the rest is history ...

     The prospect of penning my thoughts on history and how it may – or may not – have a bearing on my literary endeavors creates some discomfort. But since history is my third great passion, after classical music and old movies (especially pre-Code and film noir), why not? Thus what follows is a stream-of-consciousness, ergo somewhat rambling, grab bag of pronouncements on the endlessly fascinating, sometimes frustrating, topic of history, with no particular overarching thesis or point of view (aside from my own), or otherwise ideological ax to grind.
     I’m not so presumptuous as to suggest that I write historical novels – can genre fiction ever qualify as such? But since my mysteries are set in the early Thirties and late Forties I feel the need to have at least a modicum of sensitivity to historical events and trends, just to add some spice, along with the concurrent authenticity bolstered by accuracy in things like slang, clothes, music and so on.
     As for my nonfiction writings, both print and online, I’ve flirted with history, usually in the form of book reviews on subjects either historical or that touch on history in some way, such as biographies. But truth be told, I’m not qualified to offer any profound insights into matters historical or historiographical. True, I technically possess an advanced degree in music history, but this is such a specialized field and for the most part steers clear of the likes of political and diplomatic history, the philosophy of history, and the various historiographic controversies. [1] Besides, degrees, even advanced degrees, especially advanced degrees, aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Completing a graduate degree program is not so much an accomplishment of intellect as it is one of persistence and determination, as well as a willingness to subordinate one’s more creative impulses and aesthetic flights of fancy in order to conform to academic protocol and tradition. But as the fellow said, I begin to digress.
     What I’d like to focus on here then isn’t so much how historical background creeps into my novels (which I actually cover elsewhere, both online and in print), but instead to offer my thoughts on the subject of history in and of itself. As mentioned above, studying history, strictly as an amateur mind you, is one of my favorite avocations when I get bored with writing. And I admit to a few parochialisms, among them Ancient Greece and Rome, Egypt, the Cold War, WW2, and the social and political, as opposed to the purely aesthetic, history of cinema. My basic approach and philosophy when studying history might be described as instinctively siding with underdogs, rebels, outsiders, in a word, those who challenge long-held, entrenched views (Shakespeare authorship question, anyone?). Or phrased another way, those who just plain see the world differently. I’m especially receptive to fresh or alternative, even offbeat and eccentric, approaches to orthodox history (provided said approaches can be rationally argued and supported by sound evidence and methods). Likewise I seek out topics, events or individuals that haven’t been so thoroughly covered already. If I must choose a label I’d call myself a contrarian, or better yet, skeptic. I favor these two appellations over the term ‘revisionist,’ which has taken on a bad odour [2], unfairly so in my opinion.
     However (and it’s a big however), I do have my limits. To wit, I’m not a fan of what might be called the conspiracy theory school of historical inquiry, which, alas, runs rampant on far too many blogs and other online sources, and yes, books too, that purport to go into history, and worse, politics. So many of these have a decidedly paranoid vibe to them, with a dearth of actual evidence to back up their breathless pronouncements. But the occasional nugget gets through, intelligently reasoned and presented, in unlikely places, that sheds new light on old stories. So best not to be too rigid in what to include versus what to discard in the historical quest.
     Aside: it’s often been said that historians have a leftist bias, but I’m not so sure. Any historian worth his salt will of course bring his own worldview, but will evaluate all evidence fairly and come to his conclusions accordingly, at least he should. In other words, he won’t cook the books or choose facts selectively. Even if we accept the notion that professional (read: academic) historians have a liberal bent, then we could also charge that most pop history sources have a decidedly right-wing slant [3]. Here I’m thinking of the ubiquitous usual suspects the ilk of the History Channel, Story, A&E, Wikipedia, the Hallmark Channel, the ‘liberal’ PBS, and, on balance, even the august Encyclopædia Britannica. And yes, I include the movies, especially the movies, when listing pop culture sources that have a rightist slant in their treatment of history [4]. To this group I might add the various print popular histories aimed at a mass audience. Somewhat ironically, these are frequently penned by professional academics. These tend to go over well trodden territory, rely on secondary sources, and take a narrative, storytelling approach, in the process generally reinforcing long congealed views that won't rankle the prospective audience (read: customers) too much.
      Here it’s only fair to offer an admission: I watch a goodly amount of television pop history (but don't tell anyone). And in defense of pop history, one of its virtues is that it tells a narrative with a minimum of fat: that is, it keeps the story moving, a virtue we can't always claim for academic history, or real life, for that matter. Also in its favor is that a viewer may be inspired to seek out further, meatier treatments of a historical subject. And to be sure some pop history venues at least make an attempt at academic sheen with various, well-credentialed talking heads flitting in and out in the basic narrative [5]. To all these musings I would add my own two cents that real history is not so much the search for the details of what happened (though, as in law [and politics], it's not always easy to agree on basic facts), but rather the how and the why of what happened, and as a consequence the influence of historical events on what came after.
     Another interesting take is Alex Rosenberg’s (relatively) recent book How History Gets Things Wrong: the Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories, (MIT Press 2018). Rosenberg’s thesis is that the practice of interpreting history through narrative stories often results in bogus readings of the past due to our brain's preference for simple narratives over complex realities. Rosenberg bases his theory on evidence from three scientific disciplines: evolutionary anthropology, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology.
    In Rosenberg’s calculus, it’s when history considers data and analysis from other disciplines that we get a more definitive historical picture. Books like Kyle Harper’s The Fate of Rome and Walter Scheidel’s The Science of Roman History might be cited as examples of what other, somewhat related, fields can contribute to the historical gestalt. Rosenberg seems to be calling out for a more evidence-based, i.e. purely objective, purely scientific, and less narrative, approach to the study of history.
     As for my own reaction, some purely anecdotal evidence suggests that Rosenberg may actually be onto something. As opined elsewhere in these pages, my impatience with the, if you will, real life approach to storytelling – examples being those ‘you are there’ true crime police procedurals and live broadcasts of actual trials – is that their chaotic, arbitrary unfolding of events is the actual antithesis of the comforting, predictable flow of stories. Ergo it’s stories that we like. Since stories come after the fact, they provide a reassurance and explanation, a making sense of things that don’t make sense when they happen, because they are just experienced.
     Getting back to pop vs. academic history, sometimes historians get it just right and strike a fine balance between the esoteric and the popular. Such a source that deftly combines the academic with the popular, leaning academic, is the Great Courses DVDs and CDs, which at last count numbered some 280-odd lectures on history.
       Aside: perhaps this is a good place to address the phenomenon known as spin, which online sources tend to innocuously define as the attempt to control communication and opinion through selectively emphasizing facts and evidence. Such a definition, while abstractly correct, doesn't go into the deceptive – and destructive – aspects of spin as practiced in our world today by politicos and really anyone involved in the business of public relations. And with no disrespect to historians, it’s not so much of a stretch to opine that all history is spin, since historians, both professional and otherwise, present a certain interpretation of events, however couched in academic, arcane language, that by implication implores the reader to accept said point of view [6]. 
     In one of my online posts elsewhere I wrote on the seeming all-pervasiveness of spin these days. I asked: why so much spin in our current world? Was it always this way? I'm not sure I answered the questions satisfactorily, if at all. I also suggested that spin's evil sibling is advertising, but with regard to my views on advertising, as the man said don't get me started. Ditto for propaganda, probably the most egregious variant of spin. Spin is of course a form of disinformation, sometimes outright misinformation, and upon further reflection I now suggest the reason we see, and hear, so much spin these days is stunningly obvious: in a digital and media saturated 24/7 world there are simply more messages bombarding us, and a good portion, probably a majority of said messages, are spin or something like spin. Case in point: a good percentage of the messages I receive each day, in print, online, on tv, or otherwise, are without fail appeals to send money for such-and-such good cause, purchase life insurance, sign up for a credit card, or buy a product that will make me forever happy. In all cases the motivation is to separate me from my money.
     Regarding today's endless news cycle, they say journalism, be it print or television, is history in the raw. Ergo spin is really manufactured history, sometimes expressed as massaged and manufactured journalism in the raw. To be sure, journalism itself, even with the best of intentions, can be disinformation. Said disinformation may well be unintentional, arising due to relatively benign factors such as mistakes or on-the-spot speculation without all the facts in an attempt to be the first to scoop a story. Still, in our murky world of mass messaging and the mind-numbing volume of images and messages, including those, especially those, manufactured by the ever looming, seemingly all-pervasive AI, it’s becoming increasing difficult to tell exactly where ‘news’ (read: reality) ends and spin/propaganda begins.  
     In the case of, say, a self-penned biography, we must also admit the uncomfortable reality that a memoir is, to a large extent, spin, of the best, or worst, kind, depending upon one's point of view: memoir is by necessity selective and as such usually, though not always, self-flattering. Anyhow I propose now that spin has been around forever, just as malicious and mendacious in the past as today, maybe more so. It's just a matter of volume – both literally and figuratively – in our all-too-modern world.
     But getting back to history, all historians, be they purveyors of spin or no, are to some extent subjective and biased. In a perfect world they would be scrupulously objective and even-handed, but that would be like saying humans should be without likes and dislikes, and – horrors! – opinions [7]. So maybe it all comes out in the wash with the pop and academic sides cancelling each other out. But it still leaves us with the discomforting reality that, as has been pointed out, what we call ‘history’ is ultimately what the historian, whatever his motivations or ideological bent, chooses to point out.
 
