10.22.2021
10.21.2021
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, Payne - B+
Malcolm Little was born to the Reverend Earl Little, a Baptist preacher and handyman, and his West Indian wife, Louise, on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. Earl was from Georgia and steeped in the culture of slavery and Jim Crow; Louise's father was white and she viewed the world through a more optimistic lens. Earl and Louise founded the local chapter of the United Negro Improvement Association, which fostered self reliance, independent thinking and racial pride. The UNIA was the brainchild of Jamaican born Marcus Garvey, who took a more aggressive, less assimilationist stance than the NAACP. The couple raised their children to not succumb to any demeaning stereotyping from either white peers or teachers. Earl moved his family to Milwaukee in late 1926, and to Lansing in 1928. They purchased a home in a white neighborhood, and soon thereafter, were burned out. Earl built a tar-paper shack on 6 acres of land outside of town. On the night of Sept. 28, 1931, Earl was hit by a Lansing streetcar and killed. Among the many challenges Louise and her seven children faced, one was particularly painful and shameful. The insurance company holding a $10,000 accidental death policy on Earl refused to pay. Even though the Medical Examiner said it was an accident, the insurance company insisted it was suicide. "As the family struggled with raising crops and doing chores, a decided waywardness, or slackness, set in among the growing children." As pressure mounted so did Louise's ability to cope, and in late 1938, the state institutionalized her. By this time, young Malcolm was already hustling on the streets of Lansing. Soon he was an accomplished thief and con man, and one who, according to those who grew up with him, hated whites. The state sent him to reform school at 14. When he was 15, he moved to Boston to be under the supervision of his older half-sister, Ella. Malcolm was smart and ambitious and hoping for more opportunities in the east. His brother-in-law got him a job shining shoes at a nightclub, and soon he was making a fortune pimping and selling reefer. He shifted his base to Harlem, where he was known as Detroit Red as he broke laws everyday, and as of 1943, evaded the draft. When the induction notice arrived, the 6'4" redhead put on a zany yellow zoot suit and playing a homosexual, talked to the psychiatrist about going south to get some crackers. A 4F classification followed. Back in Boston in the fall of 1945, Malcolm organized a burglary gang. Malcolm, his best friend, and three white girls were arrested and tried for braking and entering. The two black men received sentences of 8-10 years. The white girls cooperated with the state and got off with wrist slaps.
He entered the prison system on Feb. 27, 1946. Encouraged by an inmate of color who seemed to have everyone's respect, Malcolm turned his photographic memory and loquacious verbal skills to the library and learning. He wanted to learn how to fight with words. At the same time, his oldest brother, Wilfred, encouraged him to consider the preachings of the Nation of Islam and Elijah Muhammad. He read extensively and adopted the beliefs of the Nation of Islam. When he was paroled in 1952, he was a new man, his drinking, drugs, and whoring days behind him. He went to work for the NOI in Detroit and soon was a first class recruiter. He was also a stickler for the rules. Elijah sent him east to rejuvenate some failing temples. He was so effective that he garnered the attention of the FBI. His pointed critiques of thousands of lynchings at the hands of the blue-eyed devils as proof of the nation's institutionalized racism caught Hoover's attention. Both Elijah, and in particular Malcolm, now the Nation's national spokesman, were introduced to America in a documentary on a NY television station. Mike Wallace called Malcom a "remarkable man." That said, the roots of future conflict were arising as the ascetic Malcolm began to hear stories about Elijah's womanizing. Malcolm's fame and national profile brought money into the coffers, but his high profile began to trouble those in Chicago known in the faith as the royal family. By the end of the 1950's, Malcolm was a national figure traveling the country espousing the Nation of Islam's gospel of separation from whites and Black self-reliance. In 1961, Elijah asked him to sit down and talk in Atlanta to the KKK. The Klan desired to see if their mutual opposition to integration might lead to cooperation on some fronts. At the end of a two hour summit, the Klan asked for information about the location of the home of ML King. Malcolm blanched at the desire of the Klan to kill King, and fell out further with Elijah, who continued discussions with the KKK.
