New Books in History

What should we study? The eighteenth-century luminary and poet Alexander Pope had this to say on the subject: “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man ” (An Essay on Man, 1733). He was not alone in this opinion. The philosophers of the Enlightenment–of which we may count Pope–all believed that humans would benefit most from a proper comprehension of temporal things, and most particularly humanity itself. For them, understanding humanity meant, first and foremost, understanding the human body. Naturally, then, the philosophes and their successors paid close attention to the body. They cut it up, took it apart, measured it and attempted to see how it worked. They were most interested in one part in particular–the human head. It was the seat of the human characteristic the Enlightenment scientists admired most: intelligence. If one could get a handle on the human cranium, then one would understand what it meant to be human. Or at least so they thought. In her fascinating new book The Skull Collectors: Race, Science and America’s Unburied Dead (University of Chicago Press, 2010), Ann Fabian introduces us to a group of American philosophes who began to collect and study human crania in the first half of the nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, they took most of their cues from their European counterparts. They did, however, adapt craniology to a peculiar American context. Living in a social order in part built on supposed racial difference, the American skull collectors knew that what they said about Africans mattered. Their work could support the suppositions of slavery, or not. Moreover, living in a social order that was at the very time they were working involved in a quasi-genocidal campaign against indigenous peoples, the American skull collectors knew that what they said about Native Americans mattered as well. Their work might buttress the movement for Indian removal, or it might not. And being people of the “New World,” the American skull collectors knew that they were looked down upon by many of their European colleagues. They needed to collect skulls aggressively in order to establish craniology as an American science. As one might expect, the American skull collectors were, by our lights, a strange bunch. Racists, imperialists, and nationalists to be sure. But also scientists, curators, and founders of physical anthropology. Thanks to Ann for bringing them to us in all their contradictory richness. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

The question as to why the leaders of the Soviet Union murdered hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens during the Great Purges is one of the most important of modern history, primarily because it shapes what we are likely to think about communism. There are two schools of thought. On the one hand, there are those who feel Stalin launched the Great Purges because “social cleansing” was (and is) intrinsic to communist ideology and practice. On this gloss, communism itself is responsible for Stalin’s bloodletting. On the other hand, there are those who hold that Stalin launched the Great Purges in response to a momentary crisis, or perceived crisis, that had little to do with building communism per se. On this understanding, Stalin and his colleagues believed that the destruction of the Soviet Union, either by internal or external enemies, was an imminent possibility. Thus they felt they had to act, and act decisively. By the mid-1930s, all the top Bolsheviks were truly frightened. They thought the end might well be nigh, and they knew that something had to be done about it. Who’s right? In his path-breaking Policing Stalin’s Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924-1953 (Yale UP, 2010) David Shearer offers the most nuanced answer yet. He argues that the Bolsheviks believed class war was an essential and unavoidable part of building communism. The logic here is simple: if you are going to build a classless society, you have to destroy existing classes. This is precisely what the Bolsheviks did, and said they were doing, during the mass repression campaigns–especially de-kulakization–of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The Great Purges, however, were different. Here Stalin was not building communism via class war, but preparing the Soviet Union for what he believed would be a decisive battle with capitalist states without and “socially harmful elements” within. By the mid-1930s, all the top Bolsheviks were truly frightened. They thought the end might well be nigh, and they knew that something had to be done about it. In desperation (delusional though it may have been), they used the police organs developed during the the period of class war (the NKVD, the GUGB) to root out any potential opponents of the regime. Who were they? Basically anyone who had run afoul of the law or was a member of a suspect political class or ethnic group. Stalin ordered the police to tally these “socially harmful elements” and transmit the results to Moscow. On the basis of the tallies, Stalin issued arrest quotas and commanded that they be filled and over-fulfilled. The Great Purges began. And then, after roughly 17 months, they stopped. The Germans invaded, were defeated, and the Bolsheviks set about rebuilding the country. The repression continued during this period, but, as Shearer shows, it was different from what had come immediately before. The political police were no longer rounding up masses of potential counter-revolutionaries (except in the newly occupied territories such as the Baltic States, Eastern Poland, and Western Ukraine; there class war and social cleansing still had to be undertaken). Instead, the civil police arrested and exiled hundreds of thousands because they had abused socialist propriety by pilfering food, refusing to work, or committing one or another crime. What Shearer demonstrates is that while Soviet communism was inherently oppressive, it was not inherently murderous. Communism did not uniquely cause the Great Purges; Stalin’s paranoia and power did. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

