A review of Michael Wood’s “The Great British Story: A People’s History”

In America, Ken Burns once said something interesting about American history. That is, he said that the history of the United States is usually told as “a series of presidential administrations punctuated by wars.” You could probably say something similar about the history of our mother country. Schoolchildren in the British Empire were once required to memorize the chronological order of the kings and queens of England. I suppose that there might have been some value in having schoolchildren memorize this stuff. As someone who studies the laws of England, I can tell you that the numerical citation of a Parliamentary law still makes reference to whichever monarch was in power at the time of its passage. Nonetheless, there’s still something to be said for the history of ordinary people as well – and I should note that some of those “ordinary” British people were my own ancestors! My mom has a real talent for family history, and so I’ve seen the names of some of my British ancestors from centuries ago. I’ve even done church work for some of them. (More about that here.) They lived through invasions, plagues, famines, and wars – and passed on their genes well enough to give me the opportunity of writing this post. Thus, this is a personal story for me, since only a few of my British ancestors were “powerful monarchs.” Most of them were ordinary peasants, like the people dramatized in the various episodes of this series.

James Monroe: Famous for the Monroe Doctrine

In 1823, President James Monroe gave one of his annual addresses to Congress on December 2nd. In this address, he announced that “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers” (Source: Text of the Monroe Doctrine). This was the famous “Monroe Doctrine,” the most iconic aspect of his administration. Some have argued that it had more to do with Monroe’s Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams – who would later succeed Mr. Monroe as president. But, either way, it is clear that Mr. Monroe approved it – which is why the doctrine still (rightly) bears his name. Many have argued that James Monroe was one of our Founding Fathers, and that he was thus “the last Founding Father president.” His presidency is today remembered by history as the “Era of Good Feelings.” (More about that later.) But who was this man? Why was he so important? And where exactly did he come from? These are the questions that this post will attempt to answer.

James Monroe

James Buchanan: One of the worst presidents in American history

When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, James Buchanan remained in office until March 4th of 1861. (The Twentieth Amendment, which later changed the regular inauguration date to January 20th, had not yet been passed.) Therefore, Southern states started seceding from the Union while James Buchanan was still in the White House. By the time that he left office, a full seven of them had seceded. But James Buchanan did nothing to stop them. The South was furious because Buchanan wouldn’t yield to their demands. And the North was also furious, because Buchanan wouldn’t stop Southern secession. Mr. Buchanan did practically nothing during this critical period. Thus, it would fall to his successor, Abraham Lincoln, to end the Southern attempts at secession. The seeds of the Civil War were being sown (at least in part) during James Buchanan’s administration. This is why Buchanan is typically ranked among the worst presidents in American history. But more about that aspect of the story later. For now, let me try to answer a relatively simple question: Where exactly did James Buchanan come from?

James Buchanan

Is it better to be a generalist or a specialist?

“Jack of all trades,

And master of none,

But oftentimes better

Than a master of one.”

– Paraphrase of an old saying

An anecdote about Leonardo da Vinci, and the origins of the term “Renaissance Man”

During the Italian Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci achieved great successes in an astonishing variety of fields. He was celebrated as a great painter, draftsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. The Italian Renaissance has since become associated with people like Leonardo, whose accomplishments are so broad and varied. Indeed, it is from this era that we get the term “Renaissance Man” – and, of course, the corresponding term “Renaissance Woman.” These two terms describe people like Leonardo, who achieved success in a wide variety of fields. But there have been people like this in many different periods, which is why there are other terms than those referencing the Italian Renaissance. This includes the term “polymath,” a more formal word. This just comes from two Greek words that translate to “many areas of learning.”

Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest generalists in history

A review of PBS’s “The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln”

“Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal – you sockdologizing old man-trap!”

– A comedic line from the play “Our American Cousin” (1858) – spoken by an actor at Ford’s Theater in 1865, the moment before Lincoln was shot there by John Wilkes Booth

Background on John Wilkes Booth, and his unrealized plot to kidnap Abraham Lincoln

