Fists of Time

Oxford History of the U.S. Completism

Every few nights at bedtime, my toddler daughter inexplicably declines my offers to read children's books; instead, she asks for "Daddy's book": the huge tome at my bedside, David M. Kennedy's Freedom From Fear.  (It seems that when she's particularly tired, Kennedy's prose sends her quickly into slumber.)  I don't mind reading this to her every few nights; after all, it brings me closer to fulfilling my quixotic goal of reading every installment of the Oxford History of the United States series.

Although I have only finished two other editions of the Oxford series (McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and Howe's What Hath God Wrought), I deeply appreciate how these books synthesize existing scholarship and explain important events in clear prose and concise detail.  (The writing is decidedly above the pre-school level, but actually accessible to adults - the books are often marketed to a general audience.)  Achieving all of those goals requires a delicate balance, but each book in the series consciously strives to fulfill each.

Much of the history in the series is familiar to anyone who took a college seminar in U.S. history, but all of these authors go through a level of detail that is illuminating without being granular.  For example, I certainly knew about the Japanese atrocity known as the Bataan Death March but not how it fit into the U.S. armed forces' maneuvering in the Pacific during the early years of their involvement in the War. (Don't worry - I read this part alone, silently, without exposing my youngster to this depiction of human suffering.)

I have already admitted that this goal of reading every installment is quixotic - I probably have about 5,000 pages of epic history to consume, not to mention all of the other books I want to read.  My unofficial goal is to finish each by the end of 2013.  Check back periodically for further updates.

Justifying the Need for Public Domain Re-Prints

The Washington Post published a review of a new Penguin edition of Ernest Poole's novel The Harbor (1915) this weekend.  I enjoyed learning about Poole and this forgotten book.  (A portrait of early 20th-Century working-class Brooklyn, the book is described favorably compared to other social realist works of the era; Poole won the first Pulitzer Prize for his next novel.)  What I missed, however, was any discussion of the value that Penguin might have added to the book.  Because The Harbor is now in the public domain, why should E-Book users even bother buying Penguin's version?  Project Gutenberg has a public domain version available here.  (Google Books offers a version here.)

Sure, many re-printed classics include essays and forewards, but these are typically dry and unappealing to the casual reader.  What, besides a soft binding, makes Penguin's version any better than the free online version?

I, personally, am not an e-book user and would probably be inclined to read Penguin's version instead.  It is undeniable, though, that e-book demand is surging.  In this context, re-packaging a public domain text seems pointless.

The Post claims that Penguin has "rescued [The Harbor] from oblivion," but, thanks to Project Gutenberg and open access advocates had already preserved the work for posterity.

How Important is the "Original," Survey Asks

I visited the Library of Congress Manuscript Division reading room yesterday to look at some archival papers for work.  The reference librarians on duty asked me to fill out a survey.  The questions on it entertainingly illuminated archivists' and historians anxieties about digitization and authenticity.

It is impossible to interpret the survey's precise intent and design by reverse-engineering from the questions.  (To be honest, I did not read all of the long (and small) print matter on the first page of the survey.  Not because of I didn't care, but because I had to answer 100 questions while on the clock.)  However, the questions seemed to broadly gauge researchers' attachment to original documents as opposed to digital and microform copies or printed transcriptions.

Was it important for me to see the original version of this document?  Why?  Sentimental attachment?  The tactile 'feel' of the paper?  The sound it makes in your hands?  The smell?  Does this documents connect you to your ancestry?  Is it important for civic engagement?  Oversight of government? (Rate 1-7, 1 for statements with which I agreed the least, 7 the most.)

The variety of questions struck me as a bit defensive.  I wonder if, based on these questions, researchers have criticized the Library of Congress for making certain documents unavailable for use.  I'm sure it has happened, but do people really whine that they are being denied the right to "feel" the paper or "connect" with their ancestry?

If so, enough with the indignance.  Archivists must make certain exceptions and allow researchers with compelling cases to access open, original papers that have been filmed or digitized.  Copying on microfilm and through digitization is useful and necessary as a preservation, storage, and distribution measure.

The most interesting question asked what, in my opinion, was a suitable life span for the document, and what I imagined was a likely scenario for that document's destruction.  Personally, I can't imagine acquiring an archival collection and then later getting rid of it, let alone destroying it.  (I understand from my archivist friends and acquaintances that deaccessioning actually occurs rather frequently.  Surely archivists have their reasons for deaccessioning certain papers, but, as a researcher, that power strikes me as God-like.)  Maybe this question was a Solomonic test of my devotion to historical manuscripts.  I answered that I thought a suitable life span was 10,000 years.  Why?  History is - will always be - relevant.

