american terrorism! i read books! you get to hear about them ~ !
i have fallen tragically behind on my flist. i'll try to catch up, promise. yesterday i read my list without logging in so i missed all the flocked posts. der....
i've been reading a lot of books on what i would categorize as "American terrorism" (19th century-style, of course). finished three books this weekend (two of them rather short). dunno if any of these would be of interest to anyone on my flist, especially since i don't necessarily recommend two of them. first up:
Victims: a true story of the Civil War by Phillip Shaw Paludan ~ The problem with this book isn't that for its 130 pages it's quite the dense, lumbering behemoth (reads more like a academic dissertation than anything else). The problem is that it sets out with a thesis that it cannot seem to prove.
The narrative starts off really strong with a very good overview of the community of Shelton Laurel, but by the time it arrives at the killings, the ambiguities of guerrilla warfare have been presented in such a way as to render me undecided on what actually went down. People were killed. Probably without cause. But while I couldn't possibly condone summary executions on any level, one has to wonder at the fear and frustration (and utter incompetence) of those who ordered and carried out the killings. We see it time and time again: some small thing that sets off a chain of events more extreme than warranted. The maze of offenses and retaliations in this arena in particular are incredibly hard to untangle.
So there's a lot of new information here and that's fabulous, but the way in which it's presented left me feeling like the author meant to take a strong stance against the killings, but actually failed to make the point that this was a bona fide war crime. While I accept that the burden of guilt is on the prosecution's head to prove (and they don't prove anything beyond reasonable doubt), it's hard to judge anything in a case in which a degree of reason is entirely lacking on both sides.
A good springboard for further investigation, but between the heavy-handed and too-often discursive writing style, and the failure to effectively make its case, I was disappointed.
for a super-short overview of the "battle/massacre", you can read a quick summary here that gives a somewhat fair context for understanding the events that lead to the heinous deed. they call it a "battle", but in fairness, i think the bushwhacking feud was really too dirty on both sides to be called a battle proper. "massacre" more accurately covers it, regardless of the circumstances by which it came about.
i ain't saying it didn't happen.
i just don't think paludan proves that it
was done without provocation.
this seriously weakens his case that these
men and boys were "victims" as opposed to
obstructive patriots and/or partisans.
on a lighter note, in completely unrelated news, if you haven't read this article on a recently authenticated picture of W. A. Mozart, you oughta, because it's pretty cool. i especially love the closing:
One of Mozart's friends described him as a man "in whose personal intercourse there was absolutely no other sign of unusual power of intellect and almost no trace of intellectual culture, nor of any scholarly or other higher interests." Yet that same man was to music what Shakespeare was to theater.
How can we turn this mysterious and unsettling fact to use? What lesson can it teach us? One thing comes to mind at once: humility. You don't need a portrait of the composer of "The Marriage of Figaro" to know that next to him, nobody looks smart.
click here to check it out!.
i've been reading a lot of books on what i would categorize as "American terrorism" (19th century-style, of course). finished three books this weekend (two of them rather short). dunno if any of these would be of interest to anyone on my flist, especially since i don't necessarily recommend two of them. first up:
Victims: a true story of the Civil War by Phillip Shaw Paludan ~ The problem with this book isn't that for its 130 pages it's quite the dense, lumbering behemoth (reads more like a academic dissertation than anything else). The problem is that it sets out with a thesis that it cannot seem to prove.
The narrative starts off really strong with a very good overview of the community of Shelton Laurel, but by the time it arrives at the killings, the ambiguities of guerrilla warfare have been presented in such a way as to render me undecided on what actually went down. People were killed. Probably without cause. But while I couldn't possibly condone summary executions on any level, one has to wonder at the fear and frustration (and utter incompetence) of those who ordered and carried out the killings. We see it time and time again: some small thing that sets off a chain of events more extreme than warranted. The maze of offenses and retaliations in this arena in particular are incredibly hard to untangle.
So there's a lot of new information here and that's fabulous, but the way in which it's presented left me feeling like the author meant to take a strong stance against the killings, but actually failed to make the point that this was a bona fide war crime. While I accept that the burden of guilt is on the prosecution's head to prove (and they don't prove anything beyond reasonable doubt), it's hard to judge anything in a case in which a degree of reason is entirely lacking on both sides.
A good springboard for further investigation, but between the heavy-handed and too-often discursive writing style, and the failure to effectively make its case, I was disappointed.
for a super-short overview of the "battle/massacre", you can read a quick summary here that gives a somewhat fair context for understanding the events that lead to the heinous deed. they call it a "battle", but in fairness, i think the bushwhacking feud was really too dirty on both sides to be called a battle proper. "massacre" more accurately covers it, regardless of the circumstances by which it came about.
i ain't saying it didn't happen.
i just don't think paludan proves that it
was done without provocation.
this seriously weakens his case that these
men and boys were "victims" as opposed to
obstructive patriots and/or partisans.
on a lighter note, in completely unrelated news, if you haven't read this article on a recently authenticated picture of W. A. Mozart, you oughta, because it's pretty cool. i especially love the closing:
One of Mozart's friends described him as a man "in whose personal intercourse there was absolutely no other sign of unusual power of intellect and almost no trace of intellectual culture, nor of any scholarly or other higher interests." Yet that same man was to music what Shakespeare was to theater.
How can we turn this mysterious and unsettling fact to use? What lesson can it teach us? One thing comes to mind at once: humility. You don't need a portrait of the composer of "The Marriage of Figaro" to know that next to him, nobody looks smart.
click here to check it out!.