Here’s something interesting. If you search Google Books for “Hitler,” you’ll get 3,090,000 results. What’s that mean? Well, it means that more scholarly attention has probably been paid to Hitler than any other figure in modern history. Napoleon, Lincoln, Lenin and a few others might give him a run for his money, but I’d bet on Hitler. The fact that so much effort has been expended on Hitler presents modern German historians with a problem: it’s hard to say anything new about him. The fact that so much effort has been expended on Hitler presents modern German historians with a problem: it’s hard to say anything new about him. Surely Thomas Weber knew this when he began to work on Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (Oxford UP, 2010). After all, a new book on Hitler’s wartime experience had come out in 2005. What more is there to say? It turns out that there is quite a lot if you know where to look. And Weber does. He uses an interesting approach to uncover novel information about Hitler. Weber acknowledges that the documentary record relating directly to Hitler’s personal wartime experience is thin (a few letters, some military reports) and, when it is thicker, biased (more than a few axe-grinding memoirs from a much later time). These documents, all of which have been pored over by historians, will not shed any new light on Hitler. So Weber turns to a much larger and more trustworthy body of sources: that produced by the officers and soldiers in Hitler’s unit, the List Regiment. Though these papers usually do not mention Hitler by name, they enable Weber to reconstruct what he must have experienced, to see what was typical and what was not in Hitler’s service record, and, on the basis of this information, judge the veracity of claims made by Hitler, Nazi propagandists, and historians about the impact of World War I on the the Nazi dictator. The result is a serious revision. Hitler (et al.) said that World War one “made” him the person he became. Weber shows in detail that this claim is false. Fundamental elements of Hitler’s worldview either pre-date the war (his German nationalism) or seem to post-date it (his radical anti-semitism). In fact, the war did two things for Hitler: it gave him credibility he could use as he entered politics and it convinced him that he was an expert in military affairs. He ran for office as a humble Gefreiter (private), a holder of the Iron Cross First Class; and he ran the war as a dilettantish know-it-all, often with disastrous consequences. The only revelation Hitler had in the trenches was a common one, namely, that war is a very nasty business. That he went on to start another, even bloodier one has less to do with his experience of World War One than the ideas he brought to the conflict and absorbed after it. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

Here’s something remarkable: at some point in the future, something you believe to be just fine will be utterly disdained by the greater part of humanity. For instance, it is at least imaginable that one day everyone will believe that zoos were [NB] profoundly immoral. The future will condemn us for imprisoning animals. The future will ask “How could they have done such a barbaric thing?” And the future, more than likely, will answer “Because they were evil.” When looking into humanity’s sordid past, we often say this sort of thing. Why did American slaveholders trade in human flesh? Because they were evil. Why did the Nazis persecute the Jews? Because they were evil. Why did the Khmer Rough murder countless innocent Cambodians? Because they were evil. In 1940, Mochulsky was tapped by the NKVD (it ran the GULAG system) to build railroads north of the Arctic Circle. He thereby came to control the lives of a great number of what were essentially slave-laborers. He, of course, did not see them as such. “Because they were evil,” however, is not an explanation; it’s an ethical judgment. It might make you feel morally superior; and indeed you might well be morally superior. But it will not help you comprehend anything. For if you really want to understand why seemingly ordinary people did what you feel are truly awful things, you have to listen to them explain why. In Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir (Oxford UP, 2010), Deborah Kaple gives us just this opportunity. She presents us with Fyodor Vasilevich Mochulsky–ordinary fellow, Communist Party member, and GULAG officer from 1940 to 1946. Born in Belorussia after the Revolution, Mochulsky was raised on Bolshevik ideas. Not surprisingly, he believed in the project; he wanted to help create a bright future for humankind. So he trained as an engineer, because building socialism was all about building in those days. In 1940, Mochulsky was tapped by the NKVD (it ran the GULAG system) to build railroads north of the Arctic Circle. He thereby came to control the lives of a great number of what were essentially slave-laborers. He, of course, did not see them as such. To him, they were “enemies of the people” and had received their just (if somewhat harsh) reward. Under his direction, many of them suffered and died. This bothered him a bit, but not enough to question “the system.” He thought it was basically sound, though perhaps in need of better implementation. And that is the way he saw his role: he was improving “the system” without ever asking whether “the system” itself was bankrupt. Of course, looking back on what he did (he wrote the memoir in the 1990s), he has regrets. But he had none at the time. Mochulsky believed in what he was doing, just the way you believe that it’s fine to imprison animals. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

