“The Gilded Age, 1876–1912: Overture to the American Century”, by Alan Axelrod

384 pages, Sterling, ISBN-13: 978-1454925750

I’ve mentioned my fascination with the Gilded age before, when I reviewed “Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Daughter and a Mother in the Gilded Age” by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart on November 15, 2018. “The Gilded Age” was first coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their novel of the same name, and was a time of adolescent expansion of the post-Civil War United States from a nation of farmers to a nation of corporations, business and the rise of massive consumerism. It was an age of technological advancement propelled by such behemoths as Thomas Edison with the electric light bulb and Alexander Graham Bell with the telephone; giants of industry – such as Andrew Carnegie in steel, John D. Rockefeller in railroads and oil and JP Morgan in many fields – made America an economic power house. It was also an age of widespread corruption and greed, as evinced in the lives of the piratical Robber Barons. Reformers abounded, from Carrie Nation against liquor, to suffragettes and civil rights activists. Modern advertising and the rise of the department store along with modern retailing were developed. Immigrants from Eastern Europe and Asia came to America lured by promises of employment. The era’s political era ended with the outbreak of the First World War

And so I got The Gilded Age, 1876–1912: Overture to the American Century by Alan Axelrod with expectations of more of the same sort of discussions brought about by the before-mentioned Consuelo and Alva, only on a more complete scale. While the Vanderbilts – and all of the other Robber Barons, as well – are discussed, Axelrod’s work is much more wide-ranging, as he discusses the low along with the high, the mansions of the rich as well as the tenements of the poor. At not-even 400 pages, though, is serves more as a primer to this rather familiar-looking era, full as it is with numerous pictures throughout that will keep younger readers more engaged (and not a few older ones, as well) while reading about this intriguing era. All of the numerous topics I mentioned above are touched-upon and introduced, but I imagine that each subject could and, probably, should warrant a book all its own that delves deep into its darkest reaches. But anyway, I liked The Gilded Age as the start of a conversation and hope to expand my knowledge of this fascinating ear more in the future.

“Mao: The Unknown Story”, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday

832 pages, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., ISBN-13: 978-0679422716

I knew I was in good hands when, upon opening up Mao: The Unknown Story, the first paragraph stated unequivocally that “Mao Tse-tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world’s population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime…” There you have it: just a little taste of the monstrousness you will encounter in Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s biography of this wretched man. Their book is simply breathtaking in its scope and details. I already knew more than a little about Chinese history when I first opened it (and, indeed, have reviews other books about Mao on this blog), yet I had no idea about the depths of Mao duplicity in every single aspect and facet of his life. The authors – the husband and wife team of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday – have been accused by other (supposedly respectable) reviewers of representing their opinions as facts, but this just isn’t so: when they speculate, they freely admit it, and then prop up their speculations with facts and, in some cases, eyewitness testimony.

Mao Tse-tung was utterly loathsome. Every aspect of his personal life was bizarre and perverse, from his personal hygiene to his collection of nurse-concubines, to his “longevity program” in which he demanded a teenage virgin be brought to his bed every night. He called for murders and executions, engaged the entire country in a mad, destructive effort to produce steel from pots, pans and scraps, ruined agricultural production and caused a famine (this is without dispute, only the numbers dead are disputed – 1 million or 30 million – low figure or high, it was still horrible), exported food as people starved, built up then ruined the public education system, burnt books, encouraged gangs who harassed and punished teachers, tried to destroy the country’s cultural inheritance, tore down historic buildings and monuments, suppressed science, persecuted the veteran Communists who had brought about his victory, and tried to supplant Western medicine with the “great storehouse of Chinese medicine”.

But what of the good he did? We're told by his apologists that he united China. Well, all the best despots are uniters, aren’t they? Hitler could be said to have united Western Europe, at least for a time. Stalin united the countries of the Soviet Union, and later those of Eastern Europe. Tito united Yugoslavia, and Saddam united Iraq. Is being a “uniter” enough to justify the rest? We’re also told he thwarted foreign occupation or control of any part of China, but did he? Colonization was well on the wane by 1949. Japan was in ruins. Britain had given up India. The Dutch had released Indonesia. The United States had provided the Philippines with its independence, and the zeitgeist of the post war world, led by the United States, was to free colonies. No one wanted a piece of China any more. We’re told that lifespan and literacy increased under Mao. Perhaps so; perhaps not; Communists were not scrupulous in maintaining records. If literacy and lifespan did increase, Mao had little to do with it. Peace has its dividends, including longer life and better education. After 20 years of better schooling, Mao disrupted everything with the Cultural Revolution and set China back, especially Chinese science and industry. It was only with his death and the arrest of the Gang of Four that China came right once more and began to progress rapidly.

This magnificent book is not without its blemishes; for instance, there is no discussion of the quality of the sources or how they were used, and the motives of people in general – and of Mao in particular – are asserted rather than evaluated (also, there is no introduction or concluding chapter to bring together the key themes of the book; a small complaint, perhaps, but a giant irritant). Nevertheless, Mao: The Unknown Story a stupendous work and one hopes that it will be brought before the Chinese people, who still claim to venerate the man and who have yet to come to terms with their own history, even as they require others to do so.

