History in Books

[SeanF]

12 hours ago, Gorn said:

To be fair, early Moghuls at least were ethnically Central Asian and culturally Persian, so they were foreigners. They were also descendants of Timur, who committed one of the most horrific atrocities in India's history.

The Moghuls were foreigners at one point, but it still seems to me to be a swipe aimed at the Muslim population.  Successive Muslim rulers conquered a great deal of India, but they also became a part of the population.

[SeanF]

8 hours ago, Zorral said:

Which has nothing whatsoever to do with the British East Company setting off a war of conquest and looting on prosperous, long integrated states, does it.  And the Hindi's calling it disintegration.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Guédé, Alain, trans. By Gilda M. Roberts (1999 in France, 2003 in US). Monsieur de Saint-George: Virtuoso, Swordsman, Revolutionary; a Legendary Life Rediscovered.  This is infinitely more interesting than that bio pic that came out last weekend.  This book is fascinating, in fact. A very good translation.

We've been listening non-stop to the Hayden music the Chevalier commissioned from him, since having been so deeply disappointed by the film.
 

One thing that has me scratching my head is how rapidly the Moghul empire disintegrated.  In 1707, it was a superpower.  By the time that Nadir Shah sacked Delhi, in 1739, it had ceased to be of any account.

[Zorral]

 

10 hours ago, SeanF said:

how rapidly the Moghul empire disintegrated.

The Anarchy tells us!

[Zorral]

On 4/12/2023 at 5:05 PM, Zorral said:

Cherezińska, Elżbieta; trans. by Maya Zakrzewska-Pim. The Widow Queen (2022) and The Last Crown (2023). The Bold One saga.

Highly recommended for those of us who have loved such novels set in Europe's North and East, after the end of the western Roman Empire, and in the early medieval era -- you know you are one of those if you loved Nicola Griffith's Hild, or Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles.

Here we have the intersection of the beginning of Poland as a state, Bohemia, the Rus, Kiev, Hungary, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and England, paganism and Christianity, all connected via the family of and the figure, Queen Swietoslawa

May 18^th, NYT Science section has this, on the discovery, perhaps, of the, perhaps, mythical Jomsviking fortress, which plays a role in these novels:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/18/world/europe/poland-vikings-wolin-jomsborg.html

[Jaxom 1974]

Does anyone know if there is any good alternative Civil War fiction where Lincoln survived...?

[Zorral]

Alternative War of the Rebellion fiction always goes with the slavers' victory, with Lee peacefully looking out over his fields being worked calmly by very quiet Black labor, ruminating that slavery will wither away peacefully ... someday ... just not today, for the time isn't right.

If Lincoln hadn't been killed, Johnson, that white supremacist wouldn't have been POTUS, and brought back the traitors to the House and Senate, causing an immediate crisis in government, that hung on until the next election when Grant was elected and returned to the policies, as far as he'd been informed of them back then, by Lincoln. But the damage was already done.

In any case, for some reason, none of those who want to change that history are in the least supportive of the consequences of the former enslaved successfully being integrated into US government and society. Or, to consider, perhaps, or even possibly, that the defeated traitors would have forced Lincoln to take stronger and more military steps, putting up even Lee to trial for treason and execution.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Lewis, Norman (2003) The Tomb in Seville; the final publication of the famous travel writer.  He and his companion arrive in Madrid just as the shooting war between the Reds and the fascists/germans start.  The scenes at the train station -- where I've been, though it is not the same edifice but it is on the same spot -- with the shooting between both sides is so well done.

This is a reworking of Lewis's first published travel book, in 1935, A Spanish Adventure.  Lewis died shortly after The Tomb in Seville. Full circle of a long, productive, adventurous travel life.

 

[Jaxom 1974]

@Zorral... sure, I'm aware how most alternate fiction goes where Lincoln survives...I enjoy Turtledove for what the story is.  Guess i should have been a little more specific.  Is there anything out there where Wilkes Booth doesn't succeed and then the supposition becomes how Reconstruction went under the way Lincoln intended? What does a United States guided by Lincoln in the post Civil War years look like...

