Druids - Anne Ross

   1999; 211 pages.  Full Title: “Druids: Preachers of Immortality”.  New Author?  : Yes.  Genres : Archaeology; European History; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating: 8*/10.

 

    Druids.  What part of Europe did they spring up from?  What parts of Europe did they flourish in?  What roles did they play in ancient Celtic society?

 

    What did the Greeks and Romans have to say about them, and how accurately were their views?  How did the upstart Christian church respond to them, and how successful was that endeavor?

 

    What were the Druids’ key beliefs and how did they practice them?  What were their religious festivals?

 

    You can find answers to all those topics in Anne Ross’s book Druids.

 

What’s To Like...

    Druids is divided up into 12 sections, namely:

00a. Foreword

    The two branches of the Celtic language.

00b. Introduction

    Druids, Prophets, and Bards: the 3 groups of “Men of Learning”.

01. Druidic Origins

    Are Druids from Eastern Europe or Western Ireland?

02. The Classic Commentators

    Greek and Roman writers, Ogam writing.

03. Questionable Death and Unusual Burial

    Human Sacrifices, Bog Burials, and “Foundation Sacrifices”.

04. The Symbolic Head

    Decapitation and Drinking from a Skull.

05. The Vernacular Literatures

    St. Brigit, the Red Branch, and other ancient Irish texts.

06. Druids and Fenians

    Rival warrior castes, or allies?

07. Assemblies and Calendar Festivals

    Samain, Imbolc, Beltain, and Lughnasa

08. Unity and Diversity

    Druids and the Early Church; St. Patrick

09. Folklore and Festival

    Druidic Traditions, Rituals that survived to modern times.

Epilogue

    Druidism: where did it come from and where is it heading?

 

    The book is written in what I call “scholarly style”.  Anne Ross (b. 1925; d. 2012) was both an archaeologist and a scholar, and spoke fluent Gaelic, which I’m sure helped in her research for this tome.  This is a short book; the text is just barely over 200 pages and that includes lots of maps, drawings and photographs.  It is written in English, not American, although I didn't find that a distraction.

 

    As might be expected, the text is packed with fascinating details.  Lots of my heroes—Taliesin, Simon Magus, the Morrigan, the Tuatha De Danann—get mentioned, as well as an ancient Celtic board game called “fidchell”, which is said to resemble chess.   I learned the etymology of the word “Ireland”, and got some tips on how the read omens to tell whether it’s going to be an auspicious or inauspicious day.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 3.9*/5, based on 21 ratings and 5 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.55*/5, based on 60 ratings and 10 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Apotropaic (adj.) : supposedly having the power to avert evil influences or bad luck.

Others: Janiform (adj.); Outwith (conj.); Turves (n.)

 

Excerpts...

    The oral tradition amongst the Celts was deliberately fostered, as we learn from the classical commentators on the Celts.  This custom would seem to have arisen in order that the sacred learning and details of ritual practice should be kept away from the uninitiated.  Writing was used for business purposes in Gaul, and Caesar remarks that Greek letters were used for this purpose.  He also comments how, when some noble person was being cremated, people would throw letters onto the funeral pyre for him to give to dead relatives and friends in the Otherworld.  (pg. 87)

 

    The men of Ulster regularly held a great festival at Samain, Hallowe’en, 31 October, i.e. November Eve.  A huge feast was made by the king, Conchobor, in Emain Macha.  They kept the feast for three days before Samain, for three days after Samain, and on the day itself.  It was one of the most important calendar festivals of the whole year, and still survives in the folk memory down to the present time.  This period was devoted to sportive occupations: horse racing and other sports; drinking — which often caused quarrels — and the recitation by each man present of his victories over powerful opponents.  (pg. 152)

 

“They also invite strangers to their banquets, and only after the meal do they ask who they are and of what they stand in need.  (pg. 185)

    There is absolutely zero profanity in Druids, which is a rarity, even when reading non-fiction.  The book was a slow read for me, but that was mostly because I was fixated by the archaeological details and Gaelic lore.

 

        The inherent problem with any discussion of Druidism is that there just isn’t a lot of reference material to work with.  As the first excerpt mentions, Druid religious and historical records were done via oral tradition, and Greek, Roman, and Christian commentators have questionable reliability.  Julius Caesar is a particularly dubious source, although I was impressed with Anne Ross’s objectivity about his commentary.

 

    One review criticized the author’s writing style, feeling that it was written “to the layman”, but I thought the book's tone was just right, neither too technical nor too prosaic.  My only beef was with the maps: there were quite a few of them, and they would only be useful if one lived close to the geographical areas cited.  I don’t.

 

    Overall, I found Druids: Preachers of Immortality both enlightening and entertaining.  It kept me turning the pages although in fairness, Druidism and Archaeology are two subjects I am always very interested in.  Amazon only offers one other book by Anne Ross, Folklore of Wales, which means I'll have to hit the used-book stores to read more books by her.

