Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

By Alfred Lansing

If there is a sub-genre of literature that I enjoy almost as much as zombie literature it's anything that has to do with polar exploration. And while I do enjoy a good novel on the subject (i.e. The Terror by Dan Simmons), absolutely nothing compares to the real life dramas that unfolded on the ice at either end of our planet at the tail end of the great age of exploration. I have devoured more than my fair share of non-fiction books on the subjects of Franklin, Scott and Admunsen. Pages filled with endless winters, frostbite and blubber. Stories that burble with the constant threat of hunger, exposure and death. Each of ten rife with tragedy, perseverance and thankless heroism. And for what? Usually nothing more than the whim of an adventurer and the glory of the day. Like the French, Spanish and British captains of the early days of North American exploration, there are so many characters in the great age of polar exploration. The recklessness of Greeley, they mystery of Franklin, the steely determination of Admunsen, the tragedy of Scott and the absolute true grit of Ernest Shackleton, the man whose expedition spent two years on the Antarctic ice and lived to tell the tale.

For those who are unfamiliar with Ernest Shackleton, he was a  British explorer whose 1915 expedition is famous for its almost interminable time floating on Antarctic pack ice. Shackleton and his team had set out to become the first to cross the Antarctic continent on foot but they never even made landfall as their ship, the Endurance, become frozen fast into the thick pack ice that forms on the Weddell Sea. Over the course of the winter they spent on the ice, the pressure eventually crushed and sank the ship, leaving the entire expedition exposed on the ice and drifting with the pack.

Through the gutsy leadership of Shackleton and the diligent measurements made by Frank Worsley, the captain of the Endurance, the entire expedition and crew of the ship were able to survive the ice and a harrowing sea journey to the nearby Elephant Island (off the end of the Palmer Peninsula). From their Shackleton and Worsley outfitted one of their three small skiffs, the James Caird, for an even more harrowing journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island, across the Drake Passage, a body of water known as the most dangerous on the planet.

In these latitudes, as nowhere else on Earth, the sea girdles the globe, uninterrupted by any mass of land. Here, since the beginning of time, the winds have mercilessly driven the seas clockwise around the Earth to return again to their birthplace where they reinforce themselves or one another.

And what is quite possibly the most remarkable thing about the Shackleton expedition is not the year they spent on the ice or their miraculous dash across the Drake Passage or even their impromptu crossing of South Georgia Island in order to reach the whaling station on Stromness Bay (a feat that was not repeated until 1954) but rather the fact that not a single member of the expedition lost their life. Of all the hands that left London in 1914, every one of them returned. Very few successful expeditions to the polar regions returned without casualties. It is a testament to the leadership of Ernest Shackleton that in the face of disaster, he was able to maintain order and persevere.

And it is Shackleton's leadership that is the focal point of Alfred Lansing's classic account of this remarkable expedition, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. Taken from the astonishing amount of primary source materials available to Lansing (i.e. the personal diaries of virtually all the men on the expedition) and given the exceptional quality of these sources, Lansing paints a picture of a dichotomous leader. Shackleton seems reckless to the point of disinterested in the planning stages of the expedition, making personnel choices based on anemic interviews and hunches. However, whatever selection process he used, it seemed to work because once on the ice, Shackleton's ability to lead in the face of extreme adversity was beyond reproach.

While the reader may disagree about Shackleton's motives and his heedless preparations for the voyage, it is difficult to question his ability as a leader in peril. From the outset, Shackleton had an almost innate ability to get the most from the men around him and the correct measure of tact to maintain order and cohesiveness even as the expedition was facing mortal peril. With very few exceptions, the entire team was able to maintain cordial relations throughout the almost two year ordeal without resorting to violence or mutiny. While a degree of credit should go to the men, it was Shackleton that brought them together and it was Shackleton that ensured they stayed together. One can only extrapolate from that that it was also Shackleton who ensured that all hands returned.

But what makes this book stand along side some of the other pillars of polar literature (The Arctic Grail by Pierre Berton, The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Admunsen's Race to the South Pole by Roland Huntford) is the author's ability to allow the story to work for itself rather than resort to embellishment and hyperbole. Lansing deals with his subject in the clinical, matter-of-fact way in which a good chronicler should. Certainly the events of Shackleton's two year adventure on the Antarctic ice (never once setting foot on the actual continent, I might add) are fantastical enough, certainly there is no need for a writer to garnish the story with over-wrought trimmings. It is difficult to add much to the open-boat voyage of the James Caird without resorting to mythologizing. Better writers have done so in the past, so it is a testament to Lansing that he has resisted, and it certainly must have been a temptation.

