Capo Press Research Articles

Heroes and Villains: A Historian's Check-List

(London: Vintage, 2006), p.153 4 Dalrymple, The Last Mughal, p.484. The story is by no means all bad. In 2010, Belfast solicitor Alastair Rankin visited Gujarat, where he was warmly welcomed by the members of the Church of North India - a union of various Anglican and Protestant churches, one of which had been founded by his great-great-grandfather in 1840. 5 Dalrymple, The Last Mughal, pp.58–59. 6 Thomas Keneally, Three Famines: Starvation and Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2011). 7 Enda Delaney, The Curse of Reason: The Great Irish Famine (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2012), p.85. 8 Terry Golway, Irish Rebel: John Devoy and America’s Fight for Ireland’s Freedom (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998), p.25. 9 Golway, Irish Rebel, p.33. 10 Peter FitzSimons, The Catalpa Rescue: The Gripping Story of the Most Successful Prison Break in Australian History (London: Hachette, 2019), xxxv. 11 FitzSimons, The Catalpa Rescue, p.350. 12 FitzSimons, The Catalpa Rescue, p.353. 13 Golway, Irish Rebel, p.313. 14 S J Connolly (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Irish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.190. 15 J Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA (Abingdon: Transaction Publishers, revised 3rd ed., 2017), p.648. 16 See John Marshal, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p.58. 17 Connolly, Oxford Companion, p.140. 18 Connolly, Oxford Companion, p.568. 19 Christopher Hibbert, Wellington, A Personal History (London: Da Capo Press, 1997), p.61. 20 Hibbert, Wellington, pp.268–272. 21 Patrick M Geoghegan, Liberator: The Life and Death of Daniel O’Connell 18301847 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2012), p.137. 22 ibid., p.141. 23 Irish Government, ‘Proclamation of Independence’, https://www.gov.ie/en/ publication/bfa965-proclamation-of-independence/. 24 American History: From Revolution to Reconstruction and beyond, ‘Act of Abjuration’, http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/before-1600/plakkaat-vanverlatinghe -1581-july-26.php. 25 National Archives, ‘Declaration of Indepedence’, https://www.archives.gov/ founding-docs/declaration-transcript. 26 Constitution of India Project, ‘Purna Swaraj’, https://www.constitutionofindia. net/historical_constitutions/declaration_of_purna_swaraj__indian_national_ congress__1930__26th%20January%201930. 27 The Selected Works of Ho Chi Minh (New York, 2011), pp.85–87. There is no reference to Marxism in this speech by Ho Chi Minh, although the American Declaration and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen are both honoured. 28 nidirect, ‘Historical Topics Series Information Leaflet 5: Solemn League and Convenant’, https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/publications/historical-topics-seriesinformation -leaflet-5-ulsters-solemn-league-and-covenant. Studies • volume 109 • number 435 284 Edmond Grace SJ Heroes and Villains: A Historian’s Check-List Felix M Larkin Historians like me are trained to think about significant figures from the past not as heroes or villains, but in a more nuanced way. We must acknowledge that the people we study were real human beings, just like us – flesh and blood, each a mixture of the good and the not-so-good, each with talents and shortcomings, each with failures as well as achievements. Historians should not enlarge or diminish them beyond what they were in life. We seek to understand them and explain their actions, not to celebrate or condemn them. We aim to get ‘the best obtainable version of the truth’, to quote Woodward and Bernstein.1 Nevertheless, historians too are human – with their values, and their simple or not-so-simple likes and dislikes. It is inevitable that we will have strong views about some of those that we study – and while we must try to disregard our prejudices in our work, it is rarely possible to do so completely. In this article, I will consider the four people from the past that I admire the most and the one that I abhor above all others – and why. John F Kennedy The first of my heroes – and the one of longest standing – is John F Kennedy, 35th president of the United States. I was twelve when JFK was assassinated in 1963 – and that event prompted me, at that early age, to begin reading about Kennedy, and about the US presidency andAmerican history generally. It was...

Book Review: Wasn’t That A Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America by Jesse Jarnow

Jesse Jarnow. Wasn’t That A Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America . New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 2018. 296 pp. This book revisits the times and career of the Weavers, known in the 1950s as “America’s best-loved folksingers,” for having earned four

The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War by James McGrath Morris

