THE ONE AND ONLY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

A review of Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003)

(Rating 5 of 5)

To say that Benjamin Franklin led an interesting life would be the understatement of the century. Dr. Franklin was the first American to be world famous. He was an American Revolutionary, a theorist on government, a scientist in nearly all fields, and a printer being his first profession. In the end, one can say that there is nothing that the man did not do in his lifetime. Walter Isaacson brings this extraordinary American to life, allowing the reader to explore the world that was with this incredible human being.

The thirteenth of sixteen children, and a youngest son of a youngest son for five generations, Ben Franklin learned early on that if he wanted to be noticed he would have to work hard. Franklin went to work at an early age as an indentured servant for his brother James’s print shop in Boston. He even get his first by-line, after getting in trouble with the state legislature and order to print no more work under his own name, James Franklin decides to publish everything under his brother’s.

However, life as an indentured servant is no fun even when your master is your own older brother. Ben Franklin decides to escape to Philadelphia, where he opens his own print shop. As a printer, Franklin has tremendous success, his paper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, was popular. He would also publish the famous Poor Richard’s Almanac. Franklin, however, does some things okay for his time, but now we would frown upon. For example he, from time to time, makes up stories or writes letters to the editor under pseudonym often to express a political point or to tell a funny tale.

“Like most other newspapers of the time, Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette was filled not only with short news items and reports on public events, but also amusing essays and letters from readers. What made his paper a delight was its wealth of this type of correspondence, much of it written under pseudonyms by Franklin himself. This gimmick of writing as if from a reader gave Franklin more leeway to poke fun at his rivals, revel in gossip, circumvent his personnel pledge to speak ill of no one, and test-drive his evolving philosophies.” p.65

Ben Franklin was also an accomplished scientist, even though he was not formally trained. His work in electricity would be revolutionary as his later political ideas. Franklin's most famous invention outside his silly stove was the Lighting Rod. He would also map the Gulf Stream, and would always be fascinated by oil’s effect on water.*

“In fact, these terms devised by Franklin are the ones we still use today, along with other neologisms that he coined to describe his findings: battery, charged, neutral, condense, and conductor. Part of Franklin’s importance as a scientist was the clear writing that he employed. ‘He has written equally for the uninitiated as well as the philosopher,’ the early nineteenth-century English chemist Sir Humphry Davy noted, ‘and has rendered his details as amusing as well as perspicuous.’” p.135

Ever a political and social creature he was member of local clubs and debating societies. He would marry Deborah Franklin after her first husband abandoned her. He would have also father an illegitimate son who he would personally raise**. As the colonial postmaster general, he would found the origins of what would become the post office.


(William Franklin)

Benjamin Franklin would spend almost an entire decade in Britain trying to be an advocate to the people of Pennsylvania on a variety of issues. He was an opponent of most the tax laws that Britain made during this time. When letters from the colonial Governor Thomas Hutchinson came to Franklin’s attention, he leaked them so that the Americans would see that the threat to their liberties was coming from home rather than the mother country. The Privy Council of George III however saw that event differently, and he was brought before them and ridiculed. After this misadventure, he went home and joined the Revolution. Joining the rebels would cause a permanent break with his son William that was never healed.



As a member of the Second Continental Congress, he was a strong advocate for Independence for America. He was part of the famous Committee of Five with future presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. There he aided in drafting what would become the Declaration of Independence.




Franklin was dispatched by the Congress to try to form an alliance with King Louis XVI of France. There after the Battle of Saratoga, Franklin negotiated the most important military alliance in the young history of the Republic. He would later take part in the signing of the Treaty of Paris the ended the American Revolutionary War.

“As he would prove in France, Franklin not only knew how to play a calculated balance-of-power game like the best practitioner of real-politik, but he also knew how to play with his other hand the rousing chords of American exceptionalism, the sense that America stood apart from the rest of the world because of its virtuous nature. Both the hard power that came from its strategic might and the soft power that flowed from the appeal of its ideals and culture would, he realized, be equally important in assuring its influence.” p.338

At the end of his life, Franklin would do two more things that are incredible. In 1787, he would take part in the writing of the Constitution of the United States; his plea for unity became a part of his legend. Two years later, as his life was about to end, he became the president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and wrote letters to the First Congress urging an end to slavery.



Ben Franklin’s incredible life ended on April 17, 1790, he was the man who did it all. Everything written in this review and more is covered in Mr. Isaacson’s work, and I highly recommend this book to anyone.

*Which means Franklin would have quite a bit to say about this latest crisis in the Gulf of Mexico.

**William Franklin’s mother was most likely a prostitute.

{First video was posted by Rocketboom on Youtube, I think the young lady gives the best three minute description of Franklin. The second Walter Isaacson himself.

TWO SELF MADE MEN

A review of Stephen and Paul Kendrick’s Douglas and Lincoln: How a Revolutionary Black Leader and a Reluctant Liberator Struggled to End Slavery and Save the Union (2008)

(Rating 5 of 5)

President Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass came from two different walks of life and led very different lives. They were both, as Douglass would later describe it, ‘self-made men’ with Douglass rising out of slavery and Lincoln out of poverty to become leading figures of the nation. Lincoln would become a politician and rise to become the sixteenth president of the United States. Frederick Douglass would become a politician too, but not an office-seeking one. He would be on the outreaches of power doing all he could, in his genius, to fight for the enslaved and for justice for all African-Americans. Stephan and Paul Kendrick, father and son, recreate the epic political battles of the Mid-Nineteenth century United States over slavery and the Constitution.