Perhaps tellingly, the survey was on paper - to my knowledge, it is not online.

On History and Science Fiction

Two new essays compare the study of history with science fiction.

At The New Yorker, cultural and literary critic Adam Gopnik discusses the life lessons that elaborately-constructed sf and fantasy epics can teach to young adults.  Among the genres' virtues are books' ability to allow these readers to "think historically":

...the fantasy readers’ learned habit of thinking historically is an acquisition as profound in its way as the old novelistic training in thinking about life as a series of moral lessons. Becoming an adult means learning a huge body of lore as much as it means learning to know right from wrong.

This is an interesting proposition worth considering. Authors such as Tolkein and J. R. R. Martin routinely inject their books with backstories, outlining past civilizations, wars, and animal species.  This is part of 'world-building,' elaborate descriptions of fantastic people, places, and things that are not of our Earth.  Such details are illustrative in a aesthetic sense but also allow readers to consider historical questions such as cause and effect or progression over time.  Gopnik says that Tolkein's work contains "an overwhelming sense of history," detailing ancient kingdoms like Westernesse.  This fallen kingdom underscores a "constant evocation of lost or fading glory" but also marks a dimension of time, the Second Age, that far precedes the events taking place in the Lord of the Rings series.

I agree with Gopnik's contention that there is utility in "learning a huge body of lore."  I don't mean this in the sense that young adults should cram and memorize; they are already asked to do this way too much before their standardized, multiple-choice exams.  I only mean that epic fiction may demonstrate that one's place in society is in part determined by past events.  (The conflicts in which we become trapped, as Terry H. Anderson recently showed me, and Tolkein would agree, is partially determined by centuries of struggle among past empires.)  Even in a time of quick-reference Wikipedia, a close reading of the "huge body" asks the reader to posit and consider.

I am skeptical that sf/fantasy epics can be directly equated with studying actual history.  The modern study of history requires the critical reading of both information and sources.  Sf/fantasy readers, postmodern literary critics notwithstanding, are likely to eschew the latter.  In other words, Historians will question medieval accounts of the First Crusade while Tolkein fans are unlikely to question his explanations of Middle Earth military conflict.  (It is exactly for this reason that Jon Gardner's novel Grendel was successful; it questioned the authority of mythology, repositioning the monster as protagonist.)

At History News Network, former Historian of the House of Representatives Ray Smock discusses Newt Gingrich's use of both history and science fiction themes in his political rhetoric.  It is a cautionary tale.  Plenty (and perhaps too much) has been written of Gingrich and his Ph.D. degree in History (most recently by Adam Hochschild's in the New York Times), but Smock adds a new dimension to the discussion (no pun intended).  Smock portrays Gingrich as "an avid reader" of sf, especially Asimov's Foundation trilogy:

the Foundation series was an inspired version of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall set thousands of years in the future rather than the past.  Newt was more fascinated by the fictional decline of an empire of a million planets than he was the real decline of ancient Rome.

Smock notes that Gingrich discussed the Foundation series in his 1996 book To Renew America and quotes him fairly. This fascination with Gibbons and Asimov, Smock argues, motivated Gingrich to speak of America's ills as not only national decline but the very fall of mankind:

He outlined his role as a visionary leader.  His “primary mission” was to be an “advocate of civilization”—a “definer of civilization”—the “teacher of the rules of civilization”—and “leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces.”  Newt saw his mission as “universal rather than national.”

Smock does not make too much of Asimov's influence on Gingrich's rhetoric, although he parts with a cheap shot: "to confuse science fiction with reality is to remain always a child." Smock should have resisted the temptation to demean the former Speaker of the House and instead state his inferred conclusion.  The invocation of both Gibbons and Asimov are bombastic overstatements emblematic of Gingrich's rhetoric on many different issues, from President Obama's personal background to the plight of the urban poor.  Furthermore, this style of writing and speaking renders him unfit for the duties of both Historian and President of the United States.

Both of these essays, intentionally or not, address the value of studying history.  What is the value of historical inquiry, or even knowing anything about the past?  Gopnik seems to suggest that the value is cognitive because adults must process and interpret many narratives, or massive amounts of information.  Smock (perhaps inadvertently) appears to argue that history should not be applied in "lessons."  If you constantly look at the contemporary United States as a falling Rome, you will certainly lose touch with reality.

