Tonight we kick off Episode 16 of the weekly Guest Post series: Medium Cool with BGinCHI.
In case you missed the introduction to the series: Culture as a Hedge Against this Soul-Sucking Political Miasma We’re Living In
You can find the whole series here: Medium Cool with BGinCHI
Tonight’s Topic: Talking About History: “The Past Is Never Dead. It’s Not Even Past.”
Take it away, BG!
In this week’s Medium Cool, we’re talking about history. To frame the discussion, we asked our own Tom Levenson to give us a sketch of the subject of his new book, due out in August. His write-up is below the fold, so click through to read about the South Sea Bubble.
For today’s discussion, let’s talk about historical events that fascinate us: What draws us to them? What makes them relevant to contemporary life?
It would also be helpful if you’d mention the books (or films, etc.) that made a historical subject come alive. As a specialist in 16th-century literature & culture, for example, I read the first of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall series with a trepidation that was quickly dispelled by her amazing evocation of the period and its characters.
A sketch of the subject of Tom Levenson’s new book, due out in August,
from Tom, himself:Thanks to BGinChi and to Watergirl for making this happen.
So—yeah: there’s a book coming, by me, about a lot of stuff, centered on what happened on a few hundred yards of a London alley during 1720—an experiment in financial engineering that turned into the first great stock market boom, fraud and bust.
The book is called Money for Nothing. It tells the tale of what is now known as the South Sea Bubble—so called because ground zero of the disaster lay in the dealings of the South Sea Company. This was a joint stock enterprise founded a decade earlier to lend money to the government, funded by a monopoly on trade with the Spain’s American colonies.
The Company’s great chance came because of a fact of life in early 18th century Britain: its leaders were in the habit of waging wars the nation couldn’t afford. By 1720, paying the interest on Britain’s national debt sucked up more than half the kingdom’s annual revenue.
That was unstainable, of course—if for no other reason that it hamstrung the British ministry in what would turn out to be a long 18th century of nearly continuous conflict with France. The deal that emerged from clandestine discussions between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the inner circle of Company directors allowed private holders of government paper to swap their assets for stock in the company; the government would cut the interest they paid, but debt-holders turned share-owners could now do something that was brand new: trade in and out of a stock market on which those shares could rise—and perhaps, achieve riches waaaay more exciting than a semiannual payment from the crown.
There was a central flaw in the deal, (to be revealed in the book, of course) and it all ended in tears and more. But my goal in telling this story wasn’t to retell an old morality tale of ignorance, folly, and the inevitable consequences of money mania.
Rather, I wanted to answer two questions: where did the ideas that sparked the Bubble come from? And what really happened in and after 1720—because the old version of the South Sea story as a morality tale on the evils of money mania always struck me as a way to take those events out of history. Something came out of it, that is. What?
I’ll save that second question for another post, maybe a little closer to publication (August 18 in the US, mid September in the UK).
For now, let’s talk about the “where it came from” bit. That would be the scientific revolution. Also coffee shops—but we can save those for the comments. In the broadest strokes, I argue that Britain’s scientific revolutionaries, William Petty and his disciples, Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley and others, inspired, informed, and shaped the nearly simultaneous financial revolution that ran from (roughly) the 1680s to the 1750s. . More broadly—the book traces how the ideas and themes and even perhaps the feel of late 17th century notions of reason, empiricism and the power of math affected so much more than the study of the night sky or the flight of cannonballs.
There’s lots of fun stories along the way. Newton is a recurring character, both in his young guise, calculating out his sums to 50 places and more, and again much older, now recognized as the most brilliant man of his age, losing his shirt in the Bubble. William Petty, under-recognized as a powerful and pernicious thinker, put Ireland to measure, reduced the island to monetary valuations, invented the idea of quantifying government thinking and decision making, and ran several calculations on the economic return of ethnic cleansing. Edmond Halley invented (not altogether, but a lot) the mathematics of life insurance…and so on.
