5 comments about Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years.

1. I found this book at the library yesterday after I heard the news (I wanted to see it without paying for it). I read through a lot of it to get the sense of what the book was about, and I am stunned that it has taken this long for the truth to come out. Yeah, it's a fascinating story, but come on people.
   
   The people who bought this book should be given a full refund of their purchase in the same way they would be given a refund if they bought a box of cereal and opened it up to find potato chips. After the author and publisher give back all the money, they should then sell the rights to the true story to Hollywood; this entire story sounds like Pan's Labyrinth: a young girl in the most terrible of times escapes through her imagination into a fairytale of her own.



2. I would like to say that I have known Misha personnally for over 20 years and I could not be more hurt and deceived. And like the people who was closest to her we were lied to the greatest extend. And no, I was not gullible. I was there in Ipswitch along with a team of reporters who also believed her and saw what she could do with animals. Misha is actually remarkable with animals but not with people. She never has. But what I found most distasteful is that people can be angry towards me who was also a victim of her lies. So people don't be so quick to judge and hurt others! I am sorry that my own review of what I believed to be true back in 2001 has influenced others to buy and believe her story as well. And that makes me even sicker just to think about it. Now I have to reconcile my own feelings towards Misha and my family and friends who were also affected by her betrayal. So stop the hatred and blame it on the author, not me and the hundreds of people that invested into Misha's story emotionally and financially as well.



3. Here is the article, published yesterday, where the author recants the story. Below, you will find my letter to the Editor of the St Petersburg Times, commenting on the article, and my condensed review of the book.
   
   Author says Holocaust bestseller is made up
   Historians doubted her story of having been raised by wolves.
   Associated Press
   Published March 1, 2008
   
   
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   BRUSSELS - A Belgian writer has admitted that she made up her bestselling "memoir" depicting how, as a Jewish child, she lived with a pack of wolves in the woods during the Holocaust, her lawyers said Friday.
   
   Misha Defonseca's book, Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France.
   
   Her two Brussels-based lawyers, siblings Nathalie and Marc Uyttendaele, said the author acknowledged that her story was not autobiographical and that she did not trek 1,900 miles as a child across Europe with a pack of wolves in search of her deported parents during World War II.
   
   "I ask forgiveness to all who felt betrayed," Defonseca, 71, said in a written statement. She lives in Dudley, Mass.
   
   Defonseca wrote in her book that Nazis seized her parents when she was a child, forcing her to wander the forests and villages of Europe alone for four years.
   
   She claimed she found herself trapped in the Warsaw ghetto, killed a Nazi soldier in self-defense and was adopted by a pack of wolves that protected her.
   
   Defonseca says that her real name is Monique De Wael and that her parents were arrested and killed by Nazis as Belgian resistance fighters.
   
   "This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving," the statement said. "I ask forgiveness to all who felt betrayed. I beg you to put yourself in my place, of a 4-year-old girl who was very lost."
   
   She said there were moments when she "found it difficult to differentiate between what was real and what was part of my imagination."
   
   Pressure on the author to defend the accuracy of her book had grown in recent weeks.
   
   "I'm not an expert on relations between humans and wolves, but I am a specialist of the persecution of Jews and they (Defonseca's family) can't be found in the archives," Belgian historian Maxime Steinberg told RTL television. "The De Wael family is not Jewish nor were they registered as Jewish."
   
   Defonseca had been asked to write the book by U.S. publisher Jane Daniel in the 1990s, after Daniel heard the writer tell the story in a Massachusetts synagogue.
   
   [Last modified March 1, 2008, 01:19:15]
   
   Here is my letter to the editor regarding this article (and is a short review of the book)
   Subject: Author says Holocaust bestseller is made up
   I first read Misha DeFonseca's memoirs in French as "Survivre avec Les Loups" (Survival with Wolves) in April, 2006. I think I knew, deep down, that several elements of the story had to be fiction, namely: Misha setting off to walk 1,900 miles "to the East" to find her deported parents, her escaping from the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, her being adopted by and raised by a pack of wolves, her witnessing the rape of a Ukrainian girl and Misha's slaying of the attacker, among others. Nonetheless, the book was moving in its depiction of the barbarity of man's treatment of fellow men, the horrors of life during the Nazi Occupation in Eastern Europe, and the hope of a child to be treated like a person instead of like an animal. I am sad that the author felt the need to embellish her story, which could have stood on its truthful merits alone. We must never forget!
   Marianna Steriadis



4. A story in the March 3, 2008 edition of the New York Times (culture section) reveals that this book is a FAKE. The author has admitted as such. Touting this book as a "memoir" is thus mendacious.



5. Readers may be interested in these letters that appeared about the Defonseca saga in the Globe:
   [...]
   Taken in by a Holocaust memoir
   March 7, 2008
   
   
   AS A chronicler of Holocaust memoirs, I read the saga of Misha Defonseca and publisher Jane Daniel with interest and more than a little apprehension ("Den of lies," Living/Arts, March 1).
   It is indeed difficult if not impossible to even check on, let alone determine, the veracity of the stories of Holocaust survivors. Nazi records, if there is anything of relevance in them regarding individual survivors, are only just now beginning to come out, as in the case of the recently released Bad Arolsen archives. Often, one has little to rely on besides an occasional lucky link between available records and a traumatized, and perhaps somewhat compromised, elderly memory. Exaggeration, embellishment, and fabrication, which can and do exist in any interviewing, always end disastrously, as we see in this saga, which even drew in the likes of Elie Wiesel.
   Thus, going into the collecting process with hope for monetary success is ambiguous at best and futile at worst. Yes, Daniel has expenses and business concerns. But in most cases, documenting the memoirs of others does not result in financial gain. Certainly with regard to atrocities such as the Holocaust, the preservation of memories holds other rich rewards for both the teller and the scribe, but most authors know to keep their day jobs.
   SUSIE DAVIDSON
   Brookline
   The writer, a journalist for the Jewish Advocate, is the author of "I Refused to Die: Stories of Boston-Area Holocaust Survivors and Soldiers who Liberated the Concentration Camps of World War II" and "Jewish Life in Postwar Germany"
   
   [...]
   
   Misguided view on veracity of Holocaust memories
   
   March 18, 2008
   SUSIE DAVIDSON'S assertion that it is is misguided and should not remain unchallenged ("Taken in by a Holocaust memoir," Letters, March 7). It is also not true that Nazi records "are only just now beginning to come out." Archives have been available in Germany and elsewhere for decades to validate the roundups and deportation of Jews from particular communities in Europe.
   Expecting witnesses who tell of their ordeals on transports and in camps to offer proof that they were in a particular ghetto or camp is like Swiss bank officials demanding that children of survivors whose parents had been gassed furnish copies of the death certificates.
   But most disturbing is Davidson's claim that, when interviewing Holocaust survivors, about all we have to rely on is "a traumatized, and perhaps somewhat compromised, elderly memory." As someone who has spent more than a decade interviewing Holocaust survivors, I have found the exact reverse to be true.
   Misha Defonseca's book is so full of confirmable historical errors that on that basis alone it was possible for informed readers to recognize that her narrative could not be true.
   LAWRENCE L. LANGER,
   West Newton
   The writer is the author of "Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory."
   
   
   Statements regarding verification of Holocaust stories still ring true
   
   I stand by my assertions that were taken to task by Lawrence Langer ("Misguided view on veracity of Holocaust memories," Letters, March 18). My statement that Langer quoted, "it is difficult if not impossible to even check on, let alone determine, the veracity of the stories of Holocaust survivors," concerns, as it states, survivors' actual stories, rather than the Nazi deportation archives Langer mentions (which I have seen, some in actuality, in Germany).
   
