Review: The Hinge of Fate

The Second World War, Volume IV: The Hinge of Fate by Winston S. Churchill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I find that I am liking each one of these volumes more than the last. The pleasure of this history is that, through the eyes of Winston Churchill, the war takes the shape of an enormous board game, played over months and years. Far removed from the gore of the front lines, Churchill sees the conflict as symbols on a map, which he needs to arrange in the most advantageous possible way—a game he plays brilliantly. This is not to say that he is frivolous or superficial. But warfare is far more palatable when experienced from the command chair than from the trenches.

Added to purely military decisions is the messier business of courting allies. Indeed, the best parts of this book describe Churchill’s cultivation of his relationships with Roosevelt and Stalin. Dealing with the Americans was relatively easy, as Roosevelt and Churchill seemed to have gotten along very well. Nevertheless, working so closely together required constant coordination of plans, both short-term and long-term; and Churchill sometimes struggled to get the American command to accept his military vision.

With Stalin, relations were far more tense. The Soviet leader is constantly demanding from Churchill fresh supplies and for a second front in France. Churchill, meanwhile, does his best to placate Stalin while firmly refusing to do what he feels is unwise. This culminates in his 1942 visit to Moscow, narrated in the two best chapters of the book. Churchill, sure that he will not be able to invade France in 1942, decides he must deliver this message personally if he is to maintain his working relationship with the Soviets. Stalin, at first, doesn’t take the news well, but by the end they are up all night, drinking vodka. In virtually any other circumstances, the two men would have been sworn enemies, and it is fascinating to see them try to cooperate.

The title of the book is quite apt, as it contains the battles that marked the beginning of the end for both Germany and Japan: Midway, Stalingrad, and Tunisia. These books, it should be remembered, are public memoirs rather than objective history; and so Stalingrad and Midway, being battles Churchill had nothing to do with, get only a cursory treatment. Northern Africa, on the other hand, occupies much of the book, as British and then American forces beat Rommel, invaded the Vichy territories, and finally won a decisive victory in Tunisia.

As a final thought, I am constantly surprised at how much I am learning from these books. Somehow, after a lifetime of World War II media, I knew close to nothing about operation “Torch,” and had no real idea of the significance of the Northern African campaigns. I was also unfamiliar with the Katyn massacres—Russia’s mass executions of Polish prisoners, an issue which Churchill felt he could not raise with the Soviets, for fear of hurting their relationship. Indeed, having been in Dresden just two weeks ago, I’ve had occasion to reflect that it was not only the axis who committed war crimes.

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Review: The Grand Alliance

The Grand Alliance by Winston S. Churchill

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Churchill’s account of the Second World War continues. I am finding that these volumes have a kind of cumulative power, which far exceeds that of any single volume. As I slowly make my way through the war, month by month, campaign by campaign, theater by theater, the mind-boggling scale of the conflict is beginning to sink in. What would be major operations in other wars are here mere side-shows or diversions. To pick just one example, if the Anglo-Iraq war were to happen today, it would be considered a momentous event that dominated the news. But in the context of World War II, it hardly even registers.

Merely keeping track of all this—the troop strengths, the ships available to the Navy, the number of serviceable aircraft, all distributed literally around the globe—would strain any military organization today. Two silly but revealing examples illustrate just how many different places Churchill had to keep in mind. He insisted that Iceland be written with a (C) after it, so that it could never be confused with Ireland (R). And he also preferred that Iran be called “Persia,” since otherwise somebody might confuse it with Iraq. The very idea that people might mix up what countries to attack or defend I think says more about the scale of the War than any superlative could.

But the military organization is only half of the equation. For Churchill is always acutely aware of the political situation, in ways that strictly military commanders are not.

To pick a simple example, Churchill has occasion to criticize a general for putting a British regiment in a relatively safe zone, while sending colonial forces into battle—for the apparently superficial, but politically real, reason that it reflects poorly on the British government. Indeed, Churchill’s frustrations with General Auchinleck’s hesitations to attack Rommel in North Africa reminded me very much of Lincoln’s own admonishments to George B. McClellan to be more aggressive. In both cases, the political leader realized the value of at least appearing to have the initiative. Appearances are important when you are courting potential allies and public opinion.