If you, like me, devour books about polar expeditions (and I especially like reading them during the sweaty Taiwanese summers, it helps me cool off just a bit) then this is a good call. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage is both well researched and accessible. It shies away from the florid language of myth-making, maintaining the tone and pace of the materials from which it was born. It is often difficult to construct a compelling narrative from the personal recollections of a dozen men, but Lansing is apt to the challenge. Indeed he has written a book that should be viewed as a pillar in the genre.  One that should be read be an would-be Antarctic explorer (even if their armchair is preferable to and slightly more comfortable than the confines of the James Caird).

Sex With Kings

Sex With Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry and Revenge

By Eleanor Herman

Sex With Kings is the sort of niche history that really gets me going. I love it when a historian bites off a little corner of history and chews on it for 200-300 pages, especially if it is a subject that has otherwise been left to rot on the side of the plate. Subjects such as the etymology and evolution of the word fuck or the history of the human fear of premature burial arouse in me a curiosity that must be satiated.

When I came across Sex With Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry and Revenge (via someone else's book blog, but I forget whose. If you read this and it was your blog let me know and I will edit in your credit) my insatiable curiosity was roused. How could a history of royal mistresses not fail to entertain as well as inform. So long as it didn't focus on the detritus one finds in the British tabloids, this should have been a fantastic read.

Well, it is.

And it isn't.

First, one must give Eleanor Herman her dues. This book is an exhaustive piece of research. One wonders whether she was able to get her hands on every single existing letter written by or about royal mistresses since the reign of Louis XIV and if it isn't the definitive work on the subject, it should be.

This book is stuffed with juicy details into the private lives of the kings and queens of Europe. From the sorcery that some mistresses performed to maintain their relations with the king to the knifing ways in which they batted off pretenders to their position to the manner in which each of them was cast aside upon the death of their royal benefactor. It is a veritable historical gossip rag full of exposes and scandals.

But it that was it, if the sole purpose of Herman's work was to satisfy the leering eyes of historical royal worshippers then this book would be pointless. Herman also examines the ways in which mistresses have shaped the history of Europe. How some wars were the direct result of the meddling and others were settled due to the soothing hand of a king's dangerous liaison. In the case of King Ludwig of Bavaria, his mistress Lola Montez directly caused the revolution of 1848 that eventually forced the King to abdicate his throne and move into exile.

But I did have some problems with this book. First and foremost is the title of the book. When I first heard about this title I was excited to read the way in which mistresses were kept and perceived in a wide variety of royal and imperial settings. Sex With Kings suffers from excessive Euro-centrism. This wouldn't have bothered me so much had it been mentioned in the title. something like Sex With Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry and Revenge in Europe, but it wasn't called that. I wanted to know about the Imperial courts in Japan and China, the harems of Middle Eastern kingdoms and the such. But it concentrated primarily on Europe (and if I'm being honest, it focused even more primarily on Western Europe, Russia and Serbia only factoring in on a couple of occasions).

I also didn't enjoy the organization of the book. I understand that this is always a problematic point for anyone writing history. Do you write your subject chronologically, thematically or do you write it as a character study. Here, Herman chooses a thematic organization with such chapter headings as Beyond the Bed - The Art of Pleasing a King and Loving Profitably - The Wages of Sin. I suppose this organization was as good as any other but I found it difficult to juggle the names of kings, queens and mistresses from chapter to chapter. When Herman refers to Madame du Pompadour for the umpteenth time in chapter 10 I was forever trying to remember whether she was the mistress of Louis XIV or Louis XV. I would have preferred a character study that was divided either by king or by mistress.

Nevertheless, Herman is forgiven any personal problems a reader might have with her work. As it stands, she has bitten off a chunk of history to call all her own. As of this moment, Eleanor Herman is the official authority on the history of royal mistresses in Europe.

