Thursday, March 26, 1964 University Daily Kansan
Page 3
Wars, Fires, Sea Battles and Muckrakers
AUSCHWITZ, by Dr. Miklos Niyisli (Crest, 50 cents).
In the wake of the movie "Judgment at Nuremberg" and Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" has come a splurge of books about the horror's of Hitler's Germany. The cover labels Auschwitz "Eichmann's inferno," and so it was. This book is an eyewitness account, written by a victim who survived, a Jew and a doctor who had to perform autopsies and dissections on Jewish corpses.
By now most of us know even the most vicious horrors of the death camps. But the present college generation, even in the shocking world in which it lives, needs to know more. "Auschwitz" and the other books in the genre are not for mealtime reading, but they are important, to understand the Nazis and to understand ourselves.
THE DIPLOMACY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, by Samuel Flagg Bemis (Midland; Indiana University Press; $1.75).
The most important of all American historians of diplomacy is Samuel Flagg Bemis, and this is one of his best histories. It is a history of one of the critical times in American history, and a history that is loaded with big names and big events.
Largely it is a story of the negotiations between the 13 colonies and France, but the negotiations with Spain and the Netherlands also were important, and make part of the story. It is never a dull or pedantic history, for Bemis is a historian who knows the desirability of making a work live from a literary as well as historical standpoint.
Through our diplomats, notably that famous negotiator, Benjamin Franklin, France was brought into the controversy in 1778, and helped to swing victory toward the patriot cause. Bemis tells this story, and devotes several chapters to negotiations with the British in the 1780s after the Battle of Yorktown sealed victory for the Americans.
THE SOUTH IN NORTERN EYES, 1831 TO 1861, by Howard R. Floan (McGraw-Hill Paperbacks, $2.45).
A special kind of service is provided in this book by Howard Floan, a service of interest to those concerned with how myths, legends and images are created in society. Floan presents as his thesis the belief that misinformation about the South played a large role in the attacks on slavery and the denunciations of the southerner.
He turns to writings of prominent northerners for proof. These include the abolitionists Garrison and Phillips, the poet Whitier, the poet-critic Lowell, the Concord philosophers Emerson and Thoreau, Longfellow, Holmes and Hawthorne, New England magazine writers, New Yorkers, Melville, the influential editor Bryant, and the poet Whitman.
THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE, by Robert Cromie (MrGraw-Hill Paperbacks, $2.75).
Exciting social history has been written by a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, the kind of history greatly popular in recent years. This attractive paperback has in addition to the text several drawings and photographs of one of the most famous fires in history.
"One dark night...when people were in bed, /Old Mrs. Leary lit a lantern in her shed: /The cow kicked it over, winked its eye, and said,/There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight." That's an old jingle that reminds us of the famous legend. The fire did start at the O'Leary's, but unfortunately there is no proof that the cow was responsible.
THE ARMADA, by Garrett Mattingly (Sentry, $1.95).
It started the night of Oct. 8, 1871, on DeKoven Street. By the time the blaze had flared up and been driven by a southwesterly wind, and then burned for two days, there was property loss amounting to millions of dollars, and there were 100,000 homeless people.
Garrett Mattingly, a professor of European history at Columbia University, conceived in "The Armada" a history as readable, as meaningful, as related to its times as De Voto's "Across the Wide Missouri" and "The Course of Empire." He started with the intention of doing little more than a monograph, and emerged with a history in the grand manner, one that won a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize Committee.
"The Armada" appeared in 1959. It is a story of the naval campaign of 1588 that culminated in the defeat of the Spanish fleet by the British and that ensured independence not only for the English but for the French and Dutch as well. Mattingly begins with the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and provides a full-fledged study of European power politics in the 16th century.
Here are some of the names and subjects—S. S. McClure, the editor, writing on three great articles in one issue of McClure's; Lincoln Steffens, on the shame of Minneapolis; Ida M. Tarbell, on the Standard Oil Company and the oil war of 1872; Ray Stannard Baker, on miners and scabs.
This is a treasure trove for the student of American history, government, or journalism. It is a set of primary documents by those vigorous and dramatic writers whose exposes of American society early in the century led Theodore Roosevelt to criticize them as "muckrakers."
THE MUCKRAKERS, edited by Arthur and Lila Weinberg (Capricorn, $2.45).
Theodore Roosevelt, on the man with the muckrake; David Graham Phillips, on the treason of the Senate; William Hard, on Uncle Joe Cannon; Mark Sullivan, on how congressmen vote; C. P. Connolly, on the controlled state of Montana; Steffens and Claude H. Wetmore, on boss rule in St. Louis.
