History of Rome by Michael Grant.

Michael Grant’s History of Rome is as standard and scholarly a depiction on this subject as you will find anywhere. It is not highly original or challenging in its conclusions. But it is an interesting and easy read by a historian who mastered his topic and was a skilled, methodical writer. Using his consummate understanding and proficient writing ability, Grant leads the reader from the Etruscan Period through the fall of the Western Empire after the split between Rome and Constantinople. He accomplishes this task in approximately 500 pages. Given that such breadth of time is often covered in twenty volume enterprises, one must admire the author’s concision.

While the insights Grant offers are hardly original, they are beautifully expressed with all of the thoughtful complexity intended by the progenitors of these ideas:

“Hannibal was…one of the world’s most noble failures, an altogether exceptional man who took on, in deadly warfare, a nation empowered with rocklike resolution—and that nation proved too much for him. It emerged hardened from the supreme test, and ironically, his most lasting achievement was to confirm and magnify its confidence and power” (Grant, p. 127).

In a couple of short sentences, the historian conveys Hannibal’s character, Rome’s tenacity, and the fascinating paradox that Hannibal produced the opposite of his intention despite heroic efforts of genius.

One surprising feature of this book is the inadequacy of its endnotes. They exist primarily as a further discussion of events and issues; not as confirmation of the statements to which they refer. Sometimes, during the process of explication, Grant will reveal the name of an individual who is a source (as he does in discussion of the claim that Jesus was born earlier than 4 BC [Grant, p. 499]). But even in that instance, he does not tell the reader where he found that source. Most often, he simply offers no information to permit one to investigate his interpretation. It is understood that history is not a science. But the more evidence a work offers, the more accuracy it will contain. Statements and conclusions that are drawn from primary sources, and from the real science of archaeology, are the evidence of history. Notes are the documentation of that evidence. Without accurate documentation, historians cannot confirm or falsify each other’s findings. Consequently, it is impossible to tell how the writer arrived at a conclusion. Statements without evidence are no better than legend.

But this is the only major flaw in an otherwise exceptional synoptic history. It is a difficult task to present a brief account of an extensive time period, about which so much has been written. Among such projects, there is a tendency to over-generalize and present a bare-bones outline, leaving the reader without rich thought or detailed picture of life. Grant performs a superior service by elegantly balancing his subject’s flow and the Empire’s evolution, with instructive, personally relatable features in which history lives. If your goal is to obtain an overview of the Roman Empire, you could hardly do better than to pick-up this volume.

Grant, Michael. History of Rome. New York: History Book Club, 1997.

Louis Blanc. His Life and His Contribution to the Rise of French Jacobin-Socialism by Leo A. Loubere.

Most people outside of French institutions of higher learning know nothing about Louis Blanc. But during the 1848 Revolution, there was no more popular Frenchman in Paris. His books had educated a generation of rebels on the Republican-Socialist alternative to monarchy. As a result, organizers of that monarchy’s opposition and workers in the streets saw him as their leader. The politicized populace was fully willing to place him as leader without parliamentary due process. Indeed, on more than one occasion during those tumultuous days, they carried him on their shoulders (as he struggled to get down), with the intention of violently installing him as autocrat of the government. There was certainly precedent for this means of choosing leadership. Only 50 years earlier, Robespierre had attained supremacy using the power of the mob. But Blanc was not a demagogue. He resisted violent efforts to attain his goals. He thought that the combination of education and representational government would lead to the realization of democratic and socialist ideas he propounded in his writing.

Leo Loubere follows Blanc’s career from journalism and history-writing, through his involvement in the 1848 Revolution, to his later career and death. Permeating the entire chronology are the revolutionary’s ideas on state, republicanism, socialism and social conditions. Be prepared for some detailed political philosophy; this is not just a portrait of a life. It is also quite critical of Blanc’s thoughts and actions. Saliently, his thoughts on violence are self-contradicting. While Blanc clearly states that “a cause…which must dip its hands in blood…can only retard the forward thrust of progress” (Loubere, p. 48), he supports war against Britain, rationalizing that for economic reasons “either France must perish, or England be erased from the map” (Loubere, p. 52). Politically progressive readers may be disappointed that Blanc repudiates the Paris Commune for its establishment through violent rebellion; but when the troops kill 20,000 communards, Blanc is silent (Loubere, p. 197).

