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Political map of Who’s Who in World War I [infographic]

Over the last few weeks, historian Gordon Martel, author of The Month That Changed The World: July 1914, has been blogging regularly for us, giving a week-by-week and day-by-day account of the events leading up to the First World War. July 1914 was the month that changed the world, but who were the people that contributed to that change? We wrap up the series with a Who’s Who of World War I below. Key countries have been highlighted with the corresponding figures and leaders that contributed to the outbreak of war.

Download a jpeg or PDF of the map.

Gordon Martel is a leading authority on war, empire, and diplomacy in the modern age. His numerous publications include studies of the origins of the first and second world wars, modern imperialism, and the nature of diplomacy. A founding editor of The International History Review, he has taught at a number of Canadian universities, and has been a visiting professor or fellow in England, Ireland and Australia. Editor-in-chief of the five-volume Encyclopedia of War, he is also joint editor of the longstanding Seminar Studies in History series. His new book is The Month That Changed The World: July 1914.

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                Related StoriesThe month that changed the world: Tuesday, 4 August 1914The month that changed the world: Monday, 3 August 1914The month that changed the world: Sunday, 2 August 1914 

Monsters in the library: Karl August Eckhardt and Felix Liebermann

By Andrew Rabin

On a shelf by my desk rests a pale, cloth-bound octavo volume entitled Leges Anglo-Saxonum, 601-925, published in 1958 by the German philologist Karl August Eckhardt. Inside, the volume’s dedication reads, “Dem andenken Felix Liebermanns” (“In memory of Felix Liebermann”). On its face, this seems perfectly innocuous: what could be more natural than one scholar paying tribute to another, especially someone generally considered among Germany’s greatest medievalists? Yet the dedication conceals a disturbing history, for Liebermann had been a member of one of Berlin’s foremost Jewish families, one nearly wiped out in the Holocaust, and Eckhardt was a dedicated Nazi, a Sturbannführer in the SS, and a close friend to Heinrich Himmler, the leading architect of Hitler’s “Final Solution.”

Felix Liebermann by Max Liebermann. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Why did Eckhardt dedicate his book to Liebermann, and how should this shape our understanding of his work? To answer these questions, it’s necessary to learn a bit about the individuals themselves, starting with Felix Liebermann.

Liebermann was born in 1851 to a family of wealthy German-Jewish textile merchants. Against his father’s wishes, he pursued a degree in philology at the University of Göttingen and subsequently joined the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, a project editing the major records of early Germanic culture. In 1883, the Royal Academy of Sciences in Munich invited him to produce a new edition of Anglo-Saxon law. The result, published in three volumes between 1903 and 1916, was the Gesetze der Angelsachsen, a monumental accomplishment numbered among the greatest achievements in the history of scholarly editing. Its reception was summed up by the historian Frederic William Maitland, who described Liebermann as “a Sherlock Holmes of today” and the Gesetze as “the best work that has hitherto been done on historical materials of a similar kind.”

Jewish themes surface only occasionally in Liebermann’s writings, yet their appearance suggests that he saw his religious and professional identities as complementary. For instance, in a lecture to the Jewish Historical Society of England, he suggested that Jews should take pride in the fact that “the gem so honored by [England's] greatest king, the founder of the English constitution, as Alfred was called in the twelfth century, was the Mosaic law.” More pointedly, he did not hesitate to harshly and publicly criticize those who concealed anti-Jewish sentiments behind a facade of disinterested scholarship, such as the historian J. M. Rigg, who suggested a factual basis for the medieval “blood libel” legend. Though Liebermann took pride in his Jewishness, it nonetheless had significant consequences for his career. In Germany, he never received a full university appointment, while in England he was mocked as “Stubbs’s Jew” (a reference to his friendship with Bishop William Stubbs) and denied a Cambridge professorship, ostensibly because of an otherwise-unattested stutter. Though Liebermann himself died in 1925, well before Hitler came to power, others in his family felt the full brunt of Nazi anti-Semitism. In 1938, the Liebermann family, including Felix’s widow Cäcilie, saw their home and possessions confiscated. Five years later, Cäcilie would die just weeks before she was to be deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp. Shortly afterwards, Martha Liebermann, widow of Felix’s brother, the modernist painter Max Liebermann, committed suicide to avoid the same fate.

The history of Liebermann and his family furnishes part of the backdrop against which to read the dedication in the Leges Anglo-Saxonum; the rest must be filled in from the life of Eckhardt himself. Eckhardt was born in 1901 into a family of lawyers and judges. He completed a doctorate in law at Marburg in 1922 and then went on to study Germanic history at Göttingen. His editions of medieval lawbooks earned him a reputation for both brilliance and productivity that led to faculty positions at Keil, Bonn, and Berlin. At the same time, however, he was also growing more engaged with right-wing politics. He joined the SA in 1931, the Nazi Party in 1932, and the SS in 1933. By 1934, he had become a member of Himmler’s personal staff. In this capacity, Eckhardt oversaw the expulsion of Jewish academics from German universities, developed policies penalizing students who spoke out against the regime, and ghost-wrote speeches on Himmler’s behalf, most notably his 1936 address calling for the extermination of homosexuals. Eckhardt also composed a number of pseudo-scholarly pamphlets on topics of interest to Himmler, including ancient Germanic mysticism and the question of whether Jesus was actually Jewish (Eckhardt concluded that he wasn’t). When war came, he was drafted into the army and posted to Paris, where he spent his time carrying out research in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Though briefly imprisoned in 1944-5, he was deemed too insignificant for prosecution. Eckhardt returned to scholarly life and, over the next twenty-five years, published a series of influential editions — most notably of the Lex Salica and the Schwabenspiegel — that confirmed the promise of his early career. He died in 1979.

