Dave
This book in the University of Nebraska series of the state politics and government covers Maryland state political history. The book offers a comprehensive overview of every political institution in the state from the state, county, municipal, and local level on down. In addition, the book offers around 100 pages of useful political history and context that help explain the history of Maryland's politics from its colonial days in the early 1600s to the present. A useful book for anyone hoping to learn more about government in Maryland.
In Custer Died for Your Sins, Vine Deloria, Jr., over the course of 11 essays, explores the relationship between Native Americans and different institutions in the United States. The relationship between Native Americans and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, between Native Americans and Black people, between Native Americans and anthropologists, between Native Americans and missionaries and the Christian establishment, between Native Americans and the treaties that have been imposed upon them. The essays can be vicious, self-deprecating, tragic, hilarious, deeply reasoned, eye-opening, but they are always extremely lucid and offer necessary perspective. There are elements of the book that don't age perfectly well: Deloria has grievances with the civil rights movement which at times can seem overly fastidious, and in particular he seems specifically very upset with the failure of Martin Luther King's Poor People's March, which had failed in the spring of the year he was writing (and in the immediate aftermath of King's assassination), and these issues seem less important with 60 years of hindsight as I write this. Additionally, women's issues are almost entirely absent which I imagine some contemporary observers might take issue with. These issues aside, the work clearly comes from a very sharp with who was writing in a way that was all but totally new and totally necessary.
The Saltwater Frontier is a very admirably written piece of history. Andrew Lipman presents a history of the geopolitical situation in New Netherlands and New England in the 17th century, and in a surprising breakthrough which rightfully won him the prestigious Bancroft Prize, actually made use of BOTH Dutch and English primary sources to do his research. As such Lipman is actually able to triangulate and include the perspective of the indigenous peoples of the area as well. All told, the book, with its spectacular prose, gives a vivid picture of what life on the ground (and on the sea) might have been like in 1640s Connecticut. In a relatively short 300 or so pages Lipman opens the readers eyes to the ways that the waters of the American northeast functioned themselves as a frontier that were often dominated by the indigenous peoples of the area.
Nice overview of the history of the underrated supervillain of German cinema, Dr. Mabuse. Covers the 12 or so movies that have featured Dr. Mabuse including concise but interesting biographies of the respective directors, summaries of their plots, histories of their productions, analysis of their themes, and relevant contextual placement within German and filmic culture as well as in relation to each other.
Seems to me this was written in large part to counter the arguments of Kracauer's notorious 1947 “From Caligari to Hitler” which argued that the prewar German movies, including the expressionist films, presaged Hitler and represented a traceable trajectory in the German mindset. Eisner instead spends most of this book talking about what Expressionism wasn't, as overly simplistic generalizations have been quick to call every German film “expressionist”. The book starts with more immediacy than it finishes but it does a good job of laying out the influence of German Romanticism, the theater of Max Reinhardt, and of the small stable of competent German filmmakers on one another.
Had to slog through this. Lots and lots of important information and coverage of primary documents and accounts from roughly ~1750 to 1899 in both Oregon and Washington, but it is organized poorly and brutal to actually sit down and read. If I was a graduate student researching PNW Indians this is probably a must own just to use the index to find incidents, characters, and moments from PNW Indian history, but I cannot recommend it to a casual reader. New historiography is badly needed.
Fantastic short read. Bulgakov is a bright, ambitious young doctor assigned to a small outpost in rural Western Russia where, even by 1915 or so, electricity has not proliferated. In a series of vignettes Bulgakov paints a portrait of life in rural pre-revolution Russia. His peasant patients, usually illiterate, often carry superstitions that interfere with treatment and spread rumors when procedures go poorly, are out of a previous century and in the cast of characters around Bulgakov, one can see the material circumstances that allowed for the revolution.
The stories are funny, gripping, frightening, sad, and witty. Bulgakov comes of age as a young doctor and his conception of adulthood and his understanding of the rules of the institutions he works within (be they medicine, the village social politics, the Russian Empire etc.) matures considerably as he becomes wiser, more jaded, but importantly more empathetic by the end of the book.
Mark Twain describes his travels on a luxury cruise that takes him and a couple hundred other Americans from New York across the Atlantic to the Azores, Gibraltar, Morocco, Marseille, Paris, much of Italy, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine in 1867. It is fascinating to hear about an American traveler's experience at such a time when the world was industrializing and probably already as different from the 18th century as it was different from our world in the 21st century today.