Loubere has inimical tendency to perseverate upon sectarian political divisions within 19^th Century France. This grinding proclivity dominates chapters 17 and 18, which lead-up to a final whimper on Blanc’s death and legacy. The only consolation to this weak ending is that these chapters comprise 32 short pages, so are quickly dispatched (or skimmed based upon the reader’s preference).

By the author’s admission, “Blanc was not a particularly effective leader” (Loubere, p. 162). He possessed neither the personal opportunism nor the strategic skill to create a lasting legacy. His gifts were those of a teacher, propagandist and thinker. As the biographies of Socrates and Marx show, such people are not remembered unless there is an intrepid student or following to carry-forth their projects. So outside of French academia, Louis Blanc is a forgotten footnote in history.

Loubere, Leo A. Louis Blanc. His Life and His Contribution to the Rise of French Jacobin-Socialism. Westport: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1980.

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

According to Howard Zinn, most of what we are taught about history is “told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats and leaders” (Zinn, p. 9). He contends that selection, simplification and emphasis, are inevitable distortions; choices that must be made in order to tell a cogent story. But, “the historian’s distortion is more than technical, it is ideological” and “any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual” (Zinn, p. 8). Given this view, Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is an attempt to add the viewpoints of those most often left out of historical narratives. He tells the landing of Columbus from the perspective of the Arawaks, the Civil War from the perspective of the slaves, the rise of industrialism from the perspective of the workers, the opeerations of government from the perspective of the women ignored by it, and the wars from the perspective of those who favored peace.

The writing in this book is plain, without being simple-minded. Because of the overwhelming task the historian has set for himself, he relies upon the linked stories of individuals and events to present broad movements and subcultures. “It was January, midwinter, when the pay envelopes distributed to weavers at one of the mills…showed that their wages, already too low to feed their families, had been reduced. They stopped their looms and walked out of the mill…soon 10,000 workers were on strike…the IWW organized mass meetings and parades…the governor ordered out the state police. A parade of strikers was attacked by police…this lead to rioting all that day…a striker, Anna LoPizzo, was shot and killed. Witnesses said a policeman did it, but the authorities arrested Joseph Ettor and another IWW organizer…Neither was at the scene of the shooting.” (Zinn, pp. 327-8). His images are clear and evocative, pitting the common people against a wealthy owner class and the government that supports their interests.

Zinn admits that “a ‘people’s history’ promises more than any one person can fulfill” and that “it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people’s movements of resistance.” He explains this “makes it a biased account, one that leans in a certain direction. I am not troubled by that, because the mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction—so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people’s movements—that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission” (Zinn, p. 570).

There is an underlying political science theory that drives Zinn’s narrative: the historian straightforwardly expresses that he sees our government as created by wealthy elites to support their interests, and that it has been safeguarding those interests ever since. He puts forth the idea that most governments are interested in maintaining stability and will relinquish power and rights just enough to prevent rebellion from below. Concurring with Karl Marx, Professor Zinn describes our capitalist state as “pretending neutrality to maintain order, but serving the interests of the rich” (Zinn, p. 252).   At times, the historian’s self-proclaimed “bias” and “distortion” leads to distorted conclusions. Chapter Sixteen, “A People’s War?” is an artless and comically unconvincing attempt to challenge the notion that World War II was not popular among the US masses and undemocratically foisted upon them. Conversely, in the same chapter, he presents China’s communist government as “the closest thing, in the long history of that ancient country, to a people’s government” (Zinn, p. 418). Perhaps compared to China’s dynasties, Mao’s regime was closer to “a people’s government;” but it was still a dictatorship with re-education camps and prisons for those who disagreed. It appears doctrinaire to attack the capitalist state for being in the hands of an elite minority while extolling the virtues of a dictatorship in the following paragraph. But such juxtapositions are rare for Zinn, and his version of our history presents consistent evidence of State collusion with wealthy elites to maintain stability in a system which benefits their association.