I have seen many films about the Civil War. But this film may still rank among the best, despite its relative brevity. It is only 90 minutes long, and it is brilliantly narrated by the actor Chris Cooper. It has many omissions, but it also has some great storytelling. (More about the omissions later.) After a brief introduction, they start by delving into the early life of John Wilkes Booth. They spend some time on his successful stage career, and his early sympathy with the Confederacy. Ironically, John Wilkes Booth had a pro-Northern brother, who later disowned the actions of his notorious sibling. The brother-against-brother phenomenon extended right into the Booths’ own family. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. They spend time on his growing dissatisfaction with Abraham Lincoln, which would later turn into murderous rage. Booth felt some guilt about not having fought for the Confederacy on the battlefield. Thus, he recruited people to help him in a plot to kidnap Abraham Lincoln, and bring him southward. Obviously, this kidnapping plot was never realized – partly because his accomplices pointed out that there were some slight flaws in his plan. But, eight hours before the fateful gunshots, he learned that President Lincoln would be attending Ford’s Theater that night. Thus, he worked at a feverish pace to lay the groundwork for the later events of that evening. Lincoln had few bodyguards around him, in part because no president had ever been assassinated before. That is, there were many other times where Booth could have killed Lincoln with relatively few risks to himself. But he chose Ford’s Theater instead, in part because of his familiarity with the stage. Thus, he got ready to kill President Lincoln. But he also had some accomplices remaining, as well as two other targets.

John Wilkes Booth, the man who murdered Abraham Lincoln

Booth with brothers Edwin and Junius Jr. in Julius Caesar

A review of “Iran: The Forgotten Glory”

“All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, and the princes, the counsellors, and the captains, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a firm decree, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he [including Daniel] shall be cast into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not. Wherefore king Darius signed the writing and the decree.”

– The Hebrew Bible, “The Book of Daniel,” Chapter 6, Verses 7 through 9 (as translated by the King James Version of the Bible) – a notable chapter in the Bible to mention the Persians

There are actually three pre-Islamic empires in Persia, and this film is about two of them

There are actually three pre-Islamic empires in Persia. This film is about two of them. The first episode covers the Achaemenid Empire, and the second episode covers the Sasanian Empire. Thus, they (mostly) skip over the Parthian Empire that was between these two great groups. (More about that empire later.) The first episode is roughly 53 minutes long, while the second episode is roughly 44 minutes long. Thus, this film is a little more than an hour and a half in all. It’s a reasonably good primer on the history of Ancient Persia. But its focus seems to be more archeological than historical. Its focus is on showing ancient ruins and reliefs, and what they tell us about the Ancient Persians. And I’m perfectly okay with this film being so low-budget. They make reasonably good use of maps, reconstructions, and other relevant images. They rely on two talking-head scholars, one of them speaking a language that I presume to be Farsi – the Iranian dialect of modern Persian. The other is an American guy from California, whose name suggests some Iranian ancestry of his own – something that proves to be quite helpful in this context. And the film’s credits show many Iranian names involved in the making of this film. But one feels that the viewer doesn’t get a great understanding of Persia’s military or political history, or even their cultural history. They don’t even really show where these great Persian events took place. It’s just an examination of the artifacts from the time (including their art), and what they tell us about the Ancient Persians themselves.

Darius the Great

John Tyler: The only US president to take part in the Confederate government

“I do solemnly swear [that] I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

– Text of the presidential oath of office (as taken by John Tyler), from the United States Constitution (written 1787), Article 2, Section 1, Paragraph 7

When the American Civil War began in 1861, the former president John Tyler initially supported a peace conference. When that failed, John Tyler sided with the Confederacy. He was a slaveholding Virginian, and would preside over the opening of the Virginia Secession Convention. John Tyler would even serve as a member of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States. Later on, he won election to the Confederate House of Representatives, but died before it was first assembled. Earlier in his career, John Tyler had been the tenth president of the United States. He had presided over this very same Union, from which he was now voting to secede. John Tyler is thus the only president who took an active part in the Confederate government. When he died, John Tyler’s coffin was draped with a Confederate flag – the only president ever laid to rest, under a different flag from that of the United States. But who was John Tyler? What is the legacy of his presidency? And where did this man come from?

John Tyler

The English Empire: The predecessor of the British Empire

In 1485, the last Plantagenet king of England fell in battle. His name was Richard the Third, and he was killed on the battleground of Bosworth Field. The winner of the battle was a young man named Henry, who then became “Henry the Seventh.” He was the first of the Tudor rulers of England. Henry had been on the Lancastrian side of the “Wars of the Roses.” But, when he married a Yorkist lady in 1486, the two factions from the civil war were finally united, since he was marrying someone from that faction. Her name was Elizabeth of York, and she would eventually give birth to a son in 1491. The boy was the future “Henry the Eighth,” who would eventually form the new “Church of England.” (More about that here.) But, at that time, the boy’s birth signaled a formal end to the “Wars of the Roses.” The following year was 1492, the year that Christopher Columbus was arriving in the Americas. Spain and Portugal would soon be creating massive overseas empires, in which they spread their longtime Catholic faith to distant shores. Henry the Seventh was still the king of England in 1496, when he commissioned John Cabot to sail to Asia. Cabot sailed in 1497, but instead landed on the coast of Newfoundland – in what is today Canada. They did not yet attempt to found a colony there. Cabot later made another voyage to the Americas, but did not return. To this day, no one knows what happened to Cabot’s ships.