 

    8 Stars.  One last thing.  On page 48, I ran into the verb “whelmed”.  I’m familiar with “overwhelmed” of course, and have occasionally seen “underwhelmed”, usually used in a tongue-in-cheek fashion.  But this is the first time I’ve encountered “whelmed” used in a serious context.  Awesome!

Ancient Egypt - DK Publishing

   2021; 385 pages.  Full Title: Ancient Egypt: The Definitive Visual History.   New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Ancient History; Egypt; Non-Fiction; Reference.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    My seventh-grade “World History” teacher was Miss Stoudt.  Early in the first semester, she introduced us students to  Ancient Egypt in a rather unique way.

 

    “You can remember the Nile River by looking at your arm,” she said.  “Your shoulder is where the Nile starts, a long way south in central Africa.  Your elbow is where the great city of Thebes is,  And down here where your hand is,” she said spreading her fingers, “is the Nile delta,  the most important part of the Egyptian Empire.”

 

    Her clever demonstration sparked my interest in History then and there, and it remains strong to this day.  I owe it all to Miss Stoudt and her “Nile River arm”.  Alas, that’s the only memory of the history of ancient Egypt that I still remember from her class.  So it was high time I read a book on the subject.

 

    That's where Ancient Egypt: The Definitive Visual History comes in.

 

What’s To Like...

    Ancient Egypt is divided into seven historical eras, and covers a total of 5,395 years.  Event-wise, it starts with an early settlement in lower Egypt around 5,000 BCE, and ends when Egypt is reduced to a mere province in the Roman Empire, with most of its inhabitants converted to Christianity and its gods, such as Horus, depicted in statues as wearing the armor of Roman soldiers.

 

    Structurally, each entry is a 2-page spread, which contains plenty of pictures of Egyptian archaeological discoveries plus a brief summary of whatever topic is being addressed.  Frankly, I was blown away by the number of relics we have of ancient Egypt, many of which are inscribed with lengthy discourses in hieroglyphics, and whose translations are available to historians wanting to learn about Egypt’s past, which goes back more than 7,000 years.

 

    I really liked the “flow” to the book.  All of the 30 or so dynasties are covered to some extent, based on how many relics and ruins remain that commemorate a given ruler.  That means lots of dates and names are given in the book, but it never got tedious because Ancient Egypt also presents lots of aspects of the everyday life for both peasant and pharaoh.  Those "ordinary" topics include:

 

    the layouts of ancient Egyptian bathrooms,

    the partaking of beer and wine (see below),

    board games,

    ancient graffiti,

    how to make mud bricks,

    family life and pets (see below),

    the first fiction novels, including The Tale of Sinuhe (which you can purchase at Amazon) and other bestsellers which were written more than 3,000 years ago.

 

    Both the quality and quantity of the hieroglyphics that have survived the ages are staggering.  I was fascinated by how many photographs of these symbols were included in the book.  One of the final entries covers the Rosetta Stone, an amazing find which allows us to understand and translate the Egyptian pictographs.  It can be argued that it is the greatest archaeological relic ever unearthed.

 

    Two of the most important words I learned thanks to the Rosetta Stone are:

“ka”: the spiritual life force in all humans, and the reason all those tombs and pyramids were built

“maat”: the cosmic order to the world, or in other word, the will of the gods, and thereby the justification of any actions that a pharaoh might take.

 

    There are zero cusswords in the book, which is what I’d expect from a scholarly historical treatise.  Amazon lists both formats as being 400 pages long, but the text ends on page 305, with lots of goodies after that, such as: tables (rulers, deities, sites), glossary, and index.  The author is listed as “DK Publishing”, which is the standard practice for the books they put out, but if you check inside, you’ll find that the text was written by Steven Snape, who, I gather, is no relation to Severus Snape, a renowned professor at Hogwarts.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.8/5 based on 311 ratings and 82 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.42/5 based on 53 ratings and 12 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    For every Egyptian, whether rich or poor, bread was the staple diet and seems to have been eaten at every meal.  It was made from Egypt’s abundant supply of emmer wheat and sometimes barley.  State workers were often paid in bread and sometimes in grain, which suggests that bread was not just made by official bakers, but also by ordinary people in their homes.

    Beer, which was made from the same basic ingredients as bread, was also widely available.  It was produced by both large-scale specialists and local brewers.  Most Egyptian beer was probably quite low in alcohol content, and it seems to have been drunk in large quantities.  (pg. 116)

 

    Egypt has often been claimed as the original home of the household cat.  They were probably domesticated from the Middle Kingdom onward, as images of them do not appear in Old Kingdom reliefs, but wild species are known from much earlier.  The Egyptian word for cat, miw, is certainly derived from the sound that they make.  During the New Kingdom, cats were shown as pets in the tombs of the upper classes, especially with women.  Unlike dogs, cats were rarely given personal names, but there were exceptions.  One cat, known as “The Pleasant One,” is depicted in the tomb of Puiemre, at Thebes.  (pg. 274)

 

Kindle Details…

    Ancient Egypt sells for $19.99 at Amazon at present.  DK Publishing offers what seems to be hundreds of other reference books (I didn’t even try to count them all), with prices mostly ranging from $1.99 to $19.99.

