Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/03612759.2023.2221537
Yaakov A. Mascetti
ately is the significance of the account Burgess has given? Additionally, various sentences or claims throughout the work lack substance and deserve more explanation. For instance, in Chapter 1, Burgess claims that early Soviet cosmonauts “were born into a life of seclusion and deprivation on the back streets of Moscow, unloved and passing each wretched day scrounging for food and finding shelter where they could” without naming any such cosmonauts or explaining the context of Soviet society (16). While certainly the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era was generally still impoverished, to suggest individuals were “unloved” is hyperbolic and unproven. Burgess seems to assume the reader is familiar with the Soviet Union and its society when likely many readers today would know little about it. The research and sourcing used for this piece does not appear too extensive with the book reliant mostly on other secondary books, including Burgess’s other works, and a handful of websites, such as Britannica.com, the BBC, and russianspaceweb.com. Thus, the facts in the book are almost entirely derived from other published accounts. Soviets in Space does include an appendix, but it lists only sixteen books and is not an exhaustive selection of works on the subject. Absent are works by MIT historian Slava Gerovitch, who has published numerous works on the Soviet program, or NASA historian Roger Launius, who had written accounts of both sides of the space race. Therefore, Soviets in Space is not a great initial resource for students or researchers to find more material on the subject. Overall, Burgess’s exposition on Russia’s space program is a factual, terse, and basic account which does not provide historians with anything new or insightful. The tables included throughout the chapters help organize the space missions for those seeking quick access to the facts. The book’s audience lies with popular readers with an interest in the space race and spaceflights and more particularly the cosmonauts and their individual experiences aboard Soviet or Russian craft.
{"title":"Experiencing God in Late-Medieval and Early-Modern England","authors":"Yaakov A. Mascetti","doi":"10.1080/03612759.2023.2221537","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03612759.2023.2221537","url":null,"abstract":"ately is the significance of the account Burgess has given? Additionally, various sentences or claims throughout the work lack substance and deserve more explanation. For instance, in Chapter 1, Burgess claims that early Soviet cosmonauts “were born into a life of seclusion and deprivation on the back streets of Moscow, unloved and passing each wretched day scrounging for food and finding shelter where they could” without naming any such cosmonauts or explaining the context of Soviet society (16). While certainly the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era was generally still impoverished, to suggest individuals were “unloved” is hyperbolic and unproven. Burgess seems to assume the reader is familiar with the Soviet Union and its society when likely many readers today would know little about it. The research and sourcing used for this piece does not appear too extensive with the book reliant mostly on other secondary books, including Burgess’s other works, and a handful of websites, such as Britannica.com, the BBC, and russianspaceweb.com. Thus, the facts in the book are almost entirely derived from other published accounts. Soviets in Space does include an appendix, but it lists only sixteen books and is not an exhaustive selection of works on the subject. Absent are works by MIT historian Slava Gerovitch, who has published numerous works on the Soviet program, or NASA historian Roger Launius, who had written accounts of both sides of the space race. Therefore, Soviets in Space is not a great initial resource for students or researchers to find more material on the subject. Overall, Burgess’s exposition on Russia’s space program is a factual, terse, and basic account which does not provide historians with anything new or insightful. The tables included throughout the chapters help organize the space missions for those seeking quick access to the facts. The book’s audience lies with popular readers with an interest in the space race and spaceflights and more particularly the cosmonauts and their individual experiences aboard Soviet or Russian craft.","PeriodicalId":220055,"journal":{"name":"History: Reviews of New Books","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129859522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/03612759.2023.2221541
John Rennie Short
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Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/03612759.2023.2221543
David M. Valladares
has little patience for those who would hearken back to some ideal time “before buying and selling took over as a dominant part of most people’s lives. Life really was slower and simpler than it is today. But was also, for the great majority, much poorer in every sense” (8). Changes to the standard of living brought more choices, new conveniences and a range foods and fashions to the public. While she might describe the odd snobbish clerk or unpleasant interaction with a customer, for the most part Bowlby rejects a view of retailers as hard-hearted capitalists who exploit and manipulate the public. Instead, the shop is a community resource worth remembering and preserving. The flurry of brief chapters means that this work is perhaps more suitable for scholars and general readers interested in retail history, rather than the undergraduate classroom. Not surprisingly, given her disciplinary background, Bowlby draws mainly from literary sources, “narratives that have featured shop settings and scenes of shopping” (11). She has culled a broad range of examples, mostly focused on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Going beyond expected works like Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames, Bowlby is equally adept analyzing the pedlar Autolycus in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, the immediate connection between a patron and shop girl in a Patricia Highsmith novel, or the absence of the butcher shop in Pride and Prejudice. There are a few forays into the trade press and the occasional operational manual for a specific retailer which is deeply mined, but her use of archival materials is impressionistic rather than comprehensive. There is also relatively little engagement with secondary works on the history of retailing, consumption, or capitalism. Instead, the strength of this work is in creating surprising juxtapositions: an analysis of the complex negotiations involved as a privileged