New Publications
Defining Moments: Historic Decisions by Arkansas Governors from McMath through Huckabee, by Robert L. Brown (151 pages, November 2010), assesses each governor from 1948 to 2007 and their legacies. No matter what you think of them individually, Arkansas governors are a seriously colorful bunch. Best known perhaps are two-time governor Bill Clinton, who stuck to his guns on a teacher-testing bill in 1983, and Orval Faubus, whose disastrous pro-segregation stance at Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957 left permanent scars on the state and the entire South. Others are lesser known, including Marine hero and New Deal Democrat Sid McMath, who killed the poll tax and sponsored anti-lynching legislation, a comprehensive roads program, and rural electrification; Dale Bumpers, who stood up against a corrupt redistricting bill in 1973; and David Pryor, whose opposition in 1977 on constitutional and environmental grounds to a U.S. Corps of Engineers proposal to dam the Strawberry River is now regarded as prescient. $19.95. University of Arkansas. 978-1-55728-944-5.
A useful accompaniment is Arkansas: An Illustrated Atlas, by Tom Paradise (54 pages, January 2011), which offers a succinct overview of the state’s geography, geology, politics, ecosystems, and demographics. $19.95. Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. 978-1-935106-25-8.
Discovering the Civil War, by the Foundation for the National Archives (208 pages, December 2010), complements an exhibition at the National Archives that runs through April 17 (coincidentally the 150th anniversary of Virginia’s secession from the Union). Its focus is not on battles and leaders, but on the documents, photos, maps, and illustrations that shed light on the Civil War’s effect on ordinary Americans. In addition to displaying original documents held by the National Archives, the volume features essays on how people became naturalized citizens of the Confederacy, what happened to those who served as substitutes for draftees, Confederate saboteurs behind Union lines, female spies and soldiers, the debate over censoring telegraphic messages, a poignant letter from an escaped slave, and the 75th Blue and Gray Reunion at Gettysburg in 1938. $44.95. D. Giles. 978-1-904832-91-1.
As the Civil War sesquicentennial advances, it’s useful to remember that life went on for many of its principal players and their families after Appomattox. In After the War (360 pages, September 2010), David E. Hardin profiles the postwar lives of 11 prominent figures, from Ulysses S. Grant to Robert E. Lee and from Jefferson Davis’s daughter Winnie to George Armstrong Custer’s wife Libbie. The stories of how they personally dealt with the war’s aftermath are emblematic of the post-traumatic stresses of a fitfully reunited nation. $27.95. Ivan R. Dee. 978-1-56663-859-3.
The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atomic Bomb, by Allen M. Hornblum (446 pages, September 2010), details the life of Harry Gold, who became an industrial spy for the Soviet Union in 1934 when he worked as a chemist for the Pennsylvania Sugar Company in Philadelphia. However, Gold is best known as the courier who passed on to his Soviet handler classified documents on the Manhattan Project in 1943–1945 from atomic spies Klaus Fuchs and David Greenglass in Los Alamos, information that helped accelerate the development of a Russian bomb. Gold was arrested in 1950 when Fuchs identified him as his contact, and Gold in turn implicated Greenglass, as well as his sister Ethel Rosenberg and her husband Julius, in the spy ring. Hornblum goes into fascinating detail about Gold’s motives, activities, relationships with his family, arrest, imprisonment, and post-prison life as a respected clinical chemist at what is now the JFK Medical Center in Philadelphia. $32.50. Yale University. 978-0-300-15676-8.
A Professor, a President, and a Meteor: The Birth of American Science, by Cathryn J. Prince (254 pages, December 2010), tells the story of the Weston, Connecticut, fireball of December 14, 1807, the first documented recovery of a meteorite in North American history. Yale College’s first chemistry professor, Benjamin Silliman, traveled to the town soon afterward, interviewed witnesses who had seen the meteor and heard the three explosions as the stone broke up in the atmosphere, and retrieved several large fragments. Silliman thought the circumstances clearly showed the Weston stone had come from outer space, a progressive notion that was contested by President Thomas Jefferson, perhaps for politically partisan reasons, as he was by no means a scientific slouch. Prince shows how Silliman influenced scientific practice and education at Yale and across the country. $26.00. Prometheus. 978-1-61614-224-7.
303 Squadron: The Legendary Battle of Britain Fighter Squadron, by Arkady Fiedler (331 pages, November 2010), is the first translation of Dywizjon 303 since 1942 when it was originally published in Polish and English in London. Fiedler (1894–1985), a well-known Polish author and journalist, wrote the book to give credit to the Polish airmen of the Royal Air Force squadron that destroyed more German aircraft during the Battle of Britain in 1940 than any other Allied unit. This edition, produced at the request of Fiedler’s son, is enhanced by footnotes, maps, abundant historical photographs, and nine appendices, as well as the inclusion of the airmen’s real names, which were given pseudonyms in Fiedler’s original book. The narrative vividly captures the drama, the danger, and the spirit of the times. $21.95. Aquila Polonica. 978-1-60772-005-8.
Voices at the World’s Edge: Irish Poets on Skellig Michael, edited by Paddy Bushe (191 pages, January 2011), came about from Bushe’s invitation to a dozen Irish poets to spend a few inspirational days on this rugged, rocky island. Lying nine miles from the coast of County Kerry, for some 500 years Skellig Michael was home to a colony of medieval monks living in beehive-shaped huts near its steep summit, reachable only by 670 crudely carved stone steps. If any site in Ireland can easily inspire the muse, it is the stark beauty of this near-inaccessible monastery, with its puffins, gannets, and battered lighthouse surrounded by the stormy Atlantic. Among the contributors are John F. Deane, Theo Dorgan, Kerry Hardie, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Bernard O’Donoghue, and Bushe himself. Seamus Heaney’s wife Marie wrote the foreword, and literary photographer John Minihan contributed photographs. $22.95. Dedalus Press. 978-1-906614-35-5.
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