Book Review - A History of the World in 6 Glasses

A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think I would have enjoyed this book much more if I didn't already have some knowledge of much of the history it relates. This book is what I call a pop history. And I don't use this term derogatorily; I love pop history. Pop history makes history palatable. Interesting. Like gossip. It is usually lighter on deeper themes and academic prowess but it's readable and entertaining, and usually teaches me a little something. Sometimes I get interested enough in a topic or a person that I look in the bibliography for dour historical tomes to learn more.

But this pop history covers ground I've already covered in the dour historical tomes, so it was less a-ha! and more, oh, yeah, that.

So, really, it's probably a five star book if you don't already know the greatest hits of ancient history (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Rome), early modern European history (Enlightenment), Chinese history (mostly as it relates to Britain and the opium wars), and American imperialism/isolation/path-to-superpower.

I learned about bappir, "beer bread" (unleavened bread containing the ingredients kept in government store houses and crumbled into the brewers vat) created just so beer ingredients could be stored for longer periods of time without rotting.

I learned that ancient depictions of beer drinking show one large vessel and many people around it with straws. Communal. Standage interpolates that the tradition of "clinking of glasses symbolically reunites the glasses into a single vessel of shared liquid" is a nod to the ancient practice of drinking out of the same bowl.

Alcoholic beverages are intrinsically linked to climate; beer where grains grow, wine where grapes grow, rum where sugar grows. What is so abundant that we don't need to eat it all to survive so we can ferment some of it to get drunk?

Beer gets its reputation as barbaric because wine was the drink of the Roman empire because grapes grow in the Mediterranean climate and grains mostly grew in the north, which had to be conquered and "civilized" by Rome. When Rome fell, beer should have taken over again, as those northern Visigoths and Vandals came from the barbaric beer-drinking north to sack the empire, but Visigoths and Vandals liked wine, too, and passed laws making destroying vineyards illegal.

Wine is also central to Christianity, which, along with its connection to the Roman empire, contributes to its association with civilized humanity.

And why don't Muslims drink wine? Muhammed apparently preached abstention from alcohol because it clouds the mind (though he was known to enjoy lightly fermented date wine), but it could also be because the Islamic culture was trying to erase the Roman culture and Islam was trying to erase Christianity; erasing wine kills many birds with one stone.

And what is distilling? It makes fermented alcohol more-so. The boiling point of alcohol is lower than the boiling point of water, so the vapor collected in the distilling process produces a liquid with a much higher alcohol content than fermented beverages. So distilled wine is brandy. Distilled beer is whiskey.

And sugar and slaves. The Greek and Roman empire enslaved much of its population, but since the empire's fall, slavery in Europe was not as common. The spread of Christianity, which forbids the enslavement of one Christian by another Christian, contributed to the decrease of slavery. But then, in the race for empire and control of sugar, labor was needed. To get labor AND protect profit margin, slaves were needed. So theologians declared that Black Africans were not fully human, therefore they could not be converted to Christianity, therefore they could be enslaved.

Rum is distilled from the left-overs of the sugar trade. The stuff they were throwing away; it was made out of trash and didn't rot, so it kept easily on ships and in hot weather. Therefore, it became the drink of choice in the new world. It gets its name from the the southern England slang word "Rumbullion," meaning a brawl or violent commotion. Admiral Edward Vernon, trying to make the rum supply last longer, mixed it with water and lime and sugar; a primitive cocktail. This drink came to be called "grog" (Vernon's nickname was Old Grogram) and it also prevented scurvy, a bonus.

Did you know the Molasses Act caused the American Revolution? Well, maybe not, but Standage makes a convincing case. Molasses, the byproduct of the sugar industry which is distilled into rum, came mostly from the French colonies in the Caribbean. The British crown passed a law that their colonies in the Americas could only buy molasses from British islands. But the British sugar islands did not produce nearly enough molasses to supply the rum needs of the British colonies in the Americas. So the colonists ignored the law and the crown didn't enforce it. "Henceforth," Standage writes, "the colonists felt entitled to defy other laws that imposed seemingly unreasonable duties on items shipped to and from the colonies. As a result, the widespread defiance of the Molasses Act was an early step along the road to American independence." John Adams wrote at the time, "I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence. Many great events have proceeded from much smaller causes."