Like Manny, I was also impressed by Churchill’s willingness to put politics aside in order to win the war. Few politicians in Britain, I imagine, were less sympathetic to Soviet Communism than Churchill. But as soon as Hitler made his great error and commenced Operation Barbarossa, Churchill did not hesitate to send vital supplies and equipment to his former foe, even though it weakened his own position—correctly predicting that a strong Russian defense would debilitate the German army. The tense and sometimes downright rude correspondence between Stalin and Churchill was especially interesting to read. Even then, at the beginning of their alliance, the Cold War was looming ahead.

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Review: The Assassination of García Lorca

El asesinato de García Lorca by Ian Gibson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes the simple act of remembering is political. History is, unfortunately, replete with crimes that one government or another would prefer to remain hidden. And, certainly, forgetting is probably easier for everyone involved—less traumatic, more convenient—even, perhaps, for the victims. Thus, whenever some busybody like Ian Gibson begins stirring up old trouble, the accusation of “opening up old wounds” is inevitably trotted out (ironically, by the ones who did the wounding in the first place).

And yet, even if it is not entirely logical—even if what is done is done, and nothing can change that—some sense of moral duty, of obligation to victims who are beyond all human help, seems to compel us nevertheless to reach back into the past and seek justice. This book is imbued with that sense—perhaps a quixotic sense—of ethical duty, as Gibson attempts to nudge the moral balance of the universe back in the right direction.

He first establishes that Lorca was anything but the apolitical flower child that he is sometimes portrayed as. It is true that Lorca was perhaps somewhat naïve and, in general, was averse to party politics (he repeatedly refused to join the communist party). But he was politically active and unambiguously allied with the left, as was evident by several public declarations. Indeed, the idea that Lorca was, in his final days, converting to the fascist cause—an openly homosexual poet who dramatized the evils of conservative Catholicism!—was never anything but laughable.

Gibson then does his best to establish the events that lead to Lorca’s death in Granada, using interviews with witnesses (admittedly many years after the fact) to pin down as many details as he can. In the process, he gives the reader a sense of the climate of terror and repression that engulfed Granada in the opening days of the military uprising—jails packed to bursting, mass graves filled by firing squads, a knock on the door at mightnight to go “take a walk.” In the process, he also lays to rest another myth of Lorca’s murder, that he was somehow killed by uncontrollable elements of the falangist party—a random act of violence, in other words. On the contrary, Lorca’s death was the product of an intentional campaign of “purification,” approved of and organized by the authorities.

This book might not have had such an impact on me had I not visited Granada as I was on the final pages. Though I had read many of Lorca’s works before the visit, he was still just a historical personage for me—one of Spain’s many dead poets. But visiting his former houses (there are several, as his family was very wealthy) transformed him into somebody startlingly real and close. I saw the piano that he liked to noodle on, the writing desk on which he wrote his most famous plays, and even hand-drawn theater backdrops to be used in a puppet show for his baby sister.

This trip culminated in a visit to the Barranco de Víznar, the place of his execution. We arrived on a foggy Sunday morning and followed the path into the woods. Soon, we came upon several white tents, which covered the excavations sites of mass graves. The trees around the site were covered with laminated posters bearing the names and faces of those executed there—professors, politicians, farmers, pharmacists, music teachers… In the center was a simple memorial covered in flowers, with the inscription “They were all Lorca.”

So far, the remains of dozens of individuals have been recovered there by a team of investigators, though none have yet been identified by DNA tests. That this excavation had to wait nearly 100 years to take place is a measure of the silence—imposed, in an attempt to forget—that followed the Spanish Civil War. But relatives of the victims have kept their memories alive, and now they are perhaps receiving some modicum of justice. Even today, memorializing these victims takes courage. Just last week, a hiker was assaulted at that very place by a man screaming “There aren’t many buried here!” The hiker was hospitalized. But the work continues.