Reviewed by: The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War by James McGrath Morris Steven Florczyk The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War. By James McGrath Morris. Da Capo Press, 2017. 314 pp. Hardcover $27.00. In his postscript to The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War, James McGrath Morris notes that "we might never have heard of Ernest Hemingway had it not been for an Italian soldier who was killed taking the brunt of the exploding mortar on the July night in 1918. But it seems little or no effort has been made to identify the soldier …" (253). To correct this oversight, Morris publishes here a list of eighteen potential candidates along with a note to contact him if "interested in trying to identify the actual soldier's name" (254). Future readers of this book no longer need to do so, however. As Morris informs in a 18 January 2019 Washington Post article, upon reading The Ambulance Drivers, Italian historian Marino Perissinotto reached out to Morris, and together they concluded that the name previously lost to history must be that of Fedele Temperini, whose regiment was stationed in the same vicinity as Hemingway and whose death was recorded on the same date as Hemingway's wounding. If correct, the discovery of Temperini is remarkable, even if, as Morris goes on to point out in the article, "strict Italian privacy laws prevent us from learning more about him." Morris's interest in recovering figures from anonymity, especially those obscured due to the overshadowing presence of Hemingway, suggests a parallel of sorts for understanding his account of the friendship between John Dos Passos and Hemingway in The Ambulance Drivers. Morris reminds readers of Dos Passos's importance by quoting George Packer's 2005 comment in The New Yorker: "It's hard now to remember that, several generations ago, the trio of great novelists born around the turn of the century—Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner—was a quartet, with the fourth chair occupied by Dos Passos" (249-50). The granters of the The John Dos Passos Award might agree, for they created the prize "to honor one of the greatest—and most often ignored—American writers of the twentieth century." Likewise, Morris's book [End Page 141] helps readers remember that Dos Passos not only once occupied that fourth chair but even at times garnered more attention for his writing than the trio that sat beside him. That said, Morris does not explicitly set out to champion Dos Passos. As the subtitle suggests, The Ambulance Drivers is the biography of a literary friendship, focusing on these writers' careers that developed as a response to The Great War, which inspired them to plot, as Morris puts it, "a literary revolution" (3). Their common experiences as volunteer ambulance drivers in the war significantly informed their plans, even if each writer varied in his view of the catastrophe and how to deal with it in writing. Whereas, according to Morris, "Hemingway had no interest in pondering its causes, worrying about its conduct, or even being bothered by the banality of military life," Dos Passos "wanted to write about war to end it. In Hemingway's mind, war was inevitable and a man was measured by it, as he had been. Literature could capture the experience, not change it" (76). Thus, a portrait emerges of Dos Passos turning to fiction as a medium for social activism and satire while Hemingway appears more consumed with personal concerns. Morris quotes from each writer's work to showcase their distinct versions of Modernism as well: Dos Passos experimented with combining words ("rainseething," "whiskeyglasses," etc.) and splicing fiction with newsreel accounts; Hemingway relied on repetition and minimalism. Morris even shows instances when Hemingway apparently recast ideas originated by Dos Passos. "As in the moment in Dos Passos's Three Soldiers when Chrisfield murders his sergeant," Morris explains (172), Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms includes a scene when Frederic Henry and Bonello execute a sergeant who deserts. Besides chronicling the successes, Morris also presents Dos Passos's struggles as a playwright...

A Fierce Glory: Antietam—The Desperate Battle That Saved Lincoln and Doomed Slavery by Justin Martin

Reviewed by: A Fierce Glory: Antietam—The Desperate Battle That Saved Lincoln and Doomed Slavery by Justin Martin David Work A Fierce Glory: Antietam—The Desperate Battle That Saved Lincoln and Doomed Slavery. By Justin Martin. ( New York: Da Capo Press, 2018. Pp. xviii, 318. $28.00, ISBN 978-0-306-82525-5.) Justin Martin's new book on the battle of Antietam argues that this desperate, savage battle of September 1862 was the most critical engagement of the Civil War. Not only did the Union victory end General Robert E. Lee's [End Page 704] attempt to invade Maryland and win the war for the Confederacy, but also the victory provided President Abraham Lincoln with the opportunity to issue the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and allowed the Republicans, despite losing seats, to retain control of Congress after the 1862 midterm elections. Thus the battle transformed the Civil War and saved Lincoln's presidency. There is nothing original in Martin's interpretation of the importance of the battle of Antietam, as previous authors have made similar arguments. What sets Martin's work apart is its discussion of a wide range of topics that do not always get much attention in books focused on a single battle. These topics include the actions of Clara Barton, who first rendered frontline aid to soldiers at Antietam; Union doctor Jonathan Letterman, who devised innovative methods for caring for the wounded that were first used at Antietam; and photographer Alexander Gardner, whose famous photographs of the dead of Antietam changed the way people viewed war. Martin gives a great deal of attention to Lincoln, describing his first year in the presidency (including a detailed discussion of the death of his son Willie), his decision to write the Emancipation Proclamation, and his movements on the day of the battle and immediately afterward. Martin provides an excellent summary of the engagement that captures the human drama of the battle, while not getting bogged down in too much detail, but he gives very little space to the Maryland campaign as a whole. His focus is on the battle of Antietam. A Fierce Glory: Antietam—The Desperate Battle That Saved Lincoln and Doomed Slavery is well researched and sourced, making use of numerous primary and secondary sources, including official records, newspapers, regimental histories, and autobiographies. The book does not follow a strictly chronological narrative, as the first few chapters alternate between the engagement itself and details of the first year of the war, biographies of Lincoln, Lee, and George B. McClellan, and the movement of the armies before Antietam. So, for example, while the battle starts on page 38, the famous "lost order" occurs on page 76. For the most part this organization works, but there could have been better descriptions of the armies' movements and the command decisions made in the days leading up to the battle. Overall, Martin's book is a well-written, engaging work that, while shedding little new light on the battle itself, succeeds in widening the scope of the story of Antietam, providing readers with a narrative that is not obsessed with the movement of regiments and discusses topics not normally encountered in such a book. David Work Green River College Copyright © 2019 The Southern Historical Association

