Review: A Consumers’ Republic

Title: A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America

Author: Lizabeth Cohen

Genre: History

Trigger Warnings: Racism, classism, racial slurs, poverty, death (mentions), misogyny, sexism

Back Cover:

In this signal work of history, Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lizabeth Cohen shows how the pursuit of prosperity after World War II fueled our pervasive consumer mentality and transformed American life.

Trumpeted as a means to promote the general welfare, mass consumption quickly outgrew its economic objectives and became synonymous with patriotism, social equality, and the American Dream. Material goods came to embody the promise of America, and the power of consumers to purchase everything from vacuum cleaners to convertibles gave rise to the power of citizens to purchase political influence and effect social change. Yet despite undeniable successes and unprecedented affluence, mass consumption also fostered economic inequality and the fracturing of society along gender, class, and racial lines. In charting the complex legacy of our “Consumers’ Republic” Lizabeth Cohen has written a bold, encompassing, and profoundly influential book

Review:

A while ago, I recommended this book to someone on an anti-consumption Reddit thread who was asking for academic books about consumption and anti-consumption. I added the caviat that I hadn’t read it yet, but the author has a PhD and teaches history at Harvard so it was probably within the vein of what they wanted. Now that I’ve read it, it turns out that I was correct – this is very academic.

It’s not uninteresting, exactly. I feel like I learned a lot about a lot of things – the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the development of suburbia, the 1950s as an era, how consumerism has been built into the foundation of modern society, and more. Consumerism is like a thread that runs through everything, connecting such disparate topics as suburban lot sizes and the lunch counter sit-ins of the civil rights movement, extending from the 1940s and 50s to the present day and getting less and less obvious but no less present as time goes on.

That said, this book is also very dense. It’s nearly 600 pages (over 21 hours as an audiobook) and still feels like it contains more information than 600 pages should reasonably hold. It took me a while to get through just because it’s throwing so much at you so fast, and I think I’d have to read it at least two more times to absorb everything.

There is so much packed into this book that it feels like something I would go through chapter by chapter in a history class, or have to read excerpts of for a class discussion. It’s a little more academic than I would consider a general readership book. You probably need a specific interest in the topic to have the patience to finish this one, but if you do have that interest, you’ll learn a lot.

Review: An African American and Latinx History of the United States

Title: An African American and Latinx History of the United States

Author: Paul Ortiz

Genre: History

Trigger Warnings: Slavery, racism, colorism, systemic oppression, racial slurs, colonialism, imperialism

Back Cover:

Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged revisionist history, arguing that Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa–otherwise known as “The Global South”–were crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, as exalted by widely-taught formulations like “Manifest Destiny” and “Jacksonian Democracy,” and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms American history into one of the working class organizing themselves against imperialism.

In precise detail, Ortiz traces this untold history from the Jim Crow-esque racial segregation of the Southwest, the rise and violent fall of a powerful tradition of Mexican labor organizing in the 20th century, to May 1, 2006, International Workers’ Day, when migrant laborers–Chicana/os, Afrocubanos, and immigrants from every continent on earth–united in the first “Day Without Immigrants” to prove the value of their labor.

Incisive and timely, An African American and Latinx History is a bottom-up history told from the viewpoint of African American and Latinx activists revealing the radically different ways that brown and black people of the diaspora addressed issues plaguing the United States today.

Review:

When I picked up this book, I wondered why African American history and Latinx history were lumped together. Why didn’t each get its own book? But after reading a little bit, I understand. African American history and Latinx history in the United States are deeply intertwined, more than I would have expected or guessed.

I really appreciated that this book did not cover in depth the history everybody knows. It goes from the arrival of the first imported Africans in the American colonies nearly to present day, covering laws and events relevant to African American and Latinx communities, how they felt about them, and how they reacted, and very few things in these pages are things I already knew. Abraham Lincoln was mentioned twice and the Emancipation Proclamation only once; Martin Luther King Jr. was discussed only in the context of labor rights and unionization. This is not the same old stuff you covered in history class – this is history you don’t get taught in your ordinary history curriculum. Some of these events I was alive for and still had no idea about.