Both Lincoln and Douglass had to overcome many hurdles in life to get to their destinies. Lincoln was born into extreme poverty. He had a cruel and overbearing father who worked all he could out of him until he was twenty-one. Douglass had been born into slavery. He did not even know who his father was, although he had a strong suspicion that it was the man who, by the law, owned him. Both would over come these obstacles on the road to greatness.



Lincoln managed to educate himself and ‘read law’ in order to join the bar and become a frontier lawyer. He would win election to the state legislature and become a vocal minority leader as a member of the Whig Party. He would serve one mediocre term in the United States House of Representatives. In the 1850s, two failed Senate bids, one against the legendary Stephen Douglas, established Lincoln as one of the leading voices against slavery, the expansion of slavery, and slave power. Although against slavery, he had a strong dislike for the radical Garrisonian Abolitionists, who in his view undermined the Anti-slavery movement by making it unelectable, unappealing, and anarchistic.


(Beardless Lincoln)

Douglass managed to escape to chains of slavery and went to the North, where he dodged slave catchers, educated himself, and was found by William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison himself, recruited Douglass into the movement. As time went on, however, Douglass started to become very critical of the movement that he had joined. The Garrisonian abolitionists were pretty good at getting nothing accomplished; they made a lot of people mad at them but did nothing to really damage slavery. Douglass would leave to start his own movement one that would be more mainstream without being mainstreamed.


(Young Douglass)

“To fully break from Garrison and his philosophies was wrenching, but Douglass had tired of conceding to the South their argument that the United States Constitution was a proslavery document. Further, he now resisted William Lloyd Garrison’s often expressed notion that seceding from the Union was a viable option for northern states. Instead, Douglass came to view the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that ‘all men are created equal’ as the proper lens though which to understand the essential meaning of the Constitution with the additions of the Bill of Rights.” p.44

When Lincoln was elected in 1860, Douglass was disappointed. Lincoln was not really the type of person he wanted as president. Although the most openly anti-slavery president ever elected, Douglass thought Lincoln’s approach was too slow and his willingness to enforce fugitive slave laws too cruel.


(Fredrick Douglass)

However as the war went on Douglass’s view on President Lincoln began to change, first by meeting him and deciding upon that meeting that Lincoln was nothing if not honest. When the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, Douglass started recruiting young black men, including his own sons, to fight for the Union cause. Douglass would even collaborate with Lincoln in a plan for Douglass himself to go down to the South personally and try to start up a slave rebellion, but the war ended before that became necessary.


(Lincoln at work)

“Douglass had clearly made quite an impression on the president. It was now Lincoln himself prompting a second meeting. In thinking about the ease and evident lack of prejudice that marked his meetings with Lincoln, Douglass maintained that this connection was forged in their both being self-made men. Though it might be audacious to compare a president’s early days with his own, Douglass was well aware of the grinding poverty of Lincoln’s childhood, and he later pondered that this commonality was a source of their ease with one another. Douglass concluded, ‘I account partially for his kindness to me because of the similarity with which I had fought my way up, we both starting at the low rung of the ladder.’ So when receiving the invitation, Douglass resolved to go ‘most gladly.’”

(Lincoln on the field)

After the war was over, Lincoln would, though some backroom strong-arming, get the eventual Thirteenth Amendment though the Congress of the United States. President Lincoln would not live to see it though; John Wilkes Booth took his life on April 14, 1865. Although he and Lincoln had their differences, Douglass would never have it so good with a president again*. Lincoln’s immediate successor was more of villain to his cause than an ally. Douglass would spend the rest of his life fighting for justice and civil rights. He would live until 1895, fighting forever to the end.


(Douglass from his senior years)

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested to anyone interested in U.S. history, the Civil War, and centuries-long struggle for civil rights. This book captures the essence of two incredible leaders who lived and lead in incredible times.

*Although, he did have a positive opinion of President Grant.

{Video is from a biography channel preview on the life of Fredrick Douglass}

ADVENTURE ON THE HIGH SEA

A review of Evan Thomas’s John Paul Jones (2003)

(Rating 5 of 5)

If there is a movie in need of a modern remake Hollywood should look no further than another John Paul Jones movie based on this book by Evan Thomas. Jones is the only military commander during the Revolution who would take the fight to the Great Britain itself. Thomas’s work is an exciting adventure story that is a historical biography.

Born John Paul, Jr. as young man he grew up with little promise in a world that judged your worth by social status of birth. As old orders were challenged, they would bite back making advancement for people like John Paul even harder. Since Paul was only a gardener’s son, the only future he could have at sea was on a merchant ship. He would do well at that earning his way up to captain. Unfortunately, for the captain and a member of his crew, John Paul got into a fight with a sailor unhappy about his pay. In the fight, the sailor was killed. John Paul claimed self-defense that might have been true, but he thought the British courts would never try him fairly so he ran off to America, to become John Paul Jones.

