This real-life action will delight fans of fictional heroes from the same war—Horatio Hornblower (C.S. Forester) and Richard...
Sumptuous storytelling recreates the first worldwide war.
Known as “The Great War” until World War I, the Napoleonic Wars embroiled Britain and other nations in conflict with France for a decade (1804–15), as Napoleon Bonaparte sought to create an empire in Europe. In this vivid history, husband-and-wife historians Roy (Nelson’s Trafalgar, 2005) and Lesley (Empires of the Plain, 2004) take us from the audacious, supposedly invincible Napoleon’s disastrous effort to conquer Egypt to his complete military defeat at Waterloo and England’s rise as supreme naval power. Besides recounting major sea battles (involving Spain, Denmark, Russia, Turkey and other nations), the authors illuminate aspects of life at war and on the home fronts, quoting from diaries, letters and journals. We see Britain wild over Horatio Nelson after his defeat of the French at Trafalgar (“Joy, joy, joy to you, brave, gallant, immortalized Nelson!” wrote Countess Spencer in London); sailors suffering from lack of food and water and the scourges of smallpox and yellow fever; the brutal recruiting (impressments) of seamen to build the British navy; and the imprisonment of more than 100,000 captured Frenchmen in cramped British hulks that became tourist attractions. In that low-tech era, information about the enemy was hard to come by, communication difficult (even within one’s own fleet) and hysteria rampant: Many British wondered whether the relentless Napoleon (seen only in drawings) was a creature from hell. American inventor Robert Fulton figures in the story, working for the British under the code name “Mr. Francis” to devise torpedo bombs used against anchored French ships. While charting the bitter rivalry between Britain and France, the Adkins also show how British trade restrictions plunged the young United States into the War of 1812, which destroyed Washington, D.C., but ranked as a mere sideshow for England.
This real-life action will delight fans of fictional heroes from the same war—Horatio Hornblower (C.S. Forester) and Richard Sharpe (Bernard Cornwell).Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-670-03864-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2007
Important material out of the shadows to which so much labor history is exiled.
Top-drawer narrative histories of two important strikes, and a more amorphous consideration of musicians’ rights to their work, from three progressive historians.
Zinn (The Future of History, 1999, etc.) tackles the Colorado coal strike of 1913–14, during which 11 children and 2 women were found burned to death under tents set ablaze by National Guardsmen in a notorious incident known as the Ludlow Massacre. Zinn is a fine storyteller, keeping the tone low but passionate as he makes plain as day the many evils of John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s coal operation, a veritable fiefdom unto itself, keeping workers in its harness from cradle to grave. He also does a good job highlighting how the New York Times acted in collusion with the coal operators as part of a larger cultural air-brushing of dramatic and violent labor events into oblivion. Frank (American Studies/UC Santa Cruz; Buy American, 1999) displays a jazzier style as he recreates the Woolworth’s sit-down strike of 1937 in Detroit. (“Woolworth’s was a palace built for working-class people. The big fluted columns were made of concrete, not marble, then painted shiny bright colors.”) He too stands foursquare behind the strikers: young white women, poorly paid in dead-end jobs, caught in the revolving door of unskilled work. The radical Waiters’ and Waitresses’ Union of Detroit capitalized on the canny tactic of the sit-down strike, which kept owners from locking out workers and hiring scabs, and the women managed to subvert journalists’ preoccupation with their sex. Kelley (History/NYU; Race Rebels, 1994) tries to get a sense of musicians’ rights through the unsuccessful American Federation of Musicians strike against theater owners in 1936. The topic is unwieldy, as can be seen when looking at today’s controversies Napster and MP3, and Kelley’s broader question—voiced, not answered—is “what happens when working-class consumption of popular culture overrides the interests or concerns of popular culture workers?”
Important material out of the shadows to which so much labor history is exiled.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2001
ISBN: 0-8070-5012-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Galloping history, despite the misleading title. (7 maps; 8 pp. b&w photographs, not seen)
A well-known BBC correspondent takes the career of Lt. Col. George Scovell, who cracked a complicated French cipher during the Peninsular Campaign of 1807–14, as an excuse to retell the rousing story of Wellington’s sanguinary preparation for the great test of Waterloo.
Urban, a former Army officer with a passion for the history of warfare, has added an important footnote to accounts of the Napoleonic Wars by giving Scovell, formerly an engraver’s apprentice, proper credit for his critical role in the British victories in Spain and Portugal. But the book’s title greatly misrepresents Urban’s focus. Yes, Scovell was accommodating enough to have left behind a journal and substantial notes, but these hardly suffice to fashion a biography. Instead, Scovell is a Zelig-like figure who appears at the verge of history’s grand photographs but is rarely front and center, a position invariably occupied either by Wellington (whom Urban clearly admires) or by his redoubtable adversaries in the field (including Napoleon himself in the short penultimate chapter on Waterloo). We begin in 1809 as the then–Capt. Scovell is serving lookout duty. His skills as a linguist and a fastidious organizer of men and matériel soon earn him promotions and the stern favor of Wellington, a man not noted for his warmth. We learn a little about Scovell’s wife, Mary (there is not much to learn), whom he does not see at all for one three-year period. Scovell organizes local guides and scouts (a daunting task) and begins to dabble with French ciphers, discovering in the process his own remarkable talent for code-breaking. Soon he is at work on the Great Paris Cipher, an extraordinarily difficult French code that occupies him for many months; indeed, it is not until near the end of the campaign that he understands it all. With partial foreknowledge of French intentions, Wellington has a decided advantage. Scovell’s post-Napoleonic career of 36 years consumes only a chapter.
Galloping history, despite the misleading title. (7 maps; 8 pp. b&w photographs, not seen)Pub Date: March 2, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-018891-X
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001
GENERAL HISTORY | MODERN | MILITARY | HISTORY
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BOOK REVIEW
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