Mark's comments (member since Aug 15, 2007)

Mark's comments from the Our History group.

These four aren't about the Holocaust per se, but all relate to it one way or another:

"Everything Is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer is a recent book that oddly combines humor and pathos. A young American sets off to explore his Russian roots, and the road trip is absurdly funny; in the process, he encounters the horrific story of the Nazi killings that occurred in his ancestral village.

"The Painted Bird," Jerzy Kosinski. It's been a long time since I read this, but it involves Jerzy as a young teen having to hide in the woods from the Nazis and survive on his wits.

"The Reawakening" by Primo Levi. This is part two of Levi's Holocaust memoir (I believe the first part recounts his concentration camp experiences in detail). This book actually picks up at the point where the camp was liberated but is grimly fascinating in its own right.

"The Fixer," by Bernard Malamud, is pre-Holocaust, but tells in detail the story of a Russian Jewish peasant who is caught up in a wave of anti-semitism because he dared to try to better his life and hide his Jewish identity. It is grim, but I found it gripping.

I did in fact read a biography of Burton some time ago, but don't know if this was the one. He was one of those truly fascinating Victorian polymaths, wasn't he? I forget how many languages he accumulated by the end of his life, but it was an amazing number.

Thanks to all for your good suggestions. I haven't checked back on this thread I started for quite a while. I have Titan sitting her at home waiting to be read. Many others to check out, obviously.

Just wanted to second your comment about Osama. I bought the movie because I had heard it was an award winner and somehow thought it would have an uplifting ending. I watched it finally very late one night and remembered just sitting there at the end of the movie, depressed and angry, and had to make myself get up and get back into my [safe and taken for granted] Western life.

I know among some professional historians that there is disdain for biography, on the argument that it too often ignores the broader social trends in history and tends to support the "great man" theory.

But I find the best biographies to be set in a rich historical context, so that in reading about one person's life, you are also reading about an era of history, understanding the surrounding issues and seeing connections to contemporary events.

Just two quick examples of biographies I think are superb: "The Power Broker" about New York planner and master politican Robert Moses, by Robert Caro; and "John Adams" by David McCullough.

What are some of your favorites, and why?

For a later period, I highly recommend Alan Furst's books about World War II Europe -- film noir in a book, with highly varied anti-heroes. And truly, "All Quiet on the Western Front" is a classic for a reason. Even today, it is a great read for the miseries of World War I trench warfare.

And if you want a truly good immigrants coming to America saga, try "The Emigrants" trilogy by Swedish author Vilhelm Moberg.

Oh, and for 1600s and 1700s Britain and Holland, try David Liss's books, "A Conspiracy of Paper" and "The Coffee Trader."

Thanks for the compliment, Grumpus. I really appreciate it. Yes, I think part of the fascinatino of history is being able to be inside crises and tremendously challenging times, from the comfort of an easy chair, preferably with a snack at hand :-)

John, I know nothing about this genre, but it sounds great -- particularly the one about Roman holiday spots. What a great concept, and a great book title! Hope it's well written.

Thanks, Patrick, good comments all. Some of my interest in Stanton came from the local angle, since I work in Pittsburgh and actually live in a section of the city called Stanton Heights. But yes, even though I am decidedly not a Civil War buff, I had read a few books on different aspects of it, including Donald Herbert's (I think I got that right) recent Lincoln biography, and that sparked some of my interest in Stanton. I did read the one older biography of him I could find, but in too many cases in the 1800s and early 1900s, biographies were hagiographies.

But in general, much of my reading, my research and my writing is triggered by serendipity. One thing truly does lead to the other.

BTW, I did do a couple Civil War stories for my newspaper, one as part of an anniversary section we did on Gettysburg. The other was very serendipitous, in that I read a magazine article about an American abassador to France who fought to recover John Paul Jones' body from a pauper's grave and get it shipped back to America, then found that the ambassador had been an aide to Ulysses Grant and had written memoirs, then in the memoirs found that there was great yarn about two Union spies making it through the Confederate lines wearing only their underwear, and one of them turned out to be from Pittsburgh, and then I found his grandson was still alive and had all his letters home from the war, and voila, a story was born. Here's the link, in case you care:

http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/...

I wanted to second what Anita said. I've become more and more interested in history as time has gone on, and yet I could hardly say my study has been systematic and I didn't do any of it in school. So, like her, my historical knowledge has been a patchwork that I've accumulated almost haphazardly, but which over time fills in more and more of my gaps and gives me a sense of the whole (without ever coming close to comprehensive knowledge).

I think the history I have the least affinity for is military, and part of that may be because so much of my school history experience seemed to be about learnng one battle after the other (quick -- 1066, 1865, 1917). And even if I'm reading an "issues oriented" history, I like it to be full of fascinating characters, like "Paris 1919", which I just finished and loved.

One part of reading history that has made a deep impression on me is the ephemeral nature of fame. Look at how many people were lionized during their lifetimes and are virtually unknown now.

For quite awhile, I've been wanting to do some kind of in-depth look at Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's secretary of war, who at one time was a lawyer in Pittsburgh, where I work. But as far as I know, despite all the Civil War mania, the last biography done of Stanton was in the 1800s or maybe early 1900s, and yet he was an enormously powerful (and sometimes hated) figure during the civil war, and would have become a Supreme Court justice if he hadn't died prematurely. And there have to be thousands of Edwin Stantons out there to explore.

Another example I stumbled across on CSPAN recently, where author Stanley Weintraub was talking about how, in his opinion, the best American general in WWII was Jacob Devers. Who has ever heard of him? When the interviewer asked Weintraub whether he was considering doing a biography on Devers, Weintraub said with some chagrin that you have to keep your book-buying market in mind when you write history (i.e., who would buy a book about someone who was overshadowed by Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley etal?).

Still, I find these lost figures of history utterly fascinating, and hope to encounter many more.