ERA Reviews

The time between 476 AD and 1453 AD is called the Middle Ages, or "The Dark Ages." The label is most likely due to the fact that historians were not interested in this particular period of world history until the last century, other than as a foil for their projections. Historical understanding of the Middle Ages is essentially a 20th century phenomenon.

Being anything but dark, the Middle Ages were the time of two fascinating Chinese Dynasties, the Tang (618-907) and the Sung (960-1279) both remembered as "China's Golden Age;" the time of the rise and dominance of Islam in the Middle East (7th-10th century); the Mongol conquest of the largest empire in history (13th century); the blossoming of the Maya civilization (600-800); and the emergence of the first large trading system in the world connecting China, South East Asia, India, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean.

The Middle Ages are particularly fascinating because during this time the seeds of today's world system were laid. The answer to the question "Why did the civilization of the Western world become so powerful and dominant today?" is hidden somewhere in the (not-so) Dark Ages.

To paint the story in very broad strokes, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire Western Europe up to the 12th century was, in terms of culture and scientific know-how, a backwater to the civilizations of China and the Islamic Middle East. Beginning in the 12th century however, scientific know-how for commercial and practical purposes was gathered little by little, and trade helped to accumulate wealth in Southern Europe. Indian mathematics arrived in translation from the Arabic in Europe in the 13th century, and "Arabic" numbers began to replace Roman numerals. The crusades, which began in 1199, exposed Europe to Asian knowledge in papermaking, navigation and medicine. All in all, the transfer of know-how was so substantial that it is quite justified to say that Western Europe at the end of the Middle Ages was deeply in debt to the Islamic world - and not only as a conduit for Chinese and Indian know-how.

Commerce and curiosity appear to have driven Europe towards the Renaissance, whereas China's Confucian scholar-bureaucrats in their disdain for commerce ensured that invention and research did not translate into "baser" products than those needed for statecraft (military and administration).

Jeff Hay's "The Middle Ages" is a textbook with short excerpts from history books - popular and academic - as well as from primary sources like Boccacio, Marco Polo or the great Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta. The excerpts are preceded by a one-page summary of the main theses expounded in the excerpt - very useful for someone who just wishes to browse. Overall, this book gives a good overview and introduction.

"The Middle Ages" shares with other textbooks a primary focus on questions relating to Western Europe, but to a lesser degree than the textbooks that were in use when I studied history in the 1980s. A short and useful list of books for further reading complements the book. Another plus is that it touches upon the effects of large-scale events like global weather changes (the Little Ice Age from 1300-1700) and epidemics (the Plague from 1320-1360) on life in the Middle Ages. The price, however, is quite steep for an introductory text.

In Ministers of Reform, Robert Crunden traces the backgrounds of many of the leading achievers in the Progressive era. Although the statesmen, social workers, writers, artists, and thinkers were not bound to a common platform and were not members of any single movement, many of them shared common backgrounds and experiences that influenced their political/social ideas. Such commonalties include a religious heritage and (except in the case of Woodrow Wilson) an Abolitionist heritage. Abraham Lincoln was seen as a living ideal as did the Republican party until many became disillusioned by it. Protestantism and education also were important factors. Progressive leaders Crunden looks at include Samuel Hopkins Adams, Jane Addams, Charles A. Beard, William Jennings Bryan, John R. Commons, John Dewey, Richard Ely, Robert Henri, George Herron, Charles Ives, Robert La Follette, George Herbert Mead, Robert Park, Theodore Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair, John Sloan, Frederick Jackson Turner, Harvey Wiley, Woodrow Wilson, and Frank Llloyd Wright. The spirit of innovation and moral rectitude of the Progressive generation made its mark throughout American politics, society, and culture. One important point Cruden makes is that, although many Progressive leaders demonstrated tolerance at home, they often also showed a great deal of intolerance abroad.