Did I say that I love the 17th and18th centuries? I do. So much of our world was born then, and so many of our problems now can be explored by examining the first occurrences of the same pathologies back then. For just one example (to be discussed more next time), the 2008 crash was recognizably a direct descendent of that first Bubble.
Which is why the book concludes with this: Newton and his contemporaries may be forgiven for the blunt errors they made as the Bubble blew up their fortunes. They were the first to confront that kind of crisis.
We don’t have that excuse.
***
If after all that you want a further taste of Tom’s book, and I bet you do, here’s an excerpt from the introduction.
You can pre-order the book here:
Okay, now that you’ve been inspired by Tom’s sketch of his upcoming book, and perhaps the introduction, as well, let’s get back to… Talking About History: “The Past Is Never Dead. It’s Not Even Past.”
~WaterGirl
Update at 6pm: Reminder that next week on 6/14 we will be talking about TaMara’s newly-released book, Underway: A TJ Wilde Mystery. Check out last Sunday’s Medium Cool for links to the book. (Which you can easily find by clicking on the category at the top of the post.)
WaterGirl
Before I forget… many thanks to Tom Levenson!
Omnes Omnibus
Covering John Law and the Mississippi Bubble too? Or the English?
Baud
Tom’s a good writer of interesting subjects. Loved the
Search for SpockHunt for Vulcan.BGinCHI
I’ll take this opportunity to sing my praises for Luc Sante’s book Low Life.
I read it, IDK, 20-25 years ago, and I think about it all the time. It’s such a richly written history of NYC. It puts you there like few other books I’ve ever read.
Similar to it, though with a bit less style, are the books of Herbert Asbury. His Chicago: Gem of the Prairie, and The Gangs of New York (on which the film is based) are terrific reading, and wonderful granular history.
If you like gritty urban history, these are for you.
BGinCHI
@Baud: Is that the one with the Whales?
BGinCHI
And to second WaterGirl: THANKS TOM!
Dorothy A. Winsor
The book sounds fascinating.
I also appreciate the Faulkner quote in the post title. We’re seeing the truth of it acted out right now as the conflicts behind the Civil War keep twisting the national life.
WaterGirl
I believe that Tom is here. Tom?
Baud
@BGinCHI:
No, it’s the one where Einstein destroys the Enterprise for violating his laws of relativity.
JPL
OT This might have been mentioned but the editor of the NYTimes opinion pages resigned. lol
Yutsano
Oh man! We so need to do a book thread when Tom’s book comes out! I’m sending a copy to the YouTube people who introduced me to this subject. It’s amazing how relevant it is today.
This is the video I got that from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1kndKWJKB8 It’s a string of them and it’s a really good explainer of the bubble. Dr. Levenson gets into much more detail and he’s a lively writer.
BGinCHI
@Baud: Part of the Einstein: Law Enforcer series.
Logline: “A mild-mannered patent clerk makes up new laws for the universe and punishes those who violate them.”
BGinCHI
@Yutsano: We’ll indeed be doing that right at the August launch.
Trying to get Cole to fly us to London to do an on-site launch/MC post, but apparently birds are nesting him out of house and home.
Tom Levenson
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes–Law and his Système too. But treated mostly as a control arm on the experiment both Britain and France faced in the recovery from the respective crashes.
WaterGirl
@Yutsano:
That’s the plan – another thread closer to publication date. Or are you thinking a book club kind of thing where people have read the book and can discussion it? That’s doable here, too, unless Tom would rather do that outside of Medium Cool.
Tom Levenson
@WaterGirl: Yup! here.
Tom Levenson
@BGinCHI: I’m not going to say much about it, but I am playing with an idea that’s not as far off of this as it perhaps should be.
WaterGirl
@Tom Levenson: You snuck in when my back was turned. :-)
Baud
@Tom Levenson:
My suggestion: Give Einstein a dog sidekick who helps him fight science scofflaws.
raven
The beheading scene of Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall is insane.