Einstein: His Life and Universe

Einstein: His Life and Universe

By Walter Isaacson

I've been hearing a lot about this guy Walter Isaacson over the past year. From what I heard he is the world's pre-eminent (or at least the world's most famous) biographer. Isaacson is noted for his in-depth biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissenger. He achieved runaway success with his most recent biography of Steve Jobs (which just happened to coincide with his death.... hmmmmm....). Which such a wide array of subjects (from such a wide breath of history) I figured I needed to get my hands on one of his biographies just to see what all the hullaballoo was all about.

I finally tracked down a copy of an earlier biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe and it's easy to see why Isaacson has garnered such a stellar reputation. Writing a comprehensive account of the life of one of the 20th century's brightest and most enigmatic scientific minds is no simple task and the sheer volume of primary sources (including all of Einsteins papers and correspondence as well as his wife, Else's) must have made the research for this tome Herculean in nature.

Furthermore, since Isaacson is dealing with a genius whose name is synonymous with being a genius, he is unable to hide behind his writing skills in an attempt to distract the reader from noticing that he, like virtually everyone else on the planet, doesn't particularly understand the intricacies of general relativity and unified field theory. No sir! Isaacson went out and figured this stuff out and wrote about it. Trouble is, Einstein's science as filtered through Isaacson remains as unintelligible to the average reader as it was when he scribbled his equations on the backs of old envelopes at the Patent Office in 1905.

I have read books that have presented Special and General Relativity in a far more engaging and entertaining fashion (after reading David Bodanis's book E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation I walked around for about five days explaining it to anyone who would listen.... then promptly forgot it). However, one can forgive Isaacson for his scientific opacity as it pertains to Einstein. After all it is Albert Einstein and after all again, you probably didn't pick up his biography to learn about relativity, photons, unified field theory or quantum physics. If you did, you're doing it wrong.

I imagine that you, like me, are more interested in reading about Albert Einstein the boy, the husband, the father and the unabashed pacifist as opposed to Albert Einstein the scientist. Don't get me wrong, I appreciated all the science (when I understood it) but I was more interested in reading about his relationships with his contemporaries, most notably his complicated relationship with Max Planck, his close kinship with Niels Bohr and his lifelong rivalry with the anti-Semitic (and later Nazi party member) Philipp Lenard. These are names that are familiar to most of us from high school (or university) science class but rarely get discussed as human beings.

Isaacson is an objective observer of Einstein's aloof and often chilly demeanor in reference to his own family. I was completely unaware of his (and his first wife, Mileva Maric's ) first child, Lieserl, who was taken to Maric's home country of Serbia and raised by family members. Her memory is so completely erased from Einstein's personal records that her fate is still unknown. Einstein also maintained tumultuous relationships with his two sons Hans Albert and Eduard of which Isaacson presents Albert as an ofttimes cold and uncaring father (though one may argue that it was just his way). And yet Einstein maintained a tender side that, which not often visible to his friends and family, existed for those close to him, most notably his second wife (and cousin) Else.

Isaacson also delves deep into Einstein's notion of pacifism and his flirtation with Chaim Weizmann's brand of Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s. Einstein's obsession with personal freedom and his abhorrence for political parties and the machinations of the establishment made him the perfect spokesperson for the burgeoning notion of militant pacifism that gained a certain credence during the 1920s. Though he retreated from this stance when Adolf Hitler attained power in Germany and even played a small part in the development of the atomic bomb (another fascinating portion of this book), Einstein remained astutely anti-war throughout his life and was an early proponent of a United Nations (though his vision was of a much more powerful UN with a standing army to settle international disputes. This militant pacifism, unsurprisingly, would later get him in a degree of trouble with J. Edgar Hoover during the Red Scare that followed World War II, though absolutely nothing came of that nonsense.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of this book (for me) was Einstein's relationship with God and religion. I was surprised to note that a young Einstein (not Yahoo Serious... the real young Einstein) dabbled in devout Judaism before abandoning the notion of organized religion and ascribing to a more Spinoza-esque notion of the divine. I was always under the impression that Einstein was either atheist or, at the very least, non-practising. But it turns out that he was quite the spiritual fellow and loved to wax intellectual on the nature of the divine with anyone who would listen.

There is so much more to this book. Isaacson presents a complex man and his world from literally millions of pages of reference. Isaacson discusses his relationship with Germany, Charlie Chaplin, his two wives, his parents, Robert Oppenheimer, his involvement with women, communists, socialists, Caltech, Princeton, Switzerland and Marie Curie. There is dimly no end of the layers in which Isaacson peels away.

