The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Rambling About Reading

Re: Rambling About Reading

Richard Hershberger — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:32:31 -0000

I am more of a 19th century baseball geek than a Civil War nerd. Colored baseball is not my main area of interest, but you might google on "Octavius Catto". He was an up-and-coming civil rights leader in the Frederick Douglass school until assassinated. He was also one of the founders of the Excelsior Base Ball Club of Philadelphia, which in 1869 played the first game between a colored and a white club. Catto was an interesting guy, and reputedly a pretty decent ballplayer.

Re: Rambling About Reading

ShaunMc — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 23:19:12 -0000

I don't know if it's the same in the US as in the UK but John Burrowes in 'A History of Histories' (which is a good read) thinks that it's a product of the professionalisation of history. Schools focus on teaching the technique of history, so analysing sources and being aware of the bias of the source and so on, but that it means that they're not teaching a grand narrative so much.

So sections of a nation's history are cut up so you can study them while learning some way of doing history but at the cost of the class being aware of the narratives that make up that nation's history. If you see what I mean. He expresses it a lot more elegantly.

Shaun

Re: Rambling About Reading

deathbypapers — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:57:48 -0000

bread and roses, yeah james scott's "Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance." That book has had a huge impact on modern historiography as its theoretical models have been expanded too a host of different settings. Hahn's "Nation Under Our Feet" (which TNC has been talking about) uses that, as does Robin D.G. Kelley's "Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class." It has gone beyond African-American's and is used by Greg Grandin in "Blood of Guatemala" (a study of the K'iche Mayans during Spanish and ladino rule). There's other examples as well, but Scott started it all off (as far as I know).

Re: Rambling About Reading

RL — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:37:12 -0000

Does anyone read John Berryman anymore? I loved and love him:

Drop here, with honour due, my trunk and brain

among the passioning of my countrymen....

Bury me in a hole, and give a cheer,

near Cedar on Lake Street, where the used cars live.

Re: Rambling About Reading

bread & roses — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:03:52 -0000

So by "weapons of the weak" do you mean the strategies/tactics discussed in the book of that name by James Scott? Or something different? I read that book because I stumbled upon "Seeing like a State" and was totally impressed, but I've never run into anyone else who's read it, so I'm curious if it's had some cultural impact.

Re: Rambling About Reading

kid bitzer — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:17:35 -0000

don't worry, t. you can grow to admire lincoln, love lincoln, even worship lincoln, and never lose your grasp of his imperfections.

he was far from perfect. he was deeply flawed.

but those of us who do love him, love him despite his deep flaws.

which is really the only honest way for one human to love another, you know?

so keep that lefty critique, however savage and scathing it was. soon you'll see that he would have been the first to engage you on it, to defend some things and repent many others. he was capable of change. he knew he didn't know it all.

i'm glad someone gave a shout out to ben franklin, too. the happiest and most fortunate great american, as lincoln was the most morose.

so here's the next stage: after you read a few more books, you drop me a line, and we'll start touring some battlefields together. gettysburg, definitely. but that's just the start.

when you start finding that you want to visit battlefields every spring, you'll know you're over your head.

Re: Rambling About Reading

RL — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:06:59 -0000

What to recommend. I have in the past but currently, in my class, I use no textbook. Students hate that, even though I give them copies of my lecture notes and post all my images.

Fortunately I am not responsible for teaching survey art history (my most popular course is called Art As Ideas) so I can get away with talking about the impact of Egyptian religious belief, neo-Platonism and the Byzantine fascination with light, Rod Serling as a neo-surrealist, the nihilism of post-WWI art, Wittgenstein and modern abstraction... things I'm interested in and that will hopefully make students interested in art history.

The two dominant texts are Gardner's Art Through The Ages and Janson's History of Art. They're the Current Williams & Friedel (dating myself) of art history. Gardner says it is global; Janson's subtitle is The Western Tradition.If you wanted to have a quasi-survey, as you put it, Gardner would be the one. At least she tries.