And coffee and the Enlightenment. For many years I have taught my history students that throughout much of history, water wasn't safe to drink, so fermented beverages were consumed instead. Coffee and tea, bringing water to a boiling point before ingesting it, makes water safe, too. Once these beverages were popularized of course people got new ideas; they weren't constantly besotted. They were hopped up on caffeine. Ergo, coffee caused the Enlightenment. Standage's chapters on coffee agree with my thesis. The coffee houses of 17th century London were the driving force of not only science and philosophy, but also business and commerce. "The period of rapid innovation in public and private finance, with the floating of joint stock companies, the buying and selling of shares, the development of insurance schemes, and the public financing of government debt, all of which culminated in London's eventual displacement of Amsterdam as the world's financial center, is known today as the Financial Revolution. The need for colonial wars made it necessary, and the fertile intellectual environment and speculative spirit of the coffeehouses made it possible." Standage goes further to interpolate that Seattle is home of Starbucks AND Microsoft...coffee, innovation, networking--just like 17th century London.

Tea. Spread through the Asian continent along with Buddhism (Taoist monks found it an invaluable aid to meditation, enhancing concentration and banishing fatigue). Then became an integral part of Chinese culture. Then adopted by Britain and edited into the height of their culture.

It also made people healthier in England. It made water safer. It had antibacterial antioxidants that passed into breastmilk and helped to reduce infant mortality. Tea helped keep people alive so they could live tightly packed in the cities and run the machines of the Industrial Revolution. It made Wedgewood and Twining household names. And it caused some horrific behavior in the colonies, government-sanctioned illegal drug smuggling, the Opium Wars. All for tea. And profit.

Standage's final beverage is Coca-Cola, which started as a snake oil cure and through serendipity and luck and war became a symbol not only of globalization but of the United States' power and prowess in driving the culture and economics of the entire world. It traveled with the military in two world wars (and was sanctioned and financially supported by the US government; the military built bottling plants for Coca-Cola AND allowed them a pass on sugar rations, all because Coke helped keep morale high).

My favorite anecdote, one I'd never heard before, was Coke as a Cold War weapon;
"Perhaps the most unlikely convert to Coca-Cola was General Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, the Soviet Union's greatest military leader, who successfully defended Russia from German attack and later led his forces into Berlin to end the war in Europe. Zhukov was one of the few people who dared to disagree with Joseph Stalin, the brutal Soviet leader, who could not do away with Zhukov because of his popularity and heroic stature. During post-war negotiations over the division of Germany, Zhukov was introduced to Coca-Cola by Eisenhower and took a strong liking to the drink. But he was reluctant to be seen enjoying something so closely identified with American values, particularly as the rivalry between the two superpowers intensified. So Zhukov made an unusual request: Was it possible to make Coca-Cola without coloring, so that it resembled vodka, the traditional Russian drink? His request was passed to the Coca-Cola Company, which duly obliged and, with the endorsement of President Harry Truman, devised a colorless version. It was shipped to Zhukov in special cylindrical bottles, sealed with a white cap and labeled with a red Soviet star."

Pepsi, the also-ran, tried to disrupt Coca-Cola's world-wide dominance, mostly by attempting to capitalize in markets where Coke was hated because it was so categorically American ("When we think of Communists, we think of the Iron Curtain. When they think of democracy, they think of Coca-Cola," read a placard at the 1948 Coca-Cola Company annual meeting). In places where America began to be hated (France, the Middle East, the Soviet Union) Pepsi tried to move in. In 1959, Nixon and Kruschev were photographed drinking Pepsi at a Moscow trade-fair of American products. Nixon, after losing the election for the governor of California, joined Pepsi's law firm and became Pepsi's ambassador overseas. Pepsi, not tainted by anti-communist propaganda, started to move into those markets, led by Nixon, the creator of much anti-communist propaganda. Is this irony?

Standage closes with an epilogue predicting that water will be the beverage driving history and politics in the 21st century. Water. Without which none of these other beverages could exist. Full circle.