 

“If you have eaten three loaves of bread and drunk two jugs of beer and your belly is still hungry, restrain it!” (Ancient Egyptian Wisdom Text)  (pg. 117)

    The only gripes I have about Ancient Egypt involve the Kindle format.

 

    Be aware that, in order to convert from the hardcover to ebook format, DK Publishing chose to scan each page.  That means you can’t highlight any of the text, the index entries don’t link to anything, and worst of all, the ebook eats up a major chunk of your Kindle storage capacity.

 

    Look it up at Amazon: the size for this ebook is a whopping 232,625 KB.  Now compare it to some text-only ebook on your Kindle, where the typical file size is 1,000 to 10,000 KB.  That means that this book is the equivalent of 23 to 232 “text-only” ebooks.

 

    To be fair, the text could not easily be done apart from the scanning due to the clever placement of the many images.  And DK Publishing does helpfully point out that tapping twice on your Kindle screen automatically expands the page image to a readable font size.  It took a bit of finagling, but eventually I hit upon a method that visually worked for me.  You will too.

 

    Finally, I must note that whoever at DK Publishing did the Kindle-version blurb, got the subtitle of the book wrong.  The correct subtitle, as shown in the cover mage above, is “The Definitive Visual History”, the Kindle page erroneously calls it “The Definitive Illustrated History”.  C’mon, dude, you had one job.

 

    But let’s be clear: Ancient Egypt is a fantastic effort, with both the text and the pictures being simply jaw-dropping in content.  I highly recommend this book to all history buffs, but do yourself a favor and shell out the added bucks for the Hardcover version, not the ebook.

 

    9 Stars.  Etymology note: In common parlance, the word “graffiti” can be both singular and plural.  The one exception is when it involves archaeology, when the Italian-based word “graffito” is then correct.  Kudos to the writers and editors of Ancient Egypt for getting this right.  English is a goofy language.

How The World Works - Noam Chomsky

   2011; 314 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Interviewer: David Barsamian.  Editor: Arthur Naiman.  Genres : Political Science; History; Democracy; Interviews.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

   The United States of America.  Land of the free, Home of the brave.  A shining example of a successful democracy, although some nitpickers will tell you that we’re technically a republic.

 

    We've been taught that our purpose in life is to show the rest of the world that they too can be as wonderful as we are.  With liberty for all, and the freedom to choose whatever leaders they think will best govern their nation.  Ok, brave new world, that has such a nation as the USA in it!

 

    But what if the stuff we were taught in our US History and High School Civics classes is a bunch of hooey?  What if we actually live in a country where a powerful few control the government and its policies, and what we think of as a free election is really just a choice between two candidates both of whom will do whatever those powerful few tell them to and the heck with the opinions of the rest of us?

 

    Nah, that’s silly.  That’s something only the wacko conspiracy nuts would dream up.  We’d surely know if we, “the 98%”, were being duped, right?

 

    Noam Chomsky begs to differ.  He says we’re being brainwashed.  And that we don’t have any idea of how the world works.

 

What’s To Like...

    How The World Works is a 2011 compilation of four of Noam Chomsky’s earlier “short political books”.  They are:

        What Uncle Sam Really Wants  (1992)

        The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many  (1993)

        Secrets, Lies and Democracy  (1994)

        The Common Good  (1998)

    The text of How The World Works is only 314 pages long, which gives you some idea of how short those four individual books are.

 

    Noam Chomsky identifies himself as an “anarcho-syndicalist” and a “libertarian-socialist”.  Wikipedia has pages for both those labels, the links are here and here.  I found his views to be a curious mix of both left-wing and right-wing radical politics.

 

    On one hand, he’s convinced the world is being run by the IMF (International Monetary Fund), which has been a far-right pet theme since way back in their "John Birch" era.  Chomsky also has low opinions of both John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, much preferring the politics of Ross Perot.  On the other hand, he’s a staunch supporter of labor unions, the working class, and the Third World, and is unabashedly anti-imperialist.  These are all left-leaning positions.

 

    The text is mostly taken from a series of interviews done in the 1990’s (plus several of essays, I gather), which were then edited, abridged, and clarified to make them more reader-friendly.  “Clarified” doesn’t mean “altered”; it means things like when the text reads “President Bush”, it gets changed to “[first] President Bush]”.  Some of the questions sound like Noam Chomsky penned them beforehand and gave them to the interviewer, but that’s okay.

 

    Some of the topics are unavoidably a bit outdated at times – things like Nicaragua, Chile, the Cold War.  Even "SNCC", an acronym that anyone under the age of 50 probably won’t recognize, gets a brief mention.  I was surprised to see that the PBS channel gets criticized by the author, but delighted to “meet” Amilcar Cabral, a Guinean anti-colonialist with (essentially) the same name as this blog’s writer.

