David W. Tollen's Blog, page 10

Thoughtful, Enthusiastic Review for The Jericho River

The Jericho River continues to receive unusually thoughtful reviews. Click here for a new one from CJ Leger.

And here are some highlights:

The creation of strange creatures and mythical environments is extremely creative and portrays a talented David Tollen with an imagination worthy of the silver screen. The book is also fast-paced and action-packed from start to finish …
…a must read for history buffs everywhere who will receive great joy in coming across contextual adventures they’ll surely be familiar with.  

The book is The Jericho River, A Novel About the History of Western Civilization …

Star Wars and History: Samurai and Nazis

~ This is the last of a six-post series called Star Wars and History. ~

Samurai with faceplate

Star Wars draws on history for its look and feel as much as for its plot choices. In particular, the samurai of Medieval and early modern Japan contribute their style both to good guys and bad buys. Darth Vader’s armor looks like a night black, plastic version of samurai armor, and the Jedi’s robes have medieval Japanese feel too.

Lightsabers and Jedi duels also harken back to the samurai. Japan produced unusually fine, precisely balanced swords during its medieval period, and the samurai trained their bodies and minds almost to dance with these blades. The lightsaber plays a similar role in the Star Wars universe. “An elegant weapon for a more civilized age,” says Obi-Wan. And like the samurai, the Jedi and the Sith fight with acrobatic skill and grace, thanks to years of training.

The samurai — or at least their 20th Century movies — may have lent Star Wars some plot threads as well. (George Lucas always loved samurai movies, according to online sci-fi pundits.) For instance, in The Hidden Fortress, from 1958, two bickering peasants help a general rescue a princess.

Nazi SS

A far darker specter from the past haunts the Star Wars movies. The Empire’s soldiers have a definite Nazi feel. The officers wear dark uniforms reminiscent of Hitler’s SS, while the foot-soldiers are called stormtroopers: a name for Nazi paramilitary forces. (The German army also used “stormtroopers” — Stoßtruppen — for certain special forces in World War I.)

Of course, everything comes back to Darth Vader. His iconic headgear blends a samurai faceplate with an SS helmet.

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If you like fantasy + history, you’ll love my book, The Jericho River, A Novel About the History of Western Civilization!

Here are the six posts in this series, Star Wars and History:

1. Roman Republic and Empire

2. Fall of the Knights Templar

3. Joseph Campbell and the Urban Myth with a Thousand Faces

4. Father vs. Son in Myth

5. Divine Conception in Myth

6. Samurai and Nazis (above)

See also, Why Sounds Yoda So Archaic?

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Image: Berlin, Kaserne der LSSAH, Vergatterung, 1938, source unknown — provided through Wikimedia Commons

© 2016 by David W. Tollen. All rights reserved.

Star Wars and History: Divine Conception in Myth

~ This is the fifth of a six-post series called Star Wars and History. (See below for a list of the six titles.) ~

Perseus’ mother, Danae, and the golden rain

In The Phantom Menace, we learn that the Force conceived Anakin Skywalker in his mother’s womb, without a father. That divine conception puts him in company with the Buddha, according to some stories, and of course with Jesus Christ, along with a long list of pagan heroes. For instance, in The Secret History of the Mongols, a radiant being descends through the roof of a lady’s yurt and fathers Bodonchar Munkhag, founder of Genghis Khan’s dynasty. And in Greco-Roman myth, Zeus conceives the hero-king Perseus by descending on a virgin as golden rain — while Mars conceives Rome’s Romulus and Remus when his phallus emerges from a sacred fire tended by a virgin priestess.

Anakin’s divine conception (immaculate conception) is an odd plot choice Star Wars, since fate usually has cosmic plans for these miracle children. Prophecy suggests that Anakin will “bring balance to the Force,” but all he really does (as Darth Vader) is assassinate the Emperor, ending a brief period of tyranny. He doesn’t even fully restore the Republic or galactic peace, since civil war continues in The Force Awakens. Anakin’s destiny doesn’t seem to put him up there with the Mongols’ ancestral khan or with Perseus or Romulus, who founded Mycenae and Rome — much less with Jesus Christ or the Buddha. Still, Anakin’s origins make him a mythic hero.

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If you like fantasy + history, you’ll love my book, The Jericho River, A Novel About the History of Western Civilization!

Below are the six posts in this series, Star Wars and History. 3.

1. Roman Republic and Empire

2. Fall of the Knights Templar

3. Joseph Campbell and the Urban Myth with a Thousand Faces

4. Father vs. Son in Myth

5. Divine Conception in Myth (above)

6. Samurai and Nazis

See also, Why Sounds Yoda So Archaic?