Immanentize
@Tom Levenson: The Baroque Cycle but real?
pamelabrown53
A major reason I love Jane Austen is that much of her writing explores primogenitor and the entailment of estates. How women went from riches to rags as a result.
An interesting movie that portrayed the woman as evil for trying to beat the system was the 1941 movie ” The Little Fox”, starring Bette Davis.
BGinCHI
@Tom Levenson: Fiction? Screenplay?
Tom Levenson
To answer BGinCHI’s question at top, there is a work of history that is simply astonishing to me every time I return to it. That would be Jonathan Spence’s Emperor of China. The Kangxi* emperor (reigned 1661-1722) was a diarist and a thoughtful writer-ruler. Spence constructed a kind of biography/autobiography out of Kangxi’s own words–just a remarkable feet of historical collage.
Can’t recommend it highly enough.
Benw
@Baud: and a souped up hot rod to chase them down named the General Relativity!
Tom Levenson
@BGinCHI: Fiction, but very closely grounded in biographical and scientific fact (except for the batshit crazy stuff, of course).
jeffreyw
I have the audiobook preordered. Looking forward to listening to it. Will Kevin be doing the narration this time, too?
Baud
@Tom Levenson:
Do you think contemporary readers will be able to relate?
BGinCHI
@pamelabrown53: As a scholar of the early modern period in England, I’m always reminding my students about the rights of women in that, and earlier and later, periods.
The key is marriage.
Women had pretty robust rights (to own and manage property, sign contracts, make business decisions, etc.), unless and until marriage, at which time these rights passed almost completely to their husband. It’s one of the reasons Shakespeare’s comedic heroines are so wary of marriage, and so intent on making sure young men don’t take advantage of them. Portia in Merchant is the best ex.
If you wanted the best situation? Become a widow. And stay one.
Tom Levenson
@Immanentize: In a kind of way, Newton and the Counterfeiter and now this one, Money for Nothing, are the Baroque Cycle, but real.
Stephenson was kind enough to blurb Newton and the C.–even after I told him I had to stop reading his Cycle, because the voice of his Newton was drowning out the Newton I heard in my head.
BGinCHI
@Tom Levenson: Whoa. Damn, I’ve never read this.
On my list!
Tom Levenson
@BGinCHI: Plenty of historical fiction villainy could turn on that fact.
BGinCHI
@Tom Levenson: I love it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tom Levenson: Cool.
pamelabrown53
@BGinCHI:
Exactly! Or be like “Emma” whose father worshiped her and there was no no entailment.
She had total security as long as she didn’t marry!
Tom Levenson
@jeffreyw: Thanks!
Re the narrator: I don’t know. They don’t consult me.
neldob
I am interested in recent history, since around 1950, and the book Blood in the Water about the Attica prison uprising in 1971, by Heather Ann Thompson was dynamite and is particularly relevant these days. And wow did it ever come alive. And Betty Medsger’s book The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret F.B.I. , also happened in 1971, was also an amazing true story of a very nerve wracking adventure of some very brave, smart and thoughtful people. My generally sieve like mind remembers both these books.
BGinCHI
@neldob: It’s interesting what an impression well-written and paced history makes on us.
It’s one of the hardest things about writing historical fiction: getting it into shape as a narrative, rather than a series of events.
BGinCHI
@Tom Levenson: Jeff Goldblum.
Just sayin’.
Another Scott
Thanks for this. Looking forward to the book.
Speaking of the housing bubble, Dean Baker from July 2005 (5 page .pdf):
It was all easily predictable by sensible people, and was predicted. Too many people refused to listen. There was too much money to be made before the music stopped!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@BGinCHI: I once heard Connie Willis explain the difference between plot and chronology in similar terms. She said if your events can be connected by “therefore,” “and so,” “because,” etc, you had plot. If they were connected by “and then,” “and then,” “and then,” you had chronology.