 

    I didn’t agree with all of Noam Chomsky’s opinions, such as his take on the Gulf War precipitated by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.  He’s also very much anti-Israel when it comes to the issue of Palestine.  I am not pro-Israel either, but Chomsky’s view makes it a black-or-white issue, and the Middle East situation is certainly a lot more complex than that.

 

    Still, it was fun to fact-check him via Wikipedia, and without a doubt, this book will give any reader a lot to think about.  There are enough historical examples of the US allying with despots to quell freedom movements (Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua), to prove that the “American history” we are fed in school has been thoroughly whitewashed.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 604 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.15/5 based on 3,209 ratings and 274 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    As far as American business is concerned, Nicaragua could disappear and nobody would notice.  The same is true of El Salvador.  But both have been subjected to murderous assaults by the US, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and many billions of dollars.

    There’s a reason for that.  The weaker and poorer a country is, the more dangerous it is as an example.  If a tiny, poor country like Grenada can succeed in bringing about a better life for its people, some other place that has more resources will ask, “Why not us?”  (loc. 400)

 

    Statistics about things like the quality of life, infant mortality, life expectancy, etc. are usually broken down by race.  It always turns out that blacks have horrible statistics as compared with whites.

    But an interesting study was done by Vicente Navarro, a professor at Johns Hopkins who works on public health issues.  He decided to reanalyze the statistics, separating out the factors of race and class.  For example, he looked at white workers and black workers versus white executives and black executives.  He discovered that much of the difference between blacks and whites was actually a class difference.  If you look at poor white workers and white executives, the gap between them is enormous.  (loc. 2146)

 

The problem with real democracies is that they’re likely to fall prey to the heresy that government should respond to the needs of their own population, instead of those of US investors.  (loc. 370)

    There are some quibbles.  From least important to most:

 

    There’s a 20-page Index in the back of the e-book, which would be really handy if you wanted to revisit a topic and/or quote from the book.  Unfortunately, there are no page numbers listed, and no links, rendering it essentially useless.

 

    There’s a lot of repetition and overlap.  But that’s to be expected since How The World Works is really just a four earlier books by the author squashed together.  What Noam Chomsky has to say about, say, China in a 1992 interview is not going change much when he's asked about it in a 1993 interview.

 

    Similarly, there’s not a lot of actual facts and references to substantiate the author’s claims of skullduggery.  He’ll mention that he read some book at some point in the past, which supports the point he’s trying to make, but he provides no direct quotes from it.  However, since most of the text is from an interview he's giving, that’s not surprising.  I expect someone writing a book to back up his allegations with hard facts, but I don’t expect someone giving a speech or an interview to do so.

 

    Overall, How The World Works gave me lots to think about but not much documentation to support its controversial assertions.  Perhaps some of Noam Chomsky’s other political science books do.  He’s written and published about a hundred such tomes.

 

    7½ Stars.  Noam Chomsky has also written 50+ books on Linguistics, several of which reside on my Kindle.  I'm leaning towards tackling one of those next.

The Secret War - Max Hastings

   2015; 557 pages.  Full Title: The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : History; Espionage; World War 2; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    During a war, how much is the knowledge about what the enemy’s up to worth?  Before you answer, keep in mind that money is precious when waging war: armies are expensive, and so are the weapons, transportation, and food needed to properly equip them.

 

    Besides the money, you also need to decide how many people to devote to gathering enemy intel.  After all, they could instead be carrying a gun and stationed on the front lines.  Even when you decide on a number, then you have to figure out what they’re going to focus on.

 

    Some should work on breaking the enemy’s secret codes, but who knows, maybe the whole war will pass by before they succeed at that.  Others should spend their time eavesdropping on the enemy’s communications, which in World War 2, was mostly radio transmissions.  Perhaps we ought to also drop some commandos behind enemy lines, equipped with binoculars and a transmitter, to give us firsthand observations of where the enemy squadrons, ships, fuel depots, etc. are located.  I wonder how’d we get anyone to volunteer for that job.

 

    Naturally, we should expect our foes to do this same kind of skullduggery to us, so we’d also need a counterintelligence department.

 

    Which means we'll need even more money and personnel.  It better be worth it.

 

What’s To Like...

    In The Secret War Max Hastings takes an in-depth look at how each of the major combatants in World War 2 approached the task of developing intel on their opponents, and in some cases, on their allies as well; the latter being especially true when England, the USA, and Russia were forced to into an uncomfortable alliance against Nazi Germany.

 

    I liked the book’s structure: 21 sections in more or less chronological order, starting with the pre-war setups and continuing through the post-war “Nuclear bomb technology” spying, capped off with a great final chapter in a “what ever happened to so-and-so” forma, which was one of my favorite sections, along with #15, “Blunderhead”, which chronicles the escapades of one Ronald Seth, in theory an English spy, who certainly knew how to milk the system.