"Munitions of the Mind" is a broad survey of propaganda and its use through history. Perhaps the one book of its kind, "Munitions of the Mind" takes the reader from early Western civilization to the Gulf War, briefly describing how propaganda was used to promote military and political goals of empires, democracies, and ideologies across the eons.

The book is an excellent basic resource for those seeking to understand how propaganda has been used through history. Clearly and insightfully written, it forces the reader to think about how emerging media may be used by entities to promote their goals.

The book contains some minor irritations, such as its references to Margaret Mead's somewhat controversial "Coming of Age in Samoa," and a section on the Cold War that appeared (to this reader) to place both sides on equal moral footing. This reviewer also hungered for more details on peacetime propaganda, more pre-20th century examples, and the an explanation about how modern marketing techniques affected propaganda. The non-Western world is virtually ignored. Visuals would have also helped the reader understand how graphics are used in conveying ideas without words. However, these are small problems in a work of such amazing scope and interest.

THIS IS A GREAT BOOK FOR THOSE WHO WANT A BRIEF HISTORY OF MUSLIMS IN EARLY AMERICA. THIS BOOK FOCUSES MAINLY ON MUSLIMS WHO WERE BROUGHT HERE AS SLAVES AND WHAT BECAME OF THEM. SOME BECAME MEMBERS OF THE CALVERY OR BOUGHT THIER FREEDOM AND RETURNED TO AFRICA. THERE WAS THE PRINCE OF SLAVES ,CALLED SO BECAUSE HE WAS A PRINCE WHEN HE WAS CAPTURED, THERE WAS BROTHER YARRO WHO LIVED IN GEORGETOWN IN WASHINGTON, D.C. THERE IS ALSO INFORMATION AND PICTURES ON BURIAL SITES AND SLAVE LIVNG QUARTERS AND WELL AS PICTURES OF THE MUSLIM SLAVES THEMSELVES. THEN THERE IS THE STORY OF THE FIRST NATIVE BORN MUSLIM CONVERT WHO WAS A CAUCASIAN. THERE IS MUCH MORE OFFERED IN THIS MODEST WORK.

I felt that the book was not as objective as i would have liked it to be. I felt that opinions should have been kept out.

I particularly enjoyed the historical bits that the editors
included in "No Cross, No Crown." I had heard of this
congregation before I bought the book, but knew next to nothing
about its beginnings and history. The difficulties that the
women had to face must have been tremendous - for not only were
they female, but also Black or Creole-Black women living in a
southern state in the 1800s. Women who seemed to have to tread a
fine line in working for women of color, both free and slave.

A compelling read . . . draws you along through the final chapter and beyond!

This book tells the story of the outlaws of the early West (western Kentucky, southeastern Illinois, and Tennessee from around 1795 to 1820). These men were not the gun-toting, bank-robbing criminals of the Wild West but were highway robbers and river pirates who most often wielded knives and axes. They preyed on pioneers living in isolated cabins in the wilderness and on traders coming down the Ohio River on flatboats or traveling inland along wilderness trails.

Most of these criminals at one time or another used Cave-in-Rock as their headquarters. This huge cave, on the Illinois side of the lower Ohio River, is about 85 miles below Evansville, Indiana.

The most notorious of all the criminals of this time and place were the two Harpe brothers, who were said to kill men, women, and children simply to gratify a lust for cruelty. One story epitomizes the brutality of their exploits: Traveling through western Kentucky, the Harpes came to a cabin, where they found only a mother and her baby, the husband being off hunting. They asked to spend the night, and the next morning they asked the woman to prepare breakfast for them. She consented to do so but said that it would take her some time because her child was not well and she had no one to nurse it. The men then said that she should put the baby in its cradle and they would rock it while she cooked. After the woman had served their breakfast, she went to the cradle to see if the child was asleep, expressing some astonishment that her child should remain quiet for so long a time. She found the infant lying breathless, its throat cut from ear to ear.

"Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock" was first published in 1923 and was recently reprinted by Southern Illinois University Press. Historians, amateur and professional, will value this book interesting for the light it sheds on a period of the nation's history that has received too little attention.

