In the Light of History (Book Review)

J H Plumb In the Light of History (1972) Essays, reviews, and occasional pieces by a historian with a distinguished academic record (for which he was knighted in 1982), yet not one who made much of a splash outside the universities. His specialty was England in the eighteenth century, but  judging from this book he read widely beyond that narrow focus. I liked his occasional pieces best, written for a general magazine audience in the 1960s. He’s good at presenting a brief sketch of what we think we know, then carefully, and often wittily, revising it in the light of documents that professional historians have hunted out and published. This is the light of history of the book’s title.

     Plumb’s gift is to present to us the way people lived. He believed that there was no point in knowing what happened in politics, war, and trade, if you couldn’t imagine what it was like to live in that time and place. What mattered then as now is that people of different classes lived different lives. What matters now is that our lives have become very different from those of our ancestors. Plumb is on of the few people to recognise that technology drives change because it changes the time and effort spent on daily living, and because it expands the range of available choices. We interpret this as progress because for most of us these changes give us more comfortable, healthier, less work-intensive lives. It also changes power structures, which is why the conservative reaction to recent changes has become so vicious. The old patterns of wealth and power are undermined when ordinary people can live better than their betters did a couple or three generations before.
     Plumb made some astute predictions. He noted in an essay on hippies that these people focus on themselves, on the satisfaction of their emotional and aesthetic needs, and withdraw from politics. This is dangerous, for it allows fascism to breed in the political vacuum created by their disengagement. An article in the New York Times is a useful gloss on this insight:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/opinion/the-downside-of-liberty.html
     A book that is both entertaining and instructive. Recommended. ***

An Hour in Paradise (book Review)

Joan Leegant An Hour in Paradise (2003) Leegant can write. Like Munro, Gallant, Ford, and other masters of the short story, she can evoke a whole person and their milieu in a few sentences, and show us, ruthlessly but never cruelly, the consequences of their weaknesses and flaws, the effects of unexpected encounters with people and events. We are most of the time unable to see ourselves accurately, still less see the actual relationships with other people. Illusions of one kind or another may prevent us from achieving what we think we most desire, or may lead us into recognition of what we really want, that is, what we lack, need, and desire. Passions that we don’t acknowledge seize us unexpectedly. Goals we thought would give our lives purpose become mirages that lead us into a morass of despair. But there is always hope. The smallest joy can, at least for a time, compensate for the pain.
     So a young American PH D student, sure that he does not need a wife, is seized by love when he encounters a girl who knows she’s ready for a husband, but has false notions of the kind of man she could love. A couple unite after a lifetime of marriage to the wrong people, only to have their vision of bliss destroyed by frail health. A girl who thinks she wants the glamorous life of Hollywood is startled to recognise her soulmate in the man in the seat next to her on the flight home. A woman who has become pregnant by her married lover marries a man who rejects her when he discovers her pre-marital betrayal. Yet she could not help herself. There are six other tales, all worth reading.
     These stories draw you in. I wanted to know more of the world Leegant has imagined. ***

The French and Indian War (Book Review)

Seymour L. Schwartz The French and Indian War 1754-1763 (1994) Schwartz is a surgeon with an avocation for maps. Compiling a chronicle of the Seven Years War around his collection of maps and plans was apparently a natural task for him, and brought him to that most desired of collector’s goals, showing off his specimens. The result is a source book rather than a history. Anyone who wants to fill in details of the war will find this a useful book. What struck me was the similarity of the forts: by the mid-eighteenth century, building forts was a mature technology. There are also portraits of the senior officers, all of which were of course aristocrats fulfilling their class’s obligation of military service, with varying skill and success.
     Schwartz does not explain how the eighteenth century fort functioned as a weapons platform or military machine, which it clearly was. He neither analyses the skirmishes and battles, nor judges the commanders. But I have no such qualms: several were more or less incompetent, limited by their training, and unable or unwilling to recognise opportunities for success. A few were clearly cowards, who retreated from or capitulated to inferior forces. The battle for Montreal is an exception: both commanders were above average in tactical skill, both were brave, and both were killed leading their forces into the field. Wolfe’s conquest of Quebec relied on luck and daring: no sensible commander would have tried to scale 180 foot cliffs in order to attack from the rear. It’s no discredit to Montcalm that he didn’t anticipate the tactic that defeated him.
     In the end the British won, making North America an Anglo-Saxon outpost. It remains so today, although demographic changes are diminishing the influence of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants that built and governed the two countries north of the Rio Grande over the next two centuries.
     As is common with low-budget productions, text and illustrations are often out of sync with each other. There are puzzling references to “plates”. The diagrammatic simplification of many of the maps makes the densely detailed originals easier to interpret. The reproduction of the maps and plans is very good, considering that in the mid-1990s photos rendered as half-tones were still the main mode of illustration.
     My avocation isn’t history, so I can’t judge the quality of this book. But it did clarify some timelines and geography for me, as well as filling in the cast of characters and giving me a sense of how slowly events proceeded in an era when the most urgent information moved at the speed of a fast horse. On this basis I’ll rate the book at **½

Zen (TV series)

