ranks were not merely made up of a family that would naturally be expected to defend him. Officers, novelists and politicians all rallied to Dreyfus' cause. And while it's too much to expect that they did so without any sort of personal agenda, it's clear that their motives were pure in a manner that does honor to the French character. However, on the other side of the ledger lies some of the most shameful conduct imaginable. The strong skein of anti-Semitism that ran through French society at this time is made eminently and revoltingly clear. Moreover, the willingness of the Army's high command to blithely let Dreyfus rot even long after they learned that the case against him was nonexistent is nothing short of the definition of selfishness. For these men put the health of the state and the honor of the army ahead of the truth and, in doing so, consciously protected a "pure French" traitor while condemning the innocent "French Jew." The state over the individual, concealing a crime to shield the honor of institutions... It does not get more convenient, nor more despicable.

An absolute must-read that transcends time and place and speaks to political and philosophical conflicts as real today as they were in the nineteenth century... Excellent work... (4/5 Stars)

An explosive and engaging The Year Without Summer

From The Week of September 2nd, 2013

Civilization is so massive, so ubiquitous, with its cities and monuments, its billions of souls and countless technologies, that it is easy to forget the degree to which its existence is poised on the razor's edge. We, its builders, had to be born on the right planet, orbiting the right star, inhabiting the right region of the galaxy. We had to come along at a time in Earth's evolution in which our natural predators had mostly died out, their remains spending millions of years being converted into fossil fuels for us to exploit. We had to avoid ice ages and killer asteroids, global plagues and seismic catastrophes. In other words, we had to be incredibly lucky. And yet, we do not think of it this way. For us, civilization is a permanent blessing conveyed upon us by the generations who came before us and passed on by us to those who will efollow. This is folly, a truth wonderfully demonstrated by William K. Klingaman's excellent work.

When, on April 10th, 1815, Mount Tambora erupted, sending millions of tons of superheated rock, gas and other debris into the atmosphere, no one could have conceived of the consequences. Even observers of this once-a-millennia explosion assumed it to be little more than guns being fired at distance. And yet, not only would tens of thousands of people parish as a direct result of this colossal eruption, but millions more would be threatened by its long term impact on the climate. For in launching 55-million tons of sulfur-dioxide gas into the stratosphere, the Tambora event supplied the fuel for the creation of sulfuric acid light enough to disperse throughout the atmosphere, helping to reflect sunlight, that would normally make it to the ground, back into space.

This triggered an episode of significant global cooling which, over the coming months, not only robbed the world of a warm summer but lead to the failure of crops and harvests necessary to feed millions of humans in the northern hemisphere. In Quebec, snow would be reported falling as late as June and as early as September, a dire circumstance experienced throughout Europe and North America. In time, conditions normalized and the climate settled back into a more typical disposition, but not before igniting apocalyptic fears and scientific fascination that would drive the former into the arms of faith and the latter out into fields and labs where they could begin to discover just what had happened to the world in that fateful year.

An excellent primer on volcanic eruptions and a disturbing reminder of our incredible dependence on the vicissitudes of the climate, The Year Without Summer is an entertaining and innovative work of popular science. Mr. Klingaman draws upon the surviving letters and works of temporary figures to describe the awful, summerless conditions that lasted, to some degree or another, for three years. But while first-hand observation forms the core of this account, the author has liberally supplemented it with not only scientific explanations of the Tambora eruption but detailed accounts of the other factors, like the solar minimum, that may have exaggerated the impact of the volcanic event.

It is impossible to read this work, however, and not be deeply affected by the tenuousness of our existence. The Tambora eruption lowered global temperatures by no more than two degrees. And yet, this was sufficient to kill off harvests and, thus, send millions of humans scrambling for food. And this in a time in which the human population was a mere fraction of what it is today. If such an incident was to occur now, hundreds of millions might well starve to death. Volcanos and earthquakes, comets and asteroids... These are dangers over which we have absolutely no control. And yet, we live as though we do, not only by reproducing in unsustainable numbers but by choosing to live in the center of most of our world's most dangerous zones. Only the powers of denial can be sufficient to keep us from completely surrendering to the fear of what may well come at any moment.

This is not perfect work. Mr. Klingaman would've done well to discuss in more detail the inner workings of volcanos at the expense of some of the internal lives of early Americans. Moreover, he might've done well to speculate on the impact the weather had on the politics of the period, but these are very minor quibbles in what is otherwise a rewarding and sobering read.

Fascinating work... (4/5 Stars)

A phenomenal look at a forgotten massacre in King Leopold's Ghost

From The Week of August 26th, 2013

Of colonialism's many sins, the degree to which it encourages humans to separate the strong from the weak, the momentarily superior from the disadvantaged inferior, must be its most grievous. After all, by dint of being both the planet's apex predator and foremost intelligent species, humanity is already predisposed to a self-centered view of the world, skewed to favor the viewer at the expense of all else. To then exacerbate this existing trait with all of colonialism's criminal enticements is akin to pouring gasoline upon a fire, an inferno of injustice, exploitation and degradation from which few ever recover.

Worse yet, though, is what this mental sense of otherness does to the victims who, starved, beaten and destroyed, having no culture or resource left to fall back upon, cultivate the victimizer's toxic tactics in hopes of lifting themselves out of the mire into which their fellows have been plunged. Abused becoming abuser creates the most pernicious vicious cycle imaginable, one in which peace and justice are made foreign concepts to entire generations. This Adam Hochschild exquisitely and passionately captures in his valuable investigative work.

