Short rounds and leftovers:

Hello, readers! Here's hoping those of you in the US had an enjoyable Thanksgiving on Thursday. I thoroughly enjoyed the company of my cousins, though I did rather poorly in our board game of choice.  I blame the dice.   Throughout the week I finished up a couple of titles and wanted to comment on them.

First up is The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which is less a book and more of a long essay on Linux, an open-source operating system -- and specifically, how Linux's bottom up, emergent order approach is much different from the controlling top-down approach of Microsoft and Apple.  I was interested because I recently used a boot disk with Ubuntu (a Linux variant)  to access a computer and extract files from it after it stopped booting Windows. I was pleasantly surprised by its intuitiveness, because I'd previously regarded Linux as something of interest chiefly to programmers and system administrators. Everything I had to do I managed through the graphical interface, just like Windows or Apple, and I made another boot disk with another Linux variant (Mint) to test next time.  An interesting quote from the book:

"The Linux world behaves in many respects like a free market or an ecology, a collection of selfish agents attempting to maximize utility which in the process produces a self-correcting spontaneous order more elaborate and efficient than any amount of central planning could have achieved. Here, then, is the place to seek the 'principle of understanding'.

The 'utility function' Linux hackers are maximizing is not classically economic, but is the intangible of their own ego satisfaction and reputation among other hackers. Voluntary cultures that work this way are not actually uncommon; one other in which I have long participated is science fiction fandom, which unlike hackerdom has long explicitly recognized [ego-boosting] as the basic drive behind volunteer activity."

Although a lot of the content of The Cathedral and the Bazaar is over my head (given my status as definitely-not-a-programmer),  I like the idea of the open source movement, and not just because it produces good programs that are free of cost, like VLC Media Player, LibreOffice, and the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), two of which I use.   Developers are becoming insanely clingy about controlling users, and about what they allow users to control; these days the proprietary software on computers isn't so much owned as rented.  And some of the software produced by these places isn't even that great: my favored music player, Winamp, makes it far more easy to build and edit playlists than iTunes or Groove, and it's been using the same simple approach for all the 15+ years I've been using it.  

Also up is Coffee to Go, a truck-driving...journal from a Scottish author who drove principally between the UK and western Europe. This book was recommended to me on the basis that he travels to Russia, but no such trip was recorded here, with the farthest reaches being Austria and northern Scandinavia. (There may be multiple editions?) Although I like trucking memoirs generally, this one was....well, less a memoir and more of a journal. Hobbs records every bit of his trip, from how much he paid for coffee to what he said to the fellows as customs, and I found it tedious. The last fifth of the book are recollections of his trips from before he started keeping a diary, and those are much more interesting to read because of all the play-by-play action is absent, replaced by a general narrative with thoughts on traveling to tiny places like Andorra. Easily the most interesting chapter were his memories of driving into Western Berlin during the Soviet era, when  the western side of the city was a pocket surrounded by the dismal DDR.  Hobbs seems like a nice guy, but this wasn't one I'll remember much about, I'm afraid.

City of Fortune

City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas
© 2012 Roger Crowley
464 pages

In the north of the Adriatic grew a city built not on land, but upon the water -- whose fortune was earned in transit, by  running the ships that connected Europe with the Orient.  Already a powerful commercial entity at the time of the Fourth Crusade, Venice's actions there would catapult her to empire -- empire based on the broken back of eastern Rome, but empire nonetheless, and she would survive near-defeat and triumph again and again until finally she met her match in the Turks. City of Fortune is a history of the Stato da Màr, the empire of the sea that existed wherever waters run.  A highly narrative history  that focuses on Venice's peak and fighting decline,  City of Fortune is a treat for students of European history as it tells the story of this most singular state.

This book was a particularly rare treat for me because I had no idea how it would end. I knew Venice was built from a swamp and maintained itself through trade, and that it was extensively involved in the crusades as the provider of transportation. I had no idea how powerful it was at its peak, however, and knew nothing of the circumstances of its decline.   The story of Venice is one not of Europe, but of the Mediterranean: Venice, the Eastern Roman Empire, and the Turks are its primary actors.   In the beginning Venice was technically a vassal of the eastern empire, commonly called the Byzantine, but  as it made its living by trade the city rarely behaved like a subordinate, frequently engaging in commerce with the constantly-attacked empire's enemies in the middle east. When the Church organized another crusade to redeem Jerusalem from the rising Turks, Venice would become the key agent in derailing the crusade, ultimately sending it to conquer Constantinople instead of Jerusalem, and solidifying Turkic rule in Judea instead of repelling it. Venice's entire economy and much of its citizenry were consumed by the contract with the west to transport their men and material to Jerusalem:  when the west balked at paying in full, Venice decided to use their armies to redeem its gold in other ways, by sacking some of its rival-neighbors.  When some ambiguity over the Byzantine succession presented an opportunity for regime change and rewards in gold, naturally Venice took advantage and carried the crusade toward  Constantinople. Things didn't go as planned, and....well, long story short the west conquered the city, fractured the eastern Roman empire, and left it easy pickings for the Turks as they continued to march west. 

