“Detroit: A Motor City History”, by David Lee Poremba

160 pages, Arcadia Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-0738524351

On July 24^th, 1701, Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac stood in the heart of the wilderness on a bluff overlooking the Detroit River and claimed this frontier in the name of Louis XIV by founding the trading post of Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, later to become the city of Detroit; thus began the story of Detroit, a city marked by pioneering spirits, industrial acumen, and uncommon durability, all of it documented in Detroit: A Motor City History by David Lee Poremba (part of The Making of America Series). While Detroit is known worldwide as the City that Put the World on Wheels, what is not widely known is that, prior to the birth of the automobile, a tremendous diversity of manufactured goods transformed Detroit from a frontier town into a great industrial city. What is also not widely known is that, over the course of its 300+ year history, Detroit has been sculpted into a city unique in the American experience by its extraordinary mixture of diverse cultures: American Indian, French, British, American colonial, and a variety of immigrant newcomers.

Poremba documents the major events that shaped this once-small French fur-trading outpost across three centuries of conflict and prosperity. Through a collection of remarkable images that are among the oldest of the city, all linked by informative text, Detroit is revealed as a thriving, bustling manufacturing town that served as the world’s leader in a number of important industries. Readers experience firsthand the struggles of the nascent village against raiding Indian tribes and the incessant political and military tug of war between the colonial French and English, and then American interests. Bessemer steel, iron, steel rails, freight cars, stoves, lumber, drugs and cigars are just a few of the products that helped the city build the capital that was later needed to prosper during the automobile era. Detroit played a pivotal role in establishing the country’s economic and industrial power in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, serving as a center for its well-known civilian and military mass-production resources.

Detroit: A Motor City History examines it all from the foundation through the modern day, and its evolution into a leading industrial center of the Midwest. This visual history provides insight into Detroit’s rapid evolution from a hamlet into a metropolis against a backdrop of important community and national affairs: the decimating fire of 1805, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, both world wars, the industrial dominance of the 50s, the riots of the 60s, the decline of the 70s and the unknown future shown in the 80s.

“The Russian Five: A Story of Espionage, Defection, Bribery and Courage”, by Keith Gave

 

Gold Star Publishing, 288 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1949709582

June 13^th, 1997, will go down in history as one of the Darkest Days in the history of the Detroit Red Wings, for that is the day that the career of Vladimir Nikolaevich Konstantinov, one of the best defensemen ever to lace up skates for the Winged Wheel – hell, one of the best defensemen ever to lace up skates EVER – came to a crashing halt when the limousine being driven by Richard Gnida (you son-of-a-bitch) crashed into a tree and caused irreparable brain damage to the Russian hockey star (Russian hockey legend Viacheslav Fetisov and team masseur Sergei Mnatsakanov were also injured; Fetisov recovered from his wounds, while Mnatsakanov did not). It ended also the grand experiment in a different kind of hockey in the NHL, of Russian hockey, as recounted in detail by Keith Gave in The Russian Five: A Story of Espionage, Defection, Bribery and Courage.

As a life-long Detroiter and Wings fan, I already knew much of the story behind Detroit’s acquisitions of the five Russian hockey players – Viacheslav Alexandrovich Fetisov, Igor Nikolayevich Larionov, Vladimir Nikolaevich Konstantinov, Sergei Viktorovich Fedorov and Vyacheslav Anatolevich Kozlov – in the 90s was an interesting one, but the previously untold details in this well-written book reveal danger and intrigue beyond anything I expected. For The Russian Five is the true story of immigrants that became American heroes, teammates that became family and a scrappy, resilient city that became home to the Stanley Cup Champions…twice. It’s a story about hopes and dreams becoming reality, and the harsh reality of dreaming big. The names of the Russian Five are legendary now in the Motor City and their influence is still felt throughout the National Hockey League today as team after team tried, and failed, to emulate what the Wings had done.

Granted, the non-linear style of the book can grate at times, especially for those who are unfamiliar with the players and the topic, but when you are basically compiling five mini-bios, plus a brief history of a hockey team and a sports league, a little jumping ‘round is rather a necessity. Sadly, reading The Russian Five was rather like reading the epitaph of a dear friend; the thrill has gone, the times have changed (damn the Salary Cap) and the players have all moved on. I still love and root for my beloved Winged Wheel, but I don’t know if we will ever see an era like the seasons described by Gave. Mores the pity.

“The Big 50: Detroit Red Wings”, by Helene St. James, forward by Chris Osgood

 

Triumph Books, 336 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1629377773

Evidently, there are a bunch of these The Big 50 books out there featuring sports teams like the Cincinnati Reds or New York Giants, but the one that concerns us today is The Big 50: Detroit Red Wings by Helene St. James, who has covered the team for the Detroit Free Press since 1996, with a forward by Chris Osgood, the sometimes cheered and sometimes maligned former goalie for the Wings for a number of years. What you get are a series of 50 profiles of the men who made (and in some cases, unmade) the Greatest Team in Hockey (screw you, Leafs – and Canadiens, for that matter). There is more to it than that, however, with several little side trips and deviations from the theme.

