New Books In History

I confess I was attracted to this book by the title: Capitalism and the Jews (Princeton, 2010). Capitalism is a touchy subject; Jews are a touchy subject. But capitalism and the Jews, that’s a disaster waiting to happen. I don’t suggest you try this, but just imagine what would happen if you started a water-cooler chat with “Hey, what do you think of capitalism and the Jews?” Not pretty. So, being a bit curious, I wanted to know who would write a book with said title and what they could possibly say that wouldn’t get people calling for their head. Well, here’s what I found out. The book was written by Jerry Muller who, I can tell you with all earnestness, is a very bright fellow, an excellent (and witty) writer, and someone with a load of interesting things to say about capitalism and Jews. Don’t worry, it’s not what you think. Muller’s book is no spittle-encrusted diatribe against greedy, hook-nosed, money-lenders. But neither is it the kind of book that ignores the (too often considered embarrassing or offensive) facts, the central one here being that Jews are, as Muller well puts it, good at capitalism. There is no Judeophobia or Judeophilia to be found in these pages. Rather, there is a fascinating, meditative, and enlightening account of the historical relationship of capitalism and the Jews, predominately in Europe over the last thousand or so years. This book is full of cool-headed, convincing arguments about controversial, oft-asked historical questions: Why are Jews good at capitalism? What made European Jews different from other diaspora communities? What role did the Jews play in the evolution of capitalism? What attracted some Jews to socialism? Why do we think–wrongly as it turns out–that there was an affinity between Jews and communism? How did Jews themselves react to the strong association between capitalism and their faith? How did Christians react to the same association?

If you read this book, and I hope you do, you will be able to sensibly answer all these question. And really, you have no reason not to read it because it is a model of brevity. It’s rare that you find so much packed into so few pages. But that’s what you’d expect, I suppose, out of a very bright fellow, excellent writer, and someone with a load of interesting things to say…

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Tags: Anti-Semitism, Assimilation, Capitalism, Christendom, Christianity, Conspiracy Theories, Early Modern Europe, Enlightenment, Ethnic Cleansing, Exile, Intellectuals, Jews, Middle Ages, Modernity, National Identity, Nationalism, Religion, Renaissance by Marshall Poe
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If you’re like me (and I hope you aren’t), the “Trial of the Century” involved a washed-up football star, a slowly moving white Bronco, an ill-fitting glove, and charges of racism. I watched every bit of it and remember exactly where I was when the verdict was announced. But if you are French (which is a nice thing to be), then there is only one “Trial of the Century” and it involved an honorable though stuffy army captain, a torn up note of no significance, a bungling military establishment, and charges of anti-Semitism. The erstwhile American football player (and actor, don’t forget he was an actor) was guilty, pretty much everyone knew it, but no one really wanted to take the issue on. The aloof French officer was innocent, pretty much everyone knew it too, but in this instance a kind of culture war broke out.

France circa 1900 was at a fork in the historical road: on the left, the liberalism of the Revolution; on the right, the conservatism of the post-Napoleonic settlement. So which was it to be: France a nation of free-thinking citizens or France a nation of Catholic Frenchmen? The question was not definitively answered during the Dreyfus Affair, but new (and somewhat disturbing) possibilities were sketched out. The analysis of these new paths is one (among many) of the great strengths of Ruth Harris‘s new book Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century (Henry Holt, 2010) . She shows that both sides—the Dreyfusards (aka “Intellectuals”) and the Anti-Intellectuals—used the Affair to elaborate their visions for France and, in the process, worked themselves into a tizzy. They began to believe things that, well, only a lunatic could believe. French political culture entered a kind of surreal moment (a bit like American political culture during the O.J. trial if you ask me). Alas, the French didn’t quickly come back to reality after the Affair ended. They organized parties and continued to fight. And they are still fighting.