I could go on for hours about how Walter Isaacson reclaimed, re-constructed and humanized a figure that long ago was co-opted by though who scarcely understand him or his work. It is a testament to Isaacson's well-deserved reputation as a biographer that he obliterates the lies and half-truths that we have come to accept about Albert Einstein (He never failed math in school, he did finish high school and although he spoke later than most children, he never exhibited serious developmental problems). From the rubble of such obliteration, a comprehensive (and I would add definitive) biography of science's greatest mind has been created. If you think you can stand the science, it's worth the read!

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

By John J. Mearsheimer

Administrator's Note: I'm going to bet that this will be my least popular post, ever. Not because of what I say, so much, but because this book will look so insanely dry to virtually everyone who visits this blog. It's not, but it is decidedly academic, which makes it a book of limited interest by nature. I've tried to make this entry as fun as possible. Apologies if you don't think so. So, anyway... whiteout further ado.... International relations!

Anarchy.

According to John J. Mearsheimer, the controversial international relations theorist and preeminent proponent of offensive realism, anarchy is the most misappropriated word in the English language. Aside from the abjectly idiotic manner in which the Sex Pistols bandied the term about during the first wave of punk rock and the manner in which anarchy has somehow become a catchall slogan for clueless punks (and I say this lovingly, as I am a huge fan of punk rock), anarchy does not, as most of us assume, mean a state of chaos and disorder but rather a system in which there exists no system above in which to appeal for justice.

Such is the international system.

Within nations there exists a system of laws and rules. It is a social contract in which the citizens of said nation agree upon (or, more likely, are born into and therefore have no choice but to abide). These laws and rules function as a means of controlling and tempering or relations with each other and our government. But what of the international system. What laws exist among nations? the answer, of course, is none. Anarchy. Nations exist in a state of anarchy and therefore act in a self-serving manner in order to gain as much wealth, security and power they can achieve at the expense of their rivals. This is a simple matter of survival. Kill or be killed.

This is a central theme of Mearsheimer's theory of offensive realism. Offensive realism is the theory of international relations that outlines how and why nations act the way they do. The theory was first presented, in painstaking detail I might add, in Mearsheimer's classic 2001 book on international relations, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. While it did take the world of international relations by storm, offensive realism is actually an extension of Hans Morgenthau's older theory known as classical realism, but I digress. I don't want to get to theoretical around here. Offensive realism asserts that:

A) The international system functions in a state of anarchy. (Not just the U.K)
B) All states are rational. (Yes, Even North Korea)
C) All states are concerned with survival (All states want to continue being states... especially Poland).
D) All states have some military capability. (There is some debate about the Canadian navy, but we'll let that go)
E) All states can never be 100% certain of the intentions of other states. (of course)

The end result is that all states attempt to maximize their power and influence while trying to minimize their regional rivals, thus establishing a balance of power or, in the case of America, regional hegemony. Really, when you think about it, offensive realism is simply a massive dose of common sense mixed with a heaping spoonful of duh. But kudos to Mearsheimer. Nobody thought of it prior to this book (or if they did, they certainly didn't think to write it down anywhere) and therefore Mearsheimer wins the Common sense Award for International Relations.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that great power politics is not the sexiest section of the non-fiction aisle but it does have a certain fetish appeal (much like furries), especially to a former history student and an avid fan of European diplomatic history (I didn't have a lot of girlfriends when I was younger, I'll give you a few guesses as to why). While the trend in historical study has shifted over the past fifty to sixty years from the purely political to the purely social (and I do love me some Howard Zinn), there is still need for understanding how and why states act the way they do, not only in order to understand the past, but also in attempts to predict the future course of events. Offensive realism provides that need. And it rings especially true when one thinks about the growing security concerns facing Asia.