Such as some hard-to-answer questions about the Wings, like: What if Marguerite Norris had kept control of the Red Wings? Would there never have been a 42-year Stanley Cup drought? Or what if Colleen Howe had brokered a deal with Gordie to play with teenaged sons Mark and Marty in Detroit? How about what if the Wings had stuck to their guns and drafted Pavel Bure in the 1989 draft to go with Lidstrom, Fedorov and Konstantinov? Or even better, what if they had drafted Jaromír Jágr third overall in 1990 rather than Keith Primeau? (Or Derian Hatcher? Or Keith Tkachuk? Or Martin Brodeur? Or…anyone else?) St. James discusses it all from all eras of the Hockeytown franchise.

Probert vs. Kocur. McCarty vs. Lemieux. Everybody vs. Roy. The Fabulous Fifties. The Russian Five. The Captain. It’s all here, a mini-encyclopedia about the Detroit Red Wings that relives their years of glory and gives hope for better days ahead.

“The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian”, by Robert E. Howard, illustrated by Mark Schultz

 

496 pages, Del Rey, ISBN-13: 978-0345461513

In the early oughts, Del Rey began producing the complete works of Robert E. Howard; The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, illustrated by Mark Schultz, was the first volume to be published. I first heard of the Cimmerian when I saw the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger adaptation Conan the Barbarian on HBO; to learn from my Dad that this pale imitation of one of his boyhood heroes was meh at best was the height of insanity in my eyes…I mean, AH-nold was Conan; nobody, but NOBODY, could have played that part, and the movie was a rollicking good time with swords and wizards and blood and sex (a little). What’s not to love, right? That movie had to have been the best thing to happen to Conan since Frank Frazetta.

And THEN, I began collecting this Del Rey series of the original, unedited tales of Conan and…damnit, Dad was right again. The movie is still one of my favorites (the sequel? Not so much), but compared to these unadulterated Howard-and-ONLY-Howard tales (sorry, L. Sprague de Camp) the movie really is meh. We can at least be thankful that Howard has the following that he has and that his tales which, I would argue, truly launched the sword and sorcery milieu, are considered modern classics, and to thank Weird Tales for bringing him to the world’s attention – even as we bemoan their inability to pay him what he was owed; ah, well, then as now this literary environment is not for everyone.

The tales to be found in this volume are amongst the classics of the Conan corpus, printed in order of when they were originally published, rather than utilizing some later-day chronology that can only be guessed at, seeing as Howard himself seemed to write stories without regard to their placement in any sort of history. So we get The Phoenix on the Sword, The Frost Giant’s Daughter, The God in the Bowl, The Tower of the Elephant, The Scarlet Citadel, Queen of the Black Coast, Black Colossus, Iron Shadows in the Moon, Xuthal of the Dusk, The Pool of the Black One, Rogues in the House, The Vale of Lost Women and The Devil in Iron. But this collection also offers other Conan-related works, as well, such as the poem Cimmeria, several synopses Howard penned of his stories, various notes concerning the Hyborian Age and even a map drawn by the man himself.

What this volume of Conan lore does is prove that no one could write Conan like his creator could; I suppose I have to give credit to his inheritors for giving it a try and attempting to keep the flame flickering, but to appreciate the full force of the Cimmerian’s appeal one must return to the source material, as Del Rey has done. For all these being tales of blood and gore, Howard’s prose is actually quite good. His descriptions of characters, locations and events are detailed and descriptive, especially of the ancient cities that decorate this savage era. The battles rage and the blood flows with descriptive detail, almost to the point of absurdity: for some reason, Howard often wants his readers to know whose blood this character’s horse slipped on, or the exact positioning of the archers and the pikemen.

Seeing as these tales were written in the 30’s, the dialogue can occasionally be rather stilted or over-the-top; I mean, as uneducated barbarians go, Conan is as philosophical and, um, “kind” as they come, but even so, reading one deep (and lengthy) monologue after another from this muscle-bound philosopher became rather ridiculous after a time. Also, these dissertations read just like that, as if Howard had written an essay for a philosophy class, rather than as a conversation between two persons. This becomes more obvious as the stories flow, for I believe that the earlier tales are stronger than the latter. But don’t fret none, for after a discussion on the meaning of “civilized” comes to an end a ferocious gorilla-thing leaps at our hero and Conan must do what Conan does. This is what Howard’s Conan tales are, in a nutshell: deep philosophical debates on the meaning of civilization masquerading as blood-and-guts fantasy adventure.

“Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder”, by Caroline Fraser

 

Picador, 656 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1250182487

I loved, loved, loved the “Little House on the Prairie” TV show as a kid (and totally had a thing for Melissa Gilbert, too), although I never got around to reading the books. Don’t know why. Anyway, when I found Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser for cheap at 2^nd & Charles (where else?) I snatched it up as an opportunity to learn about the Real Laura. And I wasn’t disappointed, although I was repeatedly surprised, but typically in a good way. Fraser evidently made it her life’s work to learn everything about Laura Ingalls Wilder, including her extended family, her tumultuous daughter, her turbulent times and even the natural history of the Midwest she and her family sought to settle. To read Prairie Fires is to relive the settlement of the American West in all its glory and gore, from the 1870s and 80s when Indians still roamed the wilds uninhibited, to the depression of the 90s, through the Populist Era, the Roaring 20s, the depression of the 30s, World War II and right up into the 1950s. That’s right: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Pioneer Girl and symbol of the American conquest of the west and Yankee woman daring-do lived long enough to see America become a global superpower.

Fraser begins Prairie Fires with genealogical research into Wilder’s (and Almanzo’s) families, harking back to the colonial Pilgrim era before flashing forwarding to the Dakota War of 1862. From here, Fraser runs from strength to strength as she charts the path of this ordinary yet extraordinary girl-then-woman and, by example, of other pioneers of her ilk. The thing one learns quickly is that Laura’s own admonition of her works is absolutely true: she stated on a number of occasions that everything in the books “was the truth, but not the whole truth”; thus, while Wilder writes about Pa and Ma uprooting their family from Wisconsin for better prospects in the Dakotas, she leaves out the fact that they did so to run away from their many creditors. The truth, but not the whole truth.

But Prairie Fires is not only about Laura and Almanzo, as she paints a portrait of her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, as well – and what an unflattering portrait it is: selfish, immoral, manipulative, petty, mentally ill (manic depressive), dishonest, modestly talented, irreligious (flirting with Islam her whole life), plagiarizing, economically incompetent, politically hypocritical, casually anti-Semitic; not at all like her mother, I would argue. For all that, we get glimpses of her intermittent success, for Lane moved in fairly high political and literary circles, made her living by her writing and would have lived well but for her financial naivety. And without Rose’s efforts, it’s safe to say we would not have Laura’s beloved books at all, for she suggested, encouraged (and hectored) her mother into writing all about her life, and we as Americans are the better for it.

Yet Fraser does rather seem to have an axe to grind against Lane, and I finished Prairie Fires with no doubt whatsoever about the absurdity of the charges that Rose ghostwrote the Little House series. Fraser seems generally in favor of collective politics, seems supportive of the New Deal programs and was bothered thus by Wilder’s and Lane’s many criticisms thereof. She spends a great deal of energy detailing the misguided attempts by Laura’s successors to corral her work into the Conservative/Libertarian cause, and in this she is somewhat successful, but her attempts to explain away the fundamental reasons why people like Wilder resented the very New Deal programs intended to help them come across as feeble and not a little condescending.

We read somewhat about a religious heritage of independence going back to the Pilgrims, resentment of land use decrees and crop destruction, but we hear again and again and again the litany of supposed hypocrisies: the homestead act was a Government Program after all, everyone necessarily took jobs off the farm, the bank where Laura worked administered Government Lending, the frontier was only open thanks to the Army, Pa cheated the Railroad, Almanzo’s lying on his Homestead Application – and that’s about it. It’s a mighty thin list to set against decades of hard toil, thrift and scrupulous morality, and it doesn’t bear the weight of being Exhibit ‘A’ in “Wilder’s Real Politics On Trial”.

But enough negativity: Prairie Fires for me was a literal page turner. The writing flows like a prairie river and the detail is exhaustive without ever being exhausting. It answered every question I had about Laura Ingalls Wilder (and many I never knew I had), and along the way I learned more American history and began to understand just how and why families like the Ingalls went to the frontier. While the Laura Ingalls Wilder of my youth is gone – the TV show I so loved has been forever ruined by the historic reality – the Wilder I came to know in Prairie Fires is so much more interesting for being real.

“State of Emergency: Britain, 1970-1974”, by Dominic Sandbrook

 

Penguin Books, 768 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0141032153

If I were forced to come up with a term to describe the of the UK during the early 1970s, it would be “conflicted attitudes” – which in what Dominic Sandbrook did in State of Emergency: Britain, 1970-1974, the third book in his series on modern Great Britain (the first two being Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles, reviewed on February 11^th, 2020, and White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties, reviewed on February 18^th, 2020). The focus of State of Emergency centers around the premiership of Edward Heath from his surprising victory in June of 1970 to his just as surprising defeat in March of 1974. As to why these two mystifying events occurred, Sandbrook’s conclusion is that, while the British public were, by and large, sympathetic towards his goals, in the end they decided to postpone any further conflict these might create after enduring so much of that during Heath’s time at No. 10: the Oil Shock, the Three-Day Week and strike after strike after strike from the all-powerful Trade Unions that ultimately drove Heath and the Conservatives from power.

