Thomas J. Craughwell (1956–2018)

This is a story I've been fascinated by for many years. I first read about the excavation under the Basilica of St Peter's in Rome when I was teenager with a passion for archaeology. It seemed to me incredible then that they may actually have found the bones of the chief apostle, Jesus' right-hand man, and the first pope. But everything seemed to fit, the bones they discovered were of a elderly, powerfully built man, (Peter was a fisherman after all, accustomed to manual labour, and if he show more died during the Neronian persecution as tradition holds, he would have been about 65-70 years old) right under the High Altar of St Peter's, exactly where tradition said they would be. So I became convinced that they had indeed discovered the bones of the second-most important man in the history of Christianity. The addition of years and experience had made me somewhat more sceptical, and I became equally convinced that the whole thing was too good to be true, traditions just don't get proved that easily and completely. But then, last year, my perspective was changed. I heard about the discovery of the remains of Richard III, exactly where they were supposed to be, and conforming to every respect with history and tradition. We have been told that Richard was a hunchback, and that he died violently in battle, and his skeleton showed exactly that. He had a pronounced spinal deformity, and his bones showed signs of terrible battle injuries, as well as post-mortem wounds gratuitously performed on his body by the victorious Lancastrians. To have these traditions confirmed so completely has made me re-think the possible authenticity of the bones of St Peter, and I am now prepared to concede, after reading this little book with the latest research on the remains, that, yes, these may well be the actual bones of St Peter. The story will enthrall both those with a Christian perspective, and those of a secular bent who are fascinated by archaeology and the resolution of ancient mysteries. The story itself has been well-detailed before, with excavations under St Peter's beginning in the 1940's, discovering first a magnificent late Roman necropolis, the most complete ever found, with family tombs complete with lovely structures, art and inscriptions. The excavators then sought permission from the Pope to dig right under the High Altar itself, where tradition said Peter was buried. They discovered a complex set of early Christian structures, with graffiti which seemed to attest that Peter lay nearby, finally discovering bones which were initially identified as Peter's, it later being confirmed they were not. However, another set of bones which had earlier been removed in secret, were rediscovered forgotten in a storeroom. These are the bones which match the description off Peter so closely, and which in due course, the Vatican has officially pronounced as his remains. Whether or not you believe this, the whole complicated story is thoroughly absorbing, and Craughwell has done an excellent job of translating the science of the discoveries into a fast-paced book accessible to the lay reader. The lack of pictures and diagrams is perhaps a disappointment, and would have made following the progress off the excavation easier to understand, but there is a comprehensive bibliography where the interested reader can locate more detailed material. An excellent little book, recommended for the both the faithful and the scientifically-minded. show less

The plural of "anecdote" is not "history."

The Army of the Potomac's Irish Brigade was one of the most famous military units of the American Civil War, although the results it achieved probably did not match up to its fame. Badly commanded, badly served by the officers who ordered it into action, and often stuck in bad places, perhaps the most noteworthy thing about the brigade is the incredible rate of casualties it suffered -- a point officer Craughwell makes quite clearly. If blood is the show more price of fame, the Irish Brigade earned every historical mention it has ever gotten, including many contemporary songs about the brigade and especially its 69th New York Regiment (although it appears that only one of the songs, now usually known as "By the Hush," has survived in oral tradition to this day). If all you want to know is how badly the poor Irishmen suffered, this book will serve you well.

But if you want to understand its actual role in the Civil War, you'll need to read something by an author who actually understands Civil War armies.

Case in point: the word "division." In the Civil War, two to four brigades formed a division, and two to four divisions formed a corps. The Irish Brigade was a brigade in the First Division of the Second Corps. Before the Battle of Fredericksburg, General Ambrose Burnside, commanding the Army of the Potomac, had six corps, which he thought (probably correctly) was too many to manage directly. So he grouped the corps into higher organizations. He might have called them "wings" -- a pretty typical term at the time -- but, for whatever reason, decided to call them "Grand Divisions." There were two corps per Grand Division. Thus a Grand Division was an organization about six times as large as a division. But Craughwell's description of Fredericksburg confuses divisions and grand divisions, and on page 125 he says how Joe Hooker broke up Burnside's divisions when he means Hooker dissolved the Grand Divisions. This mistake completely messes up his description of that period.

Or take his description of Chancellorsville. When Stonewall Jackson was hurt, Lee assigned "Jeb" Stuart to command Jackson's corps. But Craughwell never explains that Stuart had done so; he just talks about Jackson's troops and then, suddenly, Stuart's troops. Anyone would assume that Stuart's troops mean Stuart's cavalry division, not Jackson's corps. Also, on p. 133, Craughwell calls Harry Heth a Major General. He wasn't. He was a brigadier, who had inherited A. P. Hill's division when Hill replaced Jackson and then was hurt -- meaning that Heth was exercising the authority of a major general. But he wasn't a major general, and again, the whole impression is wrong.

My feeling -- and that's all it is, a feeling -- is that Craughwell mostly has his anecdotes right, so the "color" of this book is generally accurate. But as a history, it's very bad. If you truly want to learn about either the Civil War, or the Irish Brigade, you'll need something with a better ability to put this heroic, badly used Irish soldiers into a context. show less

This collection of urban legends contains not just the usual poodle-in-the-microwave, killer's-hook-on-the-car-door and spiders-in-the-hairdo tales, but also ghost stories, UFO sightings, e-mail scams, celebrity rumors, and just about anything else you can think of that could possibly come under the "urban folklore" heading. They're told very simply and without any attempt at analysis or verification/debunking, except for a short introduction and the occasional note about where a story show more originated or what variations exist. I think the author makes a bit of a mistake by making up lots of dialog for these stories, though, as it's very stilted and puts the style somewhere between the casual "so, then the guy goes" speech that you'd get with actual oral retellings and a genuine attempt at literary dramatization. It's not a very comfortable middle ground.

Still, I found the first hundred pages or so fun to read, even though I'd already heard a lot of these before. Some of them are such great stories, with such perfect little ironic twists, that you can't help almost wishing they were true. After a while, though, I found myself getting rather bored. I don't know if that's because the best stories are to be found towards the front of the book and the editor started scraping further towards the bottom of the barrel after that, or if it's just that there's a limit to how many of these I really want to read, even in bite-sized chunks. show less

I wanted to like this book, I really did. The story of how, in America, race and slavery are intertwined with cuisine, is fascinating and deserves in-depth exploration. Unfortunately, the author seemed mostly interested in Jefferson and French cuisine, and the story of James Hemings was stuck on as a necessary side note. Admittedly, the information about Hemings is slight, so the author may have felt limited in his ability to say more. But he pads the story with extended information about show more the sights, sounds and flavors of France of the day, about Jefferson’s family, about Jefferson’s interest in plants. If he had given equal context to African-American contributions to the cuisine of the U.S., or extended the discussion forward with information about how freed slave cooks built enterprises around their food, the book would have been much more interesting and enlightening. As it was, the author seemed rather uncomfortable with the aspects of slave owning that cast his beloved Jefferson in a bad light. At one point he notes that sexual relations between slave owners and slaves may be shocking to us today, “but” they were common at the time. I would think an “and” would be more appropriate to that explanation. He also refers to the relationship between Sally Hemings and Jefferson as an “affair,” not the word most would use to describe a relationship in which the power laid all on one side. The author’s seeming discomfort or lack of interest in the complexities of this story left the book feeling lightweight, like a heavily padded magazine article. show less