An intriguing, if incomplete, account: Knox provides readers with a compelling reconsideration of the European revolutionary...
A comparative study of German Nazism and Italian Fascism, by Anglo-American historian (and Vietnam vet) Knox.
In the years following WWI, both Germany and Italy developed revolutionary movements that advertised national renewal and increased opportunities for the lower orders. Germany’s war-weakened nobility, its shattered economy, and its ineffectual representational government helped unleash ideas about competitiveness and merit that the Nazi Party would mix in with stories of Jewish backstabbing and Bolshevik subversion. Hitler argued that the conservatives and aristocrats had allowed Judeo-Bolshevik fiendishness to flourish, and that the ancien regime must be swept aside by a liberation of Aryan energies. Whereas the frailty of the German state could not stop the Nazi revolution, the ideological and institutional strength of the Catholic Church, as well as the staying power of the Italian ruling classes, limited the strength of Mussolini’s populist uprising. Just as the French Revolution found its fullest expression in the continental wars that lasted close to thirty years, Nazism and fascism reached their logical climax in the carnage of WWII. Italy’s lackluster performance during the war was due, in large part, to the failure of Mussolini’s revolt within the military and the government. On the other hand, Hitler’s plan opened up exclusive officer corps, government, and party positions to ambitious men from lower classes. When the dictator assumed command of the Wehrmacht during the retreat from Moscow, he argued that his leadership would finally wipe out old elite entitlements and open the way for men of real battle experience to command the racial and ideological struggle against the Russians. In the end, Nazism created mass expectations that merit would result in a better life. Knox goes so far as to imply that Hitlerism made modern German democracy possible (although he does not mention that it also made 50 years of Soviet rule over millions of Germans possible as well).
An intriguing, if incomplete, account: Knox provides readers with a compelling reconsideration of the European revolutionary tradition, but one hopes that he will follow through with a companion volume that traces the further careers of Nazi opportunists.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-521-58208-3
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Cambridge Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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