Category Archives: History

Don’t Know Much About the Bible by Kenneth C. Davis

Posted on by
Reply

Read: 1 March, 2013

I’ve been working on my Bible reading project over at Carpe Scriptura and I came across a recommendation to read this book. Though the stated objective of my project is just to chronicle my personal impressions of the text, I do like to cheat and get some outside perspectives occasionally, particularly when I raise questions that require more historically-founded answers.

Don’t Know Much About the Bible is a great introduction to the Old and New Testaments. Davis has a summary of each book, including a discussion of the themes, issues, and current scholarly thoughts for most. He also covers some of the bible basics, such as the Document Hypothesis. In that sense, I found it to be a perfect little primer for cultural Christians and others who just want a crash course on the contents of the Bible but lack the patience to slog through the actual text (which I fully understand). I could also see it working well as a quick reference book for someone who does enough Bible-talk to need one, but not enough to memorize all the information.

I found the information to be well presented and the writing style to be accessible. That being said, I did notice a few issues. Most notably, Davis seems rather intent on calling women in the bible prostitutes, such as Rahab (which is a little iffy). Worse, he presents their professions as if they were undisputed facts, stated explicitly in the text. I suppose he should get some credit for dispelling the myth about Mary of Magdala being a prostitute – though that correction is nearly more famous than the original myth by now.

Buy Don’t Know Much About the Bible from Amazon and support this blog!

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale

Posted on by
Reply

Read: 16 March, 2012

The Road Hill House murder shocked Victorian England. The crime itself was brutal, of course, but what really shook the foundation of Victorian assumptions about social class and safety was that the murder took place in an otherwise ordinary middle class household and that the murder was evidently one of its inmates.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher follows the investigation of the murder and its aftermath, focusing on the lives of the Kent family and on Mr. Whicher, the detective, himself.

Summerscale does an amazing job of contextualising the murder and its aftermath. While she does go a little overboard in painting the Road Hill murder as the catalyst for change in Victorian society, she does at least make her argument rather convincing. Her writing style is approachable even for those unfamiliar with the era, and her frequent mentions of books and historical figures added extra fun to the reading for me because it brought back so many of my lessons from when I studied Victorian literature in university.

I highly recommend Mr. Whicher if you have an interest in the Victorian era, issues surrounding the interaction of law enforcement and privacy, or simply enjoy mysteries and want a little more background on real life detectives.

Buy The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher on Amazon to support this blog!

The Medieval Cookbook by Maggie Black

Posted on by
Reply

There are a few “medieval” cookbooks floating around, but this is the best I’ve seen so far. It’s the kind of cookbook that you can actually sit down and read through.

The recipes are divided by era, social class, and function. There’s a chapter on foods that were primarily associated with the cloister, for example, and a section for remedies. There are simple dishes with few ingredients that would be most appropriate for a side-dish or breakfast, and there are elaborate meals that belong more properly to a great feast.

Each recipe comes with a short introduction or with a contemporary passage describing the dish, followed by the ingredients list and instructions. Some license is taken with substitutions – sometimes multiple substitutions are indicated for choice – to deal with the fact that many of the ingredients are hard to find these days or no longer exist at all.

illustrations from contemporary sources are plentiful and printed in full colour, making this book a lovely source of medieval art as well.

I’ve tried a couple of the recipes over the years and enjoyed them. I’d love to throw a “Period Party” someday to really make use of this book.

Get cooking! Buy The Medieval Cookbook from Amazon to get started on your feast!

The Men Who Stare At Goats by Jon Ronson

Posted on by
Reply

Read: 7 July, 2011

I really want to categorize this book as fiction; and, in a sane world, I would. Unfortunately…

It begins in 1983,  when Major General Albert Stubblebine III (a truly Dickensian name), upon realizing that both his body and the wall are made up of atoms and that atoms are mostly made up of empty space, tries to walk through a wall.

Starting from Stubblebine’s sore nose, Ronson takes the reader through a brief history of the US military’s more insane moments. He lulled me into a sense of “oh, that happened in ’70s, but it would never happen today” with stories of men staring at goats to make their hearts stop (and, when goats aren’t available, the odd hamster would do) and a First Earth Battalion that could end conflict with their “sparkling eyes.”

