JFCooper's Reviews

I decided to cross post my Early Reviewer obligations here. Thinking that some of you might enjoy or appreciate them.

The first 5 follow this post in reverse chronologial order. More to follow as I write them.

Daniel

Golden Gate: The Life and Time of America's Greatest Bridge
Kevin Starr, Bloomsbury, 2010

Starr has an engaging style, and when he gets out of his own way, the work is very good general audience type of history. The book begins with some seriously purple prose that turned me off as a reader. Starr seemed to think it necessary to extol the grandeur of a structure that can be counted as one of the few in America to lack the need for such advocacy. As others have noted, Starr also has a penchant for attempting scholarly passages that end up confusing the reader. But on the whole the book is an easy read.

One other issue I had with the book, which could be the fault of the publisher rather than the author, was the lack of inclusion of photographs described in the text by the author. Two examples are the Ansel Adams photograph depicting the Golden Gate in the years just prior to the construction of the bridge and the unnamed photographer who Starr mentions snapped an image of the only serious accident as it occurred. I would like to see every image Starr mentions included in the center piece.

One of the strengths of this work is the unusual organizational approach. Chapters are dedicated to subjects having to do with the bridge, this their content can be carried from beginning to end of the construction and use of the bridge. This allows Starr to tell us a more coherent story of some of the less well known aspects of the bridge than a straight chronological organization would have allowed.

Overall, despite the prose and image inclusion errors there is a lot to like about Golden Gate. As you read it, skip the parts you fail to enjoy or that fail to inform you. You'll still know more about the bridge than you did, and you'll still enjoy the book as a whole.

Chasing Oliver Hazard Perry: Travels in the Footsteps of the Commodore Who Saved America
Craig Heimbuch, Clerisy Press, 2010

In Chasing Oliver Hazard Perry: Travels in the Footsteps of the Commodore Who Saved America, author Craig Heimbuch discovers that ambling is more conducive to the type of introspection he engages in as he develops the physical and emotional connections that bind Perry and the Battle of Lake Erie to the present day.

The premise of Chasing Oliver Hazard Perry is simple, elegant, and (for people interested in American History) intriguing. Heimbuch circumnavigates Lake Erie looking for evidence of Perry’s victory and the War of 1812 in order to discover how people interact with this distant and largely ignored event.

But Chasing Oliver Hazard Perry becomes, at its heart, a conversation between now and any number of thens chosen by Heimbuch. The Battle of Lake Erie is the oldest then and the font from which all of Heimbuch’s examination (self and otherwise) flows. Other pasts are more specific to Heimbuch and include family trips during childhood, family trips with his own children, a young adulthood spent in Cleveland, and his work as a journalist.

Heimbuch includes some basic historical content gleaned from a few secondary sources. These are well written synopses, necessary only in that they give the reader a sense of the importance of Perry’s victory on Lake Erie. The real story is Heimbuch’s personal interaction with Perry and his victory.

Heimbuch is at his best here when he writes someone else’s story. He’s less comfortable writing his own. But as the book progresses Heimbuch’s comfort level with himself increases and we a treated to something like a limited memoire. Chasing Oliver Hazard Perry becomes an examination of the places of the self.

One final note: Heimbuch is self-deprecating about profundity, and that is a good thing. But there are a few highlight worthy passages in Chasing Oliver Hazard Perry. As a History instructor at a community college, I was inspired by the truth in Heimbuch’s statement, “…I think a person reaches a point in life when they need to stop feeling like they need to be entertained and start feeling like they need to listen.” And I chuckled at, “…History is like tequila—you have to know when you’ve had enough before it really starts to bite you in the ass.”

Chasing Oliver Hazard Perry is a good read. If you are interested in the Lake Erie region, Ohio, Commodore Perry, how a non-Historian interacts with History, or literary self-examination you will enjoy Heimbuch’s Chasing Oliver Hazard Perry, Travels in the Footsteps of the Commodore Who Saved America.

Anonyponymous
John Marciano, Bloomsbury, 2009

No one, least of all the author, will mistake this for a scholarly work. Cleverness is valued here more then accuracy. This is not to say that the book is inaccurate, only that where the two conflict cleverness wins.

NPR prizes cleverness in writing, and they did a seven minute piece on Marciano and Anonyponymous: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120018497

Lots of fun etymological tidbits encased herein. No two entries are related to one another; the data is "chunked" (as my Distance Education Cohort Trainer says). This makes the entries good for a quick read in a place otherwise known for the elimination of waste.

But it's good for the night stand too. If you need to get your brain to slow down after a long day, Anonyponymous will do the trick.

The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon
John Ferling, Bloomsbury, 2009

Ferling sets himself a lofty goal and then finds it difficult to meet. He starts out with an excellent premise, that Washington was a deeply political animal whose political skill and machinations are willfully ignored by both Washington's latter peers and by almost all Historians. And so Ferling set out to document Washington's political activity and prowess.

The problem that Ferling runs into is that Washington was so good at the politics of disinterestedness, appearing to stand above the fray, that Ferling has has very little direct evidence to cite. Washington's own silence during his time in the House of Burgesses, for example, leaves scant material for Ferling to investigate. Indeed silence was Washington's favorite political tactic. (Apparently he learned earlier than Franklin that it might be better to keep his mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.)

