“The Wit and Wisdom of Jane Austen”, by Jane Austen, compiled by Dominique Enright

 

162 pages, Sterling Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-0760770160

The Wit and Wisdom of Jane Austen by – wait for it – Jane Austen was compiled by Dominique Enright, a writer with a passion for all things Austen. If you’re like me you oft have the urge to quote someone but can’t quite remember the quote in question (this happens to me all the time because I have a memory like a sieve and I particular get irked when it happens with Jane Austen). This book is almost worth the effort for the introduction alone, a nice, long but simple piece about Jane Austen’s life. The quotes in question are compiled from her novels, letters and diaries, so there is a wide variety that cover many situations, divided into chapters on subjects, including balls and gowns, love, family, housekeeping and marriage. Austen was a prolific letter writer, and many of the items collected here are taken from letters to her nieces and her devoted sister, Cassandra. Most of her correspondence – she wrote upwards of 3,000 letters – including all of the letters she received from Cassandra, was destroyed by her family members after her death, with only 160 surviving the inferno. As to her wit and wisdom, they are indeed evident throughout the many passages quoted throughout the book:

“Expect a most agreeable letter, for not being overburdened with subject (having nothing at all to say), I shall have no check to my genius from beginning to end”.

“You [Cassandra] deserve a longer letter than this; but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve”.

“I will not say that your mulberry-trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive”.

As Enright wrote, “Her success as a writer lies in that, although her world was small, what she drew from it, and her insights into the people she encountered, allows her novels to function as microcosms of society at large”. Would that we had more words of wisdom from Jane, but this tome – and her six novels of course – must, sadly, have to do.

“Song of Wrath: The Peloponnesian War Begins”, by J.E. Lendon

576 pages, Basic Books, ISBN-13: 978-0465015061 

The last book by J.E. Lendon that I reviewed (on December 29^th, 2015) was Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity, a history of the battle tactics of the ancient Greeks and Romans. So who better to delve into the most famous wars of the ancient world, which he does in Song of Wrath: The Peloponnesian War Begins? As Lendon points out in the introduction, the ancient world is very alien to us all-knowing moderns – “a strange and alien past” as he puts it – and so we must not treat these people as displaced moderns who think and feel as we do. Just as we shouldn't hold foreign peoples to our standards of morality or principles, neither should we hold ancient peoples to our same standards. They were so very different from us, and in some ways cannot fathom them or theirs. Not that we shouldn’t try.

And Lendon makes sure that his ideas and conclusions about these alien peoples are well-supported by a full panoply of footnotes and an extensive bibliography. Just as importantly, he gives us a full chronology the Peloponnesian War of 431-404 BC (while being careful to delineate when said chronology isn’t very clear), a listing of important people, places and things and, perhaps most importantly, a glossary of all of those untranslatable but all-important Greek words that matter. When all of these many moving parts are set within their proper, ancient, context, the First Peloponnesian War becomes the tale of the all-pervading Greek social concepts of honor, revenge and humiliation, each of which is a crucial social construct that stretches back to the time of the Iliad, the all-important Greek epic poem that lends its (paraphrased) opening lines to Lendon’s book.

This last bit is important, for Lendon begins his history long before the First Peloponnesian War ever starts, as he gives an overview of the relative histories of Athens and Sparta before giving a synopsis of the Greco-Persian Wars of 499-449 BC and their impact on Greece in order to showcase how they ultimately led to the ancient Cold War between perhaps the two most important of the Greek city-states. Using this over-arching cultural framework, Lendon explains just when and how First Peloponnesian War erupted and the tactics used by the belligerents and their ultimate goals. The reason that Lendon uses this approach in his work is to emphasize that which previous histories seemed to emphasize over everything else; namely, the overarching economic and strategic interests of all of the powers involved.

Song of Wrath explains not only the where, what and how of the first decade of the First Peloponnesian War, it explains the why, which is this: that it was just as much a war of honor and status with all of the illogical and irrational dynamics this implies.

“501 Must-Drive Cars”, by Fid Backhouse, Kieran Fogarty and Sal Oliver

 

544 pages, Bounty Books, ISBN-13: 978-0753726006

I am very much an amateur car guy; that is, I like cars – classic cars, muscle cars, custom cars, antique cars – but really know only a little about them. This is one of the reasons that I volunteered at something called Stahl’s Automotive Collection in Chesterfield, Michigan: to cure myself of my ignorance. It is also why I buy books like this, 501 Must-Drive Cars by Fid (Fid?) Backhouse, Kieran Fogarty and Sal Oliver. Evidently, there’s a whole mess of these “501” books, none of which I have; I got this one at my local 2^nd & Charles for – get this – $2.00. I mean, just how in the hell can I go wrong? So anyway, this book is what it says it is: a photographic record of 501 of some of the most interesting, breathtaking, stylish cars that have ever graced the roads. Each entry features color photographs of the car in question, along with such necessary information that a proper autofanatic ought to know, such as year and make, country of manufacture, engine details, performance data and the like. A great resource for the experience car nut or, in my case especially, the car nut-in-training, 501 Must-Drive Cars has something for everyone and must be added the every auto enthusiast’s library.