As a follow up to The Guns of August, I listened to The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890 – 1914, which Barbara W. Tuchman published as a sequel to The Guns of August, so I feel like I did this in the correct order.
The Proud Tower isn’t so much a cohesive narrative book as much as a series of essays Tuchman published in various periodicals collected in one volume, and each describes a different part of the world in the 25 years prior to the outbreak of the war, focusing on political, cultural, and economic climates in various regions of the world of the time.
This book was informative although extremely disconnected, which I suppose makes sense as the pieces in it were all originally separately published. Each chapter did have a main idea and one difference between this book and The Guns of August was that this book had a chapter devoted to the United States, with Tuchman’s central idea for the chapter that the USA gave up its century plus policy of neutrality and pacifism to embrace the imperialistic attitudes of nineteenth century Europe.
I found this book interesting although the lack of overall message/theme renders it a bit useless as anything but exactly what it is – a collection of essays. That said, as usual I liked Tuchman’s writing, humor, and the way she presented information in an accessible way. It’s a good popular history of supplemental reading. Again, as someone whose knowledge of European history from 1800 – 1914 is spotty at best, any popular history book that can hold interest and provide insight into the world during that time is a valuable resource (presuming of course, it isn’t completely wrong). Tuchman’s book does that.
Final note: the title of the book comes from Edgar Allen Poe’s poem ‘The City in the Sea.’ The passage reads While from a proud tower in the town/ Death looks gigantically down.
Category Archives: history
Democracy in America
This one was dense. Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America was definitely one of the thickest books of 2020. I listened to it based on the recommendation of one of my Twitter acquaintances, who, sadly, has mostly left the platform (not that I blame him). Anyway, de Tocqueville came to the United States to see the relatively new republic in action, and the work he wrote when he returned to France remains one of the most timeless books about the United States. It’s quoted by Colin Woodard (who I love), and while I haven’t noticed it quoted in other place, my Twitter acquaintance claims its frequently cited, and I tend to believe him because he loved books like this.
Anyway, I found this book extremely interesting and insightful, and I’m rather devastated I lost most of my notes on it (I took a lot of them) in a great notebook tragedy of 2020 (my cat spilled a pitcher of water over all my stuff). de Tocqueville’s purpose in writing the book was to examine the ‘revolution’ taking place – not an actual bloody revolution, but the social and economic conditions happening in a republican experiment in which the majority of the population bought in.
It was published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840 and focused on several main themes, including the impact of a Puritan founding (which was a lot about the separation of church and state and religious freedom, not common in Europe at the time), the Constitution (the Puritans originally developed the concept of popular sovereignty in some early piece of American political thought and the Founding Fathers developed institutions to protect popular sovereignty, but de Tocqueville argued that freedom is protected more by American habits of thought than any real institution) and the situation of women (where women at the time did not have much more freedom than anywhere else but de Tocqueville did predict they would become ‘just as equal as men.’)
I found Democracy in America a valuable and insightful history book and apparently it’s still studied in political science, sociology, and history spheres. Lots of different view points on the political spectrum like to be able to claim it as a document of support, which I suppose means it does a pretty good job of being well written and neutral.
Readers beware: this book is pretty dense. It’s probably going to take you awhile to get through, but it is interesting and still relevant today.
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
Fun fact: Thomas Jefferson used to be my favorite founding father. In my twenties it changed to Washington but that’s another story.
I’ve always been interested in Jefferson, since I was a kid. I think one my first book reports was on him when we had to do a biography. This book came out in 2012, I think but I didn’t get around to it until 2020. It had been on my radar for several years but Jon Meacham’s books are thick and I wasn’t entirely sold on them until I listened to his book about Andrew Jackson. After that I decided to give some of his other books a try.