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Tags: 19th Century, 20th Century, Anti-Semitism, Catholicism, Conservatism, Conspiracy Theories, Exile, France, Ideology, Intellectuals, Jews, Liberalism, Media, National Identity, Nationalism, Newspapers, Paranoia, Paris, Public Intellectuals, Religion, Salons, Scandals, Trials, Writers by Marshall Poe
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You’ve probably heard of hipsters. Heck, you may even be a hipster. If you don’t know what a hipster is, you might spend some time on this sometimes entertaining website. Where do hipsters come from? Lets work backwards. Before hipsters (1990s), there were slackers (1980s): middle-class, college-going, white kids into Alternative rock. They were hipsters in all but name. Before slackers, there were punks and pseudo-mods (1970s): middle-class, college-going, white kids into Punk and New Wave rock respectively. Neither of them was really “hip” because they liked to take speed and be “intense.” Before punks and pseudo-mods, there were hippies (1960s): middle-class, college-going, white kids into rock and folk. They weren’t “hip” because they smoked a lot of dope and were embarrassingly earnest. Before hippies, there were beats (1950s): middle class, college-going, white kids into outré poetry and literature. They weren’t “hip” because they took narcotics and liked to be “cool.” Before beats, there were proto-hipsters (1940s): middle-class, college-going, white kids who liked hot jazz and black people. They were more like modern wiggers than hipsters. (If you don’t know what a wigger is, here you go.) And before proto-hipsters, there was the mother of all middle-class, college-going, white American subcultures—the bohemians. They were a lot like hipsters.

These hipsters-before-hipsters are the subject of Joanna Levin‘s fascinating new book  Bohemia in America, 1858-1920 (Stanford UP, 2010). In it, she deftly traces the mid-nineteenth-century migration of bohemianism from the Parisian Latin Quarter to American shores and its spread to middle class, white culture thereafter. Bohemianism offered Americans who, as Tocqueville noted, were all about equality (read: conformity) a chance to be different in a safe way. The bohemians practiced a kind of satire-of-the-deed: they used themselves–the way they dressed, talked, loved, worked–to poke fun at everything “bourgeois.” They were performance artists, and they wanted attention. Just like hipsters.

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Tags: 19th Century, 20th Century, American Literature, Artists, Bohemians, Bourgeoisie, Capitalism, Culture, Greenwich Village, Intellectuals, Latin Quarter, Liberalism, Marxism, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Subcultures, Writers by Marshall Poe
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Of all the events in American history, two are far and away the most troubling: slavery and the near-genocidal war against native Americans. In truth, we’ve dealt much better with the former than the latter. The slaves were emancipated. After a long and painful struggle, their descendants won their full civil rights. Though that struggle is not yet finished, near equality has been reached in many areas of American life. And almost all Americans understand that slavery was wrong. None of this can be said about the campaign against native Americans. Instead of emancipation, the Indians–or rather those left after the slaughter–were “removed” to reservations where their way of life was destroyed. After a long and painful struggle, many of their descendants are still in those reservations and living in poverty. They struggle still, but are not equal to other Americans by most measures. And many Americans refuse to believe that the U.S. was wrong in killing, sequestering, and impoverishing the native Americans.

They are wrong to do so, for we know what happened and why thanks to historians such as Heather Cox Richardson. In her eye-opening new book Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre (Basic Books, 2010) she shows just how calculated, self-serving, and even spiteful the White assault on the Plains Indians was. Despite what they said (mostly to the Indians themselves), the Whites never had any real intention of allowing the Sioux and others to keep their land, maintain their way of life, or even to continue to exist. It was clear to them that the Indians would either become White (meaning would take up farming) or would go. The Whites weren’t exactly cynics; rather they were self-deceiving fatalists. They came to believe that destiny itself compelled them to assimilate or annihilate the Indians.

But destiny didn’t destroy the Plains Indians. The government of the United States of America did.

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Tags: 19th Century, American Midwest, American West, Assimilation, Atrocities, Civil War, Colonialism, Democratic Party, Empires, Frontiers, Genocide, Immigration, Imperialism, Native Americans, Racism, Refugees, Republican Party, Uprisings, Violence, War by Marshall Poe
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