Equal of the Sun

Equal of the Sun
© 2012 Anita Amirrezvani
431 pages

When Javaher came to the Iranian court, he did so with a secret mission: he intended to find out who murdered his father, and then return the favor.  So intent was he on this that he had himself made a eunuch to qualify for court service.  He quickly found himself at the side of an extraordinary woman, the Princess Pari -- who, standing in for her aging father, effectively ran the government. But when the shah died without designating a successor,  both the realm and the palace are thrown into chaos. Being a woman,  Pari is not allowed to take the reins herself...but she has no intention of letting her family's labors go to waste in civil war.   Her intervention makes her a target in the wave of violence that follows her father's death in the next two years, and eventually ends in tragedy. Equal to the Sun is her faithful servant's contribution to history; though she will be dismissed by the official histories, penned by scribes bowing to the wishes of far inferior and petty potentates,  hers is a story worth telling.

This is Amirrezvani's second novel set in historical Iran, and continues her lovely incorporation of oral tradition within the twists and turns of the text.  The novel's basic plot  is basic court intrigue, albeit with an mesmerizing figure at the center.  Princess Pari was a real personality, though given how little record there is of her life there's a lot of interpretation at work here. Not lost on the author and her characters is the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who is fighting the same battle in England that Pari fights in Iran, that  a woman can reign as effectively as a man.  Amirrezvani draws a few discrete parallels to Elizabeth's story, having Pari declare herself married to her country.  Her possession of the royal farr,  the glory and  essence of sovereignty,  is recognized by increasingly more characters as the novel wears on. In a court of men obsessed with tribalism and looting the coffers, she remembers how glorious Iran once was, and can see danger looming in the restive Ottoman empire, now looking at the internecine chaos as opportunity for its own expansion. Pari's downfall is not jealous men, however, but a jealous woman. Her death is so surprising and abrupt that the reader is almost as horrified as Jahaver.

While Blood of Flowers had a more original premise (telling the story of an unknown artisan who creates exquisitely beautiful tapestries),  I welcome the return of Amirrezvani to  storytelling.  If she had only written a novel set in historical Iran, that would be of interest enough, especially given how passionate her characters are towards one another and their goals. But her integration of  oral tradition -- folk stories in Blood, epic poetry here -- with the text of the novel -- is unique. Her characters are inspired and nurtured by stories old, even as they try to figure out their own destiny.   Parts of the book do bear a the too-heavy stamp of modern writing, though, like the intermittent sex scenes.  I tried to skip through them -- is there anything more awkward than reading a woman's version of a eunuch trying to have sex? --   but pillow talk often turned to political intrigue or mystery-solving.   That aside though...if she writes again, I'll read her again!

Lost to the West

Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that Rescued Western Civilization
© 2009 Lars Brownsworth
329 pages

The Roman empire not not fade quietly into history in 474, when a Gothic warlord decided to run the city of Rome directly instead through a faux-imperial proxy. It went out in a blaze of glory, in an epic battle in which an Emperor himself stood in the line and bid a massing enemy to do its worst.  For Rome continued long after the Empire faded from Italy, and it not only prevailed but flourished against a host of enemies until finally falling a millennium later.  Lost to the West is highly storied introduction to the eastern Roman empire, one that reduces eleven hundred years of war, politics, and religion to three hundred pages. I learned of this book through the author's podcast, "Twelve Byzantine Rulers", and Lost to the West improves on it. Instead of having twelve distinct episodes, Brownsworth moves smoothly through an entire epoch, lingering on leaders and events which were especially impactful. It's essentially a shorter Short History of Byzantium,  even more storied.

For those completely in the dark, the 'eastern' Roman story begins in the third century A.D., when the Emperor Diocletian decided that an empire that wrapped around the entire Mediterranean was more trouble than it was worth, and divided it into administrative halves. His intentions were good, but the move didn't save Rome from the curse of dynastic wars, and when Constantine the Great seized total command, he transformed the entire Empire. Not only did he established a new capital in the east (Constantinople), the better to focus on the realm's Persian foes, but he began the process that turned classical Rome into Christian Rome. His unity didn't hold for long;  distracted by the constant problems of the Balkans and Persia, the Emperor was unable to come to the rescue of the badly-led western realm. Weakened by its own civil wars, the west fell easy prey to rampaging barbarians.  Constantinople would reclaim bits of Italy later on, only to lose them again as the centuries passed, but the heart of the Empire, the heart of western civilization, was fixed in the east.  In comparison, old Italy was a dump, and Europe little more than a wilderness with a few wooden forts occupied by belching brutes.

Religious unity took longer to destroy.  The Bishop of Rome held an esteemed place in Christendom, being one of the five great metropolitans of the Empire with Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople. After the first three fell to the Arabs, however,  Rome and Constantinople were a rivalry of two. While their respective Latin and Greek cultures were different, eventually it was politics that sundered Christendom. The iconoclastic epidemic, for instance, saw the eastern emperor attempting to order Christians throughout the empire to destroy their religious art, either by breaking it or whitewashing murals.  This originated in the emperor's belief that the Empire had become idolatrous, and was being punished by God. To regain divine favor,   Christians should purge themselves of representational art in the manner of the triumphant Muslims and in the ancestral way of the Jews.   The eastern church was coerced into going along with the emperor, but the Roman bishop was incensed that a secular figure would dictate doctrine to the church -- and order the destruction of soul-edifying art, to boot!  So began a merry round of excommunication and growing hostility between east and west, politically and religiously, that was made permanent when a western army sacked Constantinople on its way to redeem Jerusalem yet again.  That tragedy, the Fourth Crusade, came after the 'official' schism, but the eastern Romans suffered so at the hands of the west that they would never submit to the Roman papacy. "Better the Turk's turban," they snarled, "than Rome's miter."