For a time Venice would flourish in its ill-gotten gains:  from the ruins it turned its commercial holdings into a genuine empire, and the wealth of the ancients and the east would pour into Venice.  When like proud Athens it found itself in bitter wars with its neighbors, even being surrounded by a  Genoese fleet, it somehow rebounded. But  nations reap what they sow as well as individuals,  and Venice's empire of the sea was no match for the Turks' increasingly vast holdings in the middle east,  marching through Asia Minor and soon pushing around Venice for possession of islands and seaways.  Venice would attempt to organized a general European defense of the Med, but her own prideful pushiness made her a pariah -- and her attempts at lifting high the cross were laughed at, considering Venice's long history trading with Christendom's foes.   Venice would lose her military might to the Turks in battle after battle, but ultimately it was Portugal who would see the city fall from commercial dominance. Faced with the Turkic domination of the west, the closing of access to India and China, the Portuguese would find new ways east -- and  as the Age of Discovery dawned, Venice's brilliant star would dim. But that's a story for Crowley's other book, Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire.


Curiously, for a century or so there existed a lovely hotel in downtown Selma modeled after the Places of the Doges in Venice.  The building was destroyed in the late sixties to  make room for city hall.  A pox on politicians!

A Thousand Miles from Nowhere

A Thousand Miles from Nowhere
© 1995 Graham Coster
275 pages

Great literature has been produced from travelers' tales, from those who walked or rode trains or even drove -- but none from a truck, says Graham Coster. In the hopes of filling in a niche, he hitched rides with British and American truckers transversing North American and Europe, to learn about life behind the wheel of a big rig. The memoir is based on three trips undertaken in 1993, but as Coster was not himself a driver, there are only three things he writes about: the drivers, the landscape, and country music. (Also: candy bars. One wonders if Mars, Inc underwrote his trip!) The landscape is almost absent, mentioned only as the background scenery. In Arizona, Coster ruefully notes that his time spent with truckers has altered his perspective: he has visited the state before, noted its beauty, but once embedded in the work routines of a cab it's nothing more than a low hill with a series of truck stops behind it. The places, unless they are extraordinarily abominable (New York City, the bane of truckers) are all ironed out by the constant transience of driving life. The drivers themselves all make for fun company, swapping stories about experiences on the road and ruminating over friends they've lost. In the United States, Coster is more out of his element -- praising presidents who truckers loathe, making jokes about people they admire. Ruminations on music, and especially country music, rival the conversations with drivers for page-space. Coaster is intrigued that the drivers he meets in England and Germany both like American country music, and in the US, they seem to listen to nothing else. It's not an accident that the book takes its title from a Dwight Yoakam piece. Coster likes it well enough himself, though he prefers the country-pop party anthems to the emotional croonings of Hank Williams.

Although this is a topic that greatly interests me, I was completely underwhelmed by this title, in part because I've read other memoirs and encountered nothing new. Even if I were reading it for the first time, however, there's little real information about the trucking industry here: it's just driving and waiting. For information on Eurasia's transcontinental routes, Danger: Heavy Goods, a memoir about the England-Saudi Arabia route, is much better...and written by an actual driver.

Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History
© 1942 Jawaharlal Nehru
1192 pages

In 1930,  a man who would later become the first prime minister of India was thrown in jail for a period of two years. There, removed from his family and regretful that he was forcibly absent from his daughter Indira's life, Jawaharlal Nehru labored to impart what wisdom he could through a series of letters. Beginning in October 1930 and ending in August 1933, the letters -- written in a loving and erudite pen -- cover the whole of the human story, from prehistory 'til the "present day" of 1938.   Composed from memory, notes, love for his daughter, and fervent if beleaguered hope for humanity, Glimpses is an extraordinary collection.