In 1963, Malcolm confirmed what he had long suspected. Elijah was a hypocrite and adulterer. Malcolm met with Elijah's son, Wallace, who confirmed that Elijah had impregnated a number of his secretaries and expelled them from the NOI for adultery. He also told Malcolm that Elijah's NOI creation myth was completely false. Shaken to the core, the street hustler cum evangelist turned away from the Honorable Elijah. At the same time, Elijah now considered Malcolm an existential threat. Malcolm X left the nation in March, 1964. He studied traditional Islam and even made the haj to Mecca. Upon his return from the seven week overseas trip, he attacked Elijah's paternity of six illegitimate children in the national media. He then focused on trying to create a coalition ranging from ML King to Kwame Nkrumah, president of Ghana, to bring the treatment of America's negroes to the UN. His focus was now political. On February 15, 1965, the NOI firebombed and destroyed his house in Queens. The day after the firebombing while speaking in Harlem, Malcolm disclosed Elijah's connection to the Klan. Elijah had already decreed that Malcolm must be eliminated. One of Malcolm's bodyguards was a NYPD undercover cop. When he alerted the department to what he believed was an impending assassination attempt, the NYC police reduced their presence in front of the Audubon Ballroom where he spoke again on Feb. 21. When Malcolm stood at the podium to begin, a smoke bomb went off and a member of the NOI Newark mosque, stood up and blasted Malcolm with a sawed off shotgun. Two men jumped on the stage to finish him off with pistols. He died a few minutes later. The only shooter prosecuted and jailed was the one wounded by a bodyguard at the scene. The other two and the two who had created a confusing distraction, were never pursued. The authorities were more interested in disparaging Malcolm than capturing his killers.
His teachings have had a profound impact in the decades since his murder, particularly in the wake of Spike Lee's 1992 movie. Young Blacks took inspiration from his brilliance and his insistence that they were not second class citizens. Black replaced negro in daily usage as a proud affirmation of race. This book is 530 pages and a bit of a slog at times. But it is well worth the effort. He was an extraordinary individual who annoyed and threatened the white establishment and most of Black America, but he didn't pull any punches in his crusade against racism.
Victory City: A History Of New York And New Yorkers During WWII, Strausbaugh - Incomplete
"In the decades surrounding World War II, New York was a far larger presence in America and around the world than it is today." It was the largest city in the world and 40% of America's exports and imports came through its harbor. An amazing 850,000 New Yorkers wore a uniform during the war. The man who ran the Manhattan project, and the people who betrayed it, were from the city.
As news of the Pearl Harbor attack spread through the city that fateful Sunday, reactions were many and varied, but none more poignant than that of the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. After the announcement of the bombing, the orchestra played the Star Spangled Banner. Soldiers and sailors reported to their duty stations. Starting Monday, recruitment centers were open 24 hours per day. In the early months of the war, anywhere from 5 to 24 U-Boats patrolled the east coast, with particular attention paid to New York harbor. In the first six months of 1942, Germany snk 226 freighters in US waters. Eventually, the Reich was unable to project that much power that far.
Throughout the city, businesses converted to war time production. The fabled team at Steinway made army-green-colored uprights and glider planes. That said, by 1942 the city had more unemployed than in 1939, as most of the major defense contracts went to the large industrial states in the midwest. LaGuardia successfully pushed FDR to utilize the garment industry to manufacture uniforms. The Navy began to increase hiring in Brooklyn. "The wartime boom had finally come to New York City and it spread through the entire town." Vast amounts were spent on entertainment by the millions in uniform who passed through the city.
A great topic - a great city - but an author who, in a 10 page chapter, covers a dozen people doing twelve different things with no sense of narrative or continuity led me to call it a day.
10.13.2021
The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became An American Hero, Egan - B+
Thomas Francis Meagher was born on August 3, 1823 in Waterford Ireland, a place where being Irish had been a virtual crime for seven centuries. Edmund Burke, an 18th century statesman describing the institutions of Ireland said: "A machine of wise and elaborate contrivance as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people and the debasement in them of human nature itself as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." A colleague of de Tocqueville observed: "I have seen the Indian in the forest and the negro in his chains and thought I saw the the very extreme of human wretchedness, but did not know the condition of unfortunate Ireland. An entire nation of paupers is what never was seen until it was shown in Ireland."