By considering the recurring idea of decline, I wonder if the recurring tropes of sf/fantasy might actually undermine young readers' ability to think historically.  The plot of the Foundation series recalls a theme that Gopnik noted during his mention of Tolkein's Westernesse: the decline of a civilization.  If young readers are constantly reading about decline and military conflict, their perception of history may in fact be distorted.  On the other hand, perhaps I am reacting too strongly.  Both Gopnik and Smock ask young readers to eventually grow up and leave fantasy behind, employing the critical tools they have honed while avoiding direct parallels to fictional scenarios.

Book Review: Railroaded

There have already been several high-profile reviews of Railroaded (I especially recommend Gary Gerstle's review in Dissent) so I will not discuss the book in detail.  I would instead like to inform casual readers about the intensity of Railroaded.  The book provides a fresh interpretation of the Gilded Age - and industrial capitalism itself - but is stuffed with details that often render it impenetrable.

Author Richard White's basic premise is that the transcontinental railroads were failures because they lost money, ignored demand, wasted government subsidies, and plundered Native American land.  This is not just a book about railroads.  The implications are massive.  White (correctly) declares that these failures demonstrate that capitalism can be irrational.  He challenges key interpretations of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, especially Wiebe's Search for Order and Chandler's Visible Hand.  White does not entirely contradict Wiebe or Chandler; he allows that railroad barons formulated a rational, orderly veneer.  Railroaded openly promises to get in the very guts of corporations and expose their hidden corruption.

Those guts can be nasty, or at least unreadable.  In just a few dozen pages, readers will become lost among the many entrepreneurs, loans, scandals, and Congressmen.  I found myself skimming these passages, catching their general outline but confused by the level of depth with which they were described.  Richard White has obviously put in many years of research but much of it could have been synthesized or simply left out.

Railroaded is not all details.  Richard White has a literary flair.  Literary references abound.  (White particularly enjoys comparing corporate executives to Melville's "Confidence Man.")  This shouldn't be too surprising, as railroad barons soon captured the public's imagination; Twain's Gilded Age and Frank Norris's Octopus were directly inspired by them.  White's literary penchant also comes across in its "mise en scenes," asides that take the perspective of a diarist or memoirist who worked for the railroads.

The personal stories redeem Railroaded.  A few anecdotes are shocking or harrowing, such as the embezzler who was caught post-mortem, after stolen dollars had already passed down to his wife and father.  A worker and a woman are killed by trains in accidents that haunt their witnesses.  White workers trick a crew of African-Americans, lock them into a car, and nearly drive it into Puget Sound.  To top it all off is a compelling account of the Pullman Strike.

As engaging as many of the vignettes are, I question their inclusion in Railroaded.  The book is simply massive, inviting obvious comparisons to the very octopus it describes.  (This reviewer tasted the cheese and fallen right into that mousetrap.)  The book may have been more manageable without as many asides and anecdotes, or its discussions of Canadian and Mexican railroads.  In fact, this international perspective undermines one of White's key themes: that the intercontinentals helped create a U.S. national identity.

The intercontinental railroads indeed helped forged an American nationalism; Railroaded shows us how dark that national identity could be.  Anti-monopolism was subverted by competing railroads, who bought off congressmen.  (White cites a government finding that the Central Pacific alone allegedly spent nearly $5 million on bribes in the 1870s.)  Labor unions were typically racist.  If there is anything close to a hero in Railroaded (and there is not), it is Charles Francis Adams, president of the Union Pacific, a reform-minded railroaded executive who hid his disgust with prevalent business practices.  Adams's self-loathing is compellingly documented. In one private letter, he slammed the industry's "vicious practices."  "The railroad system," he said, "is wallowing in the mire."

Railroaded concludes with a quote from Adams's funeral eulogy by Henry Cabot Lodge: "business success - money-getting ... comes from a rather low instinct."  It is a fitting conclusion.

Book Review: Bush's Wars

After listening to Terry Anderson's panel at the latest AHA conference via YouTube, and seeing his latest book on the New Releases shelf at the local public library, I decided to give Anderson's Bush's Wars a read.  There have been a number of well-received books on the wars in Iraq and against al Qaeda over the last ten years, from Jawbreaker to Imperial Life in the Emerald City and Bob Woodward's trilogy-plus-one of books on George W. Bush.  Anderson suggested at AHA that he would be synthesizing these works in his short history of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  I finished reading Bush's Wars wishing that I had picked up one of those other books instead.  If you read or watch U.S. or world news daily, as I have before and since 9/11, you will learn little from reading this book.

The most interesting, and obvious, feature of Bush's War is that much - about one-third - of the book describes the events that actually precede those wars.  This unconventional choice is welcome, if not effective.  I learned much about both Iraq and Afghanistan in these opening chapters.  However, the themes introduced here are absent from subsequent chapters.  Anderson enjoys establishing that Iraq is an "improbably country" and Afghanistan was the "graveyard of empires."  If his intention is to show that both Iraq and Afghanistan are historically difficult to govern and resistant to occupying forces, it may suffice to say just that.