WaterGirl
I just added a reminder up top, but will include it here, also:
SFBayAreaGal
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose.
I went to St. Louis in 1998 right after I read the book. I stood on the banks of the Mississippi, next to the Arch, looking up the river. I was standing there trying to imagine what the men of the Lewis and Clark company were thinking, knowing they were leaving everything they knew.
I loved this book. It brought history to life for me.
Azelie
@BGinCHI:
I teach a class on women in medieval Europe. To the extent that students have thought about it, they assume that women’s rights (including property ownership) were uniformly non-existent before the 20th century. I love showing them the variability in women’s ability to exert influence.
SFBayAreaGal
@Another Scott: There was/is a blog called the Housing Bubble Blog. The person that ran the blog was predicting the housing bubble burst was going to happen a few years before it did.
BGinCHI
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I guess that’s right, but it’s SO much easier said than done.
In my second novel I had a great historical subject unknown to most people, with great characters and really exciting events. And it was SO DAMN hard to make it into a novel.
Fun, but hard.
Another Scott
@SFBayAreaGal: +1. An excellent book.
I really enjoyed his Crazy Horse and Custer as well.
Cheers,
Scott.
BGinCHI
@Azelie: YES!
Wife of Bath so much fun to teach in this context.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@BGinCHI: To me, historical fiction looks really hard to do well. I love it when I find it, but my hat’s off to anyone who writes it.
Tom Levenson
@BGinCHI @Dorothy A. Winsor:
I’m excited to push my boat out into fiction (thinking Rushdie’s Sea of Stories for that metaphor).
But terrified.
Another Scott
@SFBayAreaGal: I started reading calculatedriskblog.com during the late stages of the bubble. I never saw any of Tanta’s posts in real-time, but she apparently knew exactly what was going on and why.
It’s really hard to get both the direction and the timing of economic events exactly right. Dean was off a year or two as well, and the crash was even worse than he expected. Gettig the direction is probably more important! :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@BGinCHI: Hmm. Second novel. That means that I am either totally unaware if your first novel, or you published another one after When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed.
She said, sheepishly.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Tom Levenson: Always good to try new things!
BGinCHI
@Tom Levenson: Here are all the tricks to make writing historical fiction easy:
prostratedragon
In my checkered past as a wouldbe urban economist I found urban history actually to be much more interesting and might have sought to pursue it had health and other matters not intervened. I read and join in recommending Low Life and Gangs; knew that Asbury had written other histories, but didn’t know that one was about Chicago. I should check that out.
A more formal historical approach is in books by Timothy Gilfoyle –he’s at Loyola!– such as City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920, which gets into particular aspects of who comes to the city and why, and how people interact with their urban environment. I see that in addition to several books on 19th century New York, he has one on how Millennium Park came to be.
MattF
I like historical narratives that have a definite viewpoint– reading a description of ‘one thing after another’ will lose my attention. Three books that I more or less swallowed whole were Hugh Trevor-Roper’s Hermit of Peking about a remarkable con man/scholar, Simon Winder’s Germania which is ‘about’ the author’s own obsession with Germanic history, and Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, which singlehandedly changed the way I looked at the Holocaust. All three are fine histories, IMO, but each for different reasons.
AliceBlue
For anyone wanting to know more about Emmitt Till’s murder, The Blood of Emmitt Till by Timothy B. Tyson is excellent.
I’ve mentioned this book before, but it’s worth mentioning again: We Band of Angels by Elizabeth Norman. This is the truly gripping story of the army and navy nurses who served on Bataan and Corregidor and were taken prisoner by the Japanese.
BGinCHI
@WaterGirl: Novel #2 is, what’s the right word…..languishing, unsold.
It will be resurrected once #3 is finished and ready to go to market.
Maybe we should have a thread about agents, publishers, selling books, etc.
I have true stories, believe you me.
