Morbid Romantic

Book Review & Personal Blog

The amount of books I got this week may be staggering, but the simple fact behind that is that I am slowly getting my books for next semester in the mail. Amazing, huh? Just how many books I am going to need for three classes. And, AND, I have not even gotten all of them; most of them, yes, but not all.

A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War by Gary Forsythe (Purchased from Amazon)
During the period from Rome’s Stone Age beginnings on the Tiber River to its conquest of the Italian peninsula in 264 B.C., the Romans in large measure developed the social, political, and military structure that would be the foundation of their spectacular imperial success. In this comprehensive and clearly written account, Gary Forsythe draws extensively from historical, archaeological, linguistic, epigraphic, religious, and legal evidence as he traces Rome’s early development within a multicultural environment of Latins, Sabines, Etruscans, Greeks, and Phoenicians. His study charts the development of the classical republican institutions that would eventually enable Rome to create its vast empire, and provides fascinating discussions of topics including Roman prehistory, religion, and language. In addition to its value as an authoritative synthesis of current research, A Critical History of Early Rome offers a revisionist interpretation of Rome’s early history through its innovative use of ancient sources. The history of this period is notoriously difficult to uncover because there are no extant written records, and because the later historiography that affords the only narrative accounts of Rome’s early days is shaped by the issues, conflicts, and ways of thinking of its own time. This book provides a groundbreaking examination of those surviving ancient sources in light of their underlying biases, thereby reconstructing early Roman history upon a more solid evidentiary foundation.

Currant Events by Piers Anthony (Paperbackswap)
Clio, the muse of history, has a problem connected with the twenty-eighth chronicle of Xanth. When she sits down to write it, she discovers that it has already been written– and unintelligibly. So the scholarly lady must repair to the real Xanth, where she is sent by the Good Magician Humfrey on a quest to save two pocket-sized dragons, Drew and Drusie, who are essential to the environment of Xanth. Naturally, the quest is successful–Anthony does not trade in tragedy in his best-known series–and what is more, along the way Clio finds true love with the magician Sherlock and meets a good many of the ongoing characters in the Xanth series. If latest entry in said series features a more mature heroine (still obsessed with her figure, however) and less of the adult conspiracy and stork-summoning that has marked some of its recent predecessors, the puns for which the Xanthian corpus is famous are as numerous and outrageous as ever.

Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights by Glenda Elixabeth Gilmore (Bought from Amazon)
Yale historian Gilmore turns a wide lens on the battle against Jim Crow in this worthy if overstuffed collective biography of the black and white Southern activists whose work before the larger Civil Rights movement constitute its neglected, forgotten or repressed origins. Expanding the temporal and geographical boundaries of the fight for racial equality, Gilmore’s scholarship considers international racial politics and traces a progression from 1920s Communists, who joined forces in the late 1930s with a radical left to form a Southern popular front, to the 1940s grassroots activists. Gilmore (Who Were the Progressives?) lavishes attention on the first American-born black Communist, Lovett Fort-Whiteman, who died in a Siberian gulag in 1939; and on FDR-era civil rights activist Pauli Murray, distinguished by her fight against segregation at the University of North Carolina in 1939 and her involvement in the defense of Virginia sharecropper Odell Walker, ultimately executed for killing his white landlord. Gilmore’s sweeping, fresh consideration of pre-movement civil rights activity, with its links to both the exportation of American racism and the importation of Communist egalitarianism, is full of informative gems, but the mining is left to the reader.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith (Gift from Secret Santa)
This may be the most wacky by-product of the busy Jane Austen fan-fiction industry—at least among the spin-offs and pastiches that have made it into print. In what’s described as an “expanded edition” of Pride and Prejudice, 85 percent of the original text has been preserved but fused with “ultraviolent zombie mayhem.” For more than 50 years, we learn, England has been overrun by zombies, prompting people like the Bennets to send their daughters away to China for training in the art of deadly combat, and prompting others, like Lady Catherine de Bourgh, to employ armies of ninjas. Added to the familiar plot turns that bring Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy together is the fact that both are highly skilled killers, gleefully slaying zombies on the way to their happy ending. Is nothing sacred? Well, no, and mash-ups using literary classics that are freely available on the Web may become a whole new genre. What’s next? Wuthering Heights and Werewolves?

Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow (Gift from Secret Santa)
Sixteen-year-old Dru Anderson has grown up traveling the country with her demon-hunter father. When he tries to tackle a powerful sucker named Sergej in the Dakotas, he is turned into a zombie. After stopping him from killing her, Dru must save herself when she, too, becomes Sergej’s target. She is befriended by Graves, a classmate who is quickly bitten and turned into a loup-garou (half werewolf), and meets Christophe, a djamphir (half-vampire vampire hunter). Dru also learns that she is growing into her own special powers. This is the first book in a series, and a large portion of it is spent developing the three lead characters, which occasionally slows down the action. While Graves seems to be the love interest, it is clear that both young men are attractive enough to draw Dru’s attention, promising tension in future installments. However, the book is plagued by frequent odd descriptions (a werewolf the size of a Shetland pony and Graves, who is half Asian, described as a half breed), and the choppy pacing is sometimes distracting. Dru’s inner monologue is a bit wordy during action scenes as well, which drags down the pace. Despite flaws, the similarities to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga (Little, Brown) will make this book an easy sell (though Dru is, by far, a tougher heroine than Bella, both in her language and her behavior), and the cliff-hanger ending will leave readers eager for the sequel.

The Reformation: A History by Diarmaid MacCulloch (Bought From Amazon)
Many standard histories of Christianity chronicle the Reformation as a single, momentous period in the history of the Church. According to those accounts, a number of competing groups of reformers challenged a monolithic and corrupt Roman Catholicism over issues ranging from authority and the role of the priests to the interpretation of the Eucharist and the use of the Bible in church. In this wide-ranging, richly layered and captivating study of the Reformation, MacCulloch challenges traditional interpretations, arguing instead that there were many reformations. Arranging his history in chronological fashion, MacCulloch provides in-depth studies of reform movements in central, northern and southern Europe and examines the influences that politics and geography had on such groups. He challenges common assumptions about the relationships between Catholic priests and laity, arguing that in some cases Protestantism actually took away religious authority from laypeople rather than putting it in their hands. In addition, he helpfully points out that even within various groups of reformers there was scarcely agreement about ways to change the Church. MacCulloch offers valuable and engaging portraits of key personalities of the Reformation, including Erasmus, Luther, Zwingli and Calvin. More than a history of the Reformation, MacCulloch’s study examines its legacy of individual religious authority and autonomous biblical interpretation. This spectacular intellectual history reminds us that the Reformation grew out of the Renaissance, and provides a compelling glimpse of the cultural currents that formed the background to reform. MacCulloch’s magisterial book should become the definitive history of the Reformation.

Gender & Jim Crow by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore (Bought from Amazon)
In this extensively documented history, Gilmore (history, Yale) examines the imposition of legally mandated segregation in North Carolina at the turn of the century. African Americans had achieved significant success in that state even after the end of Reconstruction, and Gilmore argues that the incentive for segregation emerged in response to that success and to the stirrings of independence of white women. Vilification of the black man as a sexual predator served the twin purposes of banishing potential economic and political rivals and restricting the ambition of white women. This focus, however, provided an opportunity for black women to play the role of “diplomat” to the white community and to initiate a small measure of interracial cooperation. Although well written, this densely detailed exposition will attract a chiefly academic audience.

The War with Hannibal by Livy (Bought from Amazon)
In The War with Hannibal, Livy (59 BC AD 17) chronicles the events of the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage, until the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. He vividly recreates the immense armies of Hannibal, complete with elephants, crossing the Alps; the panic as they approached the gates of Rome; and the decimation of the Roman army at the Battle of Lake Trasimene. Yet it is also the clash of personalities that fascinates Livy, from great debates in the Senate to the historic meeting between Scipio and Hannibal before the decisive battle. Livy never hesitates to introduce both intense drama and moral lessons into his work, and here he brings a turbulent episode in history powerfully to life.

The Night Battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries by Carlo Ginzburg (Bought from Amazon)
Carlo Ginzburg’s The Night Battles is a remarkable tale of witchcraft, folk culture, and persuasion in early modern Europe. Ginzburg introduces us to the benandanti (literally, “well-farers”), a small group of men and women who, because they were born with a caul, were regarded (and regarded themselves) as professional antiwitches. They told Inquisitors that, in dreams, they fought ritual battles against witches and wizards to protect villagers and harvests from harm. Listening to the benandanti’s extraordinary stories, the Inquisitors were alarmed by images of witches’ sabbaths and sorcery. The result was a revealing cultural clash and the slow metamorphosis of the benandanti into their enemies– the witches.