Most egregious is Anderson's treatment of the war in Afghanistan, which hardly earns a more than a few dozen pages.  Of those pages, none of them address events occurring after the battle at Tora Bora.  I began the book hoping to learn more about the ongoing struggle between the Taliban, U.S., and Afghan forces and was completely let down.

There are one or two passages that are actually illuminating instead of obvious.  Several pages are dedicated to the rise of David Petraeus and his formulation of the counter-insurgency strategy.  Anderson - like most reasonable observers - agrees that this development was a critical turning point in the Iraq War.  The story was often overlooked in contemporary news accounts because they were overwhelmed by the Surge and its political proponents and detractors.

The real lost opportunity here is the lack of long-range analysis.  The book purports to make sense of the conflicts, but it instead feels like a series of major events.  Anderson repeatedly insists that both Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terror were "Bush's wars."  "Thus, only six months after the invasion, by the end of summer 2003, the 'cakewalk' in Iraq... had  become an insurgency," he writes. "Next it would become Bush's War."  The book's unconventional timeline - which hinges on several chapters of background information - actually undercuts this claim.  By focusing on George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton's policies early on, the George W. Bush administration appears to have been locked into unavoidable conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bill Clinton's pseudo-war, Operation Desert Fox, and the Republican congress's declaration of a regime-change policy, clearly guided the next president towards war.  (Ongoing skirmishes in the no-fly zone, events that this book glosses over, pushed the U.S. even farther in this direction.)  Terry Anderson even suggests that George W. Bush's cabinet was preparing for a possible war with Iraq since January 2001.  If all of this is accurate, I wonder if that war might have occurred with or without the 9/11 attacks.  Although it is unclear, perhaps Anderson is suggesting that a more competent president may have still waged war against Saddam Hussein but conducted the war in a way that would have prevented an insurgency or an invasion of al Qaeda terrorists.

In his concluding chapter, Terry Anderson rightly takes George W. Bush to task for his countless failures in the prosecution of the Iraq War.  "The Bush Administration was filled with cultural bravado and ignorance," he writes, adding "there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. history."  Reviewing the last ten years of war policy is highly unpleasant and sobering.  For readers aged 20-25, or anyone who might not have been politically cognizant during those regrettable years, this book will be catch you up to speed.  For everyone else, reading Bush's Wars will be like reliving a nightmare.

New Review on Beatbots: Roots of Steel

I just finished a review of Deborah Rudacille's Roots of Steel for the webzine Beatbots.  It is a powerful history of the Sparrow's Point steel factory outside Baltimore with labor-, social-, and oral-history dimensions.  Most impressively, at about 250 pages, it is compact and exceptionally readable.

Roots of Steel is a great book and I wanted to spread the word about it.  (Plus, the site came out of a core of Baltimore contributors, so I thought it would especially be of interest to that audience.)  But, if anything, I've started writing again for Beatbots just to try strengthening my writing chops.

Disputed Ground

During all of the 9/11 commemoration last weekend, I thought back to a video I produced in graduate school. It documented the rallies, protests, and demonstrations at the World Trade Center and Lower Manhattan in the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps it is appropriate that I waited a week before posting this video. After all, "Disputed Ground" is not really about the terrorist attacks. It is a meditation on public expression. Looking at all of the vintage footage of New York City, you may become sad about the people who died in the Twin Towers, or nostalgic for the lost architectural icon. But I want you instead to focus on the mentality captured in the video: the idea that ordinary people should communicate with each other on the streets of their city.

My initial interest in the World Trade Center began in college while I was researching the anti-war movement of the 1960s. The "hard hat riot" - an attack on anti-war protesters in downtown New York City - was rumored to be instigated by construction workers from the Trade Center site. Even if there was no proof they were the attackers, the allegation was compelling to me; it suggested a battle between two versions of American liberalism: a paternalist, union-friendly corporatism versus a pacifist, revolutionary New Left.

I had also just read Don DeLillo's Underworld, which takes place at the same time as the riot; in one passage, the towers' erection looms:

The World Trade Center was under construction, already towering, twin-towering, with cranes tilted at the summits and work elevators sliding up the flanks. She saw it almost everywhere she went. She ate a meal and drank a glass of wine and walked to the rail or ledge and there it usually was....

