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THE PROMISE OF THE NEW SOUTH, 1877-1906

Name: THE PROMISE OF THE NEW SOUTH, 1877-1906
Author: Edward L. Ayers
ISBN: 0-19-503756-1

by Edward L. Ayers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1992

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A uniquely comprehensive cultural, political, and social history of post-Reconstruction, exploring not only ``the South's deep poverty and institutionalized injustice'' but also ``the complexity of experience in the new South.'' Ayers (History/Univ. of Virginia; Vengeance and Justice, 1983) aims ``to understand what it meant to live in the American South in the years after Reconstruction.'' To achieve this, he examines the matrix of economic and societal forces that shaped the South's singular culture. He argues that the political and social milieux in the South in the initial years following the end of Reconstruction were fluid, and that as conservative Democrats, and factions sympathetic to their objectives, gradually came to dominate the public life of the region, the post-Reconstruction South slowly assumed its distinctive character. Ayers sees the railroad in particular as a powerful catalyst of socioeconomic change. The rapid expansion of the railroad, he contends, engendered new cities and gave rise to commercial and industrial growth while encouraging the development of racial segregation (the segregation of railroad carriages, a concession to the laws of a few reactionary states, led to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which approved the ``separate but equal'' doctrine). While there were, then, reactionary aspects to southern political life in the post-Reconstruction era, the great Populist movement of the late 19th century, Ayers theorizes, had its roots in the political interest groups that coalesced in the South. The author also surveys the major social institutions and significant literary and cultural activity in the South during this period. Ayers succeeds in depicting the post-Reconstruction South not as a repressed backwater of American life, but as a region that, despite substantial injustices, made significant contributions to American life.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-19-503756-1

Page Count: 640

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
AMERICAN VISIONS
by Edward L. Ayers

- BOOK REVIEW
THE THIN LIGHT OF FREEDOM
by Edward L. Ayers

- BOOK REVIEW
WHAT CAUSED THE CIVIL WAR?
by Edward L. Ayers

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ARTHUR FIEDLER

PAPA, THE POPS, AND ME

by Johanna Fiedler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 11, 1994

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The daughter of Boston's beloved maestro transposes the familiar laments of a star's adult child into the world of classical music. In the course of his 50-year tenure as conductor of the Boston Pops orchestra, Arthur Fiedler emerged as a true celebrity. Beyond his musical flair and dashing appearance, he exhibited a knack for marketing. He made his reputation by organizing America's first annual series of free outdoor symphony orchestra concerts on Boston's Charles River Esplanade. On taking over the Pops in 1930, he built a national following, and in his last decades, the PBS ``Evening at Pops'' television broadcasts cemented his fame. The Arthur Fiedler whom the public adored, however, turns out— surprise!—to have distanced himself from his family, immersing himself in his career and continuing to live the high life while on tour. When at home, he would show himself to be misanthropic, miserly, and alcoholic. Fiedler fille details in a clear style how this behavior impeded her personal growth. After a withdrawn, troubled childhood, she came to have difficulties of her own with alcohol and searched into adulthood for a father figure—for instance, dating musicians, some ``hand-picked'' by her father, all with forceful, dominating personalities like his. Her complaints against Fiedler päre seem valid, but the dysfunctional Fiedler family nevertheless strikes the reader as having been more typical of the mid-century upper middle class than traumatic in the ``Daddy Dearest'' vein. More intriguing sections of her book narrate her family's singular accomplishments: her grandfather's emigration from Austria to join the Boston Symphony, her father's navigation of the tides of cultural politics and of nationalist sentiment during WW I, and his endeavors to prove his mettle as a serious artist. That he loved dogs, fire engines, and women while hating children is, in the end, relatively uninteresting. Only Fiedler enthusiasts and habituÇs of the classical music scene will want to wade through the run-of-the-mill pop psychologizing featured here.

Pub Date: Oct. 11, 1994

ISBN: 0-385-42391-8

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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AN HONOURABLE DEFEAT

THE FIGHT AGAINST NATIONAL SOCIALISM IN GERMANY, 1933-1945

by Anton Gill ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 11, 1994

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A succinct, informative, and well-written history of attempts by Germans to kill or overthrow Hitler. Gill, an Anglo-German historian (A Dance Between Flames: Berlin Between the Wars, p. 192), focuses largely on the resistance network within the German ``establishment'': the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church, the Foreign Office, the Abwehr (German secret service), and, above all, the army. Focusing on the years 193844, he chronicles such key events as the coup d'Çtat planned by a group of officers at the time of the Munich crisis, a coup they would have implemented had Hitler gone to war instead of winning major concessions from British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Such efforts culminated in the July 20, 1944, near-miss of a bomb assassination attempt against Hitler by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. It resulted in massive bloodletting against thousands of real and suspected conspirators, was widely denounced within the Third Reich, and was undervalued both abroad and in postwar West Germany, but a July 1944 New York Times editorial aptly called the bombing an ``honorable treason.'' In colorful prose, the author demonstrates how possible anti-Nazi uprisings and assassination attempts were repeatedly thwarted by the conspirators' dawdling and individual failures of nerve, by Allied (particularly British) indifference and mistrust of the conspirators, and by bad luck. He scants communist resistance, although he does delve into the White Rose and other German student groups. Unfortunately, Gill makes almost no mention of Germans who hid or otherwise aided Jews, political dissidents, or those threatened by the ``euthanasia'' campaign. Still, he skillfully uses German and English sources and provides a chart illustrating the resistance network and a ``Who's Who'' of anti-Hitler conspirators. Like the late Barbara Tuchman, Gill has deftly synthesized scholarly and more popular historical writing to produce an impressively accessible and interesting work. (Maps, 25 b&w photos, not seen)