My only issue with this book was that it throws around terms without actually defining them. I figured out “racial capitalism” from nomenclature and context, but I’m still not entirely sure what “emancipatory internationalism” is. I wish there was an appendix of definitions at the back (although I read the audiobook, so there may very well be definitions in the print version).

This is a very worthwhile book. It taught me history that I never learned, illustrated racism, classism, and colonialism with real historical examples, and gave me perspectives on the United States that I don’t often hear. It’s a little drier than I usually like to read, but it’s worth reading anyway.

Review: The Darkening Age

Title: The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

Author: Catherine Nixey

Genre: History/Religion

Trigger Warnings: Death, torture, oppression, misogyny, religious bigotry, homophobia

Back Cover:

The Darkening Age is the largely unknown story of how a militant religion deliberately attacked and suppressed the teachings of the Classical world, ushering in centuries of unquestioning adherence to ‘one true faith’.

Despite the long-held notion that the early Christians were meek and mild, going to their martyr’s deaths singing hymns of love and praise, the truth, as Catherine Nixey reveals, is very different. Far from being meek and mild, they were violent, ruthless and fundamentally intolerant. Unlike the polytheistic world, in which the addition of one new religion made no fundamental difference to the old ones, this new ideology stated not only that it was the way, the truth and the light but that, by extension, every single other way was wrong and had to be destroyed. From the 1st century to the 6th, those who didn’t fall into step with its beliefs were pursued in every possible way: social, legal, financial and physical. Their altars were upturned and their temples demolished, their statues hacked to pieces and their priests killed. It was an annihilation.

Authoritative, vividly written and utterly compelling, this is a remarkable debut from a brilliant young historian.

Review:

In the version of fundamentalist Christianity I grew up in, we idolized the Early Church and Original Christianity. Somewhere between Jesus’ resurrection and the formation of the evil polytheistic Catholic Church, there was a time where the Early Church did Christianity perfectly and modern Christians’ goal is to get back to that right way of Christian-ing that got lost when the Catholics got in charge. Despite this obsession with how Christianity was in this time period, though, we were never taught or encouraged to learn about actual church history. Probably to keep us from learning about this stuff, because Christians are not the good guys here.

Y’all, I am not joking when I tell you I grieved.

This book is a chronicle of how Christian attempts to eradicate “paganism” (a term that didn’t exist until they started using it to describe non-Christians) destroyed the classical world. Most of the Greek and Roman philosophy we know existed but have no copies of were lost to Christian book burnings. Some of the most beautiful specimens of statuary were smashed and defaced because they depicted “pagan gods” and were actually vessels of demons. Christians destroyed gorgeous architecture, killed prominent non-Christians, and were the ones to actually finish off the Library of Alexandria (which actually survived the famous burning, though much smaller).

Many proud traditions of modern Christians were evident even back then – anti-intellectualism, lust for temporal power, main goal of forcing everyone into conformity while claiming they’re just caring about their immortal souls. They destroyed so much history and literature and even an entire religious system. Hellenistic polytheism was completely eradicated, along with most documentation (if it existed in the first place) of how the religious system worked. We know the pantheon and many of the myths, but we know very little about how the actual day-to-day practice of the religion worked.

There’s so much more in this book – about martyrdom, the origins of monasticism, famous early church fathers – that I could mention in this review, but it would be easier to just read it. It’s worth it. Christians are very much not the good guys here, and that’s a narrative Christianity doesn’t want you to hear.