Based on these two disparate, vague inspirations, I was intrigued. Clearly the World Trade Center captured the imagination of New York before it was even built. I never had the opportunity to research the topic, so it just sat brewing in my mind for years until I attended Graduate School and took Kelly Shrum's Digital Storytelling course. That class (and a blizzard that allowed me to devour a few books, including the recently re-published Divided We Stand by Eric Darnton) allowed me to indulge my fascination. I did not actually perform any original research but I honed in on a theme in Darnton and others' histories of the World Trade Center. The twin towers, even before their construction began, became a site for mass rallies, gatherings, and stunts.

I should take this opportunity to clarify my thesis. The World Trade Center both provoked and inspired people to protest and perform. However, the buildings themselves were not the sole impetus.  Americans in this era seemed less averse to political action.  The events in the video cover a wide range of issues. One clip I included shows a rally commemorating the first Earth Day; crowds filled the streets of Midtown. That particular event was slightly tangential to my topic, but underscores the point that Americans in 1970 were not afraid to be politically active.

Since 9/11, "Ground Zero" and Lower Manhattan continue to be a hub for protest. (I'm not even going to bother discussing Park51.)  But all of those protests are in the shadow of 9/11; none, to my knowledge, address environmentalism, wages, or urban renewal. The spirit captured in "Disputed Ground" is a feeling that I fear we have lost.

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A few production notes: this video was produced using Windows MovieMaker; all clips and content are either public domain or used within bounds of fair use; guest voice credits courtesy of Rwany Sibaja and Michael Plumb; I claim ownership of this video - redistribution is allowed under condition of authorial attribution and non-commercial use; special thanks for technical support go to Kelly Schrum and Misha Vinokur.

While unearthing this video from my graduate school files, I encountered some problems with file size and compression. Even after a semester-long crash course in multimedia files, I am still learning how to make browser-friendly video. The version below has poor audio and video quality; my apologies.  Someday I will have a smaller, cleaner, higher-resolution version for the web.

Without further ado, please enjoy "Disputed Ground: Protest, Public Space, and the Birth of the World Trade Center."

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History of Punk at AHA 2011

In my last post, I discussed the need to study the history of punk rock from a fresh analytical perspective.  Based on the preliminary program for the January 2012 American Historical Association conference, this academy may be headed in this direction.

Next year's conference in Chicago will include a panel titled "Cold War Kids: The Ideologies of Punk in the East and the West."  I would have settled for a discussion of American musical subculture, but this panel may just be next-level.  M. Montgomery Wolf will discuss politics and American punk.  (On its face, this sounds a bit passe, but Wolf promises to tie punk's muddled leftist sentiments to "subjective individualism.")  Jonathyne W. Briggs and Raymond Patton will discuss, respectively, punk culture in France and Poland and its intersection with nationalism and anti-communism.  Commenting is Neil Nehring of University of Texas, author of a book on youth culture and anarchism in mid-Century Great Britain.

Academic scholarship has been slowly moving towards the critical analysis of this awesome musical form.  Bruce Schulman's The Seventies wisely chose to discuss the music genre. In last year's Organization of American Historians conference, I had the pleasure of hearing Stephen Tootle quote profanity-filled Minor Threat lyrics from the lectern.  Wolf's presentation is based on her dissertation research, which, according to her University of Georgia bio, is being worked into a book.  I'll anxiously be awaiting its publication.

Jewish Culture and the Birth of Punk

I hate to re-blog, but I am very excited about this find.  Liel Leibovitz's podcast Long Story Short has just released an episode discussing the role of Jews in the birth of punk rock music.  The history of punk is a huge interest of mine.  I typically find that most historical discussion of the topic shallow, or purely curatorial.  Looking at the musical subculture through religion, though, is a new, thoughtful way to interpret the emergence of punk.

This episode features "unofficial punk historian" Jeff Wengrofsky (a Humanities instructor at NYU), who can quickly name off scores of Jewish punks from the New York City 1970s punk scene.  This is certainly an "unofficial" history, though - few anecdotes of these musicians' life experiences are specifically recalled, and the hosts generalize (albeit fairly) about the Jewish American experience.  Wengrofsky also closes with the warning that not too much should be made of Jewish punks, because white (and even black and Latino) Christians played an equal or greater role in the music scene.  Nonetheless, Liebovitz and his guest confidently discuss the feeling of alienation that was very specific to a Jewish cohort but shared - albeit for different reasons - among punks of other backgrounds.

The podcast episode is also exciting for me because this is my first exposure to Tablet magazine.  While focusing on Jewish American life and culture, this gentile found himself quickly reading through and enjoying several essays.  Its front page features profiles on both Jane Jacobs and Scott Ian (of the band Anthrax).  In this respect it reminds me of The Root; both are centered around specific cultural and ethnic life but consistently publish remarkable work accessible to a wide readership.