    1 An exception here might be Wagner, not necessarily because he’s the most written about composer of all time. Then again, maybe it’s because he’s the most written about composer of all time. But more to the point, his life and work, along with writings about him, ergo his influence, intersect so many things historical. Thus he needs to be noted as an anomaly. This is true to form: Richard Wagner was the exception rather than the rule in so many things.
     While talking about Wagner we might mention the contentious War of the Romantics of the mid and latter Nineteenth Century, waged largely in print sources, by musicians, critics and enthusiasts. The conflict pitted the progressive forces represented by composers of the New German School – Liszt and Wagner in particular – against the Viennese based, conservative faction who chose Brahms as their champion. A vicious battle it was, conducted publicly. As they usually do, in artistic matters anyway, the progressives eventually won. Whatever the outcome, it remains that the imbroglio was not historiographic but rather philosophic and aesthetic.
   2 In a purely abstract sense, all history can be considered revisionist, and rightly so: the historian’s job is to examine conventional interpretations of history, consider new evidence, or interpret facts and events in a new light, applying more recent methodologies and fresh perspectives.
    In his excellent book The Ever-Changing Past: Why All History is Revisionist History (Yale Univ. Press, 2021), author James Banner makes that very point. He demonstrates why historical knowledge is unlikely ever to be absolute, unchallenged and unchanging, and why history as a branch of knowledge is both a science and an art.
     Then there's the most extreme form of revisionism, actually not revisionism at all, but negation, namely the wholesale erasure of the past. This is usually done by extreme authoritarian states or groups that desire to promulgate a certain nationalist, militarist, corporate or racialist point of view, and thus have to rid themselves of inconvenient examinations of the past. National governments are the most egregious practitioners but it occurs elsewhere, more recently in corporations, news media, school boards, universities, public debate, and print publications. An antidote for the moment it would seem – both blessing and curse, some might say – is the online digital culture that gives expression to more diverse, admittedly sometimes extreme, unpleasantly so, views. Author Jason Stanley gives an excellent overview of erasing the past in his recent book Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.
   3 Here I define ‘right-wing’ to broadly include sources which reinforce orthodox interpretations of history, making them, more or less by definition, cautious and uncontroversial by nature, thus the inclusion of the likes of Britannica and Wikipedia. As for the much-maligned, supposedly left-leaning PBS and NPR, I don't see it myself. Whatever their content, which purports to be middle of the road and neutral, the tone of their broadcasts – civil, polite, intellectualized – is by and large conservative. Yes, programs like Democracy Now, Firing Line, America Reframed, Fresh Air, and Open Mind must be noted as exceptions, but these are islands of nourishment and spice in a sea of bland diet.
     Aside: when I talk about historians in above comments I use the masculine 'he' or 'his' simply for clarification’s sake, not out of sexism or any attempt to suggest that women can't be good historians. Reactionary or no, for me it just makes a sentence or idea flow better to use 'he' rather than the clumsy yet more politically correct 'he/she'.   
    4 When I refer to ‘the movies,’ I’m thinking primarily of films that fall under the rubric Hollywood, i.e. American produced, (mostly) for American audiences. In contrast, any number of other national cinematic traditions might well claim a leftist, or more equivocal, vibe. Be that as it may, the movies, especially those of the American brand, along with its evil sibling television, arguably have been the world’s dominant cultural and aesthetic force for at least a century, and as such have exerted an incalculable influence on the popular perception of what constitutes ‘history.’
    5 As Sarah Maza points out more eloquently and succinctly than present writer: "History is not only the ultimate hybrid field, borrowing its languages and methods from both the social sciences and the humanities; it is also the discipline that most frequently crosses over from the academic world into the public sphere . . . unlike sociology, history has its own television channel, unlike economics, its own book club." (Thinking About History, Univ. of Chicago Press, 2017, p4).
    6 Even the most hard-headed of chroniclers can make a stumble. Witness the very public case of the redoubtable British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper and the infamous 'Hitler Diaries.' A renowned Hitler expert and usually thought of as a conservative sort, Trevor-Roper examined the diaries and famously pronounced them genuine, based on preliminary, and dubious, evidence and opinion. That Trevor-Roper later recanted his initial assessment was largely lost in the media frenzy. Translation: the damage was done. The diaries were eventually revealed to be an obvious forgery, and Trevor-Roper's reputation was, to a large extent, irretrievably tarnished. The conventional wisdom is that the great man was victim of conflict of interest, being as he was a director of the prestigious Times of London, which had bought the rights to the diaries (for a hefty price). My own take is that, for his own private reasons, Trevor-Roper so wanted the diaries to be genuine that he hastily gave his imprimatur, a classic case of a historian getting emotionally too close to an issue. Thus his mistake was due more to psychological and emotional factors than ideological bias.
     Trevor-Roper's case is a cautionary tale on the need to, as much as possible, steer clear of emotional involvement with a subject. Easier said than done, you might say. One could opine that all historical topics are emotional, depending on whom you're talking to, what your audience is, and what nationalistic, ideological, or financial (especially financial) interests might be involved. When the topic is an emotional, or controversial one, there's the tendency to have a disproportionate emphasis on convenient material - to choose facts and 'evidence' selectively - that support a particular spin or thesis. From a purely American perspective, some obvious choices for treat-with-caution might be the genocide of Native Americans, the Civil Rights Movement, women's suffrage, gay and lesbian rights, the Vietnam War, the JFK assassination, and more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic.  
     7 If we accept this thesis – that all history is opinion, ergo spin – can there ever be anything as true history, or objective history? A big question, both philosophical and otherwise, which greater minds than mine have written on at length, and which your humble servant really isn’t qualified to weigh in on, thus I’ll leave it there.