Luther: Man Between God and the Devil by Heiko A. Oberman (Bought from Amazon)
In Oberman’s startling portrait of Martin Luther, we meet an obstinate monk of volcanic temperament, for whom Christ and the Devil were equally real. “Luther proclaimed the Last Days, not the modern age,” asserts this University of Arizona history professor. The rebellious monk, we learn, called himself doctor, preacher, or professor, but never “reformer,” and never spoke of his movement as the “Reformation.” His achievement lay in “horizontalizing” Christian ethics by proclaiming that good works are crucial for survival in a threatened world. This weighty study gives full attention to aspects of Luther’s career that other biographers have sought to minimize, such as his savage attacks on Jews and his scatological invective against the Devil. Oberman brings us closer to the real Luther.

The Early History of Rome by Livy (Bought from Amazon)
With stylistic brilliance and historical imagination, the first five books of Livy’s monumental history of Rome record events from the foundation of Rome through the history of the seven kings, the establishment of the Republic and its internal struggles, up to Rome’s recovery after the fierce Gallic invasion of the fourth century bc. Livy vividly depicts the great characters, legends, and tales, including the story of Romulus and Remus. Reprinting Robert Ogilvie’s lucid 1971 introduction, this highly regarded edition now boasts a new preface, examining the text in light of recent Livy scholarship, informative maps, bibliography, and an index.

The Myth of Bloody Mary: A Biography of Queen Mary I of England by Linda Porter (Bought from Amazon)
In this groundbreaking new biography of “Bloody Mary,” Linda Porter brings to life a queen best remembered for burning hundreds of Protestant heretics at the stake, but whose passion, will, and sophistication have for centuries been overlooked. Daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, wife of Philip of Spain, and sister of Edward VI, Mary Tudor was a cultured Renaissance princess. A Latin scholar and outstanding musician, her love of fashion was matched only by her zeal for gambling. It is the tragedy of Queen Mary that today, 450 years after her death, she remains the most hated, least understood monarch in English history. Linda Porter’s pioneering new biography—based on contemporary documents and drawing from recent scholarship—cuts through the myths to reveal the truth about the first queen to rule England in her own right. Mary learned politics in a hard school, and was cruelly treated by her father and bullied by the strongmen of her brother, Edward VI. An audacious coup brought her to the throne, and she needed all her strong will and courage to keep it. Mary made a grand marriage to Philip of Spain, but her attempts to revitalize England at home and abroad were cut short by her premature death at the age of forty-two. The first popular biography of Mary in thirty years, The First Queen of England offers a fascinating, controversial look at this much-maligned queen.

Henry IV and the Towns: The Pursuit of Legitimacy in French Urban Society, 1589-1610 by S. Annette Finley-Crosswhite (Bought from Amazon)
This book is the first serious study of Henry IV’s relationship with the towns of France. Rejected by a majority of his subjects because of his Protestant faith, Henry spent the early years of his reign conquering his kingdom through the use of force, persuasion, bribery, and conciliation. By reopening the lines of communication between the crown and the towns, he strengthened the French monarchy. Thus while this book is not a biography of the King, it offers an in-depth analysis of a crucial aspect of his craft of kingship.

Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David J. Garrow
In this 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, David J. Garrow, through extensive interviews, and access to F.B.I. transcripts, delves deeply into both Dr. Martin Luther King’s leadership role and his private life. He attributes King’s moral and physical courage to his religious faith: King believed that he had literally been called to do the Lord’s work. But from 1965, when the F.B.I. taped King in sexual encounters and sent the tape to S.C.L.L. headquarters, his associates noted a “spiritual depression”, even a “death wish.” Fear that exposure would ruin his public work dogged him until his assassination in 1968. While documenting the F.B.I.’s dirty tricks, Garrow never loses sight of King’s achievement and vision, nor of the poignancy of King’s belief that “the cross is something that you bear and ultimately that you die on.”