Also, what other Lincoln biographies are recommended? I've been on a Lincoln and Grant kick lately.  The recent Meacham was okay, but didn't seem to cover much new ground.  I do like and enjoy Team of Rivals and find I can listen to it multiple times...Chernow's Grant biography is my current audio book... by I'm sure there are others that I'm missing. I know there are. 

[Zorral]

27 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Is there anything out there where Wilkes Booth doesn't succeed and then the supposition becomes how Reconstruction went under the way Lincoln intended? What does a United States guided by Lincoln in the post Civil War years look like..

I thought that was what I was answering.  Nope. And for those reasons.  Nobody can or even wants to, really, imagine a US in which the political battles set off by his death, in which Grant wasn't distracted by holding the Union victory together in D.C. instead of overseeing Reconstruction, and working in tandem with a sensible person.  No one could ever employ 'sensible' to describe the real drunk in this story, Andrew Johnson -- something Chernow seems not to have noticed.

The Chernow bio was ... disappointing, shall we say?  This is the best Grant bio I have read:

American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant by Ronald C. White Jr., (2016) who is a Canadian!  Chernow's Hamiliton was first rate plus included some original discoveries about Hamilton.  His Grant biography is a rehash of much older writers who had more than a whiff of Glorious Lost Cause about them.  

There is also Grant's own Memoirs.  A lot of people don't bother with the first part, which is the Mexican War, but it is just brilliant. Grant was such a good writer.  His editor/publisher, Mark Twain, was so impressed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

New book which looks yummy to read in bed, prior to the read-aloud to each other in bed before shutting off the lights: McShea, Bronwen. (2023) La Duchesse: The Life of Marie de Veignerot, Cardinal Richelieu’s Forgotten Heiress Who Shaped the Fate of France.

 

Edited May 22, 2023 by Zorral

[Jaxom 1974]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

I thought that was what I was answering.  Nope. And for those reasons.  Nobody can or even wants to, really, imagine a US in which the political battles set off by his death, in which Grant wasn't distracted by holding the Union victory together in D.C. instead of overseeing Reconstruction, and working in tandem with a sensible person.  No one could ever employ 'sensible' to describe the real drunk in this story, Andrew Johnson -- something Chernow seems not to have noticed.

The Chernow bio was ... disappointing, shall we say?  This is the best Grant bio I have read:

American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant by Ronald C. White Jr., (2016) who is a Canadian!  Chernow's Hamiliton was first rate plus included some original discoveries about Hamilton.  His Grant biography is a rehash of much older writers who had more than a whiff of Glorious Lost Cause about them.  

There is also Grant's own Memoirs.  A lot of people don't bother with the first part, which is the Mexican War, but it is just brilliant. Grant was such a good writer.  His editor/publisher, Mark Twain, was so impressed.

 

Hmmm...apologies if I misunderstood what you'd said.

I'll give that other bio a look. 

And I'm mildly shocked that no one has ever really supposed what could have happened had there not been that assassination...ah well...

[Zorral]

30 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

And I'm mildly shocked that no one has ever really supposed what could have happened had there not been that assassination...ah well...

I'd love to see what you think might have changed if Lincoln hadn't been murdered!

Myself, I have come to think whether or not Lincoln had been assassinated, when it comes to integration and civil and voting rights, not much would be different than it turned out to be. Lincoln would have pardoned the same people who were pardoned; nobody would have gone to prison, etc. 

The fact is that Lincoln's assassination terrified and angered the southern figures for they knew how forgiving and mild he was.  They did everything they could to cooperate with the manhunt after the assassination. I'd love to be convinced that I'm wrong about that.

What would have been different is the power plays of the figures within the Republican party of the time. Thadeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and some of the other 'radicals' would have been able to implement some of their ideas instead of being blocked at every turn by Johnson, which would have been good for African American headway.

It's just as likely Grant would have followed him as POTUS, as he did after Johnson's dreadful administration, which alienated all the Union people, while he was helping the south and those figures as much as possible to essentially role back abolition and reinstate slavery.

Which, under another name essentially happened very quickly, fully implemented by 1877m Grant or not.