Reactions

OPINION Reactions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InRedditEmail C&EN, 2017, 95 (49), pp 3–4December 18, 2017Cite this:C&EN 95, 49, 3-4(Credit: iStockphoto)Letters to the editor Bird problem In the Nov. 20 issue, herring gull is cited as one of the species that scientists are watching for possible environmental impacts (page 26). However, I have been a birder for over 45 years, and I knew immediately that the photo of the “herring gull” on the cover and in the accompanying article cannot be such. The bird is obviously (to a birder) an adult bird, and thus to be a herring gull would have a larger, thicker yellow bill with a bright red spot on the lower mandible. The bird in this photo, with a thin, small, greenish-colored bill lacking any clear marking (as well as several other factors), is more likely a black-legged kittiwake, a species also mentioned in the article.R. Martin SmithMadison, Wis.Periodate chemistry I read with interest the Oct. 2, 2017, article (page 6) about new studies of aqueous periodate equilibria which found no evidence for metaperiodate (IO4–) in aqueous solution. Kinetics studies tell a different story. Two independent temperature-jump studies (J. Phys. Chem. 1964, DOI: 10.1021/j100794a057; Z. Naturforsch., B: J. Chem. Sci. 1977, DOI: 10.1515/znb-1977-0127) and a corroborating 17O NMR line-broadening study (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1965, DOI: 10.1021/ja01096a008) indicate the existence of a rapid meta-orthoperiodate hydration-dehydration equilibrium in acidic media.The equilibrium and kinetics studies are not necessarily in conflict, however. The equilibrium study of Horváth and colleagues indicates that orthoperiodate predominates in aqueous solution over a wide range of pH values (Inorg. Chem. 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.7b01911). The equilibrium quotient for formation of metaperiodate is much smaller than had been generally accepted in previous kinetics studies. Metaperiodate, though present at low concentrations, insufficient to be unambiguously detected in equilibrium studies, can manifest its presence in aqueous solution. For example, the subtle role of this species is in accordance with ... [an] independent kinetics study reported on complex formation of an iron(III) hydroxo dimer with periodate ion (Dalton Trans. 2004, DOI: 10.1039/B313341A).Kenneth KustinChapel Hill, N.C.Women in chemistry Bibiana’s editorial in the Nov. 13 issue on the giants of chemistry (page 2) connected well with my current reading. My oldest daughter, upon graduating from college, was given this book by a classmate: “Nobel Prize Women in Science” (Carol Publishing Group, 1993) by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne. My daughter left the book with her old man when she moved on. Beginning with Marie Curie and followed by Lise Meitner, the book takes the reader through biographies of 11 additional Nobel Prize-winning women and their respective struggles to compete in the male-dominated scientific communities during much of the 20th century. The book aptly describes what each accomplished scientifically and how each overcame great gender discrimination obstacles. Eve Curie’s “Madame Curie” (Da Capo Press, 1937) is a great resource on the life of her famous mother. A paperback copy updated in 2001 is readily available. In 2012, I offered a lifelong learning course over four evenings on the life and accomplishments of Madame Curie at Michigan State University. This course was well attended.Paul R. Loconto Okemos, Mich. ACS 2016 IRS FORM 990 AVAILABLE The American Chemical Society’s 2016 IRS Form 990 is now available on the ACS website. To access the information, go to www.acs.org/acsirsform990. Please scroll toward the bottom of the page to access the 2016 form and related “Guide to Schedule J” for explanatory information regarding ACS executive compensation. If you have any access problems, please contact service@acs.org.

Body of Truth. HarrietBrown. Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo Press, 2015. 304 pp. $32.50 cloth.

Body of Truth. HarrietBrown. Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo Press, 2015. 304 pp. $32.50 cloth.