   Langer analogizes my statements on lack of supporting documentation to my asking the survivors I have interviewed to furnish proof. I have never done such a thing; to the contrary, over the past several years, I have organized public events, always sold my books at cost, charged no speaker fee though I invited and paid other supporting speakers, and, most importantly, publicly read these stories in forums ranging from the Boston Public Library to myriad bookstores, classrooms, synagogues, senior and veterans' centers in an effort to spread awareness of the bravery of these people during the terrible times they lived through.
   
   Yes, I have taken these dear souls at their word. That does not mean I believe that every word is inscribed, and I'm sure the survivors wouldn't either. No memory is perfect. Trauma is affecting. Although I have done my best to verify what survivors in my books have told me, feel that the stories are true, like Langer am highly impressed at their ability to recount their tales, and wholly believe in their sincerity and honesty, I am not afraid to state that I would never take credit for 100 percent, iron-clad verifiability.
   SUSIE DAVIDSON
   Brookline
   
   
   To: letter@globe.com
   Subject: Records, as well as memory, can indeed be fallible
   Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:37:07 +0000
   
   I beg to differ with Lawrence Langer. First, I have a hard time believing that Nazi records released thus far have been all that forthcoming, let alone totally forthright. Second, the sheer breadth of fallout from the deception of Misha DeFonseca alone speaks for the need to be as careful as Susie Davidson has been in her books.
   I recently saw a local public television show try to deal with having had a World War II soldier on the preview hour to Ken Burns' documentary "The War", telling tall tales about his bravery that were soon unveiled as fabrication. This and DeFonseca's book have certainly not been the only instances of unintentional publication and broadcasting of fraudulent or incorrect memoirs in the media, because, as Davidson said, memory, as well as recordkeeping, are not always correct.
   As the nephew and namesake of one of the navigators of the Exodus 1947, whose own story few would believe if it weren't true, I appreciate writers like Davidson who make the effort to verify, admit they can be fallible, and do their work for no personal gain.
   
   FRANK LEVINE
   Malden
   
   
   
   
   I REPRESENTED Misha Defonseca in litigation against Jane Daniel. I worked closely with Defonseca for more than six years. I learned that her memoir was a fabrication when her statement was published in the Globe.
   The article cites Lawrence L. Langer as expressing outrage that anyone could exploit the Holocaust for profit. Langer, an authority on the subject, goes so far as to compare them to Holocaust deniers. I think this is an unfortunate overstatement.
   The irony is that Defonseca's real story seems to be even more compelling than the fabrication. According to the researcher who uncovered the truth, her parents were Catholic members of the Belgian resistance who were captured and killed by Nazis. It is one thing to belong to a group targeted for oppression or genocide and something quite different to choose to align yourself with such a group and share its fate. Whatever our beliefs about our own integrity or moral fiber, there are few among us who would make that choice once we have assumed the obligations of parenthood.
   Defonseca's parents were among this rarest sort of human. Their daughter paid a horrible price for that choice.
   RAMONA HAMBLIN
   Newton
   
   
   
   
   WE AT Wolf Hollow were saddened by the revelation that Misha Defonseca's incredible memoir was an elaborate hoax. Upon meeting her in 1996, we were awed by her story. We were aware of many documented cases of children raised by animals, including chimpanzees, apes, and indeed wolves. Wolves live in packs that mirror our own human families, and are considered the most socially complex nonprimate mammal. In our talks with Defonseca, she demonstrated an intimate knowledge of wolf behavior. Who would not want to believe such a heartwarming story in the midst of one of mankind's darkest times?
   We became close friends with Defonseca, subsequently holding book signings and hosting a film crew from "The Oprah Winfrey Show." We spoke of her when visitors to Wolf Hollow would ask of the validity of tales of wolf-raised children, and even named a wolf puppy Misha. Readers can imagine how shocked we are now.
   For someone to feel the need to create such a story in lieu of reality is the truly sad story. Despite the deception, the Misha that we knew is a warm woman and an advocate for animals, and we trust that that much is still true.
   ZEE SOFFRON
   Assistant director Wolf Hollow
   Ipswich
   
   
   
   
   AFTER READING this story, I was speechless. I have known Misha Defonseca since 1988, when she and her family moved to Millis, and we became close friends. I truly believed her story, and supported her efforts in writing her memoirs.
   One speech she gave stands out in my mind, a night at Brandeis. Several hundred students, faculty, friends, and true Holocaust survivors gathered to hear her story, and many tears were shed as the story unfolded. Holocaust survivors in attendance that evening called out the names of the death camps they were in, and a moment of silence was observed. This experience will live in my memory forever.
   I feel so betrayed, yet my heart is broken for the true Holocaust survivors she used to promote her lies. When her book was published, I felt honored that she put my name in it, and now I am ashamed. I want no association with the lies.
   PATRICIA CUNNINGHAM
   Millis

5 comments about Edison: A Life of Invention.

1. I was given this book for a writing project and dutifully plowed through it over the Christmas holidays. Overall, I must say that it was an absolutely excellent holiday book as well as chock full of useful ideas for my scholarly purposes. This is an extremely difficult balance to strike and Israel has done it better than I thought possible - I was prepared for a long dry slog and instead found a great and exciting story.

   Edison, Israel argues, was not just a lone little-educated tinkerer of genius as he is often portrayed, but the creator of the prototype for the modern corporate research lab - he knew how to find talent, how to organize it to get the most out of people, and how to beat the competition by both speed and in the creation of entire new systems of technology. He also knew how to manipulate the media and build on his fame, creating a myth to which he had to live up. That being said, he had a pitch-perfect intuitive sense not only of potential new markets, but of how to create technical solutions to exploit them. He learned from his failures and strove to apply his less-successful inventions elsewhere, often to great effect. Taken together, this was true business genius and Israel explains it all succinctly, including the exposure of Edison's many weaknesses in management and his financial affairs and his many flops (such as the mining experiments that nearly bankrupted him). Furthermore, the basics of his major inventions - improvements to the telegraph and telephone, the light bulb, commerical electricity generation systems, to mention a few - are covered with competence, always with an eye to the management of it all and what it took, all of which are of great use. This adds up to a masterpiece of scholarship and popular writing in my view, crossing a plethora of disciplines in very readable prose and at a good pace of storytelling.

   However, there are many things that make this a challenging read and in some ways disappointing. Even though I know a lot about science and engineering from my own writing, I found the many passages explaining the nuts and bolts of his inventions hard to follow and ultimately rather dry. If the reader is not interested in these highly technical details, he can skim them without losing the narrative thread. Moreover, Edison as a person does not always come thru, though really he was his work and not much else. You also do not learn much about the fate of his enterprises or even his personal financial fortune after his death, which is also a part of his legacy that should be explored. Finally, Israel addresses somewhat rarified questions in the concluding chapter regarding whether Edison was a "scientist" and how industrial research was changing (developing specialties that required far more education than inventors of Edison's "heroic invention" epoch) to make the emergence of generalist, self-taught inventors like him far more difficult and with limited horizons; while I enjoyed this a great deal, it is of limited interest to those who were never steeped in "science policy."

   All in all, highest recommendation. It is a great achievement and will stand as one of the definitive biographies of this great and difficult man.




2. Reading this book has been an experience for me. I wanted to find out more about the life of one of America's most famous inventors, and this book has helped me along the way, so I give it credit for that. However, I have felt like I am trudging into a mighty windstorm, reaching deep into my soul to plunge each forward step as I slowly turn the pages in this book. There are pockets of enlightenment throughout the book, but it really is a relaying of facts about Edison's life, which is technically what a biography should do, but this book does not come alive in my hands like others have.
   
   To be fair, I did accomplish my goal of learning more about this great man. I learned that a lot his inventions were a result of not just great intellect, but of great work ethic and stick-to-it-iveness. Also, one of his greatest contributions was a corporate model for delegating work among his subordinates. The speed of the development of his inventions was the key, as several other inventors were working on similar ideas at the same time.
   
   Anyway, I recommend the book as a good introduction to the life of Tom, but I am sure that there is a book out there that will give you the same enlightenment without making you feel as though you've crawled on your hands and knees through the Sahara, with a canteen full of lukewarm water that leaks at a very slow rate.



