“Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War”, by Tony Horwitz

 

432 pages, Vintage, ISBN-13: 978-0679758334

I have read dozens of books about American history in general and on the American Civil War in particular, but Tony Horwitz provides some refreshing insights into this seminal American conflict with Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. Traveling through ten different states, Horwitz sets out to answer several age-old questions about The Civil War (or “The Late Great Unpleasantness”, or “The War of Northern Aggression”, depending on which side you’re on).

But first and foremost, why can’t Southerners put the Civil War behind them? Why do so many of them insist on living in the past? Each chapter is written from a different state and they are informative, disturbing, poignant and often downright hysterical. Just the chapter names are amusing including, “At the Foote of the Master” (about expert Shelby Foote), “Gone With the Window” (about Atlanta’s continuing obsession with Gone With the Wind) and “The Oldest Confederate Widow Tells Some”.

Horwitz traipses through battlefields, camps with re-enactors, seeks out little-known stories and checks out dusty museums and personal collections. He also talks with dozens of people (both Civil War experts and simple folk) about such topics as slavery, The Daughters of the Confederacy, the Confederate flag controversy, Civil Rights, prisoner of war camps, The Ku Klux Klan and various Civil War luminaries. Perhaps the most enjoyable parts of the book involve Horwitz tagging along with some hardcore re-enactors.

His romantic vision of a cozy re-enactment weekend (complete with camp fire, hardy stew and good camaraderie) is quickly burst when he’s made to remove or discard almost everything he has, including his clothes, eyeglasses and food (they’re not vintage 1860s; also, Confederate re-enactors tend to constantly starve themselves to obtain the appearance of proper, emaciated Southern soldiers). Some hardcore even go so far as to soak uniform buttons in urine to achieve the correct “patina” – all of which sounds more like work than fun.

The most disheartening parts of the book involve describing the New South, which is more integrated than ever before yet feels more divided than any time since…well, the Civil War. Confederates in the Attic succeeds as a first-hand account of one man’s attempt to understand our modern (circa 1998) views of the Civil War and how they stack up against the actual war. This is done in a well-written, very humorous, fast-paced travelogue style that is highly entertaining and deeply moving and difficult to put down.

“Enigma” by Robert Harris

 

320 Pages, Random House, ISBN-13: 978-0679428879

Y’know, I’ve read a lot more of Robert Harris’ books than I realized: first there was Fatherland (reviewed on January 3^rd, 2024), next was Archangel (reviewed on February 3^rd, 2024) and now there’s Enigma – and I think this is the last one…but we’ll see. Unlike Harris’ other two books, Enigma is about actual events, in this case the English effort to crack the German “Enigma” cipher machine which was used to protect military communications. In the book, Tom Jericho, a gifted cryptanalyst at Bletchley Park – the principal center of Allied code-breaking during the World War II – is recuperating in Cambridge from a nervous breakdown brought on by the pressures of work and the breakup of his relationship with Claire Romilly, another cypher clerk. After a few weeks, he is told Bletchley needs him back since it has become locked out of the Naval Enigma and convoys HX-229 and SC-122 are at risk from a pack of 40 German U-Boats, setting up the largest convoy battle of the war.

In describing Bletchley Park’s attempts at decoding the German Enigma cyphers, Harris explains the art of cryptography, the workings of the Enigma Machine, the development of the first computers and even commentary on the collapse of the class system in Britain during the War. But the convoy battle simply serves as the background for the main story, for Claire has mysteriously disappeared and Jericho and Hester Wallace, Claire’s friend and flatmate, set out to solve the mystery, which appears to be related to some mysterious unbroken cryptograms from the Ukrainian front. What is the subject of the cryptograms? Is there someone inside Bletchley feeding information to the Nazis? Is the missing girl a traitor or a victim of circumstance? As the clues pile up and the mystery unfolds, Tom and Hester race against time in order not only to find Claire and solve the mystery of her disappearance, but to crack the Enigma code, as well.

I found Enigma to be a prototypical Harris book: an efficient and taut thriller, seamlessly interweaving the fictional mystery story with historical facts – the structure, by the way, intended to mimic the Enigma itself, with its wheels within wheels giving new meaning to strings of symbols, each wheel here being a new configuration or interpretation of some character’s motivation. And fear not if you are unfamiliar with the Enigma machine or the art of cryptology, for Harris manages to explain it all in readily accessible language and with easy to follow logic. Also, the characters are interesting enough that you actually give a damn what happens to them, even the mysterious Claire, who only appears in flashbacks and in other’s descriptions of her. But the real treat is the immersion into the paradoxical life of the intelligence agent: how do you use the information gained without compromising the source?

