Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950

In Salonica, City of Ghosts, Mark Mazower chronicles the very long history of this city, following its economic and social vicissitudes, and how people of varied ethnic and religious persuasions have both ruled and lived in its borders.

One is struck by what a crossroads city Salonica was (it is no longer a crossroad).  It was located at the nexus of the Greek, Slavic, Jewish and Muslim worlds, and all four peoples/faith communities have played a substantial part in its history.

Despite such a varied and rich history, this work is ultimately about the erosion and erasure of history.  When the Greeks gained control over Salonica in the early twentieth century, they tried to eradicate the long Muslim history of the town.  When Salonika’s Jewish community was deported to its death in World War Two by the Germans, its ancient cemetery was desecrated by order of Greek municipal officials, not the Nazis, who had long wanted the land to expand the city.

Today, Aristotle University sits atop Jewish bones, and it was only recently that the university placed a memorial on its campus.  It was destroyed by vandals in early 2019 .  The heartless ethnic scrubbing of this city continues.  It is not the ghosts of the city of Salonika that are the abiding problem - it is its living people.

Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution by Kathleen DuVal

Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution by Kathleen DuVal examines the history of the Gulf Coast during and after the War of Independence.  In this way the author supplies us with another view of the revolution, exposing many myths we often accept without question.  

Not all British colonies in the Americas rose up in revolt.  Canada did not, for one, although DuVal gives Florida center stage.  At the time, West and East Florida were English possessions.  When the Spanish and French declared war on Britain, Spain captured the Floridas.  It was the only area seized from the British that did not rise up in revolt.

DuVal separates each chapter by historical character.  The Spanish war with England was a multicultural affair, fought by slaves, free blacks, Acadians (Cajuns), Irish, Germans, and Native Americans.  She teases out their contributions to the war and the peace, and examines who were winners and who were losers when the war concluded.

This wonderful inversion of our typical reading appetites for the American Revolution is truly enlightening.

Libby Prison Breakout: The Daring Escape from the Notorious Civil War Prison

Libby Prison Breakout: The Daring Escape from the Notorious Civil War Prison, by Joseph Wheelan, tells the story of the horrendous conditions Union POW officers endured in a Richmond warehouse.  

Apologists for the south have always claimed that the Confederacy had few resources for their own troops and civilians, and that Union POWs had the same rations as everyone else.  I doubt that, but even if it is true, what was the cost of keeping POWs in clean, more spacious cells, with access to clean water?

This book simply highlights the moral necessity to treat POWs humanely.  Any excuses for not doing so is a whitewash for war crimes.

Another Missed Opportunity for Ha Jin

As I do with all Ha Jin's books, I wanted to like The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (Li Po) and came to the book with great hope.  Li Bai, the Tang Dynasty poet, is an inherently fascinating man and influential poet.  So, Ha Jin had a great subject for this non-fiction book.  

He indeed does the very hard work of interpreting the importance of this great Chinese poet for an English speaking/reading audience.  At times, he performs this task admirably.  But most of the time, the book pursues the same tempo and rhythm: Li Bai seeks an official position to get ahead, gets close to securing it, and then loses it for some reason.  This continues for the whole book.

So the pattern is monotonous.  This is a fine book to learn about classical Chinese poetry, but Ha Jin makes it difficult  to feel overly enthused with his flat, repetitive prose and repeating patterns.

We'd Better Hope

We all better hope that How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are wrong in their assessment about the future of the US government.  If they are correct, we are just a bit beyond the bounds to save our institutions, without some occurrences which, in the current political environment, seem very unlikely.

This is a uniformly depressing book, but a vital read.  Partisan politics are inevitable, but a move toward the center by a large number of Americans appears to be the only path out of the mess we are in; otherwise, we may be witnessing the death knell of our republic.

Nu, it is all in the framing

What is wrong with The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person, by Harold S. Kushner?  Nothing that is Kushner’s doing.  He had spent most of his career exploring why, in a world purportedly ruled by a good God, bad things happen to good people.

The Book of Job is about this topic, so Kushner should, of course, take it on.  But Job has proven itself to be a difficult book to read, and not merely because of its thorny theological issues.  It’s Hebrew, although at times masterful, is at others nearly incomprehensible.  The book appears to be out of order in parts, or jumbled.   At a certain point, it is impossible to tell which characters are speaking.  Job appears to have been composed from a few sources, and the seams often show. So this is not a great book to assuage our theological anxieties, or perform feats of theodicy.  Job is a mess. 

