“Medieval England, 1000-1500: A Reader”, edited by Emilie Amt

520 pages, University of Toronto Press, ISBN-13: 978-1551112442

Medieval England, 1000-1500: A Reader, edited by Emilie Amt (the Hildegarde Pilgram Professor of History at Hood College, Maryland; I knew you’d want to know), is an academic anthology that collects a series of medieval documents and narratives that, together, seek to illuminate the cultural, economic, political and social history of England during the Middle Ages. Be forewarned, however: this is very much an academic history designed for serious students of the Middle Ages and other experts in the field; as such, it is dry and not a little turgid, but if you can wallow through this stuff you’ll (probably) learn something. The subjects range between both secular and clerical, male and female, and rich and poor. Along with such classic texts as the Domesday Book (no, that’s not a misspelling) and Magna Carta (really, you can’t talk about England during the Middle Ages without mentioning Magna Carta), the collection also contains materials on less frequently addressed topics, such as the persecution of Jews and the writings of a number of women, such as Margery of Kempe and Queen Isabella of Angoulême. Again, not for the ignorant or the weak of heart; Medieval England is written for those who already have some knowledge of its topics and are interested in delving deeper yet into its subject matter. If this describes you, well then, have at it; if it doesn’t, then best to stick to the popular history stuff and leave this work to the PhD candidates.

“Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City”, by Nelson Johnson

290 pages, Fall River Press, ISBN-13: 978-1435158528

In his book Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City, Nelson Johnson tells the tale of a bustling little city by the seashore totally dependent upon money spent by tourists of a variety of stripes (yes, yes, yes it served, at least in part, as the inspiration for the HBO series, although that was a work of fiction, and the early days of “AC” take up only a part of the book). Atlantic City began as a bug infested barrier island that Dr. Jonathan Pitney dreamed of turning into a health spa for the masses; instead, it became an anything goes boardwalk of vice for the blue collar workers of Philadelphia and New Jersey, with its popularity rising in the early 20^th Century and peaking during Prohibition as the resort’s singular purpose of providing a good time to its visitors (lawful or otherwise) demanded a singular mentality to rule the town. Success of the local economy was the only ideology, the law be damned, and critics and do-gooders were not tolerated. By 1900, a political juggernaut, funded by payoffs from gambling rooms, bars, and brothels, was firmly entrenched, and for the next 70 years Atlantic City was dominated by a partnership comprised of local politicians and racketeers. This unique alliance reached full bloom in the person of Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, the second of three bosses to head the Republican machine (I’m sorry to say) that dominated city politics and society.

In Boardwalk Empire, Nucky Johnson, Louis “the Commodore” Kuehnle, Frank “Hap” Farley, and Atlantic City itself spring to life in all their garish splendor. This book was well written and the early history was very interesting, what with the good doctor with his dreams for a resort for the wealthy, the railroads being fought over and built, even the mosquitos and Philadelphia’s attraction to the vices. However, after the first couple of power struggles and corruption stories it became rather boring and pedestrian in style. If the subject matter intrigues you, this book will probably be worth a read; however, don’t expect high drama or strong narrative (and certainly not anything as spicy as the HBO series). Johnson does an excellent job reconstructing key eras in Atlantic City’s and New Jersey’s recent past, and is at his best when explaining the multifaceted politics-meets-racket machine that was Atlantic City and the people that dominated it. Balancing this are a tendency to start strong with narrative, and then devolve to “note card transcription” modes of storytelling; these are at their worst during the chapters on Atlantic City’s decline and early-casino organized crime forays. In these portions of the city’s story, strong or dominant individual figures aren’t present to capture and focus attention, and Johnson’s writing style takes the already complex and muddy “histories” and renders them sometimes intractable (the last chapter on the coming of Donald Trump is interesting, considering The Donald’s current improbable residence).

“God’s Funeral: The Decline of Faith in Western Civilization”, by A. N. Wilson

512 pages, W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN-13: 978-0393047455

Remember the furor back in the 60s and 70s when several American theologians announced that God is dead? (their views were old-hat in Europe, particularly Germany, where Nietzsche had proclaimed the death of God in the 1800s). Their fellow Americans were not amused, and they invariably led the Western world in a resounding “Yes!” when asked whether they believed in God (I remember seeing those bumper stickers: “Nietzsche is dead – God”). But these radicals were not the first to offer this proposition, as A. N. Wilson shows in his book God’s Funeral: The Decline of Faith in Western Civilization, the subject of which is the loss of faith in 19^th Century Europe, especially in Britain. While most of the leading lights portrayed in this book are British, Wilson makes it clear that, aside from John Ruskin, his countrymen were rather shallow in this regard; Wilson, however, also treats his characters with a seriousness leavened by a certain playfulness.

Wilson, for all his very British wit, is in earnest about the intellectual battles between absolute faith and the forces of unbelief. He insists on taking the sowers of doubt seriously. He has no use for Karl Marx or his disciples, whom he sees as another manifestation of what Reinhold Niebuhr identified as foolish “children of light”, but he gives old Karl high marks for seeing that industrialism would produce “consumerism”, an inherently seductive enemy of Christianity. Wilson doesn’t like capitalism any more than he likes communism or any other “ism” that puts man, and not God, at the center of human existence. Indeed, at one point, he blurts out a sweeping generalization worthy of funny old Herbert Spencer: “Dethroning God, [Hardy’s] generation found it impossible to leave the sanctuary empty. They put man in His place, which had the paradoxical effect, not of elevating human nature but of demeaning it to depths of cruelty, depravity and stupidity unparalleled in human history”.

True? Maybe; after all, the numbers of wars and deaths brought on by secular, not religious, fanaticism, even in our century, implies that Wilson is on to something here: after all, the Nazi crusade against the Jews was not religiously inspired, and the Soviets and ChiComs murdered millions upon millions of their own citizens in the name of Man, and not God. Wilson is an honest man, even humble in his own way. He makes no attempt to define God or to offer any arguments why anyone should believe in God, or not. But at the end, he’s reduced to the rather limp confession that after giving the Big Question serious thought, he concludes vaguely that he agrees with Friedrich von Hügel: “Religion [is] the deepest kind of life”. I think most of Wilson’s subjects, religious or otherwise, would have come up with something better than that.