“The Last Prince of Ireland”, by Morgan Llywelyn

 

368 pages, William Morrow & Co., ISBN-13: 978-0688107949 

I bought The Last Prince of Ireland by Morgan Llywelyn from the overstock shelf at – get this – B. Dalton (seems to me I’ve said that before). So anyway, this novel is about O’Sullivan’s March, in which Donal Cam O’Sullivan Beare, the last independent Chief of the Name of the O’Sullivan Beara Irish clan, gathered a thousand of his remaining people – about all that was left – after their defeats at Kinsale and Dunboy and set off northwards on a 300-mile march, starting on December 31^st, 1602. If you know next to nothing about Irish history – place me firmly in that column – then all of that was Irish to you. But, by and large, you don’t need to know any of that when reading this book, as it is a tale of resilience in the face of starvation, exhaustion, betrayal and hopelessness that can appeal to anyone.

The story builds steadily in emotional intensity to the point where one becomes highly attuned to the emotional states of the characters, feeling both their pains and their joys. This is one of the strengths of the book, as there are no two-dimensional cardboard cutouts to be found; each character has depth and are not merely representory stand-ins or typical archetypes. As they fight and strive and suffer and die, you feel for them and egg them on but, as you do so, you cannot escape the sense that their cause is ultimately doomed, as are they. That so many of these people are ordinary – and non-combatant women and children to boot – only makes their plight all the more impactful and their survival all the more invoking (and to think, the Irish had 300 more years of English misrule to undergo).

So be warned: there is a lot of doom and gloom to be found in this book, hanging over these people like a literal dark cloud. If detailed descriptions of people suffering, struggling and starving as they fend off attacks from the marauding English – and other Irish, as well – then The Last Prince of Ireland may not be the book for you. But survival was the goal; the physical survival of all the people that O’Sullivan Beare was obligated to lead and to fight for. But this physical survival was always seen by the lords as concurrent with survival of what was truly “Irish”, which is simply a bitter truth: in the effort to simply survive, much of what was once treasured is lost to the ravages of time and expediency. An old lesson, to be sure, but one that The Last Prince of Ireland teaches all too well and all too tragically.

“To Marry an English Lord: Tales of Wealth and Marriage, Sex and Snobbery in the Gilded Age” by Gail MacColl and Carol McD. Wallace

 

414 pages, Workman Publishing Company, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0761171959

I absolutely love the Gilded Age, but I don’t really know why; there’s so little to recommend it on a personal or professional level, but…there it is. So whenever I come across a book on this era I naturally snatch it up – like this one, To Marry an English Lord: Tales of Wealth and Marriage, Sex and Snobbery in the Gilded Age by Gail MacColl and Carol McD. Wallace which, as the cover blurb tells us, was the inspiration for Downton Abbey. This was a chatty book that was organized rather strangely: you start a chapter or a section reading some fascinating story about this American heiress or that English grandee and, upon turning the page, run smack into some photo essay telling a completely different story.

Not that these many photos and sidebars weren’t useful; indeed, they include detailed information about Victorian and Edwardian high society, such as which fashions were all the rage, how calling cards worked, how wealthy women could easily conduct little extramarital affairs on the side – you name it and it’s all here in all of its high-class debauched glory. I thought that the two authors were rather like a couple of Old Maids discussing the goings on of the Well-to-Do over their backyard fence, sharing copies of People Magazine to illustrate whatever strumpet they were dissing. Oh, they were all going to hell in a handbasket, no doubt, but they would do so with elegance and style, make no mistake.

This may be the best thing about the book, but it would have been even better if the format was different – say, as a coffee table book, where the pictures would have been given more justice. Furthermore, the book is repetitive in the extreme: once we get past the well-known Buccaneers who crossed the Atlantic to harpoon their own Great White Lord – y’know, Jennie Jerome, Consuelo Vanderbilt and such – we read about their erstwhile cousins who came afterwards and damned if I could differentiate between the lot. And it’s not just that the women’s stories were all similar; the authors actually recap the same stories two, three and even four times in subsequent chapters. I mean, enough, already.

Oh, and mustn’t forget all of those lists, especially the last which details each heiress with her father, husband and manor house – again with the repetition! I get trying to enlighten the reader, but it looks like the authors substituted quantity for quality and just loaded one down with facts and figures. Not a bad book, don’t get me wrong, but gossipy and rather unserious, a kind of cross between a dynamic history book and a high-society gossip rag. To Marry an English Lord is a detailed Who’s Who chronicling the lives of the many young, rich American women who relocated to Britain in search of husbands with fancy titles and the men who married them for their money. Really, these high-class low-lifes deserved one another.