Egyptissimo

    Brier, Bob. Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
    Brier, Bob. The History of Ancient Egypt [DVDs]. Chantilly, VA, Teaching Co., [2003]. Series: The Great Courses. 8 discs and 4 course guidebooks.
    Cooney, Kara. When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt. Washington, D.C., National Geographic, 2018.
    Cormack, Ralph. Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring '20s, New York, Norton, 2021.
    Goldman Michal, director. Nasser's Republic: The Making of Modern Egypt (DVD). Narration by Hiam Abbass. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Icarus Films Home Video, 2016. Includes bonus features: director’s commentary; bonus clip; 16-page booklet.
    Olson, Lynne, Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist who saved Egypt's Ancient Temples from Destruction, New York, Random House, 2023.
    Snape, Steven. Ancient Egypt: The Definitive Visual History, DK, 2021.
    Treasures of Egypt: A Legacy in Photographs from the Pyramids to Cleopatra; Ann R. Williams, general editor, Washington, D.C., National Geographic, 2022.

     
    Being the centenary of Howard Carter’s famous discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb, 2022 inspired renewed interest in and coverage of all things Egyptian. But it was Carter’s sensational find on 4 November 1922 (and the subsequent lurid tales of an ancient curse) that generated a tidal wave of fascination for Eygyptiana that manifested itself in Egypt-influenced clothes, architecture, interior design, jewelry, and heaven knows what else, probably most infamously in the various mummy novels and movies. Thus we might assume the craze for all things Egyptian began in the early Twenties. No such thing. Truth be told, the phenomenon sometimes called Egyptomania had been around a long time, a very long time, centuries actually, even millennia. As just one example the Romans and Greeks of antiquity had a fascination with, even reverence for, Egyptian culture. To be sure, Egyptophilia (the other, possibly less pejorative, term) was given a bit of a jump start in 1798-99 with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and the attendant scientific and archaeological discoveries, most significant being the Rosetta Stone and its eventual deciphering by Jean-Francois Champollion. Thus, the ‘modern’ era of Egyptomania began around 1800 and really kicked into high gear with the discovery of Tut’s tomb in 1922, and continues in various guises to this day.
    While many people are interested in the legitimate history of Ancient Egypt, probably many more folks (myself included) are fascinated by the Egypt of myth, legend, pseudohistory and pop culture. And this is not necessarily a bad thing. But more to the point, why Egypt? And not, say, the Incas in Peru, or the Maya of Central America and Mexico, or the ancient Chinese civilizations, or the Khmer Empire in Southeast Asia, they of the massive temple complex at Angkor. Or … well, you get the idea. In some mysterious way we have a thing for Ancient Egypt that we don’t have with other ancient cultures. As for me, it’s difficult to say exactly but it must have something to do with how long the civilization lasted, how far away it is in time, its exotic yet familiar design qualities, and, not least, the massive scale of the structures. And yes, I admit that I enjoy all the mummy movies – each is entertaining in its own way – but my favorite is the first, classic, darkest and probably most archaeologically accurate version, The Mummy (1932) with Boris Karloff.
     Mummy movies aside, Egypt’s tentacles reach far and wide, sometimes appearing in unlikely venues: in the 1933 original King Kong a member of the expedition crew opines that the massive wall built to keep Kong in looks like it could be Egyptian. Movie auteur Carl Denham then goes him one better by invoking Angkor (“nobody knows who built it”). Then there are other, in-your-face, reminders like the Luxor Hotel in – where else? – Las Vegas. More edifying is the fact that Sigmund Freud was an inveterate collector of Egyptian artifacts, art, and books on ancient Egypt. It’s not too far off the mark to think that Freud saw a connect between archaeology and psychoanalysis. Others have noted that writers and readers of mystery novels are also fans of ancient archaeology. In any case these examples have at their center an uncovering, a gradual revealing of what was hitherto buried, often with a surprise or twist ending.
    In any event the titles listed above are a grab bag with no discernable focus other than most are of (relatively) recent vintage and each in its own way, with varying degrees of success, represents an attempt to capture the mystery and mystique of all things Egyptian.
    I’m not qualified to judge how ‘definitive’ Steven Snape’s coffee table romp through ancient Egyptian history and culture is, but judged on its own merits Ancient Egypt: The Definitive Visual History is a mostly impressive achievement and has the usual high gloss qualities one expects from a DK production. The thorough index and intensely detailed acknowledgments section in particular add a certain academic heft to the mix. However – and it’s a near deal-breaking however – there’s no footnotes or even a token reading list, much less a true bibliography. An occasional title is tossed out randomly but we find nothing even close to a systematic listing of sources. But given that the rest of the book is so good, we can, if not exactly forgive the omission, appreciate the book’s other, not inconsiderable, qualities, best of which are the many sumptuous illustrations.
    Published during the Tut centenary of 2022, National Geographic’s Treasures of Egypt might be seen as the famous society’s coffee table answer to DK’s sumptuously extravagant volume. As to be expected the large tome is dominated by historical and current photos that present Egypt in all is splendiferous and mysterious glory. The book will hold few surprises for specialists or even well-informed amateurs, but the illustrations are something to behold. Alas, like Ancient Egypt: The Definitive Visual History, there’s no reading list.
    I’ve seen several of the Great Courses lectures on DVD and listened to a few on CD, and Bob Brier’s DVD traversal, The History of Ancient Egypt, is my all things considered choice as the best, or at least my favorite. In an engaging style that walks a fine line between audience-friendly and esoteric, he gives us a near perfect introduction to the mysteries of Egypt for the novice enthusiast or well informed amateur, and he even provides enough minutiae and specialized information to appeal to the serious student or specialist. There is never a sense of dumbing down the material, and this marvelous perusal once again reminds us of the cultural treasure that the Great Courses series is, either in their CD or DVD incarnations, with the caveat that even they have the occasional misfire, i.e. a boring presenter. But not this one. Brier’s infectious enthusiasm shines through and as a presenter he’s smooth and reasonably entertaining. In any case his chronologic approach with selected side trips to mummification, archaeological digs, and mummy movies maintains a remarkable consistency throughout the 48 lectures.
    Brier’s book Egyptomania might be seen as an unofficial condensed version, a kind of pop history take on his Great Courses lecture. Especially noteworthy are the many illustrations: posters, movie stills, pottery, toiletries, cigarettes, cigarette cases, jewelry, et al. There’s exceptionally strong coverage, perhaps too strong (i.e. to the de-emphasis of other, worthy subjects), on the removal and transportation of obelisks. Despite this imbalance, Brier’s book may be recommended as an entertaining breeze though one man’s obsession with Egyptiana, as well as an accessible introduction to the topic. Along with the present book, the reader may also be interested in checking out Joyce Tyldesley’s Tutankhamen: The Search for an Egyptian King and Ronald H. Fritze, Egyptomania: A History of Fascination, Obsession and Fantasy, both of which offer similar if meatier treatments of the subject.
    As for Kara Cooney’s When Women Ruled the World, none of the six women profiled actually ruled the world, but as is revealed in the book’s subtitle, only Egypt. And even given Egypt’s primacy as the dominant culture of the era, there were lots of other civilizations around, each with its own traditions and, invariably male, rulers. At any rate When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt focuses on the six women who ruled as absolute monarchs of Egypt: the better-known figures of Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Cleopatra, and the much less familiar Merneith, Neferusobek, and Tawosret. Of the lesser known rulers, Merneith is perhaps the most interesting: her reign goes all the way back to the early mists of history, ca. 3,000 BCE.
    Cooney’s basic thesis is that women rulers in ancient Egypt were not the normal way of business but that they usually came into power, and often held it, in periods of national stress. Less persuasive perhaps are Cooney’s frequent conclusions regarding these six queens and today’s female rulers and women leaders generally. The book’s academic gloss includes map, bibliography, illustrations, chronology, and detailed footnotes. See also Cooney’s informative DVD, Ancient Female Rulers: The Women Who Ruled the World (3500 Years Ago), Dreamscape Media, 2021, which covers much the same territory in somewhat more abbreviated fashion.
     With Robert Cormack’s Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring '20s, we jump forward a couple of millennia (at least), and I confess much of my enjoyment of the book is due to the narrative’s semi-gossipy style as Cormack recalls the many colorful personalities, both substantial and more peripheral, that flit in and out of the narrative.
     While Midnight in Cairo is ostensibly a breezy examination of the history of entertainment in Egypt, focusing on the nightlife of the 1920s & ‘30s, specifically the energetic music, theater, film, and cabaret scenes, all is skillfully filtered through the political and social backdrop of Egypt in the first half of the Twentieth Century. In this historically conservative culture, the Twenties and Thirties in Egypt were more a (near)anything-goes time in performance and the arts, not unlike the Weimar era in Germany at the same time. And the independence of women entertainers paralleled the struggle for women’s rights: opportunities for women were greater and indeed the women asserted themselves. As the book progresses we have more emphasis on the political scene and less on the entertainment industry. As mentioned above, numerous picaresque characters spice the narrative in starring or supporting roles, but for me hors concours go to the irrepressible belly dancing diva Tahiya Carioca in all her over-the-top glory. But there was more to the woman than just being an entertainer: she was something of a feminist activist and supported numerous left-wing causes [1]. In this historically less-than-progressive society, she was perhaps the highest exemplar of the remarkable women profiled in the book during a time when there was freedom and passionate expression in the arts, entertainment, and even political arenas. It all coalesced into a nightlife scene that’s today, alas, largely lost to history.
     The remarkable documentary Nasser’s Republic overlaps much of the era of Midnight in Cairo, and indeed the two cover some of the same issues (for example, Egypt’s road to modernity). But there the similarity ends. Told largely by way of rare archival footage, Nasser’s Republic is a thoughtful, realpolitik examination of Nasser’s near two decades rule as President of Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s. The documentary is also, to a lesser extent, a profile of the man himself.
     As the narrative makes clear, for all his accomplishments in making Egypt a modern nation, and his unflagging popularity with the masses, Nasser never really achieved his stated goal of making Egypt a legitimate democracy. Indeed his methods were decidedly authoritarian. Even so, Nasser comes off as one who ruled more by charisma than by attention to abstract issues and bureaucratic detail. The broad brushstroke narrative rushes through the 1960s and especially the Six-Day War, instead focusing on the 1950s and, a few years later, the building of the Aswam Dam. The best part perhaps is the interview footage with poets, journalists, historians, Nasser associates, and especially Nasser’s daughter, all of which humanizes Nasser and gives texture to the story. While Nasser’s Republic is a mostly sympathetic view of its subject, on balance, it’s an even-handed account, and highly recommended.
     Lynne Olson’s fascinating Empress of the Nile gives full due to a major if somewhat low-profile figure in Egyptology, Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, and in particular her heroic efforts to preserve ancient Egyptian monuments and artifacts in danger of being destroyed in the building of the massive Aswan Dam in the 1960s. There’s also substantial coverage of Desroches-Noblecourt’s acitivites in occupied Paris during World War II, which included work for the Resistance. The narrative also recounts Jackie Kennedy’s efforts as a rescuer of cultural artifacts, which included her own, not inconsiderable, efforts in persuading the Kennedy administration to financially support the Egyptian artifacts rescue project. Empress is a an engaging, reader-friendly read. Recommended.