Of course, their author was an extraordinary man.  I first encountered him some six years ago, when I watched the film Gandhi and found him such  a sympathetic figure that I read his biography and became utterly transfixed by him. Most striking was a story his biographer, Shashi Tharoor shared -- that Nehru was so unnerved by his support in office that he wrote an anonymous letter warning people to be more skeptical -- "Nehru has all the makings of a dictator...we want no Caesars" .  Having read Glimpses, having spent upwards of a month with Nehru, reading these intimate letters to his daughter,  I can more readily believe that he wrote such a thing.   Here was a man whose deep appreciation for human history allowed him to create from memory and notes, an epic history of the world without recourse to a library -- who would, in the progress of the letters, continually connect them to one another in one fabric of historical reflections.  He was as conversant with the weaknesses and pains of the human experience as the potential and glory. 

Glimpses reminded me much of H.G.Wells' Outline of History, and this is no accident; Nehru quotes it a few times, using it as one of his sources. While Wells and Nehru share a common worldview, however -- scientifically centered and politically progressive, the two combining in a ready belief that science was on the precipice of conquering politics and economics with state socialism --  Nehru writes more broadly of the world.  Not surprisingly, India and  Southeast Asia are at the book's heart. Even when writing on other topics, like Ireland's perennial fight with England,  allusions to India are common.. These connections are partially the result of him writing as teacher to his daughter, but as he admits the letters serve him as well, allowing him to reflect and inwardly digest the lessons of history. As an actor in India's ongoing drama for independence, no doubt there are lessons he hopes to apply in practice. He also draws out these lessons in contradiction, contrasting "priest-ridden" India with  China, which he views as more rationalistic even in antiquity.  (Again with Wells, Nehru is not a fan of organized religion,  largely viewing it as nothing more than elaborate conspiracy to keep people from thinking about being poor. He does not blame it for every ill of the world, however, referring to it often being used as the mere cover for more mundane conflicts.)

What does Glimpses offer the modern reader?  For starters, Nehru's history regularly visits India, southeast Asia, and the middle east in a way that westerners at least probably do not encounter. I have never read about India colonialism, for instance, and have only encountered Persian history post-Sassanids when I  sought it out deliberately.  There is the virtue of novelty, then, but Nehru makes this all the more valuable by relentlessly chronicling areas' histories in connection with one another; they're not disjointed. Even when Nehru is forced to make sudden jumps, he offers recaps and reviews to remind his daughter, of what we discussed previously. (Considering that there are nearly two hundred letters, this is especially helpful.)     There is also Nehru's teaching style to consider. This is not an academic history, but the counsel of a parent to a child, and it is therefore tender. When he devotes four chapters to the trade crisis and Great Depression, one suspects he is writing more for his own benefit, but Nehru frequently stops chronicling to reflect. It is here when he is musing on the lessons these recollections to have teach us that Nehru sounds most loving, most wise.  He is a pleasure to listen to, to spend time with, and this is an invaluable attribute for an author.  Even if a reader disagrees with a man, it is possible to listen to him, take him seriously, and earnestly reason together with him -- if he is a sympathetic author. If he is a boor bellowing in confrontation,  there is neither wisdom nor argument to find, only courage in one's prejudices. 

Nehru is no boor -- and neither is he a bore.  While Nehru was a political figure, his history does not limit itself to politics; he frequently dwells on literature, architecture, and poetry, frequently including verses for his daughter's consideration.  (He also includes tables of trade and population statistics, because fifteen year olds eat that stuff up.) Obviously, I prefer Gandhi's strident village anarchism to any sort of state-centered scheme, but Nehru isn't an extremist. He writes of science that humility goes hand in hand with knowledge, as every discovery only creates further questions. He exhibits that humility most of the time, frequently chronicling the unintended consequences of government actions and the chronic moral frailties of man. If Nehru has a blind spot, it  is authoritarian socialism, and particularly his enamored take on Stalin. While the author is happy to accept Roosevelt's tinkering with the American economy as a kind of socialism, he declares that Hitler's tinkering with the German economy had nothing at all to do with socialism despite its "National Socialism" name.  Both were using the state to 'buffer' the economy on behalf of :"Society", so -- what's the difference?  

