”The mere independence of America were it to have been followed by a system of government modeled after the corrupt system of English government would”The mere independence of America were it to have been followed by a system of government modeled after the corrupt system of English government would not have interested me with the unabated ardor it did. It was to bring forward and establish the representative system of government, as the work itself will show, that was the leading principle with me in writing.� ~Thomas Paine
The central thesis of this short book is that Thomas Paine was far more than the firebrand propagandist of the Revolution, the role he is usually credited with. The author emphasizes Paine’s role as a political thinker, imagining and suggesting new forms of government in his Common Sense, his pamphlet that stirred the colonists to revolution for independence. And he further credits Paine with inspiring John Adams to write Thoughts On Government in response to Paine’s Common Sense, which the curmudgeonly and conventional Adams griped was ”far too democratical.�. Adams� pamphlet ultimately had a far more direct impact on the development of the American Constitution and form of government, but by casting Paine as the impetus for Adams to first publish his thoughts, the author further credits Paine’s direct political impact.
This book was less than what I was hoping for. It suffers from being far too respectful and staid. While it adequately lays out the conflict between Adams� and Paine’s political ideas, it utterly fails to convey the bitterness of the conflict (even as it directly quotes some of the acerbic Adams� nasty slurs on Paine). Despite a title that promises an emphasis on conflict, what it delivers is a respectful reiteration of the early formation of the American government out of the conflicting ideas present in the Revolution. This wasn’t what I was expecting, and I feel it was a missed opportunity for a far more interesting book.
What this book hints at but underplays, as it strives to remain respectful of all, is the underlying conflict in the idea of America that has been present from its origins. That conflict is bitter and irreconcilable. It is the Yin and Yang of our national character, and remains in increasingly bitter conflicts about what exactly America is and what ideals it represents to the present day. Adams didn’t just disagree with Paine’s democratical ideas � he despised and hated Paine the man because of them. Paine learned to give back in kind, eventually alienating even old friends like George Washington with the bitterness of his personal attacks. John Adams vs Thomas Paine was the perfect exemplar of this ongoing conflict over the idea of America, but the author simply used it to deliver a conventional history lesson on America’s origin.
I read War to the Knife as part of my John Brown January reading project. The war in Kansas that preceded the American Civil War launched John Brown fI read War to the Knife as part of my John Brown January reading project. The war in Kansas that preceded the American Civil War launched John Brown from obscurity onto history’s stage, where his bold, ruthless, and terrible actions begin his legacy that would lead through Harpers Ferry, the gallows, and on into iconic legend. So a book devoted to that Kansas warfare seemed appropriate.
War to the Knife was not what I was expecting. It is less a history than it is a compilation of contemporary accounts, drawn from newspapers and now obscure books like that by Kansas’s first governor, Charles Robinson’s Kansas Conflict. I am not exaggerating when I say that almost every page of this text is dominated by long quotations of contemporary accounts. This has value, as finding all of these various accounts scattered among newspaper archives, out of print books, and secondary sources would be daunting for most readers. Yet the almost total lack of historical analysis gives this book a copy/paste vibe that does not recommend it. So while this book could be a valuable resource for someone with a deep interest in the savage conflict in Kansas, if you are looking for a history, this is not your book. Two and a half stars rounded up for the value of the quotation collection. ...more
”There was no milk and water sentimentality � no offensive contempt for the Negro while working in his cause; the pulsation of each and every heart be”There was no milk and water sentimentality � no offensive contempt for the Negro while working in his cause; the pulsation of each and every heart beat in harmony for the suffering and pleading slave. In John Brown’s house, and in John Brown’s presence, men from widely different parts of the continent met and united into one company, wherein no hateful prejudice dared intrude its ugly self � no ghost of a distinction found space to enter.�
What a fitting way to conclude my John Brown January reading project! A Voice From Harpers Ferry is a first hand account of that famous raid, written by the only Black man to escape it alive. Anderson’s personal account of his experience there, his descriptions of John Brown and his other brothers in arms, is absolutely invaluable to anyone interested in John Brown and the Harpers Ferry raid that sparked the Civil War.
Osborne P. Anderson was a free born Black man. He attended Oberlin College before removing to Chatham, Ontario, where he opened an abolitionist print shop. It was there, in May of 1858, that he met John Brown, learned of his revolutionary plans, and joined his cause when Brown was forming his provisional congress in Chatham’s Free Black community. Anderson became recording secretary and member of that provisional congress, and later left Canada to join Brown at Harpers Ferry.
Much of the first hand detail we have of the Harpers Ferry operation comes from Anderson’s book. He describes the difficulties of living hidden in cramped quarters at the Kennedy farm before the raid. He tells of the orders and assignments that were given the night the raid launched. Anderson was assigned to the group who were capturing important hostages (including Col. Lewis Washington, grandson of George Washington) and rounding up what slaves were willing to join the raid. Brown himself order Anderson to be the man to whom Col. Washington must surrender his grandfather’s ceremonial sword, because of the symbolic significance of Washington’s sword being surrendered to a Black man:
”The Colonel cried heartily when he found he must submit, and appeared taken aback when, on delivering up the famous sword formerly presented by Frederic to his illustrious kinsman, George Washington, Captain Stevens told me to step forward and take it.�
This book is a unique document detailing a pivotal incident of American history. Anderson prose is clear, well written, and displays the passion and absolute commitment he had to the cause. Anyone interested in John Brown and his famous raid should consider this book a must read. ...more
In The Hamilton Scheme William Hogeland tells a sprawling story that begins during the American Revolution and continues through the Andrew Jackson adIn The Hamilton Scheme William Hogeland tells a sprawling story that begins during the American Revolution and continues through the Andrew Jackson administration (and beyond). His concentration is on the political and economic machinations that built the early financial system of the new nation � how and why it was done, who benefited, who was hurt, who opposed the process, and the lasting ramifications. The initial protagonist of this story is Alexander Hamilton, whose dream of creating in the new nation a financial empire on the model of Great Britain, combined with his machiavellian genius in implementing his ideas, created the foundation that all others would either attempt to build on or rip apart.