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Book Review: Katharine Graham - A Personal History

A Personal History by Katharine Graham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I started this book and then put it down for two months while I re-read the Harry Potter books for fun. Kay Graham stared up at me from my nightstand every night, her expression a combination of imperiousness, judgment, and cajoling.

When I finally picked her back up again and read the part where she was bedridden with tuberculosis, I understood her annoyance with me. Her daughter, Lally, had ripped a mystery out of her hand and given her Proust. "She was right," writes Graham. "I shouldn't waste this valuable time reading trash or light, amusing books. All I needed was her gentle push and I finished all seven volumes."

And that kind of summarizes Katharine Graham. Titan of the industry yet continuously unsure of herself. Looking for advice in the most unlikely of places and allowing herself to be led along by others who she perceives smarter. Or more experienced. Or more male.

The book is basically divided into three sections of Graham's life; her childhood and young adulthood, under the thumb of her distant but spottily brilliant parents, her marriage, under the thumb of her spottily brilliant but borderline abusive husband Phil, and her season of growth into the publishing icon she became after Phil's death.

The first section bored me. And annoyed me, frankly. She dropped names and described in tedious detail how she flitted about without a plan, cushioned by her money. Oooh, look, I wandered over to Chicago and got a job then I wandered out to California and got a job and then I wandered back to Washington and got a job!

I am, of course, being too hard on her. How can I possibly understand the times she was living in and the life she was reared to live? A life that she eventually bucked completely while wringing her hands the whole time wondering if she had done the right thing.

She was reared to revere newspapers; her father, in a letter to Graham and her husband Phil, wrote this about newspapers; "The citizens of a free country have to depend on a free press for the information necessary to the intelligent discharge of their duties of citizenship. That is why the Constitution gives newspapers express protection from Government interference...It is also possible for the public interest to be defeated by the way a newspaper is conducted since the principal restraint upon a newspaper owner is self-restraint."

Phil Graham didn't quite listen to this wisdom; he used his position as publisher not to create strong journalism but more to be a kingmaker. He wined and dined (well, Kay wined and dined at Phil's direction) and threw around his influence, and the paper's influence, in ways that are now not considered kosher. Kay Graham admits this, often dismissing it with what seems like flippancy, with various phrases that basically say 'it seems suspect now but back then it was just what one did.'

Except she's right. It was what one did. The Grahams donated to many politicians (giving a brief nod to journalistic ethics by making sure that Kay wrote the check, not Phil) and Phil was instrumental in getting presidents elected and peopling presidential cabinets.

So Kay Graham ran about in the upper echelons, not only of wealth, but of political power. While Phil was alive, despite her part-ownership fo the paper, she was only a housewife and hostess, consistently ridiculed and belittled by Phil, but still hearing the stories and listening to the ideas of those around her.

And those around her were mostly men. Chauvinistic men.

She doesn't seem bitter about the chauvinism, though. To her, the men, like her, were a product of her time.

Take this story she heard about JFK, relayed to her by Clayton Fritchey (whoever that is; Graham is often dropping names like we should know who these people are; this book really needs a character list with short bios, like a crappy Agatha Christie mystery that is less worth reading than Proust)

"About three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated, Clayton saw the president in New York, at a time when Adlai [Stevenson] was the ambassador to the United Nations and Clayton was his deputy. The three men were together at a party, and Clayton was helping himself to a drink on the balcony overlooking Central Park when the president came up behind him and said, 'We haven't had a chance to talk much tonight, but we've got a good subject in common,' meaning Adlai. The president then said he didn't understand the hold Adlai had over women, commenting on how much Jackie liked and admired him and confessing that he himself didn't have the ease with women Adlai had. 'What do you suppose it is?' he asked, adding, 'Look, I may not be the best-looking guy out there, but, for God's sake, Adlai's half bald, he's got a paunch, he wears his clothes in a dumpy kind of way. What's he got that I haven't got?' Clayton's response hit on what I think women saw in Adlai and what they shied away from in other men of that era. 'Mr. President, I'm happy to say that for once you have asked me a question I am prepared to answer truthfully and accurately. While you both love women, Adlai also likes them, and women know the difference. They all respond to a kind of message that comes across from him when he talks to them. He conveys the idea that they are intelligent and worth listening to. He cares about what they're saying and what they've done, and that's really very fetching.' The president's response was: 'Well, I don't say you're wrong, but I'm not sure I can go to those lengths.'"