The big difference between Nehru's writing on Stalinism and his writing in the hundreds of pages before is that with Stalin, he is writing on the present, without benefit of hindsight.  I imagine that if Nehru were to live in our own time, he would present a view of Stalinism -- and Maoism, and Pol Potism, and Juche, and the other variations which have killed and enslaved many millions in the 20th century --  that is more critical,  his being able to see the consequences from afar.  I do not believe his love for the common man would be diminished in the least, nor would his hope. This was a man who concluded his letters in the 1930s, when Japan and Germany stood astride the world, when the democracies were ailing and impotent, when India still languished under foreign domination -- and yet he urged his daughter to not take a dismal view of the world:

For history teaches us of growth and progress and of the possibility of an infinite advance for man; and life is rich and varied, and though it has many swamps and marshes and muddy places, it has also the great sea, and the mountains, and snow, and glaciers,  and wonderful starlight nights (especially in gaol!), and the love of family and friends and the comradeship of workers in common cause, and music, and books, and the empire of ideas. So that each of us may well say: -- 'Lord, though I lived on earth, the child of earth, Yet was I fathered by the starry sky''.

Glimpses was a book, for me, six years in the waiting, and worth the waiting.  I hope to spend more time with Nehru in his Discovery of India. 

Born Fighting

Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America
© 2004 Jim Webb
384 pages

Born Fighting is a family story of the Scots-Irish, a clan of forgotten men. Beginning with the Celts, author Jim Webb moves swiftly through British history to the establishment of the Ulster Plantation.  Faced with continued resistance to the British crown by the feisty Irish, who were even more suspect by their frequent fraternization with Catholic powers like France and Spain,  King James hit on a novel solution: move in their equally feisty, but virulently Protestant, Scottish cousins.  As anyone remotely familiar with Irish history can guess, that didn't end well;  northern Ireland was a warzone even throughout the 20th century.  But the Scots of the Ulster Plantation didn't stay there;  they emigrated to the United States in large numbers, where they continued being...lively. Constitutionally incapable of bending a knee to a king,  they pushed into the American interior,  driving the frontier of colonization forward, provoking the natives into war and prompting a revolution.  Although  some would eventually make it to the west coast, the hills of Appalachia and the American South were settled in large number by these rebellious Presbyterians.  Settling down didn't change too much, though; when  Abraham Lincoln called for troops to suppress the secession of South Carolina, the size of the nascent Confederacy doubled as the distant descendants of Robert the Bruce closed ranks to defend their land and kinsmen from invasion. Although they were defeated in battle, they continued to shape American history, swelling the ranks of the soldiery and producing country music.

Although Born Fighting has the scope of a historical survey, it's much more personal. As mentioned, this is a family story, and it's framed by Jim Webb's journey into the Appalachian mountains to find his family's bones, and the quest that ends at an ancestral graveyard  causes him to ruminate on how his people came to be in that land, so far removed from the hills of Britain and Ireland. It's thus quite romanticized, its characters assuming airs of heroism or tragedy as the story waxes on. The rough, ornery wildness that Webb celebrates here as an antidote to tyranny is the same 'cracker culture' that Thomas Sowell condemned in Black Rednecks, White Liberals as completely-self defeating.  Webb doesn't completely overlook  his kinsmen's flaws; his defense of the South  owns up to slavery as the cause of secession, but he rightly distinguishes that from the motive for fighting. Slaves, like private jets and palatial estates today, were not owned by most southerners;  most, in fact were owned by a few dozen elite families. The country boys wearing grey weren't fighting to keep their slaves, they were fighting because fighting rule from on high is a family tradition. The Scots-Irish, Webb writes, could respect authority from men who literally led them in battle, but never from enthroned men who dictate from afar, whether they be Caesar and Pope in Rome, or the president in D.C.

Born Fighting makes for fun reading, and it's not immaterial: there are reasonable arguments here, taken from completely respectable surveys like Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples, and WJ Nash's The Mind of the South.  There's always more to the story, though, and southern whites have not always been completely opposed to authority on principle. The New Deal that Webb mentions resistance to was much beloved by the poor South, black and white alike. In fact, a song mentioned in Webb's section on country music refers  to Roosevelt "saving us all", creating programs like the TVA that put the singer's family back on its feet. Taken as a fond retelling of family drama, however, its weaknesses can be forgiven. There are other works for the serious readers. Like Cool Hand Luke, this is a celebration of a man, of a people, who can't be told what to do and won't give up going their own way, no matter how many times they're beaten.