 

    Given that espionage is by nature a secret profession, I was amazed how many agents afterward went on to have very successful and public careers.  Graham Greene became a famous novelist.  Alan Turing became famous for his work in developing the computer.  Ian Fleming is known to all for writing the series featuring the superspy James Bond.  Freeman Dyson was a pioneer in quantum physics; the “Dyson sphere” (say what?) is named after him in honor of his theoretical essays about it.  Hugh Alexander and Stuart Milner-Barry both became top-tier chess players for England after the war.  Sterling Hayden became a famous Hollywood movie star.  All played key roles in the intel effort against Nazi Germany.

 

    Max Hastings gives an impressively balanced view of each country’s intelligence departments, including those of Japan and Germany.  They each had some significant intel successes; they each had some significant intel missed opportunities.  In fairness, it was always difficult to “sort the wheat from the chaff”.  How do you tell if the “Japan is going to attack Pearl Harbor” intercepted message is more valid than the “Japan is going to invade South America” one?

 

    I admired Max Hastings' objectivity about the impact, or lack thereof, that intel had on the outcome of the war.  Even if you gain important knowledge, such as “Russia is about to launch an offensive”, there’s not much you can do about it if your army is no longer a match for theirs.  And a message like “the enemy is going to attack tomorrow” does little good if it takes a week to forward it to your frontline generals.  The validity of any message of great importance also has to be evaluated.  Did your spy send it, or did an enemy agent?  For that matter, is your spy a double- or triple-agent?   And let’s not even discuss generals who ignore good intel in favor of their “gut feelings”, or intel which starts out true but becomes false because some leader, such as Hitler, simply changes his mind.

 

    Like any book about the military, there are a ton of acronyms to get acquainted with.  My favorite here was “Huff Duff”, which stands for “High-Frequency Direction-Finding” radio signals.   As with any reference book, there are a slew of extra sections in the back of the book: Notes-&-Sources, Index, Bibliography, etc.  I found the “Photographs” section particularly fascinating.  Last and probably least, be aware that Max Hastings is a British author, so this book is written in “English”, not “American”.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Pusillanimity (n.) : lack of courage or determination; timidity.

Others: Pibroch (n.); Sclerotic (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.1/5 based on 773 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.84/5 based on 1,666 ratings and 198 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Do we know, or am I just not being told, what the Japanese intentions are in Burma, bearing in mind that they upset the whole of our offensive-defensive plans earlier this year and that a good deal of their movement passed unnoticed?”  (…)

    “If we do not know, then if I were the Army Group commander I should be very unhappy to go into battle with an enemy disposed I know not how, and of whose full intentions I am equally ignorant.  No doubt there is a limit to what the Japanese can do today with the land forces available to them in Burma, but past experience has shown that it is both inconvenient and decidedly unpleasant when they do the unexpected.  You will remember my saying the other day that it was never wise to assume that the Japanese will not do a thing because it seems stupid to us.”  (loc. 10266)

 

    When the first Soviet bomb was exploded in 1949, it proved to be an exact copy of the 1945 Alamogordo test device.  Apologists for Moscow’s informants have ever since made two points: first, that with or without the traitors, the Soviet Union would have built its own bomb soon enough, because that is how science and technology evolve around the world; second, that the NKVD’s informants performed a service to the cause of peace, because they ensured the creation of a balance of terror, making it impossible for America’s right-wing fanatics credibly to advocate a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union.  Both arguments merit consideration.  (loc. 19535)

 

“Diplomats and intelligence agents, in my experience, are even bigger liars than journalists.”  (loc. 496)

    A word to the wise: If I had to describe The Secret War in one word it would be “comprehensive”.  This is a deeply-researched effort, and that means you have a ton of people, acronyms, and Intel Group names to keep straight in your head.  Good luck with that. 

 

    Probably because of this, I found the book to be a challenging and slow read, yet without being the least bit boring.  The depth of the details is astounding.  This is a book for history buffs, especially those who love to read about World War 2, and I found The Secret War incredibly enlightening.  I came away with a better understanding of things like:

    a.) why Germany and Russia were initially partners, then deadly enemies.

    b.) why Japan would start a war-to-the-death against the United States

    c.) why the US didn’t believe Japan would dare attack them at Pearl Harbor or anyplace else.

    d.) why Stalin didn’t believe Hitler would invade Russia in 1941

 

    If you enjoy musing about such things, this is definitely the book for you.  If you have a book report due tomorrow, and you haven’t even started reading one yet, this is definitely not the book for you.

 

    9 Stars.  A personal note.  Several years ago, while riding the local light rail to a downtown concert, I sat across the aisle from a curious-looking, foppish man who was reading a book while completely oblivious to the crowded conditions around him.  Naturally I was fascinated.  I just had to know what book he was so absorbed in.