BGinCHI
@prostratedragon: I have done a ton of research on prostitution, particularly around the Civil War era, and I do not know that book!
Damn.
In my defense, I’ll say that one of the keys to writing historical fiction is finding exactly as much as you need and avoiding rabbit holes of interesting material. Unless you are unemployed and plan to live to be 200.
BGinCHI
@MattF: We’ve talked about Bloodlands here before.
That books blew me away. Should be required reading for all college students. Period.
BGinCHI
@AliceBlue: GREAT suggestions!!
Super intrigued about the nurse book.
dnfree
The book that I read a few years ago that changed my thinking is “America Aflame” by David Goldfield. I was looking for something that covered the Civil War and Reconstruction Era from more of a sociological viewpoint, not just the recitation of battles we learned in high school. This book uses original sources to incorporate the treatment of Catholics, Irish, native Americans, and other groups, and the role of religious certainty on both sides. It led me to believe that the failure/abandonment of Reconstruction is key to the racial issues we still face in this country.
https://www.amazon.com/America-Aflame-Civil-Created-Nation/dp/160819390X
AliceBlue
@BGinCHI: We Band of Angels is one of those “you can’t put it down” books. I read the whole thing in one afternoon.
BGinCHI
@dnfree: I’ll check this out. Thanks!
gwangung
What fascinates me are primarily Asian historical figures who would have been cultural icons If they were white.
Ching Shih, the Chinese pirate queen, is one (and, of course, I wrote a play about her).
Another is Hazel Ying Lee, the first Chinese American aviator (I’d piss off the fanboys and make her Lady Blackhawk if I were writing the WWII Blackhawks….).
Esther Eng is the first Asian American female filmmaker, a not quite out lesbian who gave Bruce Lee his first job.
Mulan sorta fits into this mold (and dammit, Maxine Hong Kingston and David Henry Hwang got to her wayyyyy before Disney did).
And I have a definite predilection for these figures if you can mash them up with a touch of genre (sword and sorcery, superheroes/pulp, etc.)
NotMax
Rather than a dry (and long) list of titles am going to mention only one as it is peculiarly “relevant to contemporary life.”
The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic by Benjamin Carter Hett
Kathleen
@neldob: You might enjoy “A Time To Die” by Associate NYT Editor Tom Wicker, who was one of the mediators chosen to act as unofficial observer in response to demands from Attica inmates.
I read it shortly after it was published and found it riveting.
Zelma
Tom, I have put your book on my Wish List. 18th century Britain was my major field when I did my Ph.D. 50 years ago, although I specialized in the latter half of the century and the early 19th. My dissertation made a stab at tying the new ideas of “political economy” into politics and legislation. I never did much with it because I discovered, to my amazement, that there was this thing called “women’s history.” Nobody ever told me that women had a history! But I always found the South Sea Bubble a fascinating topic.
To address the question posed, I think Garrett Mattingly’s The Armada was the most memorable from the point of making me really understand the drama of history. And the importance of good storytelling.
Subsole
I was always fascinated by the Middle Ages. Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror is almost mandatory. I also rather liked Bishop’s work on it. Danziger and Gillingham’s Magna Carta is also a nice read. Kelly’s The Great Mortality is also an interesting book on the scale and effects of the plague.
I’ve just always been fascinated by the collapse of this great empire and people carving a new order out of the wreckage – and also the fact that institutional collapse, like the Future, is seldom equally distributed.
Also, a question for the room.
Having lived under presnit goodlybrain, is anyone else going back and rereading the history of villainous people a bit more credulously?
