Narrates the course of Europe’s first and probably greatest popular uprising, synthesizing political and social perspectives as well as competing interpretations. Making good use of illustrative facts amid the twists leading to Napoleon’s ascension in 1798, Doyle’s work reverts to the themes of political theory and faction, class and regional (especially Parisian) antagonisms, economic distortion and hardship, and international conflict borne of cynical French adventuring. Fueled by Enlightenment thought, the protagonists ‘failed to see … that reason and good intentions were not enough by themselves to transform the lot of their fellow men. Mistakes would be made when the accumulated experience of generations was pushed aside as so much routine, prejudice, fanaticism, and superstition’. The cost was millions of dead and as many or more lives wasted. Clearly written, worth re-reading.
Month: December 2022
2. Johnson, Napoleon (12 Feb 2012)
A concise biography of the world’s prototypical dictator, the first to embody Rousseau’s general will. Skillful at artillery and cartography, favoring speed and attack borne of interior lines, Bonaparte rode his 1796 Italian campaign to power, thereby ending France’s revolutionary era and creating the first 20th-century authoritarian government, replete with repressive state machinery and cultural propaganda. As a military leader, he squandered men and horses – though soldiers were permitted to pillage – while as head of state he roused nationalist resentment against France. Military failure in Spain and Russia, the British blockade, and resurgent German nationalism (newly shorn of the Holy Roman Empire), caused his downfall. Ironically, this period created, via the Congress of Vienna, an absolutist coda which survived until 1914. The short form diminished the tendency to glorify a monstrous figure.
3. Kamen, Spain 1492-1763 (26 Feb 2012)
Surveys Spain’s imperial era from the consolidation of Castilian power to the end of Anglo-French warfare. Not military conquest but adventurers, cooperative provincial elites, and Latin American coin fueled the global structure. Italy (Spanish Lombardy, based in Milan) provided crucial banking, armaments, and manpower. Spanish never became lingua franca; despite the civilizing mission of Catholicism, Castile’s elites remained intellectually and culturally insulated; and Europe did not look up to the peninsula. Power crested in 1635 and turned to France, which ‘took over’ in 1702 upon a Bourbon succeeding a Habsburg on the Spanish throne (prompting the War of Spanish Succession). Little interested in narrative politics and more attracted to sociocultural phenomena, the learned book grows dull in sections that dwell on Filipino and Ibero-American anthropology.
5. Brand, American Colossus (8 May 2012)
Surveys postbellum political economy, concluding capitalism outstripped democracy to the benefit of a few and disadvantage of many. Federal power was used to spur the development of railroads, settlement of the West (including Indian pacification), the growth of cities over agriculture, foreign trade (via tariff), and a national currency. The almost inevitable result was a series of financial crises (especially 1873 and 1895), the latter requiring the intervention of JP Morgan. Other titans such as Rockefeller and Carnegie lacked the influence on government (or fail to illustrate the thesis); incidents such as the Homestead riot or the Molly Maguires also are case in theme. Erudite and readable, the book nonetheless feels a bit freighted with ideology: it is not clear ‘capitalism’ triumphed at the expense of a still-burgeoning democracy. Indeed, by the first decade of the 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt embodied the rise of progressivism; the economy failed again in 1907 and then 1929; and what a murderous time was the century of communism and progressivism.
6. Greenwald, This Copyrighted Broadcast (10 May 2012)
An unusually structured narrative by a well-regarded San Francisco Giants baseball radio announcer. The book is only half devoted to baseball and rarely addresses the topic after midway, save for a coda. Other chapters treat feckless college life at Syracuse in the Jim Brown era, taking a punt on moving to Sydney, and the author’s fascination with Douglas MacArthur. Drily witty, the disjointed narrative makes it difficult to envision the less glamorous side of the business such as travel. It is believable, however, that the author wished to exit before soured by commercialization. Yet Greenwald might have offered perspective on other changes to the game (and craft).