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power explores Jefferson’s ability to be both philosopher and politician. Philosophers think and politicians maneuver, and Jefferson was one of the rare men who could do both. Meacham presents Jefferson’s world as he saw it, and what shaped him in his formative years as a boy and a young man. He was interested in and passionate about many things, including but not limited to science, architecture, gardens, books, his friends, family and women. Jefferson loved his home, Monticello, and the city of Paris, but he loved his country most of all and he was constantly looking for ways to achieve what he would consider a founding principle: creation, survival, and success of popular government.
This book takes us through his time as a leader – marshalling ideas (and cohorts), learning from mistakes, forming coalitions in a bitterly partisan time and a time of economic upheaval. Meacham presents Jefferson as possibly the most successful leader of the early American republic with possibly the most widely ranging influence – he championed individual liberty but recognized the new nation’s promise lay in progress, he argued for a small executive branch but he bought the Louisiana Territory, plus he wrote the Declaration of Independence and he established the University of Virginia. He had the usual complicated relationship with race, as did many men of his time.
I enjoyed this book greatly. I especially appreciated the look at Jefferson’s formative years, where you could begin to see that traits that would so clearly appear later on. Meacham does a commendable job explaining one of our most enigmatic founders, and the book is well researched.
Fun fact: My favorite quote from this book was “Jefferson found himself in a debate with a seven year old.” I just started laughing when I heard it read. The context was that Jefferson had to convince his daughter, Polly, to come to Paris with him and her sister, Patsy. Polly didn’t want to go.
American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good
American Character is the second book I’ve read by Colin Woodard, with American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America being the first. You don’t need to read American Nations to understand American Character, but it does help – Woodard advances the argument in American Nations that the United States is one large country actually made up of eleven smaller regional ‘nations’ – that is, geographic areas that are culturally entirely different from each other. (FWIW, American Nations was one of the best books on this I ever read/listened to. It was everything you already subconsciously knew put forward in such a way that you kick yourself for not fully realizing it sooner).
American Character takes this idea a step further – the American republic has always been built on argument. That’s the point and – hundreds of years later – is still the most brilliant thing about our Constitution. There’s not usually a ‘right’ answer. The argument is meant to be reframed and changed over and over again as the people living under the Constitution change with it. Freedom is change – always changing for the better idea. The trouble is, each ‘nation’ has a different idea of what the better idea is.
Individual rights vs. the common good has been a central argument for as long as we’ve been around. Woodard follows both these philosophies through from when we but thirteen humble colonies (lol) to today, guiding us through four hundred years of social experiments. Who doesn’t love a good social experiment?
I did like this book. Woodard’s historical examples are pertinent and I enjoy his skill in building a narrative. The book is well researched and it follows the arguments laid out in American Nations to their next logical steps. I found his suggestions for maintaining balance between individual liberties while benefitting the collective pragmatic and attainable as long as we want to attain them.
Woodard has put out a third book in 2020 that ties into his ‘American Nations’ trilogy, called Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood. It’s already on my TBR pile.
Say Nothing
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland is a 2018 non-fiction book by Patrick Radden Keefe. It focuses on The Troubles in Northern Ireland following the kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten children, whose family was ultimately destroyed by her murder.
I would like to start off by saying how I just cannot get over, since I was old enough to know what it was, that the Irish/UK named this bloody, armed conflict ‘The Troubles’ like they’re discussing a pair of disobedient shih tzus and not several decades worth of paramilitary organizations terrorism and guerrilla warfare. It absolutely floors me to this day.
Anyway, Say Nothing was probably my favorite non-fiction book in 2020. I didn’t do as many non-fiction books in 2020 as in years past, but I did do a fair few (some dense) and this was probably my favorite one. In a conflict with no shortage of characters and role players, Keefe did a very good job of digging into the personalities and politics of key players in the IRA since 1972, including Dolours and Marian Price.
I didn’t – still don’t – have a particularly good grip on the history and politics surrounding The Troubles. Keefe did a good job explaining a lot of the key elements of the conflict, but there’s obviously a lot more than can fit into any single volume. He combines the history, politics, and biographies into this book and ultimately uses Jean McConville’s murder as a lens to reflect on what these extremely brutal conflicts meant to the people affected by them.