I’ll tell you something I’ve never really understood: the difference between “art” and “craft.” Yes, I get the sociological difference (“art” is made in New York and Paris; “craft” is made in Omaha and Wichita), but what about the substantive difference? One common way to differentiate the two is to say “art” is not functional and “craft” is functional. You can’t sit on a painting but you can sit on a chair. If that’s the difference, then the “Museum of Modern Art” in New York should be called the “Museum of Modern Art and Craft,” because it’s full of (not very comfortable) furniture. I also cannot really comprehend the difference between “insider art” and “outsider art.” Again, I get the sociological distinction (see above), but who gets to say who’s inside and who’s outside? And if there’s “insider art” and “outsider art,” is there “insider craft” and “outsider craft?” In the world of quilting (which is much bigger than you think), Powers is a bit like Vermeer: not many pieces, but all highly valued. And like Vermeer, she’s interesting because we don’t know a lot about her. All I know is this: there was a freed slave named Harriet Powers who made really beautiful, highly literate, and deeply religious quilts. In the world of quilting (which is much bigger than you think), Powers is a bit like Vermeer: not many pieces, but all highly valued. And like Vermeer, she’s interesting because we don’t know a lot about her. In This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt and Other Pieces (2010), Kyra Hicks does her best to fill in the many blanks. The book is a combination detective story, journey of discovery, and guide to further research. Hicks, a master quilter herself, doggedly pursues every lead she can find regarding the mysterious Powers, and they take her to some very unexpected places (for example, Keokuk, Iowa). The picture of Powers that emerges from This I Accomplish is that of a skilled, religiously-inspired artist, confident and proud of her work, moving through a long-forgotten world of African American quilters. If you know any quilters (and I know you do), this book would make an excellent gift. If you’d like to see Powers’ quilts for yourself, they are held by the National Museum of American History (part of the Smithsonian) in Washington and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

In Cry Havoc: How the Arms Race Drove the World to War, 1931–1941 (Basic Books, 2010), Joe Maiolo proposes (I want to write “demonstrates,” but please read the book and judge for yourself) two remarkably insightful theses. The military industrial complex was born three decades before Eisenhower put a name on it. The first is that the primary result of the disaster that was World War I was not the even great catastrophe that was World War II, but rather a new kind of state and one that is still with us. Maiolo’s argument goes something like this. World War I caught the Great Powers flatfooted. They did not believe they were going to fight a protracted war; they thought things would be done quickly and with the men and materiel on hand. Instead, things bogged down and a massive war of attrition–something they had no experience with–ensued. In order to fight this war successfully (meaning to stay in it for the long term), the Great Powers had to fundamentally restructure their economies, something no state had ever had to do, at least in modern time. In a word, the government took over production and distribution in order to optimize the flow of arms and supplies. Many statesmen found this move objectionable, but all believed it necessary. Once the war was over, they remained convinced that the only way to deter their enemies and, in the case they couldn’t, fend them off, was to retain control of large segments of the economy and plan to take control of even larger segments. The ability to make war on a World-War-I scale and for a World-War-I duration had to be built into the “plan.” Thus the leaders of all the Great Powers effectively militarized their economies in anticipation of the next great conflict. The military industrial complex was born three decades before Eisenhower put a name on it. Maiolo’s second insight has to do with the origins of World War II itself. Most historians agree that it was “Hitler’s War.” He planned it, he armed Germany for it, and he started it. Maiolo doesn’t necessarily disagree with this position, but he offers an interesting counter-factual that puts it in a different light. What if there had been no Hitler? Would the statesmen of Europe have avoided a second great conflict? Maiolo suggests not, and for an interesting reason. Several of the Great Powers–the Soviets and Germans in particular–were very dissatisfied with the settlement at Versailles. They would not stand pat in any case. Given what we know about Soviet and German plans for and movements toward rearmament before 1933 (thanks, it should be said, to Maiolo’s own research), it is not clear that leaders other Stalin or Hitler might not have done exactly what Stalin and Hitler did in 1939, that is, take what they felt was rightfully “theirs” by force of arms. And as Maiolo shows, they would have had plenty of arms at their disposal in any case. The Europeans were going to go at again; it was simply a question of when. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

