History in Books

[Zorral]

The Mongolian Women:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mongol-empire-women

~~~~~~~~~

From 1987,  The Assyrian: Tiglath Ashur Series, Book 1, by Nicholas Guild. If the author were writing it today, presumably he wouldn't be so stupid in the way he wrote the female characters, all of whom are insatiably greedy, mostly evil, voracious sexual predators -- except for the narrator - protagonist's mother, and a slave.  This novel includes all the mythologies that emerged out of the Middle East in the ancient world, particularly brotherly conflicts with each other and the king/emperor father, whether Egyptian, Hebrew, Hellenic -- one recognizes the motifs, which presumably the author intends. However, again if he were writing this book today, it would be very different for 1987, and 1989 for the second volume, Blood Star. Those are cusp years when the archaeology updated what people had assumed for a very long time about the great empires of Mesopotamia.  There's a lot about chariots in warfare that in particular have been updated since as investigators via various disciplines, particularly those of forensic historic linguists have learned so much more about the development of the 'horse people' and the 'Aryans.'  It's kind of fun that a kingdom hardly known to anyone back then, Uratu, is included in the action.  Not really how it placed among the ancient proto-Median empires, Assyria and Babylonian empires, but still it is fun.

 

[Zorral]

I have no idea when I'll be able to get to this book just added to my US history-slavery TBR stack.

The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas, Slavery & Jim Crow, and the Roots of U.S. Fascism (2022), by Gerald Horne.

What a prolific writer is this Gerald Horne -- his biblio goes on for pages and pages.  I've read maybe 4 of his titles, back in the day, though not lately.  There are so many books every year on these matters.

 

[Zorral]

The Wolf Den (2022) by Elodie Harper. 

The wolf den is the 'city brothel' of Pompeii, run by a loan shark, among his other nefarious and cruel money-making activities. Evidently in Pompeii, prostitutes are called wolves.

The protagonist is a Greek doctor's daughter, who had been highly educated by him, who then died in debt, and finally her mother sold her to be a house slave to a neighbor, who then, took the money for himself that her mother gave her to start the savings to buy herself out again -- forced her into concubinage, then sold her on because his wife made him do it.  So she ends up in Southern Italy.

Terrible life, but bonds between her and some of the other sex workers keep her going, along with, that weird combo of emotional states composed of hatred, terror and desperate desire for approval, that so many enslaved feel for their masters. Also being so beautiful as well as tough and strong and educated, she manages to play the game, with the tremendous assist of Pliney the Elder, whom she meets in the course of her job, though he isn't the sort to have sex with a sex worker.  He is impressed with her mind, education and demeaner, and does find her loveliness perfection -- which allows her to move on.  I will not say how.

The next volume of the projected trilogy, The House With The Gold Door, is scheduled for September publication.

 

[dog-days]

Interesting-sounding book, albeit more difficult than the kind I'm used to reading these days. Still, I should maybe give it a go. It reminds me of the recent discovery of slave living quarters in Pompeii. I think that lupa (female wolf) was a common term for prostitute in Latin, not just in Pompeii. Hence one interpretation of the Romulus and Remus myth, that the boys weren't suckled by a wolf, but adopted by a woman who worked in the oldest trade. 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, dog-days said:

Hence one interpretation of the Romulus and Remus myth, that the boys weren't suckled by a wolf, but adopted by a woman who worked in the oldest trade. 

The author - protagonist mentions this.  The educated protagonist would know that!.

It's really quite a good book.  In terms of narrative, structure, language, the book is a very easy read, without in the least being simple, so to speak.  The situations, particularly one would think for readers who are women, are not easy at all, though, as generally speaking, the majority of readers are women, it seems, from review sites.

 

[SeanF]

36 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The author - protagonist mentions this.  The educated protagonist would know that!.

It's really quite a good book.  In terms of narrative, structure, language, the book is a very easy read, without in the least being simple, so to speak.  The situations, particularly one would think for readers who are women, are not easy at all, though, as generally speaking, the majority of readers are women, it seems, from review sites.

 

Forcing young women slaves into prostitution actually became a crime under Vespasian.  Baby steps, perhaps, but there was a trend towards increasingly humane treatment of slaves under the Emperors, as opposed to the Republic, where treatment of slaves was horrific (even Cicero could argue that the rape of a 12 year old girl was no more than a peccadillo).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Zorral]

36 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Forcing young women slaves into prostitution actually became a crime under Vespasian.  Baby steps

Ya know, considering the vast industry of trafficked and forced sex work today everywhere, when it is on the books illegal nearly everywhere, one has little faith that it was different in Vaspasian's day and thereafter.