While Hamilton begins as the principal focus, there’s a fascinating supporting cast to this history of a nascent financial empire. Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution was Hamilton’s mentor in finance, and a chief ally in his political machinations. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison usually (but not always) provided the spirited opposition, both theoretical and political, to Hamilton’s vision. Albert Gallatin takes over the main focus at some point of the story, as a financial genius who tried to deconstruct the financial scheme Hamilton created. Most interesting are the characters who became the biggest losers of this history � those men the founders derisively called “the Democracy,� who supported the idea of truly radical democracy (which they believed represented the spirit of the American Revolution) where laborers and common folk would receive equal treatment to the moneyed class enriched by Hamilton’s plan. These include the propagandist of the Revolution, Thomas Paine, and a back country radical prophet of Democracy, Herbert Husband.
This history spans the Revolution, Shays Rebellion, the Constitutional Convention, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, and more, all seen through the lens of how they functioned in advancing or complicating the Hamilton’s financial schemes as well as those who opposed them. It covers the administrations of Washington through Jackson. The Epilogue traces the lingering effects and political myth-making up to our present time.
Hogeland’s telling of the story is riveting, but it does sprawl out of control, losing focus in the book’s last third, sometimes almost as far as losing the point. He also has a noticeable point of view; while acknowledging the impracticality of the ideas of Husband, Paine, and the other radical democrats who were crushed by the money men who built a financial empire for their own class, it seems obvious that his sympathies are more clearly aligned with them than with the financial founders who triumphed. ...more
”My own mind is my own church.� Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
”My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.� Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man”My own mind is my own church.� Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
”My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.� Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
This book provides an account of those who got that “Emancipated Religion� � that “real Religion of Humanity� � and who promoted it in the face of their own doubts, the admonitions of colleagues, and the rebukes of Christian critics.
This is an odd and fascinating history of the freethinkers (beginning in the 19th century) who attempted to create a significant and lasting secular religion. In this attempt they were forced to struggle against not just the religiously orthodox, but also against other freethinkers who believed that the trappings and ceremonies of religion should be abandoned along with its superstitious belief systems. The symbolic center of these early attempts at secular religion was Thomas Paine, the radical revolutionary of both the American and French revolutions, who became both a kind of martyr to free-thought and its de facto secular saint.
Those searching for a religion within secularism were intent on defining religion in such a way as to deemphasize the supernatural and to accentuate moral responsibility, intellectual freedom, cosmopolitanism universality, and this-worldly progress.
Secularism was itself a coinage of the mid-nineteenth century originally designed to break down the prevailing dichotomies between Christianity and infidelity, revealed religion and freethinking unbelief.
The first section of this book centers the obsession these early proponents of secular religion had with Tom Paine’s missing bones. Paine’s body had been unceremoniously buried on the grounds of his farm, but was later stolen and taken to England by a fan who hope to reinter him there with great fanfare. When that plan failed, the location of Paine’s disinterred bones became a mystery. The American freethinkers attempting to found a secular religion of humanity with Paine as its patron secular saint became relic hunters, following every rumor and obscure clue of the possible location of these bones for nearly a century.
While unmistakably opposed to the Christian materiality of relics, to the sacramental aura of “sacred things,� Paine’s American devotees nonetheless gave perpetual expression to the seriousness of their discipleship through the pursuit of their saint’s lost bones. Secularism had a body � or rather, a missing body that was repeatedly mythologized in its absence as a token of Paine’s universal spirit. Paine was the rock on which the American church of humanity was built.
Section two of the books concentrates on the ceremonies these secular religionist attempted to create, with particular emphasis on a secular burial service. Dying as they had lived, free of religious superstition, was of particular interest to 19th century freethinkers. A favorite trope of the Orthodox was the terrified infidel begging for conversion on their deathbed. They had created one such lying story about Tom Paine’s death, and trumpeted it from pulpits as a cautionary tale against the wickedness of unbelief. Freethinkers desired an appropriate burial ceremony that could establish that they had died as well as they lived without abandoning their commitment to reason. Many early attempts at these secular burial services were hijacked by the deceased Orthodox family, who either completely ignored their wishes, burying them with Orthodox ceremony, or tacked Orthodox prayers and hymns on, marring the desired effect. This section also introduces the French Philosopher and freethinker Auguste Comte, who devised an elaborate system of secular ceremonies with pomp similar to that of his original Catholicism.
Section three focuses on specific attempts, mostly in the 19th century, but reaching into the 20th, to form secular churches of one form or another. The demand for such bodies was always more aspirational than actual, and as such, these groups were limited in size, reach and duration.
That liberal secularism, especially in the nineteenth-century United States, was going to act as a hegemon was largely a fantasy of its most excited enthusiasts and its most zealous adversaries.
Throughout the book, and particularly in its epilogue, the author deals with the way that Orthodox believers magnified the imagined threat of evil, faith destroying secularism as an imminent threat to their way of life. This belied the evidence that the believers always vastly outnumbered the freethinkers. Yet, in the second half of the 20th century, the idea that the government was in cahoots with a vast, secular humanist conspiracy became a favorite piece of evangelical propaganda, that continued to prove effective even as its untruth was repeatedly demonstrated. This, as much as anything, finally ended the few surviving attempts by freethinkers to form their own secular assemblies.
Even as the threat of secular humanism kept getting bigger as a phantasmal menace in the evangelical imagination, organized groups of religious humanists remained small, hardly living up to their culture war billing as the puppet masters of American moral decay. Their fellowships were islets of humanistic community in a sea of evangelical megachurchs, television ministries, and lobbying groups; they constituted a fringe more than a powerhouse.