Eckhardt has often been spoken of as two people, the scholar and the Nazi, but it can be difficult to separate the two. He frequently twisted his scholarship to support his political views, as when he argued (in an essay titled “Unnatural Sex Deserves Death”) that ancient Germanic law offered legal precedent for the execution of homosexuals. Likewise, even in his serious scholarship, he often sought to emphasize the purity of Germanic law and its freedom from the taint of Jewish influence (a notable contrast to the pride Liebermann took in the Mosaic influence on Alfred’s laws).

In this light, it is difficult to escape the impression that Eckhardt was using Liebermann’s memory to innoculate himself against his own history. Association with Liebermann allowed him to claim a scholarly pedigree while dismissing the implication that his political record reflected anything more than dedicated (if misguided) patriotism. Yet how should Eckhardt’s history — along with his attempts to erase that history — affect our perception of his scholarship? We cannot simply avoid Eckhardt: like it or not, his serious historical work is too important to dismiss out of hand. But Eckhardt’s history still raises uncomfortable questions: how might our research — and indeed, the shape of early medieval legal history as a discipline — have been influenced, albeit unconsciously, by Eckhardt’s noxious ideology? And is our use of his work, however necessary it may be, complicit in his attempt to erase his involvement in one of the twentieth century’s greatest atrocities?

If Borges was right and every library is a labyrinth, then inside every library lurks a monster. In my library, the monster is Karl August Eckhardt.

Andrew Rabin is an associate professor of English at the University of Louisville. He has published extensively on early medieval law and literature. His next book, The Political Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan of York, will be published this fall by Manchester University Press. He is a forthcoming contributor to Oxford Bibliographies in British and Irish Literature.

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The long journey to Stonewall

By Nancy C. Unger

When I was invited by the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco to participate in its month-long program “The LGBT Journey,” I was a bit overwhelmed by all the possibilities. I’ve been teaching “Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.” since 2002, and my enthusiasm for the subject grows every time the course is offered. It’s a passion shared by my students. They never sigh and say, “Gay and lesbian history again?”

But what to present in only forty-five minutes? My most recent scholarship examines lesbian alternative environments in the 1970s and 1980s. In the end, though, I decided to make a larger point. For many people, LGBTQ American history begins with the Stonewall Riots in 1969, so I determined to use this opportunity to talk about the history of same-sex desire that is as old as this nation.

To briefly develop that fascinating history, I touch on some of the sodomy trials in the colonial period, in which communities were surprisingly tolerant of men who were well known for seeking sexual contact with other men. I note women in early America who passed as men, often marrying other women, and develop the difficulty in determining if these were lesbians — or simply women who had no other way to earn a living wage, vote, walk the streets unescorted, and enjoy independence and autonomy. Those same questions also apply to the Boston Marriages that began forming in the late 1800s. Professional women (many of whom graduated from the new, elite women’s colleges in the Boston area) entered into lifelong partnerships with other women. Certainly, some were lesbian. But, like passing as a man, being with a person of the same sex is what allowed a woman to have a career, to travel, to enjoy all the independence that came with not being a subservient wife.

Boston Marriages and same-sex intimate friendships became less socially acceptable with increasing public awareness of same-sex desires. The “medicalization” of those desires began in 1870s and 80s, with the term “homosexual” coming into being around 1892. Same-sex sexual behavior acquired a name — and was defined as deviant. Arrests of men begin to increase. And with the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt in 1901, homosexuality became unpatriotic and un-American. As Kevin Murphy develops in Political Manhood, in 1907 Roosevelt warned Harvard undergraduates against becoming “too fastidious, too sensitive to take part in the rough, hurly-burly of the actual work of the world.” He cautioned that “the weakling and coward are out of place in a strong and free community.” The “mollycoddle” Roosevelt warned against was sufficiently similar to emerging definitions of the male homosexual that the two were often conflated, and used to marginalize and stigmatize certain men as weak, cowardly, sissy, and potentially disloyal.

Environmentalists, denounced as being anti-progress, were ridiculed as “short haired women and long haired men.” John Muir, for example, was lampooned as both effeminate and impotent. He was depicted in drag on the front page of the San Francisco Call in 1909 for his efforts to sweep back the waters flooding Hetch Hetchy Valley.

John Muir lampooned for being effeminate in a San Francisco Call cartoon from December 13, 1909. Public domain via the Library of Congress.