“The Borgias: The Hidden History”, by G. J. Meyer

512 pages, Bantam, ISBN-13: 978-0345526922

The Borgias: The Hidden History by G. J. Meyer can best be described as Revisionist History, but of the good kind: rather than try to take down a beloved historical figure, or reinterpret a positive event as a negative imbroglio, he does rather the opposite by taking this infamous Spanish clan and rehabilitating them through – get this – research and facts. Now, as educated people-of-the-world, I know full well, Dear Reader, that you know who the Borgias were…but for all of you cretins who wouldn’t know Spain from Italy, here’s a primer for you: the Borgias were a Spanish – or rather, Aragonese – noble family whose topographic surname was taken the town of Borja, then in the Crown of Aragon, in Spain. There were several of them running about Renaissance Spain and Italy, but only a few concern Meyer and, by extension, Us:

• Alfonso de Borgia, later Pope Callixtus III 
• Rodrigo de Borgia, later Pope Alexander VI
• Giovanni Borgia, 2^nd Duke of Gandía and a non-entity 
• Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois with the hottest head in the clan 
• Lucrezia Borgia, Governor of Spoleto (!) and perhaps the most notorious of the lot

Meyer takes the position that pretty much the whole great Borgia story as we know it (and shudder at) was written down years after the fact, with no documentary evidence or even support for the less controversial claims, much less the more outrageous ones. For instance, after researching their heritage, Meyer concludes that Rodrigo de Borja was supporting his legitimate nephews and niece, and not his natural children (the family tree is more like a dense and bushy thicket here). Nepotism happened, but not out of proportion to other clerical families, and there were times it made a certain amount of sense in political context. Brute-force power politics happened, but this was the age of Machiavelli and of the Italian Wars. After Meyer goes on to point out other elements of the classic story that simply cannot be true for chronological or medical reasons, there’s practically nothing left of the black legend that could be true on any such objective basis. This may make for a less titillating story, but facts are stubborn things, and the truth is the truth.

But this book is so much more than a history of these people, for it also a history of Italy in the late 15^th through early 16^th Centuries: the whole constellation of ducal Milan, serene Venice, artistic/mercantile Florence, royal Naples, Papal Rome and the complex and unwieldy Papal States, along with all the other smaller bit players, plus rising powers in the greater distance like Spain, France and the Grand Turk. With that said, Meyer’s greatest concern is Papal, especially focusing on the Vatican’s efforts to forge a coherent regional power out of what had always been a hodgepodge of independent states wherein no vassals had been living up to any of their responsibilities and feuds and vendettas had been very much the order of the day for half-a-century, give-or-take. By the end of this book I found that I had been just as entertained and informed by the real-life exploits and doings of the Borgia’s than by all of the scandalous made-up stuff, and really, what more can you ask of a book than to blow away the dust of myth using the winds of truth? (man, that was deep).

“In Search of the Trojan War”, by Michael Wood

272 pages, Facts on File, ISBN-13: 978-0816013555

I saw “In Search of the Trojan War” – that is, the BBC special upon which this companion book was based – ages ago on A&E…maybe in the early 90s? Anyway, the special was originally a 6-part documentary series written and presented by Michael Wood and broadcast in 1985 on BBC2 and examined the extent to which historical and archeological evidence matches the tale of the Trojan War as recounted by Homer in The Iliad. And man, did I think that was cool. The Iliad was real?! Achilles lived?! Helen rocked it?! Man, all of this was like honey to a bee for a young geeky historian wannabe who was still enamored of the past and was ever-eager to find out more more more about the past. As can be discerned from this blurb, for me the Trojan War held a grip on my imagination like few other events in mythology. Part of this interest in the myth is due to the startling confirmation over the past century that Troy was a real place, located exactly where the legend puts it with even minor details of topography from Homer’s text backed up by archaeological evidence. The book, In Search of the Trojan War, by Wood accompanies his series and outlines the discovery of the site of Troy – a hill in Turkey a few miles from the Dardanelles called Hisarlik – by the early archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in the mid-19^th Century and the work by him and others in uncovering the site and other notable contemporary locations, including Mycenae.

Wood describes the problems associated with these digs, which tended to be rushed and even destructive – “Schliemann has left us with the ruin of a ruin”, he laments at one point – before later, proper archaeologists could work on the sites. Accompanied by illustrations and numerous photographs of the site (some modern, some from the recent past), Wood describes in clear detail the problems presented by the fact that Troy is divided into “layers”, with the city inhabited both before and after the time of the alleged Trojan War, and dating the war to the correct layer is problematic (both the Sixth and Seventh layers have been proposed as “Homer's Troy”, and both have issues fitting that conclusion). As would be expected from Wood, he describes the situation well, first exploring the archaeological unearthing of Troy and other important sites in the region, such as that of the Hittites, a mighty empire of the ancient world that had fallen so completely that evidence of its existence was only uncovered a century ago, and how they provided a missing link that explained the balance of power of the time. Sites contemporaneous with Troy are explored and shared pottery remnants and tablets written in the same languages are used to trace a network of trade and political relations between cities and nations. Pottery and pictures of the time depicting siege engines as stylized giant wooden horses smashing down city walls provide clues as to the origin of the Trojan Horse legend…but every time a conclusion seems to drift into view, it’s frustratingly snatched away by a gap in the records.

And so In Search of the Trojan War is a well-researched book that succinctly provides an overview of the archaeological history of the region and allows Wood to present the evidence for his broad conclusions about the period. Occasionally he gets drawn a little too far down the path of speculative musings rather than sticking strictly with the evidence, but these musings are well-signposted in advance. But I don’t think I would have enjoyed this book as much if I hadn’t seen the series it was written to accompany, so it may very well be that you, gentle reader, should watch the BBC series as well as read this book to get a full understanding of the topic.