Review: The Art of War

Title: The Art of War: The Essential Translation of the Classic Book of Life

Author: Sun Tzu (original text) and John Minford (translator/commentator)

Genre: Classic/History

Trigger Warnings: Discussion of war, death, and violence

Back Cover:

For more than two thousand years, The Art of War has stood as a cornerstone of Chinese culture, a lucid text that reveals as much about psychology, politics, and economics as it does about battlefield strategy. The influence of Sun-tzu’s text has grown tremendously in the West in recent years, with military leaders, politicians, and corporate executives alike finding valuable insight in these ancient words.

Review:

I hadn’t really intended to review this book, because I didn’t really have a lot to say about it. Then I encountered this Tumblr post that was so on the nose that I had to write a review just so I could show how somebody else’s words said my thoughts better:

This version of the book has a lot of context and commentary on it, which is good because just the text of Sun Tzu’s book is maybe ten pages. I also think it’s good to read a version with context and commentary, because you get an understanding of what was going on in the world when Sun Tzu (or his disciples or someone writing under that pseudonym) was writing, the historical stories and legends discussed, and its influence on Chinese thought. It also included ancient Chinese commentary as well as the translator’s commentary, and occasionally the translator’s commentary on the ancient Chinese commentary to explain concepts or historical or mythological figures discussed.

All of this is good information to support Sun Tzu’s actual text, which really does read like the Tumblr post. It feels like sitting down and studying the book would lead to good strategic warfare, but at the same time most of the advice presented seems very common-sense – the “if you think you might lose, avoid doing that” kind. But if nothing else, it was an interesting read, especially with all the commentary included.

Review: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Title: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

Author: Dee Brown

Genre: History

Trigger Warnings: Racism, death, death of children, murder, blood, violence, guns, genocide, kidnapping

Read To: 67%

Back Cover:

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown’s eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition—published in both hardcover and paperback—Brown has contributed an incisive new preface.

Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.

Review:

Every child who grew up in America knows the story of the American West. Whether from movies and TV, the ever-popular western fiction genre, the children’s game Cowboys and Indians, or their school’s history class, they learn about brave American settlers, cowboys, and lawmen who drove away the dangerous Indians and claimed the vast expanses of the West for the United States.

This is another narrative. The narrative of the Indians who already lived in the West when the Americans decided they wanted it. The narrative of what happened to them, from their perspective, in their own words.

I didn’t finish this book, not because it was bad, but because it was painful. The names and the tribes differed, but the stories were very similar. The Americans decided they wanted to be somewhere and made a treaty to live in peace with the Indians. The Indians trusted them to keep their treaties, and agreed. The Americans decided they wanted the Indians off part of the land, but they could have the rest. The Indians trusted them to keep their treaties, and agreed. The Americans wanted all of the land, but the Indians could have some different land elsewhere for their very own. The Indians often protested at this point, but they really didn’t want to fight and eventually agreed to sign a treaty for the sake of peace, trusting the Americans to keep their word. They never did.

If you’re familiar with the idea of “good faith” and “bad faith” when it comes to trust and negotiations, it very much applies here. The Indians did not want to go to war, they only wanted to live on their own land the way they had been. They came to negotiations and signed treaties in good faith, trusting that the Americans were reasonable and that both parties would abide by the treaties that game out of the negotiations. The Americans generally acted in bad faith – when they decided that they wanted some land our resource, they were determined to get it, but whether it could be done through a fair treaty or would have to use coercion, intimidation, threats, violence, or genocide was irrelevant. Many of the Indian tribes ended up finally going to war only when they realized that they were going to die anyway, so they might as well take down as many Americans as they could first.

This is a hard book to read, but it’s an important one. Even though this book was first published in 1970, this part of the American story is never discussed from the Indian perspective in the average history class. Even so, I think it’s essential for us as Americans to have an understanding of these horrible parts of our history so we know what we have done in the past and can see the roots of events and attitudes of the modern day.