The Church of Thomas Paine contains a wealth of valuable information about the challenges, culture and development of freethinking in America. It covers humanistic giants such as Thomas Paine, Robert Ingersoll, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as lesser known lights of American free thought. While well told, it at times becomes repetitive, thanks in part to how many of the stories follow similar patterns and end in similar ways....more
”Ultimately, Paine did achieve the great Enlightenment dream of a global fame lasting for centuries. Instead of the Roman version of heaven, however, ”Ultimately, Paine did achieve the great Enlightenment dream of a global fame lasting for centuries. Instead of the Roman version of heaven, however, his reputation has drifted through something of a limbo; the dead man alternately repudiated and honored, just as the living one had been befriended and reviled.�
Thomas Paine was the most revolutionary of America’s Revolutionary generation. Because of this, his memory uniquely resisted being turned in to a marble saint or demigod as has been the fate of many of the other founders. He was simply too dangerous to be deified into that mythic pantheon we Americans were taught to revere in our grammar schools. He played major parts in both the American and French Revolutions, and came very near to igniting another in Great Britain. He attacked governments, churches, and oligarchs with absolutely no regard to politics, diplomacy, or personal safety, ever eschewing the pragmatism of realpolitik for his pure, utopian, Enlightenment vision.
So, if you are less familiar with Thomas Paine than his Revolutionary contemporaries, there’s a reason for that. Paine has been reviled as much or more than he has been honored in our history. Even today, his ideas are still untamed, can still stir controversy. He never forsook the pure fire of the Enlightenment ideal behind the American Revolution, and thus never calcified into convenient marble myth.
Author Craig Nelson has written a truly dynamic biography of this fascinating man. He covers the man, his writings, his times, and his legacy equally well. He treats Paine sympathetically, yet is no sycophant. And he puts Paine into the perspective of his times, by explaining that Paine was far less radical then than he is perceived now. Nelson writes that much of what Paine wrote in his controversial The Age of Reason (his book supporting Deism and attacking revealed religion) were ideas common to most of the great men of his time (Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, etc.) but they were careful not to share these thoughts with the common folk. The line that Paine crossed, that which made him dangerous, was that he wrote for the common man, exposing the masses to ideas the elites felt they were not ready for. Even Paine’s great enemy William Pitt the Younger, who hounded him out of England, banned his books, tried him in absentia for seditious libel, and carried on a miniature reign of terror in England to put down what Paine had stirred up, said of him that Paine’s The Rights of Man is right, but what can I do?
Nelson casts Paine as the Enlightenment prophet who transmitted the ideas of the elite few to the massed many, and that may just be why Paine’s ideas are still vibrant and relevant while his contemporaries have to settle for being marble myths.
”Thomas Paine needs no monument by hands. He has erected a monument in the hearts of all who love liberty.� Andrew Jackson
The Americanization of the Apocalypse: Creating America’s Own Bible is the third and final volume of Donald Harman Akenson’s study on the Plymouth BreThe Americanization of the Apocalypse: Creating America’s Own Bible is the third and final volume of Donald Harman Akenson’s study on the Plymouth Brethren, John Nelson Darby, and their influence on what developed into American Fundamentalist Evangelicalism. (Discovering the End of Time, and Exporting the Rapture are his first two volumes.) The inventions of this obscure sect, dating only to the 1830s, in hermeneutics (interpreting the Bible), and most especially in eschatology (End-times theology) were completely novel in Christian theology up to that time. Yet these relatively recent innovations are now accepted by Evangelicals as the ancient, accepted doctrines of their faith, and form the building blocks of modern Christian Nationalism.
Akenson’s earlier volumes covered the emergence of the Brethren sect among the Protestants in Ireland, and the development of their startlingly, radical new ways of Biblical interpretation and End Time theology. He also examined in detail the split of that already small sect into the dominate cult of personality based around John Nelson Darby (the Exclusive Brethren) and the rump that remained (the Open Brethren). Finally, in this book, he examines how these ideas were brought to America, caught on among certain key churchmen, and were codified into a new American faith through the invention of the Scofield Reference Bible.
”The Exclusive Brethren were a novel importation to North America, something close to being a new religion.�
Akenson is strong on research, but not always great at connecting the dots. He focuses on key figures. John Nelson Darby, both the single most important figure in formulating these novel doctrines and the primary missionary in carrying them to America, is covered in some depth. Yet so many details crucial to the story are neglected. Akenson tells us where Darby went in the United States, but almost without detail of how he effected his missionary work. It is detail without any obvious narrative. Likewise, he tells us about crucial Brethren and Brethren allied men in Canada � Fredrick and Robert Grant, Reverend James Inglis � who facilitated a sort of middle ground in Canada for transmitting these doctrines to the United States, but large gaps remain where no easy story emerges. Careful reading allows one to piece together crucial details, but the reader is left to do the work, as Akenson makes no real attempt to lay out the story in any easy to follow narrative.