husband in Mrs. Dalloway attempts to buy a Spanish necklace for his wife shifts to a dissection of the failing fortunes of chain jeweler Ratner’s, whose owner disdainfully boasted of selling gold earrings that cost less than a prawn sandwich from Marks & Spencer (247). Bowlby’s musings are often original and thought-provoking. Her discussion of the counter, that key site of exchange in the shop, takes us from the flat surface holding cash registers, to the more ambiguous area under the counter where illicit or embarrassing goods might reside. She then shifts to consider communication between patrons and clerks across the counter, and finishes by examining how the term counter-jumper reflects the symbolic class distance imbued into a mere panel of wood in a store. In one of her clever turns of phrase, Bowlby describes the ‘corner shop’ as “nostalgic and old-fashioned, all nooks and grannies” (37). She is at her best exploring the language of shopping, and how old terminology can become new again. In an evocative passage exploring the experience of online shopping, Bowlby reflects on
{"title":"Rearming the RAF for the Second World War: Poor Strategy and Miscalculation","authors":"David M. Valladares","doi":"10.1080/03612759.2023.2221543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03612759.2023.2221543","url":null,"abstract":"has little patience for those who would hearken back to some ideal time “before buying and selling took over as a dominant part of most people’s lives. Life really was slower and simpler than it is today. But was also, for the great majority, much poorer in every sense” (8). Changes to the standard of living brought more choices, new conveniences and a range foods and fashions to the public. While she might describe the odd snobbish clerk or unpleasant interaction with a customer, for the most part Bowlby rejects a view of retailers as hard-hearted capitalists who exploit and manipulate the public. Instead, the shop is a community resource worth remembering and preserving. The flurry of brief chapters means that this work is perhaps more suitable for scholars and general readers interested in retail history, rather than the undergraduate classroom. Not surprisingly, given her disciplinary background, Bowlby draws mainly from literary sources, “narratives that have featured shop settings and scenes of shopping” (11). She has culled a broad range of examples, mostly focused on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Going beyond expected works like Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames, Bowlby is equally adept analyzing the pedlar Autolycus in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, the immediate connection between a patron and shop girl in a Patricia Highsmith novel, or the absence of the butcher shop in Pride and Prejudice. There are a few forays into the trade press and the occasional operational manual for a specific retailer which is deeply mined, but her use of archival materials is impressionistic rather than comprehensive. There is also relatively little engagement with secondary works on the history of retailing, consumption, or capitalism. Instead, the strength of this work is in creating surprising juxtapositions: an analysis of the complex negotiations involved as a privileged husband in Mrs. Dalloway attempts to buy a Spanish necklace for his wife shifts to a dissection of the failing fortunes of chain jeweler Ratner’s, whose owner disdainfully boasted of selling gold earrings that cost less than a prawn sandwich from Marks & Spencer (247). Bowlby’s musings are often original and thought-provoking. Her discussion of the counter, that key site of exchange in the shop, takes us from the flat surface holding cash registers, to the more ambiguous area under the counter where illicit or embarrassing goods might reside. She then shifts to consider communication between patrons and clerks across the counter, and finishes by examining how the term counter-jumper reflects the symbolic class distance imbued into a mere panel of wood in a store. In one of her clever turns of phrase, Bowlby describes the ‘corner shop’ as “nostalgic and old-fashioned, all nooks and grannies” (37). She is at her best exploring the language of shopping, and how old terminology can become new again. In an evocative passage exploring the experience of online shopping, Bowlby reflects on ","PeriodicalId":220055,"journal":{"name":"History: Reviews of New Books","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115598414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/03612759.2023.2221538
Leo McCann
{"title":"Edward M. Kennedy: an Oral History","authors":"Leo McCann","doi":"10.1080/03612759.2023.2221538","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03612759.2023.2221538","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":220055,"journal":{"name":"History: Reviews of New Books","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114571682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/03612759.2023.2221545
Elizabeth Marie Walgenbach
spective on late-medieval and early-modern elaborations on the classical conceptions of the sensorium, or the long philosophical developments that influenced and possibly led to the idea of revelation in these periods of English history. The quasi-univocal nature of Davis’ religious approach to ravishment and divine revelation to the human senses is certainly compelling, and would have been even more so had he also showed the classical and non-religious components in the long process that led to these ideas. The most important aspect of Davis’ work, though, is its relevance to the present revival in the interest within academic circles of the ways in “God’s communication with human beings” (p. 153), leading to a “reinvigorated... study of testimonial claims of transcendent experiences” (p. 193). Opposing the philosophical/secular lexica to the religious discourses, both in the seventeenth century and today, Davis in fact refers to the “important blind spots within contemporary western thought” (p. 194), and to the “intellectual arrogance that is common in every age” (p. 194). This historical, compelling and fascinating excursus into raptus is therefore supported by the author’s religious endorsement of ravishment, conceived as a moment of divine revelation to the human cognition, and is clearly rooted in a genuine “chastising [of] our own society’s inflated confidence about what we think we know” (p. 194). Davis’ sincere endorsement of this understanding that modern “scholarship provides a framework for accounts of divine experience, even immediate revelation, to be taken seriously in our own day” (p. 194), is not only refreshing, but points to a full-hearted acceptance of the fact that academic scholarship is always already a matter of personal affairs.