Lost to the West is a story of long, gradual decline, occasionally arrested by great leaders like Justinian, and occasionally hasted by abysmal ones and the plague.  The sporadic maps tell the story; from an empire that appeared to be united Rome at its height, the east declined under constant outside attack and civil war to controlling the  city of Constantinople, a bit of Greece, and bits and pieces of Asia Minor's shoreline. Constantinople would beat foes again and again, but so long lived was it that it would have to face them as they revived, zombie-like.  Eventually woe came from the east: despite surviving the Persians, Arabs, Mongols, and Seljuk Turks,  the Ottoman Turks were able to wear down the great walls of the city with cannon and seize a prize lusted after for centuries by the Islamic world.  New Rome went down fighting, however, achieving an end far more glorious than both  western Rome and the Ottoman Empire which succeeded it.

This is a fast run through a millennium, and for me it was mostly review. I enjoyed Brownsworth's voice, though his title is curiously chosen. He hints at the topic from time to time; in both the defense of Europe against eastern armies and  Constantinople's preservation and increase of knowledge lost to the west during its brooding Gothic phase, but never devotes a lot of attention to a thesis that Byzantium 'saved' the east.  Influence is  covered a little more in books like Sailing from Byzantium, though.


Related:

• Constantinople: the Forgotten Empire, Isaac Asimov; Sailing from Byzantium, Colin Wells; A Short History of Byzantium, John Julius Norwich; The War of the Three Gods: Rome, Persia, and the Rise of Islam, Peter Crawford.
• The Lost History of Christianity, Philip Jenkins

This week: the usual suspects

Well, dear readers, it's another month! I have a serious itch for science and science fiction at the moment, so I have no less than five potential science reads stacked up now, and three potential SF books. Among the numbers...Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World, and Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chromosomes.   What about science fiction? Well, there's some of H.G. Wells' less well known novels, and  perhaps something newer.

I recently finished The War of the Three Gods: Romans, Persians, and the Rise of Islam.   It is a brief but highly detailed history of the last Romano-Persian war, one in which the great powers of the classical world mauled each other.  Rome nearly perished here, because while the Persians were sweeping into Syria and Judea, tribes in the Balkans began raiding against Constantinople. Eventually the Persians would be stopped, and even subjected to raids in their heartland, and the statuo quo ante bellum stored.  No sooner had the armies retired, however, than came armies from Arabia...and by the time the ancients realized these weren't just the usual Bedouin raids, all of Persia was falling and the Romans were again stripped of most of their territory outside of Anatolia. The second half of the book is dedicated to Islam's early military victories, with abundant maps that showcase the solid maneuvering of commanders like Khalid.  The book is chiefly about combat, with some politics mixed in as the Persians weakened themselves through civil war.  I intend on reading a fair few more books about the 'middle world' later on.

Since I am in the area, I may as well mention a book I read a few weeks ago, Facing East by Frederica Mathewes-Green. recounts a year in the life of a small Orthodox mission, one created by six families that include the author's newly-minted priest of a husband. The M-Gs, as the author refers to her family later on, are both converts to the faith, and throughout this piece she reflects on the way her experience has changed in the last three years, as she and her husband begin to soak in the liturgy and live the Orthodox life more deeply. While this is not a formal introduction to Orthodoxy, or even a conversion testimonial, Mrs. M-G often provides exposition about the what and why of service. Like the faith itself, however, this tale is more experiential than epistemological. We encounter the sacraments -- Baptism, for instance -- not through lectures but through the lives of the congregants, communicated in the intimate and awe-filled style of the author. Short though it may be, Facing East provides a hint of how deep a well the Orthodox tradition is. The mission of Holy Cross may be small and relegated to renting a space that has to be evacuated every Sunday afternoon to make room for the weekday tenants, but in their religious life they are as firmly established as any of the grandest metropolitan seats or parishes across the world.    I'll probably have couple of more books about Eastern Orthodoxy as the year goes on.  For the moment, however...SCIENCE!

Destiny, Disrupted

Destiny, Disruted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
© 2009 Tamim Ansary
416 pages

When Tamim Ansary was a boy, he loved history. Specifically, he loved narrative history, the kind of drama that brought the past to life.  The problem was that the only histories he could find written in  this style in Afghanistan were written by Europeans, and as such were expressly about European history.  Being unable to find a narrative history about his own people, he decided to grow up and write one. Destiny, Disrupted is a sweeping survey of the middle east, telling the story of Islamic civilization from its own point of view. It is cavalier history, galloping through the centuries and shooting from the hip. Yet for all its breeziness, Ansary offers more insight than idle jollies. Here is the story of what became of Egypt, Babylon, and Persia, of a civilization that brought them together, shone brilliantly for a few centuries, and then fell away. But the past is never dead, as the present turmoil in Syria and Iraq makes all too plain.

The story begins, of course, in the fertile crescent, with city states that become empires. We in the west know of Egypt, Babylon, and Persia because of their connection to our own story, always included as a necessary prelude in any western civ text.  But as the western narrative moves from Greece to Rome, then Europe as a whole, the world of the middle east continued to grow in its own right.  Persia was the greatest power it ever produced, warring – in different iterations – with both Alexander and Rome. For all of its glory, however, Persia was only an antecedent to the state created by Muhammad and his successors.