3. I've always been interested in reading the biographies of famous inventors. Edison was one I knew little about, so I purchased this book. It is very interesting and takes you through his entire life. You see how Edison begins as a skilled telegraph operator. But he is not content with the status quo, he is always improving what he is working with. But he is also a businessman and gets his ideas patented, and forms partnerships and businesses to profit from them.
   
   The book also includes many pictures form different periods in his life. If you are interested in Edison, this is a great book.



4. This book is very authoritive and well researched, and even more important is that it provides end notes for the reader to verify the author's assertions. If you want a quick overview of Edison's life or just the highlights, this is not the book for you; but if you need to know the man, this is the best book I've read. Paul Israel presents Edison's achievments and failures, in inventions, human relationships and finances in a dispassionate manner.



5. I liked this book a great deal. You should consider that this is not a fictional story, and is the very essence of a research work.
   
   Great insights about his life, religious views, and his business of invention. Well treated subject and a great read.

4 comments about Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown.

1. Most interesting. A story of the founding of Jamestown from the Indian point of view. It is a family tradition that we are descended from Powhatan, and the story meant a great deal to me.



2. The major theme of POCAHONTAS POWHATAN OPECHANCANOUGH: THREE INDIAN LIVES CHANGED BY JAMESTOWN revolves around truth. For each story that has been told about Virginia's Jamestown settlement or Pocahontas in general, its has centered on the Captain John Smith and Pocahontas legend and myth that has been overly romanticized in novels and in movies. At this time, no scholar has made the attempt to intertwine the Indian voice within the English story of Jamestown. However, Helen Rountree attempts to provide the Native American voice, but from letters and accounts by English colonists and foreigners. It is unfortunate that the Indians did not record their accounts of the arrival of these new world settlers, or as Rountree suggests, invaders. Nonetheless, Rountree places the three major participants' semi-biographical accounts at the forefront of this study in order to incorporate their contribution to the settlement as well as the invasion of white colonists to the Indian landscape.
   
   Rountree examines these three major actors and their way of life from anthropological perspective. Indeed, this is an historical narrative that deals with ethnohistory, but one that is " about one side only" (p. 6). Historians study their subject matters in order to get to the bottom of how an event occurred and its end result - think in terms of the past while writing in the present. Rountree takes the same approach, and studied the Powhatan side with why and how they acted the way they did. Rountree is critical and frank about past accounts of the Jamestown story as told by historian, William Strachey, HISTORIE OF TRAVELL INTO VIRGINIA BRITANIA and his plagiarized version of John Smith's narrative, GENERALL HISTORIE, which takes an English perspective that downplays the Indian presence. Rountree clarifies misconceptions that have been told within past narratives.
   
   Chronologically, the book covers the period from 1607 to 1644. With these periods, one has a time frame to work with. Rountree provides an in depth analysis of the inception and deterioration of relations between natives and colonists of the Virginia Company's settlement in Jamestown and the wars that concurred in 1622 and 1644. The book shows how life was like before the colonists, and the significance of Powhatan daily rituals. Rountree's expertise in so-called "digging deep" to the root of origins from an anthropological point of view allows the reader to understand how life was simple and structured for the Powhatans. Rountree suggests that life only later became complicated when the Indians had to provide and teach the colonists how to survive. In the process, both Indians and colonists discovered that their lifestyles and environments were different than what they had been accustomed to.
   
   For the sake of understanding, POCAHONTAS POWHATAN OPECHANCANOUGH will allow readers of history to see the bigger picture of the Jamestown story that took place three centuries ago. Although this history has already passed, its legacy and myths continues to engage readers. Helen Rountree should be commended for taken the task to reveal the real Pocahontas as human as possible and not as a Disney cutout, and to emphasize the predominant role of chief leader, Powhatan, and his successor or "brother", Opechancanough as essential actors in American history.
   
   
   
   



3. Everyone is familiar with the story of Pocahontas and British explorer/adventurer John Smith. They are romantic stories fed to us by the likes of Disney (10 yrs ago in the 1995 film) and countless romanticized versions in historical fiction novels. This "documentary" book exposes the truth about what really happened in the span of time that John Smith, Jon Rolfe and the Virginia Company founded Jamestown and dealt with the Indian tribes headed by Chief Powhatan and his brother Openchancanough. Since Thanksgiving is fast approaching, this makes a fine book to read if you are interested in the earliest British colonial period of the 1600's, when the pilgrims fist arrived in the Eastern coast of the United States. This period has been romanticized by movies and novels, evoking a thrilling time of danger, intrigue and romance, when Indians and colonists sparred and sometimes made peace, even made love. Princess Pocahontas was the daughter of Chief Powhatan. She was only fifteen or so when she first met Jon Smith and a romance was highly unlikely, even if perhaps the girl felt an attraction to the supposedly attractive adventurer. John Smith had traveled across the globe to foreign lands as a British explorer and was in his day a bad boy. That he may have gotten into trouble with Chief Powhatan and his people is probably true. Pocahontas was a diplomat, a healer/medicine woman and regarded as a peacemaker. Even if she didn't do a dramatic a thing as offer herself up as sacrifice to save John Smith's life, she did for a time lessen tension between the natives and the colonists. She married Jon Rolfe, a British nobleman, was converted to Christianity, learned to read and speak English. She journeyed across the Atlantic, leaving behind her old life in the tribe and became a popular figure in London society. She became a lady. Most people forget about this phase in her life and it must have been a very interesting story within itself. Did she miss her old life ? Was she as respected in London or did she experience a form of racism because she was not a white English lady ? Powhatan's life is documented well in this book. He was a very influential man in his time and he, too, was able to negotiate with the English. Jamestown brought these people together. They hoped that Jamestown would be an independent, Utopian society where English and natives could live and prosper. Unfortunately, Jamestown succumbed to disease and death. The dream died and conflict between natives and colonists resumed. If you're a big history buff, this book is for you.



4. I am fortunate to have read four excellent books on the Pocahontas / John Smith story. As I have read one after the other each has added seasoning, each has distilled the myth from the acts, each is a different perspective on THE seminal moment at the beginning of European history in America.
   
   The first book I read was "Captain John Smith: Jamestown and the Birth of the American Dream" (Kindle Edition) by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler. We learn from a thorough biography of Smith at what a full and tumultuous life he lived. If even one half of what Smith wrote about his exploits was true, then his life was one of the most storied and lucky of the century. No matter how you look upon his pre-American exploits, by the time he sets foot in Virginia he is a well seasoned and experienced soldier.
   
   The next book was "Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma" by Camilla Townsend. Full of very important information about Pocahontas, the author tends to vilify Smith as a boastful liar, her sympathies towards Pocahontas run as deep. We learn much about the Powhatan people and the times they lived in.
   
   The third book was "Love & Hate in Jamestown" by David A Price. He tends to take both Pocahontas at her word (the very few we actually know of) and almost all of John Smith's many words....at face value. All three of these books are very well researched but each draw very different stories and conclusions.
   
   Coming now to the fourth and probably the finest of them, "Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives changed by Jamestown" by Helen C Rountree, I think that I have finally realized as accurately as I can who these people were and what happened at Jamestown. Whereas Townsend tends to reveal a degree of rage and resentment against Smith, Rountree does not get as caught up in the heated debates that still go on among Pocahontas/Jamestown writers and scholars. Having worked among the remnants of the Powhatan natives for 35 years, Rountree has absorbed their history and it is well integrated with mountains of scholarly research.
   