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Image: Alexandre Jacques Chantron, Danae, 1891

© 2016 by David W. Tollen. All rights reserved.

Star Wars and History: Father vs. Son in Myth

~ This is the fourth of a six-post series called Star Wars and History . (See below for the six posts’ titles.) ~

Mordred and King Arthur

In The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Luke Skywalker fights his father, Darth Vader. Revenge of the Sith repeats this father vs. son theme when Darth Sidious (Palpatine) reveals that Sith apprentices often kill their masters: their figurative fathers. That aligns Star Wars with a common theme from myth. Many mythic heroes confront and kill their fathers. Mordred, for instance, kills his father, King Arthur (and is killed by him). And of course, the Greeks’ Oedipus kills his father and takes his place as king of Thebes. Gods battle their fathers too, including the titan Cronus, who overthrows — and castrates — his father, Ouranos, the sky god. But a similar fate awaits Cronus; he’s later overthrown by Zeus, his own son.

In Star Wars, Palpatine seems to like the idea that he’ll someday die at his apprentice’s hands. “Darth Vader will become more powerful than either of us,” he tells Yoda (before Vader’s maiming at Obi-Wan’s hands). That fits because the mythic son’s victory confirms the cycle of life and the boy’s coming of age. The father-king fights back, but at some level, he’s proud of his mighty son.

In some myths, the father-son battle goes hand-in-hand with another dark family theme: incest. Oedipus, for instance, marries his mother after killing his father. (He doesn’t know they’re his parents — and when he finds out, he very responsibly gouges his eyes out.) And King Arthur sleeps with his half-sister, Morgause, and fathers Mordred, who as we’ve seen, kills his father. Luke Skywalker’s family struggles aren’t limited to fighting his father either. He’s attracted to Princess Leia from the start, and they kiss — before learning that they’re siblings. So Star Wars captures the spirit of myth by pairing father-son violence with incest — though Lucas does it with a PG rating.

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If you like fantasy + history, you’ll love my book, The Jericho River, A Novel About the History of Western Civilization!

Here are the six posts in this series, Star Wars and History. Numbers 5 and 6 are coming soon.

1. Roman Republic and Empire

2. Fall of the Knights Templar

3. Joseph Campbell and the Urban Myth with a Thousand Faces

4. Father vs. Son in Myth (above)

5. Divine Conception in Myth

6. Samurai and Nazis

See also, Why Sounds Yoda So Archaic? and Why Did So Many of History’s Kings Marry their Sisters?

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Image: Illustration from page 306 of The Boy’s King Arthur: the death of Arthur and Mordred

© 2016 by David W. Tollen. All rights reserved.

Star Wars and History: Joseph Campbell and the Urban Myth with a Thousand Faces

~ This is the third of a six-post series called Star Wars and History. (See below for the six posts’ titles.) ~

In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, mythologist Joseph Campbell argues that the same basic stories and themes appear in all the world’s myths. It’s widely believed that George Lucas built Star Wars around these “monomyth” elements from Campbell. For instance, Campbell says the hero in any myth at first refuses “the call to adventure” but then relents — just as Luke Skywalker refuses Obi-Wan’s invitation to Alderaan, then agrees to join the quest (after finding his aunt and uncle slaughtered). Campbell’s hero also finds a wise mentor — Obi-Wan or Yoda, for Luke — as well as an animal familiar — presumably R2D2. And the myth hero confronts a father figure and must reach atonement with him. Luke, of course, fights Darth Vader, his father, but they reconcile as Vader lies dying, in Return of the Jedi.

Those are just a few of the Campbell myth elements in Star Wars. Go online and search “campbell lucas star wars” and you’ll find many more — several that never crossed George Lucas’ mind, I suspect.

If Lucas did use Campbell’s themes in Star Wars, he apparently wasn’t following a particularly reliable guide to the past. Many historians and mythologists question Campbell’s scholarship, and they don’t consider his myth elements all that universal. It’s a shame, really, since Campbell tells such a great story.

But the fact that Campbell’s themes might not be universal doesn’t mean they have no connection to real myth. So it’s likely The Hero with a Thousand Faces did help Star Wars resonate with all of us, by contributing mythic themes. There’s no doubt that Star Wars tells mythic stories, as we’ll see in this series’ next two posts …

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If you like fantasy + history, you’ll love my book, The Jericho River, A Novel About the History of Western Civilization!

Below are the six posts in this series, Star Wars and History. Numbers 4 through 6 are coming soon.