Gay men and lesbians operated under a variety of burdens: religious, legal, medical, economic, and social. So how did we get to Stonewall and beyond? Out of changes wrought by World War II and the Cold War came a number of early organizations and challenges to homophobia.

In 1957 it occurred to psychologist Evelyn Hooker that all of the big medical studies on the pathology of the homosexual were based on gay men hospitalized for depression. Her report, “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual” demonstrated that, despite pervasive homophobia, most self-identified homosexuals were no worse in social adjustment than the general population. Her work was an important step towards the American Psychiatric Association’s decision in 1973 to remove homosexuality from its list of illnesses.

Frank Kameny was a World War II combat veteran who earned his PhD in astronomy at Harvard in 1956. In the middle of the Cold War and the nascent space race, astronomers were at a premium. Kameny, however, was terminated from his position in the US army map service when his arrest on a lewd conduct charge was uncovered. He took his case all the way to the Supreme Court in 1961, but lost. As John D’Emilio notes in Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, Kameny urged his gay brothers and sisters in 1964 to quit debating whether homosexuality is caused by nature or nurture: “I do not see the NAACP and CORE worrying about which chromosome and gene produced a black skin, or about the possibility of bleaching the Negro [as the solution to racism]. I do not see any great interest on the part of the B’nai B’rith Anti-defamation League in the possibility of solving problems of anti-Semitism by converting Jews to Christians . . . We are interested in obtaining rights for our respective minorities as Negroes, as Jews, and as Homosexuals. Why we are Negroes, Jews, or Homosexuals is totally irrelevant, and whether we can be changed to Whites, Christians, or Heterosexuals is equally irrelevant . . . I take the stand that not only is homosexuality. . . not immoral, but that homosexual acts engaged in by consenting adults are moral, in a positive and real sense, and are right, good, and desirable, both for the individual participants and for the society in which they live.” In 1965 Kameny organized the picketing of the White House to protest homophobia in the government.

Clearly, queer American history did not begin with the Stonewall Riots. It’s a history of oppression that spans several centuries, but also an inspiring story of people fighting for equal rights and acceptance for all Americans.

Nancy C. Unger is Professor of History at Santa Clara University. Her publications include Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer and Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History. You can follow her on Facebook and listen to her CSPAN lecture on the subject.

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Holocaust fatigue and the will to remember

By Arlene Stein

If talk of the Holocaust was in the air when I was growing up in the 1970s I was barely aware of it, even in New York City which was home to a large Jewish population, many of whom were Holocaust survivors. We did not learn about the Holocaust in school, even in lessons about World War II, or about the waves of immigration to America’s shores. There was barely a category of experience called “the Holocaust.” The genocide of European Jewry was generally subsumed under talk of “the war.” A patchwork memorial culture was forming, but it was modest, somber, locally-based, and generally not seen as relevant to non-Jewish Americans. In encounters with family and neighbors in the early postwar years, survivors often felt misunderstood, unrecognized, and even shamed.

Today, in contrast, the genocide of European Jewry is a frequent subject of Hollywood films and part of US high school curricula. Our losses are much less private; now they have a name and a hulking museum in our nation’s capital. Few in the West would deny that remembering the Holocaust is one of our responsibilities as human citizens.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Bridges by Cumulus Clouds. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

A number of historians have shown how American Jewish organizations gradually came to recognize the Holocaust and call for its public commemoration. But what of the efforts of survivors and their children? Paradoxically, they have been left out of such histories.

Interviews with survivors and descendants, and my own experiences, suggest that children of survivors were instrumental in bringing Holocaust stories into the public sphere. For decades after the war, few survivors talked openly about what they had endured, fearing that others did not want to hear, and trying to protect their children. That changed in the 1970s, when their children moved into adulthood. Influenced by feminism, the ethnic revival, and therapeutic culture, they began to probe their parents’ pasts, bringing their private stories of trauma into public view. In families where so many ghosts shared the dinner table, this was exceedingly difficult to do. Building a Holocaust memorial culture entailed a great deal of work: emotional, material, and political.

But even today, in the midst of a robust memorial culture, the Holocaust remains forbidden territory. We distance ourselves from it, bathing it in Hollywood homilies to the power of human kindness. We draw boundaries around it, housing it in concrete structures, hoping to contain it. A sense of fatigue seems to be setting in: many Jewish Americans yearn to be an ethnic and religious group defined by foods and ritual customs, rather than by pain and suffering.

A number of years ago, I sat in Carnegie Hall listening to the Klezmatics meld the music of the shtetl with contemporary folk. They had performed a song in Yiddish that spoke of the genocide in a small Polish town. As one of the performers translated the lyrics for the audience, a man sitting in front of me turned to his wife and said facetiously, “Oh that’s very uplifting.” It jarred his sense of what is suitable to perform in public, and what constituted entertainment.

More and more, one hears ambivalence about the fact that the genocide has emerged as a core element of Jewish identity. Like other Americans, Jews wish to move on from traumatic pasts. As sociologist Nancy Berns writes: “Closure offers order and predictability instead of ambiguity and uncertainty.” It allows us to “get on with our lives” and resume expectations of productivity and forward trajectories.