   What do we learn from Rountree's book that might have been missing in the other three? First, her objective was to tell the reader what happened to the three main characters and she succeeds to the fullest of the known evidence. Their stories are, with the exception of Pocahontas, that of long lives (Opachancanough might be have been close to 100 when he died) and of seeing a completely unstoppable change to their society. We must remember that Native American tribes by their very nature spent parts of their histories fighting with and either conquering other tribes or in turn being conquered by them in turn. Some tribes were wiped out, others brought into submission to a Great King, like Powhatan. The changes that the Europeans brought to the Natives of America was very unlike their previous history, a history that might have been as old if not older than the Europeans. Powhatan died with an uncertain notion of whether his people could push the smelly white strangers off their lands. Opachancanough died knowing that their civilization was doomed.
   
   One of the most important insights that Rountree presents comes close to the end of her book. She states that in the final uprisings against the Jamestown area settlements, the Powhatan natives were largely supplied by young men who had never known a time when their ancestral lands were all their own. They grew up in an embattled and bloody time of transition when the end of Amerindian culture was making itself known.
   
   Keeping this in mind, the life of Pocahontas, as short and sad as it was, exposed her to the most striking of contrasts. Can you imagine what her father would have thought had he been convinced to visit England? Would he have been able to absorb the sense of enormity of European society, positioned as it was with cities full of rank and foul airs, open sewage, filthy children running amok in the streets, clouds of black smoke coming from coal fires. Would he not have imagined Europe as a hellish nightmare? Certainly Pocahontas was astounded but what is amazing is that it appears that she actually liked being in England, if not in the smoldering big cities. Her feisty nature relished the changes that she had been pushed into. This is a strange aspect to her personality that is hard to understand.
   
   Much of the book relates the relentless waves of incompetent settlers who came to the Jamestown area. What is clear about this story is that the White Europeans were going to come and nothing was going to stop them. Not sickness, nor hurricanes, nor savage natives, nor starvation. They would come and more would follow and the superior technologies of gunpowder, steel and huge sail boats, coupled with animal husbandry were more than a match for the hunting/gathering subsistence native life.
   
   One comes away from this history wondering if it could have been another way and I suppose the answer is no. The clash of civilizations was inevitable, with swashbuckling Captain Smiths eager for exploring new and hopefully cleaner lands more than enough motivation to get out and go. That so many native lives perished as a result and thousands of years of history pulverized is a sad legacy to the memory of Pocahontas, her father and her uncle. But, it is what happened and we should know of their lives. Rountree's book is full of insight into these people as they tried in vain to deal with these strangers. The mythologies about Smith and Pocahontas I think have been finally put to rest and need not be resurrected again. The real story is much more gripping and important. Excellent book.

5 comments about The World Rushed in: The California Gold Rush Experience.

1. This book tells the story of my wife's cousin, William Swain. Swain witnessed over a hundred cholera victims, alive a day earlier, now buried in the sand banks of the Mississippi River. Bodies strewn along the Nevada trail, he viewed the tragedy. Ships, valued in the millions, he viewed abandoned in San Francisco bay.

   As family members, we have John Holliday to thank. Moreover, I was thrilled with each page of Holliday's book. The 1849 Gold Rush extracted more from its participants, due to gold fever, than they got in return from the California mines. That's exactly what happened to William, who, in May of 1848, left his lovely wife, Sabrina, a newborn daughter, his brother George, and his farm residence in Youngstown, NY. William, in his heart, knew he would make it big in California country. At least he must try. And, Sabrina, not knowing the hardships and penniless outcome, gave her loving agreement. Along the way William witnessed death and deprivation, loneliness and hunger. He arrived hopeful in gold country, plied his efforts, and came away luckily with the skin on his back. He differed from most in one important way: William kept a journal. And, Sabrina and William wrote and saved their letters, from which Holliday made one of America's finest narratives. William, weighted with introspective highlight, wrote to George, "If you're thinking of coming out here, for [Gosh] sakes, do not!" William pleaded. Prospectors and miners everywhere, food scarce, prices high, California gold fields deluded nearly all. "And no one I know has gotten rich," William offered. William, beaten in his quest, longed to be with Sabrina and brother George. Ready to return, he had saved $400. He longed to bring it all home, to hand to Sabrina. But, think of it, did you ever try to get from Sacramento to Niagara Falls in 1850, while tired and broke? Yikes. No train. William would have to walk the same way home he came, over that horrible trail. He couldn't face that prospect. So, William scraped his pockets clean, and purchased passage on a ship, via Panama. Just one catch: There was no Panama Canal. That happened 60 years later. William made his way to San Francisco bay. He boarded ship. He endured sea sickness. He ate crummy food. He arrived at Panama, shaken. Next, he and all passengers traversed the 50 mile overland eastward trek with a guide. Threatened with abandonment in the jungle, he paid double. Weak, he arrived at the east side of the Isthmus, broke. William struggled on board ship. It traveled north, taking forever, to arrive at New York City. There, George, who knew to meet him from William's earlier letter, stood waiting at the gangplank. William, broke and sick, 25 pounds skinnier, staggered into his brother's arms. George helped William toward home, finally past beloved Niagara Falls, north to Youngstown. There, adoring, relieved, Sabrina faithfully nursed William back to health. Asked late in life if it was worth it, William avoided answering. He merely declared he loved his Youngstown. Can you read between the lines on that one? 'Nuff said.




2. This is a superb, gripping and very personal account of one man's experience travelling to and from the California gold rush. The fact that Holliday had access to virtually all the letters sent from him and to him on the trail makes this book even more enticing. It made me feel that I was taking every step with William Swain on his journey, sharing in his joys and sorrows and those of his brother and wife back home. I thoroughly recommend this book, I couldn't put it down.



3. Thank heavens for people like William Swain who took the time to record their personal stories and let it become, in a sense, a first-person history tale to people in the 21st century. Swain goes into great detail about his trials and tribulations and you begin to care so much about him, it almost becomes a novel. It accidentally sets the reader up for disappointment in the end by Swain reaching home and the story suddenly stopping. You'll find yourself asking, how did Eliza greet her papa? What did Swain do with the meager amount of money he made? What was Sabrina and her husband's first words to each other after an almost two-year absence? Of course, it's not Swain's fault for ending his diary at home. He merely kept the journal to update his family on his journey; not give readers 150 years later an autobiography. Holliday can not answer these final questions either and rightfully so, he does not try. You are left to ponder how it ended and hopefully, after reading so many emotional passages from William and Sabrina, you can use your imagination to answer the homecoming questions.

   Holliday blends the information together wonderfully by arranging each chapter into three sections:

   1. an overall historical account

   2. Swain's diary

   3. A Back Home section in which letters written to Swain from wife Sabrina and brother George are included.

   The format works splendidly for the reader and keeps everything in a proper time frame. Holliday also includes scaled-down regional maps for every chapter which lets the reader follow along on a microcosm/macrocosm scope of the total journey. Holliday has also laboriously researched hundreds of other personal diaries and includes passages from them when Swain leaves gaps or when a quirky story can be added to intrigue the reader further. The World Rushed In is a fast read and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in Western US history or is just looking for a great story.




4. My wife and I recently visited California for the first time. In a U.S. Forest Service bookstore, I saw this book. Since we planned to return to California and tour the Gold Rush areas, I bought the book. I made a good choice! The use of William Swain's actual diary and letters made me feel almost like I was there, the descriptions were so detailed and vivid. It was an incredible journey that tens of thousands of men, women, and children made across the west. Many of these people thought that they could simply pick up gold nuggets for a few days and be rich. In fact, gold mining was brutally hard work, and few of the 49ers ever got rich. The author does a fantastic job of describing the California Gold Rush in human terms.
   
   If you only read one book about the California Gold Rush, "The World Rushed In" would be a great choice.



5. "The World Rushed In" is a gold rush history must read. Holliday's approach to telling the 49ers tale was a seamless stitching together of William Swain's journal and letters home with other facts and general information surrounding the rush. It is a personal approach. It is an accurate approach to what being a 49er meant to those who chased the elephant.
   