I think that many smart people, particularly on the Left, make a really ill-considered assumption, to wit, that “Republican” means “Conservative.” I don’t mean lower case “c” conservative, as in wanting to maintain the status quo. Nearly all (there are important exceptions) twentieth-century Republicans were conservatives in that generic sense. Rather, I mean capital “c” conservative, that is, pro-religion, traditional family centered, militarily hawkish, arch-patriotic, Constitution protecting, States rights shielding, free enterprise loving, individual responsibility promoting, values matter Conservative. It was only in the 1980s that a goodly number of Republicans endorsed this set of beliefs. They were believers, it’s just that they believed things that most members of the East Coast commentariat (at least before the rise of Limbaugh, et al.) did not. From the results of the recent mid-term elections in the United States, I think it’s fair to say they still don’t. In his wonderfully written, witty, and engaging book The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism (Princeton UP, 2010), David Farber tells the story of how Conservatives took over the Republican Party and reshaped American politics. He does so using a devise that I find particularly appropriate for any story of political change, namely, through the lives of the people who founded, grew, and led the movement. Farber, who clearly believes that leadership matters a great deal in democratic politics (I couldn’t agree more), has a talent for linking biography to political history. Farber’s sketches of Robert Taft, William Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Phyllis Schlafly, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush show us the degree to which their personalities shaped the rise (and fall) of American Conservatism. Each vignette is a pleasure to read and full of enlightening and entertaining observations. And though Farber pulls no punches (he does not shrink, for example, from calling a liar a liar), it’s clear that he respects his subjects and suggests that we should respect them too. In his estimation (and mine as well), they were not the collection of benighted, fearful, blinkered, country-bumpkin bigots that you can read about in The Nation. They were believers, it’s just that they believed things that most members of the East Coast commentariat (at least before the rise of Limbaugh, et al.) did not. From the results of the recent mid-term elections in the United States, I think it’s fair to say they still don’t. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

I fear that most people think that “history” is “the past” and that the one and the other live in books. But it just ain’t so. History is a story we tell about the past, or rather some small portion of it. The past itself is gone and cannot, outside science fiction, be revisited. And the histories in books are neither dead nor alive. They are zombies, endlessly repeating themselves, never having a new thought, never responding to anything you say. (Plato, by the way, is good on this subject.) In point of fact the only place that histories really live is in the minds of historians in the act of creation. In this context, the story is far from dead. Indeed, it hasn’t even been born. As historians read, research, and think, they make histories like a carpenter makes a table. Readers rarely get to see the historical craftsmen at their benches. All they see is the result. As historians read, research, and think, they make histories like a carpenter makes a table. Readers rarely get to see the historical craftsmen at their benches. All they see is the result. Today we’ll have the opportunity to look into the history workshop with Abbott (“Tom”) Gleason. Tom has worked in academic history for nearly half a century. He has been everywhere, done everything, and faced every challenge a working historian can. And now he’s written a terrific memoir about his path, and that of historians of his generation in general: A Liberal Education (TidePool Press, 2010). I came away from the book with a renewed appreciation of the hold Zeitgeist has on historians and their work. Tom was raised in a cultural milieu (the liberal WASP establishment) that has now largely vanished. That peculiar, specific context had a powerful impact (by his own admission, both positive and negative) on his historical opinions and writing. It was interesting for me to see how Tom, as a conflicted, thoughtful son of privilege, negotiated Harvard of the 1950s, academia in the 1960s, and the rise (and relative decline) of the Russian studies industry in the post war decades. With eyes wide open, he recognizes the limitations of his Cold-War scholarly cohort, the ways in which he and his colleagues saw some things while being oblivious to others. Sometimes they got Russia right; sometimes they didn’t. But they were always on a quest to find the historical truth. Tom’s memoir shows just how difficult that truth is to find. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