Yad Vashem Hall of Names by David Shankbone. CC BY-SA 3.0 via

The permanent association of Jewish identity with victimization is highly problematic, to be sure. Jews, particularly in the United States, are no longer collectively powerless, even if they consistently perceive anti-Semitism to be more endemic to American society than public opinion polls say it is.

For much of the world the continued strife in the Middle East and Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories captured in 1967 diminishes Jewish claims to moral authority and sympathy on the basis of past suffering. So do specious Holocaust analogies, such the recent claim by private equity titan Stephen A. Schwartzman that asking financiers to pay taxes at the same rate as those who work for a living is comparable to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

Still, those who say that the past is behind us and that we need to move on fail to appreciate what a hard-won accomplishment Holocaust consciousness was, how much resistance those who tried to speak openly about the genocide often encountered during the first decades after World War II, and how important it has been for survivors and their children to finally be able to share their stories. In this light, the call for Jews to stop talking so much about their tragic past may be awfully premature.

Arlene Stein is Professor of Sociology at Rutgers and the author of Reluctant Witnesses: Survivors, Their Children, and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, The Forward, and Jacobin, among other publications.

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Musicians with homonymic names

By Matthew Hough

There are many cases of musicians with homonymic names, including jazz performers Bill Evans (pianist, 1929-1980) and Bill Evans (saxophonist, 1958-), and composers John Adams and John Luther Adams. In the following paragraphs, I discuss musical examples by artists comprising three such pairs.

Nancy Wilson and Nancy Wilson

Nancy Wilson – “Guess Who I Saw Today” (1960)

The arrangement here works for me: no real solos and clearly defined instrumental roles, including the absence of the piano during the bridge (1:56-2:29). Wilson’s performance, particularly the memorable way she sings the cascading titular line at 1:01 and 2:31, is stunning.

Heart – “Stranded” (1990)

Nancy Wilson sings a powerful lead vocal on this track from Heart’s Brigade album (produced by Richie Zito, who also produced Cheap Trick’s “The Flame” and Bad English’s “When I See You Smile”). The chorus features one of the great uses of the I-V-ii-IV pattern, evoking the chorus of Peter Frampton’s “Baby, I Love Your Way” (with which “Stranded” shares the key of G major following the half step “pump-up” modulation at 2:55).

 
Patti Smith and Patty Smyth

Patti Smith – “Free Money” (1975)

From her first album Horses (produced by John Cale of the original Velvet Undergound), this track features Smith’s distinctive mix of song and spoken word. I enjoy Smith’s vocalizations as well as the arrangement, which features a somewhat gradual buildup of instrumental forces. The accompaniment begins with piano; the bass and drums enter at 0:30 and rhythm guitars at 0:48. A double time feel begins at 1:01, followed by an uneasy, repeating eighth note gesture in the drums beginning at 1:33. Additional vocal tracks enter at 2:24 and a lead guitar comes in at 3:08.

Scandal – “Goodbye To You” (1982)

Featuring lead vocals by Patty Smyth, this song preceded Scandal’s bigger 1984 hit “The Warrior.” (Both became karaoke staples long ago.) The background vocals on this track are nicely placed in 1:18-1:31 and 2:48-2:56. The decision to elide Smyth’s voice with the synth lead beginning at 1:48 provides a smooth transition into the solo section, which ends with what are possibly my favorite two seconds of the song, from 2:19-2:21.

 
“Papa” Jo Jones and “Philly” Joe Jones

Jo Jones Trio – “When Your Lover Has Gone” (1958)

Also featuring Ray Bryant (piano) and Tommy Bryant (bass), this track features Jones’ uniquely colorful cymbal playing. I especially enjoy Jones’ contribution during the last chorus, beginning at 2:32.

Sonny Clark Trio – “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” (1957)

With “Philly” Joe Jones (drums) and Paul Chambers (bass). Jones is in top form here with pianist Sonny Clark and frequent rhythm section mate Paul Chambers. The group’s interplay during Chambers’ solo (2:31-3:21) is particularly engaging, as Jones and Clark create a subtle interplay within the accompaniment.

Have you ever confused musicians or artists with similar names? Tell us about it in the comments below!

Matthew Hough is a composer, guitarist and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. His music can be heard on Original Abstractions and is published by Hough House. He is also a Grove Music Online contributor. You can follow him on Twitter at @houghmatthew.

Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

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Is Islamic history in danger of becoming irrelevant?

By Paul Cobb

Recently the jihadist insurgent group formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) underwent a re-branding of sorts when one of its leaders, known by the sobriquet Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was proclaimed caliph by the group’s members. In keeping with the horizonless pretentions that such a title theoretically conveys, the group dropped their geographical focus and embraced a more universalist outlook, .