If this book leaves you feeling guilty and ashamed like it did for me, I highly recommend looking at the Lakota People’s Law Project. The Lakota are one of the tribes discussed in this book, and this organization offers opportunities to sign useful petitions to the president and congress and accepts donations to help with legal issues (most frequently defense of water protectors, like those who protested the Dakota Access Pipeline) and improve conditions on the reservations. They also have a great email list that will help you get more informed on the issues they face.

Review: Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism

Title: Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence

Author: Kristen R. Ghodsee

Genre: History/Feminism

Trigger Warnings: Misogyny, abortion (mentions), systemic inequality

Back Cover:

In a witty, irreverent op-ed piece that went viral, Kristen Ghodsee argued that women had better sex under socialism. The response was tremendous — clearly she articulated something many women had sensed for years: the problem is with capitalism, not with us.

Ghodsee, an acclaimed ethnographer and professor of Russian and East European Studies, spent years researching what happened to women in countries that transitioned from state socialism to capitalism. She argues here that unregulated capitalism disproportionately harms women, and that we should learn from the past. By rejecting the bad and salvaging the good, we can adapt some socialist ideas to the 21st century and improve our lives.

She tackles all aspects of a woman’s life – work, parenting, sex and relationships, citizenship, and leadership. In a chapter called “Women: Like Men, But Cheaper,” she talks about women in the workplace, discussing everything from the wage gap to harassment and discrimination. In “What To Expect When You’re Expecting Exploitation,” she addresses motherhood and how “having it all” is impossible under capitalism.

Women are standing up for themselves like never before, from the increase in the number of women running for office to the women’s march to the long-overdue public outcry against sexual harassment. Interest in socialism is also on the rise – whether it’s the popularity of Bernie Sanders or the skyrocketing membership numbers of the Democratic Socialists of America. It’s become increasingly clear to women that capitalism isn’t working for us, and Ghodsee is the informed, lively guide who can show us the way forward.

Review:

This was a really fascinating book. Kristen Ghodsee has done a ton of research and interviews and even spent time living in Eastern Europe when the dominant form of government was socialism, specifically government-managed socialism she dubs State Socialism. This book mainly focuses on the effects of socialism on women, and also extensively compares how women’s situation changed after formerly socialist countries became capitalist, especially in East and West Germany after the Berlin Wall came down.

I knew very little about socialism in Eastern Europe, so this was enlightening. I learned a lot about how the socialist governments worked really hard to give women more opportunities and socialize unpaid “women’s work” like cooking, laundry, and childcare to equalize their economic opportunities. It’s taken for granted that equal economic opportunities makes things better for women, but if you’re capable of extrapolating concepts from examples you won’t really need a detailed explanation of this idea.

The part that I thought was most interesting was the discussion of how capitalism commodifies sex and how when formerly socialist governments transitioned to capitalism, they saved government money by turning things like laundry, childcare, and cooking into work that was done unpaid by women, forcing women do spend more of their time working in unpaid positions and in many cases requiring them to “sell” their sexuality and sexual access to their bodies to men for economic support. Surveys of women from formerly-socialist areas showed that the majority thought their lives were better under socialism.

Kristen doesn’t claim that socialism was 100% perfect and the ideal economic system or anything like that. The point she’s making is that the current incarnation of capitalism puts women at a disadvantage and we could learn a lot from State Socialism’s attempts at gender equality. This was a fascinating book, full of history and research without being dense, and has some really interesting ideas that I think are worth reading about.

Review: The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth (DNF)

Title: The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine

Author: Thomas Morris

Genre: History

Trigger Warnings: Blood, gore, bodily fluids, medical procedures, anti-gay slur used in a British non-slur context

Read To: 70%

Back Cover:

A mysterious epidemic of dental explosions,
A teenage boy who got his wick stuck in a candlestick
A remarkable woman who, like a human fountain, spurted urine from virtually every orifice

These are just a few of the anecdotal gems that have until now lain undiscovered in medical journals for centuries. This fascinating collection of historical curiosities explores some of the strangest cases that have perplexed doctors across the world.

