Katherine Addison's Blog, page 4

Review: Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971)

Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England by Keith Thomas

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


800 (eight hundred) pages, dripping with primary source material, about astrology, witchcraft, and magic---and religion---in early modern England. Despite the suggestion of the title, Thomas is not arguing that religion CAUSED the decline of magic, although he does talk about why magic declined and religion did not.

The book is well-written, wide-ranging, and despite being 52 years old, does not feel terribly dated. A little old-fashioned, maybe (although that's partly the swarms of footnotes)---he's not using the various lenses that later historians are so fond of (Marxism, feminism, -ism, -ism, -ism), and there aren't any rhetorical tricks. No starting with an attention-grabbing anecdote or trying to interweave arguments or anything of the sort. Do not get me wrong; I think rhetorical tricks are great, except when all they're doing is hiding the lack of actual historiography going on, and I approve of feminism and Marxism and most of the other -isms. But I ALSO note that Sir Keith (he was knighted in 1988) is writing good historiography without any of that. He's also much easier to follow than he would be if he were pursuing an -ism, and in a book of this length and density, clarity is very decidedly a virtue.



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Review: Catton, The Centennial History of the Civil War (1961-65)

Volume 1: The Coming Fury
Volume 2: Terrible Swift Sword
Volume 3: Never Call Retreat

This is a comprehensive overview of the American Civil War, written by a man with a gorgeous prose style who did his research. I don't agree with him everywhere---he's far more enamored of Robert E. Lee than I am, and he hasn't entirely let go of the idea that the American Civil War had a shred of romance in it, although for the most part he is very good on the terrible cost of the war on both sides---but I love his writing and I love the control he has over his material: he goes back and forth from theater to theater, and from North to South, and I don't think I was ever confused. He does a great job with Mr. Lincoln's progress from "I will never interfere with slavery in states where it is already established" through the Emancipation Proclamation to "no, really, all men are created equal, how about that Thirteenth Amendment?" tracing the change step by step. This is a military and political history written in the 60s, so it's almost all about the viewpoints of white men (he quotes Mary Boykin Chesnut a couple of times, Frederick Douglass I think once), but you know how the train is going to roll when you buy your ticket.

Given that it's sixty years old and concomitantly dated, I do think this is a good place to start if you want to know more about the American Civil War.

Five stars.

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Review: Gwynne, Rebel Yell (2014)

Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S.C. Gwynne

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


So okay. This is a massive (almost 600 page) biography of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. It is excellent. Gwynne has a lovely, easy prose style, has done his research, and is able to explain battles so they make sense (or as much sense as they can make---there are several points where he has to say, "no one knows why General X did this"). He is careful about chattel slavery, acknowledging it as a cause of the Civil War, putting it in the context of the OTHER causes of the Civil War, and trying to show the spectrum of attitudes people both North and South had about the subject---and the spectrum of other reasons Southern people were fighting. For me, chattel slavery is at the root of it, and Gwynne acknowledges that slavery was part of the way of life in the South even for people who did not own other people themselves, but many (most?) Southerners believed they were fighting for other reasons. I can think they're wrong---consider the contradiction of people announcing that they are fighting for their liberty when part of their definition of "liberty" is their right to own other people---and I do, but I can't argue that they didn't believe what they clearly PASSIONATELY believed. Both Lee and Jackson were profoundly loyal to the state of Virginia, and for them that trumped everything else (like "my country, right or wrong," which is itself a highly problematic moral/ethical stance). Jackson was anti-secession right up to the point that secession happened, and then he flipped a switch and said, "Okay, let's burn them down": Military men make short speeches, and as for myself I am no hand at talking anyhow. The time for war has not yet come, but it will come, and that soon. And when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard (p. 29). Jackson wanted, at the BEGINNING of the war, to burn down Baltimore and Philadelphia, to pursue, essentially, the strategy that Grant and Sherman and Sheridan employed at the END of the war, to make the war so costly that the other side would yield. Of course nobody listened to him.