“At first, Captain Paul did not hesitate to turn himself in to the authorities. He was not arrested, but he understood that he would be summoned before a legal proceeding of some kind. His experience in the Mungo Maxwell affair have him some confidence that the courts would ultimately vindicate him. He knew that captains were afforded great latitude to put down mutinies, at least under maritime law. Tobago was an English crown possession, and normally any legal case arising from an action aboard ship would be tried in an Admiralty Court, where the law of the sea—invariably protective of the authority of captains—prevailed. But the Admiralty Court was not sitting in Tobago at Christmastime 1773, which meant John Paul might have to face a normal jury trial in the local court, where he could be charged with murder. Since the Ringleader was a local, one of about 300 white men who lived on the island, John Paul looked upon the jury of his ‘peers’ with some foreboding.” p.33

Whether it was self-defense or a stupid fight we will never know, but on thing is for certain and when the American Revolution happened he answered its call. Jones earned a captaincy of a ship called the Ranger and was incredibly successful at sea, capturing enemy vessels that contained critical supplies that was going to the British troops and would now head over to the Americans. Despite his success, Captain Jones would have a good deal of trouble with the Navy Committee and his commodore. He was given, despite his success the lowest of seniority of the captains, which would send him into a jealous rage.


(Jones's ship the Ranger at battle)

“Jones needed to outsmart his opponent, to get an edge and keep it. He had maintained his ship to windward and just ahead of the enemy to give himself more room to maneuver. He knew that he could not afford to let Drake draw too near, or the superior British forces could board Ranger and take her by storm. But he wanted to keep Drake just close enough, where Ranger’s greater firepower could slowly grind down the enemy. Jones filled the tops, platforms about a third of the way up each mast, with marines, sharpshooters who could keep a steady fire of musket balls raining down on the enemy quarterdeck where the officers stood.” p.130-1

He would later go to France, where under the direction of his new patron, Benjamin Franklin, he would take the war to Britain itself. Captain Jones earned a reputation as mythical pirate who made fools out of good officers of the greatest fleet in the world. He would do this with a crew that was always on the brink of mutiny, which leads one to wonder what this man would have accomplished if he had more dedicated crew.


(Battling the British)

“The game was up. Jones hauled down his false British colors and broke out his Continental Navy ensign. At just that moment, a nervous marine in the Bonhomme Richard’s tops fired his musket. Both ships erupted, loosing their broadsides at once. The sound was appalling: the tremendous concussion of forty-two cannon and scores of small arms fired at nearly the same instant, the cracking of splintered wood, the jarring clang of a cannonball striking an iron muzzle or an anchor fluke, and, very soon thereafter, the shrieks and cries of the wounded. At the range of twenty-year yards, every gun hit home. For the officers standing exposed on the quarterdeck, it must have taken extraordinary willpower not to flinch or cringe, much less diver for cover.” p.183

(The famous line, "I have not yet begun to fight")

Jones would, with permission of the Washington Administration, would go to work for the Russian Empire as a rear admiral. He would have success but once again be undermined by jealous peers and superiors. He would nearly forgotten until President Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet, needed a historical hero and President Roosevelt was the type of person that really liked Captain Jones. Disney would do a toned down version in 1959, I think a remake might be worth trying.

{Video was posted on Youtube by Creative Quotations}

LETTERS FROM A REVOLUTION

A review of Edward G. Lengel’s This Glorious Struggle: George Washington’s Revolutionary War Letters (2007)

(Rating 3 of 5)

Edward Lengel assembled the letters that George Washington wrote during the Revolutionary War against the British Empire. The letters are laid out year by year; there are comments in-between to give context to what it is the reader is looking at. Lengel’s remarks are always italicized to distinguish them from General Washington’s letters. It is an all right read, but not something for a beginner, rather for someone who already has a strong understanding of the period.

Here are some of the letters I found most interesting:

On the Declaration of Independence,

“I perceive that Congress have been employed in deliberating on measures of the most Interesting nature. It is certain that It is not with us to determine in may Instances what consequences will flow from our Counsels, but yet It behoves to adopt such, as under the smiles of a Gracious & All kind Providence will be most likely to promote our happiness; I trust the late decisive part they have taken is calculated for that end, and will secure us that freedom and those privileges which have been and are refused us, contrary to the voice of nature and the British Constitution. Agreable to the request of Congress I caused the Declaration [of Independence] to be proclaimed before all the Army under my Immediate command and have the pleasure to inform them that the measures seemed to have their most hearty assent, The expressions and behavior both of Officers and men testifying their warmest approbation of It.” p.52

On Saratoga,

“By this Opportunity, I do myself the pleasure to congratulate you on the signal success of the Army under your command, in compelling Genl Burgoyne and his whole force, to surrender themselves, prisoners of War. An Event that does the highest honor to the American Arms, and which, I hope will be attended with the most extensive and happy consequences. At the same time, I cannot but regret, that a matter of such magnitude and so interesting to our General Operations, should have reached me by report only, or though the channel of Letters not bearing that authenticity, which the importance of it required, and which it would have received by a line under your signature, stating the simple fact.” p.119