 

   After lots of glances, I finally determined its title was The Secret War.  I google-imaged it when I got home, and found “hits” that showed somebody named Max Hastings was the author.  I was resigned to looking for it at my local library; the Amazon price was way above my budget and searching for a particular non-fiction history tome at any used-book store is always a hopeless task.  Then lo and behold!, a couple weeks later, Amazon offered the e-book version for a paltry $1.99!  Serendipity strikes again!

 

    The rest is history.  Pun intended.

The Great Wall - Julia Lovell

   2006; 351 pages.  Full Title: The Great Wall – China Against the World 1000 BC – AD 2000.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : History; China; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    The thing about the Great Wall of China is, it’s so positively great.  That’s why the Chinese call it that.

    I still remember the iconic picture of it, when President Nixon was visiting for a photo op back in 1972.  The wall looked like something you’d see on a medieval castle.  And to think it was actually built 2,000 years ago!

    I can’t imagine how much labor went into the construction – making a single wall stretching all across northern China.  Still, it was a good investment.  It was made to keep the barbarians out, and with the exception of Genghis Khan, it worked pretty well.

    And it’s huge!  Did you know it’s the only man made object on Earth that can be seen from the moon?  Neil Armstrong is on record as having spotted it while he was traipsing around up there.

    Sadly, most if not all of the above is inaccurate, being hyperbole written mostly by Western visitors to impress their countrymen back home and, in a lot of cases, with the idea of spurring trade between China and Europe.  We’ll list the correct facts at the end of this review.

What’s To Like...

    The Great Wall is a clever undertaking by Julia Lovell to tell the history of China by juxtaposing something the Chinese have been doing for several millennia – building walls.  Trying to squeeze 3,000 years of events into 351 pages of text (plus another 50 pages of Appendices, Notes, a Bibliography, and an Index) is essentially an impossible task, particularly when presenting it to people whose knowledge of Chinese history is limited to Confucius, the Mongols, and Mao Zedong (the author’s spelling).  Surprisingly, Julia Lovell succeeds admirably.

    The book is divided into 12 chapters, plus an Introduction and a Conclusion, and is presented in more or less chronological order.  Wherever an opportunity arises, wall-building is spotlighted, even when the walls were obsolete, and even when the "walls" refer to internet firewalls and those around shopping malls.  The maps, notes, and pictures all work smoothly, and I liked the use of pinyin (minus the tonal marks, but that’s not a complaint) and lots of examples of classical Chinese poetry.

    Unlike several reviewers, I thought Julia Lovell had a very balanced view of the various factions.  She gives a “warts and all” view of the various Chinese dynasties, the various nomadic tribes to the north, and the various more-recent European powers wielding their gunboat diplomacy.  The life of Sun Yat-sen gets fleshed out here, and there’s lots of interesting trivia, such as Mao Zedong being an enthusiastic but amateur versifier.

    My favorite Chinese poet Li Po gets some ink (although his name is rendered “Li Bo” here), even if he’s portrayed as a “drunken, duelling, romantic wanderer who is said to have drowned after leaping, drunk, into a river to embrace the reflection of the moon.”  Maodun was new to me – I wouldn’t want to mess with him even if I was his father.  I enjoyed meeting the early Turks, who were a major adversary of Chinese expansionism way back in the 6^th century AD, and I was startled to learn that it was a Tibetan tribe that destroyed the Yan dynasty.  I liked that oracle bones were used for divination for centuries, and that chess was being played in China as early as the 12^th century AD.

    Since I took two years of Mandarin a few years back, I already knew that there are a bunch of dialects spoken throughout China (including Cantonese in the south), but that since they all use the same script, everyone in China can understand any and all written communication by their countrymen.  The southern city of Hangzhou get brief mention; it brought back memories from a business trip I took there 15 years ago.  The eight-year-long imperial debate about which of the five “cosmic elements” would be used by the Jin Dynasty made me chuckle.  An executive committee where I used to work once took eight months and many meetings to discuss what the company colors would be.  Dilbert would have sighed.

    The Great Wall is written in English, not American, but I didn’t find that distracting.  Stylistically, I’d label it a “scholarly” presentation, almost a polar opposite of the way Sarah Vowell or Mary Roach writes, and very effective here.

Kewlest New Word ...

Corvée (adj.) : referring to unpaid labor (as towards constructing roads) due from a feudal vassal to his lord.

Others: panegyrics (n.); enfeoff (v.); havering (v.); poetaster (n.).

Excerpts...

