Books

Ron Briley: Review of "The Cambridge Companion to Baseball," edited by Leonard Cassuto and Stephen Partridge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Ron Briley is a history teacher and an assistant headmaster at Sandia Preparatory School in Albuquerque, New Mexico.Both the casual fan and baseball scholar should find The Cambridge Companion to Baseball a delightful read and companion for their enjoyment of a popular sport whose claim to be the national pastime is, nevertheless, somewhat dubious for this modern age.  Editors Leonard Cassuto and Stephen Partridge have compiled fifteen essays, along with interchapters focusing upon important baseball personalities, prepared primarily by academics.  The essays are well-written and cover a wide range of issues from literature, film, and material culture to history, economics, race relations, and international development of the game, which is also a business.  The editors assert, “The story of baseball is, in an important way, the story of the interaction between the myth of the national pastime and the reality of the baseball business.  The tension between these two is what drives this book” (2). 

Jim Cullen, Review of Terry H. Anderson's "Bush's Wars" (Oxford, 2011)

[Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. He is the author of The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation (Oxford, 2003), among other books. He is also the author of the recently published Kindle Single e-book President Hanks. Cullen blogs at American History Now.]It is often said that journalism is the first draft of history. Bush's Wars is presented as the first major comprehensive study of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an effort to weigh the foreign policy legacy of President George W. Bush. This is how the blurbs and publicity for the book position it, and the way Terry H. Anderson puts it in his introduction: "to 'figure out,' in Bush's words, the history of the defining policies of his presidency -- and to do it during his lifetime."

Eric Herschthal: Review of John Ferling’s “Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free” (Bloomsbury, 2011)

Eric Herschthal, a staff writer for The Jewish Week, is currently researching a book on the early American republic. His writings have appeared in The New Republic, The New York Observer, and elsewhere.It’s hard not to feel bad for the Founding Fathers these days. After all, it is the Civil War’s moment.  This year marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of that ghastly war, and for the next five years it will get the lion’s share of attention.  The challenge facing any historian writing a popular history of the Founders today, then, is to show that what they fought for—freedom, and independence—were not simple canards; that when the Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence “all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” they actually meant it.That is the challenge facing John Ferling, a respected historian of the American Revolution, in his new book, “Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free.” To tell his story, he seizes on an underappreciated but profoundly significant moment in the eight-year War of Independence—the decision to not merely compel the British to reverse a series of onerous acts, but to break away from the empire entirely, and declare themselves a free and independent nation.

Jim Cullen, Review of Steven Tyler's "Does the Noise in My Head Bother You? A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir "(HarperCollins, 2011)

[Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. He is the author of The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation (Oxford, 2003), among other books. He is also the author of the recently published Kindle Single e-book President Hanks. Cullen blogs at American History Now.]Like a meal at McDonald's, reading autobiographies of pop culture artists always seems like a better idea before I begin than after I'm finished. I start out wondering how particular works of art I've always loved got made, but by the time I'm done reading I find myself amazed that the person I've read about was actually capable of such achievements. Their tics, stories, and laments seem to demystify them to the point that putting down the book feels as if I'm finally parting after spending too long on vacation with someone I thought I liked. If familiarity doesn't breed contempt, it does engender impatience.

Ron Briley: Review of Jennifer Frost's "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism" (New York University Press, 2011)

Ron Briley is a book reviewer for HNN.

Luther Spoehr, Review of Ronald A. Wolk's "Wasting Minds: Why Our Education System Is Failing and What We Can Do About It" (ASCD, 2011).

 [Luther Spoehr, a senior lecturer at Brown University, teaches about the history of American school reform.]           Ronald Wolk, who grew up in Pittsburgh and now lives in Rhode Island, earned a distinguished reputation as an education journalist.  As founder and first editor of Education Week, he established a high standard for thorough, professional coverage of the national school reform debate that was kicked into high gear by the “Nation at Risk” report (1983) and then into overdrive with No Child Left Behind (2002).  He now chairs Big Picture Learning, the parent organization of  “The Met” school in Providence, and, not surprisingly, shares the ideas of its founder, Dennis Littky.