Don't just love women. Like them.

After Phil's suicide, Kay Graham's life was a battle for that status among the men surrounding her. Like me. Respect me. Don't just love me.

She is an unlikely feminist. She spent much of her life tethered to her parents, then to Phil Graham, who is revered as a genius but, despite my certainty that Kay Graham softened her portrayal of him, I think Phil Graham was an entitled punkass. Take this moment;

"He [Phil] began his remarks by describing the company, saying, 'I have been responsible for its affairs for 17 years--and for the last 15 years, since it became a corporation in 1948, I have been controlling owner of its voting shares.' There was no mention of my father or how this came to be or the existence of me as minority owner, of course."

Of course. As she expected. Because why would he? And why would she expect it?

But in this same blurb Graham goes on to say, "He ended his remarks with some philosophical thoughts, including a phrase about journalism being the first rough draft of history, which is quoted to this day: 'I am insatiably curious about the state of the world. I am constantly intrigued by information of topicality. I revel in the recitation of the daily and weekly grist of journalism. Much of it, of course, is pure chaff. Much of our discussions of how to do it better consist of tedium and detail. But no one yet has been able to produce wheat without chaff. And not even such garrulous romantics as Fidel Castro or such transcendent spirits as Abraham Lincoln can produce a history which does not in large part rest on a foundation of tedium and detail--and even sheer drudgery. So let us today drudge on about our inescapably impossible task of providing every week a first rough draft of a history that will never be completed about a world we can never really understand...'"

So, yeah, Phil was kind of wise sometimes. But he was still an entitled punkass. His affair with Robin Webb, his mental illness and his refusal of drugs or effective treatment, his expectation that Kay would be waiting for him when he returned from the brink (she was)...Punk. Ass.

And Kay Graham kind of accepts this as the way it is and the way it is supposed to be. Until she doesn't.

"I adopted the assumption of many of my generation that women were intellectually inferior to men, that we were not capable of governing, leading, managing anything but our homes and our children. Once married, we were confined to running houses, providing a smooth atmosphere, dealing with children, supporting our husbands. Pretty soon this kind of thinking--indeed, this kind of life--took its toll: most of us became somehow inferior...When I first went to work, I was still handicapped with the old assumptions and was operating as though they were written in stone...I truly felt like Samuel Johnson's description of a woman minister--'a woman preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.'"

Graham wakes up to feminism slowly. "As a manager, I was aware of the issues but had no clear idea how to lean on male-chauvinist managers to make changes. Women had accepted the dubious assumptions and myths about themselves for much too long. And men had be be helped to break out of the assumptions of which they, too, were victims."

(see, even in her feminism, she is gentle with her men-folk)

"I worked hard to educate the men around me, to raise their consciousness, even as I myself was in the early stages of consciousness-raising," she says, even as she relates a time when she almost accepted an invitation to a Gridiron dinner while the club was still not allowing female members. "My first reaction was that after all these years of being on the outside I was excited to be invited, and I was all set to accept when I received a letter signed by many of the women on the editorial side of the paper and from other papers, asking me not to go until the club accepted a woman as a member. But there was no opening at the club at this time, and the gesture of an invitation seemed to me a beginning. Besides which, I really wanted to go. However, I asked several of these women to dinner at my house to discuss the issue...They made many valid arguments but the clincher belonged to Sally Quinn, who said, 'If a country club excluded you for being a Jew but said they'd like to have you come for dinner, would you go?' That cemented my decision to regret the invitation, which I did."

The last third of the book focuses on the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and the pressman strike. Graham's retelling can be spotty, expecting the reader to know some of the details, but her side of the story provides insight to the story as a whole; her first draft of history recalled 30 years later.