Akenson continues his history in the United States by sketching out more crucial figures in Americanizing the Brethren doctrines; first James Hall Brookes, who was crucial as a teacher, a publisher, and a founder of the Niagara Conference, and later Dwight L. Moody, the famous American lay evangelist who, in a simplified form, spread these doctrines to the masses. But he truly hits his stride when he comes to Cyrus I. Scofield, the complex man with a shadowy, if not nefarious past, who was responsible for creating the Scofield Reference Bible. The most important and most accessible portions of Akenson’s book are those that chronicle how C.I. Scofield took the innovations of Brethren doctrine and essentially created a new, American scriptures with them:
”Cyrus Scofield’s ribbons of comments and footnotes, in partnership with Henry Frowde’s oversight of the visual design take the innovative belief system that had begun with the Brethren in Ireland and superimposed it on the King James Bible. One cannot get to the KJV text without first engaging the iron mask that eventually comes to be called Dispensationalism.�
The Scofield Bible is ubiquitous in Evangelical circles, the primary Bible study aid, and still a significant tool for Evangelical ministers creating sermons. Akenson’s book culminates in the creation of this book, placing it as the end point of the process of invention that began in a tiny, elite group in Ireland in the 1820s, developed into a small sect in England, and then passed its legacy to American Evangelicals while virtually hiding the process by which it happened. Akenson goes into great detail on Scofield’s creation of his reference Bible, and his partnership with his publisher, Henry Frowde of Oxford University Press to create its unique look and format which proved crucial to its effectiveness. Akenson writes:
”Here the continuing creative genius was Scofield’s and Frowde’s; taking a clean text of the King James Bible, washed of all previous interruptions in the text, and encircling that text with interlocking bands of information, and presenting these in a physical form that gave priority to the interpretations over the material that was being interrupted. The frame took presidents over the text.�
He explains how this changed the experience of reading or studying scripture, to the point where the Scofield Reference Bible is essentially a new and unique scripture:
”Frequently, one was inveigled into reading an interpretative summary before encountering in full all the material being summarized. Once a Bible student engaged the Scofield system, an innocent reading of the scriptural text was forever impossible.�
”The Scofield Reference Bible turns the two testaments into a single narrative, complex, and even slightly confusing, but nevertheless a single narrative that begins in the SRB before the ancient text is allowed a syllable. The SRB does what the original does not do � it pressures everything to fit.
I cannot say that I enjoyed this book. I was put off by its lack of narrative to help make sense of a complex and obscure history. But it is an important book, well researched, and crucial to a better understanding of American Evangelicals and that subset of the group, Christian Nationalist. It definitely picks up in its final third about Scofield and his Reference Bible, which is certainly the clearest, if not most important portion of the volume. I’ll give Akenson the last word on that:
”The Scofield Reference Bible is an unprecedented, creative, and magisterial structure. It is so strong that no matter how hard we try, we cannot avoid its subsequent impact. It was perfectly formed to become the Ur-text, the script and scripture of 20th century white Christian Nationalism.�
Most of the audience for Inventing A Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson is already familiar with much of its material. If you have enough interestedMost of the audience for Inventing A Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson is already familiar with much of its material. If you have enough interested to pick up a book about the early republic, as covered here in the administrations of our first three presidents, odds are you already know your way around the subject. All the big stories from the beginning are here � the Constitutional Convention, the Compromise of 1790 and the Assumption Bill, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Louisiana Purchase � you know all this stuff already, right? So why bother with this book?
There are a few reason why you should read Mr. Vidal’s book, the first of which is that it’s totally free of American Exceptionalism, that virus that infected much of what passed for American History. Vidal writes about these guys as real men � active, self-interested politicians, not unlike the variety that we now know, and he interprets the material through that lens. He acknowledges that they (at least his principal characters) were not only competent, but more importantly, self-aware that they were acting out their careers at the beginning of something BIG, that they were living their lives on the lit stage of history. As such, they actively curated their own lives, actions, and papers with an eye toward posterity. Vidal takes many opportunities to point this out, as in this passage about Washington:
Reluctantly (apparent reluctance was his style whenever something desirable came his way) Washington had accepted the presidency of a joint Virginia Maryland company to develop the navigability of the Potomac River.
Vidal never lets you forget that he is writing about men, not demigods or marble statues.
Gore Vidal’s lived experience is the second thing that sets this volume apart. He was born into a politically active family � he was grandson to Senator Thomas Gore, and was tangentially related to Jacki Kennedy. He once ran for Congress himself. He knew, first hand, what motivated political choices, the personal ambition at its heart, and had a behind the scenes view of the patriotic gloss that then became politics public face. He knew all this too well to ever believe Mythic History as commonly taught. So when he wrote of the politics of our past, he didn’t deceive himself that it was substantially different from the present. (This isn’t so much a separate reason as it is an explanation why Vidal was not susceptible to American Exceptionalism.)
But for me, Gore Vidal’s voice is the driving reason for reading Inventing a Nation. It is sophisticated and earthy. He assumes his readers intelligence, never writing down to them. He writes with wit, and his arch style sets his work apart, as here:
Paradoxically, a later generation of pagan-minded fundamentalist chose to place an image of the optimist Jefferson on a Dakota cliff alongside the Father of the Gods, the Renewer of the Union, and the Proto-Imperialist, quite ignoring the truly American Adams who represented the tortured conscience of a nation sprung from bewitched soil, prone to devil belief and lately to bloody wars against serpentine evil everywhere forever wriggling its way through sacred gardens.
Finally, Vidal’s intellect and insight sometimes made him appear almost prescient. When writing about the Federalist obsession with war with France, he sums it up by explaining:
In the United States, dying political parties often make colorful departures.
In our own age of one of our major parties becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of MAGA Trump, this statement appears particularly apt.
I wanted to see what happened when I brought rigorous theoretical and methodological approaches to bear on some seriously weird shit.
Which is just whaI wanted to see what happened when I brought rigorous theoretical and methodological approaches to bear on some seriously weird shit.
Which is just what Erik Davis has done in High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoteric, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies. He has written a serious, scholarly study about the Outsider, Countercultural weirdness that was going on in California in the 1970s � what some have described as America’s Third Great Awaking. Davis writes that he sometimes thinks of himself as a “Counter-Public Intellectual,� that he identifies with the undergrounds he writes about, and that:
I was committed, in a sometimes defensive way, to affirming the value of fringe scenes whose distance from highbrow norms and other indexes of “seriousness� I was defiantly and proudly aware of.