In the summer of 2008 the Chinese were worried about rain. They were set to host the Summer Olympics that year, and they wanted clear skies. Surely clear skies, they must have thought, would show the world that China had arrived. So they outfitted a small army (50,000 men) with artillery pieces and rocket launchers (over 10,000 of them) and proceeded to make war on the heavens. The idea was to “seed” clouds with silver iodide before they got to Beijing and rained on the Chinese parade. Or maybe the idea was to frighten the rain gods. Who knows? In any case, none of it worked: the massive, loud, and surely expensive operation had, according to most experts, no measurable effect on the weather around the Chinese capital. You might say you can’t blame them for trying. But according to James Rodger Fleming, you can. In his incisive new book Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control (Columbia UP, 2010), Fleming shows that although people have always dreamed of controlling the weather, and many have tried to do so, no one has ever succeeded. The reason is simple: the atmosphere of the Earth is not like your refrigerator or oven. It’s just too big and complex to be man-handled by any known or even realistically imagined technology. But, as Fleming demonstrates, there are always desperate people who refuse to accept this intuitive fact. So we are presented with a gallery of rain-making mountebanks, charlatans, and swindlers ever-ready to part rain-seeking fools and their rain-seeking money. In Fleming’s excellent telling, the story is entertaining though a bit sad. It’s sadder still that the weather-controlling con is still being run by seemingly well-intentioned people who claim they can “fix” global warming by means of some out-sized, outrageous, and out-of-this-world engineering scheme. Fleming, who both knows the science and has looked at the history, is more than dubious. The only way we can “fix” the sky is to leave it alone and hope for the best. It turns out, however, that leaving the sky alone is hard. It’s actually easier to attack it, proclaim victory, and continue as before. Just ask the Chinese. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

I imagine the guys who first faced Bill Russell felt like I did when I had to guard Antoine Carr in high school. I “held” Carr to 32 points. But no dunks! Russell’s opponents in college and the NBA rarely fared any better. Sports talk is full of hyperbole, but in Russell’s case most of it is true. In his time, he was far and away the best player to ever step on the court and, for most of his career, he completely owned every court he stepped on. He was so dominant that they changed the rules so less gifted players would have a chance. Bill Russell, however, was not only a surpassingly great basketball player, he was also an African American star in an era in which being an African American star (or just being an African American) was very complicated. Today we are used to seeing outstandingly successful blacks in all (or almost all) spheres of life. In the mid-1950s that just wasn’t true. The American ruling elite was lily white, and that’s the way most white Americans thought it should be. Bill Russell (and Jackie Robinson, Althea Gibson, Willie Mays, Cassius Clay, Jim Brown, among others) were anomalies: they were black, but they were both extraordinarily accomplished and remarkably famous. They couldn’t just be athletes; they had to be symbols of some promising (or frightening) new world as well. That’s quite a burden to bear. In King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution (University of California Press, 2010), Aram Goudsouzian has done a great service by detailing the ways Russell bore this weight, and the ways in which he fought to throw it off. Aram makes clear that Russell was a conflicted soul. He lacked self-confidence, but he was brusk and even arrogant. He was friendly and gregarious to some, but often simply rude to others. He was hot tempered, but he affected a cool, distant demeanor. He believed he was a man of principle (and convinced others he was), but he periodically abandoned his family for a playboy lifestyle. If Russell couldn’t be honest about himself, he insisted on being honest about everything and everyone around him. He meant what he said and said what he meant–about race, about sports, about anything that bothered him. He was a sort of athletic Socrates, always questioning and never fully accepting the way things were. And, like Socrates, Russell was willing to suffer for his beliefs. As Aram points out, he did in many ways. But in the process he gained the respect of almost everyone he encountered. He was a hard man to like, but he was an easy man to admire. I should add that if you like white-hot game narratives, this book is full of them. Remember this?: “Greer is putting the ball in play. He gets it out deep and Havlicek steals it! Over to Sam Jones… Havlicek stole the ball! It’s all over… It’s all-l-l-l over!” Johnny Most, RIP. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

There’s a saying, sometimes attributed to Napoleon, “Scratch a Russian and you find a Tatar.” I’ve scratched a Russian (I won’t say anything more about that) and I can tell you that the saying is false: all I found was more Russian. It’s true, however, that Russians have always known a lot about Tatars because they’ve lived cheek-by-jowl with them for many centuries. Before the beginning of European contact with Russia in the sixteenth century, Russians didn’t really think the Tatars were terribly exotic. They were just neighbors, albeit occasionally hostile and profoundly heretical ones. The same could be said of the early modern Russian view of, say, Poles and Germans. Things changed, however, when the Russians decided they weren’t just “Russians” but were also “Europeans.” That happened, roughly, in the eighteenth century. The Europeans, not being terribly experienced with the peoples of eastern climes, had some rather odd notions about the folks they often called “Orientals.” Over time, the Europhilic Russian elite began to assimilate the Europeans’ views of “Orientals.” The process by which they did so, and the cultural consequences thereof, are the topic of David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye‘s lucid, witty, and thought-provoking Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration (Yale UP, 2010). David explores how the Russians came to construct their own unique “Orient,” one that wasn’t exactly like the Western version and yet was clearly different from the thing itself. For unlike their imaginative European counterparts, the Russians–in my reading–could never really accept the Western image of “Orientals.” They knew the Tatars and other Asian peoples too well and could see that the Western view didn’t match. And then there was the needling suspicion that they themselves were “Orientals”. Thus Russian “Orientalism” was hardly the supposedly subtle yet powerful tool of pith-helmeted, empire-building, expansionists, but instead an attempt at self-understanding. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