A replica of John Cabot’s ship the Matthew

A review of “Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead” (audiobook)

Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead once collaborated on a book. It was a three-volume work entitled “Principia Mathematica” – not to be confused with the similarly-named work by Isaac Newton. Both Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead were mathematicians, as well as philosophers. They had a lot in common. But they would diverge significantly in their later years, in religion and politics as well as in philosophy. This audiobook covers both of them, although it may cover Bertrand Russell even more.

A review of “Skepticism and Religious Relativism” (audiobook)

I was expecting something very different from this audiobook. Specifically, I was expecting to get an overview of agnostics, atheists, and other like-minded groups (including “secularists”). And these groups are certainly covered therein. But it is really a treatment of religious skepticism, including within the religious community. This audiobook also talks about the different kinds of skepticism, and the responses to it from within the believing community. And it finally talks about religious relativism – the idea that all religions are just a “state of mind,” and that none of them is more valid than any other. (More about that later.)

William Henry Harrison: A great general and a 30-day president

In the United States, the most famous general in our War of 1812 was probably Andrew Jackson, who now appears on our $20 bill. But my vote for the greatest American general of the war would go to William Henry Harrison, whose name has never even been heard by most contemporary Americans. He was one of the great generals in American history, but he is remembered mainly for being just a 31-day president. As the Animaniacs would later joke, “William Harrison, how do you praise? That guy was dead in thirty days!” He is the shortest-serving president in American history, when you exclude all currently-serving presidents from this category. A president who has just been inaugurated would technically have even less time in office, but usually has a good chance of making it past day 31 in good shape. Mr. Harrison is often excluded from presidential rankings, because his brief tenure provides little data by which to judge his administration. But his pre-presidency life provides much greater insight into his character, and makes his story much more interesting than his anticlimactic death by natural causes in 1841. He was first and foremost a great soldier, who contributed much to the early American republic.

William Henry Harrison

William McKinley: President during the Spanish-American War

In 1898, President William McKinley sent American troops to fight in Cuba and the Philippines. This conflict is now known as the “Spanish-American War.” It lasted for only six months, but had a profound influence on world affairs. The war is now controversial – but at the time, it was viewed as a great success. But only three years after the war, William McKinley would be assassinated. In 1901, he was visiting Buffalo, New York, when he was shot by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Who was William McKinley? What was his legacy as president? Why was he struck down at the height of his glory? And where exactly did this unknown man come from? These are the questions that this post will try to answer.

William McKinley

A review of “Complexity & Chaos” (audiobook)

In 1993, the original “Jurassic Park” film brought chaos theory to a wide audience. In that movie, the character of Ian Malcolm predicts that the act of bringing back the dinosaurs for this park will cause “terrible instability” (to paraphrase what he said). Many in the film’s audience probably wondered why they made a mathematician into such a prominent character for this movie. But, if you listen to this audiobook, you will see why they did so. Chaos theory has much to tell us about how unpredictable the world is. Thus, there’s more to chaos theory than what you’ve heard in “Jurassic Park” – although I love that movie, and its summary of this field. This audiobook explores the subject, and tells us what this mysterious area is all about.

Top secret: The role of spying and code-cracking in the World Wars

In the 1970s, a British television network made a series called “The World at War,” possibly the most comprehensive television history ever made about World War II. But it contains not one word about Bletchley Park, the primary British codebreaking operation of World War II. The reason is very simple: In the 1970s, information about Bletchley Park was still top-secret, since releasing this information would have risked compromising current espionage efforts. Thus, the existence of Bletchley Park was still a closely guarded secret in the early 1970s. But, after enough time had gone by, it was no longer necessary to keep these things confidential. Thus, in the decades since “The World at War,” much of the information about the era’s espionage (including code-breaking) has been officially declassified. Thus, historians today have somewhat more information to work with, in talking about the state secrets of that time. For example, we now know things that were once top-secret, and we now know how some of that information changed hands – while other parts remained protected. This post will try to use some of the now-declassified information, along with more traditional information, to tell the stories of spies and code-crackers in both world wars – especially World War II. But, in order to achieve a true understanding of the Second World War, it may help to consider the prior events of the First World War. The “Great War,” as it is sometimes called, had some spy stories that are fascinating in their own right – rivaling any others in their human interest. These juicy stories may help to shed some light on the later espionage of the Second World War – the conflict that most continues to fascinate people today.

Rear of the rebuilt British “Bombe” computer, used at Bletchley Park in World War II England

How much was Latin America involved in the World Wars?