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Review: Battle Cry of Freedom

Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is amazing how ignorant one can be without knowing it. As a product of the American school system, and a veteran of all 11 and a half hours of Ken Burns’s iconic documentary, I thought that I was in for few surprises when I began this book. But because of deficiencies in either my education or my memory—probably a bit of both—I was constantly surprised throughout this telling of the war, and became absolutely riveted.

Though I am certainly not in a position to judge, I would venture to say that this book simply must be the best one-volume account of the war. It is a remarkable performance on every level. Despite the relatively limited amount of space that McPherson can devote to any one subject, the reader never feels that he is offering a superficial or a cursory account. On the contrary, as in the best overviews of historical events, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, as each element in the story sheds light on every other.

McPherson shows himself to be a skilled and flexible author. Whether he is analyzing the Confederate economy, or examining the Northern political situation, or explaining the advances in naval technology, or narrating battles and troop movements, McPherson’s prose is steady, clear, and engaging. His grasp of the subject is so strong, and his vision so clear, that the chaos of politics and war plays out on the page with the orderliness of a Victorian novel. The simple act of taking such a huge mass of information and rendering it into something comprehensible—while remaining nuanced and enlightening—is, in my opinion, a great literary accomplishment.

As might be expected, the comforting notion that the war was somehow about states’ rights—and not slavery—does not hold up to even a moment of scrutiny. It is true that the Confederate states, in general, did place a high value on the autonomy of individual states. Yet these states’ support of the Fugitive Slave Act before the war—a huge extension of federal power, allowing the national government to overrule individual state laws to return escaped slaves—shows that slavery trumped this concern. In any case, whenever the states’ rights argument is made, it immediately leads to the question: their right to do what, exactly? (Answer: maintain slavery.)

As a final irony, after vociferously denouncing the use of black troops by the Union Army, and refusing to treat captured blacks as soldiers (either summarily executing them or selling them into slavery), in its final months, the Confederacy considered the use of slave soldiers. This idea was so totally contradictory to their stated values that it produced anger, shame, and confusion among the Confederates. Some preferred simply to give up to the North than to resort to this horrible betrayal of their values. Others admitted that, if blacks could make good soldiers, their entire way of life was based on a lie. Politicians wrangled with the implications of slave soldiers: If they were to fight, shouldn’t they be promised their freedom as a reward? In any case, this handwringing came to nothing, as the Confederacy collapsed before they could put this desperate—and hopelessly contradictory—idea into practice.

On a purely military level—admittedly, perhaps the most superficial way a war can be judged—the American Civil War is as thrilling and fascinating as any war in history. There were brilliant generals on the Union and Confederate sides whose campaigns are still studied today by would-be commanders. In McPherson’s telling, the main lesson of the war is the wisdom of an aggressive strategy. The first two years of the war, from 1861-63, are marked by defeat after Union defeat under generals (particularly McClellan) who shied away from confrontation, while Southern generals took the initiative. However, when Grant and Sherman—as aggressive as they come—finally took control on the Union side, the carnage of battle went from horrible to simply nauseating, and I began to have some sympathy for McClellan’s reluctance to subject his troops to such slaughter.

In many ways, the American Civil War seems to prefigure the terrible conflicts of the following century. By the end of the war, the basic tactics of the infantry resembled those of the First World War—massed troop attacks against entrenched positions, with predictably horrible casualty rates. The invention of iron-clad ships reminds one of the first tanks, while the Union use of a subterranean mine to break the enemy line in the siege of Petersburg prefigured what became a common strategy in the Great War. On the other hand, the horrible conditions of prisoners of war—particularly in the Confederate camp, Andersonville—are an unsettling forerunner of the German camps in World War II. The photographs of emaciated Union soldiers will look very familiar nowadays. And this is not to mention the millions of enslaved blacks forced to aide in the war effort of their enslavers, another omen of things to come.

And yet, there is a certain horror peculiar to civil wars. I am now, for example, making my way through interviews of civilians and soldiers who lived through the Second World War, and a common thread is how easy it was to hate and fight someone alien—someone who lives far away, speaks a different language, and maybe even looks different. But in a Civil War, neighbors fight neighbors, friends fight friends, and family fight family—not metaphorically, mind you, but literally. It is difficult to understand how a country could devolve to such a point that a boy from Maine is willing to stick a bayonet in the guts of a teenager from North Carolina.