On American nationhood,

"We are known by on other character among Nations than as the United States—Massachusetts or Virginia is not better defined, nor any more thought of by Foreign Powers then the County of Worcester in Massachusetts is by Virginia, or Gloucester County in Virginia is by Massachusetts (respectable as they are); and yet these Counties, with as much propriety might oppose themselves to the Laws of the State in Government, by which they are, as an Individual State can oppose itself to the Federal Government, by which it is, or ought to be bound. Each of these Counties has, no doubt, its local polity & Interests, these should be attended to, & brought before their respective legislatures with all the force their importance merits; but when the come in contact with the general Interest of the State—when superior considerations preponderate in favor of the whole—their Voices should be heard no more—so it should be with individual States when compared to the Union—Otherwise I think it may properly be asked for what purpose do we farcically pretend to be United?” p.281

This book is a rich holding of primary source material on General George Washington and the American Revolution.

THE SUN KING

A review of John B. Wolf’s Louis XIV (1968)

(Rating 4 of 5)

Born in the last years of his father reign, Prince Louis was considered special right from birth. The new Dauphin—heir to the French throne—was dubbed a miracle child. His birth denied his uncle Gaston de France, the Duke of Orleans, of throne to which he had been standing as heir presumptive for almost thirty years. Two years after he was born a younger brother, Philippe, the Duke of Anjou, joined him. In 1643, his father had died and Louis, who was only four, was now the King of France. John Wolf brilliantly lays out the life and reign—which are practically the same—in a decent narrative.


(The miracle child who becomes king)


(The man who would have been king if not for a miracle child, Gaston de France, Duke of Orleans)

During the few decades before he was born, France was under the rule of his father King Louis XIII. The most important member of King Louis XIII’s council was his ‘prime minister’ Cardinal Richelieu who helped the King create a powerful and centralized state. This would be a great asset to France’s next monarch.


(King Louis XIII, father and predecessor)


(Cardinal Richelieu)

“There is a famous story, probably untrue, that the child, returning from the ceremony to his father’s bedside where the king asked him his name, replied, ‘Louis XIV’. ‘Not yet, not yet!’ replied the sad king. The memoirists repeat this story so faithfully that it must have had a wide circulation, but it is improbable that either Louis or his father ever referred to themselves with a numeral; perhaps the story is one of those that should have happened even if it did not.” p.11

When King Louis XIV came to throne as a child, his mother Queen Anne would take charge as the Queen Regent. The Queen and her new boyfriend, the Cardinal Mazarin, would govern the Kingdom and raise the King. During the regency, they would fight off rebellions, arrange alliances, and prepare the King to govern the nation as an adult.


(Queen Anne, the Queen Regent and mother)


(Cardinal Mazarin)

King Louis XIV would have longest reign of any monarch. At the time he takes power, Wolf’s narrative starts to become a little choppy. He stops telling the story chronologically and starts telling it categorically. Louis, as the King, would become a great patron of the arts. The King would protect and support writers, painters, and performers. Louis was so found of ballet that he would participate himself in the first half of his reign. Louis would also be a believer in the ‘divine right of kings’ that is kings were put on Earth by God and were accountable only to Him. If a King acted evil then God would send to him to Hell when he died, so if he wanted to go to Heaven he would have to be a just king.


(King Louis XIV as a young man)

“In his Memoirs Louis explains that he carefully picked his trusted ministers for their merit and probable usefulness. His critics chide him for claiming for his choices on the ground that all the men were in his entourage when Mazarin died. We have already noted that this quite misses the point. Even though Mazarin might have indicated the men who could best serve the state, Louis had to make the decision to employ them. There were many men in his entourage who would have been willing, indeed eager, to become his advisers and his tools; a man of lesser capacity would have thought twice before taking strong men as confidants. Louis’s great merit was exactly in this: he chose men senior to himself in experience as well as age, men with an expert knowledge of the problems of the kingdom rather than ‘yes men’ who might have flattered him by their submission. This young men who informed the world that he intended to govern his kingdom was no vain ‘know-it-all’ who wished to be surrounded by flatterers and sycophants.” p.147

Louis XIV would involve his nation in a war with the Netherlands. The Franco-Dutch War had many positive and negative effects for the King and his country. France would gain a good deal of territory however he would himself with a new rival the young William III, Prince of Orange and the Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic. Ultimately, William would take advantage of the political situation in Europe to ‘invade’ England and seize the throne away from King Louis's Catholic cousin, King James II*, and place himself on it.


(King Louis XIV as an active king)

Wolf also tells how the King revoked the Edit of Nantes. The King’s grandfather, King Henry IV, created the Edit in order to aid and protect protestant Christians from persecution. King Louis XIV decided that France was to be a Catholic nation again and his subjects would either convert or get out.



King Louis XIV would marry a Spanish princess, named Marie Theresa. The new Queen of France was said to be woman of great beauty but also extreme stupidity. The King and the Queen would have many children together but only one would live to adulthood, Louis, the Dauphin of France. Unfortunately, the son seemed to inherit all of his mother’s bad traits including lack of intelligence. It seems that consistent inbreeding may have been the cause. The French, Spanish, and Austrian royal families marrying to many times my have caused this, the Queen’s brother King Charles II of Spain was deformed and mentally unwell. Further evidence is the King’s illegitimate sons were all healthy and strong.