Neil Ferguson's first book is a provocative, erudite treatise that challenges much of the more recent writing on Germany's great inflation. Following Carl-Ludwig Holtferich's pathbreaking work, a consensus had begun to emerge that sees the mark's fall as part of a successful strategy that maintained employment and helped in the recovery of the German economy from WWI, thus giving a crucial boost to the stabilization of the young republic. The rewards of moderate inflation during the immediate post-war period were, according to this view, not confined to the Reich alone - German demand for American manufactures, for example, provided a significant countercyclical stimulus to the U.S. economy during the downturn of the early 1920s. Ferguson's strongest point is that this sideeffect of Germany's inflation undermined one of the main policy aims after 1919 - the revision of the Versailles treaty. According to the architects of 'fulfillment', the inflation would lead to an export boom as the mark's value on the foreign exchanges collapsed faster than in Germany itself. Hence, the Allies would realize that they would ultimately have to pay for German reparations through unemployment at home. Instead, because loose monetary policy caused a boom in the Reich at the very time when other industrialized countries went into recession, the trade balance degenerated as imports surged and exports languished in depressed foreign markets. Ferguson thus exposes an important inconsistency in the inflationary strategy - but it is one that only the benefit of hindsight reveals. The historical accident of the postwar boom in the UK and America turning to bust at exactly the time when the Germans attempted to 'export the cost of reparations' undermined a strategy that was based on accurate economic analysis. And even if the export surge never materialized, the monetary chaos within the Reich arguably did help in reducing inflated demands for reparations - from the 28 billion gold marks demanded by Cunliffe in 1919 to the approximately 4 billion of the London Ultimatum. Ferguson also presents a fresh argument that the 1920/21 easing of inflationary pressures could have been used for a more permanent stabilization - at perhaps 50-60 marks/ $. Three factors contributed to this change in fortunes: the fall in import prices due to postwar depression, foreign speculators expecting a recovery of the mark, and the recovery of output. Yet here, as in other parts of the book, Ferguson pays little attention to the considerable time-lag that operated between individual economic variables. The rise in output during 1920/21 was partly caused by the policies of easy money in the years before. The strength of the mark on the foreign exchanges, underpinned by 'hot money', could only last if Germany embarked on a deflation on the Anglo-Saxon model - something that not even Ferguson thinks was politically or economically possible. The argument is also not helped by simple arithmetic errors that lead Ferguson to overstate the size of the Reich's deficit in 1920 and 1922 (p. 278, p. 477) - revenue of 3.2 billion gold marks in 1920 minus expenditure of 7.1 billion simply does not yield a deficit of 6.1 billion. This book's main contribution therefore lies in the wider questions it raises, and not in the ones it answers. That is no mean achievement in a work that combines a monograph on the inflation in Hamburg with more wide-ranging chapters on the Reich's economic fortunes. For this is a study so rich in its observations about the inflation's effects on Hamburg's shipbuilding, banking, and overseas trade, and about the role of Hanseatic politicians in the policymaking in Berlin, that it could easily be mistaken for a regional study. Nothing could be further from the truth: Paper and Iron will at least partly define the research agenda for future scholars of Germany's great inflation.

This is an interesting compilation of poems, art and commentary about a little-known but fascinating group of writers in 1950s LA, some of whom, despite the ominous atmosphere of McCarthyism, wrote political poems and pieces that maintain an eerie relevance to issues today. The book contains an interesting anecdote about Allen Ginsberg, a highly charged debate between the editors of Coastlines magazine and a poet-promoter of the Venice West beats and a thoroughly absorbing account of one poet's experience as one of the first test subjects in an early study of LSD's effects on artists. While the quality of the text is at times uneven, most of the poetry stands firmly on its own, especially the work of Thomas McGrath, Mel Weisburd, Gene Frumkin, Ann Stanford, Bert Meyers and Sid Gershgoren.