Bad to the Bone by Jeri Smith-Ready (Bought from Borders)
Once a con artist on the run, Ciara Griffin now operates as owner as well as overworked, underpaid marketing manager for a small radio station with DJs of the undead variety. On Halloween, the station’s “live” nighttime broadcast from a local pub, The Smoking Pig, encounters problems almost immediately when the midnight broadcast of DJ goth queen Regina is preempted by the broadcast of a religious screed warning about the wages of sins. WVMP has been targeted by a group called Family Action Network (FAN). Mortal Ciara and her undead friends must also contend with a government agency offering to help, though its sincerity may not be genuine. Matters of the heart afflict Ciara and her immortal boyfriend, Shane. Several believable, captivating characters abound, including a sweet-natured vampire dog named Dexter. This terrific sequel to Wicked Game is by turns funny, sexy, and gripping. For urban fantasy fans.

Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (Bought from Amazon)
Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World surveys the ways in which Christian ideas and institutions shaped sexual norms and conduct from the time of Luther and Columbus to that of Thomas Jefferson. It is global in scope and geographic in organization, with chapters on Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, and North America. The volume explores such topics as marriage and divorce, fornication and illegitimacy, clerical sexuality, witchcraft and love magic, homosexuality, and moral crimes. It examines learned and popular notions of sexuality in and outside of Christian Europe, the development of institutions to enforce Christian standards, and the role of class, race, family, economy, and local traditions in shaping sexual behavior. Merry Wiesner-Hanks sets her findings within the context of many historical fields–the history of sexuality and the body, women’s history, legal, religious and gay and lesbian history, and colonial studies–and provides readers with an introduction to key theoretical and methodological issues in each of these areas.

The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found by Mary Beard (Bought from Amazon)
Pompeii is the most famous archaeological site in the world, visited by more than two million people each year. Yet it is also one of the most puzzling, with an intriguing and sometimes violent history, from the sixth century BCE to the present day. Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. But the eruptions are only part of the story. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. She explores what kind of town it was–more like Calcutta or the Costa del Sol?–and what it can tell us about “ordinary” life there. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, Beard offers us the big picture even as she takes us close enough to the past to smell the bad breath and see the intestinal tapeworms of the inhabitants of the lost city. She resurrects the Temple of Isis as a testament to ancient multiculturalism. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica. Recently, Pompeii has been a focus of pleasure and loss: from Pink Floyd’s memorable rock concert to Primo Levi’s elegy on the victims. But Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem. This book shows us how much more and less there is to Pompeii than a city frozen in time as it went about its business on 24 August 79.

Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Raymond Arsenault (Bought from Amazon)
The relationship between blacks and whites in North America had been a profound moral problem for at least a century before the United States itself was established. Slavery and general denigration of the humanity of blacks were deeply embedded in the culture by the time Gen. Washington assumed command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Mass., in the late spring of 1775 and immediately issued an order to stop recruiting blacks. The problem was so thoroughly woven into the fabric of the nation that major advances in the fair treatment of blacks have occurred only once a century. The first period came in the 1780s and ’90s, when northerners began applying revolutionary principle to daily life by abolishing slavery state by state. The second, of course, was the Civil War and Reconstruction period when the nation adopted the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and Congress enacted strong civil rights legislation. The third period was the modern civil rights movement of the mid-20th century, and Raymond Arsenault’s Freedom Riders focuses on one of its most pivotal struggles.

The Last Generation of the Roman Republic by Erich S. Gruen (Bought from Amazon)
Available for the first time in paperback, with a new introduction that reviews related scholarship of the past twenty years, Erich Gruen’s classic study of the late Republic examines institutions as well as personalities, social tensions as well as politics, the plebs and the army as well as the aristocracy.

Cataline’s War, The Jugurthine War, Histories by Sallust (Bought from Amazon)
Sallust’s first published work, Catiline’s War, contains the memorable history of the year 63, including his thoughts on Catiline, a Roman politician who made an ill-fated attempt to overthrow the Roman Republic. In The Jugurthine War, Sallust dwells upon the feebleness of the Senate and aristocracy, having collected materials and compiled notes for this work during his governorship of Numidia.

Fall of the Roman Republic by Plutarch (Bought from Amazon)
Rome’s famed historian illuminates the twilight of the old Roman Republic from 157 to 43 BC in succinct accounts of the greatest politicians and statesmen of the classical period.

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