What is even more remarkable, perhaps, is that the country was able to come together after such a vicious conflict. Though the hysterical and uncompromising tone of many of the politicians prior to the war now sound distressingly familiar, I suppose I should derive some hope from the fact that the country survived intact—indeed, became stronger than ever before—after this murderous episode.

Historians are averse to counterfactuals, and perhaps rightfully so. After all, how could you possibly know what might have happened in some imagined parallel timeline? However, I do think it worthwhile to consider these questions, even if precise answers elude us. What would have happened, then, if the South had successfully seceded? In a rapidly industrializing world, in which all of the major powers had abolished slavery or serfdom, how long would the “peculiar institution” have lasted in an independent Confederacy? As valuable as was their cotton, it is difficult for me to resist the idea that they would quickly have ended up an agricultural backwater, increasingly shunned by the rest of the world.

I am getting off track. This is a review of the book, not the war itself. But it is a mark of McPherson’s accomplishment that I cannot stop thinking about this defining conflict. Lately, I have even found myself watching long video tours of the great Civil War battlefields (either a great testament to the book’s value or to my own need to get a life). Of course, in any single-volume work of this kind, there will inevitably be omissions and shortcomings. I would have liked more on the experience of being a common soldier, for example. Yet such criticisms are easy to make, and seem very petty when compared to everything that McPherson has accomplished here. It is a great achievement.

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Review: Means of Ascent

Means of Ascent by Robert A. Caro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Robert Caro sets his own standard for political biographies, and if this volume was at all lacking for me it was only in comparison to the masterful first volume in this series. But even this is not exactly a fair comparison, as The Path to Power covered Johnson’s formative years—delving into his family history, his marriage, his schooling, his environment, his first working experience, and finally his rise to the House of Representatives. Its scope, in other words, is quite broad.

Means of Ascent is a very different book, covering only seven years (1941-48). It is significantly shorter (though still hefty enough), and most of these pages are dedicated to Johnson’s 1948 Senate race. This corresponds to what Winston Churchill called his “wilderness years,” in which Johnson was directionless and cut off from the main arteries of power. He spent some of this time in a non-combat role in the military (and spent the rest of his life shamelessly exaggerating his minimal exploits), some of this time using his connections to get rich through a radio station—and finally got back onto the path to power by stealing a Senate election.

As Caro says repeatedly, Johnson is a complex personality with a strange admixture of the despicable and the admirable—and this book contains precious little of the latter. As a result, whereas in the first volume one could sometimes feel sympathetic for the young man from Texas, here he is little more than a power-grasping villain. Caro himself obviously came to feel disgusted with Johnson’s personality, and his feelings seep through in his descriptions of Johnson’s ample transgressions: his blatant mistreatment—indeed, verbal abuse—of anyone he considers inferior (including receptionists, waiters, his own staff, and his poor wife), his absolute amorality regarding even basic ideals (such as democracy itself), and his willingness to stop at nothing to obtain power.

Caro contrasts Johnson’s personality with that of his opponent in the 1948 Senate election, Coke Stevenson—a man Caro portrays as honest and honorable. And here the esteemed biographer got into a little bit of trouble. While Stevenson may indeed have been upstanding in the sense that he was true to his word, did not bow to lobbyists, did not attack political opponents, and did not seek political office in order to satisfy a lust for power—while all this may have been true, Stevenson was also certainly a reactionary and a racist.

These rather unflattering qualities are given only a passing mention in the book, which may leave the reader with a skewed impression of Stevenson. Caro was roundly criticized for this, and in an article in the New York Times, published in 1991, he responded some of these criticisms. Yet his defense—that the subject of race played little role in the election—while valid as far as historical explanation goes, still does not quite excuse the glowing portrait he painted. Upon finishing the book, it is difficult to resist the impression that Caro himself came to admire Stevenson.