Mearsheimer goes on to outlines why, even in the era of vast naval and air forces, land power remains the preeminent indicator of military clout and how large bodies of water deter national power projection. Therefore, even in the modern era with massive navies air forces and nuclear weapons, all power conflicts will be settled by land forces, which makes overseas assaults a virtual impossibility (and would explain why despite their status as a great power, why Great Britain never bothered to amass a formidable army. With the English Channel as a natural barrier and the U.K.'s policy of staying out of continental affair whenever possible, there simply wasn't any reason to build one). Therefore, while America may be a regional hegemon (the only Great Power in the Western Hemisphere and the world's only regional hegemon) they can never fully actualize their power in other regions and can only act as offshore balancers (in other words, America will never be a global hegemon... so all you conspiracy theorists can wipe your brows and go back to discussing the Illuminati), a role they have accepted and maintained since 1945 due to the bipolar nature of great power politics during the Cold War and beyond.

Once the totality of offensive realism is established, Mearsheimer spends the vast majority of this book defending his theory via historical evidence, specifically Great Power politics between 1792 and 1990 (From Revolutionary Era France through to the fall opt the Soviet Union). Throughout, Mearsheimer discusses the nature and fluctuation of great power politics in Europe, Northeast Asia and the Americas. He spends a great deal of time demonstrating how all the great powers during that time (France, Austria-Hungary, The United Kingdom, Prussia/Germany, Russia/The Soviet Union, America, Italy and Japan) have acted in accordance with offensive realism. Anyone that is interested in the decision making processes of the great powers throughout this era will not be disappointed. Why some conflicts remained regional (The Crimean War, The Franco-Prussian War) while other conflicts became total wars (The Napoleonic Wars, World War I, World War II, The Cold War). It is a fascinating look into the rational minds that governed these states and how they strategized.

I don't want to ruin the ending, but the latter half of the book deals with using the theory to make predictions about the future of great power politics and spends a good amount of time hypothesizing about the latent potential of China as an emerging great power and possible Asian hegemon (spoiler: as of 2001, Mearsheimer doesn't see any potential instability in the Northeast Asian theater where there currently exists three great powers: China, Russia and America but in more recent publications he has asserted that China's rise will be not be peaceful and China will make a play for regional hegemony). Mearsheimer even spills a considerable amount of ink discussing the potential destabilizing issue of Taiwan as it relates to China and america, though it is a cursory examination and he doesn't cover any new ground, really.

Anyone who is a nerd for international politics and international relations has probably already read this book. It is regarded as a classic in its field of study (along with the work of Hans Morgenthau, A.J.P. Taylor and the like). If you are a fan and haven't yet read this book, do so at your earliest possible convenience. Whether you agree with him or not, Mearsheimer is the current golden boy of his field, though not without his detractors. In recent years he has come under fire for his assertion that Israelis are the world's new Afrikaners, a statement that has shackled him with the label of Anti-Semite, so bear that in mind before you go throwing his name around at cocktail parties, would you? But that really doesn't come into play in this book and shouldn't cloud your judgment of offensive realism.

As far as books about international relations go, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics is at the top of its field. If they gave Booker Prizes for books about international relations, Mearsheimer would have won. As it stands, they don't and he'll have to content himself with simply being the most outspoken individual in his field.

Good read. I feel smarter.

Snow Crash

Snow Crash

By Neal Stephenson

Whoa boy, here we go... Some spoilers.

I was inclined to write unfavorably about this novel until, about halfway through reading it, I noticed that it was published in 1992. See, that's the thing with science fiction. The date of publication can actually sway the reader's opinion of the book convincingly. Had this book been written even five years later and I'd be writing a cynical post about all the nonsense espoused by Stephenson. As it so happens, I can't trash this book and I'll tell you why.

Snow Crash takes place in a not-too-distant future of instant gratification and hyper-sensitivity toward personal freedoms. It is a world where the Mafia is a legal enterprise, hyper-inflation has rendered America impotent, the government has become a parody of politically correct mind games while other nations and religions act as corporate entities within its borders. It all feels like a mix of Blade Runner, The Matrix and Idiocracy but without the androids, spoon-bending and Brawndo. A hopeless, soulless dystopia that provides some very dis-spiriting end results based on our current trajectories.