Frankly, as what might be different, if anything, would probably deal with the rampant corruption of the 1870's, the monopolies , and cartels of the Gilded Age. American companies would run rampant through South America and the Caribbean.  None of which, in reality, the African Americans had anything to do with.

But honestly, I think the cartels, price fixing, market cornering was rolling out so well due to wartime and the railroad building anyway, and the massive fortunes that were already being made through rail -- it's hard to think what would have changed if Lincoln hadn't been murdered.  Politics rule along with money, always.

 

 

Edited May 23, 2023 by Zorral

[Jaxom 1974]

I agree with some of that. I do believe Grant would have likely followed Lincoln, though I'm not so certain the trajectory of the country would have been quite the same. I'm also not absolutely certain that the roll back of abolition would have been as abrupt, or even blatant. But that's a supposition for someone much smarter than me...

[Zorral]

15 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

I agree with some of that. I do believe Grant would have likely followed Lincoln, though I'm not so certain the trajectory of the country would have been quite the same. I'm also not absolutely certain that the roll back of abolition would have been as abrupt, or even blatant. But that's a supposition for someone much smarter than me...

Not smarter, it's just that for historians, a foundational plank for historiography is that counterfactuals have no place in the practice of history per se.  Which is pretty much why I dislike alternate history fiction so much, particularly since very few of the writers are deeply enough versed in the history of the time and place to do it plausibly, and so often change one thing, which isn't enough to actually, you know, change anything.  Unless, of course a pandemic or catastrophe that wipes out everything.  Ha!

As for the bolded, when it comes to counterfactual speculation, perhaps Lincoln would have continued to be influenced by his admiration of  Frederick Douglass (which he didn't have to start with), the single Black person with whom he had contact, other than free woman, Mrs. Keckly. Mrs. Keckly was his wife's dressmaker, whose own book of those days is utterly fascinating. Before Fort Sumter when all the traitors scrambled out out dodge, she was dressmaker to Varina Davis. Varina tried to get Keckly to leave with her -- "would treat her so good down there in Richmond" -- and anyway, they were all going to be back in D.C. by Christmas and she and Davis would be in the White House, so she wouldn't have to be gone that long.  Mrs. Keckly, no fool, declined the offer.  

https://www.whitehousehistory.org/from-slavery-to-the-white-house-the-extraordinary-life-of-elizabeth-keckly

But we see all around us all the time how utterly, insanely, obsessed such a significant portion of the population is about 'race', how filled with hate for African Americans, and, like then, it isn't limited to people who live in the former secessionist states -- though it's also clear both TX and FL in particular, are moving everything as fast as possible to do it again.

 

[Zorral]

@Jaxom 1974

Ha! This just showed up, an alternate history concerning a POTUS who never was, but what if he had been? -- Al Gore. I c&p this since you may not have a NYT sub.

In This Novel, Death Is Obsolete. And Al Gore Is President.
Elliot Ackerman’s alternate history reimagines the politics and science of the early 21st century.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/books/review/elliot-ackerman-halcyon.html

Quote

 

HALCYON, by Elliot Ackerman

“It was a time when a frenzy pervaded the national psyche,” Elliot Ackerman’s narrator muses in the opening of his new novel, “Halcyon.” “We had lost our ability to disaggregate our values from our rage,” he continues. And finally, my favorite: “It would do nothing to ease our grim national mood, which I would have diagnosed as rage-ennui.”

Martin Neumann, the Nick Carraway-like observer serving as our tour guide to the times, is not speaking of 2023 but 2004 — four years into an Al Gore presidency. Like many contemporary authors (present company included and guilty), Ackerman attempts to explicate the full-spectrum meltdown of the social and political culture, his vehicle of choice alternate history with a science-fiction twist.

The most enjoyable element of any alt-history narrative is how the author plays with the reader’s relationship to that history. When you’re of a generation that has spent its entire adulthood yearning for an alternative to what we’ve lived, it is ever tempting to search for inflection points, moments that haunt us with what might have been or should have been or thankfully never came to pass. It’s endlessly fascinating to gaze at the strike-slip fault where the earthquake occurred.