The Kent State Shootings, the Long 1960s, and the Contest Over Memory

The Kent State Shootings, the Long 1960s, and the Contest Over Memory Nancy K. Bristow (bio) Thomas M. Grace. Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016. 416 pp. Illustrations, appendix, notes, and index. $29.95. Craig S. Simpson and Gregory S. Wilson. Above the Shots: An Oral History of the Kent State Shootings. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2016. 272 pp. Narrator list, map, illustrations, notes, and index. $28.95. Howard Means. 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence. Boston: Da Capo Press, 2016. 288 pp. Map, illustrations, notes, selected bibliography, and index. $25.99. On May 4, 1970, National Guard troops opened fire on the campus of Kent State University, discharging 67 shots in a 13-second barrage that killed four young people and injured nine others. Reactions in the aftermath reflected the deep polarization—both local and national—that had made the shootings possible. Students were stunned to discover that troops would open fire on unarmed young people on their own campus, and a few dreamed of vengeance. Most guardsmen, though, defended their actions, and opinion in the town of Kent strongly supported the Guard. The local newspaper received piles of letters critiquing the students and endorsing the actions of the soldiers. When Dean Kahler, paralyzed by a gunshot wound, opened the first card he received in the hospital, it began "Dear Communist Hippie Radical" and continued, "I hope by the time you get this you are dead. We don't need people like you" (Simpson and Wilson, p. 142). The passage of decades has cooled the heated rhetoric of 1970, but fundamental questions about the shootings at Kent State remain both important and contested. These three books seek to engage those issues and contribute to our understanding of this event. Challenging several common myths about the shootings, Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties by Thomas M. Grace is the deeply researched, comprehensive, and critically insightful book that those who study and teach the history of the long 1960s have been waiting for. The child of Depression-era [End Page 518] parents and raised with a faith equal parts Catholicism and Democratic politics, Grace matriculated at Kent State in 1968. A campus activist who nevertheless attended both a history exam and a political science class prior to the noon protest on May 4, Grace was one of the students injured that day. Now a professional historian, Grace notes that "doing a history on an experience in which the author figures should give one some pause, as indeed it did for me" (p. 10). But he goes on to remind readers "there is no bias-free history. Good history, however, is fair-minded and faithful to the factual record" (p. 11). This is precisely the kind of history that Grace has produced. Written with honesty, care, and a keen critical eye, this book offers extraordinarily significant historical correctives and valuable new understandings. Since 1970, popular narratives have expressed surprise that the shootings could have happened "at a place like Kent State," suggesting that this heartland campus was isolated from the political and cultural dynamics of the 1960s. Focusing his work on the broader history of the campus, state, region, and nation in the years 1958 through 1973, Grace challenges this assumption and situates the shootings in the history of political activism and dissent on the Kent State University campus amid a growing polarization between the campus and its community. Kent State University in 1970, Grace tells us, was a campus dramatically different than it had been even three decades earlier. Like many U.S. institutions of higher learning, it had grown exponentially following World War Two due to veteran enrollments and the Cold War era's emphasis on higher education. With students drawn especially from the industrial cities of the region, political and cultural divides separated many of the students from the rural and conservative city and county in which they went to school. A racial divide also affected the lives of African American students, and Grace details the experiences of these students, making clear both the particular burdens they carried and the distinctive...

First Entrepreneur: How George Washington Built His—and the Nation’s—Prosperity by Edward G. Lengel

Reviewed by: First Entrepreneur: How George Washington Built His—and the Nation’s—Prosperity by Edward G. Lengel Christopher F. Minty First Entrepreneur: How George Washington Built His—and the Nation’s—Prosperity. By Edward G. Lengel. (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2016. Pp. viii, 280. $25.99, ISBN 978-0-306-82347-3.) Edward G. Lengel, director of the Papers of George Washington, knows a great deal about his subject. Having worked at the papers since 1997, Lengel has spent the majority of his academic career with the United States’ first president. Working at such a project confers considerable benefits. Above [End Page 150] all, Lengel’s proximity to Washington’s vast correspondence has enabled him to show a side of Washington that has gone under the radar—his entrepreneurial skills. In nine fast-paced chapters, Lengel takes readers through Washington’s life. He selectively focuses on well-known moments and periods while framing Washington as an astute businessman. In First Entrepreneur: How George Washington Built His—and the Nation’s—Prosperity, then, we see how Washington married well, maintained a fruitful estate, and commanded the Continental army as if it were a business. He thought ahead to ensure that its workforce—that is, the soldiers—were ready to go on. Equally important, he created an “administrative framework” that remained “in place until the enemy called it quits” (p. 122). Indeed, for Washington, the components of his army had to remain intact. The army had to be consistent and had to survive, and it did; and the general had to be decisive. Washington fought for supplies and manpower while skillfully attempting to maintain morale. Washington deployed many of the tried and tested business skills he had come to learn, perhaps even master, since the Revolutionary War. Most important, as president Washington desired to use the government to encourage the development, growth, and stabilization of entrepreneurial ventures. He met entrepreneurs and visited farms and factories. While appreciating that Alexander Hamilton’s financial plan would encourage partisanship, Washington recognized the overall importance of stabilizing the nation’s economy. This fact, among other items mentioned in this short biography, helped the United States find its feet alongside other great world powers, particularly during the war-torn 1790s. There are, however, some small issues with First Entrepreneur. Lengel’s claim that Washington, it seems, almost single-handedly built and secured the early United States’ economy is audacious. This contention slights the work of the thousands of “ordinary” Americans, enslaved and free, who directly or indirectly contributed to securing the nation, as many historians have endeavored to show. Many will also take issue with the dust jacket’s claim that Washington was the greatest American businessman of any generation. Also noteworthy is Lengel’s use of the term entrepreneur, which, as per the Oxford English Dictionary Online, was not in regular use until 1852. First Entrepreneur neatly fits into the “Founders Chic” category. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. Academics, students, and history enthusiasts alike will take a great deal from this book. Not only does it offer a focused biography of Washington’s early years with interesting insight into his entrepreneurial acumen, but also First Entrepreneur is wonderfully written. With elegant, engaging prose and, as one might expect, a firm command of Washington’s papers, Edward Lengel adds further complexities to the American Cincinnatus. And given that so much has already been written about Washington, the fact that Lengel has offered new information should not be underestimated. Indeed, First Entrepreneur is a strong piece of scholarship, one with which Washington scholars will have to contend. [End Page 151] Christopher F. Minty The Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society Copyright © 2017 The Southern Historical Association

No Map to This Country: One Family’s Journey Through Autism

No Map to This Country: One Family’s Journey Through Autism

The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson That Defined a Nation by Thomas Fleming