"I believe Watergate was an unprecedented effort to subvert the political process. It was a pervasive, indiscriminate use of power and authority from an administration with a passion for secrecy and deception and an astounding lack of regard for the normal constraints of democratic politics. To my mind, the whole thing was a very real perversion of the democratic system...As I said in a speech at the time, 'It was a conspiracy not of greed but of arrogance and fear by men who came to equate their own political well-being with the nation's very survival and security.' ... I have often been credited with courage for backing our editors in Watergate. The truth is that I never felt there was much choice. Courage applies when one has a choice. With Watergate, there was never one major decisive moment when I, or anyone, could have suggested that we stop reporting the story. Watergate unfolded gradually. By the time the story had grown to the point where the size of it dawned on us, we had already waded deeply into its stream. Once I found myself in the deepest water in the middle of the current, there was no going back."

Kay Graham is an unlikely hero but what makes her a hero is she keeps learning. After the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, defining moments that cemented Kay Graham's place as an icon, she was still insecure. She glommed onto Warren Buffet as a mentee, fondly recalling his advice "'Just remember: We're not going to teach you how to keep your knees from knocking. All we're going to do is teach you to talk while your knees knock.'"

And I feel like this biography is just that. It is frank, it is self-deprecating, it belittles the triumphs and highlights the failures. It's just Kay Graham, talking while her knees knock.

"Why dare write a book? What makes any of us think that someone else would be interested in stories from our own past? I recognize the inherent danger of being self-serving and have tried to retain as much detachment as possible, but I wanted to tell what happened just as I saw it. And in the process, I hoped to arrive at some understanding of how people are formed by the way the grow up and further molded by the way they spend their days."

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Book Review: Death in Ecstasy

Death In Ecstasy by Ngaio Marsh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

**note: I'm reading through all the Alleyn mysteries in order**

Perhaps the greatest thing about this book was the cover art of the edition I read; the Jove edition of 1983, which works really hard to portray the gratuitous sex and occult that is only hinted at. Heroin, which does play a large role, is not depicted. Interesting.

I do enjoy Marsh and her characterizations; even when she's not placing her mysteries in a theater filled with actors, she places theatrical people in the plots. Exaggerations of types. Like the guard who "seems to speak in capitals." And Alleyn, in another character's words, has "British Manufacture stamped some place where it won't wear off. All this quiet deprecation--it's directly from a sure-fireBritish best-seller." And Mr. Ogden, who is "so like an American as to be quite fabulous." Highly entertaining.

Further description of Mr. Ogden; "He was a type that is featured heavily in transatlantic publicity, tall, rather fat and inclined to be flabby, but almost incredibly clean, as though he used all the deodorants, mouth washes, soaps and lotions recommended by his prototype periodicals."

"Oh yeah? Is that so?" continued Ogden; and then, for all the world as if he was an anthology of Quaint American Sayings, he completed the trilogy by adding in a soft undertone: "Sez you?"

Then there's Miss Wade, who the detective keeps forgetting to consider, but is finally interviewed; "Before that I had not been aware of her presence in Father Garnette's rooms. She had arrived before I did and had gone through the hall, no doubt. I left my overshoes outside," added Miss Wade with magnificent irrelevancy.

And Inspector Fox, who "chose the only small chair in the room and made it look foolish."

Then there's the moment when Marsh acknowledges she's writing a mystery of a type and she is walking in some pretty big footsteps. Alleyn ask Nigel, his Watson, who is pick for the murderer is after the initial interviews; "It depends on the author. If it's Agatha Christie, Miss Wade's occulted guilt drips from every pate. Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter would plump for Pringle, I fancy. Inspector French would go for Ogden."

I have said this with Marsh before; the mystery is secondary for me. I just like wandering around in the worlds she creates.



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Book Review: Nursing Home Murder

The Nursing Home Murder by Ngaio Marsh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So a nursing home in this era of British history is not a place where old folks live out their days, so this mystery did not feature a wheelchair chase through a hall-way or a weapon concealed in a walker.

Instead, a nursing home is a private hospital. And the conceit of this mystery is that an important politician dies after surgery, having been poisoned.

Marsh is still trying to do more than a cozy, here, with Bolsheviks who want the proletariat dead being a distracting side plot. But, again, Marsh's strength lies in characterization. At one point, Alleyn speaks with Nigel, who kind of functions as his Watson.
"I have reached that stage in the proceedings when, like heroines in French dramas, I must have my confidante. You are she. You may occasionally roll up your eyes and explain 'Helas, quelle horreur!' or, if you prefer it, 'Merciful Heaven, can I believe my ears?' Otherwise, beyond making sympathetic noises, don't interrupt."