Keefe also claims to have solved McConville’s murder. McConville’s murder was considered particularly outrageous as she was the only caregiver of ten children. Keefe used the testimony of two of three of McConville’s kidnappers – Pat McClure and Dolours Price – as well as other independent corroborators to deduce the third ‘Unknown’ (a highly secretive group within the IRA) that pulled the trigger. The former IRA members had said that they wouldn’t be naming the person because the person was still alive, but considering Keefe’s deductions I’m inclined to say he was right.
Say Nothing was an excellent book that I went back to physically buy after completing the audiobook. It’s a keeper. Last item of note: Keefe takes the title from Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Whatever You Say, Say Nothing.’
Nantucket Cottages & Gardens
Nantucket Cottage & Gardens: Charming Spaces on the Faraway Isle is a coffee table book by Leslie Linsley with photography by Terry Pommett, which I’ve had for awhile but finally read cover to cover during – you guessed it – covid lockdown.
Let me preface this by saying I have always loved New England. For as long as I can remember. I don’t really know why. I didn’t grow up there, my family didn’t take a lot of trips there, fishing for a living is probably my worst nightmare, but the New England coastal life (and now even interior New England life) is an aesthetic and lifestyle I’ve been obsessed with since I was…twelve? Yes, while other girls were into boy bands, I was into nautical decor. Why yes, I have always been hip and cool, why do you ask?
In Nantucket Cottages & Gardens, Linsley visits some of those classic design elements that make Nantucket’s famous cottages timelessly chic and warmly homey. The cottages Linsley showcases are from a time before Nantucket was for the obscenely wealthy, when square footage of these cottages was smaller for many reasons, the least of which not being it was all the residents of the time could afford. With Tiny HomesTM all the rage these days, public interest in clever design for a smaller living spaces is booming.
I thought this book, in addition to being visually beautiful, was actually quite inspirational and informative. With more modern homeowners rethinking what they need in terms of space due to financial and environmental concerns, looking at the remodels and designs of homeowners who are confined to a smaller living space – not necessarily because they can’t afford a bigger one but because they literally can’t expand as Nantucket’s space is very much accounted for in most areas – it’s a practical guide to using these older, pragmatic design elements to create an efficient, functional space.
The Mayflower
Rebecca Fraser’s The Mayflower: The Families, The Voyage, and the Founding of America was the last history book I read in 2019. There is so much mythology surrounding the ship’s arrival in the Americas, and the subsequent events, that it’s sometimes hard to separate fact from fiction, and I thought it was worth it to spend some time around Thanksgiving dedicating some reading to it.
The Mayflower was a thorough look surrounding the families who came to America as well as their complicated relationships with the native people who were already here. Sourced with contemporary documents, Fraser’s work is culturally significant while also emphasizing the human element and the complex politics of the English, both on the Mayflower itself and the people who followed after. The friendship between Edward Winslow, one of the colonial leaders, and Massassoit, chief of the Wampanoags, was the driving force behind the first Thanksgiving. It is that friendship American school children act out of every year and what Americans should reflect on when regarding the history of their country before they sit down to a massive turkey dinner every year. One generation later, Edward’s son Josiah was leading the New England militias against Massassoit’s son in King Philip’s War.
I thought this book was really good for laying out a lot of background that the average person may not already know. The Winslows survival in America is a fascinating story that doesn’t really get told often enough, and the amplifying impact of the decisions the Winslows made is hardly explained at all.
I would recommend this book to someone who interested in a deeper understanding of the European migration to New England. It can be a bit tedious, so be aware of that going in, but I enjoyed the more in depth look at the European and Native American relationship.
The Templars
I decided that since I didn’t know anything about the Templars, this book was a decent place to begin. Dan Jones’ The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God’s Holy Warriors was a good overview of how the Templars came to be, what their purpose originally was, and how they became a target of a cynical plot that eventually brought their downfall.
