Noah Feldman

No one ever accused Feldman of being humble; although I found the first third of the book not very interesting (it’s a history of different movements in American Jewish thought, with some reference to non-American developments), the discussion of the relationship between Israel and American Jews was thoughtful, nuanced, and far more complicated than I can do justice to. His argument involves Israel as a redemptive counterweight to the Holocaust as well as Israeli political/religious show more developments—the formation of an actual Israeli state sapped secular Zionism of some of its energy, while religious Zionism gained power and also invested a lot of resources in educating American conservative Jews. (Secular Zionism sought to create a Jewish state in a place with historic meaning for Jews, not to occupy any particular amount or patch of land and therefore accepted UN partition plans; religious Zionism, not so much.) Among other things, he points out that the Holocaust Museum in the US was built before the National Museum of the American Indian or the National Museum of African American History and Culture—and that this was an expression of identity for American Jews. But that itself says a lot about the centrality of the Holocaust to American Jewry—as well as making “a claim of universal significance for the particular Jewish experience of suffering.” For progressive Jews, then, the universalizing meaning led to increasing criticism of the actually existing government of Israel, which is violating the principles of “never again.”

Feldman also explains the higher standard to which Israel is sometimes held as a consequence of its post-WWII creation—in the view of many (Jews and non-Jews) as compensation for the Holocaust. “If Israel was created to be a light until the nations, then when it failed to live up to that ideal, its failure would inevitably be more conspicuous than the failures of other states.” Western Europeans in particular, regarding Israel as essentially Western European in nature, don’t hold Arab or Muslim states to the same Western standards “either because of implicit racism against them or because of a more defensible political relativism.” Relatedly, when the European left became anti-colonial, Israel’s own creation looked like a colonialist legacy—except that the Jews had no other country. There’s a lot more in here, not all of which sits well with me, but if you’re interested in the topic, maybe skip part one and read the rest. show less

My books do not live in isolation from each other, but as counterpoint or coincidence. They are always holding conversations behind my back. A recent contretemps between two books in my pile has forced me to resort to a double review, pairing two seemingly disparate works that together had a keen point to make on the writing of History. As I was reading Scorpions by Noah Feldman and Peter Green’s Xerxes at Salamis, I kept overhearing grunts and harrumphs and decided to pay closer attention show more to what was going on between the books.

Feldman’s excellent history of mid-20th c. American constitutionalism, framed as an examination of the experiences of four Supreme Court justices appointed by Franklin Roosevelt, shines a light on everything from racial profiling and segregation to executive power during wartime to the tension between civil liberties and national security, and illuminates far beyond the topics treated in the book. Feldman expertly situates his case studies in context, but in such a way that the reader may ponder the links between the particular and the universal. He knows that, in the real world, principle and ideology always submit to complexity and ambiguity, law-making is seldom rational (as apart from partisan interests or individual motives), and thinking people sometimes change their minds.

Green’s book is an extrapolation from scant material and will appeal to those who like their Ancient History told as a story with kings and warriors as dramatis personae. Lines from Aeschylus and passages from Herodotus or Plutarch are analyzed, supported or corrected with fragments of archaeology. Persian kings are posed as oriental despots, and three decades of 5th-c. Athenian life stand in for the roots of Western Civilization. A single battle in a long war between regional powers almost 3000 years ago becomes the Hinge of History, though this point is to be taken as a matter of faith. Moses Finley warned against treating ancient sources at face value, against supposing that we can know ‘how things really were,’ and against psychologizing the causes of ancient warfare. Would that Green had a copy of Ancient History: Evidence and Models.

Perhaps Aeschylus was able to do what even Shakespeare could not: embody the whole of a cultural mindset in a few lines of a dramatic script. But there is no way to know. Still, many strain to believe that—like good, real Americans—the classical Greeks ‘believed in freedom,’ and without their efforts on our behalf the History of Freedom in the World would have been smothered in the crib. Works like Xerxes at Salamis are stimulating of the imagination, but must be taken with lots of salt.