Jackson is a strange study in contrasts. A gentle, kind, shy, devoutly religious man who loved his wife (both 1st and 2nd) deeply, who loved European art and architecture...and who was a stone cold killer. Also a tactical and strategic genius. One of the things this book made me think about was whether Lee doesn't get unfairly lionized when the magic seems to have resided in the COMBINATION of Lee and Jackson. Most of Lee's great victories came because he told Jackson, "Do this," and Jackson went and did it. (Jackson also did extremely, CRUSHINGLY well on his own, which is...less true about Lee.) I think I commented on my review of one of the books about Gettysburg that a lot of Lee's problem was his hands off style of generalship, but it makes more sense seeing that that was exactly how it worked best with Jackson.

(I'm sure I am not the first person to think this, but I haven't yet read a book that makes that argument.)

I did not end up LIKING Stonewall Jackson, but I did end up understanding him---or, maybe more accurately, understanding the fundamental knot of his personality that can't really be teased apart and understood.



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Review: Priest, Before Antietam (1992)

Before Antietam: The Battle for South Mountain by John Michael Priest

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is an incredibly detailed account, using a host of primary sources (letters and diaries and memoirs and basically anything any of the people who were there ever wrote or said about it), of the ten days leading up to the battle of Antietam. Priest gives roughly equal time to both sides and as much attention to the enlisted men as to the officers. We see much less of the upper echelons (except J.E.B. Stuart being J.E.B. Stuart)---certainly much less than you would get in a more conventional historiography of South Mountain---so this is very much the worm's eye view. It is so detailed it's actually a little hard to follow what's going on, which is a very dim reflection of what it was like to be there.

The maps are equally detailed; I honestly found them all but impossible to read.



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Review: Robbins, Last in Their Class (2006)

Last in Their Class: Custer, Pickett and the Goats of West Point by James S. Robbins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I found this book (subtitle, "Custer, Pickett and the Goats of West Point") unsatisfying. It's partly a history of West Point, partly a set of mini-biographies of the men who finished last in their class (the Goats) at West Point, and partly, at the end, a biography of Custer in the couple of years leading up to Little Big Horn. It talks about Pickett, but does not single him out as much as the subtitle would suggest.

It does none of these things particularly well.

It teeters on the edge of the hagiographic in its mini-biographies and is much more concerned about the friendships between West Point graduates than it is about any of the causes of the Civil War. He quotes Morris Schaff saying, "My heart leaps with pride, for on that day two West Point men met, with more at stake than has ever fallen to the lot of two Americans to decide....These two West Point men knew the ideals of their old Alma Mater, they knew each other only as graduates of that institution know each other, and they met on the plane of that common knowledge....The greatest hour that has ever come in the march of our country's years was on that April day when Grant and Lee shaped the terms at Appomattox." And Robbins goes on, "And the next day as well, when the healing began, when the United States was reborn; when classmates and brothers came together reunited in purpose and friendship..." (305). Which makes it sound like the end of the Civil War was based on the old boys' network of West Point. WHICH MAY BE TRUE. But if it IS true, I would like some examination of what that means in a whole host of contexts, not just beaming pride. With this lens, the brotherhood of white men is certainly considered far more important than the emancipation of Black people. Which could be a searing indictment of white patriarchy and privilege...but is not.

I've read too many biographies of Custer (4? 5?) to be very impressed with Robbins's rehashing of the same old facts, and I'm not quite sure why Custer gets singled out, aside from the fact that he's the most famous Goat, and his last couple of years HAVE been chronicled in exhaustive detail. I would at least have liked to have seen a tally of the Goats who died in battle, because the impression I got is that it was definitely the majority. Which, again, could be an elegy to all this passion and skill lost to the U.S. in war after war after war, but is---insofar as there's any summing up at all---simply a source of pride.

The only thing Robbins get heated up about is the abolishment of the official Goat in the 1970s as counter to the ideals and purpose of West Point (unofficially, cadets continue to keep track of their class rankings, so the Goat is still celebrated). Robbins defends the Goat as "not the product of defeatism but one of esprit[....] Competing for the coveted hindmost spot required a certain audacity and courage, traits with which Custer, Pickett and the rest would be on familiar terms" (411). (He's arguing that the brinksmanship involved in doing badly enough to be last, but NOT badly enough to wash out is a marker of merit rather than shame.) And that probably is the thesis of his book: academic standing is not a predictor of success, and Goats have more audacity and courage than those with class ranks higher than theirs. Which is okay as a thesis, but not great.



