With sweep, erudition, and insight, Gay (History/Yale Reading Freud, 1990, etc.), in this third volume of a projected five-book history of middle-class culture in 19th-century Europe and America (The Tender Passion, 1986; Education of the Senses, 1983), explores aggression as both a constructive and destructive force in Victorian life. The Victorians were so ambivalent toward aggression, Gay says, that they found alibis for it—organizing it in sports or duels; channeling it into economic or political activity; institutionalizing it in a cult of manliness (the courtly ideal of proving oneself through conflict, epitomized in Teddy Roosevelt); and projecting it on ``the other'' (Dreyfus in France, blacks in America), toward whom aggression was acceptable. The ``pathologies'' of repressed aggression were acted out in ritualized retribution, with punishment ranging from floggings to public executions; in sadomasochistic eroticism; and in suicide. Aggression also played a central role in the emergence of political culture among the middle classes and in the opposition between democrats and demagogues. Women, the ``powerful weaker sex,'' domesticated aggression and the struggle for power, directing their aggressive energies into prolific writing. Positive contemporary expressions of aggression included varieties of laughter from Dickens to Daumier; varieties of militancy—wars against poverty, ignorance, disease, unbelief; and various manifestations in social service, education, sports, industry, even in the use of statistics. Gay extends the meaning of aggression itself in a discussion of the development of professions, of the division of labor, of the rise of a literature of advice, and of versions of neurosis that reflected a growing belief in the civil wars within the self. The First World War itself appears here as a massive expression of the internalized or repressed aggression of the previous century. An appendix covers theories of aggression. His argument is occasionally untidy, perhaps simplistic, but Gay proves here to be fascinating, original, and humane—a genial guide even when so concerned with conflict.
Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1993
ISBN: 0-393-03398-8
Page Count: 752
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1993
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
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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