(Queen Maria Teresa, wife of the king, and their son the Dauphin)

When his son became a man, King Louis would betroth him to a German** princess, named Marie Anna. This seemed to have worked for sons of the Dauphin seemed to process none of his negative traits. Indeed, the oldest, Prince Louis, the Duke of Burgundy, seemed to have a lot of potential. He was then married to an Italian*** princess, named Maria Adelaide, who would have sons with him. This gave King Louis a good deal of security for the future of his throne. Unfortunately, in 1683 he lost his Queen, to which he marked that death was the only way his wife had ever displeased him.


(Royal succession secure, The King (center) The Dauphin (behind the King), the Duke of Burgundy (right), the pregnant Duchess of Burgundy (left), and the Duke and Duchess's first born son.)

Since the King had so many heirs, he decided he could spare one. After the death of his brother-in-law, King Charles II of Spain, in 1700, he decided make a play, to gain that throne for his royal house. Realizing Europe would never allow a unification of Spain and France under one monarch, instead of pressing the claims of the Dauphin of France for the Spanish throne, King Louis had him renounce them in favor of the Dauphin’s second son, Prince Phillip, the Duke of Anjou. This would then involve France in the war of Spanish Succession. This would be costly for France but it would successfully but a Bourbon prince upon the throne of Spain. The descendants of King Phillip V of Spain rule Spain to this day.


(King Charles II of Spain, proof of what damage incest over generations can cause)


(King Phillip V of Spain, King Louis XIV's grandson)


(King Phillip V's descendant and current King of Spain, Juan Carols I)

“French historians favorable to the king assert that it was quite unnecessary for Louis to assure Europe that the crowns of France and Spain would not be worn by the same man. Just as the Grand Dauphin and the Duke of Burgundy resigned their rights to the throne of Spain when Phillip mounted it, so would future princes ‘adjust’ the will of God so that the burden would not be too great for one man. It is all well and good to argue this way, but such talk does not change the fact that this proclamation was a bold, brash, arrogant challenge to the Europe that had written the partition treaties, and particularly to William of Orange and the men who had placed him on the English throne. It not only defied their policies but also boldly asserted that God, not Europe, would decide the fate of the Bourbon succession in both Spain and France.” p.511

(The later years of King Louis XIV)

After six decades of successful rule, King Louis XIV would run into one last crisis. The crisis of who would replace the King when he died. In 1711, Louis, the Dauphin of France, who had stood as the heir apparent for almost fifty years, died. In some ways, this was not too tragic. The Dauphin had always been some thing short of an idiot, he would not have a good ruler, and this would allow his young dashing son the Duke of Burgundy, now the new Dauphin of France could advance to the throne earlier. However in 1712, the Dauphine caught the measles, and the new Dauphin stayed by her bedside but she died and he got the disease. He died shortly there after, but not before, he had accidentally infected his two sons. The now five-year-old new Dauphin fought his life for three weeks before dying. His younger brother, now the fourth dauphin in four years, was the heir. After the surveying child, was the King of Spain, for the French throne.


(King Louis XV as a child, great-grandson and successor)


(King Louis XV as an adult)

Fortunately, for all involved, that child lived, and he would follow his great-grandfather on to the throne of France as King Louis XV. In this work, John B. Wolf describes in great detail the challenges and triumphs that the King of France, known as Louis XIV, was able to achieve in the longest reign on record.

*Who also happens to be William’s father-in-law.

**Although formally the Holy Roman Empire, Germany was more like a group of little countries as opposed to one big county. This meant there were many royals for the other families of Europe to marry, regardless of religion. This is primarily the reason so many royal families from Britain to Russia would be more German then of their native countries.

***Italy like Germany was a bunch of little countries at the time and provided for a good deal of potential marriages for the great powers.

{Video is from a documentary about the The Palace of Versailles, where King Louis XIV lived.}

BACK WHEN TURKEY WAS SOMEWHAT INTERSTING

A review of Stephen Turnbull’s The Ottoman Empire 1326-1699 (2003)
Part of the Essential Histories Series #62

(Rating 2 of 5)

The Ottoman Empire was the strength of the east for centuries. This was the empire the conquered Constantinople, which as a consequence wiped the last trace to the ancient Roman Empire off the face of the Earth. The Ottoman Empire at its height was one of the most powerful civilizations in the world. However, it went through a long dying period where it was ‘the sick man of Europe’ that finally ended when the empire was dissolved after World War I.

This book by Stephen Turnbull deals with Ottoman Empire from 1326-1699; unfortunately, it is a book that is less a hundred pages long. Try to imagine writing a book about the United States of America from 1776-2010, and you have ninety-four pages to do it.  The chances of you doing the subject justice are slim to none. I realize this book is about military history but still I have a tough time imagining a book that goes from the American Revolutionary War to the ‘War of Terror’ that could cover the subject with any real reason. The Ottoman Empire was one of the world’s most complex and interesting civilizations and this work does hardly scratches the surface.