The beginnings of Islamic civilization – Muhammad and the succeeding caliphs Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman, and Ali – receives outsized attention not only because they were the creators, but because so much of what followed continues to look back on them. Key to Ansary’s account is that Islamic was not merely a religion, but a transformative political community that overcame not only Arab tribal differences, but racial quarrels as the expanding Muslim state captured vast portions of the multiethnic Byzantine and Persian empires. This age was to Muslims what Rome was to the west – and even more so, because it combined the moral and spiritual force of religion with the establishment of law and economic success: imagine if classical Rome and Christian Rome’s golden ages had happened at the same time,  a sudden eruption of law and charity around the Med, and that the only emperors were the Five Good Ones, started off by a figure like King Arthur or the biblical David. This was the weight the founding era held for Muslims, and which has since pressed Muslims on, looking for the restoration and aggrandizement of what once was.  There is no singular school of thoughts on how to restore it;  it has been attempted through feats of arms, like the Turks; through religious martialism, like the Taliban, or through politics, led by both strongmen and populist revolts. As conservative politics look to the golden past, and progressives look to building a golden future, Islam can encompass most visions simultaneously. 

The problem with golden ages and transcendent spells is that they always wear away. After  the assassination of Ali, things went downhill. Islam would fracture into two, then three, then a multitude of polities.  Near the turn of the first millennium,  there were three ‘caliphates’;   successors-by-assassination Abbasid, the lone-survivors of the old  Umayyad’s in Spain, and the Shi’a Fatimids in Tunisia.   Against this disunity came Frankish barbarians from the west and Mongolian barbarians from the east; the capital of golden-age Islam would be utterly ruined, millions killed, and Islam reduced to a sideline player in someone else’s story.  Even later military triumphs at the hands of the Turks, who rebuilt and advanced much of the original empire, even invading Austria, could not bring back the golden age.  The twentieth century is wrought with Islamic nations' attempts to find their way again after being dominated by the industrialized west, and Ansary's count covers revolutions in Turkey, Iran, and Egypt, along with the rise of militias and terrorist organizations in Afghanistan and Palestine.

What Ansary has achieved here is a captivating story of an empire rising in glory, stagnating, falling apart, and then struggling to find itself again. The last few chapters are on various Islamic peoples' attempts to come to grips with modernity -- needing it to catch up to the west, but disagreeing on which aspects to incorporate -- and display the kind of thoughtfulness that makes this work more valuable than just a historical survey. This is on display earlier, too, especially when writing on the role of Shi'ism, starting first as politics, taking on theological importance, and then molding Persian politics.  One section, a European recap prior to beginning the industrialized portion of the book, does give me pause.  He writes, for instance, that the Vikings took over England and thereafter became known as Normans.  Technically the Normans did descend from Vikings, but they settled in France over a hundred years before their progeny ever  entered England.   In another instance, he attributes the split between Catholicism and Orthodoxy to being solely the result of Diocletian splitting the empire, and later describes Christianity as being essentially about the individual. Perhaps he's thinking of Objectivism, but I am tolerably sure Christianity involves a deity,

Aside from the chapter on Europe,  Destiny is a wonderful piece of narrative history, informative and funny. Ansary sometimes sounds as if he is writing for cowboys, what with referring to people as "folks" and to disturbances as "ruckuses".  It has an odd humor about it, like when he refers to the Mongolian treatment of a ruling family: they didn't want to shed royal blood, he writes, it wasn't their way.  They wrapped the royals in curtains and them kicked them to death, instead.  Moral crisis solved!  

Although this slightly predates the Arabic spring and the rise of ISIS, both only affirm this book's relevance. For an insight into the middle east, it seems an unmatched introduction.

Related:

• On Saudi Arabia, Karen Elliot
• Ornament of the World; Vanished World, both on the Umayyads in Spain
• The Lost History of Christianity, Phillip Jenkins. Another history of the 'middle world'.
• What Went Wrong? '  The Crisis of Islam; Bernard Lewis

Oil on the Brain

Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Journey to Your Tank

© 2007 Lisa Magonelli

336 pages

Every moment, oil is surging up wells, being chemically sorted in vast refineries, sloshing its way across continents in pipelines, and being dispersed throughout the country in trucks to keep over three hundred million Americans mobile. The same  miracle is effected in other nations across the globe. In Petroleum on the Brain, Lisa Margonelli begins at her local gas station and backtracks the supply line – riding with truckers, touring refineries, standing in the pit of oil exchanges,  and filling her hands with ancient dirt that hasn’t seen sunlight in millions of years at the edge of a drilling operation.  Although beginning with the American market,  Margonelli’s travels take on a geopolitical message as she scrutinizes oil’s role in the destabilization of Africa and the middle east, and looks to the future in China.   Although slightly dated (researched and written  in 2004-2005),   the majority of the book’s information remains relevant, and  is delivered in humorous style.  Petroleum brims over with personality, as Margonelli connects with lives across the globe,  and demonstrates through her travels how our lives, too, are knit together with those whose livelihood

Although gas stations are where most consumers of  gasoline/petrol enter the market, and absorb the scorn of disgruntled drivers who see the price continuing to climb,  the seemingly ubiquitous c-stations are the low men on the supply line, in control of nothing and making only a marginal profit on their gasoline during the best days. As witnessed by Margonelli as she spies fleets of trucks from different companies pulling up to the same pipelines,   gasoline sold in the United States is fairly uniform. Some companies add a detergent, but pricing varies more depending on the location and the market than the product.  Given how much oil is being produced, refined, shipped, and sold every hour, the pace of activity becomes frenetic as Margonelli travels further up the supply line, encountering harried supply dispatchers and middlemen.  Although her book is about the oil industry, it's a personal encounter with time invested in relationships on Margonelli's part. For her, the gas station owner, the driver, the genius wildcatter in Texas -- they are men and women of passion and intelligence, whose story is bound up with their profession.