The reader is introduced to a cast of improbable characters: Hiro Protagonist, a katana-wielding super-hacker turned pizza delivery guy, Y.T. (short for Yours Truly) a spunky 15-year old skateboarding Kourier working for the Mafia, and Raven, a freakishly large Aleutian harpoonist turned nuclear threat bent on revenge against America for their attack on the Alaskan islands at the end of World War Two. In Snow Crash we watch as these characters and a host of others prance around reality and something called the Metaverse (a 3D computer world that is eerily similar to the internet, although far more interactive) seemingly at will. Since the police force has been rendered entirely impotent and personal freedoms are a premium and any sort of freedom can be purchased (racist? Come live in New South Africa!), there exists virtually no laws to speak of and thus the characters face very few consequences for their often violent and destructive actions.

And then there's Snow Crash. Snow Crash is at once an extremely dangerous computer virus that can actually physically harm hackers inside the Metaverse and a highly addictive drug in reality. It is the product of one Bob L. Rife who, through an elaborate plan involving an aircraft carrier, ancient Sumerian tablets and an army of Asian refugees is bent on converting America to his own brand of Pentecostal insanity. The rationale for this requires an elaborate descent into Sumerian mythology that reminded me of the Da Vinci Code in its scope. Stephenson suggests that the Sumerian language is some sort of basic operating system hardwired into the human brain. By tapping into the basic functions of the brain via the sumerian language, Rife can control the world.

Confused yet? OK, good.

So what makes this novel so good? Well it was published way back in 1992. Ah 1992! When over-sized sweaters and bike shorts ruled the fashion world. Flat-tops were all the rage and Vanilla Ice had yet to become the ironic icon of a generation and Microsoft launched Windows 3.1. Also in 1992, Delphi became the first commercial enterprise to offer Internet access to its subscribers. While this was certainly a major moment in the history of the internet, it certainly didn't mean we were all online. Not yet anyway.

So when Stephenson published Snow Crash in 1992 with its mention of the Metaverse there was an element of fantasy to the entire idea (at least there would have been from this 12th grader had I read the book then). Stephenson talks of people having homes and offices in the Metaverse and rendering avatars and requiring greater access and tighter security. All sound familiar?

(In fact, Stephenson has often been credited with coining the phrase "avatar" although he downplays this notion in the afterword of the book).

Wait, there's more. Hiro Protagonist uses two programs within the Metaverse, the Librarian and Earth. It takes very little imagination to link these ideas with our understanding of Wikipedia and Google Earth. What's more, Stephenson talks of the financial collapse of the American system and the hyper-inflation that followed. While this certainly has not happened, it is a grim reminder of issues that plague the American Government and the Federal Reserve today.

While I imagine that Stephenson had to stretch the bounds of archaeology to do so, his idea that language is a program and religion is a virus are intriguing, although far-fetched. According to Stephenson the sumerian goddess Asherah created a virus to infect humanity. The virus was stopped by Enki through some form of linguistic inoculation (the disappearance of the Sumerian language) and the need for acquired languages (thus the Tower of Babel). At times, this portion of the book reads like Chariots of the Gods and I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes in a few places.

As with any action flick, Snow Crash ends with the requisite car chase, boss fight, explosion sequence that failed to leave me with any real closure, but that's not really the point of a science fiction novel, is it. I liked Snow Crash if for no other reason than its creative impact on our current world. While parts of this novel descended into the patently absurd, there was enough real, honest-to-goodness sci-fi excellence to balance it out. As the friend that brought this book to my attention said:

"I will remember parts of this book until the day I die."

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Plague The Most Devastating Plague of All Time

The Great Mortality:

An Intimate History of the Black Plague

The Most Devastating Plague of All Time

By John Kelly

Before you read this blog post, I need to confess that I am both a nerd and a dork. I am also petty and vengeful. Trust me, it will help you understand.

I attended university in the mid-1990s. My major was history and my focus of interest was primarily nineteenth and early twentieth century European history. You know, the post-Napoleonic period, the Quadruple Alliance and the slow, painful march toward World War I. It's a fascinating period in history and perhaps my favorite. I read a lot of material on this period, even today.

I might favor nineteenth century history, but my true obsession are the Middle Ages. I have a twisted fascination with pre-modern Europe. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that medieval Europe was a superstitious, shit-covered backwater. How does a population that bathed an average of once or twice a decade go on to dominate the planet? It baffles.

Anyhow, I took any course available to me on medieval history and read voraciously on the topic. You want to talk about William the Bastard's Norman Invasion of 1066? I'm your man. You want to wax intellectual about the Carolingians and Merovingians, I can do that. If you want to discuss the implications of the longbow on the history of warfare, I'm in. And if you want to talk the Black Death of 1348-1352, prepare for a long night.