I've used books like Lucie-Smith's Art and Civilization and Robbs / Duncon, Arts Ideas and Civilization. They combine some philosophy, historic perspective, and a variety of arts (not just painting and architecture). They don't fit my course but they do offer some interesting insights. There are many others of this sort.

There's one book by someone who you may recognize. Paul Johnson, Art: A New History. He doesn't even try to be inclusive so it's mistitled. Definite lean toward Western. But it is more challenging, not a survey. Not something my students could handle -- 750 pages plus of relatively tight text that has a point of view (that I often don't agree with, but at least it's there). 32 chapters and nobody else would devote 1/32 of a survey art history to The Western Penetration of Asia or The Belated Arrival of Russian Art or The Beginnings of Fashion Art. Plus it's not dominated by pictures. I will not accomplish my life goal -- to write a book about the history of art without pictures.

Bottom line we're still waiting for a Robert Darnton (or Forner -- bought my copy before I wrote this post) to do their thing with the survey. Every survey teacher knows we're not telling the truth. We talk about it. But you have to say something. Fortunately because of the course I teach, I can admit that what I'm saying is a selection gleaned from my own interests and prejudices.

Re: Rambling About Reading

Jordan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:49:08 -0000

@calexical

Who needs kids? I'm 25 and love the books to death. I'm not in any way ashamed to admit that I learned a lot from them and many of my subsequent investigations into history have been influenced by the Cartoon History of the Universe series. I also can't wait until the latest volume of the Cartoon History of the Modern World comes out. Larry Gonick is getting a bit preachy (there are way too many Bush allusions in the last volume), but it's still solidly entertaining and enlightening work.

Re: Rambling About Reading

irishpirate — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:44:44 -0000

As Ed McMahon might say "you are correct, Sir".

http://books.google.com/books?id=x9zj_OBOwOgC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=%22shelby+foote%22+genius+lincoln+bedford&source=bl&ots=1hQZWxcwot&sig=QrksyvmO0SIKwaKBUxSaTNJQnhk&hl=en&ei=ZJApSsXqGJi0NYzZ6McJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

It was Forrest and not Jackson.

Re: Rambling About Reading

Sorn — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:10:33 -0000

Thanks those are on the list as well. Just haven't had time to read them yet.

Re: Rambling About Reading

deathbypapers — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:56:56 -0000

Yah, does sound like we are coming from the same perspective. Art history huh? I've always found that stuff interesting. What you're describing (a few things from Sub-Sahara/Native America but primarily "western"), sounds to me like what I call "sidebar history," a plague that still afflicts modern historiography. That type of ghettoization is almost as hurtful as the previous ignoring because its implicit message is white men were doing all the important things but every once in a while a woman or someone brown (special points if its both!) pops up and has a little role. Well that's my little rant... any good art history quasi-surveys that you know of? I'd like to gain a more thorough introduction to the subject but don't know where to start.

Re: Rambling About Reading

deathbypapers — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:52:14 -0000

It's still worth reading, simply from an intellectual history standpoint, but it won't give you the best picture of the time as it came out long before a lot of the theoretical models historians use now were developed (gender, "weapons of the weak," whiteness theory etc). If you only have limited time to devote I'd suggest "Nation Under Our Feet" or "Capitol Men."

Re: Rambling About Reading

Donald — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:47:49 -0000

As for book recommendations, I have so far enjoyed Charles Lane's The Day Freedom Died. It is not a broad survey like many of the titles named here, but it's a really well detailed look at a violent, terroristic fight for political power in northern Louisiana during Reconstruction - as well as the means by which the American legal system absorbed and ratified the raw violence.

Re: Rambling About Reading

RL — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:47:38 -0000

Last thing before someone else jumps in. Yes art history texts now include the obligatory chapter on Asian art, references to 4 or 5 sub-Saharan African pieces (as though they represent in any way an entire continent that has hosted 100s of different cultures), a picture or two of native American art, and a riff on Jacob Lawrence or Aaron Douglas (who I like, no slight intended, but I like Henry Tanner even more).

Feel good inclusionary tactics at their worst. Look at us, we're inclusive! But no real discussion of what art meant and what art is in different communities of our culture.