If I may: the simple answer as to why bad things happen to good people, like Job, like you, like me, is that it simply does.  We only get into the trap of theodicy if we cling to a notion of God that is too human or overly static.  We should allow our thoughts and hearts to have different view of God;  then perhaps God is a just God, or  an impersonal force, or an great cosmic absence, or a best friend or lover.  God has many masks - yet they are all God.

Theodicy is only a conflict if we are hog tied to our notions of the structural traits of God.  We need a dynamic God.

Mission Creep

The Polar Bear Expedition: The Heroes of America’s Forgotten Invasion of Russia, 1918-1919, by James Carl Nelson, examines a little known chapter in American history, our intervention (along with our World War One allies) in the Russian Revolution.  

The mission was doomed from the start.  Originally conceived as an attempt to guard munitions and supplies the allies had stored in Archangel for the Czar’s Army from falling in the hands of the Red Army, classic mission creep led to a wider engagement.

Americans, Canadians, British, French and other forces began a wider campaign to get Russian back in the war by supporting the Whites.  But there was no clear strategy on how to do this; a small number of allied troops in the wilds of northern Russian had no real impact on the conflict.  They were a drop in a very cold bucket.

The author writes about an area of Russian few Americans are familiar with; this can get confusing.  Having a map handy  helps with geographical intelligibility.  

A Giant

Yehudah Mirsky takes on one of the most interesting figures in twentieth century Judaism in Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (Jewish Lives).  Rav Kook was a figure of immense learning, compassion, fierce intellect, and eclectic aesthetic moods.

He is far wider known in Israel than in the United States, mainly because some of his writings about the Land of Israel became the theological base for the West Bank and Gaza settler movement. 

But Mirsky shows that Rav Kook was a far wider thinker, concerned with more than real estate, constantly struggling with opposing forces he tried to harmonize.  As such he was a dynamic thinker,  remaking himself and his ideas about Judaism, nationalism, socialism… and everything.

The “real” Rav Kook will never be found because he was a rarity among people: vigorous and unafraid to change his mind.

request a lawyer... call your embassy

Nina Burleigh’s The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox, essentially shows how a young American exchange student was convicted of murder because she had a sex life.  The author theorizes that Knox was charged with murder due to certain Italian superstitions and misogynist cultural predispositions, as well as Ms. Knox often immature behavior in the context of her situation.  The Italians just did not understand her.

The Perugian authorities had a suspect for the murder of Meredith Kercher, his DNA was at the crime scene and in the victim, and he had a history of breaking into homes.  He was convicted of the murder in a fast track trial.  But Magistrate Giuliano Mignini, guided by Masonic conspiracy theories, had formed an opinion of Knox and Sollecito, and due to his conspiratorial prejudices, and probable mental instability (sue me Mignini), stuck to a paranoid and deceptive fairy tale about a sex game gone wrong. 

In a wider sense, Knox's story is a cautionary tale: don't get arrested in Italy.  The Italians do not adhere to the Anglo-American model of jurisprudence.  Add this to the sweeping power that courts have been given to arrest Mafiosi, and the Italian judiciary abuses its power mightily. In Italian courts there is no voir dire jury selection, and the jury includes two judges who also adjudicate the trial.  There is no principle of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.  Entertaining run of the mill doubt is fine for a conviction.  Civil and criminal cases, with their different burdens of proof, occur at the same time.  If you accuse the police or prosecutors of misconduct in open court or in the press, they can sue you for slander (and they seems to always do).

A jury is never sequestered, even in a high profile cases. The defense does not have a right to receive all the evidence gathered by the prosecution.  Italy can keep the accused in preventative detention for up to a year while evidence the accused may never see is gathered.  Courts appear to hold session only two days a week, and take lengthy vacations summer and otherwise.  You have no right to a speedy trial.

So, keep your nose clean in Italy.  If you do fall into a situation like Amanda Knox, contact your embassy immediately.  Ask for a lawyer right away.  While Italy's judicial abuses continue on a scale, you aren't safe at all.

The Holocaust: A New History

The Holocaust: A New History by Laurence Rees is a readable and well-researched book about the Shoah.  I am not entirely sure in what ways it is “new.” Rees weaves personal stories from many players in the drama of the Shoah along with the wider look at the history.  He claims this is new, but I’m not so sure.  In the end it hardly matters. 

This book plots the course of the destruction of the Jews of Europe with great accuracy and care. The author shows how and why the extermination of Europe’s Jews was easier in some countries than others, and how much of the murders and their methods were guided by individual Nazi commander’s discretion.

The murder of Europe's Jews was certainly a centralized operation, but it also had the flexibility of decentralization.  Rees explains this important, and little know point, well.