In another moment, Marsh confesses her "laziness." "It would be tedious to attempt a phonetic reproduction of Mr. Sage's utterances. Enough to say that they were genteel to a fantastic degree. 'Aye thot Aye heeard somewon teeking may neem in veen,' may give some idea of his rendering of the above sentence. Let it go at that."

And at the end, Angela, Nigel's betrothed, hopes for a happy ending. Alleyn replies, "'I'm afraid you've got the movie-mind. You want a final close-up. 'John, I want you to know that---that---' Ecstatic glare at short distance into each other's faces. Sir John utters an amorous grow; 'You damned little fool,' and snatches her to his bosom. Slow fade-out.'
'That's the stuff,' said Angela. 'I like a happy ending.'
'We don't often see it in the Force,' said Alleyn.
'Have some port?'
'Thank you.'

The end. Kind of film worth, huh?


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Book Review: Enter a Murderer

Enter a Murderer by Ngaio Marsh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have embarked on a quest to read the Alleyn mysteries in order. Most of them I've already read, but I picked them up randomly, so there was no through-line.

Marsh hasn't quite yet hit her stride in this book. The main characters--Alleyn, Fox, Nigel--are still trying to figure out who they are; or, rather, Marsh is still trying to figure out who they are. But there are references to the first Alleyn mystery, which indicate Marsh is trying to create the through-line I so hope I will find when I read them through in order.

The characters in this one are all stage actors and this is where Marsh excels in my opinion; creating the caricatures of type that she, being involved with stage productions, seems to know well. Take this description of the actors at the inquest;

"Barclay Crammer gave a good all-round performance of a heart-broken gentleman of the old school. Janet Emerald achieved the feat known to leading ladies as 'running the gamut of the emotions.' Asked to account for the striking discrepancies between her statement and those of Miss Max and the stage manager, she wept unfeignedly and said her heart was broken. The coroner stared at her coldly, and told her she was an unsatisfactory witness. Miss Deamer was youthfully sincere, and used a voice with an effective little broken gasp. Her evidence was supremely irrelevant. The stage manager and Miss Max were sensible and direct."

Perhaps the most charming part of this book is the forward;
"When I showed this manuscript to my friend, Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn, of the Criminal Investigation Department, he said:
'It's a perfectly good account of the Unicorn case, but isn't it usual in detective stories to conceal the identity of the criminal?'
I looked at him coldly.
'Hopelessly vieux jeu, my dear Alleyn. Nowadays the identity of the criminal is always revealed in the early chapters.' 'In that case,' he said, 'I congratulate you.'
I was not altogether delighted."

Suffice it to say, even though I had read it before, and somewhere in my head knew the identity of the murderer, I didn't figure it out until the late pages. I am apparently no Alleyn.





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Book Review: Where the Crawdads Sing

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A lovely read, marred by the impossibility of it all and by the overwrought construction with flashbacks and flashforwards. It seemed to be working a bit too hard; in plot and prose and dialogue.

But, even so, lovely. Once in a while, Owens hits the sweet spot and the reader feels like Kya when she is just learning to read; "I wadn't aware words could hold so much. I didn't know a sentence could be so full."

But other times, Owens overwrites. By a long shot.

Nevertheless, she got closer than anyone else I've ever read in allowing me to understand Einstein. I mean, I still don't understand it, but her explanation is the closest I've ever come;
"...time is no more fixed than the stars. Time speeds and bends around planets and suns, is different in the mountains than in the valleys, and is part of the same fabric as space, which curves and swells as does the sea. Objects, whether planets or apples, fall or orbit, not because of a gravitational energy, but because they plummet into the silky folds of spacetime--like into the ripples on a pond--created by those of higher mass...Unfortunately, gravity holds no sway on human thought, and the high school text still taught that apples fall to the ground because of a powerful force from the Earth."