Positioned in the heart of Africa, the war-torn and resource-rich country we know today as The Democratic Republic of the Congo has had a long and tragic history. Though claimed by the Portuguese in the 15th century, it was virtually inaccessible to European imperialism until the nineteenth, when Henry Morgan Stanley successfully traversed its dangerous terrain in hopes of locating Dr. David Livingstone, the missionary doctor and explorer who had famously vanished into this strange and foreign place. Until this time, and despite the Portuguese's unenforced claim, the Congo was an organized, self-sufficient kingdom ruled from present-day Kinshasa by a lord known as the Manikongo. But once Stanley's expedition proved that Westerners could withstand the dangers of the Congo, albeit with an excess of luck and endeavor, this kingdom would fall to the voracious hunger of Western appetites.

By the late nineteenth century, most of the world had been claimed in one way or another by the major western European powers of France, Germany and england. When Stanley's expedition proved that the Congo could be a prize to be won, tiny Belgium, lead by the ambition and hunger of its king, Leopold II, leaped at the opportunity to conquer it and, in a stroke, vastly expand its power and prosperity. Though this conquest would take many years to complete and be recognized by the international community, King Leopold II, with a combination of guile and relentlessness, would eventually prove victorious, creating the Congo Free State which began to export large amounts of priceless ivory and rubber to Belgium in exchange for relatively worthless items like glass and beads. But however horrendous this economic exploitation, the human cost was far worse. For in order to create this trade, Leopold's men instituted one of the most ruthless and degrading administrations in history, one in which women and children were systematically starved, beaten and murdered to encourage Congolese men to labor for Belgian gain.

The tale of these abominable crimes and how they came to light, King Leopold's Ghost is a mesmerizing and moving work of non-fiction. Mr. Hochschild, a first-rate historian who rarely disappoints, has set his nimble pen and sharp mind to detailing an all-but-forgotten chapter of western imperialism, one made all the more shocking for its darkness. For make no mistake. The crimes of King Leopold II and his men are at least as grave and despicable as those of the holocaust. The only difference here lies in Leopold's motives which were not forged by ethnic hatred but by greed, made no less potent by its simplicity. Step by cautious step, Leopold convinced the western powers that his intentions with the Congo were humanitarian, even pious, all while implementing, throughout this conquered land, a rule so foul, so cruel, that it inspired the writing of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a work which was, in no way, forced to exaggerate for effect.

Of King Leopold's Ghost's many virtues, the most memorable is the way in which it it reveals the role bias plays in the lives of man. Belgian crimes in the Congo were brought to light by a series of brave men, white and black, European and American, who, thanks to first-hand experience with the systematized beatings, shootings and rapes of the Congolese people, saw through leopold's lies and began declaring them to the public. However, these individuals were only few in number, a tiny fraction of the thousands of Europeans who had been to the Congo under Leopold's reign and watched the hands of the disobedient chopped off, looked on while entire villages were wiped out and the survivors forced into chaingangs, and observed the punishments with the vicious chicotte which often left its victims mortally wounded. This vast majority were silent. They were content to steal from an oppressed and brutalized people. They were content to earn and look the other way.

Even more troubling, though, are the biases amongst the social crusaders, all of whom believed in the rightness of British imperialism. The queen's justice was righteous and true, a light that should be shone upon the whole of the savage world. But Belgian imperialism was another story, the sins of which had to be exposed. This narrowness of thinking, this inability to recognize the universal despotism and criminality that arises out of colonialism, is utterly arresting, but no moreso than the will of the Belgian people to deny that their little country was complicit in the deaths of nearly ten-million people. Not until the 1980s were the records of this time revealed. And even then, no one was encouraged to read them. This is a crime against humanity they would just as soon bury.

But while there are in this tale no clean skins, there is this. When others forget, we can remember. We can read great books and remind ourselves that all crimes have been executed before, in one form or another. And in this way, when they are tried again,we can recognize them. We can be there to say "stop," "no," "this will not be allowed to pass."

A work as riveting as it is valuable... (5/5 Stars)

An engaging study of the lifecycle of civilizations in Revenge of Geography

From The Week of July 22nd, 2013

Though it is an exercise fraught with failure and misapprehension, there are few tasks more worthwhile than the effort to improve our understanding of the cultures from which we come. For, despite the challenges, despite having to constantly check for ones biases and preconceptions, there is no better way to advance one's culture than to grasp the influences, the logistics and the the history that informs it and to separate these truths from the stereotypes that so often characterize national cultures. There are reasons for why our countries are the way they are, why some are rude and others prickly. And the sooner we understand this, the sooner we can begin to predict the future with some modest accuracy. This Robert Kaplan studiously demonstrates in his examination of the world viewed through the lens of geography.

For ten-thousand years, civilizations both grand and small, both coastal and landlocked, have risen and fallen. Some crumbled into dust with barely a lasting mark to remember them by. Others immortalized their legacies through engineering and enduring monuments that have left no doubt of the links they forged in the unbroken chain of humanity's march towards a more knowledgeable future. However, despite having different languages and assets, populations and ethics, lifespans and legacies, they did, all possess one common trait. They all eventually collapsed, their prowess and their vigor consumed by younger, energetic states. This inescapable fate has prompted both historians and interested parties to analyze this perfect mortality rate and divine from it lasting clues that might help stave off the inevitable deaths of current cultures.

Though this has given rise to nearly as many universal theories as their are studiers of this question, few are as simple as Mr. Kaplan's. Setting aside the monumental fields of economics and law, politics and multiculturalism, he contends that the ultimate fates of nations are written into their geographies. From the vital rivers that organized and then gave rise to cohesive cultures in China and Egypt to the sweeps of coastal-rich territory in Europe and North America, he argues that these invaluable resources concentrate populations which in turn innovate and inflate until they've become regional powers capable of spanning entire continents.