Twain takes in the hallowed sights and sites along the “grand tour” of Western Europe and the near Middle East with a wry and usually hilariously cynical skepticism. Rather than recount how extraordinarily beautiful the art of the old masters is, Twain instead typically comments on the way that tourists take in that art–almost always using the stock observations of the guidebooks. Twain never holds back and freely describes the uglier, chintzier, seedier, and more unpleasant experiences that a traveler would have faced, be they underhanded tour guides, fraudulent histories offered at sites, bad food, awful weather, shameful behavior from fellow American tourists, or otherwise.
This is the first pre 20th century travel writing that I have read, but I suspect that Twain's is among the most readable, in large part because he seeks to parody the stodgy cliches of other travel writing popular of the time. It offers a fascinating insight into the way people lived in urban and rural places from a perspective that is unique and historical, but familiar (as an American). This does not mean Twain's work is without fault. Despite many instances where Twain works to dispel prejudices (his preface even includes a famous epigraph about the power of travel to give one empathy and dispel racism), Twain expresses ugly attitudes towards “the Turk” and “Mohammedans”, perhaps consistent with his general anti-religious sentiments, but frustratingly ignorant nonetheless.
Interestingly, Nixonland isn't a biography of Richard Nixon but instead more a history of the 1960s in America with Richard Nixon as the main character. Perlstein tells the story of the political, social, and cultural history of the U.S. in the '60s in very entertaining fashion, jumping from historical event to historical event with very satisfying in-depth analysis and exploration. Perlstein's most valuable contribution is his ability to see past the surface of historical actors' words and analyze their rhetoric and ideology with a precise clarity. Nixon becomes the perfect protagonist for such analysis because, as Perlstein makes clear, he was a master of politics and language and controlling the conversation. Nixon chose his public words very carefully, always making sure that the American public saw the version of himself (a down-to-Earth outsider who understood their frustrations, grievances, and resentments) that he wanted them to see. His actions were carefully taken as well. Nixon was able to craft coalitions with elements of the right that suited him when he needed, be they far-right John Birchers and Southern Segregationists, or moderate liberal Republicans like those who were likely to support George Romney or Nelson Rockefeller.
Perlstein believes that the present day culture wars and sociopolitical divides trace their origins to the mid 1960s and that Richard Nixon was the soothsayer who identified them first and was able to exploit them to his benefit, ultimately winning him the presidency. I do believe that the general reactionary right wing / progressive left wing cultural dispute probably is older than suggested here, but Perlstein is able to present evidence from every single part of American society (electoral politics, mass pop culture, academia, student organizing, housing, literature, military, labor) to demonstrate how this divide grew to become a great chasm in the 1960s.
Darkly thrilling tour through the ludicrous story of abject corruption and violence inflicted by the Baltimore Police Department's elite plainclothes squad ‘the Gun Trace Taskforce', a gang of cops who used their position to steal from drug dealers and others. The corruption was of course covered up and only ultimately prosecuted after the scale of their crimes and hijinks spiraled so out of control they could no longer be ignored. The authors piece together the timeline effectively but more importantly bring a refreshing critical perspective which isn't afraid to be skeptical or even hostile to traditional narratives from the administrations of the Police Department, State's Attorneys office, or City Government.
Kitchen Confidential condenses the energy, vitality, humor, integrity, and shock appeal that endeared Bourdain to millions of fans. It's impossible to read Kitchen Confidential and not feel some urge to abandon whatever else one may be doing with their life and go become a line cook (or at least take a little more pride while expressing one's self in the kitchen).
Herbert's notoriously weak prose is really grating here because Children of Dune lacks the same propulsive action-adventure of the first two Dune books. The grand scale of the Dune universe is still here, but it is ultimately a slog to get through, in large part due to the uninteresting mystery surrounding the central characters
Dune Messiah is a natural extension of the first Dune and yet suffers from a slightly weaker structure and pacing. The machinations of characters like Edric, Scytale, and Helen are silly and funnier than anything in Dune which often provides very entertaining humor and levity to the sometimes overwrought scenes.