   [1] Tahiya Carioca was known for her outspoken views and volcanic personality. One of the more entertaining anecdotes is the story of when she threw her shoe at Susan Hayward at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival in retaliation for Hayward's insulting comments about Arabs. 

the good war that never ends

    Collingham, E. M. (Elizabeth M.)  The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food. New York, Penguin, 2012.
     Kempowski, Walter. Swansong 1945: A Collective Diary of the Last Days of the Third Reich. Translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside. Foreword by Alan Bance. New York, Norton, 2015. [Originally published in Great Britain by Granta Books, 2014 as Swansong 1945: A Collective Diary from Hitler's Last Birthday to VE Day.] "Original German edition first published in 2005. Walter Kempowski: Das Echolot. Abgesang '45 Ein kollekitives Tagebuch. Copyright © 2005 by Albrecht Knaus Verlag, Munich."
     McConahay , Mary Jo. The Tango War: The Struggle for the Hearts, Minds and Riches of Latin America during World War II. New York, St. Martin’s 2018.
     McMeekin, Sean. Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II. New York, Basic Books, 2021.
     Schmid, Walter. A German POW in New Mexico. Translated by Richard Rundell; edited by Wolfgang T. Schlauch. Albuquerque, NM, University of New Mexico Press, 2005. [Published in cooperation with the Historical Society of New Mexico]. [First published in Germany in 2000 under the title Einer unter Vielen: ein Bericht über Kriegseinsatz in Tunesien und Gefangenschaft in Amerika und England 1942-1947 (W. Schmid [Libri Books on Demand], Hamburg, [Norderstedt], 2000)].
     Selby, Scott Andrew. A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin: The Chilling True Story of the S-Bahn Murderer. New York, Berkley Books, 2014.