Related:
Poor but Proud / Dixie's Forgotten People, Wayne Flynt
The Redneck Manifesto, Jim Goad. Similar in intent, but much more vulgar.
A Renegade History of the United States, Thaddeus Russell

Civilisation: A Personal View

Civilisation: A Personal View
© 1959 Sir Kenneth Clark
359 pages

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion -- poetry, beauty,  romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. (John Keating, Dead Poet's Society) 

In the mid-20th century, in the wake of a war that destroyed much of Europe and created a new tension between the capitalist West and the collectivist East that threatened to put paid to the rest of the world, Sir Kenneth Clark wondered: we are facing a new dark age?  Having posed the question, he returned to study the aftermath of the last dark age, Europe after the collapse of western Rome in hopes that it might offer an answer. Civilisations, he writes, compose political histories of themselves -- but it is the unofficial histories, the evidence they leave behind them, that really speaks. So to study the revival of Europe, to ascertain whether the 20th century west has again lost its vigor, Clark studies the book of art. Civilisation: A Personal View is a sweeping history of western art, primarily visual with a musical interlude.  A political history reveals the ambitions of its author, or patron; but the arts sweep across the human spectrum.  Lavishly illustrated with scores of full-page color photographs, most of the subjects Clark addresses are glorious sights that strike Awe into the heart of the viewer. They are churches, town palaces, sweeping vistas -- but there are the humbly but artfully-built homes, and the scenes of humbler life, too.  Although Clark comments on the evolving technical aspects of art -- the growing skillfulness at depicting man through the middle ages, for instance, from rudimentary figures with helpful "Image of a Man" labels, to the stunning life-like portraiture of the Renaissance -- he is more concerned with the spiritual import of the art. This means more than scenes of religious devotion; Clark believes that civilizations perish because they are exhausted, as though they were tired of being living things. Great art -- art that looks toward the future, that is intended as a lasting monument -- is one sign of life. For Clark, truth, beauty, and goodness are intermingled, though great monuments are not in themselves evidence of moral greatness.  After a lingering look at Byzantine glory, Clark addresses mostly north-western Europe: Britain, France, and Germany.  There is no discounting the book's richly satisfying content, however, for want of geographic range.

The Vikings

The Vikings: A History
© 2010 Robert Ferguson
464 pages
UK title: The Hammer and the Cross: A History of the Vikings

            VIKINGS!  For students of western civilization, the word has quite the mystique. Invaders from the frozen north, flying across the seas on dragons-head ships, wreaking havoc on seaboards and penetrating deep into Europe’s heartland to cause even more. Kings and priests feared them;  behind them, cities were cast into smoke. For decades they were the unholy dread of Christendom, but theirs is a history not limited to battle and chaos. The Vikings is a history of the turn of the second millennium in Europe, of not only the northern clans but of the civilizations they altered; the English, Russian, Norman, Italian, and even Arabic.  As the last of Europe’s pagans roamed far and side, from Constantinople to North America, so to does Ferguson explore not only their military and political strivings, but their religious culture as well.  Although Vikings is a weighty work, dense with information, it's presented as-such; there's no  overall idea to  tie each section together, and because their wanderings were so broad the reader is thrown from place to place in every other chapter. There's no want of detail;  Carolingian politics, variations in the Heathen religion, and even home sites at archaeological digs are given extensive consideration.  For those interested in the Vikings, and their impact on European history at this time, The Vikings will be a worthy source of information; for the  only slightly curious, however, its density may be intimidating. 

Related:
Daily Life in Anglo-Saxon England , Sally Crawford

The White War

 The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919
©  Mark Thompson

488 pages

By 1915, what began as a conflict between Austria and Serbia had broadened into the Great War, whose largest contenders were not parties to the initial dispute. The war became truly global as countries the world over joined the Allies or the Central Powers, using the struggle to pursue their own ends; such was the case with Japan, which declared war on Germany not to avenge Belgium, but to snatch up  the Kaiser’s Asian colonies.  Closer to the heart of the battle was Italy’s role in the fray; although the recently-unified kingdom began 1914 in a defensive alliance with both Austria and Germany,  it delayed entry while it considered better alternatives. Finally deciding that reclaiming more of its ‘historic’ territory from its border was better than attacking France for no reason at all, Italy entered into the war in the early summer of its second year. So began five years of tragedy, creating a victory as sad as any loss. Such is the story of The White War, which is excellent even though disheartening.