My son Isaiah likes to play the “why” game. Isaiah: “Why is my ice cream gone?” Me: “Because you ate it.” Isaiah: “Why did I eat it?” Me: “Because you need food.” Isaiah: “Why do I need food?” And so on. Isaiah naturally wants to know why things are the way they are. We all do. Most of us, however, are taught that seeking these ultimate answers is quixotic. We say either that there are no ultimate answers or that you’d have to know too many to answer them. In this conception, there either is no story of everything or, if there is, no one can tell it. Thankfully, Fred Spier disagrees. His path-breaking Big History and the Future of Humanity (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) succeeds in sketching the story of everything from the origins of the universe to the reason my son’s ice cream is gone. In around two-hundred lucidly written pages he takes us from the Big Bang, to the separation of matter and energy, to the rise of elementary particles, to the formation of galaxies, solar systems, stars, and planets, to the creation of elements, to the origin of life, to the evolution of biotic complexity, to the emergence of humans, to the origin of society, to the invention of ice cream. What enables him to do this is a simple, unifying theory, namely, that all forms of complexity are the result of energy flowing through matter within certain boundaries (“Goldilocks” conditions). Everything with edges, a shape, parts, or an internal structure is the result of energy flowing through matter within certain boundaries and is only maintained so long as the energy keeps flowing and the boundaries don’t change. Historiographically, this book takes us into new and promising territory. But even more than that it is timely, for the energy and conditions that maintain our complexity–that is, modern industrial life–are both in jeopardy. We consume much more energy than we produce, and the kind of energy we consume is moving us out of the Goldilocks zone. If unchecked, the result of these two processes is inevitable: a loss of complexity, which is to say the destruction of modern industrial society. That’s something to think about, and maybe even do something about. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

Absolutely no one doubts that Stalin murdered millions of people in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. His ruthless campaign of “dekulakization,” his pitiless deportation of “unreliable” ethnic groups, his senseless starvation of Ukrainian peasants, his cruel attempt to “cleanse” the Communist Party of supposed “enemies of the people”–all of these actions resulted in mass death. In total, Stalin is responsible for the murder of roughly 10 million Soviet citizens. Again, this is well established. What is not well established is what to call Stalin’s crimes. As Norman Naimark points out in his thought-provoking Stalin’s Genocides (Princeton UP, 2010), historians and others have been peculiarly conflicted about this issue. Everyone agrees it’s mass murder. But is it “genocide,” with all that term entails? Etymologically, it doesn’t seem so: gens is Latin for “people who claim common descent,” that is, a clan, tribe, or even nation. The Kulaks were not a gens. Historically, genocide doesn’t fit well either: after World War II, the UN decided that it would mean “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial religious group, as such.” Again, the Kulaks are none of these things. Naimark, however, argues Stalin’s crimes should be considered genocide on three grounds. First, he demonstrates that some of Stalin’s attacks were genocide under the UN definition, for example his exile and starvation of minority ethnic groups. Second, he shows that some of those who sought to define genocide during and after World War II did not intend to restrict it to gens: they included political groups, that is, entities like the Kulaks. The Soviets and others demanded these groups be removed from the definition, and they were. Third, he demonstrates that international law has evolved, and with it the legal meaning of genocide: recent proceedings in the Baltic states, for example, have broadened the definition. Some might ask “What does it matter what we call it?” I think it matters a lot. Words are not only an interpretation of the world, but they are also a reflection of who we are. The words the Nazis used to describe their crimes–”final solution,” “transport to the East,” “special handling”–tell us much about them. The words the Stalinists used to describe their crimes–”purge,” “evacuation,” “re-education”–tell us much about them as well. And so we have to ask: What does our persistent failure to call Stalin’s crimes “genocide” say about us? Nothing very good, I think. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