1. Roman Republic and Empire

2. Fall of the Knights Templar

3. Joseph Campbell and the Urban Myth with a Thousand Faces (above)

4. Son vs. Father and Incest

5. Divine Conception

6. Samurai and Nazis

See also, Why Sounds Yoda So Archaic?

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Image: Crane, Hercules & the Old Man of the Sea, 1910

© 2016 by David W. Tollen. All rights reserved.

Star Wars and History: Fall of the Knights Templar

~ This is the second of a six-post series called Star Wars and History. (See below for the six posts’ titles.) ~

Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon — a.k.a. Templars

In Revenge of the Sith, the Chancellor/Emperor orders the sudden liquidation of the Jedi Order, including an assault on the Jedi Temple. The story models the fall of medieval Europe’s Knights Templar. The Templars were a religious order whose key members were both knights and monks (kind of like the Jedi). They fought in the Crusades and were among Christendom’s most feared warriors. They also became wealthy as pioneers in banking.

France’s King Philip the Fair owed the Templars a fortune, and he wanted to escape their political power. So he ordered the simultaneous arrest of all Templars in the kingdom, on Friday the 13th of October, 1307 (a possible source of our Friday the 13th superstition). The liquidation included a raid on the order’s headquarters, in Paris, called the Temple — as well as hundreds of arrests.

The king accused the Templars of secret rites involving idol worship, homosexuality, and heresy, including spitting on the cross, and he had most of the prisoners tortured and executed. The order’s Grand Master was burnt at the stake. And under pressure from King Philip, the Pope directed Europe’s other monarchs to arrest the Templars in their realms, and he ultimately dissolved the order.

In Star Wars, a few Jedi escape and disappear, including Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobe. The same goes for the Templars. In fact, even in France, it’s likely the majority got away. No one knows what became of them.

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If you like fantasy + history, you’ll love my book, The Jericho River, A Novel About the History of Western Civilization!

Below are the six posts in this series, Star Wars and History. Numbers 3 through 6 are coming soon.

1. Roman Republic and Empire

2. Fall of the Knights Templar (above)

3. Joseph Campbell and the Urban Myth with a Thousand Faces

4. Son vs. Father and Incest

5. Divine Conception

6. Samurai and Nazis

See also, Why Sounds Yoda So Archaic?

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Image: • Knights Templar, source unknown — provided through Wikimedia Commons

© 2016 by David W. Tollen. All rights reserved.

Star Wars and History: Roman Republic and Empire

~ This is the first of a six-post series called Star Wars and History. ~

Caesar Augustus

In Revenge of the Sith, the evil Palpatine transforms the Galactic Republic from the top, creating the Empire without overthrowing the state. Palpatine is already Chancellor, though he’s held office longer than normal, thanks to a civil war. He simply switches his title to Emperor. His authority grows at the expense of the elected Senate, but he leaves the Senate in place, along with the rest of the republican government.

The story parallels ancient Roman history. The first emperor, Augustus, led the Roman Republic as its most powerful magistrate, starting in 27 BCE — with an ever-repeating term of office, thanks to victory in a civil war. Like Palpatine, he centralized power in his own hands at the expense of the Senate, but he didn’t disband the Senate. In fact, he carefully preserved the forms of republican government. Augustus was called imperator, but back then the Latin source of our “emperor” was more an honorific than a title, essentially meaning commander. It wouldn’t clearly refer to a king-like ruler until generations later. In fact, Rome’s early emperors looked more like banana republic dictators than kings (as I point out in The Jericho River).

History turns to urban myth, however, if we imagine Augustus snuffing out democracy, like Palpatine. The Roman Republic was more an aristocratic oligarchy than a democracy. And the switch to an emperor ended decades of predatory rule by the aristocrats and brought the common people peace and security.

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If you like fantasy + history, you’ll love my book, The Jericho River, A Novel About the History of Western Civilization.

Below are the six posts in this series, Star Wars and History. Numbers 2 through 6 are coming soon.

1. Roman Republic and Empire (above)

2. Fall of the Knights Templar

3. Joseph Campbell and the Urban Myth with a Thousand Faces

4. Son vs. Father and Incest

5. Divine Conception

6. Samurai and Nazis

See also, Why Sounds Yoda So Archaic?

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Image: Etienne-Jean Delécluze, The Emperor Augustus Rebuking Cornelius Cinna for His Treachery, 1814, cropped (including to remove Cinna) — provided through VanGoYourself

© 2016 by David W. Tollen. All rights reserved.