This would seem to be a wise, and even pleasingly unbiased, assessment of why some nations stabilize and succeed while others disintegrate and fail, but is it applicable in a 21st-century world where bombers and drones, have overcome the once-formidable natural barriers that have historically held nations back? Mr. Kaplan believes so. In fact, he is convinced that these technologies which have so effectively reduced mountains to molehills have created a whole host of new existential problems for humanity's various national tribes. After all, prior to the age of flight, India never had to worry about China. The Himalayas took care of any fear of invasion on both sides of that question. The same for nations separated by substantial waterways that would've taken weeks to traverse in centuries past that now take hours. The globalization of the world may have revolutionized trade, but it has opened up theatres of conflict that would have been unthinkable in times past.

The Revenge of Geography is an engaging analysis of 21st-century geopolitics informed by a first-rate mind. Mr. Kaplan has an admirable grasp of the present that is informed by both an intriguing read of geography and an educational grasp of the past civilizations that comprise known history. It explains south Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America in a manner that is no less explicable for it being erudite. And yet, there's a blitheness here that haunts his study no less than it does all those that purport to boil the world down to a single, defining trait. There can be no doubting that geography has played vital role in the shaping of our nations and our cultures, but can the success of he United States really be put down simply to the fact that it had manageable neighbors to north and south, plentiful coast to east and west, and abundant heartland in which to spread out and thrive? Factors all, surely, but far from the only ones to be heard in the formation of the defining nation of the last 200 years...

But though Revenge of Geography may state its case too definitively, it does so in an unforgettable manner. For Mr. Kaplan introduces us here to intellectuals who conceive of the world, and even history, as a series of existential conflicts for dominance. Art and science, philosophies and customs, are discarded by the minds of these men and replaced with a heartless pragmatism that is predicated on the idea that governments seek always to expand not only their powers but their borders as well. There's plenty of evidence to support this cynical view, but there's just as much evidence to counter it as well. For while states may act in the interests of the people they contain, willing to go to war for gains both economic and territorial, people are often far more emotional and far less strategic than this. They would rather live in a world that is not zero-sum, a world where everyone has a fair shot of progress and comfort, rather than one in which their interests are mercilessly advanced at the expense of everyone else. The utterly pragmatic approach here is as striking as it is narrow.

There's much of value here, but for all Mr. Kaplan's skill, he fails to convince us that geography trumps ideology or cultural ethos. Nonetheless, well worth the read... (3/5 Stars)

Political self-destruction in Preston's informative The Spanish Civil War

From The Week of June 24th, 2013

As much as the last few centuries have seen a significant advancement in most forms of human endeavor, we still lack a consistent, feasible strategy for properly harnessing and altruistically deploying the powers of collective action. For thousands of years, charismatic firebrands have rallied mobs with their voices and their deeds, unleashing these crowds in the name of a goal they desire to achieve. Moreover, entire communities have organized along similar lines in hopes of upending the status quo. But in both cases, the ends fail to justify the means. For the act of deploying the power of the collective, in the furtherance of a specific agenda, encourages others to do so for their own agendas. And it never takes long for these different groups to crash into one another, directly or indirectly, creating chaos in their wake. How we improve this dire outcome is beyond the scope of this review, but its consequences are not. They are vividly demonstrated in Paul Preston's excellent history of one of Spain's darker periods.

The consequence of years of political instability, ideological feuds and economic hardship, the Spanish civil War (1936-1939) was as brutal as it was swift. Pitting political leftists, supported by the legitimate government, the Soviet Union and thousands of foreign fighters drawn to their righteous cause, against right-wing nationalists, supported by fascist Italy, Nazist Germany and much of the Spanish military, it was a devastating conflict that not only claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of belligerents and civilians, it ripped apart Spanish society, plunging it into a kind of nihilistic chaos that would become all-too-familiar when the Second World War would break out only a few years later. The war, which saw towns besieged and bombed, soldiers starved and mutilated and civilians raped and murdered, annihilated the Spanish state, replacing it first with discord and then with Franco's victorious iron fist which would remained firmly wrapped around Spain's throat for more than 20 years.

But how could such a horrific conflict be allowed to unfold? Where were the moments of hesitation, of compromise, that would have kept its ravages from Spanish shores? And why was it such a rallying cry for European commoners and intellectuals? For these answers, we turn to the political turmoil that preceded the conflict, a succession of overturned governments, unchecked egos and ideological disputes that were a microcosm for a pre-WWII Europe gripped in a feverish and contentious debate between communism on the left and fascism on the right. These diametrically opposed forces, armed with proxies and adherents, ideas and weapons, were determined to impose their views upon the world, an insistence that succeeded only in tearing it apart.

This complex, factious world is brilliantly captured in The Spanish Civil War. Beginning with the fearsome politics that launched it, and concluding with the long, Francist nightmare that followed it, Mr. Preston details the thinkers and the commanders, the loyalists and the autocrats, the politics and the self-belief that characterized a dispute that would not only act as a harbinger for the wider, European war to come, but demonstrate the true cost of a heavily populated and profoundly divided continent that, seized by the legacies of imperialism and colonialism, eschewed union for nationalism, wisdom for pride. Every human flaw is on display here, taken up and spilled across 400, swiftly paced pages that never succumb to the bondage of that most notorious fetish of historical non-fiction, endless specificity. That Mr. Preston manages to capture such a rollercoaster conflict without completely losing the reader is an achievement all its own. That he does so while engendering both horror and sympathy is remarkable.

Though Mr. Preston primarily focuses on untangling the knotted rivalries that caused the conflict's breakout, the work's strongest moments are taken up with the ways this war bestirred and repulsed the European community. Mr. Preston makes us witnesses to the foolishness of British politicians like Winston Churchill who dismissed the loyalists as murdering propagandists, to the eagerness of Italian territorialists who were eager to extend their influence in Europe, and to the thoughtfulness of German Nazis who were keen to perform a

dress rehearsal of the tactics that they'd soon be deploying against the Europe they intended to conquer. Seeing all these familiar forces arrogantly jockeying for power, while readying themselves for a war from which it would take Europe 50 years to recover, is as eerie as it is sickening. But lest we lose all hope in humanity, the European idealists who came to fight in such an ugly war receive their own lengthy treatment, one in which we see both the selflessness of individuals willing to fight for something bigger than themselves and the terrible price that is paid for that selflessness.