Like, I would read about Commodus and think “Well, obviously that’s propaganda.” Now, I’m like “Huh. Yeah, maybe he really did drown people in honey and rose petals. I’m pretty sure at least three folks in Trump’s cabinet would fly to Thailand and do that.”
piratedan
George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman Papers, which chronicle a large majority of historical events from the POV of a fictional poltroon, coward and lecher. While done as comedy (tragically so, in many instances) its based on actual historical events and people and provides insight as to who, what, when and where…
RSA
A friend turned me on to Erik Larson’s work, and I enjoyed being immersed in WW I (Dead Wake, about the Lusitania) and the Chicago World Fair of 1893 (The Devil in the White City). I have no independent way to judge accuracy, but I can appreciate how hard it is to impose a compelling narrative on top of historical events.
Origuy
Subsole beat me to A Distant Mirror. Medieval Europe is my big interest, too. Along the line of women’s place in society, one period in which some women had considerable power was in Anglo-Saxon England, especially in the Church. There were several abbesses who had wide-spread influence, and a few queens as well. That mostly ended when the Normans took over. There were a few powerful women in later medieval England, documented in Helen Castor’s She-Wolves: England’s Early Queens. This is a link to the book, but you can also find the series of videos.
Denali
I just finished Burial Rites, a novel based on the true story of the last person to be executed in Iceland. It is a riveting tale of rural live the 19th century by Hannah Kent.
debbie
@raven:
I couldn’t believe how my heart was racing!
db11
Tom Levenson:
I read James Gleick’s ‘Isaac Newton’ ~ 15 years ago and really enjoyed it, especially for his exploration of the intellectual / political / (a)social soup that Newton was immersed in at that time.
(Plus he’s outstanding in his explication of scientific principles and concepts — always successful at rendering complex ideas in a way that an interested layperson can easily understand.)
So, really looking forward to reading this Tom — sounds right up my alley. Oh, and congrats on the impending publication of your first (semi) fiction!
dnfree
@db11: Mentioning James Gleick reminds me of two of his books, ”Chaos“ and “The Information”. If you’re at all interested in information science or technology, the latter is astounding.
https://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/1400096235
Josie
I’m currently working on a work of historical fiction during the time of the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1923). It’s a story of a cross cultural marriage during those turbulent times. I grew up on the border, about 15 miles from the border, to be exact, so I have a natural interest in the subject matter. I’ve been working on it for several years, due to the need for extensive research, both in English and Spanish and am working my way through revisions of the first draft, hopefully to be finished this year. Wish me luck.
oatler.
John Barth’s “The Sotweed Factor” is as scurrilous and bawdy a novel as you can find, which also deals with slavery and the extermination of native Americans in the 1690s.
BGinCHI
@piratedan: I LOVED these books way back when.
Maybe need to reread them.
BGinCHI
@Denali: She’s a terrific writer.
Nora
@piratedan:
Oh, wow, another Flashman fan! LOVE those books, especially the footnotes. You can learn more British Imperial history from Flashman than from a score of textbooks, and have a lot more fun, too.
tomtofa
One that changed my perceptions of the American ‘frontier’ was “William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic”. A story of land speculation and the core strength of the Federalists based on tenants and debtors.
William and the Federalists eventually lost much of their power to the more populist Republicans; William’s son James Fenimore wrote his frontier romances largely as an attempt to cast his father’s vision of squires and patriarchs in a more glowing light.
BGinCHI
@Josie: Does Ambrose Bierce show up?
BGinCHI
@oatler.: Now that I need to re-read for sure.
Josie
@BGinCHI:
It’s a possibility. I haven’t decided yet.
Immanentize
Mason Dixon by Pynchon. Perhaps my favorite historical/fantasy novel ever.
Subsole
@dnfree:
I think it is. As an older friend once put it, without Reconstruction, the South is basically Bush’s Iraq.
“Congratulations, gentle negro. You are free.
Good luck.”
BGinCHI
@Immanentize: YES.
Underrated, if it’s possible to say about TP. Better than several of his more famous works.
Subsole
@Origuy:
Nice. Gonna check that one out.
db11
@dnfree: Thanks. Have read pretty much all his books (including those two), with the exception of Time Travel (his most recent). Without intending any diss to Tom, I think Gleick’s the best contemporary science writer out there.