    For professional historians as well as amateur enthusiasts (like myself), World War II is a source of never ending fascination and discovery, as is witnessed by the continuing deluge from the major publishing houses, small presses, and do-it yourselfers: every year new information is discovered or a new take on the events surges forth.
    As for myself, I enjoy the offbeat and even eccentric approaches to the conflict: studies that consider a specialized aspect or offer a different perspective, in contrast to the Allied-centric narrative we’re presented by pop culture venues like the History Channel, Story, A&E, Hollywood, as well as the many print popular histories. Thus the six, relatively recent, entries considered here, presenting as they do aspects of the war that haven’t been covered so thoroughly, are especially welcome.
   Selby’s account of a serial murderer in Nazi Berlin at the height of the war, and Schmid’s POW memoir, while the slightest entries, are in their different ways the most remarkable, certainly the most novel, of the six volumes considered herein. McMeekin’s hefty Stalin tome, even with its revisionist vibe, is the most conventional in content and treatment, and moreover has considerable academic sheen. Collingham's analysis of food and the war similarly takes the familiar historical approach. The two remaining titles, Tango War and Swansong 1945, fall somewhere in-between.
    Kempowskli’s volume, however, is practically sui generis and thus deserves primacy as it is indeed a unique historical document. Swansong delivers the goods primo as it portrays the multi-dimensional, collage-like nature of the war as experienced by a wide swath of individuals. Swansong is the final entry of Kempowski’s ten-volume, 7,000-page opus maximus, Sonar: A Collective Journal (1993-2005). For two decades Kempowski collected newspaper articles, diaries, letters, memoirs and documents written by people on all sides of the fighting and from every level of experience and life during World War II. Swansong 1945 covers the final conflagration and ultimate end of Nazi Germany and the war in Europe. It covers four fateful days in Spring 1945: Hitler's birthday on April 20, American and Soviet troops meeting at the Elbe on April 25, Hitler's suicide on April 30, and finally the German surrender on May 8. In the Sources section the vast majority of the cites are of German texts, giving a primary source verisimilitude to the mix.
    The various persons quoted run the gamut from heads of state to civilians, prisoners-of-war, ordinary soldiers, refugees, and artists and writers caught up in the conflict. Indeed for some of us, such first-person historical accounts of the type we get in Swansong are the best barometers for what really happened, even if in some cases the memories must be treated with care. Still, one is tempted to invoke the cliché compulsively readable, because this book is exactly that. It’s tough to put down because there’s something compelling on every page.
    Especially fascinating to read is Joseph Goebbels’s unintentionally ironic entry from 20 April (perhaps not so coincidentally Hitler’s birthday), in which he poetically – and presciently – waxes on about a newer, brighter Europe that will emerge after the war. Just such a Europe did emerge, but perhaps not in the way Dr. Goebbels envisioned. Then there’s an SS officer recalling a dinner at the fashionable Hotel Adlon in Berlin on April 20, where “waiters in tuxedos and maîtres d’ in tailcoats went on solemnly and unflappably serving purple pieces of kohlrabi on the silver trays meant for better days.” And there are the chilling first-hand accounts of the activities at the Führerbunker during the last days of the war.
      One quibble: I would have preferred some photographs of the individuals. If that wasn’t possible then a few photos of the various diaries, newspaper clippings, letters, notebooks, etc.. to give a flavor of the originals. But a quibble is only a quibble. Swansong 1945 is a work of signal import and is highly recommended to all serious students of WW2.
     Sean McMeekin’s ponderous Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II is not so much a new history – most of the chronologies and events discussed have been covered at length elsewhere – as it is a new emphasis and interpretation, actually more of individuals than events themselves. Most historical accounts of WW2 describe it as Hitler’s war and make Hitler the central protagonist and ultimate villain in the conflict. McMeekin, however, argues that the war that emerged in Europe in August 1939 was the one Stalin wanted, not Hitler, also that the Pacific War was due at least in part to Stalin’s maneuverings and schemings. McMeekin covers in some detail the massive aid in materiel offered to the Soviets by the United States. Apparently egged on by “Soviet assets” in his orbit, President Roosevelt went out of his way to appease the Soviet dictator, perhaps too much so. If Roosevelt didn’t exactly give away the store, he gave way a lot. The ultimate result was that Stalin emerged as the major beneficiary of the war, and that the Soviet Union was in a much stronger position, albeit at horrific cost, at the war’s conclusion than when the war started.
     McMeekin doesn’t go so far as to overtly endorse the controversial Suvorov theory that Stalin was planning a massive attack against the West in 1941 or 1942, and that Hitler simply beat him to the punch by attacking the Soviet Union first, a classic case of a preventive, rather than preemptive, assault [1]. But if one reads carefully between the lines we can see at least a certain sympathy for and receptivity to this revisionist view. That McMeekin had access to documents in Russian archives and reads Russian adds strength to his arguments, be they controversial or conventional. Stalin’s War includes index, photos, and 120 pages of notes and bibliography.
     Similarly Mary Jo McConahay’s The Tango War, if not quite revisionist history, refreshingly takes on an aspect of WW2 that’s largely ignored in conventional histories, that is, the struggle between the U.S. and Germany for allegiances – and resources – in Latin America during World War II. Indeed McConahay’s opus may well be the first popular survey of what was going on South-of-Border during WW2, and for the most part the book succeeds admirably.
     McConahay’s approach is journalistic rather than purely historical, and she concentrates on the human element in the form of the wide array of colorful, often shady characters on both sides of the conflict. Perhaps most entertaining are the descriptions of the Good Neighbor efforts by the Office of Inter-American Affairs, which sent not-so-secret weapons – Hollywood celebrities like Errol Flynn, Orson Welles and the Walt Disney troupe – south to garner good will for the American cause. In the case of Welles and Disney, some legitimate cinematic products resulted, specifically Welles’s ill-fated documentary It’s All True and the Disney films Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. On the other hand, the shameful, forced internment in the U.S. of "dangerous" individuals being extended to Central and South America was one of the more cringeworthy episodes recounted in the book, especially so since some of the internees were exchanged for American prisoners-of-war. Likewise compelling is the chapter on espionage activities. There’s also a section on the infamous ‘ratlines,’ the escape routes that helped Nazi fugitives escape to South America.
     In the final chapter McConahay discusses the sinister parallels between European fascists of World War II and Latin American dictators of the 1970s and ’80s, many of whom were unrepentant fans of Mussolini and Hitler. These regimes had the sometimes public, sometimes covert, backing of Washington, so long as they were anti-Communist and friendly toward American economic interests. A mild weakness of Tango War is that McConahay eschews the chronologic for the topical, and as a result there’s some jumping around in the narrative. On balance, however, a good read, also replete with lots of photos. Tango War is a long overdue examination of a little-known aspect of the war.
     Scott Andrew Selby’s A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin is more noteworthy for the book’s subject matter than its treatment or style. For all that there’s plenty of works in English on Germany’s war effort, both military and civilian alike, little has been written on crime and criminals in the Third Reich amongst ordinary civilians, much less about serial murderers. And as has been pointed out, it’s a concept awash in contradiction: that such a regime specializing in state sponsored mass murder would spend so many resources tracking down a lone killer of a few women is difficult to understand. Indeed the dynamic is not unlike that depicted so provocatively in Hans Helmutt Kirst’s novel Night of the Generals, later adapted into a popular film, which told the story of a Polish prostitute murdered in 1942 by a high ranking German general, and of a certain Major Grau’s subsequent quest to track down the culprit. One can’t help recalling Grau’s maxim, ‘let us say what is admirable on the large scale is monstrous on the small. Since we must give medals to mass murderers, why not give justice to the small entrepreneur.’
     Serial Killer covers the case of Paul Ogorzow, the S-Bahn Killer. He had a family, a job with the railroad, and was a member of the Nazi Party. Since Ogorzow worked on the railway he found that the air raid blackouts at night provided good cover for him to do his deeds. Ogorzow murdered eight women total, attempted to murder six others, and assaulted many others. Wilhelm Lüdtke, head of the Berlin police’s serious crimes division, emerges as the story’s hero as he was tasked to hunt down the monster in the midst, and eventually he did. Lüdtke had the, albeit discreet, support of the likes of Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels, who “wanted to project an image of Nazi Germany as a place free from such problems as the predations of a serial killer.” Lüdtke’s rather florid afterlife following the war is covered in some detail in the epilogue. In addition to his other activities, Lüdtke worked as an asset for the CIA in the 1950s.
     Ogorzow was convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed – by guillotine – two days later. The book offers plenty of detail about the S-Bahn and investigative techniques of the German police, but little on the psychology of the protagonist. Thus the story that emerges is rather dry. For those of us accustomed to the backgrounds and especially psychology of serial killers, we sense something is lacking.
     The case was such a sensation that a series of crime novels emerged, most prominently Death Rode the Train (Der Tod fuhr im Zug). Its author was Wilhelm Ihde, writing under the name Axel Alt, and the killer’s name was changed to ‘Omanzow,’ but the fiction didn’t fool anybody, and the book was a big seller in Germany during the war. An even more bizarre detail is that Ogorzow’s widow was charged a fee for the use of the guillotine during the execution. Serial Killer includes a detailed S-Bahn map as well as photos of S-Bahn carriages, stations and towers.
     Walter Schmid’s A German POW in New Mexico offers a different take on the war experience. There are any number of WW2 personal narratives out there, written by those on all sides of the conflict, among them quite a few prisoner-of-war memoirs. Most of these are from the Allied point of view, but there aren’t many accounts of the German POW experience, written by a German, published in English, no less. In fact, A German POW is the only one I know of, though indeed there could be others.
     Walter Schmid was a member of Rommel's Afrika Korps and had fought only five months before he was captured in Tunisia. Schmid was one of 380,000 German POWs sent to prison camps in the United States. He was first sent to Oklahoma and soon transferred to New Mexico in July 1944. Schmid worked in southern New Mexico near Las Cruces as a farm laborer. His primary duties were picking cotton and harvesting melons. A German POW in New Mexico is based on his diary and the letters he sent home to his German girlfriend, whom he later married. Schmid's memoir was published in Germany in 2000, and the abbreviated English version that’s A German POW in New Mexico benefits from the translation of Richard Rundell. Special mention must also be made of editor Wolfgang Schlauch’s introduction, as well as his commentary interspersed throughout. Includes vintage photos, bibliography and appendixes.
     Collingham's hefty opus, Taste of War, was an eye opener for me in many ways. Even as a (admittedly amateur) WW2 buff, truth be told I never thought much about the importance of food production and delivery in the context of the conflict. There have been many books on the personalities, battles and strategy of the war, but the present tome may well be the first (more or less) scholarly treatment of how something so basic as the supply of food and the feeding of soldiers (and civilians) was central to the prosecution of the total war that was World War II. Includes photos, maps, extensive notes and bibliography. Much recommended.  