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Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/03612759.2023.2221532
B. D. de Ruiter
{"title":"Blood, Sweat and Earth: the Struggle for Control over the World’s Diamonds throughout History","authors":"B. D. de Ruiter","doi":"10.1080/03612759.2023.2221532","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03612759.2023.2221532","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":220055,"journal":{"name":"History: Reviews of New Books","volume":"122 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128182011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/03612759.2023.2221539
Takahito Moriyama
of proof is on Gerstle here, and he completely evades it. Continuing his attack on Trump, Gerstle writes, “The ethnonationalist leaders, Trump included... wanted the planet to be governed by force rather than by international law and multinational nongovernmental organizations...” (277) OK, by what possible “international law” could multinational, non-governmental organizations “govern the planet”? But it gets even worse: Gerstle goes on to say that Trump was making real a vision of a future in which the US would withdraw from its “role its role as the world’s global policeman, and from its responsibility as the enforcer of liberal and neoliberal rules of global order.” In other words, the world Gerstle liked was being ruled by force: US force attacking countries that did not conform to rules of the global order created by the US and its allies. (See, for instance, Serbia: 1995 or Iraq: 2003.) And when he complains that Trump wanted a global order ruled by force, what he really means is that Trump was threatening to stop ruling the globe by force! In discussing the riot that took place in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, Gerstle writes that “The Trump mob had gone berserk... smashing the heads of policemen with fire extinguishers” (289). Once again, Gerstle presents no evidence for a claim. Doing the research that perhaps Gerstle ought to have done, I discover two sources for it:
{"title":"When the News Broke: Chicago 1968 and the Polarizing of America","authors":"Takahito Moriyama","doi":"10.1080/03612759.2023.2221539","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03612759.2023.2221539","url":null,"abstract":"of proof is on Gerstle here, and he completely evades it. Continuing his attack on Trump, Gerstle writes, “The ethnonationalist leaders, Trump included... wanted the planet to be governed by force rather than by international law and multinational nongovernmental organizations...” (277) OK, by what possible “international law” could multinational, non-governmental organizations “govern the planet”? But it gets even worse: Gerstle goes on to say that Trump was making real a vision of a future in which the US would withdraw from its “role its role as the world’s global policeman, and from its responsibility as the enforcer of liberal and neoliberal rules of global order.” In other words, the world Gerstle liked was being ruled by force: US force attacking countries that did not conform to rules of the global order created by the US and its allies. (See, for instance, Serbia: 1995 or Iraq: 2003.) And when he complains that Trump wanted a global order ruled by force, what he really means is that Trump was threatening to stop ruling the globe by force! In discussing the riot that took place in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, Gerstle writes that “The Trump mob had gone berserk... smashing the heads of policemen with fire extinguishers” (289). Once again, Gerstle presents no evidence for a claim. Doing the research that perhaps Gerstle ought to have done, I discover two sources for it:","PeriodicalId":220055,"journal":{"name":"History: Reviews of New Books","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131178180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/03612759.2023.2221547
Alice Zhang
that the economic influence and legal rights embedded in the possession of textiles for most of American history did not carry over into the post-Civil War era, leaving women like Mrs. Lincoln “with only the clothes on their backs” (289). Contextualizing the power of textiles and the legal rights afforded those who owned them, Edwards creates an argument for the loss of rights experienced by women, the poor, and other marginalized people in the years following the Civil War. She contends, “The legal principles and practices associated with textiles ... featured centrally in the new republic’s economic and governing order” (297). However, “the legal principles and practices that all people on the margins used in [the] decades before the Revolution and the Civil War have been overlooked” in recent scholarship (298). This, then, is the task she sets for herself: to show that a “focus on textiles reveals a more complicated history, [one] in which all people with tenuous claims to rights involved themselves in the economy, law, and governance” (298). Indeed, that is the crux of Edwards’s argument, which she supports through the myriad stories she tells. Although numerous books have been published on the roles fashion and textiles have played in history, and I list only a few of those in my opening paragraph, none that I am aware of has taken on the herculean task of investigating the property rights tied to articles of clothing and other textiles in the antebellum United States. In her efforts to illuminate the subject, Edwards provides readers with a meticulously researched, carefully edited, and creatively presented historical analysis of exchange value and property rights as they were acquired through textile ownership. The illustrations included in the text support the arguments being made and ask readers to step into the times and places being depicted, and the archival materials listed in the voluminous notes (eightythree pages to be exact) call on readers to take the next steps in contributing to this fascinating field of research. In the end, “[t]he mix of the personal and [the] professional” (259), to use the author’s own words, makes Edwards’s book not only an educational experience but also a satisfying read. As Edwards notes, “The part of the textile market that facilitated ... exchanges was composed of real people” (173), and through her work, we come to know these real people and the significance of their legal interactions—civil and criminal—as they borrow, steal, pawn, trade, and hoard textiles.