And when Kya is trying to muddle through her mother leaving; "...you told me that a she-fox will sometimes leave her kits if she's starving or under some other extreme stress. The kits die--as they probably would have anyway--but the vixen lives to breed again when conditions are better, when she can raise a new litter to maturity. In nature--out yonder where the crawdads sing--these ruthless-seeming behaviors actually increase the mother's number of young over her lifetime, and thus her genes for abandoning offspring in times of stress are passed on to the next generation. And on and on. It happens in humans, too. Some behaviors that seem harsh to us now ensured the survival of early man in what ever swamp he was in at the time. Without them, we wouldn't be here. We still store those instincts in our genes, and they express themselves when certain circumstances prevail. Some parts of us will always be what we were, what we had to be to survive--way back yonder."

But there's the rub. All this is being said in conversation by a kid who grew up without parents or formal education. A little unlikely as dialogue, but fascinating nonetheless.

"The language of the court was, of course, not as poetic as the language of the marsh. Yet Kya saw similarities in their natures. The judge, obviously the alpha male, was secure in his position, so his posture was imposing, but relaxed and unthreatened as the territorial boar. Tom Milton, too, exuded confidence and rank with easy movements and stance. A powerful buck, acknowledged as such. The prosecutor, on the other hand, relied on wide, bright ties and broad-shouldered suit jackets to enhance his status. He threw his weight by flinging his arms or raising his voice. A lesser male needs to shout to be noticed. The bailiff represented the lowest-ranking male and depended on his belt hung with glistening pistol, clanging wad of keys, and clunky radio to bolster his position."


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Book Review: The Revenge of Geography

The Revenge Of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate by Robert D. Kaplan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

But really two-and-a-half stars because the writing style was uber-annoying. Kaplan's favorite phrase seems to be "Let me explain." Well, duh. That's why I'm reading the book.

Kaplan's thesis is that geography still matters, even in a world where environmental possibilism seems to be changing how we relate to the spaces we are in and the spaces we desire. I'm not sure he proved his thesis, really, but along the way, I at least learned a lot.

Kaplan states that a "map is the spatial representation of humanity's divisions." The names in Africa and the border lines, created by European colonization, tell us the history of imperialism. To understand history, we have to look at maps. Mountains and plains divide civilizations; Ottomans from Austro-Hungarians, Kurds from Iraqis, Sunnis from Shia. Western Europe has dominated world history because of wide, fertile plains, indented coastlines providing deep-water harbors, navigable rivers flowing north, and an abundance of resources and despite its harsh climate. In history, transportation and communication outweigh comfort.

Looking at a northern polar map projections shows how close the continents of the northern hemisphere are to one another. A southern polar projection shows how far apart the southern hemisphere continents really are. This has been a driving factor to the dominance of the northern hemisphere in world history.

Geography, according to Kaplan, has always driven history. And perhaps always will.

One of the first pieces of evidence Kaplan cites is the fossia regia, a ditch dug in 202BC by the Romans to demarcate civilized territory (Roman) from uncivilized territory. In the 21st century, that line can still be felt, if not seen. Towns with fewer Roman remains tend to be poorer, less developed, and have higher rates of unemployment.

Then Kaplan sets out to justify Mackinder's Heartland theory, which basically states that whoever holds the "heartland" (basically Central Asia, Russia, and Eastern Europe) controls the world. He argues that WWII was basically about Germany wanting to control the heartland and that the Cold War was about the Soviet Union wanting to control Eastern Europe.

Russia, having been overtaken by Mongol Horde, has always valued the need for an empire; expand or die. Germany feels the same, with Raztel's theory of Lebensraum, or living space. The US, too, with the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny. Land means power. And the where of the land matters.

One of the most fascinating discourses in the book falls in the chapter entitled "The Rimland Thesis" wherein Kaplan discusses the addition of Spykman's theory to Mackinder's. Spykman, and American, thought that control of the coastal edges of the heartland was as important as the heartland. Both Mackinder and Spykman's theories played out during World War II.

"Even as the Allies are losing and the utter destruction of Hitler's war machine is a priority, Spykman worries aloud about the implication of leaving Germany demilitarized. 'A Russian state from the Urals to the North Sea,' he explains (in 1942), 'can be no great improvement over a German state from the North Sea to the Urals.' Russian airfields on the English Channel would be as dangerous as German airfields to the security of Great Britain. Therefore, a powerful Germany will be necessary following Hitler. Likewise, even as the United States has another three years of vicious island fighting with the Japanese military ahead of it, Spkyman is recommending a post-war alliance with Japan against the continental powers of Russia and particularly a rising China."