He does a deep delve into his subject by focusing through the lens of three of the era’s psychonauts: Terence McKenna, modern shaman, Robert Anton Wilson, esoteric trickster, and Philip K. Dick, holy madman.
Before Davis began his study of his featured subjects, he spent chapters setting up the common ground where their weirdness was going down � the much-maligned decade of the �70s. He quotes Stephen Paul Miller, calling it the “uncanny decade� or the un-decade.� He writes:
It is a chestnut of �70s studies to mock the “me decade� for its shallow narcissism. But few recall how weird and difficult the “me� in question had become. Shorn of its traditional supports, the new me was not so much a triumphal exclamation point as a question mark, an existential conundrum.
The flip side of self realization was the somewhat disturbing possibility…that there is no solid or real me at all. The existential vertigo catalyzed by this suspicion is the dark secret of �70s narcissism � the Munch-like scream of the smiley face.
After setting up the complexities of the decade, Davis dives deep into chewy analysis of his three subjects in order, noting what influenced them, their similarities, and differences. He treats their most far out experiences and claims about them with scholarly seriousness, but no gullibility. Indeed, all three subjects seriously questioned their own work without rejecting it, part of what sets them apart:
In all cases, however, the beliefs of our subjects took the form, not of metaphysical assertions, but of hypothesis to be tested. Rather than prophetic revelations or dogmatic presuppositions, the hypothetical “what if?� came to shape both their experiments and their experiences.
I’m not going to go into details of Davis’s analysis � you’ll have to read the book for that. But I will say that as someone who has read all three (deeply studied both Wilson and PKD) that the dive Davis takes into their works and experiences is thoughtful, on point, and adds value. If you are interested in any or all of these figures, or the general weirdness —what Davis writes is � a path of radical empiricism,…what I will be calling Weird Naturalism.�, then you should appreciate this book....more
During the long, dark history of oppression against the labor movement (prior to 1935’s National Labor Relations Act) the capital class wielded two maDuring the long, dark history of oppression against the labor movement (prior to 1935’s National Labor Relations Act) the capital class wielded two major weapons in their class warfare against labor. The first was governmental violence � local police and National Guards used to beat, bully, or kill strikers, their families and supporters with impunity. The second was control of the press� spreading propaganda of fear and hatred against labor, excusing and whitewashing the violence used against them as necessary to protect the public welfare. This book is an example of the latter.
The Great Strike of 1877 was the first great uprising of Labor in the 19th century. It started as a strike against the railroads, who had severely cut wages during an ongoing depression, and it effected many large cities, from Buffalo to Baltimore, Pittsburgh to St. Louis. It effectively shut down the nation’s transportation system, and was spreading through sympathy to other industries � becoming the powerful and dreaded general strike. It was the first great flexing of Labors muscles, and as such, was brutally suppressed by the Capitalist Barons of Industry. Calling on police, militia, and federal troops, the strike was violently broken with lethal, government sanctioned violence.
This book was a contemporary account of the strike, written just a few months after the events by Joseph A. Dacus, a St Louis newspaper reporter. Its incendiary, loaded language casts the strikers and their supporters as a rabble of the most dangerous and useless dregs of society:
”In the large cities the cause of the strikers was espoused by a nondescript class of the idle, the vicious, and the whole rabble of the Pariahs of society.�
”It was evident that the spirit of the Internationalists was reveling with fiendish delight amid the scenes of tumult everywhere observable on the streets. Pittsburgh was fast becoming drunk with passion � dark, unrelenting devilish passion, that would hesitate to commit no crime, shrink not from any deed of horror.�
In doing so, Dacus justifies the brutal violence used to break the strike, while spreading fear against any laborers who dared to stand up to wickedly unfair treatment. He invoked the specter of The Paris Commune, a socialist people’s movement that had briefly taken over Paris in 1871 before it was brutally destroyed. This was the beginnings of the Red Scare in America, a boogie that would be invoked over and over to suppress labor reform and free speech. Propaganda like this by Dacus set the stage for the violence a decade later in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, and became a template for generations of hate mongering and slander against labor, immigrants, and social reform. Its only value is as a contemporary example of the Capitalist control of the press as a weapon in their class war against the workers (which accounts for two, rather than one stars). ...more
In the mid to late �70s, the Philadelphia Phillies were the team to beat in the National League East. They were the great, cross state rivals to my PiIn the mid to late �70s, the Philadelphia Phillies were the team to beat in the National League East. They were the great, cross state rivals to my Pittsburgh Pirates, edging them out of the Divisional title from 1976 through 1978. They were a powerhouse, with outstanding pitching led by the indomitable Steve Carlton, awesome slugging with a young Mike Schmidt and the hulking Greg Luzinski, and slick fielding epitomized by shortstop Larry Bowa. They had a deep bench and an unparalleled bullpen. I picked this book up thinking that it was a history of the best of those �70s teams � the 1977 Phillies who won 101 games and probably (but for bad luck) should have faced the Yankees in the World Series that year. But I was wrong. That’s not what this book is at all.
Instead, what I found was far more complex and complicated. It is a history of a city, a history of its two baseball teams, a history of some of the darker corners of baseball, and a kind of sociological study on the soul of that city. It uses a single game, game three of the 1977 Championship Series between the Phillies and Dodgers (not even the deciding game of that series) as a sort of framing devices to narrate all these subjects. It is not an unmitigated success in trying to accomplish all of these things, but it manages to cover a couple of them admirably.
The City of Philadelphia is the real subject of this book. The author traces its history, from the early Republic when it was the center of government, finance, commerce, and culture, to its loss of all of those things in the early 19th century, and its coming to play second fiddle to an ascendant New York City. It’s how, the author claims, citizens of Philadelphia came to have a huge chip on their shoulder, which in turn brings him back to the history of baseball in Philadelphia.