Even so, as abhorrent as I find Stevenson’s views to be, I would still prefer such a man to the Johnson of 1948, who seems to have had no political philosophy, no political aspirations beyond his desire to control people, and—worst of all—no respect for the institution of democracy. Throughout all of the legal battles and maneuvers which allowed him to keep his stolen election victory, Johnson never once betrayed the slightest hint that he might have had misgivings about betraying the will of the people. Indeed, as Caro makes clear, he seems to have been proud of it, virtually boasting of the “victory” in later years.

Now, at this point I will do something very brave—or cowardly, perhaps—and venture a slight criticism of Caro. After so many pages, his writing style is beginning to ware on me. This is because, I think, his primary rhetorical technique is that of superlatives. What I mean is that, for Caro, everything is as extreme as possible. Johnson is not just a sleazy politician, but unprecedentedly amoral; Stevenson is not just a popular governor, but a Texan hero; and so on, and so on. Caro relentlessly emphasizes how extreme every event and experience was—so much so that, by the end, you are begging for something totally ordinary and unremarkable to happen (and no, not superlatively ordinary).

That said, the book is eminently readable and highly enjoyable. Here Caro creates such a memorable portrait of an amoral, power-crazed politician that, had this book been written by anyone else, it would by itself be considered an enduring classic of American political writing. It is only when compared to his other books that this one may seem somewhat light.

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Review: Columbus (Laurence Bergreen)

Columbus: The Four Voyages by Laurence Bergreen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I remember learning about Columbus when I was in elementary school. The story was simple: he was a daring, visionary man who set out to prove that the earth was round, heroically defeating the nay-sayers who thought that he would sail right over the edge of the earth. To the mind of a child, it is a compelling tale. It is also, of course, complete fantasy (to use a polite word). Since those Edenic days of unproblematic national heroes, Columbus has become a much more divisive figure. So I decided I ought to get the real story, hopefully from somebody without an ideological axe to grind.

As I knew from his books on Marco Polo and Magellan, Bergreen is in the business of writing popular histories of famous explorers. This book is up to his usual standards, though the raw material he had to work with is naturally somewhat messier. Both Polo and Magellan were famous for one iconic voyage, while Columbus travelled to the “New World” on four separate occasions. Instead of one grand adventure, then, we get a series of expeditions, each one drearier than the last. By the fourth voyage, I was quite ready to be done with the Genoese explorer.

But I did learn. For example, Bergreen makes it clear that the competing narratives of Columbus have existed from almost the very beginning. There were rumors and accusations regarding his cruelty and incompetence during his lifetime (which resulted in his imprisonment); and not long after his death the great Spanish anti-colonialist, Bartolomé de las Casas, skewered Columbus for his role in the destruction of the native peoples. In short, he was never a universally beloved hero.

Furthermore, Columbus only became a cornerstone of patriotic ideology centuries later. He started to be celebrated in North America, for example, after the Revolutionary War, as the young nation searched for a founding myth that wasn’t so tied to England. In Spain, October 12th (when Columbus “discovered” the New World) did not become a holiday until 1892, as part of the conservative restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. In the United States, it was not made a holiday until 1937.

So, should Columbus Day be celebrated? Insofar as celebrating Columbus is merely a way of celebrating European colonization of the Americas (which certainly seems to be the case), then I think the answer must be a clear no. I don’t think it is possible to learn about the cataclysm that engulfed the native peoples of the Americas—which resulted in millions dead and the disappearance of so many cultures and languages—and think that worth celebrating. Granted, there is a kind of paradox for European Americans in this, since if there had not been a Columbus we would not exist; and it is difficult to wish oneself out of existence. Even so, celebrating the enslavement and elimination of whole peoples does not seem quite right.

Yet what about celebrating Columbus himself? Well, he does not exactly make a good impression in these pages. Certainly he was a bold and determined man, willing to risk his life for an idea (as well as for gold and glory). And his talent as a navigator is impressive. But these positive qualities seem rather pale when compared with his narrow-mindedness, his incompetence as an administrator, his cruelty to others, and his messiah complex. In the course of these voyages he combats several mutinies (with varying degrees of success), strands his own men (to be used as a bargaining chip), and has untold numbers of people enslaved. And even if you focus exclusively on his role as a “discoverer,” it is difficult to celebrate a man who steadfastly refused to acknowledge the truth of what he, in fact, had stumbled upon.