Actually re-reading ‘The Information’ during this period — it’s even better the second time around!
Immanentize
@BGinCHI: Totally agree. I learned so much real stuff!
Subsole
@Josie: Good luck! Would love to read it. Amazing how hard it is to find stuff about one of our closest neighbors.
Or South and Central America in general, really.
db11
@Josie: Good luck Josie!
Immanentize
@BGinCHI: Ok you just made me realize his initials are “TP.” Laughing in these TP desert days.
Subsole
Also a general Recc.
Satanic Mills is a good little overview of the history of company towns.
BGinCHI
@Subsole: To go along with re-watching Slap Shot and Matewan.
Brachiator
I was never too much into historical fiction or military history, but I liked the Russell Crowe movie “Master and Commander” movie so much that I read all the Captain Aubrey novels. And from there I got interested in British naval history and highly recommend the hefty but masterful “The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815,” by Nicholas A.M. Rodger.
This history doesn’t just cover naval battles, but gets into politics, the relationship of the Navy to the rest of society, and all aspects of building and maintaining a navy. But what I enjoyed most, as I do with a lot of the best history, is seeing how unasked and unanticipated questions are answered, maybe a few that the author himself didn’t realize needed asking.
For example, you get an idea of how the pragmatic British managed to sneak some meritocracy into their society via the Royal Navy. Although the society was committed to the myth that the aristocracy and nobility were naturally superior to everyone else, you could not buy a naval commission. A naval vessel was too expensive and too complex a machine to be operated by elite ignoramuses. So, even though the upper classes were still got preference, they had to learn the ropes and earn their positions. And room had to be made for talented lower class people who knew how to master various aspects of ship operations. And standout people were rewarded with titles, and so the society could pretend that they had always been members of the elite.
This model has been adapted to other aspects of British life. Amazing how that works.
You also learn that on average sailors were better fed and cleaner than folks at home, again, because you needed to have a healthy crew. And when scurvy was finally conquered, attention could be applied to the practical task of maintaining a crew for long voyages.
As an aside, the importance of the navy to the economic and social life of the nation is reflected in all of the nautical terms that have filtered into the language, and that we are only now starting to discard.
This is a bit of a sideways review of a very dense and learned book that covers a huge wealth of topics filtered through the era of the dominance of the British navy, and God knows, this stuff does not appeal to everyone, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading this very well-written book, and the degree to which I enjoyed learning about aspects of history that I never knew could be so interesting.
BTW, “The Command of the Ocean” is the second of three books about the British Navy. The first book, “The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, 660 – 1649,” is also quite good. The author has not finished the third book in the series.
Tom Levenson
@db11: @dnfree: I’m glad you like Gleick’s work. So do I–and he was kind enough to offer up a pre-publication blurb for this one:
“Thomas Levenson is a brilliant synthesizer with a grand view of history. Here is the birth of modern finance amid catastrophe and fraud—a gripping story of scientists and swindlers, all too pertinent to our modern world.”
Which is way too kind–but I’ll take it.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Naval history flicks? Check out Admiral, available on Prime.
Subsole
@BGinCHI:
Never watchef Matewan. Thanks.
Brachiator
@dnfree:
Putting this on my list.
I have ordered Henry Louis Gates’ book on Reconstruction, “Stony the Road,” but have not seen the PBS series about the subject. I have read a number of books and articles about the period before, but am still amazed at how the popular perception of Reconstruction is still based on the myth of cynical Northern carpetbaggers rushing in to take advantage of the poor, noble but defeated South. What a bunch of BS.
Again, I am more interested in the little told stories, for example how free blacks went to the South to try to help the newly emancipated people. And I have also been surprised to see how the spirit of hopefulness led to a number of interracial alliances, friendships and romances during the era.
dnfree
@Brachiator: from what you say, I think this book will be right up your alley, so to speak. Heartbreaking at the end. And it ties the corruption in the northern cities (Tammany Hall, for instance) to the willingness to believe corruption in the south.