Whether or not the reader agrees with Professor Zinn’s political paradigm, there is a great deal to learn from his topics. A People’s History of the United States provides significant puzzle pieces to our picture of the past. It is uniquely compiled and sensitively reveals the paths of the disenfranchised through our nation’s evolution. He focuses upon groups that are under-represented in our government and under-represented in the discussion of our past. Their stories are the stories of the rest of us: immigrants, activists, minorities, women and workers. People who influenced the evolution of our country and without whom neither our nation nor our history is complete.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1980.

Jeb Bush Outed by Stephen L. Goldstein.

Stephen L. Goldstein is a fire-breathing liberal. Between 1999 and 2014, he was the sole progressive columnist of the South Florida Sun Sentinel; a conservative newspaper in a conservative state. During those years, he was the target of every former student, from one of the worst public school systems in America, who could hold a crayon and scrawl an insult. For fifteen years, Goldstein pounded-out strident, unapologetically liberal columns, that were read by a seething, barely literate mob; until a new, faint-hearted editor asked him to write local “happy news” minus political content. At that, Goldstein took his computer to the developing contextflorida.com.

Jeb Bush took the oath of office as Florida’s Governor the same year that Goldstein started at The Sentinel. This book is a compilation of articles pertaining to Bush’s performance, seen through a liberal-progressive lens. But, partisan polemics aside, Jeb Bush Outed offers insight concerning the former governor’s true agenda. Bush has been posturing as a moderate Republican. However, people (especially politicians) are far more how they act in the world, rather than what they say about themselves. Here are some of Bush’s actions as Governor:

*In 2003, Jeb Bush had state troopers remove a brain-dead Terri Schiavo from her hospice where her body would be kept functioning on life support. Against the wishes of her husband, Terri was transferred to a rehab facility where her feeding tube was reinserted. This state interference in a legally private family decision, backed by Bush’s anti-Choice supporters, was later defeated in court and Terri was permitted to die. (Goldstein, p. 28).

*In 2003, Bush used state tax dollars to fund the nation’s first “faith-based prison,” violating the separation of church and state. (Goldstein, p. 55).

*Bush repeatedly pushed for a school voucher program that would have given tax dollars to religious schools. The Florida Supreme Court repeatedly disallowed this measure as unconstitutional. (Goldstein, p. 52).

*In 1997, before becoming Governor, Bush signed the “Statement of Principles” created by the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC). This document encourages the US to fight wars against governments that do not conform to a conservative agenda. (Goldstein, p. 23).

*As part of his conservative foreign policy, Bush spoke as Governor in favor of strengthening the embargo against Cuba. (Goldstein, p. 24).

*In alignment with his anti-Choice beliefs, Bush opposed stem cell research (Goldstein, p. 12).

*Goldstein cites examples where Bush managed the State Treasury by refusing to cut property taxes and middle-class income taxes, while simultaneously funneling those tax dollars to large corporations. (Goldstein, pp 135-163).

However one may feel about Goldstein’s writing, the citations speak for themselves: Bush is not a moderate in his social, fiscal or foreign policy agendas.

A cautionary note: There are different intentions in reading between someone who picks-up a fourth-grade level conservative paper in Florida to scrutinize and react to the words of a liberal columnist, and someone who is so enthusiastic about learning that they peruse non-fiction book reviews to determine what they’d like to learn next. Goldstein was aware of his readers. His style is less contemplative than combative. His patter is a mix of sarcastic humor and blunt liberal agenda. Examples: “Are you up for more war—a lot of it? More invasions of sovereign nations like Iraq…More trillions spent protecting Halliburton’s profit?”  (Goldstein, p. 23). And “The Tallahassee Taliban are at it again: faith-based finagling with your tax money” (Goldstein, p. 51). There is no subtlety or compromise in Stephen Goldstein’s prose. His articles were aimed at a public that was at best apathetic and at worst reactionary, who appeared to him as incapable of making intelligent choices. After all, they elected Jeb Bush twice. Facing such an audience, Goldstein’s manner is not so much a cry in the wilderness as it is a scream.

For the balanced examiner of non-fiction book reviews, these articles offer a learning opportunity on two levels. First, they provide a record of Bush’s performance as Governor that slices through his election-year claims to moderate Republicanism. Second, the book is its own dramatic sociological study of how a liberal writer battled a marginally-educated, conservative audience.