In 1942, Spykman predicted how it would play out. Or, perhaps, it played out that way because he predicted it and the powers-that-were thought his ideas were sound.

With the benefit of hindsight, you can always connect geography with history.

An author named Braudel apparently does this very well. "Braudel’s signal contribution to the
way in which history is perceived is his concept of “varying wavelengths of time.” At the base is the
longue duree: slow, imperceptibly changing geographical time, “of landscapes that enable and constrain.” Above this, at a faster wavelength, come the “medium-term cycles,” what Braudel
himself refers to as conjonctures, that is, systemic changes in demographics, economics, agriculture, society, and politics. Cunliffe explains that these are essentially “collective forces, impersonal and usually restricted in time to no more than a century.” Together the longue duree and conjonctures provide the largely hidden “basic structures” against which human life is played out. My very highlighting of geography has been designed to put emphasis on these basic structures. Braudel calls the shortest-term cycle l’histoire evenmentielle —the daily vicissitudes of politics and diplomacy that are the staple of media coverage. Braudel’s analogy is the sea: in the deepest depths is the sluggish movement of water masses that bear everything; above that the tides and swells; and finally at the surface, in Cunliffe’s words, “the transient flecks of surf, whipped up and gone in a minute."

So I guess I should just read Braudel, who Kaplan as a "historian whose narrative has a godlike quality in which every detail of human existence is painted against the canvas of natural forces." Once in a while, though, I think Kaplan approaches this kind of writing.

"Obviously, human agency in the persons of such men as Jan Hus, Martin Luther and John Calvin was pivotal to the Protestant Reformation and hence to the Enlightenment that would allow for northern Europe’s dynamic emergence as one of the cockpits of history in the modern era. Nevertheless, all that could not have happened without the immense river and ocean access and the loess earth, rich with coal and iron-ore deposits, which formed the foundation for such individual dynamism and industrialization. Great, eclectic and glittering empires certainly flowered along the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages—notably the Norman Roger II’s in twelfth-century Sicily, and, lest we forget, the Renaissance blossomed first in late-medieval Florence, with the art of Michelangelo and the secular realism of Machiavelli. But it was the pull of the colder Atlantic that opened up global shipping routes that ultimately won out against the enclosed Mediterranean. While Portugal and Spain were the early beneficiaries of this Atlantic trade—owing to their protruding peninsular position—their pre-Enlightenment societies, traumatized by the proximity of (and occupation by) North African Muslims, lost ground eventually in the oceanic competition to the Dutch, French and English. So just as Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire succeeded Rome, in modern times northern Europe succeeded southern Europe, with the mineral-rich Carolingian core winning out in the form of the European Union. All this is attributable, in some measure, to geography."

Boom. If this book had been winnowed to engaging large-picture, connective discourses like this, I would have been much happier with it. I love that stuff.

But Kaplan, predicting the critics, I suppose, over-writes in the attempt to premptively out-argue the arguments. And the reader grows weary.

Peppered throughout the book are little nuggets of "oh, of course!" connections. Like the word "Cossack" comes from the word kazak. So Kazakhstan is really Cossackstan.

Also, Turkey controls the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates. Now THAT is power.

And "the rich forest soil of Northern Europe, which allowed peasants to easily be productive, ultimately led to freer and more dynamic societies compared to those along the Mediterranean where poorer, more precarious soils meant there was a requirement for irrigation that led, in turn, to oligarchies." And also, precarious agriculture led the Greeks and Romans to expand their empires in search of for fertile land.

I don't think I would have enjoyed this book at all as someone completely new to the concepts Kaplan discusses. I am teaching Human Geography this year, though, so my brain is currently wired with a geographic bent and filled with geographic terms and trivia. That base knowledge certainly aided my overall enjoyment of the book.

And a note about the maps in the paperback edition; so much is hidden in the spine crease that they were more annoying than helpful.


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