NOI: Revised

 

Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State by Garrett Felber is a revisionist history in its strict sense.  For years, scholars have viewed the Nation of Islam as apolitical.  The NOI wanted a separate state, and therefore refused to participate in political or social action.  

Felber seeks to show that this is not true; the NOI was involved in prison reform almost from its inception.  Felber has a narrow goal, the NOI and its relationship with the "carceral" state.  He steers clear of defining the NOI religiously, which is my area of interest.  Felber allows the NOI to self-define as Muslim. He explains that denying the NOI's affiliation to global Islam was long a a part of the “carceral” state’s attempt to rob it of religious legitimacy.  Under this rubric, prisons were able to deny NOI inmates religious rights.

This fascinating book shows the NOI in a less Malcom X-centric light.  The NOI stands on its own.  It is an interesting angle.

Through Fire and Water: The Life of Reb Noson of Breslov by Chaim Kramer

Through Fire and Water: The Life of Reb Noson of Breslov by Chaim Kramer is definitely the book for you if you want to know about Reb Noson, the man who led the Breslov Hasidim after the death of their founder, Rebbe Nachman.

As Rebbe Nachman died at the age of thirty-eight, Reb Noson became his spiritual executor.  This book explains how he was the de facto leader of (most) Breslov Hasidim, although he never wanted the title of Rebbe.  This in itself was odd: in an age where Hasidic groups were led by dynastic heads or charismatic leaders, early on Breslov never replaced their founder .  

But this became the Breslov way and ultimately part of their appeal.  Other groups derided them for this – but since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage to the Rebbe’s grave has become a major event on the Jewish calendar.  This book makes a great case that this legacy exists because of the work of Reb Noson.  He was Plato to the Rebbe's Socrates.

When We Get Out of the Way

 

Cal Flyn’s Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape is a fascinating study of the places where humans once lived, left, and are now seeing, as the sub-title informs us, a rebounding natural world.  

Flyn masterfully threads a fine line between acknowledging the extraordinary damage our species has done to our planet while at the same moment highlighting the very real and incredible ability of the earth to heal.  This is seldom discussed in environmental debates.

When people leave an area, whether it be the Red Zone in Verdun, the area around Chernobyl, or the expanses of blighted Detroit, nature does what it does best – break down the remains of human structures, and through the actions of water, wind, and encroaching plants and animals – conquer.  There is something satisfying about the earth conquering us for a change - once we get the hell out of the way.

The Boy... but not really

 

As others have said about The Boy: A Holocaust Story by Dan Porat, the boy is not really featured in this book at all.  

In this, one of the most famous Holocaust photographs, we do not and probably will never know the identity of the boy.  The same goes for the Jewish people who surround him.  These people were murdered: they might have been dead by the end of that day.

The only definitive identification in the shot is Josef Blosche, behind the boy to the right, who participated in the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto.  The photo is part of fifty phots added to Jurgen Stroop’s report of his suppression of the Ghetto Uprising.  Both Blosche and Stroop, may their names be blotted out, were executed for their crimes. 

The book lacks focus.  We learn about other Jewish people who lived in the ghetto at the same time, but they are not related to the boy or the group who surround him.  This causes confusion. This is less a book about the boy and more about the maelstrom of the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. 

The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China: A History

 

The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China: A History by David J. Silbey is a brisk account of the uprising by Chinese troops and the mystical/quasi-military movement of the Boxers in 1900. 

Silbey provides us with an overview of the conflict, mainly from the western perspective.  What amazes me is how colonial powers at odds with each other could combine in their military efforts to defeat this Chinese rebellion.  Japan, England, the United States, Britain, Germany and Russia would fight each other in various combinations for the rest of the twentieth century.  Defeating China however was a common cause.

The sheer brutality of the allied armies also is a shock.  The Chinese remember this conflict, while it is convenient for us to forget.