Its beginnings scratch idle curiosity as to how the petroleum industry works, but Margonelli spends more time researching, her text develops broader appeal, examining the role oil plays in U.S. foreign policy.  Here the book threatens to show its age: having virtually exhausted its home reservoirs of oil, she writes that the United States has to secure new supplies across the world, and to that end has been involved in a series of wars, directly or indirectly. A chapter on Iran sees her chat with both American sailors and Iranian oilmen regarding an incident during the Iraq-Iran war, in which half the Iranian navy was sunk by an American fleet despite the United States’ official non-combatant status.  Magonelli also visits petro-states in South America and Africa, where corruption is apparently immortal;  some of the tribal warfare in sub-Saharan Africa has its roots in villages receiving unequal shares of the loot when oil companies discovered their untapped potential.   Ultimately, Magonelli believes we must look beyond petroleum, to cleaner and less volatile energy sources. In her final chapter, the story moves to China, where a then-ascendant economy was not only gobbling up goal, but dumping money into clean energy programs in the hopes of expanding China’s consumer fleet while not further destroying what little clean air remains.

The oil market has continued to evolve in the ten years since this book was originally, first doubling the highest price marked in her original next and then falling beneath it. The United States has become again (however temporarily) a net oil exporter, thanks to technological advices that make extracting oil in harder to reach places easier.  Oil's votility underscores its continuing importance to the world economy and political dramas;  in the middle east, the swinish mob that is ISIS finances itself  partially through the oil market.  Given that oil won't be bowing out to competition anytime soon, learning its cost and vagaries is utterly helpful for citizens of any country, and Magonelli's account offers entertainment value to boot. 

Related:

• Uncommon Carriers, John McPhee
• Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet,  Michael Klare
• Coal: A Human History, Barbara Freese

The Lost History of Christianity

The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia -- And How It Died
© 2008 Philip Jenkins
315 pages

For the first millennium of the church's history, Europe was less Christendom than a dismissed backwater. The heart of the faith was its fount in the middle east, where it saturated the landscape and spread through two empires across the vast expanse of Eurasia. Within five hundred years of Christianity's millennial birthday, however, its reach had vanished, lost in political upheaval and newly arrived competition. Though advertising itself as a history of the global church,   Lost History is principally about religious transformation  in the middle east, with Christianity as its case model. 

There is immediate intrigue in Jenkins' history merely for the fact that his primary subjects are unrecognizable to most as Christian.  Around the Mediterranean,  Rome -- in the person of the emperor -- maintained a faith common to all.  Achieving and enforcing orthodoxy was the reason Constantine urged on the Council of Nicaea. Outside the empire, however,  Christianity grew wild, running bramble-like clear to Asia.  Aside from stray missionaries from the Latin and Greek church,  most of the Christians covered here belonged to the Nestorian church,  which retained an orthodox-like hierarchy outside the authority of  the Greco-Roman sphere, with hundreds of metropolitans and bishops. How much of "Christianity" really survives the trek to Asia is a question Jenkins does not pursue, though the mention of a "second Jesus" buried in India allows a lot of room for doubt.   The Nestrian branch found a particularly cozy home in the Persian realm, safe from Orthodux rebuke, but the African church would vanish almost overnight, save for the impressively resilient Copts. 

The rise of Islam set the stage for the middle-eastern church's downfall, but it was not strictly a matter of religious competition.  Jenkins records Islam and Christianity meshing at first; considering the  power of Arian-like sects which effectively denied the divinity of Jesus,  they shared much more common ground than not. (So much so that medieval personalities denounced Muhammad not as a false prophet, but as a schismatic!) The golden age of  Islam was built on such ground,  flourishing through  the communities of Christian Syrian scribes and researchers.As Islam grew in self-confidence, however, and especially after it began brawling with outside powers, the  Christians within its midst were viewed as suspect. When the Black Death reared its head for the first time, a wave of persecution followed --  Christians playing the part of scapegoat that was assigned to Jews in Europe. When new powers arrived on the scene, like the Mongols and Turks, they frequently inaugurated a new era of religious oppression; the Crusades were a response  to Turkish abuses, not the nigh half-century old occupation of Jerusalem by Islamic forces.  (Interestingly, the Mongols who destroyed the high water mark of golden-age Islam, Baghdad, first persecuted  Islam and then became its champions, persecuting Christians.) Political stress turned into religious persecution again and again, a theme that runs  clear to the 20th century, when an on-the-ropes Turkey decided to rid itself of minorities with suspect loyalties. The Armenian genocide was the result.  Early Christian activity in China and Japan perished after upsurges in nationalism, as well.