    [Erzhu Rong] crossed the Yellow River, settled on a hillside outside Luoyang and invited the capital’s aristocracy for a meeting at his campsite.  From there, after gracelessly massacring every single member – perhaps as many as 3,000 – of this state welcoming party, and drowning the dowager empress and her child-emperor in the Yellow River, he rode into Luoyang and set about enjoying court life, until he was himself stabbed to death in 530 by the new puppet emperor he had installed.  Following a plucky but doomed attempt to defend the city, the emperor was himself garroted by the murdered leader’s successors, shortly after praying to the Buddha not to let him be reborn as a king.  (loc. 1995)

    By his death in 1688 – at which point he was fluent in six languages, including Chinese and Manchu – Verbiest had laboured for almost two decades on behalf of the imperial court.  He had drawn up calendars, built huge and elaborate astronomical instruments, as well as an observatory in which to use them, and overseen the forging of 132 large cannons (on which he eccentrically inscribed the names of male and female Chinese saints), subsequently used to arm China’s city walls.  (…)

    Perhaps his most innovative moment was an early attempt at an automobile, in which he strapped a boiler on to an oven, attached a paddle wheel, gears and wheels, and steam-motored around the corridors of the Forbidden City for an hour or so.  (loc. 4286)

“Who scruples much achieves little.” (Fei Yi)  (loc. 814 )

    It’s hard to find anything to nitpick about in The Great Wall.  There were some “gaps” in the history, such as the history of the southern parts of China, the historic relation between Tibet and China, the fall of the last dynasty (Qing) in 1911, and Mao ousting Chiang Kai-shek in 1949.  But there’s only so much you can cover in 351 pages, and I doubt any of these topics could be tied in to the “wall-building” motif.

    The book was a slow read for me, but I think that’s because I was so unfamiliar with all those emperors, warlords, dynasties, and barbarian leaders.  If there was an underlying theme, it was that there is always an inherent and eternal tension when any agrarian-based “civilized” society abuts a roving hunter-gatherer one.  Or, as the book puts it, “the Chinese viewed the northern tribes as raiding barbarians, while the nomads viewed the Chinese as raiding targets.”

    8 Stars.  Some truths about the Great Wall, courtesy of Julia Lovell’s book.  The “castle-looking” part of it you see in all the photographs is just north of Beijing.  It looks “medieval” because that portion was built relatively recently, about 500 years ago, not 2000.  It’s still impressive though.

    Other sections of the wall are much older, not connected to the picturesque portion, and much more primitive in construction.  It’s only recently that the Chinese started calling it “the Great Wall”, mostly for tourism purposes.  Historically, they called it many things, including “the Long Wall”.

    The wall’s purpose is more offensive than defensive.  It kinda says “this is a boundary to our land”, just like Israel’s Palestinian wall, the Berlin wall, and Trump’s Mexico wall.  Yes, it says “keep out” as well, but as Genghis Khan apocryphally said, “the strength of walls depends on the courage of those who guard them.”

    You cannot see the Great Wall from the moon.  Yes, Neil Armstrong thought he did, but it turns out he was actually observing a cloud formation.

Patricians and Emperors - Ian Hughes

   2015; 240 pages (but it felt much longer).  Full Title: Patricians and Emperors: The Last Rulers of the Western Roman Empire.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : History; Non-Fiction; Rome.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

    Why should I read Ian Hughes’s book, Patricians and Emperors: The Last Rulers of the Western Roman Empire?  I know all about that subject, since I’m a history lover.  For instance, I know that the Empire ended in 476 AD, after a horde of barbarians crossed the Alps, swarmed down the Italian peninsula, and sacked Rome.  Right now, I can’t recall who their leader was, but it was the second time that Rome was torched.

    There was almost a third time, when Attila and his Huns invaded Italy, but some Pope, one of the Leos, I believe, went out and chatted with Attila, convincing him that God would smite him dead if he stepped foot into Rome.

    Some guy named Edward Gibbon wrote a 4,000-page tome called The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire which discussed the causes of its demise.  I think he concluded that there were too many illegal immigrants camped out in Roman territory, and they ganged up together into that army that sacked Rome in 476.  After that, there were no more emperors.  I don’t know the names of any of the Emperors after Constantine, but they were obviously all a bunch of losers.  So there’s no need for me to read this book; I already know all about the subject.

    Except that almost all the ‘facts’ listed above are false, and reading about those who occupied the throne in the last half of the 5^th Century AD, and the challenges they faced, may give us insight into how the mightiest kingdom ever can be swept away.

What’s To Like...

    As the full title: Patricians and Emperors: The Last Rulers of the Western Roman Empire implies, this book has two overarching themes: a.) the various factors that led to the downfall of the western half of the Roman Empire, and, b.) the chronicling of those men with the ill-fortune to become the emperors thereof.  The book is well-researched; Ian Hughes gives the available details, which are sometimes very scant, for each of the last nine rulers.  I’d never heard of any of these guys, so this was an enlightening read for me.

    The book is divided into four sections:

Part 1 : Prelude (395-454 AD)

Part 2 : Ricimer  (455-472 AD)

Part 3 : Dissolution  (472-476 AD)

Part 4 : The End  (476 AD and afterward)

    I liked the book’s structure.  The chapters are in chronological order, but you don’t just get a biography of the Emperor.  At each year along the way, Ian Hughes tells you what was happening elsewhere – in Gaul, in Spain, in Africa, in Illyricum (where?), in the Eastern Roman Empire, and elsewhere.  The situation everywhere was complex and dynamic.  It sucked to be the Emperor in those days.  Want proof?  Consider these statistics:

    Ricimer:  Roman military leader for 11 years.  Died of natural causes.