   [1] Suvorov, Viktor.The Chief Culprit: Stalin's Grand Design to Start World War II. Annapolios, Md., Naval Institute Press 2008.

Tricky, the Dragon Lady, the gumshoe and the shrink

  Graff, Garrett M. Watergate: A New History. Simon & Schuster, 2021.
  O’Donnell, Lawrence. Playing with Fire: the 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics. Penguin, 2017.
  Robb, David L. The Gumshoe and the Shrink: Guenther Reinhardt, Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker, and the Secret History of the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon Election. [includes: appendix, Reinhardt’s confidential report on Dr. Hutschnecker]. Santa Monica Press, 2012.

     Confession: somewhat reluctantly I admit to be of sufficient certain years to remember the goings on during the Watergate Affair. With more than casual interest I followed the always fluid developments. Glued to my television, I reveled in a bespectacled John Dean as he spoke of a cancer on the office of the president; read somewhere that Martha Mitchell opined that rumors to the effect that she’d been confined to a mental hospital were “… as crazy as can be”; and remember a news item that let us know Gordon Liddy saluted someone (McCord?) when he walked into the courtroom. I’m even old enough to remember the rancorous – even by today’s standards – 1968 presidential campaign, and even recall, though just barely, and hazily, the 1960 campaign, my introduction to electoral politics.
     Thus my personal association with the trifecta of books cited above and the eras they so vividly capture. I actually did some time (the phrase is not coincidental) volunteering for one of the sides in the 1968 presidential contest (I’ll not divulge which side), but haven’t been much of an activist since. In any event, as of the writing of this post, the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in is upon us, give or take a few weeks, and a think piece on the break-in and -like events of the era, focusing on three books that caught my attention, seems apropos. Of the three books listed above two are (semi)-scholarly and one is popular. All the books have a progressive slant, Graff only mildly so, O’Donnell and Robb not so mildly. What is surprising is that, while the slightest, the Robb volume is in its way the most remarkable, and surely the most entertaining. But I get ahead of myself.
     O’Donnell’s compulsively readable account of the dramatic events of the late Sixties (an era uncannily similar to our own), focuses on the ’68 election and compares favorably with Theodore White’s magisterial The Making of the President 1960. The book in particular gives strong coverage to the nuts and bolts of the presidential campaign (almost too strong in some cases, the detailed accounting of the primary season and the nomination process being one example). Other tumultuous events of that year are chronicled extensively, but the overarching idée fixe throughout is the Vietnam War, which drives so much of the narrative both as foreground and background. If there’s a hero in O’Donnell’s thesis, it’s Senator Eugene McCarthy (Bobby Kennedy ranks a close second). McCarthy cheekily challenged President Johnson for the Democratic nomination and ran against him in the New Hampshire primary as the anti-war candidate, and almost won. There are plenty of villains in Playing with Fire, but it’s no surprise that Richard Nixon emerges as the principal bad guy though LBJ is always lurking in the shadows.
     Correctly or no, O’Donnell credits McCarthy more than anyone else with shortening the war and saving lives. But he gives us the real kicker in the last chapter, aptly titled ‘The Perfect Crime,’ in which he details what came to be known as the Chennault Affair, the short version of which is: four days before the election President Lyndon Johnson announced a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam as a strategy to end the Vietnam War. But there was a problem: operatives in the Nixon campaign were secretly communicating with the South Vietnamese government in an attempt to scuttle the peace talks taking place in Paris. They told the South Vietnamese to just hold out a little longer and Nixon would give them a better deal if he became president. The principal go-between for the Nixon campaign and the South Vietnamese delegation was Anna Chennault, a Chinese-born Republican fundraiser, widow of U.S. WW2 Major General Claire Chennault, and general woman-about-town in Washington. A nice bit of ironic trivia is that she lived at the Watergate, in the penthouse no less.
     When he learned of the underhanded communications, President Johnson described the skullduggery as "treason." But he never went public with his knowledge, for fear of damaging the office of the president and needing to disclose that that he used government agencies, arguably illegally, to spy on Chennault and the South Vietnamese. Moreover, Johnson admitted that he lacked “absolute proof that Nixon was involved” (revelations in recent years present a clearer picture, i.e. that Nixon was very much involved).
     Nixon won the election against Hubert Humphrey, barely, and his ‘better deal’ for the South Vietnamese ultimately extended the war another six years, cost an additional 21,000 American lives and untold tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, or more, Asian lives, and when the war finally ended in 1975, a year after Nixon’s resignation, the terms were essentially the same as those negotiated by Johnson in 1968 but never realized due to Nixon’s interference in the peace talks.
     But perhaps the most long-lasting result of the 1968 campaign was the ascendancy of one Roger Ailes, Nixon political consultant and architect of the modern, mass media driven political campaigns and eventual chairman of Fox News. There’s also the, eerily prescient, politics of fear and divisiveness that drove, well, both campaigns really, but the Republican campaign used it especially effectively (remember Nixon’s law-and-order mantra and the Southern strategy?) with attendant electoral dividends.
     There’s not a lot that’s new in Playing with Fire, but it’s presented in such a literate, cogent fashion that history buffs and politics junkies will take notice and find much of it little short of catnip. Still, how one reacts to O’Donnell’s take will in large part depend upon political sympathies. Like other things, good history, and good politics, is in the eye of the beholder.

