skygiants | (no subject)

Over the course of the summer, I renewed Young J. Edgar: Hoover and the Red Scare, 1919-1920 a grandly embarrassing total of 12 times as I put off reading it.

But finally I could renew no more, and I determined to make my way through it, and I remembered what I always remember as soon as I actually start reading a book of straight history, which is that I really enjoy reading history!

You pick up a book like this one, for example, and it starts out all J. Edgar Hoover was [blah blah I don't actually care very much about Hoover], and suddenly you're launched into an incredibly fascinating political and legal battle full of people nobly declaiming that they BELIEVE IN CIVIL LIBERTIES and will TAKE THIS CASE DESPITE THE RISK OF BLACKLISTING, and other people shouting ARE YOU CALLING ME A LIAR, SIR? NEED I DEMAND SATISFACTION? across congressional hearings, and Woodrow Wilson wheezily declaiming enigmatic statements and collapsing all over the place, and you're like "WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? WHO WON THAT COURT CASE, I MUST KNOW" even though the answer is obviously only a Wikipedia search away.

. . . I still don't actually care very much about Hoover, by the way, I picked up the book because I had reasons to be interested in researching the Red Scare and Hoover was just sort of an extra. But it is a very good chronicle of the Red Scare, and the massive scary "AHHH! COMMUNISM!" crackdowns and deportations, which is a bit of American history that tends to fall between the cracks of the big massive blocks of World War I and the Jazz Age. A brief and incomplete list of people who get significant pagetime in this book who are far more sympathetic and interesting than J. Edgar Hoover: Emma Goldman, Clarence Darrow, Felix Frankenfurter, Louis Post. I get the feeling that the author sort of wishes he could have made this the Heroic Louis Post book instead of the Evil J. Edgar Hoover book, except Louis Post is not famous enough and therefore nobody would buy it.

Which is not to say that the author is not invested in Evil Youthful Mastermind J. Edgar Hoover, because he totally is. Towards the last chapter especially there is some beautiful hyperbole to show how J. Edgar Hoover is symbolic of how all power corrupts and how we all have to be on watch all the time lest we turn into evil autocrats who tramp single-mindedly on civil liberties left and right. I don't disagree, but it is kind of a beautiful example of the "I DON'T KNOW HOW TO END THIS ESSAY SO IT'S TIME TO PULL OUT THE INCREDIBLY GRANDIOSE CONCLUSIONS" principle familiar to all undergraduates, writ large.

In other news, if anyone has recs for good popular history books, I am totally in the market right now while I still remember how much I enjoy it!

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/308353.html

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From:

likeadeuce

It happens I have been reading a lot of history lately!

Agincourt by Juliet Barker, an account of the battle. Barker really knows her medieval chivalry and combat, and she explains stuff that I'd always found obscure and mysterious -- like how the whole prisoner exchange system worked, what heralds actually did, what coats of arms were for, etc. She fangirls Henry V quite a bit but she doesn't ignore the French point-of-view either. I believe she has a new book out this year that takes a larger view of the Hundred Years War and I'm quite fascinated.

Abigail Adams by Woody Holton, which is a biography that covers the usual territory of the Adams marriage and their letters, but also brings in quite a bit of legal and economic history and the lengths Abigail had to go to in order to control some of her own finances. In the same general category, The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed covers several generations of the Randolph-Jefferson families' relationship with Sally Hemings and her male and female relatives.

And Malcolm X by Manning Marable is a very thorough, interesting biography, detailing Malcolm's life and the continual evolution of his political thought. It makes me wish someone would write a play about the process Alex Haley went through in creating Malcolm's "autobiography" (which I admittedly never read but am now planning to).

From:

skygiants

I think I actually have that Abigail Adams biography! I got it as a gift from a feminist-history-minded aunt some years ago (probably for a graduation) and never got around to reading it. I should hitch it up my priorities list, I am all about Adamses.

From:

likeadeuce

Lots of interesting stuff! And it kind of made me ship her w/ Mercy Otis Warren.

From:

skygiants

I love how every time I post about a nonfiction book, without fail, someone pops out of the woodwork to comment about a related historical slash ship. FANDOM IS GREAT. *laughing*

From:

likeadeuce

Well, you did lead with Hoover ;).

From:

newredshoes

I mean, always Studs Terkel, but that aside! Have I recced Furious Improvisation to you? It's about the WPA theater movement and the lady who built and ran it and how it broke all sorts of boundaries and how ultimately it's impossible for government-sponsored art not to fall under difficult scrutinies! I gave it about a 3.75 out of 5 on Goodreads, but the subject matter is interesting enough, and it's a very quick read. It's also where the HUAC started, so, yes!

