Comments (0)

By Ms. G, August 10, 2014 4:17 pm

It is odd that I picked up a book called Tobacco (2001). I hate tobacco in all its forms. It is a vile substance in my estimation.

So, oddly, I just finished Iain Gately’s Tobacco which had been sitting on my pile of cheap books for a while, at least two years. I like books about single subjects –  acorns, salt, cochineal beetles – because they reveal so much about social history. Tobacco is no different. Covering a very wide time span, from the Spanish conquest of the “New World” to the heyday of anti-tobacco law suits in the 1990s, the book tells the stories of fads, motivations, restrictions, gender roles, class differences, cultural preferences, advertising motifs and pure old dependence.

Gately has a very English style of understatement that made me laugh out loud quite a few times. He says this of the early Spanish conquest: “Relations between the Spaniards and Americans were limited to exploitation and sex.” I probably would have put the book away for another two years if I hadn’t stopped to read that line over a few times, now aware that Gately is capable of succinct mockery. As one who teaches this horrible period in human history I do appreciate the reference.

Hitler hated tobacco. Duke University was so-named after a gift of millions of dollars to Little Trinity College by Buck Duke, founder of the American Tobacco Company. Smoking jackets were designed so that weak women wouldn’t have to smell tobacco on their aristocratic husbands. Prohibition was a great boon to smoking. The book is full of interesting little nuggets like this. It is a quick trip through American and British popular culture.

What I didn’t like about the book was the ending. Gately seems to have succumbed to his own sub-title: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization. In the end he is seduced by the allure of tobacco, good and bad: “Many great men and women have left elegant testimonies to their tobacco habits, which will be joined, I believe, with others made in centuries to come.” I don’t know if he’s a smoker or not, cigar or cigarette, but as a vehement anti-smoker I don’t have any sympathy for smokers whatsoever and I certainly don’t think their stories are elegant. More recently it seems Gately has taken up the subject of alcohol (2008’s Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol). As a non-drinker I will not be imbibing.

Comments (0)

By Ms. G, August 3, 2014 12:16 pm

Thunderstruck, by Erik Larson, is another in his historical murder series. Having previously read The Devil in the White City I knew to expect two intertwining stories set in a beautifully described city; this one involves Marconi and his development of wireless telegraphy plus American doctor Hawley Harvey Crippen who gruesomely murders his annoying wife. The city is London in the Edwardian period. Certainly this book is not as exciting or gripping as The Devil in the White City but it does have the same easy to read yet not trite writing style. I enjoyed the descriptions of London’s neighbourhoods so much that I have determined to go there next summer. The two plots come together when the wireless telegraph is used to capture Crippen and his disguised lover on their way to Canada aboard a a Canadian Pacific steamer.

One of the difficult aspects of this book is the character of Marconi. He is awful: socially obtuse, ego-maniacal. Yet he is not the murderer in the book. Larson makes no bones about Marconi’s dislikeable character. Perhaps he is so accurate in his description that he leaves the reader disinterested and morally disgusted. I couldn’t wait for the Marconi chapters to be over. I knew that mild-mannered Dr. Crippen was going to turn out to be a murderer yet I enjoyed the descriptions of him so much more. Seemingly patient in putting up with his demanding wife, Dr. Crippen turned out to be driven to the wall, poisoning and dismembering his wife. His turned out to be one of the most famous murder cases in British history. I knew nothing of it.

Oddly, it turns out that Marconi’s chief rival, Tesla, who does not figure in this book, was severely lacking in social skills as well. He ended up befriending pigeons. Marconi did marry, twice.

I will read another Erik Larson book. The man is a sincerely talented writer.

Comments (0)

By Ms. G, May 19, 2014 11:21 am

Adam Hochschild. To End All Wars: A Story of Protest and Patriotism in the First World War. Pan Books, 2012.

Adam Hochschild is one of my favourite writers on depressing topics. Many years ago I spent a summer reading his chilling history of Belgian imperialism in the Congo, King Leopold’s Ghost. Browsing in my local Book City on the Danforth several months ago I came across his book on World War One, To End All Wars. It was on sale at $7.99 so it sat on my pile of future books to read. Meanwhile, my fascination with World War One – not the actual war but its causes – was satisfied by reading Margaret MacMillan’s The War That Ended Peace. When I started teaching Canadian history for the first time in 15 years I picked up Hochschild’s book from my beside table.