The truth is that Columbus, contrary to what the legend says, did not have a more accurate notion of the earth than the experts of the time. Precisely the reverse: Columbus’s voyage was based on a profound underestimate of the size of the earth. Indeed, it was pure luck that there was an unsuspected continent in the middle of the ocean. If America did not exist, and there were nothing but open sea between Europe and Asia—as he thought—Columbus would almost certainly have died in the enormous expanse of water. And he never even had the good grace to admit his mistake, insisting to the end that he had found a route to Asia, despite the very clear evidence to the contrary.

Of course, the fact remains that Columbus thought to do something that nobody (to his knowledge) had ever done before, and in the process inaugurated a new period of history. Indeed, given the tremendous importance of his voyage, we ought to do our best to understand both the man and the colonial undertaking he stands for. And I don’t think that is accomplished with myths and unreflecting celebration.

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Review: The Gathering Storm

The Second World War, Volume I: The Gathering Storm by Winston S. Churchill

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I first learned, many years ago, that Winston Churchill had written a history of the Second World War, I knew that I would have to read it. After all, I grew up watching documentary after documentary about the conflict (before the History Channel was all about aliens, it was mainly Hitler content). Finally, this summer, I found the complete set, cheap, at the Strand bookstore in New York. Looking at the six fat volumes on my bookshelf, I knew that I was in for a long campaign.

The book is, indeed, long (over 700 pages in this edition), but it is a surprisingly fast read. It was written in haste—if “written” is the right word, for most of the book was either dictated or excerpted from official documents—and reads like a series of dispatches or field reports. This is simultaneously the book’s weakness and its great strength. For Churchill does not attempt to give a universal, impartial overview of the war, but rather recreates what it was like for him to be in the thick of it. And although his perspective does impose serious limitations and distortions on the material, it also makes the narrative far more thrilling. The rush of events is palpable.

Half of this book is devoted to the buildup of the war. Churchill, to his credit, saw the Nazi threat coming from miles away, and tried again and again to rouse his country into action. Unfortunately, his warnings go unheeded, and Germany is allowed time and space to rebuild its military unmolested. It is truly maddening to contemplate all of the lost opportunities. When Germany invaded the Rhineland, for example—clearly violating the Treaty of Versailles—the French and English could have taken decisive action at a time when the German military was miniscule. But nothing can compare with the infamous Munich Agreement, in which a country capable of defending itself was given away to the Germans, which only further strengthened their military for the inevitable war.

One can imagine how such a book could devolve into a series of self-congratulatory told-you-sos. But Churchill, at least in print, is quite generous to his political opponents. In particular, Chamberlain, the architect of appeasement, comes off rather well in Churchill’s telling—portrayed a resolute, peace-loving man who made some very bad decisions. Indeed, I found Churchill’s narrative voice to be rather odd. He has a kind of boyish fascination with war and weapons, and a jingoistic faith in the British people and their empire. Indeed, although he was so very right about Nazi threat, I can easily imagine myself dismissing such a strong believer in king and country as a war-mongering kook.

But he was not a kook, at least not in this regard. Indeed, in his great attention to detail regarding military matters, and his ability to strike a brave, defiant note at a difficult hour, he proved that he was the right man for the moment.

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Review: American Colonies

American Colonies: The Settling of North America by Alan Taylor

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an exceptional volume of popular history. Few periods, I reckon, are as mythologized and misunderstood as the European colonization of the United States. In my public school, for example, I learned that the heroic Columbus proved the earth wasn’t flat, and that the Pilgrims lived in joyful harmony with the Wampanoag. To be fair, in high school, this ridiculously rosy picture was brought back to earth somewhat. Still, I think that many Americans (and I may still fall into this category) hold onto many misconceptions about our early history.

Taylor begins with Columbus and ends with the Russian and Spanish colonization of North America’s west coast. On the way, he discusses the Spanish conquistadores, the French fur traders, the main islands of the Caribbean, the slave trade, and of course the English colonies along the east coast. Even Captain James Cook and his fateful exploration of Hawaii gets a section. Taylor shows what dynamics in Europe motivated expansion—both the large-scale political and economic considerations, and the push and pull factors that made people want to leave. And, of course, Taylor mentions the many Native American groups who cooperated with and resisted, fought for and against, exploited and were exploited by the incoming Europeans.