    Euric: Ruler of the Goths for 18 years.  Died of old age.

    Gaiseric:  Ruler of the Vandals for 49 years.  Died of old age.

    Petronius Maximus:  Roman Emperor.  Ruled 2 months.  Killed, dismembered, and his body pieces tossed into the Tiber river.

    Marjorian:  Roman Emperor.  Ruled 4+ years, then beheaded.

    Anthemius:  Roman Emperor.  Ruled 5+ years, then beheaded.

    Julius Nepos:  Roman Emperor.  Ruled 14 months, then murdered.

    There are a bunch of maps throughout the book, which show how the borders of both the Empire and the various barbarian territories changed from one Emperor’s reign to the next.  Ian Hughes's point is salient – the Western Empire was steadily shrinking.  And as their territories broke away, Rome lost three vital commodities: conscripts for its legions, tax revenues to pay for its armies, and food to feed its citizens.

    Those three alone were enough to doom the Empire, but there were additional factors, such as a Roman Senate that cared only about its own personal wealth and safety, an unhelpful Eastern Roman Empire, and two barbarian leaders (Gaiseric of the Vandals and Euric of the Goths) who could outwit any Roman leader at both diplomacy and warfare.

    I was particularly intrigued by the Vandals conquering Africa, and its capital, Carthage, the home of this blog’s nom de plume, Hamilcar Barca.  Perhaps more than any other factor, this loss doomed Rome; she depended on the grain shipments from there to feed the entire Italian peninsula.  600 years earlier, Hannibal Barca was defeated by Rome, and Carthage utterly destroyed.  Now Carthage (albeit via the Vandals occupying it) is the catalyst for Rome’s ultimate destruction.  Karma is a b*tch. 

Kewlest New Word…

Bacaudic  (adj.)  :  relating to groups of peasant insurgents in the latter days of the Roman Empire.

Others : Concomitant (adj.; with its kewl pronunciation); Apotheosis (n.)

Excerpts...

    In 481 Strabo launched an attack on Constantinople, and when this failed he attempted to cross the sea to Bithynia, a plan which also failed.  He fell back and regrouped his forces before attacking Greece, during the course of which he was killed in a bizarre accident, falling off his horse onto a spear.  (loc. 5307; yeah, like I really believe this was an accident.)

    The application of ethnic labels such as ‘Goth’, ‘Vandal’, or even ‘Frank’ hides the fact that settled barbarian tribes were actually composed of many different people from a wide variety of origins, including men from other tribes, runaway slaves, Roman peasants, and even more affluent Romans who believed they stood a far better chance of improving their status serving newly-landed barbarians rather than an imperial court that was remote and seemingly not interested in affairs outside Italy.  In these circumstances, with the growth of ‘barbarian identities’ incorporating even previously Roman citizens, it is obvious that the Empire was doomed.  (loc. 5743)

Kindle Details...

    Patricians and Emperors sells for $12.99 at Amazon, although I picked it up when it was temporarily discounted.  Ian Hughes offers five other e-books, all biographies, and all about Roman notables that you’ve probably never heard of.  These are in the $6.29-$14.38 range.

The Emperor Zeno died, probably of either dysentery or epilepsy – although the legend survived that he was instead buried alive and his wife refused to allow anyone to open the sarcophagus.  (loc. 5371)

    The quibbles are negligible.  The footnotes work well, but are used mostly to list the sources Ian Hughes is citing, so I skipped them.  The text is written in “English”, not “American”, so you have connexions with neighbours, meagre programmes, and might annexe a harbour.

    Ian Hughes writes in a “professorial” style, not “folksy” like, say, Sarah Vowell.  I was okay with that because I love reading about history, and the more ancient, the better.  But if you’re not already fascinated by the fall of the Roman Empire, this book's style won't pique your interest.

    Finally, for me this was a slow read, despite being listed as only 240 pages long.  There are a slew of historical figures to meet and greet, but except for the ones cited already, I didn’t try to keep track of who’s who, just what was occurring, where, and why.

    But I pick at nits.  I found Patricians and Emperors to be a fascinating book about a memorable time in history, and I didn’t mind the slowness because I was thoroughly enjoying myself learning about people and events that were mostly new to me.  So if you’re a fellow history-buff, by all means, pick this book up.

    9 Stars.  “Professorial” does not necessarily mean “dry”.  I laughed at one point, near the end, where Ian Hughes lists no less than 210 different reasons cited by other historians as to why the Roman Empire fell.  Among them are: asceticism, backwardness in science, bastardization, communism, excessive freedom, female emancipation, gout, prostitution, and, last but not least, useless eaters.  Incredible.