"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal"
     
     We fast forward a few years, though not that many really, to 1971, where Garrett Graff’s Watergate: A New History begins. The mindset that led to the Watergate break-in and similar actions are covered in highly detailed, well-organized fashion in Graff’s densely packed account. Indeed, with Watergate: A New History, Graff has produced the most complete and thorough one-volume history of the Watergate Affair to date, and it should stand as definitive for some time, at least until new information, lots of new information, and new perspectives, are uncovered.
     Depending on how one defines the origins of Watergate, the beginnings may go as far back as 1968, the year of the above-discussed Chennault Affair. But the true underpinnings of Watergate as a political operation didn’t take place until the summer of 1971, when Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to various newspapers. Nixon initially was nonplussed about the Papers but, egged on by his advisers, eventually went ballistic. ‘The Pentagon Papers’ was a top secret Department of Defense study of American involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967, focusing on the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. The papers included the various lies and deceptions committed by the government. But here is the great irony: the word Nixon barely appears anywhere in the 7,000 pages and 47 volumes. As much as anything else the reason Nixon reacted so violently to their public dissemination was the top secret classification. In a word, Nixon was afraid. The main reason for the fear was the possibility that Ellsberg or someone else might leak additional documents that would reveal Nixon’s then undisclosed, potentially criminal, actions, such as the secret bombing of Cambodia. But even worse, somewhere in the Vietnam deluge might be evidence of the above-discussed Chennault affair and Nixon’s treachery. Thus Nixon became obsessed with leaks and created the infamous White House Plumber’s Unit, whose various extra-curricular activities included the break-in of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, the planned break-in – on Nixon’s orders – of the Brookings Institution (never carried out), illegal surveillance and wiretaps, and eventually the Watergate break-in and cover-up. Thus what we today know as ‘Watergate’ was only part of a larger umbrella of clandestine activities orchestrated by the White House at Nixon’s behest or done on his behalf. In his new study Graff lays out this thesis in excruciating (in a good sort of way) detail, employing updated sources but relying mostly on contemporary accounts. The inescapable conclusion is that the Watergate break-in and cover-up was really just the tip of the iceberg, and not necessarily Nixon’s worst crime [1].
     As Graff points out, had there been no Watergate, Nixon may well have been considered a towering and positive figure in twentieth century American history, right up there with FDR as one of the great presidents [2]. Nixon signed the Clean Air Act and created the Environmental Protection Agency, signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, transformed the Post Office into a quasi-private government entity, hiked Social Security payments, extended unemployment benefits, declared war on cancer, signed Title IX to give women opportunities in academia and on athletic playing fields, was an early supporter of civil rights (he advised then-President Dwight Eisenhower to sign the 1957 Civil Right Bill.), signed arms control treaties with the Soviet Union, re-opened diplomatic relations with China, and was the first American president to visit a communist bloc country, this despite his being a lifelong rampant anti-communist. Speaking of anti-communism, it must be mentioned that his handling of the Vietnam War is another, more complicated matter, perhaps less deserving of praise [3].   
     There are additional, personal qualities one can cite. Nixon was always loyal to his family; he was an outstanding law student (he was offered a full scholarship to Harvard, but declined); he was something of an intellectual and an avid student of history; he was loyal to a fault to his workers and advisers (and later abandoned them); Nixon established a scholarship at the Duke University law school; he served honorably in the U.S. Navy in WW2; he was a classical music buff and a fair amateur pianist, and had even once considered a career as a musician.
     However, and it’s a big however … all the positive accomplishments were largely negated by a one-word scandal that led to congressional impeachment hearings and his eventual resignation from office. For better or worse, ‘Watergate’ and all its lurid associations would be forever symbiotically connected to Richard Nixon, overshadowing all other facets of his political life.
     Graff’s writing style is fairly dry but he gets high marks for organization, especially so considering the Watergate Affair’s many intersections and cross currents. The detailed index and extensive notes section are first-rate but there’s no general bibliography. A welcome plus are the footnotes Graff inserts within the text that clarify and elaborate upon the basic narrative. Graff also fleshes out a few more details of the unsavory Chennault Affair but more or less treads the same ground as does O’Donnell [4].
     Graff admits that even today a half century later, despite the myriad of information available, there’s still no definitive answers to the basic questions: who ordered the Watergate break-in; what was its purpose; did some of the participants have their own private agendas; how did it fit in with the other dirty tricks of the White House Plumbers; how much did the participants know, both before and during the break-in [5]. 
     Amid the sordid, untidy nature of the whole affair, there are compensations: one of the great joys, if that is the word, of Graff’s telling are the insights he provides into the various characters involved in the Watergate business, their glories, foibles and absurdities. There’s the near pathological, single-minded intensity of Gordon Liddy and his highly imaginative – and expensive – ideas for sabotaging the operations of political enemies; the outrageously politically incorrect pronouncements of Martha Mitchell (among other things Martha alleged she was held hostage and drugged when she tried to talk to the press); a near senile J. Edgar Hoover and the Nixon administration’s attempts to lessen his influence as FBI director; CIA operative E. Howard Hunt, author of spy novels and later his own autobiography, appropriately titled American Spy. Then there’s the baroque convolutions in the arranging of the ‘hush money’ campaign funds used to pay off the Watergate burglars for their silence.
     Of course the inescapable main character is Richard Nixon, and what emerges is a somewhat complex but mostly unflattering portrayal. The White House tapes alone reveal him to be one vile, sneaky, thin-skinned, vindictive, anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, paranoid, foul-mouthed piece of work. But what we get, from all three books really, is a more complexly nuanced, if not exactly sympathetic, view of the man. In a word, Richard Nixon was a complicated guy. Moreover, in his own idiosyncratic way, he actually loved his country [6], but the great tragedy is that he loved power more, and as these three books remind us, he would do (almost) anything to attain power and hold onto it. And because of his conspiracist vision of the world, saw enemies everywhere – the press, judiciary, anti-war protestors, Daniel Ellsberg, leftists, hippies, intellectuals, and of course Democrats – intent on taking that power away from him [7].