This is, in hindsight, rather peculiar, seeing as the Heath government was far more liberal and sympathetic towards the Unions particularly and the lower classes in general than it gets credit for, and actually understood workers’ wishes better than many of the workers’ compatriots did or wished to. Heath and his ministers started with some standard Conservative measures designed to “reward merit” and “not support lame ducks” and so on and so forth, but ended up throwing untold fortunes to ducks both lame and otherwise, not to mention some fouler fowls out of sheer expediency that Harold Wilson would have stopped short of (if Edward Heath ad been an American President he would have been your stereotypical RINO: Republican In Name Only). Thus, the government’s attitudes were conflicted in one sense, the general public’s in another, what with this supposedly Conservative government’s proper concern with inflation warring with its desire to be all things to all people, and so Heath’s government got the worst of every world and no credit from anyone.

Most of the reasons for the ultimate fall of Heath’s government is because his popular support was a mile wide but an inch deep, and that the best thing that he had going for him was that he Wasn’t Wilson (Harold, that is; Heath’s abysmal communicative skills didn’t help, either). Which is strange, considering that for the first time “many people had cars…central heating…indoor toilets…gleaming new kitchens” and so on; the examples of material comfort and advancement were many, as were so any other changes, from the rise of inflation and glam rock, the decline of deference and cinema audiences, to the dark arts of the period’s football and industrial relations. The formidably useless Heath government found itself declaring no fewer than five – FIVE! – States of Emergency during its mere 44 months of power, while also presiding over a wrecked economy, a loss of prestige worldwide and bomb attacks by the Provisional IRA; it also had to suffer the indignities of flared trousers, insane haircuts and beards, and the popularity of the color brown.

State of Emergency is more than a continuation of Sandbrook’s earlier books or a way station between future volumes (two more, so far); it is a meditation on the hubris of men and power, and how the best-laid schemes o’mice an’ men Gang aft agley.

“Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride From Hell”, by Tom Clavin

 

Griffin, 416 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1250214607

With Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride From Hell, author Tom Clavin attempts to sift through the many, many Tall Tales that litter the historiography of the Old West in order to get to the Truth of what happened at the O.K. Corral and why. To do so, he first takes us to the 1877 founding of Tombstone as a mining town in Cochise County, Arizona. From there we get a complete history of this original lawless Western town up to and after the infamous goings on at the O.K. Corral. This extensive background gave the centerpiece of the tale an added element, as we see how and why it came to pass from a more-complete perspective of many intersecting events.

Thus, we find the Brothers Earp – that would be James, Virgil, Morgan and Warren – coming to town and falling in with the so-called “Law & Order” faction due to their past experiences as lawmen…and their need for regular incomes (originally, they were just there to try their luck at mining and gambling). They soon clashed with the Cowboys – that would be, primarily, Johnny Behan, Frank Stilwell, Pete Spence, Ike Clanton, Florentino Cruz, Frederick Bode, Pony Diehl, Johnny Barnes, Frank Patterson, Milt Hicks, Bill Hicks, Bill Johnson, Ed Lyle, Johnny Lyle, “Curly” Bill Brocius and Johnny Ringo (whew!) – a term that was originally a pejorative used to describe anyone who were as likely to rustle cattle as to raise them legitimately (that is, when they weren’t robbing the odd stagecoach). It may be overstating things to say that a clash between the two factions was inevitable, but it’s damn close.

And so we come to the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in which three cowboys were killed and Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday were wounded. The fight seemed to turn a lot of Tombstone citizens against the Earps, with many viewing them as cold-blooded killers simply because they had kept their heads and performed well in the fight. The Cowboys swore vengeance for the deaths of Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Clanton, which subsequently led to the shooting of Virgil and the murder of Morgan, and thence to Wyatt Earp’s “vendetta ride”.

One would think that a century-plus after the events tempers would have cooled but, if you are a history nerd, you know that this would be a foolish thought. In the great O.K. Divide – between partisans of the Earps or Clantons – Clavin would appear to fall in the former camp, although he does his damndest to be as nonpartisan as he can. Seeing as Tombstone is more than just a history of the infamous fight, but a study of the settling and taming of the West, it succeeds at being so much more than a potboiler. What Clavin has not done is write a radically new take on the story, which is…O.K. Tombstone is a well-researched history of this moment in American time, and he makes a convincing case that, after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, gunfighters didn’t have many places to turn. The old west was becoming at long last civilized.