   Holliday's interpretations and prose keep the story flowing, but do not add extraneous information. Nor does Holliday attempt to explain feelings or jump to conclusions. The ease with which this book flows and the personal feelings expressed by William and Sabrina Swain make this book hard to put down. The reader feels the fear of cholera and the aches at the end of the day.
   This book describes the rush mentality of the 49ers extremely well. These young, eager, adventurers truly believed they would easily find their fortunes and soon be back home. Swain himself, who was apparently better read and prepared for the trip than many, believed he would be home much sooner than he was. Unlike many others, his decision to return home from California was easier. He had a farm, a family and a life to return to that did not require any wealth. Many of the rushers had nothing to return east to.
   
   As a native upstate New York farmer who has traveled along most of the major westward trails, albeit via car or railroad, I completely understood Swain's descriptions of praise or denigration of the land he passed through. I empathized with his homesickness. There was irony in the travails Swain survived and many of my own one hundred and fifty years later. We both went west to find our fortunes. We both adapted. He was able to return home in twenty- two months. Seven years later, I am still hoping.
   
   My favorite paragraph in the book is a journal entry describing the Black Rock Desert in Northern Nevada. The paragraph ends with "where the hell is California?" I have crisscrossed Nevada in every direction. It is desolate, harsh and will lead even the most proper person to exclaim, "Where the hell is anything!" I can't imagine crossing this state walking beside an ox team.
   
   Holliday artfully tells the big story of the emigration in conjunction with Swain's individual view. Swain had no idea how many people were ahead of or behind him. Swain mentions problems in other companies, but had no idea the extent of discontent among some of the trains. Holliday draws from other sources to compare Swain's adventures with the experiences of others. This approach gives a broader spectrum of the emigration. Swain's crossing was relatively uneventful and trouble free. He was taken ill a few times, but did not die from cholera as so many did. He was fortunate in selecting trustworthy traveling companions. He found decent passage home. Swain made it home.
   
   "The World Rushed In" is a must read for anyone interested in the human side of the gold rush. Other works contain all the facts, figures and dates one could want. This book reveals the personal and social side of 'going to see the elephant.'

5 comments about Years of Renewal.

1. The book does not mention the effect that many of his decisions had on the "little" people , the common , insignificant people , the families destroyed in the blaze of war as a result of many of his decisions while playing geopolitical chess games with the Russians and the British and the Chinese. During his reign as secretary of state , antiamerican feeligs soared in Cyprus .A folk song was being played on the radio right after the 1974 war there. It talked about the great powers of the world who treat people's lives as a whim of the moment. It said that the singer wanted to set the "Embassy of Death" on fire.Can you imagine? The American embassy won the nickname Embassy of Death! .It should have been embassy of life . What Mr.Kissinger forgets to mention in his book is that he masterminded a coup d'etat in Cyprus , installed a dictator , and then invited the Turks to invade there and capture half the island because he did not like the elected democratic president.(He thought that being a non-aligned country was like inviting the communists to take control of a crucially strategic island ). The horror of that war was beyond imagination. Mr. Kissinger is still afraid to visit either Greece or Cyprus because the people with missing parents or children might lynch him.There were many demonstrations agaist his person , which surprised and brought him down to reality as to what happenned to real people with every decision he made. Even now as we speak ,25 years after the events , an American forensic team is unearthing and DNA identifying missing persons bodies .Cyprus had more missing persons than the USA had in the Vietnam war. Unfortunately the American people have absolutely no idea how many people died or lost their homes so that the multinational companies would have more oil , more control ,more raw materials, more wealth etc.They see what Hollywood shows them .



2. Dr. Kissinger, for all of his hubris and arrogance will truly go down in history as a great statesman. His intimate and sometimes self-deprecating writing style will keep the reader at the edge of their seat especially during the end of the Vietnam War and the crisis with Cyprus. All three volumes could very well serve as textbooks for anyone interested in the finer points of statecraft.



3. I have admired Henry Kissinger for many years. I think he is one of those limited intellectual diplomacies who really have, not only limited to one's word, a long term vision. It's really enjoyable when you read his book and share his thoughts.



4. Henry Kissinger's book, "Years of Renewal," is a complete review of U.S. foreign policy initiatives while he was Secretary of State under President Gerald R. Ford. In it, he details how they built upon the foreign policy successes of the Nixon Administration and laid the foundation for the resurgence of the American spirit seen during the Reagan Administration. From a diplomatic standpoint, this may have been America's finest hour.

   With the possible exception of Lincoln, no U.S. president has inherited a nation as severely divided as Gerald R. Ford. Immediately after assuming office, he faced one international crisis after another with a hostile, "McGovernite Congress," and an emasculated intelligence gathering system that made effective response to even the most extreme provocations virtually impossible. Kissinger says throughout, Ford made decisions solely on what was best for the nation, not on what was politically expedient. His reward for such selfless service: defeat in the next election.

   Like Kissinger's other works, this book can be read either in individual chapters or be taken as a whole. In each segment he details, what they did, what their options were, the assumptions their actions were based upon, and if unsuccessful, what their fall back plan was to be. In spite of seemingly insurmountable odds, they were able to hold the Atlantic Alliance together, strengthen our ties to the Peoples Republic of China, and keep the Soviets out of both the Middle East and Africa.

   The Chinese war philosopher, Sun Tsu said, "In the moment of victory, button your chin strap." History has proven the Soviets should have listened. Given our national paralysis following Vietnam/Watergate, it seemed they could not be stopped. In the international chess game--that is diplomacy at the highest levels--they were stopped through the efforts of a few, dedicated statesmen who blocked them at every turn. The fall of the Soviet Union and Communism was the ultimate result.

   This book is a textbook on how to conduct foreign policy. Enlightening and informative, it has inspired me to read Kissinger's other works, "White House Years," and "Years of Upheaval." I highly recommend it to any serious student of the era.




5. kissinger details how the white house was run after nixon resigned and ford came into power--the photographs are excellent and the text is inciteful----kissinger has been accused of some very bad decisions inhis time that caused many innocent lives--this book gives the reader for why he made those decisions

3 comments about A Place for Us: A Greek Immigrant Boy's Odyssey to a New Country and an Unknown Father.

1. This is as an extraordinary book by one of our country's most important contemporary writers. Highly recommended!



2. Gage writes his and his family's story with a wonderful combination of pathos and humour--an incredible perspective and a worthwhile read.



3. I could not put this book down. I read the story of Eleni several years ago and wanted to know what happened to the family and thie story continues with this book. Nicholas Gage's mother would certainly be proud of her family and the sacrifice she made. A fantastic book, highly recommended

5 comments about Helen Keller: A Life.

1. Anne Sullivan (Helen Kellers teacher) is probably my biggest hero.
   She endured a life of harsh physical pain from various ailments. Any direct exposer to sunlight caused her eyes agonizing pain. She was also plagued with intense emotional trauma, Orphaned, Anne and her younger brother both were shipped to an asylum where they played with rats as toys and frequently were housed in the room where they kept the dead bodies. The year Anne stayed there 70 babies were admitted, 60 died, as did Anne's brother. Anne had seen more death and pain by age 7 then many hardened solders. It was difficult for most people to understand her cantankerous personality and tendency to fly off the handle. It was said at the school she attended she would have been expelled many times, if they had someplace to expell her to. Despite these setbacks she saw Helen Keller, another girl people gave up on and showed her the world of language and communication. This new biography strips away all the well meaning sentimentality and shows us two souls, bruised and scared, but beautiful



2. This is a wonderful addition to all the bios on these two remarkable women. While the definitive is "Helen and Teacher," by Joseph Lash, this book adds lots of interesting details. I had no idea that Helen had her eyes replaced with plastic ones (hence the full face photos in adulthood) or that she enjoyed martinis, high heels and fur coats. What a woman! This is a very enjoyable book with plenty of great photographs. I wonder how much of Helen and Annie's fame was based on their youthful beauty?