As a few observers have noted, the title of caliph comes freighted with a long and complicated history. That history begins in the seventh century AD, when the title was adopted to denote those leaders of the Muslim community who were recognized as the Prophet Muhammad’s “successors”— not prophets themselves of course, but men who were expected, in the Prophet’s absence, to know how to guide the community spiritually as well as politically. Later in the medieval period, classical Islamic political theory sought to carefully define the pool from which caliphs might be drawn and to stipulate specific criteria that a caliph must possess, such as lineage, probity, moral standing and so on. Save for his most ardent followers, Muslims have found al-Baghdadi — with his penchant for Rolex watches and theatrical career reinventions — sorely wanting in such caliphal credentials.

He’s not the only one of course. Over the span of Islamic history, the title of caliph has been adopted by numerous (and sometimes competing) dynasties, rebels, and pretenders. The last ruler to bear the title in any significant way was the Ottoman Abdülmecid II, who lost the title when he was exiled in 1924. And even then it was an honorific supported only by myths of Ottoman legitimacy. But it’s doubtful that al-Baghdadi gives the Ottomans much thought. For he is really tapping into a much more recent dream of reviving the caliphate embraced by various Islamist groups since the early 20th century, who saw it as a precondition for reviving the Muslim community or to combat Western imperialism. Al-Baghdadi’s caliphate is thus a modern confection, despite its medieval trappings.

That an Islamic fundamentalist (to use a contested term of its own) like al-Baghdadi should make an appeal to the past to legitimate himself, and that he should do so without any thoughtful reference to Islamic history, is of course the most banal of observations to make about his activities, or about those of any fundamentalist. And perhaps that is the most interesting point about this episode. For the utterly commonplace nature of examples like al-Baghdadi’s clumsy claim to be caliph suggest that Islamic history today is in danger of becoming irrelevant.

Caliph Abdulmecid II, the last Caliph before Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

This is not because Islamic history has no bearing upon the present Islamic world, but because present-day agendas that make use of that history prefer to cherry-pick, deform, and obliterate the complicated bits to provide easy narratives for their own ends. Al-Baghdadi’s claim, for example, leaps over 1400 years of more nuanced Islamic history in which the institution of the caliphate shaped Muslim lives in diverse ways, and in which regional upstarts had little legitimate claim. But he is hardly alone in avoiding inconvenient truths — contemporary comment on Middle Eastern affairs routinely employs the same strategy.

We can see just such a history-shy approach in coverage of the sectarian conflicts between Shi’i and Sunni Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, Pakistan, and elsewhere. The struggle between Sunnis and Shi’ites, we are usually told, has its origins in a contest over religious authority in the seventh century between the partisans of the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law ‘Ali and those Muslims who believed the incumbent caliphs of the day were better guides and leaders for the community. And so Shi’ites and Sunnis, we are led to believe, have been fighting ever since. It is as if the past fourteen centuries of history, with its record of coexistence, migrations, imperial designs, and nation-building have no part in the matter, to say nothing of the past century or less of authoritarian regimes, identity-politics, and colonial mischief.

We see the inconvenient truths of Islamic history also being ignored in the widespread discourse of crusading and counter-crusading that occasionally infects comment on contemporary conflicts, as if holy war is the default mode for Muslims fighting non-Muslims or vice-versa. When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi can wrap himself in black robes and proclaim himself Caliph Ibrahim of the Islamic State, when seventh-century conflicts seem like thorough explanations for twenty-first century struggles, or when a terrorist and mass-murderer like the Norwegian Anders Breivik can see himself as a latter-day Knight Templar, then we are sadly living in a world in which the medieval is allowed to seep uncritically into the contemporary as a way to provide easy answers to very complicated problems.

But we should be wary of such easy answers. Syria and Iraq will not be saved by a caliph. And crusaders would have found the motivations of today’s empire-builders sickening. History properly appreciated should instead lead us to acknowledge the specificity, and indeed oddness, of our modern contexts and the complexity of our contemporary motivations. It should, one hopes, lead to that conclusion reached famously by Mark Twain: that history doesn’t repeat itself, even if sometimes it rhymes.

Paul M. Cobb is Chair and Professor of Islamic History in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania.  He is the translator of The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades and has written a number of other works, most recently The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades.

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Image credit: Caliph Abdulmecid II, by the Library of Congress. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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10 questions for Ammon Shea

Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club. The Bryant Park Reading Room offers free copies of book club selections while supply lasts, compliments of Oxford University Press, and guest speakers lead the group in discussion. On Tuesday 5 August 2014, Ammon Shea, author of Reading the OED and Bad English, leads a discussion on Shakespeare’s King Lear.

What was your inspiration for Bad English?

I am often guilty of spectacular incompetence when I try to use the English language, and I wanted to find some justification for my poor usage. I am happy to report that we have all been committing unseemly acts with English for many hundreds of years.

Where do you do your best writing?

In library basements, preferably when they are empty of people.

Did you have an “a-ha!” moment that made you want to be a writer?

I hadn’t so much of an ‘a-ha’ moment that made me want to be a writer as I had a series of ‘uh-oh’ moments while doing other things that did not involve writing.

Which author do you wish had been your 7th grade English teacher?

Gerald Durrell

What is your secret talent?

I can distinguish between Sonny Stitt and Charlie Parker, and between Phil Woods and Gene Quill, in under four measures.

What is your favorite book?

Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal.

Who reads your first draft?