Meagher's circumstances were very different because his grandfather emigrated to Newfoundland, and returned to Waterford a very wealthy man. Thus, Thomas attended an excellent Catholic college in England, read law in Dublin for awhile, and fell in with the young rebels coming of age in Ireland. The summer of 1845 saw a blight destroy the potato crop that fed almost all of the land's peasants. The English landlords grew corn, wheat and barley. Over a billion-and-a-half bushels of those grains were exported to England. While Ireland, a place not allowed a vestige of self-government, starved, the UK's indifference bordered on genocide. Indeed, the official in charge of famine relief praised the Malthusian diminishment of the population. Outraged by what he saw, Meagher became the radical proponent of 'Ireland for the Irish' and spoke of the need to emulate what the Americans had done. His oratorical skills were exceptional. He toured the country espousing the radical ideas of the Young Irish and garnering the attention of the occupiers. He designed the flag that would someday be the Republic's and participated in a brief flare-up at Ballingarry. He was one of ten men arrested and tried for sedition, but the Crown's plans were undone when one Catholic made it onto the jury. A new ex post facto Treason Felony law was passed by Parliament featuring execution or transportation for any nationalist convicted under its terms. He was arrested on August 12, 1848 . After a week-long trial, he was condemned to be hung, drawn and quartered. An international outpouring on behalf of Meagher and four others led to their sentences being commuted to transportation for life. He was sent to Tasmania, and would never see Ireland again.
It took 112 days to reach Australia, where the UK had already sent 40,000 Irish. Because of the notoriety of Meagher and a handful of other political's, they were not put to forced labor but were allowed freedom. The price was a promise to not try to escape. He fell in love with, and soon married, a young governess, Catherine Bennett, in February, 1851. Frustrated by a life without freedom, he wrote a letter to the governor resigning his parole and announcing he was escaping. He rode a horse to the coast, and was picked up by a trader, and arrived in NYC in 1852. He was free, famous, and in a country that offered sanctuary to former prisoners of the British.
Of New York's 600,000 inhabitants, fully one-fourth were newly-arrived Irish. On his second night in the city, he was serenaded by 7,000. The Irish diaspora wanted him to free their homeland. Everyone from local barmen to the US president wanted to meet him. He began to speak in public in the city and throughout the north about the plight of the Irish and his experiences in jail. He spoke on behalf of Democratic candidates and was invited by Franklin Pierce to his inauguration. His wife and his father, still a member of the British parliament, visited him in NY. The hurly-burly was too much, and they returned to Ireland, where Catherine died in childbirth. His namesake son would be raised in Waterford by his father. By this time, Britain had ended transportation, provided a dollop of self-government in Australia, and had pardoned the political's it had condemned a few years earlier. However, excluded from the pardon were the few escapees who would never be allowed back. He fell in love again, and married a local woman. However, this time it was the Presbyterian daughter of an established and very wealth family, Elizabeth Townsend. He became a citizen and a lawyer.
New York's Irish voted Democratic in 1860, and were clearly not sympathetic to the plight of the Negro. Nonetheless, Meagher joined the NY Militia's 69th Regiment and went off to war. Expectations among the Union generals was that the Irish might do a bit better than Blacks. At Bull Run, they were sent into the foray late in the day, but were repulsed, and Meagher had his horse shot out from under him. In William Tecumseh Sherman's report, he said that the"sewage from the city" had fought admirably. Meagher returned to NY and began recruiting. He saw the war as an opportunity to prove to the Americans the value of the Irish. He also wanted to train men for what he hoped would be a later fight for Ireland against Britain. By the following year, he was a brigadier general in charge of a much larger and better equipped Irish Brigade. Both the general and the brigade excelled on the Peninsula, and garnered praise from McClellan. The Brigade suffered terrible losses at Antietam and began losing its support in NY, as the church had come out against freeing the slaves. Meagher's enthusiasm for the war began to fade. He was despondent by the time of Fredericksburg. The battle proved to be the bloodiest day of the Irish Brigade's war. The Brigade was shattered, unpaid, suffering from dysentery, down to 500 men, and Meagher had an infected abscess in a knee. Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863 was his last battle. He would no longer send Irishmen to war. He resigned his commission.
The NYC draft riots that summer tarnished the reputation of the people Meagher had spent years building up. By repudiating the war and killing negroes, the Irish were once again outcasts and Meagher, for continuing to support the war, was a pariah among his own people. Lincoln asked him to return and he finished the war in a backwater Tennessee post, drinking heavily. He and Elizabeth decided to leave behind NY and head west. President Johnson appointed him Secretary of the Montana Territory. The day he arrived in Virginia City, the governor resigned and appointed him acting governor. Montana of 1865 was a lawless place where vigilantes ruled. His two years in Montana were an unpleasant series of confrontations with the vigilantes and the Indians. His dream of bringing the Irish from the cities to the mountains had offended everyone out west. In the summer of 1867, he was broke, ill, and on a riverboat on the Missouri near Ft. Benton. On the night of July 1, he fell overboard and his body was never found. He was mourned in America, Australia, and Ireland. In 1905, the citizens of Montana erected a bronze equestrian statue with words chiseled on the side from a speech he had made in Ireland. In 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy presented the Irish Parliament with the green battle flag the Brigade had carried at Fredericksburg.