3. The Helen Keller most of us are familiar with is the beligerent and frustrated little girl who in that fateful Spring of 1887, became docile, loving, and all of a sudden able to understand things when she put her hand under the water pump. But little was always written about her adult life. I always thought she had perfect features for a woman who was 100% blind and deaf. I recall Annie Sullivan's description of Helen when she first met her was that she was "noticeably blind with one protruding eye" and I thought her eyes looked perfect and beautiful, if not unfocused, for a blind woman, but then again I looked at photographs of her from her twenties on down and they were always right profile pics, with the exception of her photo on the front cover revealing her protruding left eye. It gives me the heebeejeebees that she had them removed and replaced with prosthetics. Anyway, they should make a movie about this detailing her life from Radcliffe college to her death.



4. Many or most nondisabled peoples' only knowledge of Helen Keller's life is the events of William Gibson's "The Miracle Worker". If you only know of the events from this play you would think Helen, Annie Sullivan, and Helen's family lived happily ever after. This is far from the case. Helen's disablities took quite a toll on how much she and her family loved each other. Annie became quite possessive and controlling of Helen during her childhood. Annie had a troubled personality as a result of the horrors of her childhood. Apparently she was never as psychologically stable as she might've been had she had a far better childhood. Throughout Helen's life, both when Annie was alive and after her death in 1936, she was surrounded by people and groups who sought to use her for their own purposes or goals. John Macy, after several years of marriage to Annie, saw the mistake of falling in love with her. It's easy to see why John eventually became an alcoholic, given that his second significant other passed away after only 5 years of living with each other. In the mid 1950's when Helen and Polly Thomson were living together Polly's behavior toward Helen became obsessive enough that Helen was cut off from virtually all human contact except Polly herself. In 1959/1960 Helen terminated a friendship with editor Nella Henney, perhaps as a result of being surrounded since childhood by people and groups who sought to use her for their own purposes or goals.
   
   An irony about "The Miracle Worker" is that while it's a happy tale, the true story of Helen Keller is quite a sad tale. "The Miracle Worker"
   is not Helen's "real life" at all.
   
   However, given the time Helen lived in, I can see why her life story went the way it did. I wish she'd never become disabled during childhood and wished she'd been able to live a normal life. But this biography is more believeable than previous biographies of Helen Keller.



5. My grandfather saw Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan on one of their vaudeville tours in the early 1920s in St. Louis, and never forgot the experience. Helen never achieved her lifelong goal of speaking in a way that was pleasing or comprehensible to the average person. One intimate called her voice "the loneliest sound in the world," but that night she did recite some of the Lord's Prayer, perhaps as a way of demonstrating that truly, all things are possible, if sometimes imperfect.
   
   Herrmann's book is well organized, accessible and a nice companion to the superior "Helen and Teacher" by Joseph P. Lash. She includes anecdotes I had never read before, some of which are fascinating.
   
   Everyone knows the dining room scene from "The Miracle Worker," in which Annie and Helen fight to the death to teach the child table manners. In adulthood, Ms. Herrmann notes, when Helen was the guest at an elegant luncheon or dinner party, when she was shown to her seat Helen would pass her hand once lightly over her table setting, memorize its layout, and proceed to eat with manners equal to those of her sighted companions. But she would occasionally interrupt the conversation she could not hear to ask a question, with sometimes awkward results.
   
   All her long life, the manual alphabet was Helen's continual link to the outside world; it named objects, gave her directions, and described occurring events or those about to happen. The manual alphabet itself is rudimentary and maddeningly limited. So it was through books that Helen's spirit took flight. Her comprehension of Braille came quickly, and it was through her reading that Helen learned abstract and intangible concepts. Teacher gave her nothing to read but the classics, which captivated Helen, but after Teacher's death she occasionally enjoyed the guilty pleasure of a silly romance novel. Helen learned to do what sighted people do -- which is to read whole words, not individual letters. Teacher insisted that she gain a lot of her knowledge through context, just as a sighted person does. Annie set for Helen a demanding course load, even prior to Helen's entering college, (she graduated with honors from Radcliffe in 1904) which insured that Helen was far more well-rounded academically than the average sighted and hearing woman of her day. (I've long felt that Annie should have received a diploma alongside Helen. After all, she had to learn and understand the same subject matter she translated and interpreted for her pupil. What a feather in her cap that would have been.)
   
   Helen acknowledged that exclusive reliance on the manual alphabet for direct communication with others made her a poor conversationalist. She also said late in life that she was still childish in many ways. But these things can be said of many people without her physical limitations.
   
   There is an extraordinary section devoted to restoring eyesight to the blind, particularly those who lost their sight in infancy and early childhood. Such operations have been performed only about 20 times, and the end results have not been the gift many patients hoped for but more often a curse. The world they have imagined for years, even though they had tantalizing glimpses of it as small children, bears little or no resemblance to what they are at last able to see. Herrmann notes that had Helen been a candidate for restoration of her sight, she might not have even been able to recognize Teacher. Some patients have no concept of spatial relationships, no understanding of relative sizes of objects; they cannot attach the names of the nouns they have learned to the physical objects they see before them. The process has been so frightening some have attempted suicide.
   
   Almost all people with physical disabilities become defined in terms of their limitations, both by others and sometimes themselves. The fascination that Helen Keller held and still holds for people all over the world is rooted in the fact that she refused to accept being deafblind as the sole measure of her identity.
   
   Helen Keller was not a genius nor was she a "plaster saint." There was something enigmatic and haunting about her. She was also seemingly without artifice, and possessed of an unquenchable interest in philosophy, other cultures, even music. The reasons she will continue to be studied by schoolchildren and admired by practically everyone are as numerous as the obstacles this remarkable woman overcame.

1 comments about Booker T. Washington: Volume 2: The Wizard Of Tuskegee, 1901-1915 (Oxford Paperbacks).

1. _I think you will make a mistake if you will let your mind dwell too much upon American prejudice, or any other racial prejudice. The thing is for one to get above such things. If one gets in the habit of continually thinking and talking about race prejudice, he soon gets gets to the point where he is fit for little that is worth doing. In the northern part of the United States, there are a number of colored people who make their lives miserable, because all their talk is about race prejudice_ Booker T. Washington in a letter to his daughter Portia then living and studying in Europe.(117)

   I am greatly impressed with this text, BOOKER T. WASINGTON, The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915. Professor Louis R. Harlan earned the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for History with this biography along with the Bancroft Prize and the Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association. The principle source is the Booker T Washington Papers in the Division of Manuscripts of the LIbrary of Congress, a rich, expanding collection of approximately a million letters, speeches, reports, newspaper clippings, and other documents. Professor Harlan is the editor of the published source that extends, currently, to 14 volumes. This material is available on-line in an Open-Book format at the site maintained by the University of Illinois Press (www.historycooperative.org/btw).

   This book begins in 1901, when Booker T. Washington at the age of forty-five was approaching the zenith of his fame and influence, and ends with his death in 1915. It is a biographical study in the sense that its focus is on the complex, enigmatic figure of Washington, the most powerful black minority-group boss of his time. It also recounts the inner life and struggles of the small black middle class in that generation once removed from slavery, as a coterie of college-bred black men and women challenged Washington's powerful coalition of northern, white philanthropists, southern white paternalists, black businessmen, and such members of the black professional class as he could attract to his side.

   Washington's wizardry - his skill of maneuver and ability to make the most of bad circumstances - was his strong point as a leader. His greatest failing was his inability to reverse the hard times for blacks during what whites called the Progressive Era. The same era which the historian Rayford Whittingham Logan (1897-1981) called the nadir of Afro-American history. As Washington's influence declined in his last years, W.E.B DuBois, a strong critic of Washington, and the founders at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sought relief through the court system.

   It was this legal strategy of the NAACP in the 20th Century that culminated in the successful Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and it is Washington's work-ethic, self-help, self-improvement and particularly, style of accomomdation that have been forgotten or discredited. This text helps us remember what Washington accomplished, however, more importantly, Professor Harlan's meticulous investigations reveal that the character of Washington is difficult to articulate succintly.