John L. Mathews, on monopoly; Samuel Hopkins Adams, on patent medicines; Upton Sinclair, on the packing-houses; Baker, on racial questions in the South; William English Walling, on racial questions in the North; Thomas W. Lawson, on stock manipulation.
Will Irwin, on ward politics;
Baker, on the railroads; Charles Edward Russell, on Trinity Church and the tenements; Edwin Markham, on children of the looms, and George Kibbe Turner, on white slavery.
THE COMING CAESARS, by Amaury de Riencourt (Capricorn, $1.95).
Historical warnings are offered in this 1957 book that should have special appeal to those who fear the executive leviathan in America. Amaury de Riencourt interprets American history and destiny as a Caesarism that threatens our survival as a free nation.
He analyzes our history in terms of the development of western society in the past 400 years. As he considers Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman and others he insistently draws parallels with the fate of other leaders in other times.
The author believes that the West is threatened by Caesarism, which he defines as a "slow, often century-old, unconscious development that ends in a voluntary surrender of a free people escaping from freedom to one autocratic master."
THE SILENT LANGUAGE, by Edward T. Hall (Premier, 60 cents).
This is a book for anthropologists and semanticists, which takes in quite a lot of folks today. Hall deals with cultural patterns of today in an effort to understand behavior.
Hall holds that manners and behavior often are more important than words, and that Americans too frequently do not understand how they are communicating themselves, through their behavior, to people of other countries.
CITIES IN THE WILDERNESS, by Carl Bridenbaugh (Capricorn, $2.65); CITIES IN REVOLT, by Carl Bridenbaugh (Capricorn, $2.65).
These beautiful volumes are companion works, excellent histories of the growth of urban life in America.
In the first volume, Carl Bridenbaugh treats the founding and growth of the great cities of colonial America—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Newport and Charleston. In the second, he assesses the development of an urban civilization in the same cities.
Bridenbaugh won the Justin Winson prize of the American Historical Association for "Cities in the Wilderness." The first volume embraces 1625-1742; the second 1743-1776. Students of colonial history and American civilization will find them rich and engrossing reading.
ITALIAN LITERATURE FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO ARIOSTO; ITALIAN LITERATURE FROM ARIOSTO TO THE LATE RENAISSANCE, by John Addington Symonds (2 vols., Capricorn, $1.85 each).
The biographer of Michelangelo wrote these near-classic works, which appear in a handsome paperback edition that will stand a lot of wear. The work stems from Symonds' belief that "Literature must always prove the surest guide to the investigator of a people's character at some decisive epoch."
The chief concern of Symonds is the 1300-1530 period, but he begins by discussing Italian literature in the Middle Ages and then considers the great names—Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. He treats secular and religious poetry, Lorenzo de Medici, the romantic epic and Ariosto.
One chapter is on the "Orlando Furioso," and others deal with the novellieri, the drama, pastoral and didactic poetry, burlesque poetry and satire, history and philosophy and the meaning of the Renaissance.
CLIFF'S NOTES - only $1.00 each
NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE PLAYS
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
AS YOU LIKE IT
CORIOLANUS
HAMLET
JULIUS CAESAR
KING HENRY IV - PART I
KING HENRY IV - PART II
KING HENRY V
KING LEAR
MACBETH
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
MERCHANT OF VENICE
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
OTHELLO
RICHARD II
RICHARD III
ROMEO AND JULIET
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
TEMPEST
TWELFTH NIGHT
NOTES ON OTHER CLASSICS
THE AENEID
ALL THE KING'S MEN
ARMS AND THE MAN
BABBITT
CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
DAVID COPPERFIELD
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
HUCKLEBERRY FINN
THE ILIAD
IVANHOE
JOSEPH ANDREWS
LORD JIM
MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE
MOBY DICK
MY ANTONIA
THE ODYSSEY
OF HUMAN BONDAGE
PARADISE LOST
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
BOTANY INTERMEDIATE ALGEBRA
PYGMALION
THE REPUBLIC
RETURN OF THE NATIVE
SCARLET LETTER
SILAS MARNER
THE SOUND AND THE FURY
TALE OF TWO CITIES
VICAR OF WAKEFIELD
VICTORY
WALDEN
WUTHERING HEIGHTS
OTHER TITLES
DICTIONARY OF SYNONYMS AND ANTONYMS
SECRETS OF STUDYING ZOOLOGY
NEW NOTES AVAILABLE SOON
ABSALOM, ABSALOM (March 15)
LORD OF THE FLIES (Febr. 15)
MAN AND SUPERMAN (March 15)
A PASSAGE TO INDIA (Febr.15)
TOM SAWYER (Febr.15)