The book does have some nice maps and imagery but not enough to actually save it.

AN UNSTOPPABLE FORCE

A review of Stephen Turnbull’s Genghis Kahn & the Mongol Conquests 1190-1400 (2003)
Part of the Essential Histories Series #57

(Rating 3 of 5)

I have always wondered when discussing the Mongol Empire if one should pluralize the word ‘empire.’ The Mongol Empire was the largest land continuous empire the world had ever seen before or since. Genghis Kahn had two things Alexander the Great did not: a longer life, and successors to continue the conquest. I have long believed that had Alexander lived, however, his empire would have stabilized and lasted, instead of dissolving away leaving the world almost sooner then it came. The Mongol Empire fragments into many empires and kingdoms and despite their many organizational enhancements they were not every good at governing what they had conquered. In many ways, those who were the conquered had a stronger effect, culturally, on those who conquered them the Mongols had on those they had conquered.

Stephen Turnbull’s work is a good look brief look into the juggernaut that was the Mongol Empire. He discusses some of the inaccuracies and misconceptions that are associated with the Mongol army. As I have stated in other reviews of this series, these books are very interesting because they are in an almost textbook format with out really having a textbook feel to them. In this book, there are maps, classical paintings of events, and art from various cultures that had to deal with the Mongol armies. One chapter even deals with horror ordinary people who were their victims had to experience.

“Throughout all the accounts of the Mongol conquests we can discern in the background an echo of great human suffering. Ordinary people from Poland to Java, who under any other circumstance might have lived lives that may have been short but were certainly uneventful, suddenly found their world turned upside down by a horde of demons apparently let loose from the depths of Hell.” p.76

The Mongol Empire had fought peoples all the way from Europe into Japan, a great deal of their success was owed to organization and their ability to change and adapt. This book serves as a good little into the Empire and Army of the Golden Horde.

{Video was from he History Channel's Barbarians, which is better then this book}

HOW THE GREAT POWERS GO ‘HYPER’!

A review of Amy Chua’s Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance—And Why They Fall (2007)

(Rating 5 of 5)

In short, the secret ingredient to a power turning into a great ‘hyperpower’ is tolerance. Not that being tolerant makes a nation a great power but it was essential to these already established powers to become the predominant power of their day, or as Chua defines it a ‘hyperpower.’ More then a superpower, hyperpowers are completely dominant in their sphere of the world with no rivals. To become a hyperpower, a nation must become tolerant as a prerequisite, and pulling away from that tolerance is what causes the hyperpower to crack.

Now the word ‘tolerance’ is something that must be taken relatively. Relative to the world and civilizations around them during the hyperpowers’ time period, and how the each hyperpower allows for social mobility and meritocracy.

“Finally, the concept is relative tolerance. In the race for world dominance, what matters most is not whether a society is tolerant according to some absolute, timeless standard, but whether it is more tolerant than its competitors. Because tolerance is a relative matter, even the tolerated groups may be subject to harshly inequitable treatment. Russian Jews in the late nineteenth century found America a haven compared to the pogroms they were fleeing, but were still subjected to anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish quotas in the United States.

I am not arguing that tolerance is a sufficient condition for world dominance. No matter how tolerant, the Kingdom of Bhutan is unlikely ever to become a global hegemon. It is always a confluence of additional factors—geography, population, natural resources, and leadership, to name just a few—that leads to the rare emergence of a world-dominant power. Pure luck plays a part, too. Even in the most propitious circumstances, a society’s ability to achieve and maintain global dominance will also depend, for example, on the state of the competition.” p.xxiv

With each case she briefly exams the history of the particular hyperpower, comparing it with the other powers that existed during its time, and following each case from their inception to the moment they rise to become a hyperpower, and there eventual downfall. Chua examines what made these powers different from others and what was their great undoing. Moreover, the continuing theme is each of these powers is they are more tolerant than their rivals are. Some of the civilizations she discuses are as follows:

· The Achaemenid Persian Empire was, as Chua describes, was the world’s first real hyperpower. Crushing its opponents Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt, Persia was far more powerful than anyone they came across. The Persians allowed the subjects to worship their local gods; even the King of Persia would pay homage to local gods in their own lands. This increased the King’s image and legitimacy with his own subjects. Even Alexander who brought that empire down would emulate that strategy.

(Persian Empire at its height, green is Greece that is not a part of that empire.)

· Ancient Rome, during the period known as the High Empire, is also sighted for its tolerance of its subjects, not only allowing local populations to worship their own gods but even extending their citizenship and their very definition of what a ‘Roman’ was. Rome was able to create a since of unity throughout their empire which allowed them to maintain their hold on such a large area.

(The Roman Empire)

· The Tang Empire of Ancient China, how the Emperor Gaozu allowed for the Han Chinese and ‘barbarians’ such as the Turks to intermix and marry and have it be socially acceptable. This allowed for a more inclusive empire and one that is far easier to govern.

(Tang Empire)

· The Mongol Empire broke down traditional clans into military units that would show loyalty to the army unit that they use to show with male blood ties. Genghis Kahn himself would recruit people into his army who had skills they lacked, regardless of that individuals background.