From seventeenth-century Holland to Tsarist Russia, from rural Canada to a whaler in the Pacific, many are monuments to human stupidity – such as the sailor who swallowed dozens of penknives to amuse his shipmates, or the chemistry student who in 1850 arrived at a hospital in New York with his penis trapped inside a bottle, having unwisely decided to relieve himself into a vessel containing highly reactive potassium. Others demonstrate exceptional surgical ingenuity long before the advent of anaesthesia – such as a daring nineteenth-century operation to remove a metal fragment from beneath a conscious patient’s heart. We also hear of the weird, often hilarious remedies employed by physicians of yore – from crow’s vomit to port-wine enemas – the hazards of such everyday objects as cucumbers and false teeth, and miraculous recovery from apparently terminal injuries.

Review:

I love reading “doctors of Reddit” threads, because for some reason I enjoy reading about all the injuries humans can survive and all the horrible things that can go wrong in our bodies. I picked this up because it sounded like it would be similar, except in book for and taken from historical cases.

And for the first 60%, that’s really what it was. The author is a medical historian, so he introduced, periodically interrupted, and concluded the accounts from historical medical journals with his own commentary explaining the origins and effects of the historical treatments, providing potential diagnoses in some cases, and comparing with how something similar might be treated in the modern day.

The main problem is that, like a “doctors of Reddit” thread, you can only consume it for so many hours before you get tired of the subject. This would be a great book to peruse occasionally instead of reading straight through – get your dose of the fascinating medical stuff and then put it back on your shelf until you get the craving again. I checked this book out from the library, though, and deadlines mean I’m not really able to do that. So, unfortunately, this book goes in the Did Not Finish pile.

Review: A Queer History of the United States

Title: A Queer History of the United States

Author: Michael Bronski

Genre: History

Trigger Warnings: Homophobia

Back Cover:

The first book to cover the entirety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from pre-1492 to the present.

In the 1620s, Thomas Morton broke from Plymouth Colony and founded Merrymount, which celebrated same-sex desire, atheism, and interracial marriage. Transgender evangelist Jemima Wilkinson, in the early 1800s, changed her name to “Publick Universal Friend,” refused to use pronouns, fought for gender equality, and led her own congregation in upstate New York. In the mid-nineteenth century, internationally famous Shakespearean actor Charlotte Cushman led an openly lesbian life, including a well-publicized “female marriage.” And in the late 1920s, Augustus Granville Dill was fired by W. E. B. Du Bois from the NAACP’s magazine the Crisis after being arrested for a homosexual encounter. These are just a few moments of queer history that Michael Bronski highlights in this groundbreaking book.

Intellectually dynamic and endlessly provocative, A Queer History of the United States is more than a “who’s who” of queer history: it is a book that radically challenges how we understand American history. Drawing upon primary documents, literature, and cultural histories, noted scholar and activist Michael Bronski charts the breadth of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from 1492 to the 1990s, and has written a testament to how the LGBT experience has profoundly shaped our country, culture, and history.

A Queer History of the United States abounds with startling examples of unknown or often ignored aspects of American history—the ineffectiveness of sodomy laws in the colonies, the prevalence of cross-dressing women soldiers in the Civil War, the impact of new technologies on LGBT life in the nineteenth century, and how rock music and popular culture were, in large part, responsible for the devastating backlash against gay rights in the late 1970s. Most striking, Bronski documents how, over centuries, various incarnations of social purity movements have consistently attempted to regulate all sexuality, including fantasies, masturbation, and queer sex. Resisting these efforts, same-sex desire flourished and helped make America what it is today.

At heart, A Queer History of the United States is simply about American history. It is a book that will matter both to LGBT people and heterosexuals. This engrossing and revelatory history will make readers appreciate just how queer America really is.

Review:

I think the main thing that I took from this book is that we’ve always been here.