Reviewed by: The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson That Defined a Nation by Thomas Fleming Aaron N. Coleman The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson That Defined a Nation. By Thomas Fleming. (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2015. Pp. viii, 424. $27.99, ISBN 978-0-306-82127-1.) Thomas Fleming, the author of numerous popular histories, turns his efforts to the contentious relationship between Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. The clash of personalities between these leading Virginians, [End Page 663] Fleming contends, explains the political and constitutional divisions that marked the 1790s. Sadly, however, the book never develops beyond this potentially important insight. Rather than offering readers anything new, Fleming treats them to the outdated approach of the Federalist “good guys,” led by an infallible, wise, and politically savvy Washington, versus the Jeffersonian Republican “bad guys,” and their dreamy-eyed, somewhat treacherous Francophile leader, Thomas Jefferson. Fleming’s account opens with a brief, but telling, overview of the two men’s roles in the Revolution. Washington, the war hero, “crowned his victory by rejecting pleas to banish the bankrupt Continental Congress and become the new nation’s military dictator” (p. 1). Meanwhile Jefferson’s “soaring insistence” in the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence was ignored, but his “dismaying inability to deal with the crisis that confronted him” that supposedly characterized his governorship was well known to contemporaries (p. 2). From this point, the author’s bias becomes more pronounced. Fleming suggests that Washington’s force of personality single-handedly secured the Constitution’s ratification, and in so doing Washington advanced a new political theory that power could be trusted. Jefferson’s political thought, however, offered “nothing new,” just “standard Whig … doctrine” (p. 38). Fleming’s treatment of Washington’s administration continues in the same biased manner. The clash between Washington and Jefferson is the standard story of the Alexander Hamilton and Jefferson conflict, with the president substituting for the treasury secretary. There is little that is new, fresh, or unbiased in this account. Fleming’s argument, in fact, is virtually indistinguishable from Federalist polemics of the era. Washington’s use of executive power, Fleming contends, was the critical element in the American system of governance, while Hamilton’s economic program was so obviously correct that Fleming finds it unnecessary to explain why. Jefferson’s resistance to both Washington and Hamilton demonstrated that “[e]motionally and psychologically Thomas Jefferson was not a friend of this new government” (p. 68). In the American reactions to the French Revolution, Fleming all but accuses Jefferson of treason. While Jefferson’s continual fidelity toward the French Revolution was not his finest moment, to accuse him of favoring the French government over that of the United States is nonsense. Fleming’s hatred of Jefferson and the Republicans continues in the author’s treatment of the John Adams administration. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions became vital threats to the Union, Fleming writes, but the Alien and Sedition Acts were justifiable wartime measures that were minuscule assaults on civil liberties, especially when compared with those taken by future administrations. Fleming’s biased account accelerates during Jefferson’s administration. For example, rather than credit any of Jefferson’s actions or policies in securing the purchase of Louisiana, Fleming attributes Jefferson’s successes only to malaria-carrying mosquitoes and luck. Yet it is perhaps James Madison and the Tertium Quids who suffer most from Fleming’s bias. When Madison agrees with Washington and the Federalists, he is a brilliant political thinker, but when he sides with Jefferson, he becomes little more than a sycophantic devotee incapable of independent thought. The Quids [End Page 664] are not addressed by individual names, so readers have no way of knowing who these people were or why they broke with Jefferson’s administration. It is unfortunate that Fleming, whose works are popular due to his ability to tell a good story, did not use his appeal to discuss the rich complexity that marks this era. His account represents a missed opportunity. Aaron N. Coleman University of the Cumberlands Copyright © 2016 The Southern Historical Association

Their Last Full Measure: The Final Days of the Civil War by Joseph Wheelan, and: Spring 1865: The Closing Campaigns of the Civil War by Perry D. Jamieson