The first three quarters of Killers of the Flower moon play out as a fascinating true-crime historical novel, as Grann pieces together the details of a long-buried series of brutal murders perpetrated by a psychotically evil white man against the residents of an Oklahoma Indian Reservation which in the early 20th century contained one of the wealthiest zip codes in the United States. One investigator tries to do the case right but is ultimately impeded by the structures of white supremacy on the ground in Oklahoma and the bureaucratic machinery of the newly born FBI who had commissioned him. The details of the murders, which were performed in order to consolidate oil head rights which could only otherwise be passed hereditarily are grisly and horrifying in their ruthlessness, but the book ends on a genuinely stomach churning final act wherein the scale and scope of such murders becomes apparent, if not yet (even in 2022) totally clear.
One of the great classics of American History and absolutely masterful work that totally reshaped my understanding of American history, of political, class, and racial relations, and of American political economy. Foner centers Reconstruction as the great failed moment of American history, a central focal point, a second American Revolution, a time when almost anything was possible, and he demonstrates how it all came tumbling down.
A psychedelic pulp detective novel set in 1960s Los Angeles, featuring a hilarious cast of characters who Pynchon delights in playing off one another. One of the funniest books of recent times, offering great comedy in its cultural and historical references, wordplay, situations, and structure. The central mystery comes very close to being masterfully constructed and executed but lacks a truly satisfying conclusion, but it's about the journey and not the destination.
Begins with a very entertaining first third about Crichton's days in medical school, punctuated with humorous stories about life in school and the various foibles of the medical world. The book transitions to the titular travels section, which includes anecdotes and stories of varying interest, ranging from fairly uninteresting stories of Scuba dives that stood out in Crichton's memory, to more interesting tales of life with strange peoples in Thailand, Indonesia, as well as animals in Congo, to finally a frankly strange number of stories about Crichton's interactions with the paranormal world (ranging from psychics, to seances, to hypnotisms, to numerology) all of which Crichton presents himself as incredulous toward but ultimately seems to believe on some level. Crichton, who obviously found great success in every portion of his career, writes with an arrogance that is more tolerable in the works of writers like Anthony Bourdain or Richard Feynman, but considering Crichton's full-time career was being a writer (as opposed to chef or physicist) his anecdotes are almost always engaging and narratively well-constructed at the very least.
Hämäläinen should be regarded as an author at the forefront of a new American history, in Lakota America he effortlessly pieces together an almost entirely overlooked 400 year history of a mighty empire that was able to legitimately challenge the American imperial machine and govern and perform diplomacy effectively. Lakota America should reframe and re-contextualize any American's understanding of the history of the American West and its extensive details provide an intimate portrait of a fascinating people whose legacy can never be erased.
Sanctions are a favorite instrument of the American Empire and as such it is valuable to investigate their history and scrutinize their efficacy. Mulder traces the history of economic sanctions (in their contemporary incarnation) to those directed against the Central Powers in the First World War, when the war time leaders conceived of sanctions as “the economic weapon”, a means to inflict damage against the enemy without shells or mortars. As Mulder demonstrates, it is fairly difficult to gauge the effectiveness of sanctions, though he demonstrates that it is very unlikely that sanctions have worked as intended more in more than two or three limited examples, confined to now forgotten international disputes in the interwar period. Mulder traces the intellectual history of sanctions, which were simultaneously understood as a weapon with which to coerce enemies into desired by outcomes, but also by the day's liberal internationalist thinkers as a potential ‘non-violent' tool in the arsenal of diplomacy. Mulder demonstrates that sanctions have largely remained ineffective and have in fact often induced ‘bad' behavior from authoritarian militarist states who are induced ultimately to double down on illegal foreign interventions and focus on autarkic internal industrialization, state behaviors which, to this day, sanctions are deployed to try to prevent.
Offers a new history of a largely overlooked period in American history (mid-to-late 17th century). The war turned out to be an inflection point in colonial-indigenous relations, with the dark forces of capital and religious conservatism violently absorbing New England's native peoples into their new regime centered ideologically around fanatic protection of private property. Most notably, Brooks offers a critical reading of a fascinating primary document: “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson”, in which a Massachusetts Bay Colony housewife recounts the story of her kidnapping by a war party of the Wampanoag coalition. Brooks reads between the lines of Mary Rowlandson's terror and uses the work to highlight the results of the conflict of understandings of the world.