Thomas Kolsky: Review of Jack Ross' Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism (Potomac Books, 2011)

Thomas Kolsky is Professor of History and Political Science, Montgomery County Community College and the author of Jews Against Zionism (Temple University Press)Rabbi Elmer Berger, the leading ideologist and main strategist of the American Council for Judaism (ACJ), the American Jewish organization created  in 1942 specifically to oppose Zionism, is the subject of Jack Ross’ sympathetic and well-researched. In this biography, Ross ably portrays and analyzes the sources and evolution of Berger’s anti-Zionist thought and traces the rabbi’s career as probably one of the fiercest and most enduring American Jewish anti-Zionists.

Jim Cullen, Review of Benjamin H. Irvin's "Clothed in the Robes of Sovereignty: The Continental Congress and the People Out of Doors" (Oxford, 2011)

[Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. He is the author of The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation (Oxford, 2003), among other books. He is also the author of the recently published Kindle Single e-book President Hanks. Cullen blogs at American History Now.]

Luther Spoehr, Review of David Browne’s “Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970” (DaCapo Press, 2011).

 [Luther Spoehr, an HNN book editor, teaches "Campus on Fire:  American Colleges and Universities in the 1960s" and other courses at Brown University.]As he contemplated writing this book, Rolling Stone contributing editor David Browne conceived an ambitious agenda:  “The more I thought about it,” he says, “the more 1970 felt like the lost year: the moment at which the remaining slivers of the idealism of the ‘60s began surrendering to the buzz-kill comedown of the decade ahead….I couldn’t resist revisiting a moment when sweetly sung music and ugly times coexisted, even fed off each other, in a world gone off course.”  An entirely reasonable idea.  The book itself, however, is uneven—strongest when considering the “sweetly sung music,” weakest when describing the “ugly times” in which that music appeared and trying to establish why the times and the tunes were connected.

Andrew Feffer: Review of Stanley Corkin, Starring New York: Filming the Grime and Glamour of the Long 1970s (Oxford University Press, 2011)

Andrew Feffer teaches American cultural and intellectual history at Union College in Schenectady, New York where he co-chairs the Film Studies program. He presently is writing a history of anti-communism and liberal political culture in New York City at the end of the Great DepressionOne afternoon in the late seventies I stumbled on a film crew shooting on location in Washington Square Park in lower Manhattan.  Extras had been set up doing the sorts of things someone imagined went on in the park on a daily basis – juggling, playing music, pushing infants in strollers.  I thought nothing of it until a year later when the very same scene appeared before me on a silver screen -- a sanitized New York that offered the two main characters entertainment and diversion as they strolled about the park instead of the drug dealers and panhandlers that had been harassing me there since I was a teenager.   The scenarist for that film, An Unmarried Woman (Paul Mazursky, 1978), permitted none of the hazards or traumas of urban life in the 1970s to sully the idealization of New York as a place where romance was possible.

Roger Johnson: Review of "The Notes: Ronald Reagan’s Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom," edited by Douglas Brinkley (Harper, 2011)

Roger Johnson received his PhD in American history from the University of Sussex in 2010. He blogs at Gipperwatch.

Robert D. Parmet, Review of Clarence Taylor’s “Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union” (Columbia University Press, 2011)

[Robert D. Parmet is professor of history at York College of the City University of New York and author of The Master of Seventh Avenue: David Dubinsky and the American Labor Movement.]America’s teachers have long struggled to gain respect and satisfactory working conditions.  Toward that goal, in 1916 the New York City Teachers Union was formed.  Modest in its objectives, the organization essentially sought decent salaries and recognition for teachers as professionals.  However, during the 1920s its Communist critics promoted a more militant agenda.  In 1935 the leftists gained control of the union and pointed it in a direction influenced by the Soviet Union and the American Communist Party.