Reviewed by: Their Last Full Measure: The Final Days of the Civil War by Joseph Wheelan, and: Spring 1865: The Closing Campaigns of the Civil War by Perry D. Jamieson Patricia Richard Their Last Full Measure: The Final Days of the Civil War. By Joseph Wheelan. (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2015. Pp. [xii], 407. Paper, $17.50, ISBN 978-0-306-82453-1; cloth, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-306-82360-2.) Spring 1865: The Closing Campaigns of the Civil War. By Perry D. Jamieson. Great Campaigns of the Civil War. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. Pp. [xx], 286. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-8032-2581-7.) These two books concern the final months of the Civil War and the impact of the final battles on the Union and the Confederate governments and the people they governed. The last days of the Confederacy and the closing days of the war have a rich historiography that includes the works of Douglas Southall Freeman, Bruce Catton, Shelby Foote, Joseph T. Glatthaar, and William C. Davis, among many others. Thus the end of the war is a tired topic for all but the most avid Civil War buffs and scholars. And yet Joseph Wheelan and Perry D. Jamieson have seized the opportunity of the Civil War sesquicentennial to breathe new life into well-known foes and remind readers that Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee were flesh and blood and fallible. Each had choices that could have changed what we have come to know as historic events. Wheelan and Jamieson have made these famous men more relatable, giving twenty-first-century Americans an opportunity to feel more connected to them. The authors build on previous works by incorporating new perspectives from the diaries and letters of soldiers and civilians as well as the official correspondence of military and political leaders. Both authors cover the last month of 1864 and the first five months of 1865 but each with a different focus and style. With a journalist’s eye, Wheelan provides a broad perspective on the war that swings between battle-front and home front, suggesting the influence of one on the other. He writes with compelling dramatic flair and draws the reader in with rich descriptions [End Page 688] and contemporary accounts. As a military historian, Jamieson strikes a more scholarly tone by juxtaposing the actions of Grant and Lee in Virginia with that of William T. Sherman and Joseph E. Johnston in the Carolinas. Jamieson concentrates on field operations, deftly describing the actions of each army while also giving readers an intimate view from the perspective of senior officers and their subordinates. Both are worthy studies, but Wheelan’s book might be better suited for the novice interested in politics and society, while Jamieson provides a succinct narrative of the last battles that students of military history will find hard to beat. Wheelan’s Their Last Full Measure: The Final Days of the Civil War is a narration of the final six months of the Civil War that provides lively descriptions and first-person anecdotes, making for an informative and pleasurable read. In the style of Catton and Foote, Wheelan takes the reader on a fast-paced ride to the end of the conflict. Each chapter covers one month, beginning with the Union attack on Fort Fisher outside Wilmington, North Carolina. The chapters build on the importance of Fort Fisher’s fall, which Wheelan sees as the beginning of the end for the Confederacy. To craft his story he relies on special collections at the University of North Carolina’s Wilson Library for primary source material that includes published journals, letters, and unit histories. His analysis is subtle, and his vivid writing is more descriptive than argumentative. Readers witness the effects of the Union blockade on civilians in Richmond in early 1865, with its “dilapidated homes and businesses, citizens in threadbare clothing, mud everywhere, even in the corridors of hotels, whose carpets had long ago been ripped out and sent to the military stores to be cut up for blankets” (p. 18). We travel through the Carolinas as “[f]ires and dense smoke marked...

High Times

High Times John Tytell (bio) Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats & Drugs Martin Torgoff Da Capo Press www.dacapopress.com/book/hardcover/bop-apocalypse/9780306824753 393 Pages; Print, $26.00 Bop Apocalypse is a highly coherent, comprehensive and quite compelling account of the fusion of jazz history, the combustible and sometimes compromising influence of drugs, and the emergence of the Beat writers. Even if some of Torgoff’s ground has been previously covered, he weaves his narrative more fluently than some of his predecessors and with more pickle and punch. His book is not a blow-by-blow job, not a numbing parade of fact as much as a gestalt history using a synthesizing lens focusing on a conjunction of revealing events like the detail of a young Jack Kerouac sharing a table at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem with his first wife and Billie Holiday, or the bop musician Charlie Parker downing eight doubles on a dare (what downed Dylan Thomas) before performing at the Hi De Ho Club in Los Angeles in 1946. The scope of the book is large: the beginning of jazz in New Orleans after World War One; its development in Chicago in the 1920’s and Harlem in the 1930’s; the immediate repression by Harry Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics; the impact of jazz and drugs on the Beats at the end of World War Two and their ability to artistically disseminate the news of that impact. Torgoff is a gifted storyteller and he begins with a striking anecdote told to him by the writer Terry Southern. Picking cotton in Texas in 1936, on the way to fishing for bullheads in a pond surrounded by weeping willows and cottonwoods, he saw a cow sprawled on the ground in what seemed contented bliss. The field hand accompanying him noticed an uprooted green plant and explained that the cow had eaten “red dirt,” or loco-weed: i.e. Marijuana. In a time when a national paranoia about this weed had been cultivated by federal agents, Southern began searching for more. By the time he wrote the celebrated campfire scene for Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider, Southern had “smoked thousands of joints, sharing them with some of the most interesting cultural figures of his age….” Bop Apocalypse is organized with a series of sharply drawn vignettes: Anslinger, the country’s first drug czar, an inveterate liar and xenophobic racist who declared the drug war; the musician Muzz Mezzrow, the “White Mayor of Harlem,” who began dealing weed and whose 1946 autobiography Really the Blues was read by a student at Columbia University, Allen Ginsberg, “as if it were the Rosetta Stone”; the genial and generous Louis Armstrong who played music that could make people stand on their chairs and shout,” and who understood that the musicians in his band could function on marijuana without suffering the after effects of alcohol. Another key connection was Jack Kerouac who as a student at Columbia frequented a club in Harlem where a new evolution in jazz was created. The edgy, dissonance of Bop was formed in Minton’s cellar by musicians like Lester Young and Charlie Parker. Torgoff offers elegant accounts of Young, known as the Epitome of Cool, and Parker, the Icarus of that cellar. The use of heroin, Torgoff maintains, “spread in direct proportion to the cult of Parker’s admirers and Anslinger soon created a special file on musicians.” It is estimated that 75% of jazz musicians became addicted to heroin in the 1940s and 1950s, and Torgoff compassionately explores the dynamics of this phenomenon. For Jackie McLean, one of the musicians Torgoff interviewed, it was the best way to overcome a perplexing stage fright; for others like Holiday it was compensation for a terrible despair. Paradoxically, for the authorities, it became the most convenient excuse for repression. Part of the richness of Torgoff’s tapestry is his reliance on interviews he conducted over the past quarter century like the one he did with Herbert Huncke in 1992. A catalyst underground figure whose term “beat” became the signifier for a generation, Huncke was living in a basement on...