            I have previously regarded the butchery of the Somme as the Great War’s most depressing moment, but it now has a rival, for the Italian front reads like one long prolonged experience of the Somme. The star and culprit of the show is General Cadorna, a man who was invested with considerable power and claimed even more as the war progressed, who launched ten successive attempts at the same Austrian lines over the course of two years with precious little to show for his efforts. Despite enjoying considerable advantages in men and material, the Italian army under Cardona’s command gave new meaning to SNAFU, never learning to adapt to the new style of warfare, not even incorporating lessons from its allies on the western front.  So extraordinarily bad is Cardona at waging war that the Austrian army, in other accounts and fronts lampooned for its own failures, appears focused, potent, and grimly efficient by comparison.  Only when the Austrians launch an attack that destroys all of the blood-won progress of the three years preceding, and even threaten Venice, is Cardona sacked and the Italian army saved.  Reorganizing and pushing forward, the Italians won their greatest victories only when peace talks  were already in progress, and the terms being penciled in – but even then, Italy’s redemption was squandered by its own leaders’ politicking,  For all of its millions lost, Italy ended the war despised by Europe and already at daggers with its new neighbors, the Slavic nations.

It’s a sad, frustrating story, but a story easy to experience as delivered by Mark Thompson. He’s more personable than scholarly, sometimes relaxing into a present-tense narrative of the war that would no doubt annoy history professors insisting on a more objective and consistent residence in the past tense.  Italy makes for a fascinating front, as the mountains and hills between it and the Austro-Hungarian border are far different terrain than the plains of Flanders field.  The text is supplemented by maps that make the difficult terrain’s role easier to see, but The White War is more than combat. Beginning with Italy’s extensive diplomatic dickering,   it pauses from the action throughout to offer looks at the home front, or other aspects of the Italian experience. These excerpts reveal the relatively new nation fracturing under the stress of war, stress made worse by Cadorna’s heavy-handed approach. It’s an old joke that “beatings will continue until morale improves”, but such was Cardorna’s practice;  outraged by the lack of disincline among the army, he reinstituted the Roman practice of decimation (deliberating killing every tenth man in a unit to punish it), treated prisoners as traitors, and punished even civilians for being less than enthusiastic about the war.

The White War commends itself to those interested in learning about the Italian experience, even if that experience showcases the most frustrating and horrific aspects of the conflict. 

A Splendid Exchange

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World
© 2009 David Bernstein
496 pages

         

  History oft moves with the caravans and trade fleets, and its journeys along the routes  of the past and present are given a storied account in A Splendid Exchange. Beginning in ancient Sumer and moving forward to the present day, David Bernstein demonstrates how the lust for goods from afar has linked cities and states together, and driven them apart. The narrative corners nearly every corner of the globe, Antarctica excepting, and ripens into a tentative argument for free trade, though its author isn't too insistent. Bernstein brings a lot to the table; he's a personable author, sometimes wandering off on side-roads but for never too long, and usually delivering something valuable to the reader as a reward for gamely enduring:  understanding of how air compressors work, for instance, or what is meant by the economic phrase, comparative advantage.  He creates in A Splendid Exchange  a marvelously varied history book, following the tale of  trade through city-states to nation-empires, from the middle east to South America -- but as varied as it is, no matter the diversity of goods being traded or fought over, the narrative flows seamlessly aside from a jump in the 20th century.  Those goods range from the exotic to the mundane;  table elements we now take for granted have had far more interesting past lives. Readers may well know that sugar, spice, and all things nice are everything little girls are made of – but they’re also the stuff of world empires and bitter grudges. The importance of trade routes affirms the importance of geography; many of the straits endlessly fought over throughout the book remain heavily in use today, underscoring the relevance of the various trading empires' rise and fall.  The same trading routes the Dutch and Portuguese  shot their hearts out as cannons attempting to secure are the ones we employ to transport oil, no mere luxury. Our entire global economy is lubricated by trade, which is why Bernstein cautiously presents arguments for freeing it up, with caveats.  A Splendid Exchange strikes me as popular history at its finest; varied but cohesive, fun to read but intelligently argued and obviously relevant to our contemporary experience. 

Related:

• 1493, Charles C. Mann
• A History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage
• Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky
• Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
• Sugar: the Sweetness and the Power

The Age of Revolution

History of the English-Speaking Peoples: The Age of Revolution
© 1955 Sir Winston Churchill
332 pages

The third volume in Winston Churchill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples" begins with the most dramatic assumption of power in modern English history.  In the age of religious warfare, the Protestant-majority Parliament deposed its Catholic king, James II, and invited William of Orange and his wife Anne (an English princess) to take the throne. The 'glorious revolution' opens The Age of Revolution, an age which ended the long epoch of history-as-made-by-the-king and ushered in the modern dominance of parliaments, congresses, and diets.