My wife reads my first drafts, and, if she is feeling particularly generous, my second and third ones as well.

Do you read your books after they’ve been published?

Not unless I absolutely have to.

Do you prefer writing on a computer or longhand?

I have no marked preference. I will write on whatever is at hand, and this ranges from cellular telephones to antiquated typewriters.

What book are you currently reading? (And is it in print or on an e-Reader?)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with my son, and in print.

What word or punctuation mark are you most guilty of overusing?

I reject the premise of this question.

If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?

Someone who wished he was a writer.

Ammon Shea is the author of Bad English, Reading the OED, The Phone Book, Depraved English (with Peter Novobatzky), and Insulting English (with Peter Novobatzky). He has worked as consulting editor of American dictionaries at Oxford University Press, and as a reader for the North American reading program of the Oxford English Dictionary. He lives in New York City with his wife (a former lexicographer), son (a potential future lexicographer), and two non-lexical dogs.

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. You can follow Oxford World’s Classics on Twitter and Facebook. Read previous interviews with Word for Word Book Club guest speakers.

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Image couresty of Jenny Davidson.

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The HSA/HRA response to Hobby Lobby

By Edward Zelinsky

Few recent decisions of the US Supreme Court have engendered as much controversy as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. In that case, the Court decided that a closely-held corporation’s employer-sponsored medical plan need not provide contraception if the shareholders of such corporation object to contraception on religious grounds.

Responding to the resulting controversy, Senator Patty Murray, along with many of her Democratic colleagues, has proposed legislation to overturn Hobby Lobby. Senators Kelly Ayotte and Deb Fischer, along with many of their Republican colleagues, have introduced legislation confirming Hobby Lobby. In the current political environment, there is little chance of either bill becoming law any time soon.

However, there is a response to Hobby Lobby which would address the concerns of both contraception advocates and of religious objectors to contraception. In particular, any employer which objects to providing birth control should instead be required to fund for its employees independently-administered health savings accounts (HSAs) or health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs). An HSA or HRA permits the covered employee to spend employer-provided, pre-tax health care dollars on any medical service the employee chooses, from birth control to an MRI, without implicating the employer in the employee’s spending decision.

The HSA/HRA alternative respects the religious rights of sponsoring employers. With conventional insurance or self-insured health plans, the sponsoring employer’s plan provides a menu of choices which frames the employees’ decisions. In contrast, the HSA/HRA approach permits employees to spend health care dollars on whatever medical services employees select including services to which the employer objects – without the employer’s plan framing the employees’ choices. HSAs and HRAs are thus like cash wages which, when spent by the employee, do not entail participation by the employer.

Justice Alito’s Hobby Lobby opinion identifies two other possible ways to provide contraception services without violating the rights of objecting employers. First, HHS might extend to closely-held for-profit firms the regulatory accommodation now limited to religious nonprofit entities other than churches. Under this accommodation, insurers or third-party administrators provide employees with contraception at no cost to the religious employer. Alternatively, the federal government might itself make birth control available to women who lack contraception coverage from their employer-sponsored health plans.

Commentators have expressed reservations about both these approaches. Some women’s health groups argue that a federal program will stigmatize the women who receive their contraception from such a program. Moreover, the problems of the Department of Veterans Affairs suggest the need for skepticism about the federal government as a provider of medical services. A number of religious groups contend that the current regulatory accommodation for religious employers does not go far enough and still makes employers participate in the provision of birth control to which they object.

In light of these concerns, HSAs and HRAs are compelling alternatives. HSAs and HRAs are analogous to cash wages which the employee spends as he chooses. Such accounts can assure women of the ability to obtain contraception which they seek with employer-provided, pre-tax health care dollars without burdening the religious beliefs of employers who object to involvement with contraception.

Suppose, for example, that Hobby Lobby is required to establish for each of its employees an HSA or HRA administered by the company’s bank. A Hobby Lobby employee could submit receipts to the bank for any type of medical care the employee selects. The employee would subsequently receive from the bank a reimbursement check for this care from his or her HSA/HRA account. Alternatively, HSA/HRA debit cards have become popular devices. These cards allow a covered employee to swipe when receiving health care services with the card.

These accounts could be used by each employee to defray any medical expense the employee elects including, but not limited to, the kinds of contraception to which the employer objects. However, the employer would not be complicit in the employee’s medical choices just as the employee does not participate in an employee’s decision to spend her wages on something with which the employer disagrees.

The HSA/HRA approach potentially has political legs. HHS (along with the Departments of the Treasury and Labor) could adopt regulations implementing this approach. Conservatives like HSAs and HRAs since these accounts implement a consumer-driven approach to health care. Liberals want to assure employees of contraception even if employers object to contraception. The HSA/HRA response to Hobby Lobby thus has bi-partisan appeal and is a compelling compromise as a matter of law and public policy.

Edward A. Zelinsky is the Morris and Annie Trachman Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. He is the author of The Origins of the Ownership Society: How The Defined Contribution Paradigm Changed America. His monthly column appears on the OUPblog.