Try to imagine having never seen an airplane. It’s hard. Aircraft are an ordinary part of our daily experience. Just look up and you’ll probably see one, or at least its vapor trails. Go to your local airport and you can fly in one pretty inexpensively. Heck, if you like, you can learn to pilot one yourself at any one of hundreds of flying schools. There is just nothing unusual or even very exciting about airships. It wasn’t always so. In the first quarter of the 20th century, airplanes were new. People had long dreamed of flight (see “Icarus and Daedalus”) and by the 19th century they’d done a little of it in balloons. But most folks could hardly conceive of a man (or woman) taking to the air like a bird. But men (and soon women) did just that. To many contemporary observers, flying in winged airships was nothing short of a miracle. Surely, pundits claimed, conquest of the air would usher in a new modern age. It did, but not in all the ways expected. As Thomas Kessner shows in his wonderfully told The Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh & the Rise of American Aviation (Oxford University Press, 2010), the experience of Charles Lindbergh is a case in point. To be sure, Lindbergh was an extraordinary pilot—skilled, meticulous, and remarkably brave. That, however, did not set him apart from the hundreds of other fly boys of the age. What did set him apart was: 1) luck (many of his contemporaries died in crashes, and he nearly did on many occasions); 2) a single insight, doggedly pursued (that a plane with one engine, one pilot, and an 2,385 pounds of fuel could make it from New York to Paris); and 3) the fact that after Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic he became the most famous person in the world. Tom pays due attention to all three of these characteristics, but I found the last of them—Lindbergh’s incredible celebrity and its impact on him and the world—the most interesting. It’s arguable that Lindbergh was the first “superstar.” Though he had indeed done something extraordinary, he was the creation of a finely tuned, corporate-backed publicity campaign and a frenzied, tireless, and completely meritorious press corps. The people around Lindbergh understood that if they handled his “image” correctly they all could make a fortune. And so they took this gangly, taciturn, strangely aloof son of the prairie and made him the symbol of all that was good (and marketable) in the newly christened air age. The problem was that, eventually, Lindbergh refused to play along. He was who he was, and who he was was a loner. Celebrity wore on him. Now when most people get tired of attention, they go home. But after the Paris flight Lindbergh had no home. His entire life was public. So he did what so many frustrated celebrities with considerable resources (think Howard Hughes, Marlon Brando, J. D. Salinger) after him have done: he became a crank. He tried to find a way to live for ever, dabbled in ‘scientific racism,’ and eventually got mixed up with the Nazis. Lindbergh, the arch-individualist, got tired of having people tell him who he was; he wanted to be his own man. And, in the end, he was, for good and ill. The lesson? If you are in the business of making and selling role models, it’s probably not a good idea to pick a 27-year old who has focused his life on some narrow pursuit to the exclusion of all others, even if he’s really good at it. You just don’t know what they’re going to “be” when they grow up. (For more, see “Michael Jackson,” “Lindsey Lohan,” “LeBron James,” etc., etc.) Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

There’s a quip that goes “Christianity is probably a great religion. Someone should really try it.” The implication, of course, is that most people who call themselves Christians aren’t very Christian at all. And, in truth, it’s hard to be a good Christian, what with all that loving your enemies, turning the other cheek, and helping the poor. It’s particularly hard to pull off in the modern world. But some have tried, at least in part. Foremost among them are the Christian pacifists. They are the subject of Kip Kosek’s wonderful book Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2009). Kip shows that the pacifists—more specifically members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR)—were an oddly influential group. They utterly failed in their primary mission, that is, to create a world without war. They themselves didn’t fight, but that didn’t stop everyone else from going at it hammer and tong. Yet in pursuing that quixotic end the pacifists managed to either launch or aid several progressive causes that stand at the center of modern political life. These include: civil liberties (the ACLU), racial equality (the Civil Rights Movement), the Anti-Vietnam war campaign (the SNCC), and the nuclear disarmament movement (the Nuclear Freeze Campaign) among others. The members of FoR were on the right side of all these issues before it was clear what the right side was. And they suffered for it, though they were vindicated in the end. Kip does an excellent job of explaining how their Christian faith gave them the courage of their convictions and thereby allowed them—a tiny group of believers—to help create modern liberal democracy. It’s very common today for seemingly sensible people to claim that religion is the cause of much that is the wrong in the world. But, as Kip demonstrates, it’s also the cause of much that is right. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.