The revolutions which felled kings in England, America, and France anchor the book, with countless European wars occupying the chapters between. Although the wars of religion are fading,  state politics causes conflicts aplenty on its own, like the wars of French and Spanish succession, and the seemingly near-constant Anglo-French wars in the Netherlands. The wars leapt continents, as the Seven Years War in Europe became the French and Indian War in North America. The greatest conflict, of course, was the series of Napoelonic wars, which end the book. Throughout this long century (the book spans 127 years),  the English king plays an increasingly smaller role; the 'glorious revolution' isn't the last time Parliament simply chooses to appoint its next king, and the Hanoverian succession of Georges that continues today  demonstrated that de facto sovereignty lay with Parliament, not the king.

Churchhill is a moderate historian, and its coverage of the American War of Independence is as genteel and even-sided as one might expect from a half-American author shared the rigors of World War II at the side of Franklin D. Roosevelt, of whom he said, "It's fun to be in the same decade with you."  The conservative Churchhill is likewise careful when recording the bitter battles between Tories and Whigs, the then-dominant political parties; neither side is favored. (The long view of history aides objectivity; I doubt Churchill is so fair in his narrative of World War 2!) This is narrative history, a grand story driven by personalities like the the handsome, brilliant, dashing, gallant, honorable, endlessly clever Duke of Marlborough.  Also known as John Churchill, or Sir Winston's great-great(etc)-grandfather, the attention given to him shows that  this isn't quite 'objective' history, but what's the point of having famous ancestors if you can't brag about their exploits defending the Netherlands against dictators from the east?  Given his own history in World War 2, little wonder he identified with the Duke's so strongly. The French revolution gives us a villain in Napoleon, and towering heroes in the form of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Nelson to slay the Corsican dragon.

All told, The Age of Revolution is quite an enjoyable survey of this period's history, of medieval kingdoms maturing into modern states, despite being largely about the wills of titanic characters and the wars they fought.

Forgotten Voices of the Great War

Forgotten Voices of the Great War
© 2004 ed. Max Author
336 pages

                        Forgotten Voices of the Great War is a chronicle of the first great war,  a story told not by one author but many. Interviews and written recollections from soldiers and civilians, young and old, give readers a first-hand view of the debacle as it unfolded. The editor divided the book into five year-by-year sections, and begins each with a brief (two-page long) summary of the year’s fighting before allowing the participants of history to give the full, intimate account.  Aside from the occasional insertion of dates and battle names, the narrative consists of first-hand excerpts, generally no more than a paragraph long.  There are distinct home front and military sections, and no bias as far as the soldiers’ attitudes go:   the account begins with feelings of thrill and anxiety at the war’s declaration, but by the first few months virtually everyone sounds weary. There’s no polemicizing here, though after witnessing the despair of soldiers enduring these long years at the front  what reader can escape antiwar sentiment?  All of the combat accounts are set on the Western Front or in Gallipoli,, but there are accounts of Germans, French, and Americans mixed in with the Commonwealth nations’ excerpts,  constituting half the work. Forgotten Voices leaves grand narrative behind and allows readers to experience the grisly details – the stories of soldiers tripping through dark trenches filled with cables, of the wounded sinking into muddy shell holes and attempting to effect their rescue by singing loudly amid the clamor of combat;  and of course, the rats, living in the legions of bodies and growing as large as dogs, with shooting them a dismal option because their own bodies will only add to the stinking foulness. It’s not pretty, but such is the nature of war and modern readers would do well to heed these voices instead of those singing of war’s glories.

The First World War

The First World War
© 2000 John Keegan
528 pages

The dawning of the 20th century seemed to promise nothing but good tidings for the civilized world; telegraphy and steam were knitting it together,  economies were flourishing, and progress was on the march. Then an Austrian noble was shot, and everything went to hell. The First World War is a comprehensive history of the Great War, beginning with the optimistic state of Europe in the 1910s and ending with a retrospective. The text covers the war's best known front, the western line of trenches gutting France, as well as every other, including the many varied struggles in the east (Germany v Russia, Austria v Italy, Russia v Austria,  and Russia v the Turks just to name the principles; other fights in the Balks, like those in Greece and Bulgaria are also examined),  across the world as colonies changed hands, and on the sea. Keegan's success  in taking a widespread conflict and delivering a concise narrative over it can't be overstated.