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Image credit: Doctor With Piggy Bank. Photo by prosot-photography, iStockphoto.

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A decade of change: producing books in a digital world

Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) launched in 2003 with 700 titles. Now, on its tenth birthday, it’s the online home of over 10,000 titles from Oxford University Press’s distinguished academic list, and part of University Press Scholarship Online. To celebrate OSO turning ten, we’ve invited a host of people to reflect on the past ten years of online academic publishing, and what the next ten might bring.

By Kathleen Fearn

It may be hard for some of us here at Oxford University Press to imagine a life without Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO), but even though it has reached the grand old age of 10 years old, it is still only a baby in comparison with some of our other venerable institutions. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary first published in 1884, 130 years ago, and the Oxford Almanack 340 years ago in 1674; even our celebrated duck pond is almost 200 years old. OUP employees in our Great Clarendon Street building are used to bumping into history in the most unexpected corners; my most recent find has been the story of the Oxford University Press Voluntary Fire Contingency, our very own fire brigade formed in 1885, with photos and artefacts displayed in a cabinet created from the space previously used to store the fire hoses. We even have an OUP Museum, open to the public (by appointment) and well worth a visit.

Yet even though OSO has existed for only a decade among centuries, for those of us working on book production, it has been a time of unprecedented change. My career at OUP began in 2006, when OSO was in its infancy, and my first impression of the office was, well, that I couldn’t see very much of it beneath the piles and piles of paper: manuscripts, galley proofs, first proofs, second proofs, final proofs, on desks, shelves, often even on the floor. At each stage of production, we diligently photocopied the pile just in case the courier should misplace our precious bundle. Production Editors faced the constant health hazard of paper cuts, to be feared only a little less than that dread moment when the padded envelope containing the author’s proofs splits on opening, sending an explosion of sticky grey dust over desk, floor, and clothes. The end of the production process came with the delivery of a box of (hopefully) pristine advance copies and the eventual recycling of a wall or two of our paper fortress.

The development of digital publishing was, of course, well under way, and as more and more modules were added to OSO, the production teams began to get involved in the delivery of titles online. We have worked from the start to create our online content using XML, and although the words and spaces on the screen may be the same as those in the print book, there’s actually an awful lot going on behind the scenes, as it were. Abstracts and keywords, for example, make it much easier for the reader to find what they’re looking for online, and these, together with other bits of metadata generated during the publication process, make it possible to link up each title with other relevant resources. One of our biggest challenges was, and to some extent still is, making sure that what works in a print book also works on a PC – and now on a tablet or mobile phone too. There’s no point in referring a reader to a picture overleaf when there are no pages to turn, and it’s not at all easy to create working cross-references using that old print standard, ibid.

During OSO’s life, the days of paper in the office have also passed. If you visit us today, it’s a lot easier to spot the team at their desks, as most of the production processes are now carried out on-screen. (Since we’re enjoying the benefits of a paper-light life, we’re glad that OSO readers can also save those 400 metres of shelf space freed up by reading online.) And although we still look forward to opening those advance copies, we don’t stop there, as we’ll often also be delivering the same content as an e-book and for online publication. No one knows exactly what the digital world will look like when OSO reaches its twentieth birthday, but even if our paper proofs have been consigned to the museum with the hot metal typesetting, we’ll still be producing great OUP content in whatever format our readers want and need.

Kathleen Fearn is the Content Operations Manager for Oxford University Press’s Law, Academic, and Trade books in the UK.

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Image: Urval av de böcker som har vunnit Nordiska rådets litteraturpris under de 50 år som priset funnits by Johannes Jansson/norden.org. CC-BY-2.5-dk via Wikimedia Commons.

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The month that changed the world: Tuesday, 4 August 1914

July 1914 was the month that changed the world. On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, and just five weeks later the Great Powers of Europe were at war. But how did it all happen? Historian Gordon Martel, author of The Month That Changed The World: July 1914, has been blogging regularly for us over the past few weeks, giving us a week-by-week and day-by-day account of the events that led up to the First World War. This is the final installment.

By Gordon Martel

At 6 a.m. in Brussels the Belgian government was informed that German troops would be entering Belgian territory. Later that morning the German minister assured them that Germany remained ready to offer them ‘the hand of a brother’ and to negotiate a modus vivendi. But the basis for any agreement must include the opening of the fortress of Liege to the passage of German troops and a Belgian promise not to destroy railways and bridges.

At the same time the British government was protesting against Germany’s intention to violate Belgian neutrality and requesting from the Belgian government ‘an assurance that the demand made upon Belgium will not be proceeded with, and that her neutrality will be respected by Germany’.

In Berlin they had already anticipated British objections. The German ambassador in London was instructed to ‘dispel any mistrust’ by repeating, positively and formally, that Germany would not, under any pretence, annex Belgian territory. He was to impress upon Sir Edward Grey the reasons for Germany’s decision: they had ‘absolutely unimpeachable’ information that France was planning to attack through Belgium. Germany thus had no choice but to violate Belgian neutrality because it was for them a matter ‘of life or death’.

The assurance was received in London at almost the same moment that the Foreign Office received news that German troops had begun their advance into Belgium.