The Templars are steeped in legend and myth, and part of the reason for this is that they weren’t accountable to any government at the time. They were their own organization with their own vast resources, were expert at channeling those resources across borders, and didn’t answer to king or country. Only to God. Their main mission as Christian warriors was to escort Christian pilgrims safely to the Holy Land after the First Crusade. They built a vast banking system and led private wars against those who threatened their own interests (frequently financial).
This level of power and money would become problematic later on, as they met their nemesis in Saladin who vowed to drive Christians from the lands of Islam, and who dealt a series of military setbacks. Ultimately, the greedy and vindictive King of France set his eyes on their fortune and arrested and tortured the knights into hiding and submission until ultimately they were tried by the Pope, convicted, and the last leader of the Templars tortured and burned at the stake.
In any narrative non-fiction book, you’re hoping to learn something. I went in with no real knowledge of the Templars except all the legends and myths about the Holy Grail and the Arc of the Covenant. Jones uses and interprets first hand sources, and strings together a narrative of a mysterious organization that were mysterious because they were wealthy, powerful, and secretive (like most mysterious organizations). I came out of it with a pretty good base of information on the Templars, who in the end got a pretty raw deal.
A Spy Among Friends
I have, on and off, read a bunch of Ben Macintye’s books, and this wasn’t the first, but it was the only one I read in 2019. Most of Macintyre’s projects involve writing about espionage during World War II and the Cold War, and this was no exception.
A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal is a biography of legendary Soviet spy and traitor Kim Philby, who worked in MI6 from 1941(ish) until 1951, and was the leader of the famous Cambridge Five Spy Ring (although recent accounts have claimed Guy Burgess was actually the leader). Charismatic and brilliant, Philby cultivated many relationships in Britain and the United States, and reported every word of his conversations with those people back to Moscow, betraying his coworkers, his country, and his friends. He was probably the most successful member of the Cambridge Five at passing secret information to the Soviets.
Sourced with personal papers and previously classified intelligence files, Macintyre tells an exciting espionage thriller. Philby is a fascinating character and Macintyre offers sharp psychological insight into his mind, offering possible motivations for his betrayals. I can’t remember exactly why he dedicated his life to communism and treachery, but it sounded noble, something about being for the equality of all people (or whatever).
With this in mind, I still rather disliked Philby. Maybe it was because he was betraying “my side” (as I am a daughter of the West) but I found Philby rather frightening. Macintyre never flat out says it, but Philby struck me as something of a sociopath, betraying undercover agents and Soviet defectors to Moscow without hesitation or regret.
One passage that I still remember, years later, was the story of Konstantin Volkov, the Vice Consul of the Soviet Consulate General in Istanbul. Long story short, Volkov offered to defect to the west, and promised to reveal several high ranking spies within British intelligence (probably Philby himself). Volkov’s case somehow came to Philby, who arranged to go to Istanbul to meet Volkov, but tipped off the Soviets to the traitor before doing so and delayed his arrival so the Soviets could essentially kidnap him, with horrific consequences for Volkov and his family. Macintyre writes:
“Konstantin Volkov left no traces: no photograph, no file in the Russian archives, no evidence about whether his motives were mercenary, personal or ideological. Neither his family, nor that of his wife, have ever emerged from the darkness of Stalin’s state. He had been right to assume that his relatives were doomed. Volkov was not merely liquidated, he was expunged.”
and
Philby showed no sympathy for Volkov, describing him as “a nasty piece of work” who “deserved what he got.”
Most of what we know about Volkov, actually I think *everything* we know, comes from British sources. Does anyone really deserve to have their entire family wiped out and basically be completely erased out of existence? I’d argue very few people actually deserve this. So yeah, Kim Philby. Great guy.
That said, I really, really enjoyed A Spy Among Friends. Macintyre is a master storyteller, suspenseful, fascinating, educational, and this was one of my favorite of his books, as well as one of my favorites of 2019. His other books I’d previously read were Agent Zigzag and Double Cross.
words in scarlet ink 