This history begins with a calamity on a scale difficult for us even to imagine. European diseases ravaged the indigenous population of the United States, causing a population collapse so dramatic that it makes the bubonic plague seem mild by comparison. There is no way to exaggerate the loss this represents, both in terms of people and their lifeways. However, while Taylor does not minimize this tragedy, he also avoids falling into the opposite error of portraying the natives as innocent nature people. To the contrary, he shows how different groups adapted to European presence, often becoming essential allies and trading partners to the new colonists.

Taylor also gives ample space to that other original sin of America: slavery. It is not pleasant reading. His relatively brief coverage of the conditions aboard a slave ship, for example, is deeply disturbing. But even in this case, he does not ignore the agency of his subjects. He describes, for example, how slaves would subtly resist their overseers by feigning misunderstanding or working inefficiently. I also appreciated his explanations of how slavery operated differently in the Caribbean and on the continental United States, according to climate and economic pressures.

In sum, what emerges from these pages is a vivid portrait of a rapidly changing continent—a complicated story to which innumerable groups contributed. While Taylor does demolish the patriotic myth of heroic and benevolent European colonizers, this book is not simply a hit job. Rather, it is a rich, well-written, and dispassionate account of a one of history’s most consequential periods.

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Review: The Emperor of All Maladies

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I do not consider myself a superstitious person—not even remotely—but somehow I felt a deep reluctance to pick up this book. It may have taken us a long time to figure out the germ theory of diseases, yet the psychology of contagion runs deep. I had the irrational fear that even learning about cancer would somehow unleash it into my life.

But turning away from frightful things is not a good way to live. And, anyway, even though there is a lot of sadness in this book, and a lot to stoke your fears (perhaps it is best to avoid if you have a tendency toward hypochondria), but this is basically a story of innovation.

Mukherjee moves through surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, cancer prevention, and modern targeted drugs, showing how each arose and developed in response to different sorts of cancer and out of the science and technology of the moment. It is a vast story, which includes the development of anasthesia and antibiotics, the discovery of genes and chromosomes, the first research into radioactivity, and the campaign against smoking. To use the obvious metaphor, it is a war waged on multiple fronts.

The challenges are manifold. I had naively thought that all cancer was basically the same disease, with its subtypes just minor variations. But it turns out that there is enormous genetic and chemical variety among cancers, so that a treatment effective for one may do little for another. Indeed, even for a single type—breast cancer, say—treatment can be unpredictable. This is what makes the story of doctor’s attempt to treat the disease so riveting, as it feels like a battle between two equally wily antagonists. At several points in this history, doctors attempt extreme cures—radical surgeries, or nearly fatal doses of chemotherapy—only to be defeated. Meanwhile, the victories can be as modest as a remission of just a few months.

It is probably best not to philosophize about a fatal disease, but there does seem to be a lot of irony in our quest to defeat cancer. For one, it has only become so prevalent in the modern period, because we have started living so long. Its appearance as the great killer, then, is a kind of perverse mark of progress. Further, there is the irony of trying to fight what is, in essence, a corrupted version of ourselves—a group of renegade cells which have figured out how to replicate and survive even better than our own body. There is great scope for metaphor here, but if there is a moral to cancer then I don’t think it is a simple one.

Mukherjee does an admirable job weaving a potentially chaotic and depressing story into something coherent and even hopeful. Though the book is composed of history, science, and his own experience as a doctor, these different threads reinforce one another rather than clash. The clinical anecdotes are sparing—just enough to connect the past to the present—and his thumbnail explanations of science are lucid and illuminating. But, most important, despite the many tragic deaths which litter these pages, the final impression is of how much can be accomplished when a researcher’s diligence, a doctor’s pledge to save life, and a patient’s will to live work together, generation after generation.