Two of the four cabinet ministers who had threatened to resign now changed their minds: the news that the Germans had entered Belgium and announced that they would ‘push their way through by force of arms’ had simplified matters.

Crowds outside Buckingham Palace after war was declared. Imperial War Museums. IWM Non Commercial Licence via Wikimedia Commons.

At 10.30 a.m. Grey instructed the British minister in Brussels that Britain expected the Belgians to resist any German pressure to induce them to depart from their neutrality ‘by any means in their power’. The British government would support them in their resistance and was prepared to join France and Russia in immediately offering to the Belgian government ‘an alliance’ for the purpose of resisting the use of force by Germany against them, along with a guarantee to maintain Belgian independence and integrity in future years.

At 2 p.m. Grey instructed the ambassador in Berlin to repeat the request he had made last week and again this morning that the German government assure him that it would respect Belgian neutrality. A satisfactory reply was required by midnight, Central European time. If this were not received in time the ambassador was to request his passports and to tell the German government that ‘His Majesty’s Government feel bound to take all steps in their power to uphold the neutrality of Belgium and the observance of a Treaty to which Germany is as much a party as ourselves’.

Before the ambassador could present these demands, the German chancellor addressed the Reichstag, making a long, impassioned speech defending the government’s decision to go to war:

‘A terrible fate is breaking over Europe. For forty-four years, since the time we fought for and won the German Empire and our position in the world, we have lived in peace and protected the peace of Europe. During this time of peace we have become strong and powerful, arousing the envy of others. We have patiently faced the fact that, under the pretence that Germany was warlike, enmity was aroused against us in the East and the West, and chains were fashioned for us.’

A defence of German diplomacy during the crisis followed. Russia alone had failed to agree to ‘localize’ the crisis, to contain it to one that concerned only Austria and Serbia. Germany had warmly supported efforts to mediate the dispute and the Kaiser had engaged the Tsar in a personal correspondence to join him in resolving the differences between Russia and Austria. But Russia had chosen to mobilize all of her forces directed against Austria even though Austria had mobilized only against Serbia. And then Russia had chosen to mobilize all of her forces, leaving Germany with no choice but to mobilize as well.

France had evaded giving a clear answer to the question of whether it would remain neutral in the event of war between Russia and Germany. And then, in spite of promises to keep mobilized French forces 10 kilometres from the frontier with Germany ‘Aviators dropped bombs, and cavalry patrols and French infantry detachments appeared on the territory of the Empire!’

It was true that Germany’s decision to enter Belgium was a violation of international law, but there was no choice: ‘A French attack on our flank on the lower Rhine might have been disastrous’. And Germany would set right the wrong once ‘our military aims have been attained’.

‘We are fighting for the fruits of our works of peace, for the inheritance of a great past and for our future. The fifty years are not yet past during which Count Moltke said we should have to remain armed to defend the inheritance that we won in 1870. Now the great hour of trial has struck for our people. But with clear confidence we go forward to meet it. Our army is in the field, our navy is ready for battle–, and behind them stands the entire German nation– the entire German nation united to the last man.’

At almost the same moment Poincaré was addressing the French Chamber of Deputies. But indirectly, as the constitution prohibited the president from addressing the deputies directly. The minister of justice read his speech for him:

‘France has just been the object of a violent and premeditated attack, which is an insolent defiance of the law of nations. Before any declaration of war had been sent to us, even before the German Ambassador had asked for his passports, our territory has been violated.’….

‘Since the ultimatum of Austria opened a crisis which threatened the whole of Europe, France has persisted in following and in recommending on all sides a policy of prudence, wisdom, and moderation. To her there can be imputed no act, no movement, no word, which has not been peaceful and conciliatory.’….

‘In the war which is beginning, France will have Right on her side, the eternal power of which cannot with impunity be disregarded by nations any more than by individuals. She will be heroically defended by all her sons; nothing will break their sacred union before the enemy; today they are joined together as brothers in a common indignation against the aggressor, and in a common patriotic faith.’

‘Haut les coeurs et vive la France!’

At Buckingham palace at 10.45 the king had convened a meeting of the Privy Council for the purpose of authorizing the declaration of war. They waited for 11 p.m. to come, and when Big Ben struck they were at war. Meanwhile people had begun gathering outside the palace. When news began to spread throughout the crowd that war had been declared the excitement mounted; and when the king, the queen, and their eldest son appeared on the balcony ‘the cheering was terrific.’

By the end of the day five of the six Great Powers of Europe were at war, along with Serbia and Belgium. Diplomacy had failed. The tragedy had begun.

Gordon Martel is a leading authority on war, empire, and diplomacy in the modern age. His numerous publications include studies of the origins of the first and second world wars, modern imperialism, and the nature of diplomacy. A founding editor of The International History Review, he has taught at a number of Canadian universities, and has been a visiting professor or fellow in England, Ireland and Australia. Editor-in-chief of the five-volume Encyclopedia of War, he is also joint editor of the longstanding Seminar Studies in History series. His new book is The Month That Changed The World: July 1914.

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