From:

skygiants

YOU HAVE NOT, which is a terrible oversight, because Cradle Will Rock -- which is ALL about the WPA theater movement -- is one of my all-time favorite films! HALLIE FLANAGAN FOR THE WIN, going immediately on my to-read list.

From:

ceitfianna

I don't read enough non-fiction either, but I've read some good stuff recently. Final Voyage about the end of the whaling industry and Quakerism, I didn't expect the Quakerism and its a fascinating and quick read.

Incognito which is nonfiction about how the brain works, so some history mixed in but mainly brains are neat and confusing.

I have a book about anachrists to read that I mainly bought for its title; The World That Never Was.

From:

skygiants

Thanks for the recs! I also have to laugh, because there was also surprise Quakerism in this book too. Surprise . . . EVIL Quakerism. (And therefore even more surprising!)

From:

ceitfianna

It was benevolent and rich Quakers in Final Voyage but as a Quaker, I went huh, that's unexpected.

From:

genarti

I should lend you at some point my copy of Josiah The Great: The True Story of the Man Who Would Be King, which is a somewhat biased but frequently amusing pop history book about Josiah Harlan, a Quaker* from Pennsylvania who reacted to being jilted by running away to Afghanistan (in the 1820s/1830s, when it mostly wasn't quite called that yet) to work for various Afghan rulers, get in spats with various Europeans, and attempt unsuccessfully but very doggedly to set himself up as ruler somewhere.

*Needless to say, the self-styled General Harlan did not exactly embody Quaker principles of pacifism, and got excommunicated eventually over it, but he was very steadfast in his self-identification and also his teetotaling. This is less surprise EVIL Quakerism, more surprise... FROTHING Quakerism, I suppose? I would say IMPERIAL, but he doesn't seem to have been so much imperialist per se as very firmly convinced of his own individual merits.

From:

skygiants

YOU SHOULD because that sounds deeply hilarious. *__*

. . . and PS, speaking of nonfiction, don't you guys still have my copy of that 1920s-in-the-UK book I left behind at D*C? I think I was supposed to remind you to bring it back to me when you came down a few weeks ago and, uh, did not remember until well afterwards. >.> Normally I would not mind lending you guys a book on extended hiatus, but this one I never got a chance to read first!

From:

genarti

I warn you that I'll probably keep going YES BUT IT WAS ACTUALLY LESS HARLAN-CENTRIC AND MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT at bits. *laughing* I suspect. I never actually finished the thing, because I got it for more specific researchy purposes, as you recall. Anyway, yes, you are welcome to it sometime!

I have no idea if we have your 1920s-in-the-UK book, but very possibly! If so I expect Heather is hoarding it greedily to herself. (By which I mean, she probably mentioned it to me and then I promptly forgot that she had.)

We also still have Chime which I think is yours. And Gullstruck Island, apparently! It's all tidily centralized on the Shelf Of Things Belonging To Other People which I forgot to look at before I came down last month...

From:

skygiants

I do indeed recall! And alas Josiah is probably not a fit bachelor for your purposes, although in the proud traditions mentioned above I may decide to ship him with Emperor Norton of San Francisco.

Chime is indeed mine! But the Gullstruck Island is yours, actually, I gave it to you last December. :P I have my own copy for the purposes of shoving onto other other people!

(PS you also still have some of my Bloody Jack books.

And Shati's Aksum books.

Just in case you forgot.

:D)

From:

genarti

You may feel free! I suspect they wouldn't get along, but what do I know really. Maybe they would just have a ~tumultuous love~.

Oh also! Didn't I threaten at one point to lend you The Buried Book, about the translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh? Which starts out with the guy who translated it, and works backward through the people who discovered it (primarily but not solely Europeans, and there's a very depressing chapter about Hormuzd Rassam's struggles for recognition) till it gets to the society it was written in and then the epic itself. Fascinating, I thought.

And oh! Thank you for the gift, then. *laughing* SO NOTED.

(And yes, those are all on the shelf also. :p Now!)

From:

skygiants

I don't actually remember whether you did or not, but either way I would welcome it as an addition to my borrowed-books shelf! :D Because that does, indeed, sound fascinating.

And YOU'RE WELCOME. :P Sorry for not making that sufficiently clear last year . . .

(It's good that they're clearly marked, because I think Shati is seriously considering staging a break-in raid before Yuletide. *giggling*)

From:

genarti

All right! I shall try to remember for the next time we meet.