The 2000 election, decided by 537 votes in a state run by the winning candidate’s younger brother, has that quality, as George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency makes it easy to fantasize about a Goretopia out there in the multiverse. However, Ackerman takes it a step further back, to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. In “Halcyon,” Bill Clinton made Nixonian recordings of his transgressions, and the release of the tapes led to his removal from office. This is the fulcrum of history by Ackerman’s estimation, and it’s hard to ignore his channeling of Philip Roth, not only in voice and tone but in the exploration of a thought experiment (“The Plot Against America”) and the meditation on scandal in the aftermath of Clinton’s transgressions (“The Human Stain”).

Yet this isn’t just an alternate political history; President Al Gore also conquers death. “Cryoregeneration” is a revolutionary procedure that resurrects the dead, and Neumann, a struggling history professor, finds himself witness to this controversial new technology when he realizes his friend, an elderly lawyer named Robert Abelson, is an early adopter. The Gatsby to Neumann’s Carraway, Abelson is the owner of the titular estate, Halcyon, where Neumann has secluded himself to finish his book on the Civil War.

Born in the particularly resonant year of 1914, Abelson is a veteran of World War II who returned home to become a lawyer, arguing in defense of Roe v. Wade, the Equal Rights Amendment and other progressive causes. He is the embodiment of the 20th century, its fight for civilization, its immense social progress and how it still came up drastically short.

Abelson was once a “champion of liberalism,” but “time … had conspired to leave him ideologically disenfranchised. His values had not evolved at a rapid enough pace and so he found himself stranded on the shoals of conservatism.”

As a historian, Neumann is a Shelby Foote guy, [Zorral here -- as an historian I despise that massiver perpetrator of the Glorious Lost Cause/We were all the same, that Ken Burns propagated into tv audience;  just for starters Foote's 'history' of the War of the Rebellion -- he didn't do hsitory at all, just a narrative tale; not a singe footnote or citation in all three volumes.] and believes that compromise has been core to the American character. This notion has gone terribly out of vogue in Gore’s America. (“When you commemorate Southern courage, who is asking who to compromise?” a fellow academic asks him.)

Neumann is sympathetic to Abelson as a product of his time, even though “few people are these days.” He understands that what’s happened to Abelson is what happens to all of us if we stick around long enough. Abelson, though, is sticking around much longer, having been brought back to life as a secret test case. When the undead hold on, they also hold on to their stale ideas.

After having his death certificate annulled, Abelson gets jammed up in a legal dispute over the inheritance he left to his three children. While the novel makes a passing glance at the titillating questions — Who aside from Abelson has been resurrected? Who will be able to afford it? What are the criteria for applying for a “rebirth grant”? — Ackerman prefers to approach the issue through a specious lawsuit against Abelson. The litigant is a woman claiming emotional trauma from a date Abelson arranged for her mother years ago. The story also hinges on efforts to remove a Confederate monument.

Characters and plot points weave in and out of these dual controversies, but the complicated accusation against Abelson is hampered by the low stakes. Whether or not his entitled children will inherit Halcyon does not exactly play out like a season of “Succession.” The reader cannot summon outrage for Abelson being wronged, nor schadenfreude that this embodiment of white patriarchy will finally get his.

Yet the fact that the novel doesn’t snap, that it barely even bends, and remains idiosyncratic and engrossing throughout, is a testament to Ackerman’s expert juggling act. We learn that it’s a headache to come back from the dead, and therein lies the rub of every seemingly miraculous technology that is introduced, debated, assimilated and rendered quaint in cycles that are now microgenerational. The ramifications of innovation never quite play out the way we anticipate, and therefore, when grappling with the immensity of defeating death, Ackerman intelligently forces the reader to think about the mundane, arcane territory of inheritance-threatening lawsuits.