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Review: Bearrs & Hills, Receding Tide (2010)

Receding Tide: Vicksburg and Gettysburg: The Campaigns That Changed the Civil War by Edwin C. Bearss

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


So Edwin C. Bearss was the Chief Historian Emeritus of the National Park Service. His specialty was American Civil War battlefield history. This book is his discussion of Vicksburg and Gettysburg, which he says mark the point at which the Confederate tide of success started to recede, hence the title. It reads like someone who gave battlefield talks all their life---which is not a disparagement, that must be one of the harder possible historian jobs---with lots of specific names and little bits of anecdote. His discussion is chronological and includes a lot of the build-up to Gettysburg, so for most of the book he goes back and forth between the eastern and western theaters of the war. The book has good transitions between sites, is smoothly written and easy to follow, and provides a little bit of a play by play feel. Not that other books on these battles are not detailed and exhaustive, but they don't slip into the historical present tense as Bearss does.



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desk-cleaning

[Guildenstern picks up a piece of paper]
Guildenstern: Well, this can be recycled.
Rosencrantz: But!
Guildenstern: But what?
Rosencrantz: But it's a piece of paper WITH WRITING ON IT.
Guildenstern: ...so?
Rosencrantz: So what if it's IMPORTANT?
Guildenstern: [looks at piece of paper] I guarantee you this is not important.
Rosencrantz: [very dubiously] Well, if you're SURE.
Guildenstern: I am very, very sure. Off it goes. [puts paper in TO BE RECYCLED pile]
[Guildenstern picks up the next piece of paper]
Guildenstern: Well, this can be recycled.
Rosencrantz: But!

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

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THE DOCTRINE OF LABYRINTHS IS BACK IN PRINT!

The lovely people at Open Road Media are publishing the entire quartet in e-book. They're available for pre-order now, and will be published July 11.

I am so very happy about this. Words cannot even.

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Review: Fellman, The Making of Robert E. Lee (2000)

The Making of Robert E. Lee by Michael Fellman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is really great. Fellman uses Robert E. Lee's letters and other writings to prove that he was (a) racist, so you can forget all those heartwarming stories about Lee being anything other than a bigot (b) kind of a jerk, honestly, and (c) not all that great a general. Fellman analyzes Lee's whole career, putting what Fellman calls the annus mirabilis in context, and it shows very clearly that the usual Robert E. Lee was NOT audacious, NOT a risk taker, NOT aggressive. Fellman spends a lot of time talking about the ideal of manhood that Lee was attempting to live up to, both Stoic and Christian, so lots of repression and self-control and passive acceptance of whatever befell you. It's just that for some reason, Lee had this one year where he was on fire.

(He doesn't say, but I think it may be important, that Lee was a brilliant general against McClellan (whose psychology he understood perfectly and also how to leverage it), Pope, and Hooker, all of whom made, objectively, enormous mistakes against him. It's easy to look good when your opponent is tripping over his own shoelaces. There was an enormous Union mistake at Gettysburg, too (his name was Dan Sickles), and Meade only barely kept from capsizing on Day 2, but Day 3 was just bad generalship on Lee's part.

(Grant made mistakes---Cold Harbor, anyone?---it's just that he didn't fall back because of them. Grant used the Union's superior numbers to brute force his ultimate success, not any kind of tactical genius.)

Anyway, this book is well-written and well-argued and gives a vivid portrait of Robert E. Lee.

Four and a half stars, round up to five.



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Review: Hicks & Kropf, Raising the Hunley (2002)

Raising the Hunley: The Remarkable History and Recovery of the Lost Confederate Submarine by Brian Hicks

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This book is by the reporters who covered the raising of the Hunley, and let me say first of all that they have done their homework. They have combed through the primary sources and laid out all the contradictions---which are legion: how many times did the Hunley sink before she was lost? 2? 3? 6?---and made their choices about which source to believe, and they have put together a quite readable story. The second part, about the raising of the Hunley, is based on their own reporting, and is likewise careful and in depth (so to speak). And it is not badly written.

I applaud the achievement of the people who raised the Hunley. But I also notice that Raising the Hunley very carefully frames the Civil War as States' Rights and agrarian vs. industrialized economies and does not talk about chattel slavery as a cause of the war at all. And that is both profoundly disingenuous and bad faith history.





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