Nathanson’s focus on this baseball history is by far the strongest section of his book. He begins with the creation of the Philadelphia Athletics as one of the founding teams of the American League, and he explains how it was always the favored team in Philadelphia right up through its departure from the city in 1954. He explains why baseball was so unbalanced and non competitive in the first half of the 20th century. Ever wonder why there are no great stories or legendary players from teams like the St Louis Browns, the Boston Braves, or the Philadelphia Phillies during this period? Nathanson explains it. Do you find it curious that baseball remained stable for 50 years, and then suddenly, starting in the early �50s, five teams moved in less than a decade? He explains that too. All this in service to illustrating that Philadelphians suffered another wrong when they were forced to lose their favored team, the Athletics instead of its ugly step sister, the Phillies.
Not all the pieces of this sprawling history are as interesting. While the early history about how the loss of The Second Bank of the United States and the construction of the Erie Canal led to Philadelphia’s downfall were intriguing, I didn’t have the same interest in the detailed history of its urban renewal in the �50s and �60s, or the collapse of the city’s short lived optimism as that plan began to implode in the late �70s. And using a single baseball game as a turning point in this drama seemed to be asking a bit too much of my credulity. But anytime the author refocused on baseball history, as when talking about the Phillies epic collapse in 1964, or the building of their fantastic mid to late �70s teams, he quickly recaptured my attention.
This is an odd book that tries to accomplish too much. It probably should have been at least two different books. But its baseball history is fascinating and worth suffering through its flaws. ...more
Fantasyland reads like a polemic. Polemics should be succinct. Fantasyland is not, and that is its primary problem.
Anderson’s thesis in Fantasyland iFantasyland reads like a polemic. Polemics should be succinct. Fantasyland is not, and that is its primary problem.
Anderson’s thesis in Fantasyland is that America’s credulity for whacked out conspiracy theories, alternative realities, and lying hucksters peddling fantastical tales is nothing new. Rather, it was present from the beginning. America, he claims, was an idea originally marketed to the credulous of Europe, and has never ceased to be a land where magical thinking was the norm, and fantasy routinely accepted as reality.
Anderson actually makes a strong case for his thesis. He does this in part by not treating religious beliefs with the kid gloves usually accorded them by the polite. He calls out the fantastical, anti-rational beliefs of the Puritans and the First and Second Great Awakenings, then continues on through the development of eschatology, evangelicalism, Mormonism, and all the other isms, major and minor, that dot America’s historical landscape. Around this foundation he populates the patent medicines, mesmerism, phrenology, spiritualism, and other whack-a-doodle fads that have periodically gripped America.
But when Anderson reaches the second half of the 20th century he begins to lose control of his material. He paraphrases Eisenhower’s famous phrase and starts talking about the “Fantasy Industrial Complex.� He sees this as a creation of the “anything goes”’ethic of the 1960s � the paradigm shift he sees creating our present, mad moment. While I don’t wholly disagree with him, from this point on he becomes increasingly more slipshod in his reasoning. Rather than building a solid case for his thesis, he breaks down into ranting. He begins to sound more like a curmudgeonly uncle airing his grievances than a serious commentator.
Fantasyland lacks all scholarly rigor. Still, Anderson could have made this work as a polemic. Polemics don’t require the same balanced treatment as other works of scholarship. They don’t need to carefully examine all sides, and can get away with some ranting. What a successful polemic cannot do is drag on and on and on. If it bores you, it has failed. And in his zeal to include all of his indictments against America since the 1960s, Anderson violated this most basic rule....more
Mr. Wilson’s War is a title that accurately advertises the book’s content. It is a history of World War I that focuses on American reaction and particMr. Wilson’s War is a title that accurately advertises the book’s content. It is a history of World War I that focuses on American reaction and participation as curated and helmed by President Woodrow Wilson. Because of its Wilson centered focus, the history begins in 1901 with the assassination of President McKinley. This allows Dos Passos to sketch out the development of the American political scene in the first decade of the 20th century and to show the rise of Wilson within that greater context. By the time he comes to the war years, the reader already has a basic understanding of Wilson, and can better conceptualize why he acted as he did.
Significant section of Mr. Wilson’s War are history as biography. Dos Passos introduces important figures � Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, Colonel Edward House, General Pershing, Wilson himself, and others � then goes into detailed, mini biographies of them from their youth onward. (Readers of Dos Passos’s masterful USA Trilogy will recognize this technique.)
The book is strongest when delving into the politics and the behind the scenes maneuvering of the war and events leading to America’s entry. It also does a decent job of showing how Wilson’s arrogance and intransigence made a mess of the peace. It is not a book for any in depth look at the causes of the war or detailed exploration of the battlefront before America’s entry. It is at its weakest when describing frontline action and actual battles, so if that is your major interest you should look elsewhere.
This is definitely a niche history of the war, best read by those with a deep interest and looking to read widely about it. If you are only looking for a general history of the First World War, this isn’t the book for you. ...more
”Brown was the first martyr in the war that freed the slaves, Lincoln one of the last.�
”More slowly than Brown, and more tentatively, Lincoln had summ”Brown was the first martyr in the war that freed the slaves, Lincoln one of the last.�
”More slowly than Brown, and more tentatively, Lincoln had summoned Heaven to justify his actions. Brown professed to know that God was on his side, Lincoln only hoped he was.�
”The question had been, what does a good man do when his country commits a great evil? John Brown chose the path of violence, Lincoln of politics, yet the two paths wound up leading to the same place, the most terrible war in American history. Brown aimed at slavery and shattered the Union, Lincoln defended the Union and destroyed slavery.�
H.W. Brands� The Zealot and the Emancipator is not so much a dual biography of John Brown and Abraham Lincoln as it is a history of the final, bloody years, and ultimate demise of American slavery. And that is precisely what makes it an excellent book. Brands keeps a close focus on the events of his subjects lives that are most closely tied to that theme that binds them together, and by doing so avoids much of the material that often bogs down and slows biographies.
