Christopher Buckley. But Enough about You. © 2013 The book is a collection of short, humorous
pieces Buckley has written over the years for the likes of Forbes and The New Yorker. His reader for this audio version is
fantastic, and if Buckley doesn’t sound just like him, he should take voice
lessons until he does. Buckley has also written 15 novels, and I hope
to find some of them at my library. Buckley
seems to have traveled everywhere, and much of what he writes for this book is
based on those travels. He can give you
a substantive tour of Machu Picchu and keep you amused with the funny things
that happen along the way. I got through
about 4 disks and enjoyed every minute of it, but as my Pennsylvania ancestors
used to say: “Too much is enough.” This might be a good book to read trip by trip
on a shuttle bus. June 2015
.
Joel M. Hoffman. The Bible’s Cutting Room Floor: The Holy Scriptures © 2014
Somewhere between 38 and 70 ancient books were left out of the Bible and the
Torah, and the abridged versions that we know were often changed by errors in
translation or interpretation of ancient languages and sometimes changes were
made to reflect changing times.
Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls provides an opportunity to revisit the
whole question of what scripture was meant to mean. In chapter one, Hoffman gives the reader a short
review of the ancient history of the Middle East to provide a context for his
discussions of the narratives in the Bible and the books excluded from it. His main focus from then on is the Dead Sea
Scrolls, The Septuagint, which was a
translation into Greek ordered by Ptolemy II in the 3rd C BCE, and the writings
of the historian Josephus (half a million words) in the 1st C CE. 2000 years ago there were three groups
working on interpreting the ancient books, the Christians, the Rabbinic Jews
and the people in the desert who prepared the Dead Sea Scrolls. I had thought that they were the Essenes and
some have called them the people of Qumran, but Hoffman says we really don’t
know. Sometimes all three agreed,
sometimes they all disagreed and often their different interpretations were two
to one in every possible combination.
Hoffman spends most of his time filling out the story of Adam and Eve,
mainly from the “Book of Enoch,” and filling in the blanks in Abraham’s story
from “The Apocalypse of Abraham,” including how he came to discover monotheism. One point Hoffman makes along the way was
that it was in the times that the three versions of the ancient texts were
being compiled that Judaism shifted from a sacrificial religion to its current rabbinic
form. One thing for sure, all those
angels were more trouble than they were worth.
June 2015
.
Jill Lepore. Book of Ages, The Life and Opinions of Jane
Franklin. © 2013 I recently tried Jill Lepore’s New
York Burning and had to set it aside.
Not this time. After seeing what
Lepore came up with after she set out to write a book about Benjamin Franklin’s
youngest sister, I can only regret that I chose a career in government instead
of sticking with my original plan to become an historian. Franklin and Jane rarely saw each other after
he left home at 20 when she was just six, but they conducted a lifelong
correspondence. Many of Franklin’s
letters to Jane survive and a few of hers from their later years. She kept what he sent her, but most of what
she sent him has never been found. Among
the things we learn about Franklin is that he was a devoted brother, who guided
her, helped her from afar with her various businesses and provided substantial
financial support to Jane over the years.
What we learn about Jane is how hard her life was and something of how
frustrating it was for her to have a good mind and a strong interest in
learning but little education. Then
there were 13 births, a war, several epidemics and a somewhat shiftless husband. Most interesting of all to me were Lepore’s
account of how research was conducted in the early 19th C and what
later historians and archivists had to do to repair some of the damage. Her account of her own research – much of it a
search for letters – is equally interesting.
June 2015
.
John Reed. Ten Days that Shook the World. © 1919 I had meant to read this back in the 1960s
after I had finished Russian language training and I even had a copy of it in Russian. I didn’t get around to it, and I’m glad I
didn’t, because now there’s no Cold War (just the Putin Annoyance) and no
leftover McCarthyism, so I’m able to read it as history. Yes, Reed was a socialist and leaned toward
Bolshevism, but his account of the ten days of October Revolution is about as
straightforward as one could ask for. He
wrote the book in two to three weeks using the documents he had collected, a
small Russian dictionary and his own rudimentary knowledge of Russian. When I finished, what I said to myself
was: “What a great job of reporting!” Then I punched his name into Wiki and here’s
an excerpt of what I found:
“George F. Kennan,
an American diplomat and historian who had no love for Bolshevism and is best
known as “the father of containment,”
praised the book: “Reed’s account of the events of that time rises above every
other contemporary record for its literary power, its penetration, its command
of detail” and would be “remembered when all others are forgotten.” Kennan saw
it as “a reflection of blazing honesty and a purity of idealism that did
unintended credit to the American society that produced him, the merits of
which he himself understood so poorly.” On
March 1, 1999, The New York Times reported New
York University’s “Top 100 Works of Journalism” list, which placed Ten Days
that Shook the World at in seventh position. Project
director Mitchell Stephens explains the
reasoning behind the judges’ decision:
.
“Perhaps the most controversial work on our list is the seventh,
John Reed’s book, “Ten Days That Shook the World,” reporting on the October
revolution in Russia in 1917. Yes, as conservative critics have noted, Reed was
a partisan. Yes, historians would do better. But this was probably the most
consequential news story of the century, and Reed was there, and Reed could
write. The magnitude of the event being reported on and the quality of the
writing were other important standards in our considerations.
.
“But not all
responses were positive. Joseph Stalin argued in
1924 that Reed was misleading in regards to Leon Trotsky. The book
portrays Trotsky (head of the Red
Army) as a man who co-led the revolution with Lenin and mentions
Stalin only twice—one of them being only in the recitation of a list of names,
as both Lenin and Trotsky were internationally known, whereas the activities of
other Bolshevik militants were virtually unknown. Russian writer Anatoly Rybakov elaborates
on Stalinist
Soviet Union’s ban on Ten Days that Shook the World: “The main task was to build a mighty
socialist state. For that, mighty power was needed. Stalin was at the head of
that power, which mean that he stood at its source with Lenin. Together with
Lenin he led the October Revolution. John Reed had presented the history of
October differently. That wasn’t the John Reed we needed.” After
Stalin’s death, the book was allowed to recirculate.
.
“In 2000,
the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute listed Ten Days
That Shook the World among its “50 Worst Books” of the Twentieth
Century.” And then they ordered that
George Kennan’s body be exhumed so that it could be beaten and dismembered. June 2015
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