Harry Partch: Hobo Composer by S. Andrew Granade (review)

Harry Partch: Hobo Composer. By S. Andrew Granade. (Eastman Studies in Music, vol. 120.) Rochester, NY: Uni - versity of Rochester Press, 2014. [xiii, 351 p. ISBN 9781580464956 (hardcover), $29.95; (e-book), various.] Illus - tra tions, glossary, bibliography, index.Encountering Harry Partch requires a suspension of disbelief; the iconic Ameri - can composer remains shrouded in mystery, even now several decades after his death in 1974. Partch's rich musical output is magnified by two significant texts: his posthumously published journal, Bitter Music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), and a magnificent treatise on microtonality, Genesis of a Music (2d ed., New York: Da Capo Press, 1974). Together, his textual commentaries and compositional breadth make it difficult to separate Partch's chronicles from his musical legacy. And yet, to better understand the nuances of his groundbreaking theoretical and compositional work on microtonal music, this endeavor becomes all the more important. To this end, S. Andrew Granade's book contributes an important, largely overlooked perspective to the modest but growing Partch literature: the lasting effect of Partch's years as a hobo on his musical development and artistic identity. With Harry Partch: Hobo Composer, Granade accomplishes the difficult task of balancing biography with microhistory. In Granade's hands, Partch becomes both the object of scrutiny and the lens through which the rich and largely invisible transient culture is brought back into sight.Granade's book is not an exhaustive account of Partch's life and works: only those compositions emerging from Partch's experience on the road hoboing are given full attention here. Granade's work thus fits nicely into existing Partch scholarship, consisting almost entirely of Bob Gilmore's seminal biography Harry Partch: A Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), Philip Blackburn's Enclosure 3 (St. Paul, MN: American Composers Forum, 1997), and a handful of significant articles. Indeed, Granade's focus on Partch's identity as a hobo builds from the biographical work of his predecessors-along with apparent heavy lifting in the Harry Partch Archive at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign-to draw attention back to specific compositions and how they may be understood within the framework of hobo identity.Bookended by a prologue and an epilogue, Granade structures the book's eight chapters in a chronological fashion. However, Granade places much emphasis on foregrounding hobo culture, and these discussions are bracketed in two chapterlength interludes, rather than woven throughout the text, which makes for an unconventional read. Beginning in the Prologue: To Sound American, and continuing for the length of the book, Granade argues for the indelibility of those experiences not only for Partch's musical output, but even more intriguingly, for the way in which Partch later constructed his identity around and against that of the hobo, even though those experiences only lasted for fifteen years. That uneasy relationship with his hobo background can be explained by the shifting place hobos occupied within the American imagination. Over the course of Partch's lifetime, the hobo moved from being idealized as frontier explorer or rugged individualist to being feared, loathed, or-perhaps the most damning of all-nostalgized. As much as industrialization's separation of labor from product pushed many men and women into hoboing as a means of self-fulfillment and control, it also eventually led to the unraveling of hobo culture, as more trucks and cars on the road meant fewer trains to hop, and more uniform driving habits decreased the likelihood of successful hitchhiking along increasingly-busy freeways. As hoboing was vanishing in practice, and the American perception of hobos was wavering, Partch tried his hand at musically documenting those souls and their stories of life on the road. Granade carefully places Partch's work from this period into its context. …

Fat in Contemporary Autobiographical Writing and Publishing

Fat in Contemporary Autobiographical Writing and Publishing

We Are All Ballooning: Multimedia Critical Discourse Analysis of ‘Measure Up’ and ‘Swap It, Don’t Stop It’ Social Marketing Campaigns

We Are All Ballooning: Multimedia Critical Discourse Analysis of ‘Measure Up’ and ‘Swap It, Don’t Stop It’ Social Marketing Campaigns