Everyone has their little pet obsessions. Civil War reenactments, Dungeons and Dragons, conspiracy theories, fruity beer... whatever. From an early age, mine has been the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century and wiped out between a third and a half of the entire population of the continent. For as long as I can remember I've devoured books on the topic. I think a lot of it began with the visual representations of the plague. The ubiquitous angel of death reaping lives with impunity across the European countryside, scythe in hand, smiling its skeletal smile of death. they were the sorts of images that any kid would find both disturbing and ultimately fascinating.

The Great Mortality by John Kelly may not be the definitive scholarly work on the topic, but it comes damned close and has the added bonus of being completely readable, unlike so much non-fiction. But I don't want to simply review this work. I want to tell a story that is relevant to my reading of this book.

Back in my third year of university I wrote a paper on the Black Death for my third year medieval history class. Unlike papers for my other classes, I actually started this paper weeks in advance and finished it days prior to the due date (with everything else, I started two days before and finished mere minutes before the start of class). My thesis was essentially that the Black Death was a major catalyst in the emerging enlightenment in Europe. The depopulation of the continent directly caused many of the factors that would bring about events such as the Reformation, the re-discovery of America and the revolutions that would sweep Europe into the modern age.

I'm not going to rehash all my points but essentially I argued that demographics and the collective conscience of Europe fundamentally shifted in response to the sheer magnitude of death that occurred in such a short time (and would periodically reoccur over the next three centuries). The manner in which people died, with such indignation and indiscrimination rattled the faith of many Christians (and Muslims), sparking the doubt that would culminate with the 95 theses and the rise of Protestantism. The helplessness of the medical profession at the time spurned doctors into action over the proceeding centuries, forcing them out of the barber shops and into the laboratories in order to get on with the discovery of the scientific method. And the depopulation of the continent put manual labor at a premium, so much so that many serfs and vassals were able to demand more for their services, giving the under-privileged a lifestyle previously unknown to them and a tantalizing taste of a better life. One worth fighting for. Europe would never be its same pastoral self again.

It was a damned good paper and I was careful to back up my claims factually as best I could given that I was suggesting a fairly controversial idea.

On the day in which the papers were handed back the TA stood at the front of the room and derided the entire lecture hall full of students about the poor quality of the papers. He noted that only a handful of papers were of any substance and most were not acceptable from university level history students. If any of us had views toward post-graduate work, we'd best learn how to write a paper. Naturally, I didn't think he was talking about me. I had written the best damned paper I had ever written. Surely I was one of the handful with substance.

The TA continued: "One paper in particular tried to assert that the Black Death was the cause of the Enlightenment."

The class let out a muffled giggle.

My heart crept into my throat. I'm not sure if any noticed, but I turned seven shades of red, then green... then white. I didn't hear anything else the TA said. It was like the air of my entire university career had been let out of me. I recall my paper landing in my lap and noting the 52% scrawled on the top. I'm sure there were comments, but I don't recall reading them. I was simply devastated.

(Not to worry. I finished my degree and I still maintain my love for medieval history and the Black Death in particular)

Flash forward to this past week. Kelly deftly chronicles the history of Y. Pestis from its birth as a marmot disease on the central Eurasian steppe, it's journey west to the Crimea then into Europe via Genoese merchant vessels. I especially enjoyed the way in which Kelly personified the plague as an invading army akin to the Mongols who had ravaged their way through to Hungary a century prior and whose empire facilitated the spread of the disease. But something struck me about the book as I made my way through it. I couldn't help but notice that John Kelly skirted dangerously close to the same points that got me in so much trouble years ago.

In fact, by the time Kelly reached his conclusions, he was actively postulating all of the points that had been my scholastic de-pantsing and I was reading with my mouth agape. While he stopped just short of actually typing the words: "The Black Death was a major catalyst in the impending European Enlightenment," he may as well have wrote them. He linked the Black Death to the rise of the scientific method, the demand for the printing press, the end of serfdom, the rise of the middle class and the disillusionment with the Christian (soon to be Catholic) church.