Decline on Downton Abbey: Why the Nobles and Gentry Went Broke

Spoiler Alert: This post reveals details of Downton Abbey through Season 6, Episode 1.

On Downton Abbey, Earl Robert repeatedly faces financial trouble. Many of his fellow nobles and gentry face even more dire straits. They cope by selling off their birthrights: castles, houses, treasures, and land. Why do these apparently rich people teeter on the edge of ruin?

The early 20th Century presented two serious problems for Britain’s nobles and gentry. First, their income had been dwarfed by industrial wealth and by the expenses of an industrial society. Second, many could not or would not supplement that income by working.

Industrial Society

Earl Robert’s cousin “Shrimpie” is forced to sell his beautiful castle. (In the real world, this is Inveraray Castle, Scotland.)

Until the 19th Century, Britain was a paradise for landed wealth: for landowners who rented out farmland and did not work. The land-owning nobles and gentry played the dominant role in government, with a lock on the House of Lords and a consistent majority in the House of Commons. Plus, Britain was one of history’s least governed countries. The government didn’t do much, particularly in the countryside — so it didn’t tax much. Thanks to both factors, the nobles and gentry lived almost tax-free.

During the 19th Century, however, Britain became the world’s first industrial society. Power shifted away from the nobles and gentry throughout the century and beyond. In 1911, the House of Lords lost its veto over the lower house: its last key power. And by then industrialists, workers, and the middle classes had seized substantial control over the House of Commons, thanks to the money they controlled and the expansion of voting rights. At the same time, governing and defending an industrial society had become extremely expensive. The result was far higher taxes, particularly once Britain began grappling with the debts of World War I. Industry-focused Parliaments were happy to levy increased taxes on rich land-holders (among others). By the early 20th Century, the nobles and gentry paid crippling death duties and land taxes, as well as high income taxes.

Worse, farm rents — and agriculture itself — had been dwarfed by the riches of industry. So the nobles and gentry faced wealthier competition for high status goods. In other words, the cost of fine living rose, while the relative value of farm rents fell. At the same time, industry and commerce created a competing market for labor, so the cost of servants and farm-workers rose. And World War I killed much of the workforce, from 1914 to 1918, driving labor costs even higher. So the nobles and gentry couldn’t afford the servants and other staff necessary to run their great houses and estates. That’s why rumors of serving-staff reduction stalk Downton Abbey after the war.

For nobles with titles, one solution was to marry an industrialist’s daughter, often from America. The nobleman got a hefty dowry and the industrialist got a viscount or duke for a grandson. That’s how Earl Robert ends up married to Cora, the daughter of a Jewish American businessman. But even that wasn’t always enough because the nobles (and gentry) often did a bad job managing money, and even managing their own estates. Their culture taught few commercial skills. Earl Robert, for instance, only keeps his riches because Matthew Crawley (his distant cousin and heir) applies his middle class skills to running the estate — and comes through with yet another injection of inherited cash.

Many of the nobles and gentry weren’t so lucky.

Leisure Class

Trentham Hall in 1880. Its owner, the Duke of Sutherland, was forced to demolish it in 1912.

In Pride and Prejudice — set around 1800 — the sole indictment of Elizabeth’s uncle Gardiner is that he’s “in trade.” Instead of living a life of leisure while farmers work his land and pay rents, Mr. Gardiner runs a business. Leisure was a mark of status in Britain (unlike in the U.S.), and a landed gentleman could not stoop to work — other than as a soldier or lightly employed clergyman, or in rare cases as an MP or statesman. Even by the 20th Century, the nobles and gentry often couldn’t take jobs to supplement their income — at least, not without losing status.

In Episode 1 of Downton Season 6, Earl Robert’s neighbor is forced to sell his estate. Sir John says that, after the sale, he’ll barely have enough to get by. We’re not given any numbers, but I suspect most of us would consider whatever Sir John has left a hefty nest-egg. It’s just not enough to generate a comfortable lifestyle all by itself. You and I would get a job. But that would humiliate Sir John, and he probably has few marketable skills anyway.

Some nobles and gentry did adapt and became investors in industry, while others took the plunge and supplemented their farm rents with jobs. But the 20th Century brought disaster for many. They sold out and often ultimately blended into the middle classes. And most of those who remained lived humbler lives, with smaller houses, less leisure, less purchasing power, less political power, less status, and fewer servants — or none.

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Sources:

Trentham Hall illustration: artist unknown.
Inveraray Castle, Scotland, from the south-west, 2014, by DeFacto — provided through Wikimedia Commons.

© 2016 by David W. Tollen. All rights reserved.