Brands concentrates his considerable storytelling ability on those incidents of Brown and Lincoln’s lives that most closely bear on the slavery issue. For Brown that would be his martial activities in Bleeding Kansas, his preparations for and raid on Harpers Ferry, his trial and execution. For Lincoln, Brands starts in earnest with his debates with Senator Douglas and attempts to become Senator from Illinois, his using the slavery issue to position himself for nomination for the presidency, and of course, his execution of the war effort as president, concentrating on those aspects that most closely impacted slavery. Brown’s story ends well before the book does, as he was hanged in 1859, while Brands history continues until Lincoln’s 1865 assassination.
As a history of the end of slavery, Brands gives considerable ink to some other figures significant to that issue. Stephen Douglas, the politician responsible for the popular sovereignty doctrine that set Kansas to bleeding, against whom Lincoln rose to national prominence through their debates is prominent. So is Chief Justice Roger Taney, thanks to his role in issuing the Dred Scott decision. Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave, orator, and abolitionist has almost as prominent a role in this history as does Lincoln and Brown.
It is fitting that Brown and Lincoln are profiled together in this book. Without Brown’s actions there would have been no Civil War, at least not at that time. Arguably, without his raid at Harpers Ferry, there would have been no Lincoln presidency, and you likely would never have heard of this insignificant, one term congressman. Without the slavery question, neither man would have impacted our history at all. Because of it, both became martyrs. Though Brown’s story ended first, his actions forced the issue. In the words of Frederick Douglass:
”If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that ended slavery. John Brown began the war that ended slavery and made this a free republic. Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom was dim, shadowy and uncertain. the irrepressible conflict was one of words, votes, and compromises. When John Brown stretched fourth his arm the sky was cleared, the time for compromises was gone.�
”His zeal in the cause of my race was far greater than mine. It was as the burning sun to my taper light. Mine was bounded by time. His stretched away to the boundless shores of eternity. I could live for the slave, but he could die for him.� ...more
Dangerous Rhythms chronicles the symbiotic relationship between jazz and the shadowy underworld of gangsters. Beginning with the music’s origins in thDangerous Rhythms chronicles the symbiotic relationship between jazz and the shadowy underworld of gangsters. Beginning with the music’s origins in the streets and bordellos of New Orleans� infamous Storyville red light district, the book traces the tale of how jazz and organized crime grew and developed together. From New Orleans to Kansas City, Chicago to New York, Los Angeles to Havana to Las Vegas � the hottest towns for jazz and the underworlds that both supported and exploited it are mapped out. The often arcane relationships between mobsters, corrupt politicians, and the music business is explored.
The book is arranged as a collection of episodic stories, mostly in chronological order, that tell the history of jazz’s most storied performers and their dependence on the mob’s most nefarious characters. For some, it was a devil’s bargain of necessity. Others were drawn to the glamor and danger of the mobsters. Dangerous Rhythms serves as a bird’s eye history of both jazz and the mob, and will be fascinating to those interested in either....more
The Oregon Trail is a smorgasbord of a book. It’s a travel book, it’s a history, and it’s a family saga. While telling an incredible tale of the firstThe Oregon Trail is a smorgasbord of a book. It’s a travel book, it’s a history, and it’s a family saga. While telling an incredible tale of the first covered wagon crossing of the entire Oregon Trail in a century, it chronicles the history and importance of the trail as the highway of history’s largest overland migration. Along the way it fills us in on incidental histories � mule breeding, wagon building, etc. The author also relates his family history � his eccentric father who took his family on covered wagon vacations along the East Coast in the late �50s, sparking a lifelong interest that culminated in this journey and book.
Rinker Buck is a great storyteller. He ties present to past, explaining the central importance of the Oregon Trail to America by demonstrating with his own trip what an arduous accomplishment navigating it was. He uses his family drama, both his clashing and bonding with his brother along the trail, and his personal struggles with his father’s ghost, to illustrate the struggles of pioneer families taking to the trail and facing the unknown.
If you are looking for a book with a tight focus, keep moving. This is definitely a book for generalist, not specialists. If a bit of salty language offends you � if a goddamn here and a fuck there gets your panties in a twist � maybe you should reread Little House On The Prairie instead of something earthy and real like this. But if you want to experience an amazing journey full of drama, humor, history, and not a little eccentricity, Buck’s book hits the bullseye.
”The years from 1917 to 1921 are probably unmatched in American history for popular hysteria, xenophobia, and paranoid suspicion.� ~David Brion Davis, ”The years from 1917 to 1921 are probably unmatched in American history for popular hysteria, xenophobia, and paranoid suspicion.� ~David Brion Davis, American historian
American Midnight chronicles how conservative forces in the United States manipulated the patriotic frenzy caused by America’s entry into the Great War to crush all dissent. Censorship was strictly enforced through control of the mails. Hundreds of Americans were imprisoned for nothing more than what they said or wrote. The government sponsored a massive vigilante group, The American Protective League, which harassed, tormented, and occasionally killed citizens with impunity. Conscientious Objectors were subjected to military justice, and were routinely tortured. Particularly targeted were radical labor groups like the IWW (Wobblies), Anarchist (then personified by Emma Goldman), and Socialist. Not coincidentally, these groups were largely made up of newer immigrants � Jews, Eastern and Southern Europeans � and the campaigns against the groups became a xenophobic war against immigrants.