Listenin’ to the Breeze

Listenin’ to the Breeze Jeffrey R. Di Leo (bio) Benson: The Autobiography George Benson With Alan Goldsher Da Capo Press www.dacapopress.com 222 Pages; Print, $25.99 “Listen.” So begins Miles: The Autobiography (1989) withan imperative from the master that no right-minded jazz fan would ignore. Love him or hate him, when Miles Davis spoke to us with his horn, welistened, just as we did when the man behind the horn told his life story back in 1989. “The greatest feeling I ever had in my life—with my clothes on—was when I first hear Diz and Bird together in St. Louis, back in 1944,” he continues. “I was just eighteen years old and had just graduated from Lincoln High School.” Davis’s story, like those of Diz and Bird, is part of the origin story of jazz in America, one that cannot be retold enough by its progenitors. “When I heard Diz and Bird in B’s band, I said, ‘What? What is this!?’ Man, that shit was so terrible it was scary.” It’s a moment of pure jazz injected into the teenage bloodstream of a genius. The rest is music history—and Davis left few stones unturned in the 400-plus pages of densely and richly packed autobiography. The world of jazz is hyper-competitive, particularly onstage where musicians aim to outplay and out-style one another. It is also a world where the footsteps and shadows of the greats like Bird and Miles are often respected almost to a fault. This respect is part of the jazz code, a set of unwritten rules. Learning from those who practice them is a revealing glimpse into artistic life. This is the gift of Benson: The Autobiography (2014) by George Benson and Alan Goldsher: engaging stories from a talented guitarist with a mellow voice who seemed always one step behind the giants of jazz. George Benson recounts his interactions with and feelings about many musicians from his long and remarkable life in music. In one of the book’s more memorable passages, Benson recalls getting a call from Miles asking him to join a recording session. “After I hung up, I stared at the wall for a good long while,” says Benson, “the same question blowing through my head over and over again: What am I going to play on a Miles Davis record?” Turns out Benson was right: his role in the session ended up little more than a vamp reinforcement. “And to tell the truth,” confesses Benson, “most of what happened that afternoon and evening was well out of my comfort zone.” But Benson made his mark, laying down the guitar track for “Paraphernalia,” a cut from Davis’s 1968 classic album, Miles in the Sky—a track that opened a new chapter in Davis’s musical journey. Later, Benson recounts getting paired with guitarist John McLaughlin for a gig at Lincoln Center. “I’m sure he [the promoter] was hoping for a guitar gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” says Benson, but both guitarists decided to take it back a notch. Afterwards, Benson wondered about the strange, sitar-sounding effects used by McLaughlin, who replied, “I don’t want people comparing us, so I did something completely different.” Benson is dismissed by some jazz enthusiasts because of his crossover turn towards popular and mainstream music. If anything, Benson’s original sin as a jazz musician is becoming a household name. He seems to be aware of this as he tells his story in this wonderfully concise and fast-moving autobiography. Benson rose in popularity in the mid-1970s with the release of his album Breezin’. “After twelve months,” writes Benson, “the album sold over four million copies and was nominated for five Grammy Awards.” “After that, things started changing. Drastically.” But surprisingly, these tales of drastic changes amount to little more than the final thirty-five pages of the book. The fact that Benson devotes only one fifth of the book to the last half of his career, notably the period after he became a household name, is telling. The tension between artistic and commercial success tempers the entirety of his autobiography...

Song Without Words: Discovering My Deafness Halfway Through Life

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewsFull AccessSong Without Words: Discovering My Deafness Halfway Through LifeJeffrey L. Geller, M.D., M.P.H., , Roger Peele, M.D., and Nicole Sakla, B.S.Jeffrey L. GellerSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., M.P.H., Editor, Roger PeeleSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., and Nicole SaklaSearch for more papers by this author, B.S.Published Online:1 Jan 2014https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.650110AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail by SheaGerald; Boston, Da Capo Press, 2013, 291 pagesAt the age of six, a young boy named Gerald Shea contracted scarlet fever and was left partially deaf as a result. Remarkably, however, for nearly three decades he did not realize he had a substantial hearing handicap. Instead, he thought he had a cognitive disorder that he addressed by testing the “melody” of vowels in words that he would hear until the choice of consonants made sense. These constructed vowel melodies are what Shea referred to as “lyricals.” For example, when Shea heard “Gerry, when you’re in a baa you’ve got to taa to pee,” using lyricals, he eventually translated what he had heard into, “Gerry, when you’re in a box, you’ve got to talk to people.” Unfortunately, conversations would typically carry on before he could make the translation. Despite this substantial handicap, he was among the top students at Andover, Yale, and Columbia Law School and had a successful international practice in law in the United States and Europe that often required him to hear accurately.Within those three decades, he worked 16 hours a day trying to make sense of the world around him. After discovering that he was deaf, he noted that his handicap led to “time lost as a child, a student, a lover”—as a fact, and not with any self-pity.The most imperative lesson to be taken from this autobiography is that the knowledge of being hearing handicapped does not solve or in any way eliminate the problems experienced by the 30 million partially deaf citizens in this country. When Shea finds out what his real handicap is, challenges remain. In addressing these challenges, he meets a psychiatrist, Peter Melanson, who was training to be a brain surgeon and slowly became deaf beginning in his mid-twenties. Dr. Melanson realized his deafness could have lethal consequences in an operating room and switched to the field of psychiatry, which he could successfully practice with mechanical aids. Dr. Melanson suggests that Shea be sensitive to what a life of lyricals can do to Shea’s life if he insists on not recognizing the limitations of his hearing. He ends their only meeting by giving Shea a bear hug.This candid and charming memoir reminds us that our brains are a language acquisition device. Partial deafness can lead to a limited life, or it can lead to a constant search for the meaning of life’s endless mysteries. Shea’s life is defined by the latter.Dr. Peele is with the Department of Psychiatry, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Ms. Sakla is with the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park.The reviewers report no competing interests. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 65Issue 1 January 2014Pages e10-e10 Metrics The reviewers report no competing interests.PDF download History Published online 1 January 2014 Published in print 1 January 2014

Learning to Listen: A Life Caring for Children

Learning to Listen: A Life Caring for Children

If I Had Possession over Judgment Day: Augmenting Robert Johnson

If I Had Possession over Judgment Day: Augmenting Robert Johnson

Modernizing the Mikado: Japan, Japanism and the Limitations of the Avant-garde

Modernizing the Mikado: Japan, Japanism and the Limitations of the Avant-garde