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Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/03612759.2023.2221531
E. Callahan
activity in the Senate and in the integrity, motives and standards of those in public office. Sometimes he is optimistic about politics as a progressive force, and at others he’s rather despondent. Like many, although the signs were there, he did not seem to envisage some of the more concerning developments in U.S. democracy, such as the rise of populist or alt-right movements. Despite its saccharine Camelotian title, the final chapter “Coming Home to Port” is possibly the best of the lot. Here, EMK rails against the inactivity of the current political system, the legislative gridlock, and the growing pointlessness of the Beltway to American life in general. By this stage the “lion of the Senate” is fired up and it’s a very entertaining read. At one point he asserts that “[w]e’re doing absolutely nothing in the United States Senate that’s relevant to anybody’s life” (472). The book concludes with a detailed reflection from the editors on the process of this oral history project, including the complex process of engaging the Senator in the research. Evidently it took some time for Kennedy to warm up to the process and there were times when he was too didactic and insufficiently personal in the interviews, leading to the researchers having to encourage subtle changes in emphasis. This description provides a persuasive account of the importance of establishing trust between researchers and their interviewees, and why longterm and repeat interviews can be so valuable. This chapter also makes some comments about the complexities involved with researching such powerful individuals and the implications this can have professional balance, on boundaries and on interpretive perspective. Although by its nature the book is supportive of the Kennedy project and legacy, it is also in many senses presented more as a series of sources rather than as text making interpretations and judgements of its own. Final interpretations of Kennedy’s life and career are ultimately left to the reader. With that in mind, this book is an indispensable scholarly resource on Ted Kennedy and deserves to be widely read, assigned and discussed.
{"title":"The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era","authors":"E. Callahan","doi":"10.1080/03612759.2023.2221531","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03612759.2023.2221531","url":null,"abstract":"activity in the Senate and in the integrity, motives and standards of those in public office. Sometimes he is optimistic about politics as a progressive force, and at others he’s rather despondent. Like many, although the signs were there, he did not seem to envisage some of the more concerning developments in U.S. democracy, such as the rise of populist or alt-right movements. Despite its saccharine Camelotian title, the final chapter “Coming Home to Port” is possibly the best of the lot. Here, EMK rails against the inactivity of the current political system, the legislative gridlock, and the growing pointlessness of the Beltway to American life in general. By this stage the “lion of the Senate” is fired up and it’s a very entertaining read. At one point he asserts that “[w]e’re doing absolutely nothing in the United States Senate that’s relevant to anybody’s life” (472). The book concludes with a detailed reflection from the editors on the process of this oral history project, including the complex process of engaging the Senator in the research. Evidently it took some time for Kennedy to warm up to the process and there were times when he was too didactic and insufficiently personal in the interviews, leading to the researchers having to encourage subtle changes in emphasis. This description provides a persuasive account of the importance of establishing trust between researchers and their interviewees, and why longterm and repeat interviews can be so valuable. This chapter also makes some comments about the complexities involved with researching such powerful individuals and the implications this can have professional balance, on boundaries and on interpretive perspective. Although by its nature the book is supportive of the Kennedy project and legacy, it is also in many senses presented more as a series of sources rather than as text making interpretations and judgements of its own. Final interpretations of Kennedy’s life and career are ultimately left to the reader. With that in mind, this book is an indispensable scholarly resource on Ted Kennedy and deserves to be widely read, assigned and discussed.","PeriodicalId":220055,"journal":{"name":"History: Reviews of New Books","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117162595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/03612759.2023.2221536
M. Elizabeth
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