While these dark events were concentrated in a short, three year window, they had devastating, long term effects. The IWW, the nation’s most progressive union, was crushed, never to recover. Anarchism as a social movement in America was so obliterated that most today have no concept of what it was, and define it by the hostile caricature created by the propaganda of its enemies. Socialism, which had been a strong, minority party in the Progressive Era, with Socialist mayors of major cities, Socialist state and federal representatives, and even Socialist presidential candidates capturing a significant portion of the vote � Socialism was broken, never to recover its influence. Perhaps most significantly, the Johnson-Reed Act slammed the door on immigration, replacing the Statue of Liberty’s torch of freedom with a stop sign for four decades, making xenophobia systematic.
American Midnight should be read as a warning. These events, while happening a little over one hundred years ago, are not remote and dead history. Rather, they are a particularly virulent representation of a dark side of America that often emerges in time of national stress. From the McCarthy Red hunting of the �50s, to the Patriot Act, water boarding torture, and Black Sites after 9/11, to recent MAGA demonization of immigrants, these impulses are never far below the surface, and re-emerge repeatedly....more
In Travels With George, Nathaniel Philbrick combines history and travelogue. The history is solid. The travel writing is clunky.
His chosen focus is WIn Travels With George, Nathaniel Philbrick combines history and travelogue. The history is solid. The travel writing is clunky.
His chosen focus is Washington’s travels throughout the entire country during his first term as president. Washington realized that his fame and gravitas made him a uniting figure, and hoped to solidify his still fragile nation with his personal presence. Philbrick does a good job of painting the state of the nation at the time, its internal conflicts, and Washington’s attempts to bridge them.
What didn’t quite work was Philbrick’s travelogue as he chronicled his own journey in Washington’s footsteps. He was inspired by Steinbeck’s Travels With Charlie (which he referenced repeatedly), but while he is a fine historian, John Steinbeck he is not. The three trips he took accompanied with his wife and dog read more like grandpa and grandma’s history tourism vacation than they do a Steinbeckian Search for America.
Despite misfiring on the travelogue, I would still recommend this book. He does a good job exploring Washington’s character and his importance as a national unifier. And he does not shy away from the issue that was the worm in the American apple � its original sin of slavery, and Washington’s complex relationship with it. (A sure sign of how effectively he addressed this issue is all the one star reviews from people who are absolutely butt hurt because he refused to ignore its importance.)...more
”Pittsburgh does not represent ordinary capitalism, the capitalism that bickers and dickers with organized labor. Pittsburgh is capitalism militant � ”Pittsburgh does not represent ordinary capitalism, the capitalism that bickers and dickers with organized labor. Pittsburgh is capitalism militant � capitalism armed to the teeth and carrying a chip on its shoulder.� ~Floyd Dell
In 1919, Pittsburgh was at the epicenter of an industry wide steel strike that shook the nation. Coming at a time of heightened patriotism and paranoia, the laborers who were demanding a living wage, an end to 24 hour shifts, an eight hour day and a six day week (among other eminently reasonable demands) found all the power of the steel bosses, local government, police, and press arrayed against them. Soldiers returning from the Great War were recruited to bear arms against the steel workers. As reported in The New York World:
”In the Pittsburgh district thousands of deputy sheriffs have been recruited at several of the larger plants. The Pennsylvania State Constabulary has been concentrated at commanding points. At other places the authorities have organized bodies of war veterans as special officers…It is as though preparations were made for actual war.�
Many of these workers were immigrant laborers who were distrusted and discriminated against as un-American radicals. Indeed, many of the workers allies were radicals � IWW, anarchists, socialist � who were willing to raise their voices for the beleaguered working man when all the forces of “patriotic� America were arrayed against them. Coming at the time of the oppressive Palmer Raids and the absolute nadir of First Amendment rights in America, having radical allies allowed the press to use deceitful scare tactics against all of the strikers.
With press, police, and government all supporting the steel barons against their workers, and the authorities using deadly force against them with impunity, the great steel strike of 1919 was doomed to failure. Yet it laid the groundwork for how an industry-wide strike could be conducted, and prepared the way for the successful actions that came a generation later when the Great Depression changed the way America responded to workers demanding a fair shake. As William Z. Foster, one of the principal organizers of the 1919 strike wrote:
”In 1919, after the steel trusts, by the use of troops, gunmen, scabs, lying newspapers and mass starvation, had violently broken the strike of 365,000 steel workers and lashed these oppressed toilers back into the mills, I ventured to forecast…the great steel strike of 1919 will seem only a preliminary skirmish when compared with the tremendous battles that are bound to come.�...more
The Battle of Gettysburg has been central to my knowledge of the Civil War as long as I’ve been aware of that war. I was five years old when I first tThe Battle of Gettysburg has been central to my knowledge of the Civil War as long as I’ve been aware of that war. I was five years old when I first toured the battlefield with my family (and have returned to it many times). One of the earliest Civil War books that I read as a kid was the YA novel We Were There at the Battle of Gettysburg. In over five decades of Civil War reading and study, I felt that my knowledge of the battle was comprehensive � so much so that I nearly passed over this book despite its outstanding reviews.
Happily, I did read it. Yes, it contained all that information that I had gathered in a lifetime of reading, from Lee’s planning his Northern invasion to the final, stirring words of the Gettysburg Address. But there was so much more. There was context about 19th century battlefield technology that challenged some of the most basic received wisdom about how the war and battle was fought. (Both the impact of the rifled musket and the uses of cavalry in 19th century America receive attention.) Received wisdom about specific aspects of the battle and the men who fought it was challenged as well. The cherished heroic tale of the 20th Maine on Little Round Top is cast as evolving out of which of the heroes of the battle’s second day survived the war to promote their own story (Joshua Chamberlain rather than Strong Vincent) rather than what was the most significant action of that day’s battle. Gettysburg: The Last Invasion is full of moments like these.
Allen Guelzo manage to write a book that is fresh and at times startling about the most well known battle of America’s most written about war. Guelzo’s take on several of the battle’s events and participants very well may contradict what you think you know, and even if he doesn’t change your mind, he will definitely make you stop and think about it.
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