This history of religious transformation in the middle east is then used by Jenkins to examine the life of religions in general, their 'struggle to survive'.  Though Christianity and Islam were rivals, they wore off on one another:  the Eastern Orthodox church's iconclastic period (that ghastly preview of Puritanism) marks Islamic influence, and mosques modeled themselves on the architecture of churches. Such architectural borrowing went the other way in Spain, where rebuilding churches incorporated elements of Islamic design  into their structure.  Even after Christianity vanished from an area, it left its mark: in rural Turkey, for instance, parents continued to have their children baptized to ensure the blessing of God.  Jenkins  speculates on various reasons regions thrive or perish amid competition; he notes that the church in Egypt became part of the culture, while in other parts of Africa it merely existed as outposts, like Roman military encampments that disappeared when the Romans left. Those churches were sustained from without, rather than from within. Faiths can also hedge their bets by expanding;  when Christianity virtually perished in the middle east, it continued to flourish in Europe; even as it fades in Europe, it grows again in Africa.

All this fairly interesting, though the book has certain frustrations. Belief, for Jenkins, is a moot point;  Nestorian doctrine or what Jacobites practiced, none of this matters. All the reader is really given is politics and labels; there were people here, they called themselves Christians, and then they were killed.  Jenkins has a peculiar understanding of Christianity, announcing to the reader that understanding the early church is impossible because Christianity was driven from its home region.  Since when is Christianity like Temple Judaism or Islam, fixated on a certain patch of earth?  What is revealed is how unimaginative humans are at creating ways to persecute one another:  Just as Christians were made to wear patches identifying them as an underclass and forced to dismount at the approach of a Muslim, so in the 20th century German Jews were made to wear patches and blacks had to vacate the sidewalk at the approach of a white.  One wonders how ubiquitous these shaming behaviors are -- did the Japanese practice them in China, for instance? The Lost History of Christianity is certainly relevant, given the ongoing slaughter of innocents at the hands of ISIS. It is a fascinating history of the middle east's religious evolution,  though of limited use for truly learning about the ancient church outside of Rome and Constantinople.

The Spice Route

The Spice Route
© 2005 John Keay
308 pages

Spock was right. Having a thing is often not as pleasant as wanting a thing. It is not logical, but it is often true. Such was the case with the spice trade, which so tantalized the west that it spurred on a new epoch in human history and fell victim to its own success. For centuries, spices tantalized civilizations across the Old  World, uniting them in pursuit. Romans wrote with alarm about the mound of gold and silver being lost to the east in the pursuit of clouds of incense and strange-tasting food. For the west, mystery was a key component in their appeal; they always arrived via streams of middle-men, and no one seemed to know they were were ultimately sourced.  (Their guesses based on hearsay could run wild, like Herodotus' Histories. ) Although none of the pined-for substances mace, cinnamon, etc) had preservative powers,  they did add subtle and exotic tastes to food that made them attractive even to China, closer to the source.  Keay fellows galleys, cogs, and carracks across the seas and through time, beginning with the Roman Empire and moving through medieval conflicts between Christian and Muslim traders before ultimately arriving in the globalized world that the spice trade helped create.

The spice trade's history is worth considering because of its legacy; its traffic was more than mere goods and services. They were utter obsessions to both the European and Arab worlds, and the drive to find them -- to control them, even - spurred on the Age of Discovery and the beginning of a global economy. Because of the antagonism between the Christo-Islamic political spheres  Europeans embarked on great adventures to find quicker and better sea routes to the 'spice islands'; they engaged in brutal wars, both against on another and whatever poor souls lay in their way. (Hungry, desperate men with guns don't make for ideal guests, let alone neighbors.)  Eventually Europe would win control of spice route trade points from the Arab world, and conquer the spice sources directly. The competition was such --  first between Spain and Portugal, and then even more furiously between English and Dutch trading companies --  that the spice trade fell victim of its own success. So many ships were traveling from Europe to the indies -- around Africa, around the Americas, through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf -- that markets were glutted. A warehouse in England might have a half-decade worth of surplus peppercorn, and this in the age of Sail!   The wooden road that now linked Europe, Asian, and American shores brought much more with than spices: it brought competition. Spices now had to contend with regular supplies of coffee, chocolate, chili peppers, tea, sugar -- an entire banquet of new and exotic tastes. The mysterious allure of spices had been lost in discovery,  and now they were an old pleasure fading against new possibilities, both in Europe and in Asia.  Just as the spice trade united the classical world,  Islam, China, and renaissance Europe through the ages,  its pursuit led to an Earth increasingly united in trade. The age of Discovery came not from scientific or religious idealism, but sheer appetite.

Keay uses his prior research into China and India here to good effect, drawing on Roman, Arabic, and Asian primary sources to delve into the Mediterranean powers' search for those goods from afar. Although this is a text heavy with details, they don't weight down the narrative too much. The only real limitation of the book is the complete lack of maps, which is problematic considering how large a role geography plays here.   I largely read this to introduce myself to Keay's writings, and will definitely try more of his histories.

Related:
A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, David Bernstein
1493, Charles Mann

Gates of Fire

Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
© 1998 Steven Pressfield
442 pages

When Xerxes, Ruler of Asia, god-king of men, finally stood over the bodies of the few Greeks who had withstood his hordes drawn from half a world, he could not understand. Hailed as all-knowing,   he could not fathom why a few hundred men would have opposed his army of millions, even after they were offered the greatest seats of influence in the Empire.  Finding a Greek still holding on to life,  the Persians looked for answers; nursing him back to health, they coaxed out this, the story of the Spartans. The story of an orphaned boy who fled to the strength of Sparta after his parents and home were destroyed by the Argives, Gates of Fire is his growing up among them, his quest to become like them, to be the quintessence of strength and valor, unbreakable.