Logically I knew that – queer people were obviously not a development of the 1980s, no matter how much religious nuts try to protest queerness is a new thing. But having the actual history and being able to see how queer people lived before gay rights became a movement was really encouraging. Yeah, there was homophobia that happened, too, but it was really encouraging to know that our ancestors were queer, too.

The main criticism that I have with this book is that it should really be called A Gay and Lesbian History of the United States. Bronski discusses the history of gay men and lesbians extensively – how they lived, how they managed in a society that made their love illegal, and how they fought for equality – the word “bisexuality” was in there twice (both mentions were in the same paragraph) and I don’t think trans people were mentioned as often as that (unless you count mentions of gender-nonconforming Native Americans at the beginning). So even though it was a really good history of gay men and lesbians in the United States, I wouldn’t say it’s a complete history of queerness in America.

That said, though, it was still a really good book. It’s well-researched, and like I said, I love the opportunity to see people like me in the past. The book stops before 1990, just after the gay liberation movement kicked off, so it’s all the gay and lesbian history you never read about in school.

Review: The Men with the Pink Triangle

Title: The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps

Author: Heinz Heger

Genre: Autobiography/History

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood, torture, rape, coerced sex, homophobia

Back Cover:

It has only been since the mid-1970s that any attention has been paid to the persecution and interment of gay men by the Nazis during the Third Reich. Since that time, books such as Richard Plant’s The Pink Triangle (and Martin Sherman’s play Bent) have illuminated this nearly lost history. Heinz Heger’s first-person account, The Men with the Pink Triangle, was one of the first books on the topic and remains one of the most important.

In 1939, Heger, a Viennese university student, was arrested and sentenced to prison for being a “degenerate.” Within weeks he was transported to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp in East Germany, and forced to wear a pink triangle to show that his crime was homosexuality. He remained there, under horrific conditions, until the end of the war in 1945. The power of The Men with the Pink Triangle comes from Heger’s sparse prose and his ability to recall–and communicate–the smallest resonant details. The pain and squalor of everyday camp life–the constant filth, the continuous presence of death, and the unimaginable cruelty of those in command–are all here. But Heger’s story would be unbearable were it not for the simple courage he and others used to survive and, having survived, that he bore witness. This book is harrowing but necessary reading for everyone concerned about gay history, human rights, or social justice.

Review:

This is an absoutely horrifying book. It goes into detail about all the atrocities committed by the Nazis. In learning about concentration camps, you hear about what was done to Jewish people, but gloss over the fact that criminals, Romani people, political prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals were there, too. Homosexuals were especially singled out for hatred, harassment, and torture, although the German ones were treated slightly better than Jewish people by virtue of being German, even if they were “filthy degenerates.”

All the homosexuals in the camps were gay men, but the book actually explains why – lesbians were considered still useful because they could be bred regardless of how they felt about it. That’s its own kind of horrifying.

This book also goes into a lot of detail about how concentration camps were run, which is something I don’t remember hearing from other accounts – their power structures, the delegation of work and the kind of work they did, and the pecking order between the different “triangles” (inmates were color-coded by offense – yellow for Jews, pink for homosexuals, green for criminals, red for political prisoners, etc.). One thing that the narrator focused on was how prisoners with more power would take “lovers” – other men that they would have sex with in exchange for favors like easier work and more food – despite being straight, and they still viewed men who loved other men as degenerates. Several times, the narrator presents situations like that and then points out how sex with other men was fine if it was to satisfy your urges, but degenerate if you genuinely loved the other man.

This book is simultaneously fascinating and horrifying. I learned a lot, but about the depths of Nazi cruelty and the realities of suffering in the death camps. But it’s really a story that needs to be told. Homosexuals were denied reparations after being freed because homosexuality was a crime and criminals were not considered innocents who deserved reparations. This is part of history I never learned about in history class, and it’s important to know – even if reading about it is heartwrenching.