   Washington's correspondence with the large donors to Tuskegee does not reveal a conspiracy, either large or small, to prepare Tuskegee's students to become wage-workers in the corporate structure. The typical donor sent his check rather than his advice.,...Washington's efforts at Tuskegee Institute were to train students to become independent small businessmen, farmers, and teachers rather than wage-earners or servants of white employers. At the same time, it is clear that Washington flattered and cajoled the very rich and never challenged the appropriateness of their status at the peak of the American success pyramid.

   Tuskegee became a mecca for not only Africans but West Indians and Asians. As his writings were translated into many foreign languages, he became the most famous black man in the world, and his fame drew foreigners to him like a magnet. All manner of men, American missionaries, European colonialists, Afican nationalists, Buddhist reformers, and Japanese modernizers sought to enlist his aid. On the one hand were whites who sought to aid in introducing plantation agriculture into colonial areas. On the other hand Africans and Asians hoped to find in Tuskegee industrial education and Washington's philosophy of self-help a source of strength to resist the political and cultural impreialism of the Europeans. Washington sought to accomodate all of these contradictory propositions.

   While intrepid research has uncovered new material that lends fresh insight, rather than illuminating Washington for compassion to his motives, the added light only casts more shadows. Utterly at variance with the Sunday-school morality he publicly professed, there was also a more feral, more power-hungry Washington, inordinately involved in politics, and particularly the poitics of patronage. Few people, even those affected, such as W.E.B DuBois and Mary White Ovington, knew the extent to which Washington refused to meet our preconceived notions of how a great leader should behave.

   Inexplicable human fraility, aside, as a guide for the black community, Washington had a concrete program of industrial education and the promotion of small business as the avenue of black advancement "up from slavery" and into the middle class. This program may have been anachronistic preparation for the age of mass production, urbanization, and corporate gigantism then coming into being; but it had considerable social realism for a black population which was, until long after Washington's death, predominantly rural and southern. It gave purpose and dignity to black working-class lives of toil and struggle, and also was well attuned to the growth and changing character of black business in Washington's day. He championed the emerging black business class as the leaders of black communities, and they in turn, through the National Negro Business League, became the backbone of Washington's following.

   Washington's followers found hope in his message that fortified them in hopeless situations. During his time, he was exalted as a type of Moses who would lead his people to the promised land as welcome participants in the mainstream of society. For many in the US and around the world, his teachings were a type of deliverance from their oppressive circumstances. Moses had quite a few faults, as all deliverers do, and one of these faults prevented him from entering the promised land of Canaan. Even with all of his great abilities to accommodate the ruling class majority, his ability to conquer overwhelming obstacles, Booker T. Washington's inability to accomodate the strategies of the NAACP, who were themselves uncompromising, weakened his effectiveness.

   After reading this remarkable text, I see Booker T. Washington as a man with great accomplishments and failings perhaps as great. Even with his shortcomings, he was exceptional as he provided his followers hope and lifted their spirit. Professor Harlan has brought to life a man of enormous complexity, who will never be completely understood or known which makes Booker T. Washington much like the people of which I claim familiarity.

   PEACE

5 comments about W. E. B. Du Bois, 1919-1963: The Fight for Equality and the American Century.

1. With volume two Lewis completes his magisterial work chronicling the life and times of the controversial W. E. B. Du Bois, and this second volume is every bit as fascinating and scholarly as the first one which won the Pulitzer Prize. This volume follows Du Bois' descent from a founder and spokesman for the NAACP to his self-imposed exile in Ghana in 1963. Throughout the journey Lewis thoroughly develops the changing viewpoints Du Bois put forth as solutions to the problems of racial discrimination and the powerlessness of people of color in this country and around the world. From an integrationist (who at the same time criticized the assimilationist attitude of Frederick Douglas), Du Bois moved into the Pan-Africa movement (although he disliked and opposed Marcus Garvey and his movement), and eventually supported Black separatism before settling on socialism and Marxism in the later years of his life. His "petty bourgeois" ideas concerning Black economic separatism were, of course, vehemently criticized by his Marxist friends. Many believed "Du Bois was a romantic, a racialist, and an old man given to dreams of a 'shopkeepers paradise' as a solution to the depression."

   Although Lewis soft-pedals Du Bois' deep character flaws which caused him to be constantly at odds with others who were "on his side" in the fight for racial equality, and permitted him to excuse the murder and outrages of Stalinism and the Japanese military aggression and ethnic cleansing in Asia, the author clearly reveals these facts of Du Bois' life. Lewis reveals how Du Bois' mind became so poisoned with a visceral hatred of White power, and its adjunct Western capitalism, that he eventually reached the point where he could look the other way or excuse the outrages committed by peoples or regimes opposed to Western interests (which he never seemed to quite grasp were really his own interests and those of the Negro in America). In the end Du Bois seemed opposed to almost any policy his country adopted and he supported any force in the world (be it Pan-Africanism, Bolshevism, Japanese militarism, or Chinese communism) that opposed the interests of the "White governments." Thus, did a brilliant social critic end up a confused mind destined to play the role of a pawn for regimes opposed to Western interests.

   Lewis is very good at highlighting Du Bois' conflict with Marcus Garvey of whom he draws a great character sketch. He points out that Garvey's early followers were often poor, less educated, and often of West Indian origins, while the more "elitist" Du Bois circulated among, and pretended to speak for, the Talented Tenth of the African American people. Du Bois was an elitist and intellectual who could not stomach the irrational pronouncements of Marcus Garvey. Du Bois' viewpoint was that of the Black urban, educated, professional.

   Lewis is also very strong with detail concerning Du Bois' widening differences with the NAACP leadership and the association's approach to fighting for equality. Du Bois was not a great fan of Walter White, Roy Wilkins, and Thurgood Marshall who, with their legalistic approach, stressed working within the "White system." As in volume one, Lewis does a good job of discussing Du Bois' many writings and shows how Du Bois himself (as witnessed by his "The Gift of Black Folks") never outgrew his own racial stereotyping. Lewis also soft-pedals Du Bois' many affairs with intellectual women, but he does document these relationships. He shows how Du Bois, a believer in the rights of women, virtually abandoned his wife Nina over a period of many years in almost every sense but financial (many of his friends and intellectual acquanitances never met his wife) and how he was less than a father to his unfortunate daughter Yolande (who was one of the great disappointments of his life.)

   Lewis' book is possibly most fascinating when he deals with the Harlem Renaissance and the various figures with whom Du Bois was familiar. He details Du Bois' eventual alienation from the creative people of this era who depicted the seediness of Black urban life and culture. This too realistic depiction of Black life by the Renaissance literary figures embarrassed and angered Du Bois who wanted to believe that the "Negro race" was destined for a special place in history and, as a race, manifest certain elements of racial superiority. Du Bois criticized the Harlem Renaissance writers, poets, and artists for not sharing his belief that art and culture should serve racial politics. As Lewis shows, "Du Bois's own deep anti-modernist taboos surfaced" in his criticism of the Renaissance literati. Lewis also spends a good deal of time on the historiography of the Reconstruction Era to enable his reader to grasp the importance of Du Bois' writings on the subject and how they served as a necessary correction (despite Du Bois' own one-sidedness and exaggerated claims) to the more traditional school of historical writing on the Reconstruction Era. He also reveals the extent to which Du Bois would never give up the ridiculous notion that the freed slaves saved democracy in America. He desperatly needed to find a special role for the African American in the history of the the great country. Despite Du Bois' brilliant intellect, it was his tendency to see "White" hatred of the Negro as the central paradigm of all modern history, that prevented him from being widely accepted as a scholar. For him, all historical understanding began with this simple fact. Often his own worst enemy, Du Bois, Lewis tells us, "managed to give the impression that racial discrimination had been invented soley to make his life miserable."