The Spanish Civil War is not a perfect work. It lingers overlong in the esoteric nature of the conflict's background. Moreover, it skims over the fallout from the war, confining it to an all-too-swift epilogue. However, these are but small imperfections on a tapestry that reveals to what tragic degrees humans invest themselves in ideas that, when empowered by collective belief, can set the masses to marching right off the cliff and into darkness. Not a read for the faint of heart... (4/5 Stars)

The extraordinary labors of a revolutionary in Sperber's Karl Marx

From The Week of May 20, 2013

No life is without challenges, moments of crisis and uncertainty that leave us grasping for answers and yearning for stability. The daily intersection of personalities and fortunes essentially ensures that something, at some point, will go wrong. But it's one thing to understand that life has its difficulties; it's entirely something else to deliberately steer one's existence into the winds of such uncertainties, to face them head on with brashness and truculence, and to do so while knowing full well that it may be decades, even centuries, before any of one's labors will make a meaningful difference. The will that must be required to never take the easy road, to forever endure the hardships of deprivation, in the name of a singular goal is remarkable. Mr. Sperber elucidates in his winningly thorough biography.

One of the most pivotal figures of the last 200 years, Karl Marx was a German political philosopher and armchair economist who lived during the twilight of empire. A polemicist who believed strongly in the corruptive power of the elites, his writings provided the intellectual fuel for a series of revolutions that would, after his death, sweep away the monarchies of eastern Europe and replace them with a powerful and equally corruptible proletariat, or people's party, that aimed to create a Marxist heaven on Earth by empowering the collective whole at the expense of the greedy individual. Though he would not live to see any of his predictions, or his beliefs, put into practice on a national scale, he became, in death, a people's hero, an intellectual whose complete and eloquent rejection of the disproportionate allotment of power and money in western society made him the godhead of 20th-century communism.

But though we know the legend well, how well do we know the man? For while Marx's role as the father of the resistance to capitalism is well known, almost forgotten is his poverty, his love for his children and his enduring devotion to his wife who, despite her upper-class upbringing, stood with Marx throughout his tumultuous life which was characterized by a scarcity of, and thus a desperation for, money. His partnership with Freidrich Engels is well-documented, but less so his unwillingness to let go of a decades-old family dispute, nor his struggles to maintain ownership of the movement he was creating, nor his deficiencies as an orator which counterbalanced, in every way, his excellence as an author. Hell, he spent more time as a newspaper columnist than he did as a revolutionary, a fact which, along with the other revelations of the man's existence, make this towering figure a creature of complexity and fascination.

Though it delves, at times, too deeply into the murky waters of economic theory and German philosophy, Karl Marx is a potent and thorough biography of a most dour and engaging man. Mr. Sperber, a professor at the University of Missouri, has gathered up Marx's works and his letters, his deeds and his friendships and fashioned from them a chronicle of the life of a giant of history, a man who has had as many deeds done in his name as some deities. The portrait that emerges from this meticulous assembly is of a man who struggled to find his place, a man who fought his enemies and his slighters at every turn, a man who spent more of his life as a political refugee than he did of a citizen of any country, and a man who knew everything about money and power except for how to make either. For this, he is both a creature of amazement and pity.

The author's characterization of Marx is simultaneously the work's best and worst feature. On the positive side of the ledger, Mr. Sperber removes the mask that history has placed on Marx, revealing him to be an emotional individual whose stubbornness often outstripped his good sense. His willingness to invest his entire life in the erudite refutation of capitalism, as practiced by the western powers, is downright remarkable in light of the Sisyphean nature of the war he was trying to wage against a completely entrenched system. And yet, this brings us to the negative. For Mr. Sperber does very little to actually explain why he was so devoted to an unwinnable war. The author illuminates Marx's influences, his schooling, his family history, his citizenship of the authoritarian Prussia, all of which go some way to sketching out an outline for his motive. But the unimaginable personal deprivations Marx suffered in the name of simple defiance demands a clearer description of what drove him to such atypical lengths. This is a man who endured the better part of a lifetime of financial humiliation, all in the name of exposing a rotten system. Why, when he so clearly possessed the talents to excel within that system?

In every other way, Karl Marx is a satisfying read that breaks the philosopher's life down into manageable sections, each of which succeeds in shedding light on Marx and his world, on 19th-century politics and 19th-century despotism, and on the eternal conflict between socialism and capitalism. But its occasional detours on the road to enlightening its readers prevents it from being truly great. (4/5 Stars)

the rocky road to Justice in postwar Kosovo in Under The Blue Flag

From The Week of April 15, 2013

When tallying up the cost of war, it's natural for our minds to first turn to the most obvious losses: lives and fortunes. These are measurable deficits, quantifiable burdens that can be inscribed into the hearts and textbooks of a people and used as a crude means by which to compare conflicts. But just because they are obvious doesn't make them foremost in importance. On the contrary, sometimes those things we cannot measure -- the grief of a broken heart, the arrested development of a child without a school, the cynicism of a citizen who knows the rule of law does not hold -- have far more lasting consequences than the readily apparent. Their ephemeral natures trick us into underestimating their collective power to instill in war's victims a gloominess about the future that means far more than a rubbled building. After all, a building can be rebuilt. A broken spirit cannot so easily be mended. This Philip Kearney convincingly contends in his memoir of the most fascinating and challenging adventure of his career.