8. Cohan, Money and Power (6 Jun 2012)
Narrates Goldman Sachs’ rise to national prominence in investment banking and charts its transformation into a prop-trading powerhouse as well as a ‘crony capitalist’. Through the first half of the 20th century, Syd Weinberg and Gus Levy dominated proceedings, even as the limited partnership developed corporate best practices (exemplified by John Whitehead’s famous 10 points). Though the author continues portraying the company’s leading lights through Jan Corzine, Hank Paulson, John Thain, and Lloyd Bankfein, the latter pages also seek to outline how the transformation to a public company and trading its own accounts put the bank at odds with its commercial clients. The tension prefigured by previous conflicts is illustrated by detailed review of Goldman’s derivatives trading in mortgage products (including the word of Mike Swenson ’89). An easy and sometimes engrossing read, the book is somehow not quite coherent. It goes some ways toward identifying a solution to conflicts of interest, without definitely making a case for modernizing Glass-Steagall. Perhaps it should have been two books.
9. Atkinson, Rugby-Playing Man (12 Jul 2012)
Remember America’s ‘tavern league’ era, when ill-resourced, player-coached teams contested lightly organized leagues while celebrating the cultish, borderline behavior of 20- and 30-year-olds?
These days, most do not. The game is predominated by students, most of whom weren’t born at the time of its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s. So what do we really know of the stereotype?
Jay Atkinson’s
- Memoirs of a Rugby-Playing Man: Guts, Glory, and Blood in the World’s Greatest Game
, a well-crafted autobiography of a senior-grade player in Florida, Boston, and elsewhere, is a poignant, representative snapshot of the men who identified with rugby beyond all else.
- Rugby-Playing Man’s
dust jacket sensationalizes its contents, but the narrative is more nuanced. As the author begins, ‘There are the things we do for love, and the things we do for rugby, which are pretty much the same, at least in my case’.
To be sure, there are any number debauched adventures, some of which could still transpire today. It is one thing to revisit tales among teammates, however, and another to bring them to life – without pandering – for a new audience. This is a primary achievement of Atkinson’s effort.
Still more interesting are recollections of how Atkinson found his home at hooker, a controversial state championship match, or a tour of Wales. Anyone who played in the era will relate. Though the book is consciously neither historical or sociological, later generations and outsiders will glimpse the game as commonly experienced.
Disgust with the tavern-league era – homespun administrators as much as outre players – is one explanation for American rugby’s latter-day obsession with professionalizing. The union’s present constitution seals the board off from the grassroots: only well-heeled capitalists need apply. Most have no affinity for American rugby culture, always a weakness for any government.
Atkinson’s
- Rugby-Playing Man
surpasses its author’s narrative, portraying the good and bad of a bygone time. America’s modern era, which has fallen short of its self-declared goals, will do well to find an equally skillful telling.
See also http://www.gainline.us/gainline/2015/02/on-the-tavern-league-era.html
11. Wright, France in Modern Times (29 Sep 2012)
Surveys the leading events and historiography of France from the mid 18th century. Far more than England or Germany, French society and government passed through radically distinct phases, and yet inevitably retained pronounced features of previous periods. As such, the royalist-republican duality reconstitutes itself in clashes such as the catholic-statist Dreyfus affair. Although it is not his intention, the author regrettably avoids taking sides: the narrative is strictly chronological. Also, there’s no mention of the things which are distinctly French, or the dichotomy of Descartes and Pascal (reason or revelation).
13. Kagan, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy (20 Oct 2012)
Demonstrates the Athenian statesman’s commitment to popular (democratic) governance in the face of monarchical and (uber)aristocratic tradition as well as the Peloponnesian War’s tribulations. As summarized by Thucydides, his leadership aspired ‘to know what must be done and to be able to explain it, to love one’s country, and to be incorruptible’. His successes are portrayed against the backdrop of the Athenian empire and regional conflagration, which broke both the city’s power and its experiment with representative government. As so often with Kagan, the bygone era’s realities are comprehensible to the modern reader.
16. Kempe, Berlin 1961 (25 Dec 2012)
Narrates the construction of the Berlin Wall, along with Sputnik perhaps the Soviet zenith of the Cold War era. Under pressure stemming from Ossie migration, the Communists were surprised to find the tactics unopposed by West Berlin and German as well as American leaders. Well researched and readable; but only a small piece of the puzzle.