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Review: The Path to Power

The Path to Power by Robert A. Caro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Last winter, I went to the Film Forum in Manhattan with some friends to see the new documentary about Robert Caro and his famous editor, Robert Gottlieb. It was a wonderful experience on many levels. The documentary was fascinating and inspiring—the story of two people who, in quite different ways, have lived fully dedicated to literature—and it was the perfect place to see it, in the heart of Caro’s and Gottlieb’s city, surrounded by other New Yorkers.

Gottlieb comes across as a lovable and brilliant person (he has, sadly, since passed away at the age of 92), but Caro comes across as something superhuman, an embodied intellectual force. The name of the documentary, Turn Every Page, aptly summarizes what makes Caro so special: the meticulous, obsessive, even demented attention to detail—the determination to get to the heart of every aspect of every story, to never be satisfied with half-truths or empty explanations. And then, once he has gathered together his facts, this relentless attention is focused on the writing. For Caro is not satisfied with merely presenting us with his (always impressive) research. He is determined—again, maniacally so—to make us understand on a deep emotional level what each of these facts mean.

All of these qualities are fully on display in this, the first book of Caro’s monumental biography of the 36th president of the United States. As a political biography—a record of the accumulation and use of power—the book is peerless. Caro traces how Johnson, by sheer force of his personality, went from a rural boy with little education and less money to a member of Congress in just a few years. His chapters on Johnson’s elections alone—his campaign strategies, his fundraising, his advertising—are a goldmine for any political historian, and eye-opening for even the most cynical of readers.

Yet everybody knows that Caro is a master of political biography. What surprised me most was how brilliant this book was in other respects. His descriptions of the Texas Hill Country, for example—its climate, its soil, its weather—often rise to such a level of poetry that I was reminded of John Steinbeck. And his chapter on life in the Hill Country before electrification—the difficulty of even simple chores like washing and ironing—is so empathetic that it brings this experience to life as powerfully as even the most gifted novelist could manage.

Aside from this wonderful scene-setting, and aside from the incisive history, this book is of course the study of a personality. And it is a peculiar one. Indeed, underneath all of the historical detail, I think there is a very basic moral conundrum at the heart of this book. It is, in short, that Johnson is successful and effective—indeed, often a force for good—while being personally unlikeable and morally vacuous.

Caro goes to great lengths to illustrate the uglier sides of Johnson’s character. His urge for power is so great that it trumps every other consideration in his life: love, loyalty, ideals, friendship, ethics. When he is stealing elections, betraying friends and allies, and cheating on his wife, not once does he give evidence that he even possesses a conscience. And yet, in his quest for power, he educates children, helps the unemployed find jobs, secures money for veterans, and electrifies his district, among much else.

This paradox is illustrated in Johnson’s treatment of his secretaries. While he worked as a congressional assistant, Johnson went to great lengths to help the constituents of his district—far more than any ordinary assistant could or would. But this unusual effectiveness was achieved by working his own secretaries to such a degree that they could not have any life outside of work, and one had a nervous breakdown and fell into alcoholism. This is a consistent pattern: the specific people close to Johnson are used as tools for his own advancement, while the abstract people out in the world benefit from his obsessive work ethic.

To put the matter another way, Johnson seems to violate every ethical precept I know regarding the treatment of others, and lives in total contradiction of every piece of advice I know regarding wise and good living. Johnson comes across as a miserable person destined to share his misery with the world. But it becomes clear that Johnson’s personality type is perfectly suited for politics, and he achieves almost instant success when he enters that field. Indeed, one gets the impression that everyone else in Washington D.C. is just a toned-down version of Johnson—equally as power-hungry, but not as effective.

Somehow, we seem to have a system designed to elevate people whom most of us would find repulsive. Maybe this is inevitable, as the people who most desire power are the ones most likely to get hold of it. Perhaps the best thing to do, then, is to hope that the institutions are set up in such a way that, as in the case of Johnson, these driven individuals end up having beneficent effect on society. And yet, this does seem like an awfully risky strategy.

In any case, as I hope you can see, this is a superlative book, excellent on many levels. It is, in fact, among the select class of books that can forever change your outlook.

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Lotz in Translation

Saving the world—one long, pretentious blog post at a time.

Category: History