Given the blurb on the back cover, I thought the book would avoid coverage of the battles. And that I was happy about. I didn’t want to read about trenches or artillery. However, I soon found myself immersed in the horror of it all starting with the Boer War. At first I was nonplussed that I had to sit through military details in order to get to the good bits about the pacifists and socialists who did not support the war. I do admit that I was sometimes confused about the need for all the military chapters. Then it hit me (I guess I am slow); the protests and resistance  stand out all the more in the context of the stupidity and suffering of the war.

Many aspects of my personal viewing,  reading and teaching lives have revolved around World War One lately; there’s Downton Abbey and its class divide that weathered the storm of the war; Mr. Selfridge whose London department store found itself in the crosshairs of a procurement scandal during the war (at least fictionally); the above-mentioned Margaret MacMillan; and of course my beloved grade 12 world history course in which my students study the origins of the war quite deeply. Add in Netflix and a few World War One documentaries and the stage is set for complete obsession.

Hochschild’s book offers a completely different point of view from all the others, however. His is the story of those on the other side (in Britain): trade unionists, socialists, suffragists, conscientious objectors, dissenters. Their bravery came in a different, less celebrated form, one less likely to make it into the official or common story of war. As someone just bungling my way through the teaching of Canada at war for the first time in a long time (to ESL students who have very little context on Canada itself) I find it quite refreshing to see the war through these divergent perspectives.

War does things to families. Hochschild’s case in point is the Pankhurst family of suffragette fame. I knew in general terms that many of the most militant feminists became big supporters of the war. I didn’t realize how much of a 180 degree turn it was for the matriarch, Emmeline. She took her ferocity for women’s suffrage and turned it into rabid war support. Her daughter Sylvia, meanwhile, became a war opponent. In the book they are just one family torn apart by war. Brothers and sisters, parents and children on opposite sides seems to be a common theme. In hindsight it’s not so surprising that such a cataclysmic event would have different effects on people’s passions.

The case could be made that World War One did finally usher in the modern era. Big disappointment that has been.

Comments (0)

By Ms. G, August 25, 2013 1:59 pm

An odd pairing: Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire and War in the West Indies by Matthew Parker; and Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach.

I bought Sugar Barons, Val bought Gulp. I started reading Sugar Barons. I needed to put it down so I picked up Gulp which Val had not yet got to. I continue to alternate between them. When the wars, enslavement and debauchery of the English islands of the Caribbean in the 17th century get me down I turn to the lighthearted, comedic romp through flavour and digestion. Mary Roach is a very funny writer; I hope the people she profiles, often scientists obsessed with their niche fields,  appreciate her sense of humour in describing their interesting pursuits. So far I’ve been entranced by the stories of pet food flavouring (dogs devour anything while cats are picky) and saliva. I could actually hear my stomach churning during that chapter. I’m just now getting into the part about actual digestion, so I may  be reading less often. That means my blood will have to boil as I try to fathom the treatment of Africans by their fellow humans, the British slave owners.

I would love to say that I will finish Sugar Barons during the first few weeks of school. After all, for about the last eight years or so we’ve had YM Reads, 20 minutes of daily reading during the school day. Sadly it is now gone and with it the beautiful silence while my students and I read.

Up next I hope to get back to one of my favourite authors, Michael Pollan. I saw him recently on TVO and decided I’d like to give his Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation a try.  I also caught a few minutes of Steve Paikin’s interview with Michael Moss whose Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us sounded right up my vegan alley.

Comments (0)

By Ms. G, August 7, 2013 10:45 am

Karl Marx: A Nineteenth Century Life

by Jonathan  Sperber

I have had this book on my to-read list ever since it came out. I was not disappointed. However, it is driving me crazy that so many things I say and teach about Karl Marx and Marxism need to be amended now. For one, Marx’s radicalism needs to be very closely tied to the 1848 revolutions, something I don’t do. For another, the way I teach Marxism as a fully formed  late nineteenth century ideology is a bit premature.