Though not born of Sparta, Xeones lived in awe of them from his youth. So fiercly did he admire them that after war turned him into an orphaned child, wandering the wilderness with a cousin, he left her behind to pursue the Spartan way.  He could never be one of them; criminal violence had robbed him of the strength needed to wield the heavy oaken shield and the lance. He could string a bow, however, and let it fly with accuracy, and so he devoted his life to the service of Sparta.  He is motivated by youthful admiration, but also haunted by the memory of his parents, ashamed of not having been there to defend them,  agonized by knowing he ran away from his conquered city. In the Spartans he looks for the strength and fortitude he missed in himself, and when he takes his stand among them at the last, it is quite personal.  

Through Xeo the reader is introduced first to a harsh world in which children can be reduced to scrounging about the countryside, begging and stealing food, and then to the Spartan soul. The Spartans are different than other Greeks;  even when the Persian hordes threaten to reduce Hellas' cities to ashes, its women and children to slavery, the Spartans sneer and laugh while other cities kneel in the dust in homage. There are fates worse than death for a Spartan.   The proud city is a severe place in which the souls of men are tempered like steel against the vagaries of fate, against pain;  these  cannot be avoided, but they cannot be allowed to rule. Discipline must rule; loyalty to the clan must prevail.  Xeo, like all men of the city, becomes subject to Spartan law, a demanding law that forces greatness of the soul even from the lowly.  Having found a place in the ranks as a squire to one of Sparta's knights, Xeo lastly becomes the narrator of the battle of Thermopylae This is the finale, a last  stand so audacious in courage that its telling has survived through the centuries, wherein 300 Spartans and a few thousand Allied Greeks attempted to stop the Persian millions in their tracks.

Although it lives on in the western imagination like no other battle, Thermopylae was for the Greeks a defeat: the Persians broke through after losing thousands upon thousands every day of combat to a mighty, valiant few heavy infantry, and Xerxes swept across Greece, burning even proud Athens. For those who remain, however, for those who later rose against the Persians, for any number of people who have protected a flicker of hope against the gaping maw of darkness--   the British expeditionary force standing in Belgium against the German invasions of 1914 and 1940, for instance -- Thermopylae was a triumph of the human spirit. Pressfield does a magnificent job of giving it poetic due; perhaps, considering the drama of the situation, an artful rendering of it is unavoidable. Time and again Pressfield ensnares the reader in the glorious action, or awes the soul is descriptions of the great slaughter. This he does without much hyperbole; the Persians are not demonized, nor are the Spartans lionized; the two sides meet repeatedly before the slaughter, emissaries hailing on another as brothers. The Spartans, whom  we grow to know through Xeo,  have a severe discipline, but even though they seem to fight like demigods they are still human, and herein they weep, laugh, and love fiercely Their antidote to the fear of battle is fear of failing one another, of failing to give selflessly to their brothers-in-arms.  It's an extraordinary work, as gripping for the martial telling as for the exposure to a culture whose stoic-like dedication is staggering.

The Near East

The Near East: 10,000 Years of History
© 1968 Isaac Asimov
277 pages

Come, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings. ("Richard II", William Shakespeare)

Civilization first began in the 'land between the rivers', Mesopotamia, and as this epic history of the area proves, the near east has been the cradle of many of humanity's ideas throughout the centuries. Asimov's history begins at the birth of agriculture, and so as the story unfolds we witness not only the birth of various political entities, but of civilization proper itself -- the first cities develop, men begin to make tools and weapons of bronze and iron; horses grow into impressive creatures capable of carrying armored men to war, and the first histories and records are read. Religions and philosophies flower in these highlands and deserts that survive today -- either by themselves, or through altered forms. No era  in human history has seen a lull in the action in this land, and The Near East is accordingly an exiting and fascinating read.

Asimov surprised me by committing to such a vast expanse of time: that "ten thousand years of history" starts with agriculture and ends shortly before the Israeli-Arabic wars,  with Asimov penning hopes for peace that seem sad, so many decades into the future with permanent concordance seemingly impossible. The meat of the book is ancient history, though the rise of the Arabs and Turks is given plenty of consideration and I learned far more about the period's fate in the early 20th century that I anticipated. I had no idea that Britain and Russia both invaded the area just to ensure stable communications  The book's emphasis is not misplaced, for the stories of Sumeria, Babylon, Assyria, and others deserve to be told. Egypt is only mentioned tangentially, which seems curious, but is understandable given that Asimov covered the land of the Nile in another book. Egypt's political influence on the affairs of other Near Eastern countries is addressed properly, though.  The book's scope allows one chapter's heroes to be another chapter's mythic legends, and Asimov's narrative shows how kings were constantly trying to co-opt the legacies of prior rulers. I had no idea that the most famous Nebuchadrezzer  lived in entirely different era than his namesake - the original Nebby, who lived not too long after Hammurabi.  That Asimov draws from the Sumerian king lists and 'official histories' is obvious at the start of the book, which emphasizes history as driven by the wills and capabilities of great men.  

Asimov enjoys a reputation as 'professional explainer',  one established by his use of simple, clear language and  general command of many varied subjects. His prowess as a generalist is an enduring inspiration to me, for he wrote books on science, history, poetry, literature, and others with equal ease: that showed here, as he draws facts and conclusions from literary sources like the Jewish bible and Persian epic poetry. I found the book tremendously helpful in understanding the Hellenic period -- all of Alexanders' various generals and their kingdoms confuse me -- and the the history of Persia. I'll be using The Near East as a general reference book for when I want to refresh my knowledge of the period, but the presence of one erroneous fact does give me some pause: when writing on Roman-Persian interaction, Asimov mentions that Hadrian died in 161 and was succeeded by Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, skipping over poor Antonious Pious and his twenty-year reign entirely. (Hadrian died in 138, and was succeeded by Pious, who died in 161.)  I only noticed this because of my fondness for Aurelius. It's a fairly forgivable mistake, as Rome is only being mentioned in connection to Parthia's expansion, Still, I hope it's an error he caught and corrected at some point. 

