The Pacific Ocean

by on May 26, 2013 at 12:50 pm
Posted In: Books

I picked up The Pacific Ocean a while ago at a library sale. It’s a history of the exploration of the Pacific Ocean written in 1940. It was the first of the “Oceans of the World” series, all written by different authors, and searching around shows that the other ‘forthcoming’ books were indeed released. This one was written by Felix Riesenberg, who, according to Wikipedia, wrote quite a number of books on nautical subjects (including one which served as a standard textbook); he also took part in two failed expeditions to the North Pole via airship, and had a Liberty Ship named after him.

It’s really meant as a young-adult level book, which makes sense given that it was published by a division of the McGraw-Hill company. It’s more in the lines of ‘true sea stories’ dealing with Magellan, Drake, Cook and the like, and not a thorough study of the subject.

Being seventy-three years old, it does come from another time. This is most obvious in the first chapter, which discusses the possible origins of the Pacific, and you are reminded of the fact that Continental Drift theory was known, but not yet accepted. “It is an interesting theory, over which geographers still dispute. Wegener lost his life in Greenland trying to substantiate it, and the observations taken there over a long period of time seem to indicate that Greenland is still moving west, as he predicted it must be.”

An even more telling part, is the second-to-last chapter, which deals with the opening of Japan by Commodore Perry, as this was written in 1940, when tensions were extremely high, but war had not actually started. The chapter is nicely sympathetic to the Japanese point of view, and recognizes past grievances. “The same difficulties that Perry met with in 1853 and 1854 exist today, and anyone who studies his attempts to cultivate the Japanese will find an astonishing Parallel between his negotiations and those that have made relations difficult in recent years between the United States and Japan. The Nipponese mentality and psychology have not changed, and neither have those of the United States.”

In the end, it’s a decent enough book, and might be worth picking up if you happen across it. But it isn’t worth seeking out.

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Keepers of the Keys of Heaven

by on January 17, 2013 at 10:08 pm
Posted In: Books

Roger Collins is a name I’ve known for many years through his Early Medieval Europe 300–1000, so when I realized that a book I was considering getting was by him, it became an instant first choice.

Covering nearly 2000 years of history in about 500 pages, even if restricted to a single institution (the papacy), is no mean feat, but Collins does it quite well here. There are places where names and titles go by at a dizzying pace, but mostly he picks an issue or a pope, and does a subchapter on it. This breaks the narrative into a large number of discrete chunks that mostly read very cleanly.

He actually starts in 1942, with an excavation under St. Peter’s which eventually turned up what was later announced as the bones of St. Peter himself. Collins points out a number of unresolvable uncertainties about the claim, and moves on to how this this claim ties into the Papacy’s view of itself. The book is well done and informative, for me especially in the period from 1790 to 1850, where the papacy went through it’s toughest struggle, loosing all of its temporal power, only to gain new respect in the spiritual field.

Collins maintains a good even tone throughout, treating the subject evenhandedly, and sceptically (when needed), showing how various policies were (and weren’t) reactions to the times. His final thoughts on the papacy are, “The papacy in the twentieth century was more defensive on its impregnable rock than at almost any other time in its past, and more disturbed by changes in human society and in thought than at any previous period, at least since the Reformation. The latter remains the great turning point in its history. Recent decades have, on the other hand, put the person of the pope at the forefront of the Catholic sense of identity to an unparalleled degree, and focused popular piety upon it. At the same time there have been losses, both of vocations and of faith, more in some parts of the world than others, as expectations of change, reform and leadership have been disappointed. The papacy may need to adapt to the changing circumstances and demands of the new millennium, but if its history suggests anything, this will be done slowly, reluctantly and with a firm denial that anything of the kind is happening.”

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Babur the Tiger

by on December 18, 2012 at 10:13 pm
Posted In: Books

Harold Lamb wrote a bunch of very readable and enjoyable historical biographies from the 1920s to ’60s, but is sadly not very well known today. He was an exemplar of a narrative style of popular history writing that seems to have fallen largely by the wayside, but does a great job of bringing people and places to life.

Babur the Tiger: First of the Great Moguls was the last book he wrote; somewhat ironically he considered it as part of a series with Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, which were the first two biographies he wrote. Babur actually wrote his own memoirs, and Lamb quotes from them extensively, making this volume unlike most of his other books, though no less filled with personalities and perhaps more high adventure than most.

Like any of his other books, this isn’t a detailed study, but it is a very good read, and well worth the time.

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New Infantry, New Weapons

by on November 15, 2012 at 10:22 pm
Posted In: Books, History

Part two of Osprey’s survey of European Medieval Tactics is much like the first volume. Unfortunately, while I felt the first volume started strong and finished somewhat weaker, all of this volume is at the level of the later portions of the first.

The main problem is that the first one started with a fairly solid thesis, and then lost its way in the later part of the period. This volume is still useful as a general introduction to a subject that gets too little attention, but it just wanders from place to place, and time to time, without any central ideas stated.

There are another thirteen small battle diagrams included (compared to seven in the first volume), which seem to be more crowded and harder to follow than before. This may indicate the battles are getting more complicated. I don’t know this period as well, so fewer of the battles discussed there or in the eight color plates are familiar to me, though there were still a few I knew.

I’ll also note that Osprey has a volume on Pike and Shot Tactics 1590—1660. I wonder if they have anything planned for 1500—1590?

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Bosworth 1485

by on November 12, 2012 at 10:40 pm
Posted In: Books, History

As usual, Osprey’s Campaign series does an excellent job of presenting the background and people involved in the battle in question. In this case, the later stages of the Wars of the Roses, and Richard III’s reign are covered very well. There is a lot that cannot be known through the distorting lens of Tudor propaganda, but some good points are made.

The general course of Henry Tudor’s landing and march into central England are handled well (I like the Campaign series in general because it is as much about the maneuvering to battle as much as the battle itself), with the usual excellent maps. There are also several very nice two-page spread original color paintings by Graham Turner scattered throughout, instead of art borrowed from previous books. There are two problems here: One, they usually have a paragraph or so of the main text over part of the art, and the contrast is often low enough to make reading the text difficult. Two, the people, even when they are supposed to be in motion, look posed. Other than that, they’re fine pieces, but my eyes are trained by an artist also educated as an animator; these people don’t look like they’re moving.

A final problem is that the book was published in 1999, and a couple surveys conducted since then indicate the battle may have been fought about two miles from where it was previously believed to be. It is still worth picking up, especially if found cheap, but I hope that once the resulting arguments start working their way through academia, Osprey will release a new edition of the volume.

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