This is exactly what I was saying, T.A. Guy! See that!?!? John Kelly wrote a book about it. A good one, too! And where are you now, T.A. Guy? You are probably a stuffy, know-it-all professor in some dusty office at the University of Who Cares surrounded by your antiquated medieval tomes dismissing the Black Death as a historical speed bump. You were wrong, T.A. Guy. I was onto something. Something big (in the world of medieval history, of course). Something important. Something ground-breaking.

A decade and a half later, I feel so very vindicated.

Fuck you, T.A. Guy.

(Great book. Read it.)

The Face of Battle

The Face of Battle

By John Keegan

John Keegan is essentially the alpha and omega of military history between the 14th and 20th century and virtually the god of all writing concerning World War I (well, at least in my eyes) so I was excited to get into this book. I know how pathetic that sounds. I was excited to get into a book about military history. What can I say, I'm a nerd for this stuff.

The Face of Battle is an in depth look at three defining battles in the history of warfare (and more specifically, British warfare): Agincourt, Waterloo and Somme. Rather than sticking to the tried and true historical tradition of recounting the battle, movements and tactics, Keegan attempts to delve into the humanity of the chaos. He spends a lot of time on the battlefield attempting to give the reader a sense of the emotions and psychology of soldiers and officers in the field as well as the aftermath and clearing of the battle field in the days following. A real left turn in terms of traditional military history, especially in 1976 when this book was first published.

The Face of Battle is an up and down affair. Chapter One deals with a lot of historiography which, even for the most avid devotees of history, can be tedious reading. Historiography is a very important study, but one that attracts the bare minimum of fans, even among history nerds so it took me a while to trudge through this morass. But once Keegan settles into the three battles proper it begins to roll forward with a momentum that rarely lets up. This momentum is primarily due to the increased amount of source material available to Keegan as he makes his was from Agincourt (1415), tthrough Waterloo (1815).

Agincourt is particularly worthy of note in that King Henry's withered and starving army could defeat the mammoth (for the time) French juggernaut. I read an exceptional piece of historical fiction called Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell that covers a lot of the salient points of this battle. It was interesting to see how closely the Cornwell's fiction mirrors historical accuracy. And while Keegan's treatment of Waterloo is even more detailed, my distaste for all things Napoleonic had me nodding in and out of interest. But the chapter on the Battle of the Somme (1916) is Keegan at his absolute finest.

I've always been a World War I buff and John Keegan is the best writer on the subject, bar none. So it was no surprise that the chapter devoted to Britain's failed Battle of the Somme was the highlight of the entire book. It is a real treat to listen to Keegan dissect the battle and its implications on the the soldiers, the officers and the psyche of a nation. You can practically smell the trenches, hear the continuous ballast of the week long bombardment, feel the crippling anxiety of the soldiers about to go "over the top" and the abject horror of No Man's Land. Never mind the nightmares experienced by the soldiers that survived and the imagined terrors of those who did not.

In the end, the Somme cost Britain 60,000 souls (21,000 in the first hour of the battle). The mind boggles at the catastrophic (and senseless) loss of life. Keegan handles the subject to deftly. For me the entire book culminated in a passage as sublime (if a little melodramatic) as any that appears in print concerning the butchery of World War I. With apologies to Paul Fussell, this is Great War history at its pinnacle. Allow me to quote it here, word for word. It's worth it:

Accounts of the Somme produce in readers and audiences much the same range of emotions as do descriptions of the running of Auschwitz - guilty fascination, incredulity, horror, disgust, pity and anger - and not only from the pacific and tender-hearted; not only from the military historian, on whom, as he recounts the extinction of this brave effort or that, falls an awful lethary, his typewriter keys tapping leadenly on the paper to drive the lines of print, like the waves of a Kitchener battalion failing to take its objective, more and more slowly towards the foot of the page; but also from professional soldiers. Angeris the response which the story of the Somme most commonly evokes among professionals. Why did the commanders not do something about it? Why did they let the attack go on? Why did they not stop one battalion following in the wake of another to join it in death?

If only I had the ability to write half as well as that about history. I'd be teaching it at a post-secondary institution somewhere rather than blogging my opinions about Keegan's work into the electronic void.

Anyone with a remote interest in military history should read this book, if they have not already. It goes a long way toward understanding the way pitched battles work and what it might be like to be involved in one. Probably the closest I'll ever get to an engaged battle and, judging by Keegan's words, that's close enough.