   In the end, Du Bois felt the American Negro had let him down and he lost his faith in the special role the Negro was to play in history. As he himself admitted, "I misinterpreted the age in which I lived." One has to think that this disillusionment played as much a role in his decision to leave the country as any other reason. All in all, Lewis' biography portrays Du Bois as not so much a heroic figure, as a tragic one; a brilliant mind warped by a troubled soul that was the reflection of much of the pain experienced by an educated African American in the first half of the twentieth century.




2. It seems odd that Lewis's biography of W. E. B. DuBois should be felt to be entitled to two Pulitzer prizes. The author disapproves at least on the surface of some of DuBois's more outrageous positions, but yet Lewis's biases show thru, and one gets the idea that in general if Lewis had not had the benefit of what has happened in regard to Communism in the past 15 years Lewis would be even more approving of DuBois's opinions than he now indicates. As others have mentioned, it is disconcerting to have a book from a major publisher have so many typographical errors. One would think they could have been easily avoided. And the endnotes are a nightmare. Instead of footnotes there are page notes in the back, with no discernible system: some indicate sources, but I found them very user-unfriendly. There is no bibliography as such, and overall I thought the book poorly edited. But the book tells a story of interest, especially during the period from 1945 to 1963.



3. I agree with Schmerguls, above, that David Levering Lewis' vol. II of DuBois has too many typographical errors; the endnotes are a nightmare; and that it needs a bibliography. But the book is more than a flawed book about a flawed man. It is readable, in general; Lewis could have skipped some of the big words in favor of words that ordinary readers could understand without a dictionary simultaneously open. Lewis uses colorful, precise verbs in many cases and succeeds in bringing characters to life in one word descriptions. He humanizes DuBois by discussing his friendships and by examples (through verbs and description ) of DuBois's autocratic manner. If this biography does not deserve a Pulitzer, I am curious what biography Schmerguls would consider worthy? The Oakland reviewer, above, is more on the mark in that this is a thoroughly researched and keenly insightful recounting of the life of a towering figure. I, too, sorely miss a bibliography. And the last quarter of the book is indeed full of typographical errors which a careful copy editor should have caught. One hopes that there will be a revision someday with all corrections made. Still, this is a wonderful history of the times and of an amazing (though "flawed," like the rest of us) figure in American history. DuBois certainly provoked solid thought at a time when mainstream America was unsure that Negroes could think. I have heard David Levering Lewis speak on C-Span. He writes better than he speaks because he says "Uh-uh" too much as he searches for those big words. But I'm so grateful that his work on DuBois came to fruition in my lifetime so that I could read it.



4. W.E.B. DuBois was born 2 years after slavery was abolished, and died two years before the wide ranging civil rights acts of 1965 were enacted. During this century, America was transformed from a largely rural nation whose economy depended on agricultural production (not the least of which was the cotton grown in the south by slaves) to an urban nation with the world's largest economy, built on industrial production. Throughout most of this transformation, DuBois was the loudest and clearest voice proclaiming the injustices suffered by the nation's Blacks.

   DuBois voice took many forms. He was the nation's leading Black Sociologist, Political Scientist and Hstorian scholar for most of his life. He was among the giants, regardless of race, in each of these fields. This alone would have been remarkable, even had he not had to struggle against the burden of racism every step of the way. What makes DuBois' life truly amazing (an over used word, which is fully justified here) is that in addition to his academic leadership, DuBois was a newspaper columnist, speaker, and founded dozens of popular mass organizations (most famously, the NAACP). He was quite literally the mentor of virtually every leading Black scholar, lawyer, business man, politician, etc. that followed.

   Surprisingly, given the transformation of the rest of society, DuBois retained his leadership role in the country as his many competitors and detractors faded--Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and Walter White, among others.

   Lewis has produced a masterful biography of this complex, vastly under rated man. Lewis keeps his writing interesting, as he traces the twists and turns DuBois was forced to follow in his battle against racism. He began with a traditional middle class, elite (which DuBois dubbed "the talented tenth") analysis which urged the white power structure to recognize that elite blacks were as crucial to the nation's future as were the elite of the white population. He ended as a communist, victim of McCarthy, having given up all hope of democratic change, living in exile in Ghana, where he was finally accorded the unstinting respect he was denied during the first 90 years of his life in America.

   Lewis gives DuBois final years short shrift. Lewis seems to agree with most of the contemporary civil rights leaders, who thought DuBois had simply lost his marbles in his dotage. Lewis therefore skims over the last two decades of DuBois life in a few all too brief pages.

   I beg to differ. I believe that DuBois' thinking was an entirely accurate reflection of the frustrations he had encountered. As Lewis hints at, but fails to explore, DuBois tried every conceivable means of combating America's deep seated racism. He was rejected at every turn. Despite apparent victories, many would have said that the plight of Blacks at the end of DuBois' long life was not very much improved over their plight at the beginning of his life. The white controlled governments, universities, financial instutions, and political parties had not embraced the black elite, and the black masses had yet to see any benefit from the legal victories won by Thurgood Marshall and the Inc, Fund in the late 50's.

   Lewis quotes DuBois aunt as chastizing DuBois for his attacks on Booker T. Washington as a quisling--DuBois may have grown up facing racism, but he did not have the whip marks of slavery on his back that Washington had suffered. Similarly, those who criticize DuBois for his emrace of communism had not suffered the frustrations of almost a century of struggle during which everything in America had changed--except its racism.

   As DuBois lay dying, virtually his last words were to the President of Ghana, apologizing for not living long enough to "finish" his work.

   I know of no one who was more reviled during his lifetime that better deserves the masterful biography Lewis has given us, and given to the ages.

   Everyone should not only read Lewis, but should go back and re-read some of DuBois own works. DuBois could not be given a higher honor, and deserves no less.




5. I just finished rereading DL Lewis's first DuBois biography, and am thinking about purchasing the second bio. I own a copy of the first, and did read the second bio as a library book. Reading the current reviewer comments for this book refreshed my memory somewhat about the second bio. I would agree with reader praise for the first bio; it is a splendid book, as good as historical biography can be. The second bio starts out well but ends up reading as having been rushed, which is probably what happened, Lewis rushing to meet a publishing deadline. We would all be well served if Mr. Lewis would consider reissuing the second bio when he has time to flesh it out.

2 comments about Walt Whitman's Civil War (A Da Capo Paperback).

1. Walt Whitman wrote many journals, letters and diaries during his years volunteering at the hospitals in Washington DC. There are many books out there which claim to combine all those elements into one book. This book does a great job keeping Whitman's actual writing--in other words, the entire passage is presented, including the date and location in which it was written. The major problem with this book is that the editor decided to break all of Whitman's work into Chapters with themes. There is a chapter about letter to his mother, about letters to soldiers, about observations of soldiers, etc. This means that the book is not chronological, meaning that in order to view all of Whitman's writing in the order he actually wrote it, you must jump all over this book. I am studying Whitman during the Civil War, and I use this book for most of my reference. But you should see how I have marked it, leaving notes all over the book to remind myself the order of the passages. There needs to be at least one book that has EVERYTHING in the order it was written. Despite this, this book is very good for anyone interested in getting a sense of what Whitman was doing during the Civil War. His language is easy to read and understand, and readers can skip to the chapters that interest them. I do recommend this book, but remember, the passages are not in order.



2. Whitman's book brings together his work from his journals and letters he wrote through out the entire war. As a nurse, Whitman tours hospitals and writes about the brutal realities of the war. His compassion for the wounded and sympathies radiates through out all of his work as he writes about various soldiers and his correspondence with them. With each chapter in the book we are treated to poems and scripture by Whitman that compliments his letters and journal entries. Whitman covers the entire war and it's easy to get a feel for his absolute care and love he had for the soldiers he tended to and visited. It's helpful for understanding just how horrible situations for many were and just what kind of man Whitman was. I highly recommend it.