Zen (2011) Based on a crime series by Michael Dibden. We saw Cabal and Ratking. In both, corruption at all levels of Italian society interfere with Zen’s quest for the truth and his goal of achieving some kind of justice. Complicated twists, multiple layers of knowledge and ignorance, double crosses, and intersecting motives: That’s about all there is to say about this series plotwise.
     The character is well done in the current fashion of the enigmatic wounded knight in thrall to various belles dames sans merci, wandering through the murk of evil. The movie making is in the same style, with jump cuts, multiple plot threads, brief glimpses of crucial but unexplained figures in the background, scraps of backstory, cool cars and great clothes, clever (and almost always apt) use of contrasts between dark and light, elegant and grungy locations, deliberate lack of transition shots, and minimal use of music. The tone is also in the current fashion, world weary and elegiac. The titles look like animated pages from Wired, now much imitated by the fashion magazines. All in all, well done entertainment. I’m sorry we missed the first episode. I’ll read one of Dibden’s books, if it happens to cross my path. **-½

Thirty Days: January 1933 (Book Review)

 Hitler the happy politician

 H A Turner Thirty Days: January 1933 (1996) A carefully detailed account of the thirty days of intrigue, deception, bungling, and conspiracy that led up to Hindenburg’s appointment of Hitler as Reichskanzler (chancellor, or prime minister) on January 30th, 1933. Turner shows that a handful of men – von Papen, Schleicher, Hindenburg, and a few functionaries of the Nazi and other parties – made the decisions that resulted in the Third Reich. He claims, and I think rightly, that although the changes in social and economic conditions  made a Hitler possible, the actual decisions to elevate him to power were made for personal and private reasons, some with intent, some casually, some ideologically, some with no goals other than immediate satisfaction of a personal aim or whim.

     At any time during those thirty days, different decisions could have been made, but none of the actors took the trouble to consider the long-range consequences of their choices. What appalls is the pettiness of the motives of von Papen, the Hindenburgs, and others. Hindenburg merely disliked Schleicher, von Papen hated him, both simply wanted to be rid of him. Schleicher himself didn’t really want to hold on to power, and was naive enough to believe that Hitler could be kept in check. He supported what von Papen wanted, not realising he’d already become irrelevant. (Schleicher was assassinated during the Night of the Long Knives.)

    

     The only man who had any sense that the decisions could be and were history-making was Hitler himself. In the end, he did not so much wrest power from the Establishment  as accept it when it was thrust upon him. (The Nazis called it the Machtergreifung, "Seizing Power", part of their attempt to create an image of themselves as warriors.) Those who made him chancellor vastly underestimated him. That this is no mere hindsight is supported by the comments of some politicians, journalists, and foreign diplomats who saw quite clearly that Hitler wanted total power. Hindenburg, who complied with to the conspirators' request and made the decision he had refused to make in November 1932, said the following day that he had made the greatest blunder of his career.

     In the end, Hitler came to power because other people made bad choices, for a variety of reasons. A book worth reading. ***

Wingfield's World (Book review)

Dan Needles Wingfield’s World (2011) The wonderful Letters from Wingfield farm, all of them. It’s a complete world that Needles has (re-)created, one that I was loathe to leave, and will revisit regularly. Doug Wingfield is a Bay Street financial wizard who wants to get back to the authentic, simple life, so he buys a near-derelict farm, the Fisher place, on the 7th line of Persephone Township somewhere im Southern Ontario. The series started as a short play, additional instalments followed, some made into TV shows. While much of the material is stereotypical, the characters have the ring of truth. Dan Needles denies basing them on real people, and in the strict sense this is no doubt so; but a fictional character may combine features of several real people, which I think is the case here. Anyhow, viewers and readers will willingly suspend any lingering disbelief.
      I’ve heard these lovely monologues on the radio, watched them on TV, and saw the last one on stage. They lose nothing by being offered in print. Knowing the outcomes of the stories doesn’t spoil them, but allows us to savour the full range of the human comedy as revealed on the Seventh Line of Persephone Township. Highly recommended. ****

Wycliffe and the Dunes (Book Review)

     W J Burley Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery (1993) Six teens have an end-of-term party in a chalet by the sea, a stranger drops by, he dies, the teens bury his body. Fifteen years later, it’s discovered by a dog. He’s the missing son of a politician, and the broken bones are consistent with murder. And that’s where it starts. It ends when after one of the now 30-something teens kills himself, and a second murder is solved.
    I like these stories (and also the videos based on them). Burley’s low-key narration, in which he drops details of scene, memory, appearance, food, and anything else that catches his attention, creates a seeming-complete world, which we are glad to inhabit despite the somewhat excessive murder rate. Wycliffe has aged somewhat. He’s happy to have an excuse to get away from his desk. His relation with his colleagues is easygoing and mutually respectful: they make a good team. The other characters are vivid enough to stick in one’s memory long enough to make the resolution of the puzzle feel significant. This time, the puzzle is solved about 2/3rds of the way through, but we read on, enjoying how Wycliffe, Kersey, Lane and the others assemble the fragments of fact that will make the murder-narrative convincing enough to justify the inevitable arrest. I think this series is under-rated. ***