Goldstein, Stephen L. Jeb Bush Outed. Ashland: Grid Press, 2015.

Why Marriage Equality Won.

The myth about the Supreme Court is that it impartially interprets the Constitution despite political pressure and public opinion. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The justices are a part of our society and are as influenced cultural change and political pressure as you or I.

The influence of cultural change is nowhere better illustrated than in the Supreme Court's sodomy rulings of 1986 and 2003. In Bowers vs Hardwick (1986), the Court upheld, in a 5-4 ruling, the constitutionality of Georgia’s sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults when applied to gay men and lesbians. In Lawrence vs Texas (2003), the court struck down the sodomy law in Texas and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws across the nation. What happened to the court in the intervening 17 years? It certainly did not become more liberal. The 1986 Burger Court was more judicially liberal than the 2003 Rhenquist court. What changed was the culture and its values. People felt that state and federal governments had no business in their bedrooms, and had become more accepting of  the LGBT community.

In addition to cultural change, there was political pressure. The Supreme Court has a stated role: to interpret laws according to the Constitution. But it also has an unstated role: to maintain stability. To make sure that society remains ordered and calm; to ensure that the rule of law prevails and the legitimacy of the government is upheld. If the population moves towards liberty, and it is too far ahead of the courts, there is a danger of instability and disobedience on the part of the people, which would undermine that legitimacy and authority. So, in terms of Civil Rights, these authorities are consistently seeing where they can stand firm on the way things have always been and where they must accommodate the public will. For instance, in the African American civil rights struggle against Jim Crow laws, the Supreme Court largely remained on the sidelines between the mid-1800s and the mid-1900s. When they did step-in, it was to maintain the current order. In their 1886 Plessy vs Ferguson ruling, the courts upheld that separate but equal facilities were constitutional. They only began ruling against racial segregation laws when there was a movement of African Americans prominent enough to challenge that status quo. It wasn’t until 1954, in the atmosphere of a healthy Civil Rights Movement, that the courts overturned Plessy, in Brown vs Board of Education. Legal change favoring liberty does not happen unless there is a concerted effort by a large enough population advocating for their freedom.

So why did Same Sex Marriage win? It was a historic combination of cultural change and political pressure. The Justices, as people in our society, were influenced by our changing mores. No one who heard or read Kennedy’s majority opinion, could doubt that he is the product of an environment that accepts and upholds the dignity of people of the same sex seeking marriage rights. But the additional political pressure of a popular movement, backed by the 60% of the US populace who favor marriage equality, made it clear to the Supreme Court that the road to stability lay in supporting LGBT marriage rights. This ruling is a testament to a people willing to grow in liberty and a movement persistent in its goals.

Nazism & Holocaust Denial. Censorship in Germany 70 Years Later.

As an American Jew, reading about the Holocaust, I am struck by the current legal prohibitions in Germany against denying this genocide or glorifying the Nazi government of 1933-1945. I live in a nation where expression of even the most obnoxious, hateful view is protected, unless it incites physical harm. Perhaps it is a failure of this writer’s imagination, but World War II’s armistice is having its seventieth anniversary this year. On the eve of this milestone, what is the wisdom of continuing these prohibitions?

I understand why Germany, divided and controlled by post-war Western powers, submitted to censorship of free speech around Nazism and (in 1985) Holocaust Denial. But a nation must periodically revisit restrictions on freedoms to examine whether or not they are still relevant. If German society has progressed enough that there is no threat of returning to totalitarian nationalism and genocide, then the prohibitions are superfluous and constitute a dangerous legal precedent to the stifling of other expressions. If strong undercurrents remain that might lead to destructive results, isn’t it time to recognize that a policy which has suppressed discussion has failed?

We won’t truly know the strength of totalitarian or genocidal tendencies in Germany until this censorship is lifted. If the result is that the voices favoring destruction are weak, then we can all celebrate the progress of human learning and peace. If these voices are strong, it may be time for Germans to face them directly in open, uncensored debate, aimed at educating society.