If you can find this, it should serve well as an introduction to the period, especially for teenagers and such. I say "if you can find it", because Asimov's history books are rare indeed. Some of them don't even have Amazon or eBay entries. (By the way, if you should ever spot the following books in a used bookstore, think of me and we can work out some kind of arrangement: The Roman Republic, The Roman Empire,  The Greeks, The Egyptians, and The Dark Ages.)

 Related:

• Our Oriental Heritage, Will Durant
• A History of the Arab Peoples, Albert Hourani
• What Went Wrong? and other books by Bernard Lewis, including The Middle East. 
• Asimov's Guide to the Bible., Isaac Asimov

Our Oriental Heritage

The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage
© 1935 Will Durant
1048 pages

"Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation."  (Opening sentence.)

Our Oriental Heritage is the introductory volume of a greater work, an eleven-book set covering prehistory to the last days of Napoleon. Judging from the preface, Durant initially planned to write The Story of Civilization as a five-volume set that went beyond Napoleon, even approaching the 20th century. This first volume begins in prehistory, Durant spending time to comment on the evolution of civilization's economic, political, moral, and mental elements before beginning his trek proper with Sumeria. Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Judea, Persia, India, China, and finally Japan follow. Although the majority of his subject nations have passed away into extinction, the latter three civilizations are still extant, and Durant follows their story up to the 'present day'.

Our Oriental Heritage is epic history: not only is the timeframe at hand vast, but Durant's approach is to tackle politics, religion, science, art, drama, and artisanry all together, giving his story depth as well as breadth. Despite the abundance of information, his presentation is never confusing. Sections are clearly delineated, and I enjoyed Durant's writing style: he's approachable, but dramatic, often waxing on eloquently about a particular poet, ruler, or philosophy. There's also occasional humor --  dry, of course, as historian humor tends to be.

Throughout Durant's work, civilizations rise and fall like waves crashing on a beachhead: they are born, he says, in stoicism, and perish in epicureanism. Those words are used chronically throughout the book, fading only in the last two general portions. I don't rightly understand that characteristic of his writing. While the misuse of epicureanism is understandable (being common, and objectionable only to people familiar with Epicures) as referring to powerful, rich states that grow sedentary in their success, slowly rotting inside before falling to a more youthful power,  'stoicism' always seemed out of place. He used it most often to refer to newfound religions or philosophical approaches that were puritanically moralistic.

Durant's place in all this seems a bit odd: while he approves of progress and prosperity, they reach their height during these epicurean periods which involve a worship of the intellect and the decline of emotionally-charged elements of civilization, particularly religion. He habitually mourns this decay, thinking of religion as a means by which people put their persistent tendency to believe in the supernatural to use -- strengthening individual characters, offering consolation to the suffering, and strengthening society and social order. Thus he tacitly approves of the vibrant religion of those who finish the decadent civilizations off and establish their own, all the while sadly recounting the horrors that the conquerors visit upon the vanquished. (Hinduism is the only religion in his book that doesn't attack the beliefs or artifacts of other civilizations, apparently because it co-copts them. Buddhism doesn't die in India: Hinduism simply absorbs it.)

As I cannot comment intelligently on much of the content (being wholly ignorant of some of his subjects, particularly early India and China), I can only say that I enjoyed reading the work, quirks included, and that I think my understanding of part of the human story improved for having read it. The book's age is somewhat problematic for the reader looking for a work like this: in Durant's world, the "present day" is the early 1930s -- and much has changed since then. Hitler has been the chancellor of Germany for two years and is swiftly turning it into a totalitarian nightmare;  Great Britain is the master of India, and Imperial Japan has annexed both Korea and a northern province of China, operating it as the puppet-state Manchukwo. Durant speculates on whether Japan and the United States will fight over their competing economic interests in the Pacific: he thinks they will, in all likelihood,  for economic competition has driven war throughout human history. Although old scholarship isn't necessarily bad scholarship, in the nearly eighty years since this book first saw publication, archaeological discoveries or linguistic breakthroughs might have added context that makes Durant's summaries inaccurate. An inconsequential example of this is Piltdown Man, which Durant references in tracking prehistorical hominids across Eurasia: Piltdown Man is a hoax, one not exposed until the 1950s.

There are undoubtedly other books and series written in the subject of ancient history or general surveys,  probably some written within the last decade with up-to-date scholarship. Are there better books in this subject? That I can't answer, not having read any series to recommend this book over. As said before, I did enjoy the book and do think myself edified for having read it. Durant's distinguishing characteristic, I imagine, is his decision to give a history that does not discount one thread of human life for another -- instead, he pursues economics, politics, religion, philosophy, drama, literature, and the like all with equal diligence. That approach is why I decided to start reading the series, it is why I will continue in it, and it is why I think the book worth your investigation if the subject is of interest to you.

Related:

• The Story of Civilization on Wikipedia, which contains a detailed table of contents. 
• The Outline of History, H. G. Wells. I have not read it, but it's on my "Eventually" list.