But then he gets into the ‘War on Terror’ and the horrific acts at Abu Ghraib.

The most difficult part of reading The Men Who Stare At Goats is to remember that this is only, as the subtitle says, about a “small group of men” who happen to be placed in some key positions. It isn’t representative of the army as a whole. The problem is that each of these “highly placed” men have subordinates in a culture that does not tolerate dissent – even when the orders are quite obviously insane.

Throughout, Ronson remains very objective. He allows his subjects, and their beliefs, to speak for themselves. This is an amazing feat when writing a book about men who believe that they can walk through walls or stare goats to deaths.

The tone of the book seems somewhat rambly – jumping back and forth through time and skipping from subject to subject – but it all makes sense by the end, when the whole is tied together and the influence of Jim Channon’s First Earth Battalion Operations Manual is made clear. And, really, this is the story of that book – of its history and its legacy.

Men Who Stare At Goats appears to be meticulously researched. Certainly, it comes through in Ronson’s writing just how difficult certain people and facts were to find. And, although some of the connections he draws are speculative (or based on “wink wink” statements from his informants), he does make the case that it’s all at least plausible if not factual. I found it to be a very interesting and thought-provoking read, even if my faith in humanity requires that I remain somewhat provisional in my trust of Ronson’s depictions.

Assuming that it is all (or mostly) true, though, I’d be very interested in a follow up in coming years as to the effect of the book on military policies and strategies. Has Men Who Stare At Goats embarrassed the leadership sufficiently to cause a change? Will it spell the end of First Earth Battalion‘s influence? Or will it increase its popularity?

Buy The Men Who Stare at Goats from Amazon to support this blog!

Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman

Posted on by
Reply

Read: 28 September, 2010

It is often said that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God. But which Bible?

In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman takes the reader through some of the changes that have been made to the Bible over the years, both deliberate and not, and the techniques scholars can use in an attempt to uncover what the original might have said. He does an amazing job of making some pretty complex material accessible to a lay reader.

My first encounter with Ehrman was through his textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. I was a Christian at the time, and, while I knew that the Bible had been translated and that it was therefore subject to the manipulations inherent in translation, I had no idea just how deeply the transmission errors lie.

As I read through Ehrman’s textbook and studied the material in class, I found my faith deeply challenged. Just as Ehrman describes in his introduction, our way of knowing God is through scripture. And if scripture is flawed or inaccessible, what can we truly say we know about God?

This thinking put me on a path that eventually led to my deconversion.

Misquoting Jesus is every bit as challenging as The New Testament. I find it rather interesting that the most damning argument against Christian belief comes from the Bible itself – from reading it, from understanding it within the context of its writing, and from learning just how fragile texts can be.

But Ehrman never argues against the Christian faith. He is by no means a Dawkins or a Hitchens. Rather, he simply presents the research and allows it to stand, or fall, for itself.

Buy Misquoting Jesus from Amazon to support blog!

Welsh Princes #1: Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman

Posted on by
Reply

Read: 18 March, 2010

Joanna, King John’s illigitimate daughter, is married to prince Llywelyn Fawr of Wales to secure an alliance. But John didn’t count on his daughter falling in love. When the relations between the two men start to deteriorate, Joanna is caught between her love for her father and her love for her husband.

As Wikipedia points out, one of the draws of Here Be Dragons is that it’s virgin territory; there are very few novels out there about historical Wales and, I confess, it was a milieu that I knew almost nothing about.

The historical aspects of the novel were fabulous, but it did occasionally cross into the territory of romance. Fair enough, I realize that many do like that sort of thing, but I found it rather boring and frustrating. Apparently, it’s a staple of the romance genre that people who are in love absolutely refuse to communicate with each other and, instead, simply assume the worst of the other person. I’ll never understand how this sort of thing came to be called “love” in our culture, but there you have it.