This is an excellent book, and an amazing story. I suggest that anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them read the first few chapters. Egan sets forth the most eloquent depiction of the insidious policies of the English that I have ever read. I intentionally used the word genocide above, and believe that it is the most apt description of the UK's policies. And as for Meagher, his biography reads like a novel - a well-written one at that.
Not Dark Yet, Robinson - B+
In this latest iteration, Zelda is kidnapped by Albanians, while the London security forces she worked for are curious about why she may have been spying on her boss. Banks and his team are frustrated by the lack of clues, and fear the worst. A related matter involves the investigation of the murder of a local thug by his Balkan partners. As usual, Banks proceeds with his usual aplomb and grace to resolve complex matters. This is the 27th in the series and there is a hint that Alan is thinking about calling it a day with the Eastvale Police.
Alter Ego, Freeman - B+
This is another great one about the Duluth PD. A major Hollywood movie is being filmed in town, featuring events that involved Stride a decade earlier. The writer/director is the son of a man convicted of three murders. The problem though is the entitled leading man, an aging star with an appetite for young women and his team of enablers. It slowly becomes apparent that many young women go missing around this guy, and the team including Stride, Serena, and Maggie, with some unauthorized help from Cat, expose the bad guys. Just fabulous.
Marathon, Freeman - B
This is the eighth novel in the Jonathan Stride series. It has all of the usual quality police work, interesting characters, and late in the game plot twists that make these stories special. A bomb goes off at the Duluth Marathon killing a handful and injuring many more. A man is convinced he saw a Muslim with a backpack, fires off a tweet and soon we are in the midst of a clash between a right wing group in town for a conference and the local Muslim community. To some extent, the plot becomes almost predictable as both sides dig in. My observation is that it is, of course, good, but not as good as most of its predecessors.
10.04.2021
Plunder: Napoleon's Theft of Veronese's Feast, Saltzman - B +
"This is the story of Napoleon's theft of Paolo Veronese's Wedding Feast of Cana, a vast, sublime canvas that in 1797 the French tore from a wall of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice." From the moment in 1563 that the Benedictines first displayed it, the painting became immensely famous. When he invaded Italy in 1796, Napoleon had his eye on the art treasures of the northern regions, with the goal of filling the Louvre. The French would rationalize their thievery with the statement: "The fruits of genius are the patrimony of liberty." The first two cities he extracted money, food, horses, and high art from were Parma and Milan. Rome soon followed. Napoleon then turned his sights on Venice. He demanded 16 paintings for the Louvre, including masterpieces by Bellini, Tintoretto, Titian, and Veronese. The Feast was not portable. It was 22 ft. x 32ft, affixed to a wall on an architects frame and stretcher. When it was taken down, it tore in three different places. To add insult to injury, Napoleon settled his war with Austria by giving Venice to the Hapsburgs. As the French left, they took the four horses from St. Mark's.
The Venetian paintings were placed on a 32 gun frigate and sailed for eleven weeks to reach France, where they were placed on barges to proceed up the Loire. It would eventually take a year for them to reach Paris. The Feast, cut in half, reassembled, and restored was put on display for the first time in the Louvre on May 21, 1801. The French advocated to the rest of Europe that they were bringing something extraordinary from behind closed doors to a vast number of people. It was not theft, but liberation.
When Napoleon was finally defeated, the Allies were in no rush to return the looted art, lest they appear to not be supportive of the restored monarchy. The Prussians, at gun point, rescued some of their artwork. The Austrians, on behalf of Venice, took back the four horses from St. Mark's. The Papacy made a demand for its paintings and statuary. Somehow, the French managed to hang onto about half of what they had taken from Italy. The Feast stayed because of fears about moving it again. The French offered, and the Austrians accepted, a few others as substitutes. The Feast was hidden by the French in the countryside during the Franco-Prussian War, and again in WWII. Today, it hangs just across from the Mona Lisa in the Salle des Etats in the Grand Gallerie of the Louvre.
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