Thursday, October 30, 2014

“Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization”, by Richard Miles


544 pages, Viking, ISBN-13: 978-0670022663

The Mediterranean is, perhaps, one of the most diverse regions of the world, shared as it is by Africans, Arabs, Greeks, Israelis, Turks, and by Eastern and Western Europeans. In Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization, Richard Miles, the British historian and archaeologist, studies an era of the ancient Mediterranean when other, no-less diverse peoples also shared the region: Egyptians, Gauls Greeks, Libyans, Phoenicians, Romans, and Spaniards all lived around the sea, both competing and cooperating with one another other. Miles’ study arguably is the definitive history of another of those peoples: the Carthaginians.

The narrative commences with the foundation of the city from Tyre by the legendary Queen Elissa (or Dido). Over time, the Carthaginians gained control of the area that today is Tunisia and from that base became a successful trading and maritime power. A key asset that the Carthaginians exploited early on was the silver mined in Spain, providing an early foundation for the city’s vast wealth (the Rio Tinto area southwestern Spain still has huge slag heaps produced by the mining operations of the time). One of the original reasons for the expansion into the Western Mediterranean by Tyre was the need to find resources – such as silver – to feed the “Assyrian Beast”, Tyre’s hated overlord at the time. However, it was eventually Carthage that inherited these resources and its “renown would soon come to far outshine the faded luster of its Phoenician parent”.

The events of the Punic wars are well known but, briefly, during the First Punic War Rome successfully transformed itself from a land power into a sea power and defeated Carthage. Carthage lost Sicily but expanded in Spain to try to make up for its losses, an expansion that once again brought the two cities into conflict. Despite Hannibal’s epic march across the Alps and early victories over Rome, the Romans eventually wore the Carthaginians down, took the war to Africa, and won. Carthage was left with just its hinterland and a huge war indemnity. Even then, she was thought to be too much of a threat to Rome, who again went to war and destroyed the city in 146 BCE after three years of heroic defense by its citizens. The narrative, however, does not stop at 146 BCE. Miles looks at Roman “war guilt” and how that worked itself through the following centuries (for example in the Aeneid of Virgil). Miles’ narrative of these events is compelling and easy to read but with a lot more.

Miles looks at the problems with writing a history of Carthage. There are no Punic sources, the great library of Carthage having vanished after the destruction of the city. Instead, the historian needs to rely on hostile Roman and Greek sources, as well as some pro-Carthaginian Greek sources. Miles does a convincing job of cutting through the hostile propaganda and constructing a more even handed and broadly sympathetic picture of the Carthaginians and their story. He explores the Roman stereotype of “Punic Faith”, the supposed treachery and deviousness commonly attributed to Carthaginians, as well as their reputation as cunning and deceitful traders. Miles however shows a pattern of behavior that is not too different to that of the Romans and Greeks. The accusations of child sacrifice that the Romans levelled at their Punic foes are also explored. The conclusion is that these accusations were not without foundation but are also highly exaggerated. In his study of stereotypes, Miles looks at Greek and Roman literature as sources. Miles also uses the limited sources available and archaeological evidence to examine the intellectual, cultural and religious life of Carthage, a difficult task in view of the scarcity of sources. The Carthaginians appeared to have worshipped a number of West Semitic deities such as Baal, Tanit and Melqart. The culture of the city appears to have been quite syncretic in its final centuries, absorbing much from the Hellenistic world.

Despite Miles’ compelling effort to reconstruct from the debris and try to tell us how Carthaginians saw themselves and their world, one is left with the feeling that one would like to know more. But it was Rome, not Carthage, which established its dominion over the Mediterranean world; the common elite culture of the Mediterranean became Greco-Roman, not Punic culture. For Miles, nevertheless, the history of Carthage is also a history of Rome. The Carthaginians were the first to try to build an empire spanning both shores on the Mediterranean. Though it was the Romans who succeeded in the end, to do so they had to take over Carthage’s empire and build upon it. The early overseas provinces of Rome (with the exception of Macedon) were all inherited from Carthage and with it, presumably, some of its structures of governance and law. The quinquereme of the Roman navy were based on the design of a captured Carthaginian ship. The Romans valued the technical expertise of the Carthaginians and had translated all 28 volumes of Mago’s agricultural treatise said to be the “agronomic bible of the ancient world”. The foundations of the Roman Empire were, to a great extent, laid by Carthage, but whether the Romans themselves recognized their Punic inheritance is less clear.

The Romans did not set out to destroy Punic culture, but to destroy a political rival. Punic culture continued to exist in North Africa for centuries along with the other cultures that fell under Roman rule. The continual process of the mixing of ideas, cultures and peoples in the Mediterranean which under Carthage began, continued under the Roman imperium. The westward road that the early Tyrians took to found Carthage was followed during Roman times by other west bound peoples from the Levant. These included the early Christians such as Paul. These later travelers, unlike their Tyrian and Carthaginian predecessors, left a more permanent cultural and religious imprint on the Mediterranean world and Europe – Christianity.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

“The Elizabethans”, by A.N. Wilson


448 pages, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN-13: 978-0374147440

A. N. Wilson is an English writer and columnist who has written for such papers as the London Evening Standard, Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, The Spectator and The Observer. He has also written several critical biographies, novels, and works of popular history, such as this one, The Elizabethans, which can best be described as a series of essays covering significant events and issues during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603). There is no unifying theme, except chronological, as the book is divided into, first, successive decades and, then, further subdivided by decade into chapters covering the most historically significant events or issues of the time. The lack of a unifying theme makes the book a little hard to follow, although each chapter, often quite detailed, is interesting and informative in its own right. Its targeted audience is English.