[SeanF]

7 hours ago, Zorral said:

Ya know, considering the vast industry of trafficked and forced sex work today everywhere, when it is on the books illegal nearly everywhere, one has little faith that it was different in Vaspasian's day and thereafter.

Oh, for sure.  But, it was a step on the way to accepting that a slave was something other than Talking Furniture.

Rape of slaves by their masters remained routine for centuries, of course (and had the added benefit of creating new slaves).  Enslaving, selling, and raping one’s own children must be the absolute low, in terms of human degradation.

[Zorral]

54 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Enslaving, selling, and raping one’s own children must be the absolute low, in terms of human degradation.

Humans seem to have no absolute low in terms of degrading other humans, enslaved or otherwise.  That's what history has been teaching me for years, though I've tried to avoid learning the lesson.

[hauberk]

Currently reading I'm Staying with My Boys: The Heroic Life of Sgt John Basilone, USMC by Jim Proser (with Basilone's nephew Jerry Cutter credited). Alas, while purported to be the authorized (by his family) biography of Basilone, it's a pretty poorly constructed work that was clearly intended to be shopped as a script for a movie. It takes some pretty significant liberties, including being structured as a first person narrative (including the day that Basilone died) and describes conversations between Basilone and Chesty Puller where no one else was present and with no attributions. He's at least consistent about that. There are occasional "scene breaks" where the broader perspective of the War in the Pacific is described with a level of detail and style that very much feels too scholarly to have been written by the same author, again with no attribution.

Were it not a favorite historical figure of my departed father, a book inherited from his library, and perchance an opportunity to better understand how his distorted worldview came to pass, I would have put this one in File 13.

I will note that I looked Proser up this morning and he's also written a biography of Jordan Peterson, so I don't see much of anything that is going to remediate my disdain.

Zero stars, would not recommend.

[Zorral]

You make it clear that Sgt John Basilone, USMC deserves a better biography.  Those made up conversations and speculations of all kinds in these sorts of works drive me crazy too, and generally means I close the book, and either forget about the subject or go looking for something better.

 

[hauberk]

30 minutes ago, Zorral said:

You make it clear that Sgt John Basilone, USMC deserves a better biography.  Those made up conversations and speculations of all kinds in these sorts of works drive me crazy too, and generally means I close the book, and either forget about the subject or go looking for something better.

 

Were it not for the attempt to use it to figure out what made my dad tick from a worldview standpoint, it would have already gone into the bin, but Dad lived and breathed all of the mythology of the Corps and likely considered Basilone and Chesty to be patron saints so I'm trying to work my way through this and the balance of his library to better understand him.  

[Zorral]

1 minute ago, hauberk said:

Were it not for the attempt to use it to figure out what made my dad tick from a worldview standpoint

O ya, that was clear.  It's an interesting experiment in understanding too.

[Zorral]

Hughes, Katherine Nouri (2017) The Mapmaker’s Daughter.

Born Cecilia Baffo Veniero, a Venetian of very good family, one of builders, mapmakers and other highly educated people who particularly love mathematics, mechanical and technology study-- the wife as much as the father, kidnapped into slavery, who becomes Sultan Selim II’s wife, and mother of his heir, Murad III. Nurbanu is the Sultana already by the time of Lepanto and aftermath.

Ultimately, this fictional account of this historically significant woman, doesn’t make that much sense, since it seems to hinge upon Queen Mother Nurbanu’s giving the order to have Murad’s half brothers strangled, upon the order of Suleiman the Magnificent, the order to do so he gave her before he died.  But at the same time, Suleiman also ordered his heir, Selim II, to father as many boys as possible, when Murad already existed, and no other male siblings did   I don’t get this.  Did the author not notice?  I mean why?

As far as I can tell, this is purely author's speculation here, not in any documentation, I don't think, this business that Suleiman ordered Nurbanu to do this, before he himself died, any more than he ordered Selim II, against his personal inclination, to take many women and father many boys. Perhaps this is the author's explanation for history's description of Selim II as someone who drank way too much and disgustingly indulged himself in every other way?  I'm not buying it, if that's what it is.

[SeanF]

On 6/26/2022 at 5:13 AM, Zorral said:

Humans seem to have no absolute low in terms of degrading other humans, enslaved or otherwise.  That's what history has been teaching me for years, though I've tried to avoid learning the lesson.

It’s hard not to despair of human nature, at times.

[Zorral]

Daughters of Sparta (2021) by Claire Heywood. 

A retelling of the ancient tale of two sisters, the name of one of them will be familiar even to those who are not familiar with ancient history -- Klytemnestra and Helen.