One of the bloodiest chapters in a most gruesome campaign, the Kosovo War, lasting little over a year, pitted two ethnic communities against one another in a vicious fight for freedom. Unwilling to allow one of its provinces to secede from its collective, Yugoslavia endeavored to crush Kosovo by subjecting it with crimes the likes of which Europe had not seen since the Second World War some five decades earlier. Equally unwilling to be ground out beneath the Serbian bootheel, Kosovo violently resisted, an act which caused it to spawn the powerful and ruthless Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which sought to win, through terrorism and guerilla warfare, what could not be won in open combat. Though the war lasted over fifteen months, it devastated Kosovo to such a degree that the United Nations stepped in to run the protectorate until it could stand on its own.

At this time, Mr. Kearney was a successful prosecutor in his native San Francisco. Married, and with work to keep him occupied, the prospect of him traveling to Kosovo to help the UN bring cases of war crimes against some of Kosovo's foulest characters must have seemed impossibly remote. And yet, the restlessness of a midlife crisis, combined with an abiding desire to do lasting good while at the height of his powers, found Mr. Kearney applying to the UN for a six-month stint in Kosovo as a UN-appointed prosecutor in a postwar Kosovo coming to grips with its deep and enduring wounds. This first adventure begot a second and, before he was through, Mr. Kearney would have spent eighteen months in war-ravaged Kosovo, helping to restore order to a lawless and broken place.

While problematic as a work of history, Under The Blue Flag is nonetheless an inspiring document that wonderfully captures the rewarding nature of dangerous, but ultimately righteous, work. Mr. Kearney virtually abandoned his comfortable life, trading it in for an existence in Kosovo that was both imperiled and difficult. Threatened by gangsters and terrorists, none of whom were interested in the niceties of civilization, he helped bring to that war-torn place a measure of justice long lost in first the corruption of Communism and then in the depravity of ethnic strife. He did all this all while knowing it would cost him money, friendships and even his marriage. He did it to satisfy the thirsts of his spirit, but also for a sense of rightness, of accomplishment, the potence of which only comes from a job well done under extraordinary circumstances.

However, for all that Mr. Kearney paints vivid portraits of the men he prosecuted, and while his detailing of their crimes sheds light on the awfulness of postwar Kosovo, his prose leaves a great deal to be desired. Under the Blue Flag is devoid of literary flare. Other than a few paragraphs describing the destitute nature of the author's environs, we're almost never presented with a verbal image of Kosovo. Mr. Kearney is fond of describing how much he loves this beleaguered place, and the loyalty he feels to the men and women with whom he worked to put some truly gruesome characters behind bars, but his talents utterly fail him when it comes time to root these criminals in the homeland for which so many died. Moreover, Mr. Kearney makes virtually no attempt to describe the Kosovo War, much less to place it in any historical context. Other than a few scant references to 14th-century battles that live on in the hearts and minds of modern-day Serbians, he makes no attempt to inform his readers about the creation of Yugoslavia, much less the Kosovo war which gave him the opportunity to serve in such a remarkable way. These are bodyblows to a memoir that aspires to be more than self-aggrandizement.

Under the Blue Flag is moving work that inspires us to take chances and be true to our selves and our desires. However, its failure to educate its readers on any issue but the personal history of Mr. Kearney, and the suffering of the peoples of the Balkans endeavoring to find justice in a broken world, prevents it from achieving greatness. (3/5 Stars)

the West's intellectual debt to the Arab world in The House of Wisdom

From The Week of April 8, 2013

Human history is defined by instability, a tumultuous sea of clashing cultures the waves of which bear aloft the victorious while its depths claim the defeated. And yet, such fortunes, or misfortunes, do not linger long. For like with the brief, violent life cycle of a wave, the victorious can be easily drowned. For in order for a culture to climb to the peak of civilization, it must innovate and create; it must streamline and strategize; but mostly it must supplant its foes, foes who, in the darkness of their subordination, nurse their battered pride and make of their wounds an enduring enmity that, someday, will contribute to a change at the top. Supremacy can never last forever. This much, if little else, Jonathan Lyons elucidates in his troubled history.

In the centuries following the death of the Roman Empire, while Europe was enshrouded in the gloom of cultural stagnancy and religious zealotry, the Middle East was experiencing a new dawn. The inheritors of the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, thanks to the alexandrian scholars who preserved such knowledge, the formerly disparate and warring tribes of Arabia had, under Mohammed, forged themselves into a new kind of empire, one built on the principles of a single book designed to provide a moral and political framework for their civilization. Eventually based in Baghdad, this Arab society flourished under a succession of rulers who encouraged scholarly learning, fashioning their subsequent insights into innovations that could transform their cities into palaces that would forever leave behind the plains of the dusty deserts from which they'd come.

From astronomy to philosophy, from the measuring of the earth to the understanding of the human body, this Arab awakening endured for more than three centuries, hundreds of years in which their doctors and metaphysicists would have been the envy of the world if the rest of the world, at least to the West, had not descended into superstition and ignorance. Thoughtful souls from far and wide came to learn at the court of these Arab masters until the rise of the Mongols ended all that they had built, smashing it beneath the hooves of their mountainous horses. Fragments remained. These same Arab tribes remained powerful enough to overthrow Byzantium and to make of Constantinople the seat of a new, Ottoman empire, but the dream of wisdom was over, leaving it to the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution to catalyze the advancement of civilization and transform the world into one empowered by western commerce and western technology.

For all its research, for all that it illuminates centuries of world history spitefully ignored by a self-referential West consumed by its own manifest destiny, The House of Wisdom is deeply flawed work. Mr. Lyons' intentions are good, to right a historical wrong by elevating to their proper place of prominence those Arab kings and thinkers who preserved and then improved upon the knowledge of the ancients and, in doing so, created an advanced civilization. However, instead of immersing the reader in the lives of these men and women, largely unknown to western minds, instead of bringing them to life with their histories, their struggles, their crowning achievements, the author chooses to castigate the dimness of western thought during the Middle Ages, devoting swaths of his history to describing Western barbarism and the many wars and tribulations that resulted from it. He must have intended for this to provide some kind of contrast to Arab learning. And yet, his tone is unavoidably reproachful of a culture that is now centuries dead and, thus, unable to hear his howls.