I realize that I’m not one to complain given how wooden and choppy my own writing style is, but I found Penman’s style in this book to be rather difficult to read. She has the awful tendency to force what should have been several sentences into one, joining them awkwardly. For example, she writes: “He even tried to forget the atrocity stories that were so much a part of his heritage, tales of English conquest and cruelties.” It works fine for effect now and then, but she uses it nearly every other sentence!

The book is meticulously researched and Penman is able to really bring the setting to life. The story, although about a class that is all-but extinct living lives that are so unlike anything we are familiar with, is, at the same time, very accessible. The conflict of allegiance between one’s parents and one’s spouse is something that I think most readers would be able to sympathize with.

Despite it’s flaws, I’d put Here Be Dragons as one of the better historical fiction novels on the market, well worth the read for anyone interested in the Middle Ages.

Buy Here Be Dragons from Amazon to support this blog!

Continue reading →

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

Posted on by
Reply

Read: 18, May, 2011

In 1984, Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month-old daughter, Erica, were murdered in their home in American Fork, Utah. Eighteen years later, Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her bedroom in Salt Lake City, Utah. In both cases, the crimes were committed by Mormon fundamentalists who believed in the doctrine of Celestial (plural) Marriage.

In Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Krakauer investigates these two crimes, splicing in the Mormon story and the events that lead to the schism between the Fundamentalist church with the more mainstream LDS church. He also takes a hard look at some of the Mormon scriptures that the Lafferty brothers and Elizabeth Smart’s kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, used to justify their actions.

In particular, Krakauer condemns the idea of continuing revelation, saying that it makes it possible for individuals to justify any action as revealed commandment from God. With this idea firmly entrenched in Mormonism, it is almost impossible for the more mainstream leaders to rein in the crazies. In the background, throughout all the narratives, patriarchal polygamy looms.

The book is very strong in its narrative, but doesn’t set out to make a point or place blame. As a result, Under the Banner of Heaven couldn’t legitimately be called an anti-Mormon book. It also meant that there wasn’t a good sense of scale – How many women are currently in polygamous relationships? How many children are being raised in these families and, potentially, being forced into marriages themselves? How often are crimes relating to Mormon polygamy committed?

Overall, I found it to be a very good read. Krakauer is a great storyteller and the stories themselves are interesting (albeit difficult to stomach). And, while Under the Banner of Heaven does give a fairly clear picture of the specific individuals and events covered, it’s hard to extrapolate that into any kind of knowledge about Mormonism or patriarchal polygamy.

Most quotable line: “If you want to know the truth, I think people within the religion, people who live here in Colorado City, they’re probably happier on the whole than people on the outside. But some things in life are more important than being happy – like being free to think for yourself.”

Buy Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith from Amazon to support this blog!

The Encyclopedia of Witches & Witchcraft by Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Posted on by
Reply

Read: 17 August, 2008

Overall, I’d say that this book is fine if taken as fiction and read for pleasure. If you are interested in serious scholarship regarding the history of the occult, this book would really only serve to help you with modern/Wiccan perceptions of witchcraft. While it does touch on a number of older subjects, the articles are clearly written from a Wiccan perspective.

For example, “altar” is almost entirely defined in the context of goddess worship, never mind that plenty of patriarchal religions made use of altars in their devotion to male gods (Christianity being an obvious example). The book takes the theory that goddess worship was the norm before it was suddenly replaced by male-centred religion as a given.

Even the entries that don’t display an obvious Wiccan/feminist perspective show dubious scholarship. For example, the entire entry for Patricia C. Crowther talks about her relationship with woman she had been in a previous life – Polly. Polly teaches her some spells. The book says that “Patricia had no knowledge of such spells, which experts determined were authentic.” Well, that’s just sloppy. Who were these experts? Were they experts of Elizabethan magical theory and could therefore say that the spells Crowther had learned did match up with what we know of what Elizabethan witches may have practised? Or were these experts in magic who could tell that the spells were true spells with real magical power? We are never told the type of expert and in what way the spells were deemed authentic, which would change the interpretation of the article a great deal.

And then there were some entries that I just have no way of explaining. For example, the entry on “Gypsies” explains that “their language, Romany, is related to Sanskrit,” but it never says that the people themselves are not called “Gypsies.” They are Romani. This is never mentioned in the entire entry – a very unusual little bit of bigotry for a book published in 1999.