Re: Rambling About Reading

RL — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:34:54 -0000

Adding to my comment to deathbypapers. Having now read your comment below about Lynne Cheney in the 1990s. Excepting my hyperbole, I see we are probably largely in agreement. (Though working in different areas; art history here, where the situation is far far worse... nearly all of survey art history still passes as white man bio, discuss the same picture someone else has discussed, discuss a picture at MOMA everyone knows, discuss another picture everyone else has discussed, discuss one new picture, white man bio, repeat).

Based on your recommendation, I'll pick up Foner and judge more fairly. Thank you.

Re: Rambling About Reading

Donald — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:28:52 -0000

Agreed that Lincoln is amazing - he is really like a Shakespearean character.

The Foote reference is incorrect though: Shelby Foote's "two geniuses" of the war were Lincoln and Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Re: Rambling About Reading

RL — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:16:31 -0000

Certainly someone with the moniker deathbypapers knows of what they speak. Great name. My point, overly enthusiastically made, had more to do with the high school history text than the college level texts to which you refer.

I am biased (how Foucauldian of me). Cultural history, the history of ideas, social history -- all or one of the above -- present a richer, deeper understanding than the survey history commonly presented, by the text, to nearly all American high school students, and most (not all) American college students. There are indeed great teachers, and authors, who go beyond the basic survey.

Re: Rambling About Reading

calexical — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:10:34 -0000

Those things look ridiculously entertaining. Assuming I have my own brats some day, I'll have to pick up that whole series. I remember a series of illustrated biographies of major figures that a friend of mine had when I was a kid. Inveterate reader though I was, you could not have gotten me to read through a prose biography of Marie Curie, but I tore through those cartoon books like they were printed crack.

Re: Rambling About Reading

Jordan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:06:57 -0000

If you want to go back further, the English Civil War is also a good one to check out. The motivations of the people actually involved were so different from what one tends to expect when we think about revolution today. The rabid anti-Catholicism of the Roundheads is a prime example in my mind. And yet, that revolution played a very important part in shaping the ideas and expectations of the early Americans when they decided that absolute monarchy wasn't such a hot idea.

Re: Rambling About Reading

Jordan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:55:26 -0000

One of my favorite authors is Larry Gonick, who has written numerous books in the "Cartoon Guide to" form. There are some omissions in them and they're obviously not complete (especially the Cartoon History of the Universe series), but they're funny. When you can make history entertaining, you actually remember it. And when it's presented in a sufficiently compelling form, you want to go find out more. So I wouldn't call his work the be all and end all, but it's an amazingly good way to get a sense of the scope of history that will lead you to learn even more. I couldn't recommend his books highly enough for middle/high school history classes.

Re: Rambling About Reading

Sorn — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:46:29 -0000

Just a side not but is Dubois's Black Reconstruction in America still worth reading? It's been on my reading list for a year but I haven't picked it up yet.

Re: Rambling About Reading

deathbypapers — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:45:44 -0000

Actually, a lot of college survey texts are written by rather prominent historians. Foner has written one, as has Alan Brinkley and James Henretta. Say what you will about them or their prose, but they are quality historians, diligent researchers and (sometimes) very good writers.

Re: Rambling About Reading

irishpirate — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:37:03 -0000

oops.

Lincoln in Richmond.

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/richmond.htm

Re: Rambling About Reading

irishpirate — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:36:33 -0000

Lincoln is amazing because of his very "humanity". The mental health issues he dealt with, depression, his nutjob wife, losing children etc. His trip through Richmond after the Confederate Capitol fell is a great story. Sort of like the idea of Patton and Churchill pissing in the Rhine River, only with more class.

The fact that Lincoln could overcome all and win the Civil War is amazing.

The late historian Shelby Foote basically said there were two geniuses in the Civil War. Stonewall Jackson and Old Abe. I don't have much use for Stonewall, but I think one argument for the existence of God could be the election of Abe Lincoln in 1860.

Re: Rambling About Reading

Jennifer D. — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:28:06 -0000

TNC, I can't tell you how many thing I have looked up and learned since I first started reading your blog. That's part of what makes your blog so compelling.