Admittedly, it is easy to sit safely across the Atlantic and ponder the consequences of lifting this ban. Even the presumption of safety may be naïve, given the last two world wars. I could be wrong. Cautionary inquiry and self-doubt propels frightening questions: Is Germany a Pandora’s Box of martial and racist sentiment that once opened, could only be closed again by World War III?  Is Freedom of Speech such a sacred virtue that we should risk the safety of non-German residents or neighboring countries? But these questions are driven by an anxiety that is itself affected by anti-German racism and the denial of present reality. Germany has been reunited for twenty-five years within a European Union. The destruction of that union would only harm Germany economically. It is unlikely that the opening of discussions around Holocaust Denial or the Nazi period would result in another world war. German society has evolved to the point where a Green Party regularly wins 10% of the federal parliamentary seats. The forces of reason and peace appear to be a strong counter-weight to neo-Nazi sentiment.

It is a truism, of both psychology and political history, that suppressed desires tend to destructively explode. Conversely, expressed desires brought into the open contain the possibility of being disarmed. If there are suppressed, racist and martial impulses in Germany, these will only fester until an economic failure forces a more rational leadership from  power. So, is censorship of these discussions wise? Seventy years after the armistice and twenty-five years after reunification, Germany is again a nation that can determine her own course through history. Outsider individuals and nations will undoubtedly express opinions, but this is a question that only German citizens can collectively answer.

Radical Feminists of Heterodoxy by Judith Schwarz

Radical Feminists of Heterodoxy is an optimistic, informative and regrettably short record of a women’s bi-weekly gathering in Greenwich Village. It was founded in 1912 by Mary Jenny Howe with the intention that “it would be a place where social constraints and conventional politeness were outweighed by the sheer delight in honest disagreements and differences which opened the mind to new possibilities, new ways of thinking, living, being” (Schwarz, p. 5).  This club’s attendees were among the most creative, accomplished, independent and well-educated women of their age. They supported each other personally, regarding occupational pursuits and life trials. Outside of the organization, they networked regarding a range of feminist activism from birth control to the vote. Though being a self-defined feminist in the early 20^th Century was difficult, these women found a way to make the road less rocky and lonely.

While the author unreservedly loves her subject, she is not incognizant of this social group’s flaws. Reflecting the prejudices of its time, Heterodoxy was largely white and privileged in its composition. Few working-class women attended meetings. Only one member was African American. Also, this was not an activist organization per se. Though community activists for women’s rights became members or spoke at gatherings, the group did not have a political wing. For example, “Margaret Sanger was angry at Heterodoxy members for not becoming more involved with her birth control work,” whereas Mary Ware Dennett, founder of the Voluntary Parenthood League, was a member (Schwarz, p. 65).

Judith Schwarz does an excellent job of revealing the sanctum of Heterodoxy meetings and lives with scant primary information. She published this book in 1982, when the Women’s Movement was still prominent, but under attack by the New Right. As a result, Heterodoxy contains scattered comparisons between the two times and two groups of women in hostile territory. “Like those of us who have gone through ‘C-R’ sessions, Heterodoxy women must have often been startled that despite the differences in their backgrounds, most of them had received the same sort of messages and expectations as children” (Schwarz, p. 16). Sometimes her informality is playful: “a large number of the women in the photographs were also astonishingly tailored, or, as my mind instantly reacted: ‘butchy looking’” (Schwarz, p. 5). Schwarz presents a style of writing that is largely eschewed by feminists of the academy.

Scholarly style aside, history can do more than inform about the past. It can provide us with directions for the future and understandings of human nature or situation which we find relevant to ourselves. Though it is more common for feminist historians to restrain comparison of past and present, the reader or activist is under no such constraints. For those who favor equality and are facing opposition, (whether that opposition is the conservative cross-fire of the author’s 1982 or the numbing phase of feminist political dormancy of the early 21^st Century), a book like this can offer support and inspiration. In Judith Schwarz’s words “we have a lot to struggle both for and against, and years of hard work ahead of us. In the meantime, take hope. Marie Jenney Howe and her merry ‘band of willful women, the most unruly and individualistic females you ever fell among’ did indeed ‘start something’ which still has relevance for us, their political descendants” (Schwarz, p. 82). Perhaps what we need today is a new generation of heterodoxy clubs as spaces for women to gather against the storm.

Schwarz, Judith. Radical Feminists of Heterodoxy. Lebanon, NH: New Victoria Publishers, Inc., 1982.