“Jane Austen’s England”, by Roy & Lesley Adkins

448 pages, Viking, ISBN-13: 978-0670785841

Jane Austen’s England by the husband and wife team of Roy and Lesley Adkins seeks to bring to life the world in which Jane Austen lived and worked – that would be the late Georgian and early Regency Era, between about 1775 and 1817, or Jane’s lifespan. The book’s chapters are sorted by topic and takes the natural beginning of birth and follows that through to the last chapter on death. Even though this is non-fiction, there were protagonists of a sort, for the authors chose a handful of people who existed at the time in various walks of life – a governess, a clergyman, an impoverished gentleman, a couple foreign travelers, a gentle lady, among others – and used their letters and journals to share their experiences of the topic that was being discussed. Furthermore, instead of just tackling a topic and spitting out lots of research, there is a conversational quality to the book that makes it that much more readable. The Adkin’s go to great lengths to not romanticize life in those times; for example, the chapter on childbirth and marriage doesn’t hold back from the grave situations in which people who had a child out of wedlock found themselves, and how the law came down like a hammer upon them. I cringed through the discussions of the conditions of the inns, primitive plumbing, medical and mental issues, crime and punishment, the effects of war and famine and, well, pretty much most of the topics, because these could be hard times for common people.

Jane Austen’s England focused on the average person’s life and not so much that of the privilege few at the top, which I found to be a problem. You see, Jane wrote about her class, for her class; that is, the Gentry, which was the growing middle class which also included the lower nobility and the “bourgeoisie”, the growing middle class. This English Gentry class was a broad one with people of differing fortunes within in which some had vast wealth and others…not so much. Jane Austen’s England was not an elegant, dainty fairyland in which gentlemen in shiny Hessian boots and frockcoats courted delicate ladies in diaphanous gowns and cute bonnets while the lower orders worked and sang and knew their place; it was, of course, a caste-ridden society, and this book won’t let you forget it. Hearing for the umpteenth time about poverty and dirt and the lack of equality gives one a fuller visions of what this era was like, but I also wanted to know more about the world in which Austen moved – and not just to learn how, for all their dapper looks and sterling manners, everyone stunk to high heaven. All-in-all an interesting and informative book, but unequal in its treatment of the haves and have-nots – at the expense of the haves, ironically enough.

“Mozart: Portrait of a Genius” by Norbert Elias, translated by Edmund Jephcott

152 pages, University of California Press, ISBN-13: 978-0520084759

Be warned: Mozart: Portrait of a Genius by Norbert Elias is a load of Marxist/Freudian bullshit. You see, Elias has produced a collection of interpretative essays and notes, some very fragmentary and incipient, that are the product of the interdisciplinary approach, developed via the Frankfurt School, the interwar German school of thought founded by Western Marxist dissidents who were uncomfortable with the existing capitalist, fascist or communist systems then all the vogue (the original, German subtitle of the book was Soziologie eines Genies – Sociology of a Genius rather than Portrait, a more accurate title as this is not a biography as usual with many facts about the subject’s life and milieu told in a novel-like form). Using this crap, Elias attempts a 20^th Century interpretation of the life of a 18^th Century middle-class hanger-on to the aristocracy. This “class struggle” (was Mozart struggling? Or was he composing?) ‘twixt the bourgeoisie and aristocracy is supposed to show that Mozart was trapped in the disparity ‘tween his class position and his ambitions and abilities, which far exceeded the former. Did he lack the social tools and personal force, or was the social structure not yet ready to accommodate fully ambitions already nurtured by the culture?

As told by Elias, Mozart had the force and more amenable circumstances to blaze a path for the artistic composer to a heroic, socially-strong status, as the Romantic conception of Genius, before which even the most arrogant obtuse old-regime aristocrats had to feel some prick of respect and awe, was all the rage during and after the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Elias’ synthesis of Marxist and Freudian approaches to understanding life is so much nonsense it was a chore to get through this dreck (is this likely due to insufficient time? Elias died while this book was in preparation. Dang). I thought I had learned everything about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – or should I say Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart – after reading Mozart: A Cultural Biography by Robert W. Gutman (reviewed by me on July 6, 2012). I was right: read Gutman and ignore Elias.

“The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America”, by Ernest Freeberg

368 pages, Penguin Press, ISBN-13: 978-1594204265

After seeing “The Current War” (which, sadly, came and went with a measly $11 million dollar profit against a $32 million dollar price tag), I became interested in just how Edison, Westinghouse and Tesla et alia fought the war of currents, and so when I found The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America by Ernest Freeberg and 2^nd & Charles, I, naturally, had to have it. This edition is, in fact, part of the Penguin History American Life series, which they began publishing in 2013. Freeberg’s book, you’ll find, is an account of the significant changes that electric light brought to the cities and society of the United States at the end of the 19^th Century. Beginning with a background on the electric light, he discusses its predecessors and the peoples’ fascination with new inventions before transitioning to Edison himself and other American inventors and their struggles to create a viable light; the last half of the book focuses on the impact the electric light had on ordinary peoples’ lives, the cloud of doubt and wonder surrounding the new invention and even the cons of such a revolutionary innovation.

Perhaps Freeberg’s greatest contribution to this oft-told tale is instead of focusing solely on Edison and his greatness – and on Edison’s many competitors – he shifts the focus on ordinary people and how the times affected the invention of the light bulb. There are several interesting facts that illuminate the importance of such things as the Chicago Exposition and the many World’s Fairs or the iconic nature of Coney Island, all of which, ablaze with light, dazzled a whole generation. And this is the greatest thing to keep in mind about this book: that it is actually a social history of the start of electrification generally and electric lighting specifically (mainly in the United States), and less about Edison and his rivals and their competing machines. Oh, there’s plenty of technical stuff to be found within, but, really, Freeberg is more interested in how electricity and the electric light changed the modern world, and less in who invented what. Keeping that in mind will make The Age of Edison an enlightening read. Heh.