“A Red Herring Without Mustard”, by Alan Bradley

 

416 pages, Bantam Books, ISBN-13: 978-0385343466

What else can I say about Flavia de Luce? How many more praises can I sing to everyone’s favorite 11-year-old aspiring chemist/amateur detective/precocious hellion? In A Red Herring Without Mustard, Alan Bradley’s third mystery starring the aforementioned chemist/detective/hellion, Flavia is once again called upon to solve a Murder Most Foul in her sleepy little corner of England. After attending the annual fête at Bishop’s Lacey – and nearly killing the fortune teller – Flavia invites the gypsy to stay at a small corner of her ancestral home, Buckshaw, as penance, only to learn more than she bargained for about her family…and to find yet another corpse.

Herring continues in the vein of the previous two books; indeed, it is rather a return to form as the murder occurs sooner rather than later and Flavia returns to her alchemical and investigatory ways. She is also humanized more, as her long-running feud with her two older sisters, Ophelia (Feely) and Daphne (Daffy) is brought ever-more into the forefront, although the reason for it remains opaque (the sister’s insistence that Flavia is a Changeling – a fairy that had been left in place of a human stolen by other fairies – notwithstanding). And Flavia’s feelings towards Inspector Hewitt are expanded upon as he (I think) begins to take on the role of a substitute father in her eyes.

Oh, Herring has its problems, make no mistake, problems involving a Canadian author misstating New World terms for Old; thus, Flavia talks about “drapes” instead of “curtains”, or “faucets” instead of “taps” (but he does still get “Chesterfield” for “couch” correct but, seeing as he’s Canadian, that is to be expected). Also, Dr. Kissing is reintroduced in the book who just happened to witness an act from three years previous that just happens to blow the case open for Flavia. While I am willing to forgive the odd leap of faith for the sake of moving the story along, this particular jump would have one clearing the Grand Canyon in one go.

Well, enough gushing. I enjoyed A Red Herring Without Mustard as much as I enjoyed The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag and The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, for all of its faults and mistakes. Would that all of the books I read had such engaging characters and interesting settings that made me want to read night after night – but not too quickly, mind you, for as of now, there are only seven books remaining featuring the divine Flavia de Luce. I sincerely hope that Alan Bradley continues to write these books for the foreseeable future, for I will be sad indeed to have to say farewell to my new favorite detective.

“Dracula: The Un-Dead”, by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt

 

432 pages, Dutton, ISBN-13: 978-0525951292

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I sure do miss Borders. Going there was a one-stop shopping experience for me, where there were books, CDs, DVDs and even food to be had in abundance. When it went belly-up in 2011 a little piece of me died. Oh, I still go to Barnes & Noble, although the vibe isn’t quite the same, and while 2^nd & Charles has gone a long ways towards filling that Borders gap in my soul, it’s still missed. Which is why when I was searching my bookshelves for something to read and I stumbled upon Dracula: The Un-Dead by Dacre (Dacre?) Stoker and Ian Holt and saw an old Borders clearance sticker on the front I got a little verklempt. Just a little, mind you (it also showed me how many books I still have to get to; one day, Dear Reader; I’ll get to them all one day). Looking for a little brain candy, I thought I’d finally crack the spine on this one.

Taking place 25 years after Dracula by Bram Stoker (reviewed on July 6^th, 2024), Dracula: The Un-Dead brings the old gang back together – Jonathan Harker, Mina Murray Harker, Jack Seward, Arthur Holmwood and even Abraham Van Helsing – along with some new faces – Quincey Harker, Jonathan and Mina’s son, Basarab, a Romanian actor who is taking Europe by storm, Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed, an immortal vampire (and evil, of course) and even Bram Stoker, himself (very meta, that). As I read on, I became more impressed with the writing, especially the characterizations. All of the people who survived the first book are present here, but changed and not a little scarred – especially the Harkers: Jonathan is an alcoholic who drinks to forget the torture he suffered at the hands of Dracula’s minions, while Mina appears not to have aged at all, a side effect from having almost been turned by Dracula, one that Jonathan resents.