Jim Cullen, Review of Artemy M. Kalinovsky's "A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan" (Harvard, 2011)

[Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. He is the author of The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation (Oxford, 2003), among other books. He is also the author of the recently published Kindle Single e-book President Hanks. Cullen blogs at American History Now.]

Jim Cullen, Review of Cecilia Holland's "Blood on the Tracks" (Kindle Single, 2011)

[Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. He is the author of The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation (Oxford, 2003), among other books. The first installment of his project "Sensing History: Hollywood Actors as Historians" has just been published as a Kindle Single with the title President Hanks. Cullen blogs at American History Now.]"The Great Upheaval," Cecilia Holland writes toward the end of this brief e-book on the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, "isn't much discussed in history classes, in civics classes, in popular literature." She is correct. It is a fixture of U.S. history textbooks, usually meriting honorable mention in academic treatments of the post-Civil War era and in sources like the American Social History Project's Who Built America? So Holland's decision to write a fast-paced, if somewhat familiar, narrative history of the event in the newly launched Kindle Singles series is a welcome and useful addition to the literature.

Jeremy Kuzmarov, Review of Peter Dale Scott's “American War Machine: Deep Politics, The CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan” (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010).

Jeremy Kuzmarov is assistant professor of history at the University of Tulsa and author of The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs (University of Massachusetts Press, 2009) as well as the forthcoming book, Modernizing Repression: Police Training and “Nation-Building” in the American Century (University of Massachusetts Press, 2012). In their 1964 book, The Invisible Government, journalists David Wise and Thomas B. Ross wrote that “there are two governments in the United States today. One is visible. The other is invisible. The first is the government that citizens read about in their newspapers and children study about in their civics class. The second is the interlocking, hidden machinery that carries out the policies of the United States in the Cold War. The second invisible government gathers intelligence, conducts espionage and plans and executes secret operations all over the globe.” In the 45 years since these words were written, we have learned a lot more about how the secret government operates, above and beyond the law, and continues to do so long after the Soviet demise.

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Review of Peter Dale Scott's "American War Machine: Deep Politics, The CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010)

Jeremy Kuzmarov is assistant professor of history at the University of Tulsa and author of The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs (University of Massachusetts Press, 2009) as well as the forthcoming book, Modernizing Repression: Police Training and “Nation-Building” in the American Century (University of Massachusetts Press, 2012).In their 1964 book, The Invisible Government, journalists David Wise and Thomas B. Ross wrote that “there are two governments in the United States today. One is visible. The other is invisible. The first is the government that citizens read about in their newspapers and children study about in their civics class. The second is the interlocking, hidden machinery that carries out the policies of the United States in the Cold War. The second invisible government gathers intelligence, conducts espionage and plans and executes secret operations all over the globe.” In the 45 years since these words were written, we have learned a lot more about how the secret government operates, above and beyond the law, and continues to do so long after the Soviet demise.

Jim Cullen, Review of Julia C. Ott's "When Wall Street Met Main Street: The Quest for an Investor's Democracy" (Harvard, 2011)

[Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. He is the author of The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation (Oxford, 2003), among other books. The first installment of his project "Sensing History: Hollywood Actors as Historians" has just been published as a Kindle Single with the title President Hanks. Cullen blogs at American History Now.]

Aline Voldoire, Review of David McCullough's "The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris" (Simon & Schuster, 2011)

Aline Voldoire teaches history at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York. She was recently awarded the Salo and Jeanette Baron Prize in Jewish Studies for her Columbia University dissertation, The Transnational Politics of French and American Jews, 1860-1920.

Ron Briley reviews Manning Marable's Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Viking, 2011).

Based upon the extensive Malcolm X project conducted under the auspices of the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, a deconstruction of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, oral histories and personal interviews, archival research, and an extensive investigation of FBI records and other government documents made available under the Freedom of Information Act, Manning Marable, the M.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Review of Mara Hvistendahl’s "Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men" (Public Affairs, 2011)

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is professor of history at UC Irvine.Why are there so many more boys than girls in many parts of China—and how worrisome is this phenomenon?