(Mongol Empire)

· The Dutch World Empire, Holland in becoming a refuge for victims of religious persecution, allowed the very tiny place to assume a huge brain trust. With almost all smart and talented people from various groups, they were able to build a massive colonial empire. Although they were nowhere near as nice to their colonial subjects as they were the people at home.

(Dutch World Empire)

· The British Empire mimicked much of what the Dutch did to achieve success. This was accomplished in part because of the overthrow of King James II and replacing him with King William III* who was also the Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic. Great Britain, much larger than tiny Holland would assume Dutch policies and create for itself an empire to which the sun would not set.

(The British Empire)

· And of course, the United States of America is the modern hyperpower. The United States attracted immigrants from all over Europe, American society allowed for a great deal of social mobility, allowing people such Alexander Hamilton to go from bastard immigrant to Secretary of the Treasury.

(The United States of America)

Now any student of history knows many of these ‘tolerant’ nations were not really that ‘tolerant’ as we would now define it. However as previously stated what matters is relative tolerance. In addition, through most of those examples tolerance was something that involved. The United States today is attractive place for people all over the world; that might not have been the case when we practiced legalized segregation.



The book also deals with what went wrong with the hyperpowers, often how turning away from their more tolerant traditions either caused or hastened their downfall. Chua also deals with some potential future hyperpowers, discussing some of their strengths and drawbacks. Whether any of these ‘potential powers’ will one day be able to challenge the United States remains to be seen.

Throughout the work, Chua also discusses her own life, family history, and relates her experiences to the material creating are very flowing narrative that intellectual but nevertheless is easy to understand. The book is very enjoyable and informative.

*Technically, Queen Mary II as well but it was really more William.

{Video is from Amy Chua at a conference explaining this book}

ONE AVERAGE FARMER MADE ONE HELL OF A PRESIDENT

A review of David McCullough’s Truman (1992)

(Rating 5 of 5)

David McCullough in the Pulitzer Prize winning work recreates the fiery Harry S. Truman for his readers. Once dismissed as just an accidental president, Harry Truman was considered to be just a seat warmer for the next commander-in-chief. Truman would prove to be one of the nation’s best, leading the United States out of World War II and into the early days of the Cold War. McCullough’s writes with the same brilliant narrative in this work that I had found in when I read his 1776.

I have to admit, I read this book the same summer that I read Jean Edward Smith’s FDR. In short, I found myself comparing Truman’s career to Roosevelt’s. In some ways this was unfair considering Roosevelt was about eight years older. However, I could not help but think, ‘Hey the same time Truman’s rolling around on his father’s farm, Roosevelt’s in the State Senate.’ Another example is that when Truman was a company officer, Roosevelt was assistant secretary of the navy.

McCullough begins by explaining the origins of Truman’s home state, Missouri, and his family history. Citizens of the ‘show me’ state generally have a very down to earth feeling about themselves and the world in which they lived. Truman is a man who comes out of this world.

Truman grew up trying to avoid being labeled a ‘sissy’ for having to wear glasses, he was ‘bookish’ in some ways a stereotypical nerd who read a lot of history and was widely considered by his classmates to the smartest kid in class. When grew up World War I started up and he went to battle, as a captain he had success on the battlefield leading his company. He would ultimately rise to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. When he got home from war, he married the love of his life, Bess Wallace, and they would have one child in Mary Margaret.


(Truman as a boy)


(Truman as a solider)


(Truman married to Bess Wallace)


(Mary Margaret Truman)

However, despite success in school and the battlefield he was always a little behind in life, he failed at business and feel into debt. For a good deal of time, he would work on his father’s farm. His father had a great deal of political ambition but little time and resources and John Truman would die feeling that he was a failure in life, something that would haunt his son until his days as the President of the United States.

His friendship with the Pendergast family gave him a connection to Boss Tom Pendergast, and that would lead to his election in 1922 as Jackson County Court Judge, although this was not a judicial court it was more like a county commission. Truman became the presiding judge in 1926 and he held that position right until the Roosevelt Administration. Therefore, when Roosevelt took office as President of the United States his eventually successor was nothing more then a chief county commissioner.

In 1934, Harry Truman would earn the Democratic Party’s senate nomination and go on to defeat the incumbent Roscoe Patterson by a full twenty points in the election. As a senator, Harry Truman would earn fame on the ‘Truman Committee’ that would deal with corruption of military contractors fleecing the Armed Forces during a time of war.

“Truman understood the potential peril in what he was proposing. From his reading of Civil War history he knew what damage could be done to a President by congressional harassment in a time of emergency, and the lives it could cost by prolonging the war. Abraham Lincoln had been subjected to unrelenting scrutiny by the powerful Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, which caused continuing trouble and delays. Its Radical Republican leadership had insisted even on a say in the choice of field commanders and battle strategy, and as often on a say in the choice of field commanders and battle strategy, and as often as not it was the Confederates who benefited. Robert E. Lee once remarked that the committee was worth two divisions to him, an observation Truman would often cite. He had gone to the Library of Congress for the Civil War records to verify for himself what mistakes the committee had made.” p.258

Truman’s record made the Democratic Party nominate him for Vice President in 1944, dumping Vice President Henry Wallace who many thought was closet communist. The Roosevelt/Truman ticket would go on to win and Truman would do on to be the Vice President of the United States. He would hold that office for less than three months, for in that time Roosevelt was dead.


