by Richard Subber | Apr 22, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature
toil and trouble….and craziness
Book review:
The Witches: Salem, 1692
by Stacy Schiff (b1961)
Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2015
498 pages
It may be that Stacy Schiff has neglected to include some fact or sentiment about the Salem witch trials, but I can’t imagine what it might be. The Witches is an expansive compendium of the whos and whats and whys and wherefores of this compelling—yet essentially impenetrable—story about a community gone crazy.
Maybe you had to be there to understand it.
It’s too easy to suggest that the McCarthy Communism hunting in 1954 is a modern analogy, but it won’t work. The whole dreadful McCarthy thing was a political football, approaching a sideshow even though it attracted the nominal attention of the nation and destroyed many lives.
The Salem witch trials (and the witch hunting that went on in neighboring towns) consumed the waking hours of all the townsfolk, who were deeply convinced that witches exist and that they were in league with satanic forces.
For my taste, Schiff tells too much of the story. I would have been content with a less detailed account. There is repetition that is dispensable.
For my taste, she struck a good balance between telling the story as it happened, and inviting the reader to suspect that the teenage girls were fooling all along, and that too many accusers had a personal reason to “get” the accused, and that too many religious and civic leaders who struggled unsuccessfully with their religious faith and the opposing impulses of their arguably decent selves had quickly figured out that the witch craze was a very nasty game.
You don’t need to read the whole book to figure out that there was some very destructive bogus stuff going on in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1692.
Maybe you don’t need to read the whole book to be convinced that some folks aren’t continuously motivated by a decent streak of good will and a desire to support communal well-being.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: Cleopatra: A Life
…don’t even think
about Gordon Gekko…
by Stacy Schiff
–
Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Apr 16, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Politics, Revolutionary War
He didn’t mention the “k” word…
Book review:
Common Sense
by Thomas Paine
Isaac Kramnick, ed., intro.
New York: Penguin Books, 1986
When I re-read a classic, I try to prepare myself for a couple “aha!” moments and one or two “uh oh!” moments.
I wasn’t disappointed in reading Common Sense this time.
Paine first published (anonymously) his 47-page “pamphlet” on January 10, 1776, after the shooting at Lexington-Concord and before the Declaration of Independence was approved.
Of course, everyone knows Paine argued for “independance” (his 18th century spelling).
This time around, it’s of interest to me to note that Paine very carefully avoided directly challenging King George III by name or even by spelling out his title—the text is full of “k—” references. Paine fully and explicitly described and condemned the bad things that old George was doing and likely to do.
Also, it’s of interest to me that Paine notably includes in his arguments for “independance” that America’s trade and international commerce would be buttressed by separation of the British colonies from Britain. He freely uses “America” and “Americans” in referring to the colonies and the colonists, although a huge majority of English colonists likely thought of themselves as “British” citizens.
Paine gives ample space to biblical themes.
Common Sense was widely and repeatedly republished in 1776 and thereafter—it was astoundingly popular in America, Britain, and elsewhere. Historians suspect that 75,000-100,000 copies were printed.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
The “dime novels” in the Civil War
Think “blood-and-thunder”…
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
by Richard Subber | Mar 21, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, History, Politics
Ignorance was bliss for a while…
Book review:
The Future of News:
Television,
Newspapers,
Wire Services,
Newsmagazines
Philip Cook, Douglas Comery, Lawrence Lichty, eds.
Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992
Yes, The Future of News invites instant comparison with ancient news.
Neither the editors nor the contributors mention the internet or the World Wide Web or blogs or social media. Who knew in 1992?
Note: on April 30,1993, a computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee announced he had completed the source code for the world’s first web browser: WorldWideWeb.
Be prepared to feel sympathetic when you read the repeated optimistic assessments of the trends and possible futures of the news as we used to know it more than 30 years ago.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Will the last monkey cry?
the new reality…
–
My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jan 23, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, Books Commentary, Joys of reading
a really good book about books…
Book review:
84, Charing Cross Road
by Helene Hanff
New York: Grossman Publishers, 1970
84, Charing Cross Road is a perhaps iconic epistolary opus and a minor delight for bibliophile readers.
Helene Hanff (1916-1997) was an antiquarian book freak in New York City who was thrilled to have a 20-year long-distance relationship by mail with the staff of a small book shop in London at 84, Charing Cross Road, namely, Marks & Co.
Her love of books, her humanity, and her blithe spirit are on display, as is the somewhat reserved and very British geniality of Frank Doel and the staffers at Marks & Co. who kept Helene supplied with the obscure old books that she loved so much.
If you’re still reading this review, you probably are ready to start reading the book.
Otherwise, you know…
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: Hag-Seed
by Margaret Atwood…it ain’t Shakespeare
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Dec 29, 2021 | Book reviews, Books, History, Power and inequality, World history
the traders forgot the common good…
Book review:
A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World
by William J. Bernstein
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008
Commercial long-distance trade in goods and people has been part of the human experience for about 5,000 years or so, and Bernstein offers plenty of detail about the highs and lows of this experience, and about the wealth that was accumulated by a few of the traders and the governments that backed them.
A Splendid Exchange makes it plain that, across the millennia, disease and plague has unavoidably followed trade routes. The various scourges that we nominally know about, like the Black Plague, were spread around by sailors and merchants who sailed on their ships.
Bernstein rather unconvincingly describes trade as an instinctive human enterprise. However, he clearly states that major trade and long-distance trade has been the vocation of the few and the powerful, and that rich merchants never have prominently attempted to serve any concept of the common good as they amassed their riches.
It’s an old story.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
The “dime novels” in the Civil War
Think “blood-and-thunder”…
–
Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Dec 22, 2021 | Book reviews, Books, History, World history
Does history have “causes”…?
War and Peace, Second Epilogue
Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1988
Originally published in 1869
The Second Epilogue: Tolstoy’s reflections on history and its causes, and free will
Perhaps you know that Tolstoy appended two epilogues to War and Peace.
In the Second Epilogue, Tolstoy’s sometimes discursive style may impede the modern reader. It’s not boring, but it seems to be repetitious, and Tolstoy uses surprisingly mundane examples that may seem irrelevant to the modern reader.
It’s a Russian version of mid-19th century style. It seems to be relentlessly organized, using what Tolstoy presumably believed was an elaborate precision of language that tends to obscure and confuse his observations and conclusions.
I respect his ruminations about the nature and causes of history, the inevitability of historical events, and the possibly countervailing potency of human free will.
I confess that I am essentially unmoved by his conclusion that freedom of will and action is not a prime mover in human enterprise and human history.
I suspect that Tolstoy’s endorsement of “dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause,” and his acknowledgement of so-called “laws” that frame human history, is a manifestly inadequate description of the reality and the process of human history.
I suggest that Tolstoy went astray in his search for “cause” in human history.
Of course, there are forms and trends and ex post recognition of patterns in history. The longues durées exist, but they are only part of the story. There are recognizable, durable attributes of human nature. They are only part of the story.
Tolstoy almost forgets to mention the utterly contingent natures of historical reality, the historical process, human action, and the sequence of past events. One essential element of history is the continuous interaction of innumerable competing and complementary human behaviors and environmental circumstances.
History is the unpredictable single chain of events that actually happened, with many or most of their contingent antecedents forever unknown. There’s no way to write a neat and complete version of it.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Book review: An Empire Divided
King George and his ministers
wanted the Caribbean sugar islands
more than they wanted the 13 colonies…
by Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy
–
Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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