Persian Fire

Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West
© 2005 Tom Holland
418 pages

After reading Holland's Rubicon, blogger ResoluteReader recommended that I read Persian Fire as well. I have an interest in the various Persian and Babylonian empires that rose and fell thousands of years ago, and given my strong interest in the ancient Greeks, the book was thus quite appealing. Holland begins his narrative by establishing the early histories of the Persian Empire, Athens, and Sparta, including Persia's absorption of the Babylonian and Egyptian polities. I knew very little about the various empires in "Iran", and was especially surprised to learn about the religious aspects of the Persian emperors. Holland will frame the emperors' religious views in explaining their decisions to move to the east. A couple of them seem to think of themselves as Plato's philosopher-king's. In telling the story of the Greeks, Holland is especially through in detailing their petty quarrels with one another.

Roughly around the three-fifths mark, Greece and Persian come into conflict and resulting chapters detail the Persian Wars that Darius and Xerxes carried out against the Greeks. The Persian motivations are quite romantic: they intend to show everyone that Ahura Mazda is not mocked, nor is his Empire scorned, and neither will either tolerate "evil". The classic battles of the wars -- Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis -- are all included, typically given a chapter all of their own. The book is quite thorough and very readable. Although its level of detail amounts of a somewhat imposing read, it's fairly easy to get through. He does persist in using modern terminology -- putsch, generalissimo, and so on -- but that's just a trifling matter. The book ends by hinting at the conflict between Athens and Sparta -- the "Peloponnesian Wars".

This Week at the Library (17/9)

Books this Update:

• The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’, Bill Zehme
• Banquets of the Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov
• Sinatra: the Artist and the Man, John Lahr
• Blood of Flowers, Anita Amirrezvani

I began this week with a book I’ve not read since early 2005. Were I to commit such blasphemy as to name a favorite singer, I would name Frank Sinatra. I started listening to Sinatra in 2004 (beginning with “The Very Good Years” from Reprise) and quickly become an enthusiast, and not long after I began reading Sinatra biographies. One of them was The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’. Anyone familiar with Sinatra knows that he was a man of singular style, who lived life passionately and in his own way. The Way You Wear Your Hat is not a biography. The author explores the way Sinatra lived -- with chapters dedicated to style, women, and his drinking preferences. There are a lot of quotations from Sinatra and a lot about him. I easily recommend the book to anyone who is interested in Frank Sinatra, even vaguely so. It remains a favorite.

Next I read Isaac Asimov’s Banquets of the Black Widowers, the fourth book in his Black Widowers mystery series. The Black Widower books are all collections of Black Widower tales. Each tale is a short story -- a mystery. They are all set in the same place: every month, a group of friends who call themselves the Black Widowers meet at a restaurant. Each month, the host brings a guest -- and each month, without fail, a problem arises that has to be sorted out by the Widowers. The mystery is typically presented by the guest, but not always. I found this book to be altogether interesting. One story was a bit weak, but only the one. As is typical, Asimov provides chatty commentary at the end of each tale.

After this I went to another Sinatra biography, Sinatra: the Artist and the Man. There’s really not much to say: it’s a biography that presented its information in an organized way and told the story of his life. Half of the book is biography: the other half is page-sized pictures. The pictures are from his entire life and are of rather good quality.

Lastly I read The Blood of Flowers. I won this book during the summer in a contest hosted by a history blog I read frequently. The book is set in 17th century Persia. The author is an Iranian-American who wrote the book after she began wondering about the lives of the people who made the exquisite Persian rugs that she was familiar with: this book is an attempt to explore the lives of those people. The story is told in first-person through the eyes of an un-named narrator. You would think that it would be difficult for an entire novel to go by without a single named reference to the narrator, but Amirrezvani does it and does it well. I never realized that I never knew the name of the main character until I reached the author’s afterword. The young woman’s father dies, leaving her and her mother poor. They go to the then-capital city of Isfahan to seek out a male relative who will take them in. The narrator’s chief joy comes in knotting rugs, and her uncle happens to work in the royal rug-making workhouse. While he cannot formally teach her the craft at his workhouse, he does teach her at home. Most of the book is about the young woman’s life in Isfahan -- the ups and downs. Folk stories are interwoven throughout. I rather enjoyed the book, and found it hard to put down at times. I especially enjoyed learning about 17th century Iran, or at least this author’s presentation of it. I recommend the book. Much to my amusement, Amirrezvani often describes Europeans as “farengi”, which inspired whichever Star Trek writer who created the Ferengi -- a race obsessed with material wealth. This is not an association I made myself: I heard it years ago listening to an interview with one of Deep Space Nine’s producers, and he said that the race name came from this word. A selection from the book to pique your interest -- a selection that alludes to the author’s inspiration for writing the book.

I will never inscribe my name in a carpet like the masters in the royal rug workshop who are honored for their great skill. I will never learn to knot a man’s eye so precisely it looks real, nor design rugs with layers of patterns so intricate that they could confound the greatest of mathematicians. But I have devised designs of my own, which people will cherish for years to come. When they sit on one of my carpets, their hips touching the earth, their back elongated, and the crown of their head lifted toward the sky, they will be soothed, refreshed, transformed. My heart will touch theirs and we will be as one, even after I am dust, even though they will never know my name.

Pick of the Week: Blood of Flowers, Anita Amirrezvani (And Asimov’s streak is ended!)

Next Week:

• Washington’s Rules of Civility, George Washington
• Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, Al Franken
• Holidays on Ice, David Sedaris
• Foundation’s Edge, Isaac Asimov