Although the Great War began with confrontation between the Austrian-Hungarian empire and its Serbian neighbor, it broadened into a global conflict because of the dense web of alliances between European nations and ethnic hostility in the east.   Germany supported Austria's aggressive blame towards the Serbs for the death of Archduke Franz Ferninand, the Russians supported the Serbs, the French supported the Russians, and the British supported the Belgians who had the impudence to put up forts defending the best route from Germany to France: Belgium itself.  In the east, a handful of Balkan nations loathed the great powers who wanted to rule them, or once had; Greek animosity toward the Turks brought them in.  The great powers of the east, Russia and Turkey, also wanted a piece of each other.  I've long  resisted referring to the Great War as a world war, but after reading this there's no doubt in my mind it fits: the complexity of fronts is mind-boggling. Although Austria-Hungary's bellicose attitude toward Serbia initiated the conflict, I almost felt sorry for them considering how many fronts they were fighting on.  Keegan's skill is also obvious when addressing the human side of the conflict; his depiction of the Battle of the Somme drives home its obscene waste, but while he covers the miseries of the soldiers' lives, he doesn't villainize the generals.  The First World War history and thoughtful commentary, as Keegan reflects on the difficulties inherent in commanding battles that took place across such massive fronts,  and coping with the new technologies that turned traditional tactics into those inviting slaughter.

On the whole, I'm most impressed with the narrative and the history; there's scant mention of airplanes, which I would say is odd in light of von Hindenberg's claim, "No airplanes, no Tannenberg!", but there's a lot of history packed into this book and some elements have to be underplayed; airplanes' role as scouts and artillery spotters can't merit much in a book that has to cover campaigns like Verdun in only a few paragraphs.  Another minor flaw is Keegan's motivation for the United States being purely military, a response to submarine warfare; there's no mention made of the amount of lending the U.S. was giving to the Entente powers.  The work is excellent otherwise, definitely suitable for people who want a general introduction to the war.

Related:

• To End All Wars, Adam Hochschild
• Storm of Steel, Ernst Juenger
• The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman
• All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Remarque

The Other Side of Western Civilization

The Other Side of Western Civilization: Readings in Everyday Life,
© 1979 ed. Stanley Chodorow
363 pages

The Other Side of Western Civilization collects readings in social history ranging from antiquity to the Renaissance. Its subtitle Readings in Everyday Life is largely accurate,  for the articles contributed by diverse authors largely ignore the halls of power and tell instead the stories of the common man, or detail the historic aspects of everyday life; there are pieces on the  adventures of traveling on medieval roads, for instance, and on family life in Renaissance Italy. Others move near ‘traditional’ historiography – one article covers the Battle of Agincourt – but maintain the 'everyday' focus;  "Feudal War in Practice" examines Agincourt from the perspective of the foot soldier,  taking into consideration how much room for movement there might have been if every archer in the English line had planted a stake in front of him, as official records of the battle establish. Principally, the collection covers trade, city planning, family life, social relations, and religion. Each piece is introduced by the editor, whose commentary attempts with some success to connect them together,  comparing different articles’ coverage of medieval women for instance. While readers will no doubt find some pieces easier reading than others based on their individual interest,  it's generally accessible. Also of note is the fact that this collection doesn't have a political edge to it; the 'other side' of western civilization  simply concerns topics ignored by  conventional military-political histories, like "Ancient Ships and Shipping" or "The Operation of a Monastery".  This is accompanied by a second volume, which covers the Renaissance to the early modern period.

Contents:
"Ancient Ships and Shipping"
"Cities of the Roman Empire"
"Women in Roman Society"
"The Appeal and Practice of the Mystery-Religions"
"The Conversion of the Germans"
"German Tribal Society"
"Peasants and the Agricultural Revolution"
"Jews in a Christian Society"
"The World of the Crusaders"
"The Training of a Knight"
"The Role of a Baron's Wife"
"Mother and Child"
"Traveling the Roads in the 12th Century"
"The Workday of a Bishop"
"The Operation of a Monastery"
"Hunting Subversion in the Middle Ages"
"The Peasants in Revolt"
"The Organization of the Late Medieval City"
"The Relevance of a University Education in 14th Century England"
"Touring the Holy Land"
"A Community Against the Plague"
"City Women and the French Reformation"
"Cultural Patronage in Renaissance Florence"
"Parent and Child in Renaissance Italy"