Anecdote about the European blockade of Venezuela, in the early twentieth century

In 1902, three European nations imposed a naval blockade on the Caribbean-and-Atlantic coastline of Venezuela. The three European nations were Great Britain, Germany, and Italy. All of these European countries would later be fighting both of the others at least once during the future world wars. But, at this time, these three European countries were united – due to some foreign debts that the Venezuelans were then refusing to pay. The Venezuelan president, Cipriano Castro, assumed that the United States would then invoke the Monroe Doctrine on Venezuela’s behalf. But the American president (which was Theodore Roosevelt) saw this doctrine as applying “only to European seizure of territory, rather than intervention per se” – as Wikipedia’s page on the crisis puts it. Thus, the blockade instead went unopposed, and managed to disable the navy of Venezuela. A compromise was eventually worked out in 1903, with the European blockade being maintained in Venezuelan waters throughout the negotiations. But it was one of a number of precursors to the Latin American involvement in the World Wars. Despite the American Monroe Doctrine, there had been much European colonization in the Americas during the nineteenth century. But the Venezuelan Crisis of the early twentieth century reminded Latin Americans of how connected with Europe they still were. And naval affairs in South America would soon lead to a naval arms race.

Blockade of Venezuelan ports, 1902

A review of Ken Burns’ “Benjamin Franklin” (PBS)

Long before I watched this film, I watched another PBS documentary about Benjamin Franklin. This earlier film was by Muffie Meyer, who has made a few documentaries for PBS. These included “Alexander Hamilton,” “Dolley Madison,” and “Liberty! The American Revolution.” The Muffie Meyer film is an excellent film in its own right, which is some three hours long. This Ken Burns film is even longer: some four hours long. But I had low expectations going into this Ken Burns film. That is, Ken Burns’ “Thomas Jefferson” was practically a hatchet job on Mr. Jefferson. Specifically, among other things, it had great emphasis on the hypocrisy of Jefferson’s slaveholding. I actually agree with a number of their criticisms of Jefferson, but still found their take on him to be excessively negative. Thus, I was expecting to get the same kind of treatment in this later film about Benjamin Franklin. And, at first, it seemed like this film would be in the same vein as Ken Burns’ “Thomas Jefferson.” But, surprisingly, I ended up liking “Benjamin Franklin” a lot. I may like Ken Burns’ “Benjamin Franklin” even better than Muffie Meyer’s “Benjamin Franklin.”

A review of Ken Burns’ “Muhammad Ali” (PBS)

He was born Cassius Clay, but joined the Nation of Islam and then changed his name

He was one of the greatest athletes of the twentieth century. He was born “Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.,” but would later consider that to be his “slave name.” The name had been given to him by his parents, both of whom were African Americans. But the world would instead remember him by another name: “Muhammad Ali,” an Arabic name meaning “blessed of God.” This second name came partially from the seventh-century founder of Islam – that is, after the Prophet Muhammad. But, much closer to home, he had joined the “Nation of Islam” in the United States. This was a Black Muslim group, known for its radical politics. He would be good friends with Malcolm X, but would later abandon his friendship with Malcolm, when Malcolm X later broke with the Nation of Islam. Malcolm disapproved of the more “personal” conduct of Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the American “Nation of Islam.” That is, Elijah Muhammad had impregnated seven of his secretaries. Angry members of the Nation of Islam later murdered Malcolm X as revenge in 1965. Only later in his life would Muhammad Ali express some regret over his earlier break with the controversial Malcolm X.

Cassius Clay and his trainer, 1960

Millard Fillmore: A moderate on slavery who pleased no one

In July 1850, President Zachary Taylor mysteriously died while still in office. Most seem to believe that his stomach disease was from natural causes, but there has long been a theory that it came from arsenic poisoning instead. This actually led to Mr. Taylor’s long-dead body being exhumed in 1991, nearly a century and a half after his death. The medical examiner failed to find any evidence of arsenic poisoning. Thus, most seem to believe that his stomach disease was indeed from natural causes, and that Millard Fillmore had no involvement in his death. There were open sewers in Washington, D.C. at that time, which caused an epidemic in the city. Nine of Mr. Taylor’s Cabinet officials were sick with the same disease as President Taylor. Thus, most believe that the poor sanitation led to Taylor’s food and drink being contaminated. As vice president, Millard Fillmore succeeded Zachary Taylor upon his death. And, fortunately for Mr. Fillmore, relatively few Americans suspected him of any involvement in his predecessor’s death. But Millard Fillmore would fail to be elected president in his own right, and only served for two-and-a-half years. Specifically, Fillmore finished out the term that he had inherited from Zachary Taylor. Fillmore would destroy the Whig political party, by enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Millard Fillmore