There are some exceptional Arab minds represented here. al-Haytham and al-Khwarizmi, amongst others, have numerous pages devoted to their deeds. And so the tome is not without moments of clarity that educate the reader. Moreover, Mr. Lyons is certainly right to argue that the Western mind receives an inexplicably skewed education in history, with the West forever marching towards enlightenment and freedom while the rest of the world is mired in chaos and darkness. And to whatever extend the author's work here corrects that gross misapprehension makes the enterprise worthwhile. But Mr. Lyons does not celebrate Arab learning. He uses it to sneer at a medieval West lost to doctrine. For proof of this, one needs only look to the work's protagonist,Adelard of Bath, who, despite being a fascinating character in his own right, is a westerner who realizes his culture is hopelessly behind Arab society. Yes, Adelard brings some Arab learning to the West, satisfying one of Mr. Lyons' themes here, but what he gains in this he more than loses in not truly embracing his subject, the prominence and power of post-roman Arabia.

This could have been wonderful work. But its twisted perspective ties it in knots from which it never untangles itself. A shame. For Its cause is just. The torch will have to fall to another to be carried forth. (2/5 Stars)

Charlemagne brings the giant of European history lyrically to life

From The Week of April 1, 2013

For as long as humanity has been capable of passing down its history, it has revered legends, figures of time-shrouded myth whose deeds are as grand as their appetites. All of our hearts swell at the prospect of conquest, whatever shape it takes, but these singular men and women seized that desire and stamped it with such force into the metal of our history that their immortality is virtually assured. Perhaps we would do well to forget them. Perhaps, if we were unaware of how brightly their stars burned, some among us would not be driven by the need to eclipse them, regardless of the destruction such would sew. But we'd have as much luck wishing away the sun as erasing our giants. For even in death, they have but to extend their hands and we find ourselves being welcomed into their destinies. This truth is exquisitely explored in Richard Winston's engaging biography.

The son of kings and the forger of an empire, Charlemagne is one of the foremost figures of our age. An illiterate man with a passion for knowledge, he was a creature of contradictions, of enlightenment and devastation, who rallied the men of his far flung province of the fallen Roman Empire and, over 47 years of rule, created a new imperium upon the ashes of the old. The conquerer of Europe, he caused popes to bow to his will and to craft crowns so that he might place them on his brow, acts motivated by glory, surely, but also from a desire to restore the order of what had been centuries lost in the death of old Rome. That he was successful where others had failed speaks to luck, but also to a once-in-a-generation will to leave behind a world better than the one he had found.

Charlemagne fought the Saxons and the Lombards, the Saracens and the Bavarians, but war was not his legacy. That was rooted in the idea of a united Europe, a continent that could set aside its disagreements and work in concert towards a common goal. Moreover, it was invested into the scriptoria he created, places of learning that could restore at least some of the wisdom of the fallen ancients and bestow upon the subsequent generations the capacity to build towards a world not consumed by war, but progress. These were mighty goals Charlemagne worked towards during his long reign, but fate prevented them from coming to fruition as he'd hoped. For with the passing of his eldest sons, men in whom he'd rested his hopes for a continuation of his dreams, his empire fall to Louis, King of the Franks, a pious but unwise man whose squandering of Charlemagne's efforts plunged the continent into centuries of intellectual darkness.

This is the tale Mr. Winston tells in Charlemagne, a lyrical account of the life and times of the most powerful European figure to emerge from the ruins of Rome. Drawing from Einhard's contemporary account of the emperor's life, as well as what other sources remain from the eighth century, the author paints an irresistible portrait of a singular mind, one as shaped by conquest as it was by metaphysics. Though little remains of Charlemagne's youth, and though it is difficult to corroborate the exact nature of his various deeds, a pattern of behavior emerges across the whole of the man's life, one that speaks to a complex nature that would be as well-suited to the cut and thrust of our century as it was to the tribalism of his own. From the manner in which he treated his wives to the esteem with which he held knowledge, we are made witnesses to the man more than we are the warrior, the spirit more than the deeds, a reality which is sure to frustrate those interested in military history but that pleases those others who find themselves fascinated by the minds of giants.

Charlemagne, for all its delightful prose, is a largely sympathetic account of the founder of the Holy Roman Empire. Mr. Winston is far harsher on the emperor's contemporaries than he is on Charlemagne himself. Perhaps Charles the Great was a man above all others, an unyielding spire of morality lashed by a seething sea of corrupted souls, but this seems far too simplistic given what we know of humanity which is much more liable to produce individuals of gray morality than of purely white and black. The only spot of criticism Mr. Winston levels at Charlemagne is the mercilessness with which he treats the Saxons who, time and time again, rise in rebellion against him, but even this seems muted compared to his paeans to Charlemagne's successes.

Notwithstanding its vagaries and its sympathies, Charlemagne is a vivid and lively document that teaches us as much about the man as it does about fate. For the readers of this chronicle will not be able to walk away unaffected by Mr. Winston's conclusion that, had Charlemagne's eldest sons lived, the subsequent 13 centuries of history would have unfolded quite differently. In peace, the schools Charlemagne founded would have had time to build on their learning, to spur on the intellectual flowering that only occurred centuries later. Instead, Louis' unsuitableness caused many of Charlemagne's reforms to wither on the vine, a tragic fact that caused Europe to devolve back into the post-Roman gloom that had already consumed it for 400 years.