Though this book is over 500 pages long, it is a perfect demonstration of historical thinking, particularly historical perspective. The entire point of the book is to interpret Marx in the light of his own times, not in the rear view mirror of twentieth century communism. Doing so really changes one’s impressions of Marxism as an ideology. Marx was not at all sure what a communist society would like, and, in fact, he didn’t even like to speculate about it.

This is yet another book in a long line I have read about characters who are not personally likeable but who are historically significant: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, now Marx. For me, Lenin and Marx get higher marks for their personal characteristics. Marx, it turns out, was a loving husband and father, though he did father a child with the household servant. While he had many quirks and held many of the prejudices of the time, he was committed to his writing and espousal of revolutionary viewpoints. The reader feels sorry for his health problems and loss of multiple children.

The one thing that puzzled me most throughout the book was that I could never get the connection I was looking for between Marx and the proletariat. It was made utterly clear that Marx was basically a bourgeois intellectual who had little contact with real industrial workers, though his colleague, supporter and main source of funding, Engels, certainly did with his ownership of a cotton mill in Manchester.

This book makes me want to read a biography of Engels. He comes across as somewhat of a hero for his financial support of Marx.The two were very close friends. Essentially there would be no Marxism without Engels’ attempts to get the works of his friend known after his death. It turns out that I have been right all these years in insisting that my students refer to both “Marx and Engels.”

Because historical context is so crucial in Sperber’s interpretation of Marx, it needs to be said that to understand this book one needs a good grounding in European history. Marx essentially based his concept of revolutions on the French Revolutions, plural because of the fact that the moderate revolution of 1789 was of course followed by a more radical one a few years later. Readers must understand the Napoleonic Code to see its effects on the part of ‘Germany’ where Marx grew up, the Rhineland. Then there are the revolutions of 1848, the Franco-Prussian War, the Reform Act of 1867 in Britain, Italian nationalism, all events and movements that served as backdrops for Marx’s ideas.

I don’t want to sound too Eurocentric, but I’m not ready to drop a lot of the European history from my grade 12 course. Though we’re still waiting for the new curriculum to be released, I anticipate that it is moving toward world history and away from European history. I am already feeling nostalgic for “The West and the World.”

At times it was difficult to read the biography, laced as it was with Hegelian philosophy and political economy. At other times it was surprising to read about Marx, this supposed icon of communism, as the proper Victorian man.  In the end I feel more grounded in nineteenth century history. Rarely have I felt so accomplished after reading a book.

Comments (0)

By Ms. G, July 17, 2013 5:50 pm

The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism
by Ross King

My first book of the summer.

Ross King, whose other art history books I have read and enjoyed  – Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling – is a writer who really gets the idea of social transformation. That is probably why I am so attracted to the late nineteenth century, the era in which the book is set. While society was changing, artistic tastes were slowly catching up. King does a beautiful job of illustrating this by chronicling and juxtaposing the rise and fall of artists Ernest Meissonier and Edouard Manet. Aristocratic tastes and subjects fell while more common, perhaps provocative, ones rose.   Impressionism is so popular today that it is intriguing to read about the original intensity of reactions against its newness. Like any technology or social movement, artistic styles are reflective of their social surroundings.

It’s a good lesson for me; I’m the person who grinds my teeth when I see people glued to their cellphones, yet I have three impressionist posters hanging in my house. How revolutionary I would have been in the 1870s.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

By Erik Larson

My second book of the summer turned out to be an easy read, highly enjoyable even though some of its subject matter is dark. It is the story of Chicago’s World’s Fair, held to honour the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ “discovery” of America, though technically it opened in 1893 rather than 1892. The parallel story is of a medical doctor who goes on a secret murderous rampage of young women and their children who stay in his hotel.

While the book is interesting in its contrasts of the two main characters, fair lead Daniel Burnham and murderer H.H. Holmes, its main interest for me is the description of society in the 1880s: the easing formality between men and women, the competition between New York and Chicago, and between Chicago and Paris, the previous host of the world’s fair. In third or fourth year university I took a course on popular culture in which I read a book called Highbrow/ Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America that gave me my first introduction to the White City, the nickname for the buildings designed for the fair that were all painted white. I can’t recall if they were highbrow or lowbrow, so I’ll guess lowbrow.

Though this is not technically a history book (unusual for me) it is well researched by Larson, an investigative journalist specializing in true crime.