In two papers (delivered at Baylor in 1982) and 61 pellucid pages, McNeill (The Rise of the West, Plagues and Peoples, The Human Condition) revives and renews Walter Prescott Webb's thesis that European expansion created a Great Frontier around the globe—where not only progress, freedom, and equality prevailed, but also destruction, compulsion, and slavery: "the persistent double-edgeness of change." The aim is to rid us of provincialism—put "the States back into the world as one of a family of peoples and nations similarly situated"—and also to expose the "romantic delusion" of an Arcadian past. The evidence derives from McNeill's unsurpassed knowledge of steppe and veldt and Outback, of disease and demographics, of transportation, communication, agriculture, and trade—in which he perceives patterns. The two papers divide at 1750. In the two centuries before, the Europeans' diseases ("epidemiological superiority"), combined with their "greater or lesser superiority of skills," destroyed native populations (in the US, USSR, Latin America); the resulting labor shortage, for agricultural or mineral production, brought recourse to compulsory labor (slaves, serfs, indentured servants, peons); "the arts and skills of civilization" made little headway. After 1750, however, transportation and communication links grew—and, most crucially, population soared. (McNeill reviews the possible reasons—with particular attention to the spread of American food crops, like potatoes and peanuts, yielding "more calories per acre than anything grown before.") When there was no more land to be tilled, and no other livelihood at hand, migration set in (to Australia and South Africa, as well as North and South America)—reducing the differences between European and frontier societies, and bringing the legal abolition of slavery and serfdom. But, McNeill emphasizes, "legally sanctioned compulsory labor" persisted—in Australia and the Congo, in the transport of Indian and Chinese "coolies" to the fringes of British and American settlements (carrying "three times as many persons across the world's oceans as ever left Africa in Atlantic slave ships"). Once again: a monumental thesis, compactly and matter-of-factly put.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1983
ISBN: 0691046581
Page Count: 73
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Aly delivers again, this time expanding his lens outside of Germany to offer further revelations about the Holocaust.
The award-winning German author dips into his vast archive of resources to produce a major work on anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism has been around for centuries. Though occasionally somewhat dormant, usually during times of fiscal strength and political peace, it always returns to rear its ugly head, each time spelling disaster for Jewish populations. Aly—the highly respected historian of the Holocaust who won the 2007 Jewish Book Award for his excellent Hitler's Beneficiaries—examines the period of 1880 to 1945 to show how, why, and in what forms anti-Semitism increased sufficiently to support the Nazi concept of the Final Solution. The author ranges widely across Europe, examining Russia, Romania, France, and Greece as well as Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, and other less-explored locales. “There is no way we can comprehend the pace and extent of the Holocaust,” writes Aly, “if we restrict our focus to the German centers of command.” While Jews were restricted from many jobs, they applied all their strength and determination to areas that were permitted, such as pharmacology, medicine, and journalism. Governmental actions began with bans on Jews serving municipalities and joining trade associations, and they also experienced limited access to education. After World War I, the concept of self-determination morphed into a brand of nationalism and misguided “racial theory” that led to increased animosity and violence. “Insofar as gentiles in the first half of the twentieth century pressed for Jews to be partially or completely stripped of their civil rights or insisted they be shipped off to somewhere outside Europe,” writes the author, “they were motivated by [an] obsessive anxiety: the fear of a supposedly overwhelming power and the real intellectual and economic agility of a small, precisely delineable ‘foreign’ group.” Though the gruesome subject and detail are sometimes tough to swallow, readers should forge ahead, relishing the author’s incredible research and singular scholarship.
Aly delivers again, this time expanding his lens outside of Germany to offer further revelations about the Holocaust.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-17017-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
GENERAL HISTORY | WORLD | HOLOCAUST | JEWISH | HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Unsurprising but perfectly competent and seamlessly of a piece with her Living History (2003). And will Hillary run? The...
Former Secretary of State Clinton tells—well, if not all, at least what she and her “book team” think we ought to know.
If this memoir of diplomatic service lacks the preening self-regard of Henry Kissinger’s and the technocratic certainty of Dean Acheson’s, it has all the requisite evenhandedness: Readers have the sense that there’s not a sentence in it that hasn’t been vetted, measured and adjusted for maximal blandness. The news that has thus far made the rounds has concerned the author’s revelation that the Clintons were cash-strapped on leaving the White House, probably since there’s not enough hanging rope about Benghazi for anyone to get worked up about. (On that current hot-button topic, the index says, mildly, “See Libya.”) The requisite encomia are there, of course: “Losing these fearless public servants in the line of duty was a crushing blow.” So are the crises and Clinton’s careful qualifying: Her memories of the Benghazi affair, she writes, are a blend of her own experience and information gathered in the course of the investigations that followed, “especially the work of the independent review board charged with determining the facts and pulling no punches.” When controversy appears, it is similarly cushioned: Tinhorn dictators are valuable allies, and everyone along the way is described with the usual honorifics and flattering descriptions: “Benazir [Bhutto] wore a shalwar kameez, the national dress of Pakistan, a long, flowing tunic over loose pants that was both practical and attractive, and she covered her hair with lovely scarves.” In short, this is a standard-issue political memoir, with its nods to “adorable students,” “important partners,” the “rich history and culture” of every nation on the planet, and the difficulty of eating and exercising sensibly while logging thousands of hours in flight and in conference rooms.
Unsurprising but perfectly competent and seamlessly of a piece with her Living History (2003). And will Hillary run? The guiding metaphor of the book is the relay race, and there’s a sense that if the torch is handed to her, well….Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5144-3
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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