(President Truman)

Truman came to office in the middle of the incredible events of World War II and had to make the most famous or infamous decision of his career: the decision to drop the atomic bomb. In August 1945, Japan was sent the Postman Declaration demanding their surrender or the bomb would drop. Japan refused, the bombs were dropped, and the war ended.



As president, Truman would later become admired for making tough decisions that had to be made. Moreover, a lot decisions would have to be made, in his first term he had to deal with strikes, propose and fight for the Marshall Plan, help form the United Nations, create the Truman Doctrine of containment, initiate the Berlin Airlift, and recognize the state of Israel. A great deal of these things would not popular, at first, and would cost Truman politically and most considered him dead in 1948, but as McCullough explains, Truman would shock them again.

“The Marshall Plan was voted on by Congress in April 1948, almost a year after Marshall’s speech at Harvard, and passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses. It was a singular triumph for the administration, the ventral gem in the cluster of great and fruitful decisions made by President Truman,’ as Arthur Krock would write. Indeed, it was to be one of the great American achievements of the century, as nearly everyone eventually saw.” p.583

With Thomas Dewey once again the nominee of the Republican* Party running as an if he were an incumbent, Truman ran as if were the challenger, he ran a more vigorous and ultimately successful campaign for president, popularized for ‘Given ‘em Hell.’

“His opponent, Truman said, acted like a doctor whose magic cure for everything was a soothing syrup called unity. And here were the American people going for the usual once every four years check-up.
‘Say you don’t look so good!’ Truman said, acting the part of the doctor.
‘Well, that seems strange to me too, Doc,’ he answered, as the voice of the people. ‘I never felt stronger, never had more money, and never had a brighter future. What is wrong with me?’
‘I never discuss issues with a patient. But what you need is a major operation.’
‘Will it be serious, Doc?’
‘Not so very serious. It will just mean taking out the complete works and putting in a Republican administration.’
The audience roared with laughter. He had made the cool, letter-perfect Dewey a joke at last.” p.700

(Wrong Headline)

Truman continued being Truman though out his second and elected term as president. During this term, the Chinese Communists won their civil war with the Nationalists and this helped feed the fire of a man named Eugene McCarthy, a drunken fool and senator, who would sensationalize national fear, and ruin the lives of many innocent people and get very few communists. N.A.T.O. would go on to be successfully established and due to the invasion of South Korea by the Communist North, Truman would get the U.N. to organize a ‘police action’ against the aggressor. The events of the Korean War would get save the South from the North but it would also led to another famous Truman event the firing of General MacArthur.

“In New York two thousand longshoremen walked off their jobs in protest over the firing of MacArthur. A Baltimore women’s group announced plans fro a march on Washington in support of the general. Elsewhere enraged patriots flew flags at half-staff, or upside down. People signed petitions, fired off furious letters and telegrams to Washington. In Worcester, Massachusetts, and San Gabriel, California, Truman was burned in effigy. In Houston, a Protestant minister became so angry dictating a telegram to the White House that he died of a heart attack.” p.844-5

Despite being from a family with Confederate heritage Truman moved more on Civil Rights then any president before or until Lyndon Johnson. Truman would form the President’s Committee on Civil Rights and he would desegregate the military.

“On racial maters, Truman had not entirely outgrown his background. Old biases, old habits of speech continued, surfacing occasionally offstage, as some of his aides and Secret Service agents would later attest. Privately, he could still speak of ‘niggers,’ as if that were the way one naturally referred to blacks. His own sister told Jonathan Daniels that Harry was no different then ever on the subject. Daniels, who had gone to Missouri to gather material for a biography of the President, recorded in his notes that as Mary Jane drove him south from Independence to Grandview one morning, she turned and said, ‘Harry is no more for nigger equality than any of us’—a statement Daniels, as a southerner, found reassuring.

But Mary Jane, like others, failed to understand that Truman knew now, if they did not, that as President he could no longer sit idly by and do nothing in the face of glaring injustice. The findings of his Civil Rights Commission, in a landmark report entitled To Secure These Rights, had been a shocking revelation.

The murder of four blacks by mob gunfire referred to in the letter had occurred in Monroe, Georgia, in July 1946. Two men and their wives were dragged from a car and gunned down so savagely their bodies were scarcely identifiable. One of the victims, Truman knew from a report of his Commission, had been a newly returned war veteran, and this, like the account of the men dumped from the truck in Mississippi, and of the young black sergeant, Issac Woodward, who had been pulled from a bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, and brutally beaten and blinded by police, made an everlasting impression on Truman, moving him in a way no statistics ever would have.” p.588-9

Despite all his success, Truman would leave office unpopular and would remain so until the late sixties-early seventies, when a popular resurgence for the thirty-third president would begin. This Pulitzer Prize winning work McCullough does justice to the great President Harry S. Truman.

*He ran against Franklin Roosevelt in 1944.

{Video is from the Discovery Channel}