WaterGirl
@Tom Levenson:
Wow!
Subsole
I am hesitant to recommend it, especially as it can be uncomfortably close to our current era, but Piers Brendon’s The Dark Valley: a Panorama of the 1930s ought to be required reading in every highschool history curriculum.
It details the world’s slide into fascism in pretty stark and unsparing detail. As I said, it may be a bit much to endure on top of the current troubles. But it is a very good look at a very small and ugly time. Lots of relevance, lots of lessons. Lots of revelations. Like the NYT spiking an expose on concentration camps in the 30s.
Also, too: you will need to go watch Private Ryan shoot some Nazis when you get done.
dnfree
@Brachiator: if you appreciated Master and Commander, and if you like science fiction at all, you might enjoy the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik. The Napoleonic era with dragons! The series is also notable in the change over the course of the books (which feature travels to different continents) in the relationship between dragons and humans.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
Added to my watch list. I have also been looking for good books in English on the Dutch Republic. Nicholas Rodger is scrupulously fair to Dutch naval excellence in “Command of the Ocean.”
But a good movie about the era might be a lot of fun.
Also, a lot of notable Dutch pirates in the 1600s.
db11
@Tom Levenson:
To echo WaterGirl: WOW!! Congrats.
No doubt it’s well deserved, so no need for such modesty ;)
…and now I’m REALLY itching to read your book!
Miss Bianca
I just read the description of Tom’s book to my friend D and I could tell he was interested because about halfway through he turned around from his computer game. ; )
Then he said, “Sounds like a ‘Real Live Baroque Cycle.’
Since Stephenson is one of D’s favorite authors, that’s a high compliment and I bet he’ll be happy to read it after I’m done with it.
On a “what did you just read that blew you away” front, I just finished a novel called Girls on The Line, by Aime K. Runyan. It’s about a young woman from Philadelphia who volunteers to join the Army’s Air Signal Corps during WWI. I had just finished Code Girls, a nonfiction book about the Army and Navy codebreakers during WWII, and this seemed a natural followup.
Well, it was very well researched and surprisingly well written – not that it’s surprising it’s well-written, but that it has it call – it’s suspense, it’s romance, it’s history, and it’s human observation all at once, and the writing is beautiful and tear-jerking and funny without ever seeming ‘literary’ or striving for effect. It’s everything the nightmarish Jackdaws wishes it were. Highly recommended.
Miss Bianca
As for a history that blew me away and changed my thinking (and it’s definitely time for a re-read in the Plague Rat Year): Pox: An American History, by Michael Willrich.
Neldob
@Kathleen: cool, thanks. Really a lot of good reading here. Looking forward to it. Human memory is so short. Need history books to live longer.
J R in WV
@BGinCHI:
I grew up not that far from Matewan, and in my grandma’s attic, where we would play as kids, there was a tool box full of .30 shells from National Guard machine guns sent in to break miners on strike.
When we asked about them, Grandma really refused to tell us about that bit of history. But then I grew up, and had Don West as a college professor. He was a labor organizer in Harlan county, and was beaten and left to die in a winter ditch, then rescued by a teacher, kept in secret until he recovered.
Don could teach labor history because he lived it, was maimed, missing 3 fingers from one hand from that night in Bloody Harlan.
hitchhiker
I see that I’m late to this party, but just in case anybody’s still reading, I love the Dorothy Dunnett books, especially the six novels known as the Lymond Chronicles. They sent me down many a rathole in search of context, especially when I came back to them after google entered the universe. They’re about a young Scotsman, set in the mid-1500s.
Dunnett wrote them in the late 60s, I believe … they’re entertaining but also extraordinarily erudite — the sort of books that generate devoted online fan clubs where chapters and characters and settings are explored and discussed for years on end.