Wilson seems to see himself as something of an iconoclast, trying to reinterpret received wisdom, and he tries mightily to explain how a small island nation off the coast of Europe became a world leader in exploration, literary arts, colonization, drama, political theory, and any number of other key areas, showing through his discussion how Elizabeth’s era generated such powerful cultural changes and, through those changes, ushered in the modern era. The religious conflicts of Elizabeth’s reign are the most frequently discussed topic and might be as close to a unifying theme as Wilson has. In one way or another, these religious divisions contributed to the other major events and conflicts. It’s not a book for someone new to the Elizabethan period, for although the information, and even many of the digressions, are certainly informative, some grounding in the period would be useful to the general reader, if only to help said reader keep track of the players (especially when Wilson starts talking about how his interpretation differs from the standard view).

Wilson is a good writer and the essays are sound. He makes a point to include various theories on different mysteries of the time (from baby-daddy dramas to Marlowe’s death), but maintains an honest relationship with the reader, making it very clear when he is expressing his opinions and when he is citing facts. This is a great read for anyone who has ever been interested understanding Elizabethan times beyond a book that praises the Queen from the first page to the last while also outlining her various weaknesses. The concluding chapter is wrapped up in parallel with Hamlet. The author took great care throughout the rest of the book to refrain from comparing anything from the Elizabethan era to our own, reasoning that it wasn’t possible to compare things from two very different times. Instead, the use of Hamlet to show the eventual down-spiral of Elizabeth’s reign, and the savior in the form of a foreign (or in this case, Scottish) power, shows the depth of the author’s understanding and appreciation for the subject. Overall The Elizabethans provides a good summary of the Elizabethan era and good introductions to its most significant figures.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

“Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars” by Paul Ingrassia



416 pages, Simon & Schuster, ISBN-13: 978-1451640632

Paul Ingrassia has chronicled the auto industry for more than twenty-five years as the former Detroit bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. As such, the writing style of Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars reflects this: the language really does seem directed towards the average 8th Grader, rather than to a full-grown adult. While Ingrassia deserves credit for his inspiration to write about how 15 different cars influenced the American dream, the book is so filled with errors, breathless mischaracterizations, and irritating stylistic furbelows as to seriously reduce its merit. Engines of Change could have been a good book, but as delivered it is poorly researched, sloppily edited, full of half-baked “explanations” of technical matters, cutesy phrases (if I ever see the phrase “as it were” again…) and, in many details, is just plain wrong. Ingrassia has the credentials; too bad he didn't take the time, and too bad his publisher never bothered to insist on quality. What’s that you say? You want examples? Well, here you are:

A few pages in we’re warned about the author’s carelessness when we come across “Austin-Healey” misspelled as “Austin-Healy”. Minor? I think not in a book of this sort. If you can't get the car names right, what have you got?

Bookending this egregious error, Ingrassia’s acknowledgments thank “Csaba Cera”, correctly known in the actual world of his journalistic eminence as “Csaba Csere”. Embarrassing? You bet.

In between these startling miscues is a photograph of what purports to be the Dodge display at the 1957 Detroit Auto Show – that actually pictures 1955 Dodges.

On page 116 Ingrassia chronicles Ed Cole’s 1952 seconding to Chevrolet to fix its manifold (OK, pun intended) problems. But he implies that one of Cole’s first tasks was to redesign an existing Chevy V8 engine whereas, in fact, Chevy did not have a V8 available for its cars until 1955. Let me be clear: the new V8 may have been redesigned under Cole’s leadership before it was ultimately introduced in 1955, but an impressionable reader could reasonably conclude from Ingrassia’s telling that Chevrolet already had a V8 in the model years between 1952 and 1955. This, of course, was not so, and I’m sure Mr. Ingrassia knows it was not so, but his writing is so fuzzy, so imprecise, so unimproved by a rigorous reading before publication, that he sows error by failure to be clear.

Moreover, he says that the ‘55 Chevy, whose grille has often been likened to one of a contemporary Ferrari (i.e. simple mesh) had “a toothy front grille”. It did not. Again, these may seem like small points, but they are unacceptable because, in fact, they distort the very history that the author is attempting to recount.

There is more. Read about the 1979 government bailout of Chrysler and be completely mystified. Ingrassia presents it as a fait accompli, but never tells us how it, over a great deal of opposition, came about.

Ingrassia’s book is a comic-book version of 20th & 21st Century American history, featuring tail fins, hippies, soccer Moms, yuppies, and red-staters. If only American history were so easy! (My favorite simplification is the wave-topping summary of the 70’s on pg. 192): “The car’s life spanned the decade of Watergate, defeat in Vietnam, two oil shocks, the Iranian hostage crisis, inflation, stagflation, and national ‘malaise’”). The descriptions of automotive history are similarly inconsistent, with detailed explanations of John Z. DeLorean’s wardrobe and personal life, contrasted with a one-paragraph passing mention of how Ed Cole single-handedly brought unleaded gasoline and catalytic converters to the US market (it this is really true, it deserves more exposition than it received). Finally, Ingrassia’s writing style is chatty and breezy, with repeated attempts at “cleverness” and detours into random areas of pop culture in an attempt to provide period “ambiance.” All told, this book was more like an extended magazine article in terms the depth of research, quality of writing, and clarity of theme. While automotive history is clearly interwoven with American history, this book doesn’t do either subject justice.