Unfortunately, for Ferling the result is less than stellar. Using the example of Washington's tenure in the House of Burgesses again we are forced to note that perhaps Ferling has over-reached. In the preface Ferling writes, "...Nothing about Washington has attracted less attention than his political activities. Though Washington served in the Virginia Assembly for nearly 20 years before the War of Independence, his legislative career has been passed over with insufficient scrutiny." Yet Ferling's scrutiny yields only tidbits like, "Jefferson, who served in the assembly with Washington for nearly seven years, once said that his colleague seldom spoke and never made a lengthy speech. Lacking a 'mind... of the very first order.'"

Further Washington's career in the House of Burgesses seems replete only with activity less historically significant than his conduct as a soldier and President. Ferling notes that committees Washington served on controlled stray animals, set fee schedules for public offices, licensed ferry operators, regulated the fur trade, watched over courts, commerce, and public claims. Ferling writes, "Much of this was excessively trivial for a man who... frequently had to make life and death decisions."

The committee assignments could have yielded political gold for a man interested in turning responsibilities into opportunities. For example, the fur trade a ferry licenses could have been used to shape and control westward expansion in Virginia, but apparently Washington was not up to the task and Ferling lets him off the hook.

Indeed for much of the book Ferling seems to be left holding the bag for Washington, attempting to explain why Washington did not do or say more. He falls for Washington's own singularly effective political tactic of saying nothing about his own responsibilities and failures.

The Ascent of George Washington turns out to be a good account of Washington's adult life that includes a deeper examination of Washington's political activity than has been previously attempted. But Washington's political conduct never rises to the heights that Ferling claims it does and Ferling is forced, over the course of the book, to minimize his own thesis.

It seems most Historians have steered themselves away from Washington's political life for good reason.

The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village
Thomas Robisheaux, W.W. Norton, (no date given)

The Last Witch of Langenburg is not merely a 400 year old murder mystery, it is a deep, cogent, and insightful examination of myriad roles and interrelationships that existed in rural Germany in the late 1600s. Robisheaux uses the investigation of the untimely death of a young mother to plumb the depths of these roles and interrelationships, noting rocky and difficult associations between, for example, millers and farmers.

No aspect of life in rural Germany is left unexamined, no relationship unplumbed. The sum becomes greater than its constituent parts as social status, state interest, science, war, politics, poverty, and piety all collide. And Robisheaux delves into his subject by parting out the examinations as they are needed. The arc of Anna Smeig's story provodes the framework for introducing the examinations. Almost before the reader knows it, he or she is introduced to the semi-supernatural status of the local Lord's Executioner or the state interest in the out-of-wedlock pregnancy of a young woman.

But the real triumph of The Last Witch of Langenburg is the greater reality that these circumstances, roles, and relationships describe by implication. The Enlightenment was underway in France and Italy and ideas about human ability to know the mysteries of the natural world were colliding with systems of belief in profound ways that would be difficult to describe, let alone adequately illustrate without allowing a single episode to launch the reader into a detailed description of the time and place.

The Last Witch of Langenburg is an informative and entertaining work that has the power to transform the reader's understanding of some basic historical interpretations. Highly recommended.

Sitting Bull: Prisoner of War by Dennis Pope

The importance of historical data is not self-evident. It takes a well trained historian to sort the data, put it in context, and explain both what the data means and how that historian came his or her conclusion about the data. The best way to do this is to create a narrative that uses the available data, and while relating the narrative explain what meaning the content of the narrative has for us today.

There are other metrics to judge historical works. We look for the depth of the research, and monitor the citations in the body of the work. We note explanations of bias by the historian. We gauge the validity of the analysis and interpretation the historian has employed in order to create his or her account.

Dennis Pope’s Sitting Bull: Prisoner of War is, by most metrics an able account of Sitting Bull’s captivity at Forts Yates and Randall in the Dakota Territory. Pope does an excellent job of relaying the details of camp life for Sitting Bull’s band, and expressing Sitting Bull’s attempts to a) free himself and his people from captivity and b) acquire the necessary supplies and skills to become farmers like the whites on whose behalf the army imprisons him.

For shear data, Pope’s account is indispensible. Sitting Bull: Prisoner of War is extremely well researched and full of detailed information about daily life for the Hunkpapa band of Sioux in captivity.

But Pope’s work exists inside a context that Pope himself did not create. Sitting Bull: Prisoner of War is part of a larger set of works that address the life and time of Sitting Bull, works like Robert Utley’s Lance and the Shield and Stanley Vestal’s Sitting Bull, Champion of the Sioux. These other works do Pope the service of providing the meaning for the information he imparts in Sitting Bull: Prisoner of War.

In short Pope neither tells a full story nor imparts its meaning. This does not mean that Sitting Bull: Prisoner of War is not an excellent work of History. But it does make the book drier than it needs to be and it leaves the reader wondering why the detailed information contained therein is so important.

Call it a companion work and enjoy it for the detailed knowledge you’ll gain.

Just found out I nabbed Gone: A Photographic Plea For Preservation for Early Review.
Looking forward to reading it, as it contains a short story by Shelby Foote.

Daniel