This book isn’t a waste in the sense that I did get quite a few story ideas from it. But if you are doing research for any purpose other than the writing of fiction, don’t bother looking here. And, honestly, even if you are writing fiction, use it only as inspiration, not as an information source.

Buy The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca from Amazon to support this blog!

Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King

Posted on by
Reply

Read: 31 March, 2008

Hearts in Atlantis is a collection of short(ish) interwoven stories dealing in some way with the 60s, Vietnam, and the lives of two people named Carol and Bobby. The first and main story is about a kid named Bobby who finds himself just about to grow up. One day, an older man named Ted moves into the building and, in him, Bobby finds an adult he can be friends with. This is the only story that deals with the supernatural and Stephen King fans will find that it connects with his Dark Tower series.

The rest of the stories are considerably shorter and mostly deal with Vietnam – either with the fear of being sent or with the effects of having been there. Wrapping up the novel is a short story that finds Bobby returning to his home town, completing the circular path of the novel.

According to the book jacket, the novel is about Vietnam and the 60s, but it’s done in a very circumspect way. Only the minor characters ever go, the heroes of the shorter stories crammed into the final few pages. The main characters, Bobby from “Low Men in Yellow Coats” and Pete from “Hearts in Atlantis,” never go. Bobby, in fact, never even gets to hear about Vietnam, growing up before the war starts. But “Low Men in Yellow Coats” doesn’t avoid the subject at all, it merely hides it. Bobby is given a copy of Lord of the Flies and becomes obsessed with it, using that novel to understand his world, a world that would be transformed into a scene from the novel in the following years. As for Pete, he comes close to Vietnam, almost touches it, but he manages to scramble back into humanity and away from the mentality of Lord of the Flies that he approaches when he laughs at a crippled classmate who falls and nearly drowns in a flooded path. He regains himself, saving the classmate and raising his grades so that he wouldn’t be sent to war, he is spared the guilt and trauma that affects the main characters of the next two stories.

For a book that centres around Vietnam, Hearts in Atlantis somehow manages to stay off the soapbox. It’s always something that’s bothered me about Vietnam stories. It’s such a raw subject that I’ve yet to see an author be able to handle it without becoming preachy. That’s not to say that King doesn’t show an opinion, but that opinion is not a moral judgement of the war, but rather an exploration of the mentality that led to what happened during the war – like Lord of the Flies, he presents us with ordinary people who were thrust into extraordinary situations and either did or saw things that they spend the rest of their lives trying to deal with.

The characterization is amazing. This is the first actual Stephen King book that I’ve read. I’ve read some of his short stories, but they’ve never appealed to me. Now I know why. His strongest ability is characterization, something that he creates and builds upon over the course of a long narrative. Despite the length, there was an economy of space too. Every scene served to advance character and the result was a lengthy book with very little action that I read quickly and excitedly.

I’m trying to think of labels for the book, but I’m finding myself at a loss. There are elements of suspense and horror, but these are merely vehicles for exploration and not the subjects of it. Not to mention that the supernatural elements of “Low Men in Yellow Coats” are abandoned entirely until the final few pages.

Buy Hearts In Atlantis from Amazon to support this blog!

Medieval Pottery in Britain by Michael McCarthy and Catherine Brooks

Posted on by
Reply

Read: 22 December, 2007

A survey of Medieval pottery divided into two parts. Part one deals with shaping, firing, and decorating techniques as well as the uses for pottery in both the domestic and industrial settings. Part two has an in-depth look at each area of England and the pottery styles common to each.

Part one is very interesting and a fun read. The writing style isn’t too dry and it’s full of great information. If you’re looking for something to just pick up and read one afternoon and have some interest in pottery or Medieval life, it’s a great choice.

Part two is a much more in-depth study. It’s mostly sketches of pots with explanations that are written for brevity rather than readability. Basically, part one is the read bit and part two is the reference bit.

Buy Medieval Pottery in Britain, Ad 900-1600 from Amazon to support this blog!