Ultimately, Ackerman suggests that it is our own constant frustration and confrontation with history that threatens to drive us to a permanent state of rage-ennui, for history is not easily derailed. In the 2004 election, Bush emerges victorious thanks to Gore’s ill-advised pardon of Clinton. Playing to his evangelical base, Bush scraps the cryoregeneration program. This feels like Ackerman’s most flagrant challenge to all dreams of alternate history: Gore won, literally cured death, and the very next election people voted for the other guy anyway.

In the end, the novel concludes, we will make all the same mistakes, vote for all the wrong people or ignore the opportunities at hand even when we vote for the right ones. History muscles its way back, an unthinking, unfeeling set of forces that proves more difficult to repair — let alone reverse — than death itself.

 

I won't be reading this.  Also, it come through as a right mess. Blech.  The author didn't even bother to grapple with the actual matter of what happened in Florida and that election.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Zorral

[SeanF]

22 hours ago, Zorral said:

Not smarter, it's just that for historians, a foundational plank for historiography is that counterfactuals have no place in the practice of history per se.  Which is pretty much why I dislike alternate history fiction so much, particularly since very few of the writers are deeply enough versed in the history of the time and place to do it plausibly, and so often change one thing, which isn't enough to actually, you know, change anything.  Unless, of course a pandemic or catastrophe that wipes out everything.  Ha!

As for the bolded, when it comes to counterfactual speculation, perhaps Lincoln would have continued to be influenced by his admiration of  Frederick Douglass (which he didn't have to start with), the single Black person with whom he had contact, other than free woman, Mrs. Keckly. Mrs. Keckly was his wife's dressmaker, whose own book of those days is utterly fascinating. Before Fort Sumter when all the traitors scrambled out out dodge, she was dressmaker to Varina Davis. Varina tried to get Keckly to leave with her -- "would treat her so good down there in Richmond" -- and anyway, they were all going to be back in D.C. by Christmas and she and Davis would be in the White House, so she wouldn't have to be gone that long.  Mrs. Keckly, no fool, declined the offer.  

https://www.whitehousehistory.org/from-slavery-to-the-white-house-the-extraordinary-life-of-elizabeth-keckly

But we see all around us all the time how utterly, insanely, obsessed such a significant portion of the population is about 'race', how filled with hate for African Americans, and, like then, it isn't limited to people who live in the former secessionist states -- though it's also clear both TX and FL in particular, are moving everything as fast as possible to do it again.

 

I like to consider the roads not travelled;  the battles that might have gone the other way;  the assassination attempt that might have failed, or the royal marriage that was not fruitless.

It’s fiction, but I still enjoy alternative history.

[Jaxom 1974]

@Zorral... that novel sounds... kinda awful, but right now that isn't where my tastes in alternative history lie...

I'm with Sean.

The more I think on it, another full for years of Lincoln, possible eight as I think he may have pushed that envelope in 1868 if he felt the job wasn't complete or fulfilled, with some of the forces around him lending strength, and counter arguments, likely would have set the US in a very, very different path. But that's what alternate history is all about. Ah well. 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

likely would have set the US in a very, very different path.

I'd love to see what that path would/might have been, and how it gets there!  Meaning the means and ways, political and economic and social.

[Jaxom 1974]

45 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I'd love to see what that path would/might have been, and how it gets there!  Meaning the means and ways, political and economic and social.

I do too. I don't think I'm qualified and/or smart enough to make the actual leap of supposition...but, for me, I do believe it would be different today of it happened then...

[Zorral]

13 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

I do too.

I wish you'd stop saying 'not smart enough' about yourself.  You're more than plenty smart. It's just that you have concentrated on other, equally, if not more, important things than all the ways and means of 'what if'!

[Jaxom 1974]

15 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I wish you'd stop saying 'not smart enough' about yourself.  You're more than plenty smart. It's just that you have concentrated on other, equally, if not more, important things than all the ways and means of 'what if'!

Ha. Well, that's what I meant, if not implied.  Sometimes I think I should have studied history and not English...ah well...

[Zorral]

That's the great thing about history and English (and other languages), you study them together, and you can study them w/o having to be in a formal cla$$room, and can keep studying them all your life, because we never come the end of them! And we can even drink wine while doing so.  Some people may call it 'reading.' We call it 'research.'  Ha!