Imagine a world without the Middle Ages, without irreason and theocracy. Imagine a Renaissance that began five centuries earlier in Charlemagne's Europe rather than Italy's city states. Imagine if industrialism came to Europe in the 13th century, not the 18th. We would today be among the stars.

Well worth the read, as much for the dream as for the man... (4/5 Stars)

The depths of human endurance explored in Moorehead's A Train in Winter

From The Week of February 18, 2013
As much as we plan out our lives, the colleges we attend, the jobs we want, the people we attach ourselves to, control over our futures is nothing more than an illusion. For while some of us may have the fortune of executing their plans without incident, others have their hopes and dreams shattered by circumstances beyond their mastery: car accidents and pink slips, assaults and terminal illnesses. These are not foreseeable pitfalls. They are unanticipatable traps that, when sprung, have the power to devastate not just our lives, but the lives of those we love. And if they cannot be avoided, then they can happen to any of us, at any time, dreams broken on the altars of powers beyond our command and our imagination. This decidedly grim theme runs right through Ms. Moorehead's engaging, if bleak, micro history.

The year is 1940 and Europe is exploding into war. The French army has been humiliated by the German Wehrmacht which has subsequently blitzkrieged its way all the way to Paris. There, aided by a puppet government and the collaborative French police, the Third Reich establishes France as a civilized German territory, using its absolute power to slowly roust France's Jews, communists and other dissidents from places of authority. At first, the arrests lead only to imprisonment, but as the war progresses, the Third Reich reaches for a more permanent solution for those who it considers dead weight. Undesirables are taken from their homes and their workplaces and packed into trains which relocate them to brutal concentration camps in which these unfortunates suffer an unimaginable combination of humiliation and forced labor that not only takes the lives of millions, but reduces the survivors to but shadows of what they were.

Though many of France's key institutions shamefully capitulate to the will of the German occupation, in particular its police forces which pursue Nazi-approved targets with sycophantic zealousness, some lone voices speak out against the gradual dissolution of their country. From academics to laborers, these brave souls organize a resistance which endeavors to both disrupt Nazi operations in France and carve a path for a revival of the French army under Charles de Gaulle. Men and women band together to write speeches and create pamphlets, to pool cash and plot attacks, designed to advance the cause of a free France. However, before many of their schemes can come to fruition, the French police attack these dissident networks, making mass arrests of their own countrymen who are in turn deported to Germany deathcamps. These are their stories, of resistance and survival, of degradation and regret.

Though at times relentlessly tragic, A Train in Winter is an unforgettable examination of the French resistance and all that its members suffered at the hands of both the Nazis and the Vichy government. Focusing in particular on a group of young, sympathetic French women who wrote speeches and distributed pamphlets for the movement, Ms. Moorehead captures the essence of the resister. For to be such is to embrace a life of sacrifice, to put above ones own self-interest the rights and freedoms of a nation, and to pay for these beliefs with blood and servitude. Many of the women did not enter the resistance expecting to be captured and killed, but they knew these were possibilities. And yet, instead of standing by, instead of taking the easy path, these individuals chose to risk their precious lives for a future they held in their hearts. Moreover, they did so knowing that they stood to lose not only their lives, but the health and safety of their loved ones, spouses, parents, even sons and daughters.

But though the stories of the women Ms. Moorehead has singled out here are interesting enough, her work ascends to the truly mesmerizing when it chronicles the depravities and the spinelessness of the collaborators. Every occupying force needs them. For no land can be understood and operated without them. And so every occupier incentivizes men and women in key positions to keep their jobs and do their work, placing them into an ethical bind that is by no means easy to escape. But the degree to which these collaborators performed their tasks, oftentimes going above and beyond the call of duty simply to exercise their power, or, worse, to impress their masters, is as startling as it is revolting. The lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of brave souls who sacrificed all for their country were ruined by men and women bent on self-preservation at all costs, making a Faustian bargain with the Nazis for which, sadly, they never had to adequately pay.

As a history of a particular group of women, Ms. Moorehead's tale leaves a lot to be desired. She is too often interested in hailing their virtues, in celebrating their bond, than in truly examining their lives. Moreover, most of these events are now nearly 70 years in the past, making details decidedly blurrier than they appear here. However, as an exemplar of the triumphs and perils of the resisters, as a chronicle of Nazi cruelty and as an enduring statement about the nature of endurance in the face of unimaginable degradation, this is admirable work. Well worth the read... (3/5 Stars)x

The life of an extraordinary, ordinary man in Tomalin's Samuel Pepys

From The Week of February 11, 2013
As much as history is shaped by its giants, those figures of legend who come down to us from countless tales and nearly as many deeds, it is just as influenced by the smallfolk as well. For while many are ready and able to compose flowery paeans in honor of the great men and women who've danced across the stage of our shared past, no one documents the little people who fight in the wars the great generals win; no one is watching the laborers who manufacture the tools and products that allow the great ones to dispense their words; no one memorializes the lives of the slaves and builders who erected our great monuments. They are forgotten, necessary remnants who go without recognition because no one bothers to remember their deeds. At least in the case of one man, however, these anonymizing shadows have been thrust back. For his talent and his words survived the test of time to describe to us a world we might not have otherwise seen. Ms. Tomalin elaborates in her excellent biography.

Born in the dying days of the old monarchy, Samuel Pepys was a man of talent and intelligence whose life straddled the most transformative period in English history. A poor boy in Tudor England, a young, educated man in Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, and an aging parliamentarian during the Glorious Revolution of 1688, he survived kings and misfortune, wars and uncertain political winds, to witness not only the repeated plagues that marred mid-century London, but the great fire that all but consumed it in that most apocalyptic year of 1666. He was the son of a tailor who amassed wealth and status in an England obsessed by class distinctions. And yet, he would be but a forgotten footnote in history if his most exceptional diary had not withstood the corrosiveness of time's decay to stand witness to his mind, his pen and the Britain that shaped them both.