(Shati is welcome to them if she wants to ever come over or invite me over or whatever, instead of occasionally just informing me that she waved at my street from the bus, or was driven by the street and pondered staging a commando raid but did not actually stop to ring the doorbell. :p)

From:

ceitfianna

Ooh, I must find this book. My religion has an intriguing history.

From:

rachelmanija

I don't have recs but just wanted to mention that my grandfather, who was a card-carrying communist but not famous or anything, eventually got a summons from HUAC. He tore it up and threw it away!

By then HUAC was starting to fall apart, so there were no consequences. They never even got back to him.

From:

skygiants

Ha! Government bureaucracy, man. With such inefficiency it's wonder our country is still plagued by liberals and communists!

From:

ashen_key

Tom Holland's Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic (a.k.a. Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, depending on which edition you pick up) and his Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West. Both are excellent, really well written, and both of my copies are covered in post-its. Persian Fire I especially love for the fact that Holland goes "you know, the histories of the Greco-Persian wars rarely try and pull together the Persian Empire into something more than just The Enemy. I'm gonna go and to that, and I'm going to explain the Persian Empire and its history first"

Um.

Um.

I have multple shelves of popular history - were you after anything in particular? Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz is also very, very interesting and mostly excellent - there are some gaps, it gets a bit Western-centric towards the end (I suspect it was due to Western marriage changing a lot, but there is still a gap the closer she gets to modern life), but it's mostly excellent.

From:

ashen_key

Also, I am currently reading Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, by Jennifer Homans, and oymygosh, it's fascinating. Utterly fascinating - particularly when looking at the French origins, and what this meant for the court where everything was pretty much a dance, and the cultural/political symbolism of it all.

From:

skygiants

Not anything in particular, no! I mean, in general I am always looking for 1920s stuff because I'm trying to give myself a good grounding for a future writing project whenever I finally get around to it. But I also operate on the principle that almost all knowledge will probably turn out useful for something someday, though.

The point is these all sound fantastic, but ESPECIALLY the ballet book! Which has no relevance for anything I'm doing at the moment, I'm just fascinated by ballet.

From:

remindmeofthe

Philip Sugden's Complete History of Jack the Ripper. I don't even care about the Ripper all that much and I still found it fascinating because of the sheer amount of detailed research Sugden did. He went back to the source and went through historical documents exhaustively and disproved some stuff and discovered some other stuff and made new connections and omg it's gorgeous. Total academiagasm.

From:

skygiants

Ooooh. Every so often, I do get the true-crime bug; this sounds like it would be great for that. Thanks!

From:

marginaliana

I enjoyed The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers

From:

skygiants

Oh, awesome! That is especially relevant to me because I just spent two or three classes in TV talking about Victorian visions of magical communications technology. (There's something so endearing about it. Sonnets written to radio!)

From:

agonistes

Glancing at my shelves: Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz (pop chronicling of interest in the Civil War), Soul By Soul: Life Inside The Antebellum Slave Market by Walter Johnson (not a light read ://// but an important one), In Search of the Blues by Marybeth Hamilton (chronicles how white folks pretty much built the whole concept of the blues as a Thing, starting with Howard Odum forward to record collectors in the 1960s), Elvis Presley by Bobbie Ann Mason (a class-and-gender-based reading of the life of Elvis), and Meeting Jimmie Rodgers by Barry Mazor (basically argues, and then shows, how EVERY-FUCKING-BODY owes their music to Jimmie Rodgers).

From:

skygiants

I knew you would come through with excellent music history recs!

-- by the way, what was the other 33 1/3 that you recommended to me last year or so, after the Celine Dion one? I can't seem to find that IM convo.

From:

agonistes

Facing Future by Dan Kois! It is about Israel Kamakawiwo'ole (the guy who played "Over the Rainbow" with the ukulele and everybody and their brother likes to play it for all sentimental occasions) and Hawaiian sovereignty and cultural imperialism.

Also, and this one is fiction, but while I'm reccing 33 1/3s that live on my shelves: John Darnielle's Master of Reality (Black Sabbath) is hugely devastating and also made me understand why people like metal.

From:

skygiants

. . . wait, how is a 33 1/3 book fiction? I thought they were all music studies?

From:

agonistes

They are! They are all books about a single album. And that book is about Black Sabbath's album Master of Reality.

Music is neither fiction nor nonfiction, and the point of the series is to discuss single albums in whatever way makes sense. For Master of Reality, they went with fiction.