This is what I think my books were talking about: that Historiography is not just an academic exercise. It is the deployment of critical thinking in the judgment of evidence, assumptions, arguments and conclusions about the past. In disputes about the sources and bases and meanings of ‘freedom’ in American political discourse of the 21st c., for instance, the ‘lessons of history’ are frequently cited to bolster one side or another. The problem is that not everyone learns the same lessons.

One of the lessons from the classical Greeks, assumed by many and reaffirmed by Green, is that the History of the World is the story of the West v. the Rest, and that war makes us free. The evidence from Scorpions and Xerxes at Salamis suggests that the freedoms enjoyed by people in 'the West' are less the consequence of warfare (or strict adherence to ideology, or divine intervention) than the product of a flexible, pragmatic jurisprudence developed over the past one hundred and fifty years—and the gravest threat to those liberties are politicians and our fellow citizens, not foreigners. show less

This is not a biography in the traditional sense - it's focus is on Madison's political career and other aspects are typically only touched upon as they relate to politics. Madison does had a remarkable political trajectory - he starts out as a state legislator, was a mentee and ally of Thomas Jefferson, attends and projects significant influence at the Constitutional Convention, is deeply engaged in the partisan politics of the early republic, and serves as president during the War of 1812. show more Two things I found interesting in this book: In the course of his career, Madison changes his mind about the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States, initially arguing against it in Congress but later signing a bill for its renewal as president. Secondly, in his retirement, Madison developed his views regarding slavery and came to believe that resettlement in Africa was the best option. However, he had trouble convincing even the enslaved people at his own plantation to take this option (leading one to question the actual feasibility of the idea). Overall, a decent read that expanded my knowledge of this president. show less

I want to start off by stating unequivocally that I really disliked reading this book. It took me months to read it, I kept abandoning it in favor of many other rivals from my to-be-read pile, and I only forced myself to persevere and complete it because I had obtained it as part of an Early Reviewers program and therefore owed it a fair trial.
It didn’t start off that way. Initially, I really looked forward to cracking the cover and I was hopeful that the material would be captivating. The show more concept seemed sound: four consequential members of the Supreme Court handpicked by FDR -- Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Robert Jackson -- chart landmark moments of jurisprudence that still resonate today. Author Noah Feldman promised to demonstrate how four distinguished men with competing egos worked together and against one another to make constitutional history.
A skilled writer would have not only have focused upon the lives of his four subjects, but would have recreated the historical era for the reader, sketched out the institutional edifice of the Supreme Court as a critical branch of government, drawn a sharp biographical outline of FDR (the shaman who anointed these justices), and constructed a foundation of American constitutional law that would provide context for the drama of key decisions on the Japanese-American internment camps, WWII saboteurs, the Rosenberg’s, segregation, free speech and more – as well as the fractured relationships between the justices. As it was, the 433-page book was devoid of any of this, and there was decidedly little drama to boot! One has a suspicion from reading this book that if Noah Feldman had directed the movie Titanic, you would get to meet some of the passengers and crew, learn a little about icebergs, and then the ship would sink.
Perhaps for those who are already familiar with the Supreme Court, the history of American constitutional law, and the cast of characters, this book would be more interesting, but I tend to doubt it. The writing is often simply dull. And while there is no lack of subject material for high drama, the most dramatic moments as presented by the author are entirely anticlimactic. Moreover, the book skips all over the place in theme, biography, and chronology, so by the last chapters I was still confusing character traits of Jackson and Douglas, and was never quite sure who was aligned with whom at what point. Often, Feldman seems as if he is simply chatting with a room full of colleagues who are entirely familiar with the people, events and controversies associated with the subject at hand, something I found highly frustrating. At the end of the day, the book simply failed to hold my interest. A good editor should have shorn off two hundred pages of meandering verbiage and sent the writer back to his desk to weave a tighter narrative with more punch.
I typically read a great deal of history and biography, both scholarly works and those aimed at a more general audience. Some authors are better writers than others, and sometimes the prose is downright tedious, especially in academic works. Yet, usually I feel by the end of a long nonfiction book such as this that I have learned something meaningful that will stay with me. Sadly, I took almost nothing away from Scorpions except relief that I was finally through with it. show less