I am deliberately reading this on my phone, as an NYPL Overdrive download.  It's a kind of experiment, testing whether it's worth trying to read on a phone, while out-and-about on the subway, waiting, etc. This novel’s prose is plain, the chapters brief, switching back-and-forth from the viewpoint of either Klyemnestra and Helen. This structure makes it easy phone reading, at least with the phone's and Overdrive's programming for customizing font size, bold type, and so on. This (very new) phone's keyboard, and capacities for reading and writing are a delightful surprise to this visually impaired reader: sharp, easy and graceful. So, with this kind of book, at least, the experiment has a happy conclusion. 

I find the slowly building portrait of Klytemnestra from a very young girl to the point where she executes Agamemnon convincing. We see the much older Agamemnon instilling hatred for him in his very young, hopeful, dutiful bride, step-by-step, long before he executes their daughter, Iphigenia, in order to get the winds to take him to Troy.

Helen is so much younger when the tale begins, it takes a much longer time for her character to form.  Her true character, herself, so to speak, begins to emerge after a wracking childbirth nearly kills her, because she's too young, too small, to be pregnant and go through labor. But that didn't stop her far older husband from demanding pregnancy and heir asap.

The cultural milieu in which women are held as no value other than providing an heir, with no rights of any sort, living essentially a sequestered life, is more than convincing as well, it being the only culture which doesn't threaten males' security of superiority, and their ease.  Conditions for women just won't stay changed, do they?
 

[LongRider]

I just finished FREDERICK DOUGLASS (2018) a biography by David W. Blight. Not being an expert on bios or history, I thought this book was fantastic. 
 

With all the CRT pearl clutching these days I felt I needed to catch up.  Several months ago I read the 1619 PROJECT by Nikole  Hannah-Jones, didn’t review it as this old white lady was overwhelmed.  Many of the essays were so gritty and heartbreaking.

Deciding it was time to get back to more history, Frederick Douglass was my choice.  I wasn’t disappointed.  First read the first 2 of his autobiographies, then tackled the Blight book.

Douglass’s life story is the story of an incredible AfricanAmerican who was also a great American.

Born into slavery, didn’t know his birthday or white father.  (his mother was raped most likely by the plantation owner) Taken from his mother very soon after birth.

He suffered hunger, the lash and other cruelties of slavery.  His story of how he learned to read is  amazing and his escape thrilling.

A few years later he began his career as an writer and orator. He traveled with other abolitionists  while still a runaway slave. His speeches and writings contributed much to the abolitionist cause.  
 

He gave talks and speeches for 50 years!  His voice was such an important one for the issues of the black people: abolition, fighting in the Civil War.  Fairness in pay and treatment for black soldiers.  Whatever the issues were he was there.

Douglass died in 1895, still fighting; against poor treatment of the black men, their voting rights, lynching and white supremacy and more.  Sadly, his voice is still needed today.  
 

I’m glad I read this book, a well researched and comprehensive bio.  Highly recommend it.

  Also, after reading this and the 1619 Project, I see a glimmer of why CRT and gritty history based on reality scares the Right so much, it should.

Edited July 29, 2022 by LongRider

[Zorral]

Yes!

And, can you imagine that the Bronte sisters saw him and heard him speak in Yorkshire?  They did! Their father was a clergyman out of Ireland and Yorkshire, both seats of rebellion and hatred of subjugation. So of course they did. When I finally figured that bit out, I danced on ceilings.  I have ever since kept finding other little bits in the Bronte sisters' works that point to their awareness of slavery in the "new world", though it was not the focus of their work. But in Jane Eyre particularly you can see Charlotte Bronte wrestling with these issues in various ways/

http://frederickdouglassinbritain.com/

Ooops, did it again -- that cartoon I posted from historian twitter, of the fine jar whenever going off on historical subjects w/o anybody asking one to!

 

[LongRider]

13 hours ago, Zorral said:

And, can you imagine that the Bronte sisters saw him and heard him speak in Yorkshire?  They did! Their father was a clergyman out of Ireland and Yorkshire, both seats of rebellion and hatred of subjugation

His trips to the UK and Ireland were so fascinating!  He made so many friends and contacts, men and women.  And, (I forget the names, sorry) paid his master to arrange his manumission, so on that first trip abroad, he left America as a fugitive, runaway slave and returned as a free man.  What a story!

It will be a bit before I get back to history, although I think I'm pursue some more of this type of history.  When I get back to it, possibly W.E.B.DuBois, or Ida B. Wells.  

To be honest though, so much of FD's story still resonates for this time in history.  

[Zorral]

1 minute ago, LongRider said:

To be honest though, so much of FD's story still resonates for this time in history.  

O does it ever!  Alas.