Not everyone will like the differences between the heroes of Dracula and their iteration in this book, but to me they seemed to be realistic; they were, after all, mere mortals taking on an otherworldly evil and were left permanently damaged by it (their relative fates, meanwhile, may anger fans of the original book even more so). Other changes that Stoker and Holt have made is moving the action of the original book back from 1893 to 1888, in order to correspond with the Jack the Ripper murders in Whitechapel and, thus, add another element to their story. As to Stoker’s (Bram) appearance and how in the hell he wrote a work of fiction that just happened to accurately reflect “real-world” events, the author’s explanation was a neat, to say nothing of unexpected, twist on the original story (Stoker’s dying as he should, in 1912, neatly brings an end to this most meta of literary cameos).

There are issues with the book, as parts have a kind of “B Movie” vibe (for you losers: a low-budget film with subpar acting, writing, directing and so on, good enough to entertain but in no way a work of art). As an example of what I mean, vampires are safest in the shadows, better off making people believe that they are myths and, thus, in no way threats. And yet here we have Báthory strutting around in men’s clothing (in 1912, mind you) with her two vampiric gal-pals and riding in a driverless carriage, when they’re not attacking men in public with bared fangs and flashing swords. These sequences are so over the top as to be ridiculous. Or when…somebody is found impaled in Piccadilly Circus, as unsubtle a murder as one could imagine – and as difficult to pass off without anybody noticing, yet they manage it. Oh, and there’s sex, especially lesbian sex. Not a complaint; just an observation.

Furthermore, the entirety of the original book has, in Stoker and Holt’s hands, undergone the revisionist treatment, as the original motivations for Dracula are turned upside down in this sequel. Now, if someone had told me that this classic of gothic horror was essentially rewritten I would have thrown it into the trash in disdain. But I kept right on reading and found, overall, that I enjoyed the book, with all of my earlier provisos intact. Oh, and the vampires: one glaring fault is how one vampire in particular just keeps coming back in spite of the grievous injuries done to them repeatedly. No explanation given, no time given to rest and heal; they appear when they need to and fight as they have to. And the ending…two main characters meet their ultimate fates which I found to be unsatisfying to say the least, while the last chapter…well, I don’t know what the last chapter is for. I guess to definitively show that there will be no more sequels?

But as much as I feel that I should disdain this book…I don’t. There are fights and blood and guts and lesbo sex and riddles wrapped in mysteries inside enigmas – all-in-all a piece of entertaining escapism, which is just what I was looking for.

“Tudor: Passion. Manipulation. Murder. The Story of England’s Most Notorious Royal Family”, by Leanda de Lisle

 

576 pages, PublicAffairs, ISBN-13: 978-1610395458

This is one long-winded title, make no mistake, but Leanda de Lisle shows in Tudor: Passion. Manipulation. Murder. The Story of England’s Most Notorious Royal Family that every word is necessary in order to convey her point. A word of warning: if you’re looking for a book that goes into the infighting and interpersonal relationships of the Tudor royals and key members of their inner circles, then this book certainly delivers, but if you’re seeking a history of not only that, but their overall achievements and failures, then you'll need to look elsewhere, for de Lisle is heavily focused on the family and factional dynamics in and around the House of Tudor and on spotlighting the achievements of the respective Tudor reigns.

And when de Lisle says “Tudor” she means it: after recounting how this minor Welsh landowning family lost everything in 1399 when they backed Richard II against the usurping Henry IV – the first Lancastrian king of England – she tells the tale of Owen Tudor and his seduction of Henry V’s widow, Queen Catherine, thus setting the House of Tudor definitively on its onward and upward societal ascent. Many of the works I have read on the Tudors skip these details, but de Lisle reminds us of just how high this unlikely royal dynasty climbed and, subsequently, just how far they fell – good job, Elizabeth (hell, she even resurrects David Tudor, Owen Tudor’s last child, from obscurity; I had never heard of him before this book).

Naturally, when you attempt to discuss all of the Tudors at once you are left with a lot that is unsaid. This book is an overview of the Tudor era, and so much must be sacrificed; any hope of in-depth examinations of policies or philosophies must be jettisoned and left to other, more detailed works (there are a plethora of biographies on any of the personages mentioned in this book). But that’s okay: seeing the lives and reigns of one Tudor monarch flow into the next gave a sense of continuity that can be lacking in studies that focus on one monarch at a time and showed just how and why change came over the course of 16^th Century England. Nothing happens in a vacuum and showing the flow of history really solidified my understanding of the era.

Except for de Lisle’s using two very flimsy excuses from this period of history to lend us her personal opinion on two very modern, very polarizing issues, Tudor is history as it should be: engaging, complete and even entertaining – oh, and don’t skip the Appendices at the back.