Two New Reviews of The Jericho River

My novel, The Jericho River, recently got two great reviews — from author Leslie Wright, at BlogCritics.org, and from student reviewer ZoeDessoye1, at LitPick. Here are some highlights:

From Leslie Wright:

“… it’s a wonderful mythical and epic tale of danger and excitement …“
“… intriguing for anyone who enjoys a great romp into the past, with myths, history and adventures of worth. Tollen does a great job of making history fun.“

From ZoeDessoye1:

“The historical situations were so engaging and action-packed, I would have enjoyed even more of this book; it was very well written and enjoyable.“
“I was learning new information and being thoroughly entertained with the action all at the same time.“

You can see each complete review here: BlogCritics.org / Leslie Wright and LitPick / ZoeDessoye1.

The Jericho River is a multiple-award-winning novel that uses fantasy to teach the history of Western Civilization.

Ancient Man-Made Global Warming and Environmental Engineering

Many Americans doubt man-made global warming because they don’t think humans could so fundamentally change the world. Some believe only God could alter the climate. But small groups of Homo sapiens have been re-engineering the environment on a massive scale for thousands of years, using only primitive tools. Many scientist think that includes ancient man-made global warming.

The bison: greatest beneficiary of Native American environmental engineering?

Most of us know that humans have been cutting down forests and wiping out animal species for millennia. But we rarely recognize the scale of past people’s impact — and not just of metal-wielding farmers, like the peasants who transformed Europe’s vast forests into meadows and farms. When European explorers reached North America, for instance, they found a world of open woodlands, great prairies, and vast buffalo herds. Some researchers think that environment was largely man-made. The Native Americans had long before thinned the woods and, wielding fire, cleared and expanded the prairies. They were opening up farmland and easy foraging grounds, according to the theory, as well as grazing country for the buffalo and elk they hunted. And they did it without modern technology or even significant metal tools.

The Australian Outback: forest no longer

Another theory says Stone Age hunter-gatherers reshaped Australia on an even larger scale, again with fire. When the Aborigines arrived around 45,000 years ago, much of Australia was dense forest. But the forests soon disappeared, replaced by deserts and plains, as well as limited open woodlands. Scientists think the Aborigines burnt away the trees and undergrowth to clear friendlier pastures for themselves and their preferred prey, particularly kangaroos and wallabies. They created and managed the “natural” Outback: a continental park four times the size of Britain, Germany, France, and Spain combined. Researchers think the Aborigines’ fire-clearing even reduced Australia’s rainfall, by altering evaporation and reflection from the land’s surface. And they did it with Stone Age tools.

Spain during the last ice age. Not only did our ancestors drive these animals to extinction, they may have held back the ice and snow.

Even the Outback is just the tip of the iceberg. Another theory holds that ancient people altered the entire world’s climate. Ice ages have gripped the Earth for more than 2.5 million years, occasionally interrupted by short warming periods, called “interglacials.” We live in an interglacial that began almost 12,000 years ago (the “Holocene”). Some scientists think the current interglacial would have ended millennia ago, plunging humanity back into ice age, if not for farming during the past 8,000 or more years. By clearing land and cultivating it, human beings released greenhouse gases (CO2 and methane). That stalled the natural cooling process and delayed the ice’s return.

Eight thousand years ago, the Earth was home to something like 10 million people. Today, there are more than 7 billion human beings. Some of theories above are controversial, but if it’s even possible for a few million people to re-engineer the environment and warm the planet with primitive tools, what might billions do with modern industrial power?

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Sources:

Bison illustration: Bull Buffalo, lithograph of painting by George Catlin (c. 1846).
Re-engineering North America: see, 1491, New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus , by Charles Mann.
Outback photo: Australian Outback: Mount Conner/Attila, a mesa between near Uluru, by Gabriele Delhey (2003), provided through Wikimedia Commons.
Re-engineering Australia: see, The Biggest Estate on Earth, How Aborigines Made Australia , by Bill Gammage.
Australian climate change: Karl-Heinz Wyrwoll (2012) — “How Aboriginal burning changed Australia’s climate,” published online at The Conversation.
Ice age drawing: Fauna de la Edad del Hielo, Mauricio Antón, 2008 — cropped, provided through Wikimedia Commons.
Interglacial theory: Ruddiman (2003) — “The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era Began Thousands of Years Ago,” Climatic Change 61: 261–293.
Historical population figures: U.S. Census Bureau historical population estimates; Max Roser (2015) — “World Population Growth,” published online at OurWorldInData.org .

© 2016 by David W. Tollen. All rights reserved.