Remaining one of the most definitive first-hand accounts of the Great Fire of London, a Hellish storm that devoured large swaths of the city, Pepys'' diary reveals the thoughts of a man on the rise in a time long past. Forsaking the clean narratives that only come with hindsight, Pepys describes his life in detail, from humiliatingly private exchanges with his wife to points of fashion and conduct in the halls of power to which he was eventually admitted. But more than the finer points of his rise and fall, beyond the vagaries of his household, the diary chronicles the appalling anonymity of the everyman, and everywoman, in his London. Not only are there nothing like public services to aid the poor and the unfortunate, there's an abysmal disconnect between the privileged monarchy, who feel entitled to their position, and the wretched outsiders who have no means at all of gaining a voice and putting an end to their powerlessness, a fact that would remain true for decades to come.

A biography of both the man and his enduring document, Ms. Tomalin's Samuel Pepys is a testament to the smallfolk of history all-too-readily neglected by a species obsessed with only the brightest stars. Fixing upon Pepys' glories and his faults, the author wonderfully captures a man's life in 17th-century England. But more than that, she exposes us to his legendary diary which speaks to a rare talent for both detail and self-examination. Pepys, at times, seems like a bundle of faults, a womanizer who has little time for people who are burdensome to him. But we only know of these failings because the man himself wrote of them. He rejected, in part or whole, the urge within all of us to present our best face to the world, to soft-pedal our warts while emphasizing our best features. And in doing so, he gifts to us a trustworthy document about the life of a gentleman in a tumultuous time.

There's no doubt that Ms. Tomalin's biography has its flaws. Its length is bloated at more than 400 pages. Moreover, the author would have done well to better embed Pepys in the world around him, both its trends and its pitfalls. But in every other respect, this is an eminently enjoyable and edifying portrait of a selfish but selflessly honest man through whom we can come to better understand a world we've mostly left behind. Pepys would make for a wonderful inspiration for Pip, the protagonist of Mr. Dickens' famous Great Expectations if Dickens' own story, coming near some two centuries on, wasn't so very much like Pepys' own.

Ms. Tomalin's prose and research more than does justice to a man of history worthy of our attention. (4/5 Stars)

In Galileo, the arrogance of a man; the ignorance of a church

From The Week of January 28, 2013
We all err. But while most blunders succumb to the rigors of time, others thunder across human history, requiring both centuries and apologies to be laid to rest. This may not be fair; we all, from time-to-time, act out of ignorance and to have that held against us, and the organizations we serve, is a stain that cruelly blots out all of our subsequent good deeds. And yet, I cannot help but think this is just. For perhaps the judgement of history should be as searing as it is unforgiving. For is this not the only dependable deterrent in place to dissuade the narrowminded from acting foolishly? Is this not the only reliable spur we have with which to prod the stodgy and the selfish into a wider view of the world? There is enough ignorance in the body of humanity. We do not need more from the authorities in whom we place our faith. This much Mr. Reston makes clear in his engaging biography.

A giant of history, Galileo Galilei redefined our understanding of science and the solar system. He discovered planets and moons, invented telescopes and spyglasses, all of which re-enforced the Copernican view of the universe. Unfortunately for Galileo, however, he endeavored in a time of superstition and theocracy, a time in which the Pope stood above even the kings of Europe, let alone its citizens. And so, when the great astronomer's Copernican beliefs clashed with the geocentric dogmas of Catholicism, the resulting inferno consumed the balance of his life as religious censure robbed the world of the genius of one of our era's foremost minds.

As much as the Catholic Church stands to be blamed for this folly, Galileo shares responsibility in his downfall. For he was a man of pride and ambition, a man whose correspondence speaks to a deep dissatisfaction with his station in life. Striving to have more, to be more, he abandoned caution for arrogance, an imprudent decision that put him into the bloody hands of a powerful church unwilling to let his "transgressions" abide. The result, perhaps the world's most famous exile that stained the reputation of one of the world's foremost faiths for 350 years.

Less a biography of Galileo than a chronicle of his battles with a close-minded church, Galileo is a riveting reconstruction of the latter half of the life of the great astronomer. The author abandons a detailed history of Galileo's family life, touching only briefly on his distant relationships with his cloistered daughters and his frustrations with his mooching siblings and in-laws, to focus instead on the central conflict of Galileo's life. A religious man, Galileo did not seek to overthrow the power of his church, but when his discoveries contradicted its dogmas, he could not forever be silent. Perhaps, if this was the man's only transgression, it would have been allowed to pass. But as Mr. Reston exemplifies, a habit for inflaming the ire of men both powerful and petty robbed Galileo of the benefit of the doubt from a stern institution already fighting off the existential threat of Protestantism. A consequential clash, then, was inevitable, the details and fallout of which is captured here wonderfully well.

Galileo might have done well to devote more of its pages to the backgrounds of the men who lined up to condemn Copernican Galileo. Mr. Reston does spend some time with Cardinal Bellarmine, the prime mover of his doom, but Pope Urban VIII is, here, little more than a figure at the side of the stage, outside the brilliance of the bright lights. However, these failings are washed away by the author's animation of Galileo himself. For there is little of legend here. The mythology is stripped back to reveal a convincing portrait of a man quite carried away with his own intellect. And might well he would be when surrounded by such darkness. This professorial pompousness, though, seems as unwise now as it would have then, at least to Galileo's friends.

As fascinating as it is captivating, Galileo is gripping work that does as much to illustrate the sins of a church as it does to peel back the historiography of a man become scientific saint. Both failed in the most human of ways. And yet, the former's failings helped doom the world for the next two centuries. The latter sought only to sheathe it in the light of objective truth. Little wonder that we can forgive the latter but never the former. (4/5 Stars)