     We go back to 1960 with David Robb’s The Gumshoe and the Shrink, which basically tells the story of eccentric private investigator Guenther Reinhardt and his connection to the 1960 presidential campaign. Reinhardt was hired by Frank Sinatra (acting as intermediary for Joseph Kennedy, JFK’s father) to dig up dirt on Kennedy’s opponent Richard Nixon, especially if he could find evidence that Nixon was seeing a psychiatrist. Indeed he was [8]. Nixon started seeing Arnold Hutschnecker in the early 1950s and continued to do so intermittently throughout the decade. Hutschnecker’s checkered career included the revocation of his license to practice medicine for a year, but he rebounded by writing a best seller titled The Will to Live, one of the first self-help books to reach a mass audience. Austrian born, Hutschnecker received his medical degree in Berlin and practiced medicine in Germany until 1936, when he fled the country to escape the National Socialist regime. He set up his medical practice in New York as an internist but his specialty narrowed and he focused more and more on psychosomatic illness and depression. His high powered patients included Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor and the author Erich Marie Remarque.
     With The Gumshoe and the Shrink, we’re propelled into a different, what shall we say, literary, universe. I hesitate to say a different moral or ethical, even political, universe, since most of the dirty tricks and duplicitousness we find in the 1968 election and Watergate, covered so well by Graff and O’Donnell, were around in abundance in 1960, the difference being that they were less visible, or, perhaps more to the point, less covered, actually less discovered, by the press. In any event, the difference is really one of style: despite their smoothly digestible prose and friendly organization, Graff and O’Donnell still have a scholarly patina. Not so Robb’s breezy page turner. Gumshoe not only flows like a novel, a good one, but the content seems more fiction than fact. Indeed, much of it reads like a whodunit, and some of the stuff in it seems so fantastical that it must be fiction. But the claims are documented with sources and when one checks them out they come in positive.
     Gumshoe is also enjoyable for the depiction of the various and sundry, sometimes oddball characters who flit in and out of the story: Westbrook Pegler, depraved reactionary columnist and radio personality, who penned near-psychotic missives against Roosevelt, Truman, unionists, and imaginary communists [9]; Senator Joseph McCarthy, who makes an appearance in an especially appalling scene of drunken violence; Drew Pearson, muckraking journalist, Pegler nemesis, and the first to report the Nixon-Hutschnecker connection; India Edwards, ground-breaking political operative and the sacrificial pawn in the JFK Addison’s Disease imbroglio.
    Given that there’s something juicy on just about every page of Gumshoe – incidents recalled, documents quoted, quasi-bombshells revealed – somehow this modest entry into an admittedly crowded field has managed to stay under-the-radar. Indeed, I’d never heard of the book till I stumbled upon it a few years ago at the local public library. Moreover, one can only wonder why a cinematic treatment hasn’t been done. I can’t help visualizing in my mind’s eye our two main protagonists in the story, and no, they aren’t Kennedy and Nixon but rather Guenther Reinhardt and Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker. For me the inevitable choice to play the dodgy, amoral Reinhardt would be Walter Slezak, an Austrian émigré and prolific 1940s actor who specialized in slippery characters, albeit with a philosophic, intellectual bent. Appropriately enough, he played a private detective in two of his best films, Cornered and Born to Kill. The role of Hutschnecker is a little more problematic, but an initial choice might be John Hoyt, character actor with an exotic edge who appeared in countless 1950s and 1960s television programs and films. Horror and sci fi buffs probably best remember him as the mad scientist in the cult classic Attack of the Puppet People. In any case, what the heck, while we’re talking movies, for the other two, more historically significant principals of Gumshoe, to play JFK I’ve got to go with Bruce Greenwood of 13 Days, and for Nixon, a tougher call, since lots of actors have played him, and done so very well. But my choice is Dan Hedaya, who with the obvious physical resemblance, also comes with the distinction of previously essaying Nixon, brilliantly, in the Watergate spoof Dick.
     While Robb’s book is vaguely pro-JFK with its mostly positive portrait, Joe Kennedy cuts a pretty poor figure. Power hungry, absolutely ruthless, and more than willing to use his huge financial resources to further the political ambitions of his sons, his ambitions really, Joseph P. Kennedy actually had a lot in common with Richard Nixon. And JFK doesn’t emerge totally unscathed: during the runup to the 1960 Democratic convention, doubtless with his knowledge and approval, subordinates and surrogates repeatedly and categorically denied that he had Addison’s disease. This was a blatant falsehood, since he’d been diagnosed with the condition as far back as 1947. But Lyndon Johnson emerges as an even more unsavory character. A consummate old school politician and exponent of the win-at-all-costs philosophy, Johnson was a master of dirty tricks at least at the level of Nixon himself.
     Gumshoe is admittedly not a perfect work: the chronology jumps back and forth and thus detracts from the real narrative – the 1960 election, and especially Reinhardt’s various machinations – which is the crux of the story. Still, the book is a thoroughly enjoyable, fast-paced read, and should appeal to a wide audience, from history buffs to pop culture enthusiasts to fans of cloak and dagger intrigue on the margins.

    It seems nary a year goes by and a new Nixon biography or Watergate analysis, memoir, or tell-all exposé isn’t released. Each one peels back a few more layers of the Nixon psyche and reveals just a little bit more – the conniving schemer, frustrated social climber, criminal dissembler, misunderstood genius, tragic hero. Yet if the politician is an open book, solved long ago, the man remains an enigma, as mysterious and inscrutable as ever. We may not have Nixon to kick around anymore, but we still have the specter of ‘Watergate’ and all its after-effects, manifested mostly in the profound distrust of government and disdain for politicians generally. We may be finished with Nixon, or hope we are, but as the three books cited above remind us, he isn’t quite finished with us.   
        
    [1] To be totally equitable it wasn’t only Nixon who was held accountable for all things Watergate. Scores of cronies, subordinates, and other operatives, as well as dozens of big corporations, were charged with crimes. Several served substantial prison sentences, and their Watergate afterlives are a curious combination of obscurity and semi-celebrity: right-wing radio hosts, actors, political and business consultants, best-selling authors (predictably, several memoirs emerged), political columnists.
    [2] Similarly, it must also be mentioned that, had there been no Vietnam War, today Lyndon Johnson would be considered one of our greatest presidents.
    [3] I leave to others, i.e. professional historians and legal scholars, to determine whether Nixon’s directives in the Vietnam War qualify as war crimes. At the very least the horrific Christmas bombings in 1972 and the above-referenced secret bombings of Cambodia are sufficient to give one pause.
    [4] Rumblings of the scuttling of the Paris talks had trickled out in the press as early as 1969, but nothing stuck, and by the early 1970s the story had all but disappeared from the political radar. Ironically enough, the next substantial mention in the public record of the backchannel negotiations may well have come from a most unlikely source: Anna Chennault. In her 1980 memoir The Education of Anna she describes communications she had with Nixon, John Mitchell and the South Vietnamese government. This appeared at least two decades before more details, the proof, if you will, emerged, and the Affair began to seep into public awareness, culminating in books like Ken Hughes’s Chasing Shadows and Don Fulsom’s Treason: Nixon and the 1968 Election. For an exceptionally detailed analysis of the Chennault Affair see: John A. Farrell, Richard Nixon: The Life (Doubleday, 2017), pp.342-44; 637n-640n.
   [5] Almost to the point of tedium, Graff methodically takes us through the most commonly put forth theories on the actual motivation for the break-in. The scenarios range from the mundane to the downright absurdist. The official theory, probably the correct one: incompetent burglars broke into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate to bug the office or phone of party chairman Larry O’Brien, the ultimate goal to find incriminating or embarrassing information. A second, related, almost sub-theory, one that naturally alarmed the ever-paranoid Nixon, is that the burglars were looking for any incriminating information the Democrats might have on Nixon and the Republicans. And the theories get more creative: the burglars were looking for information about an alleged call-girl ring organized by the Democratic headquarters to arrange hookups with visiting supporters and VIPs. A different scenario, quintessentially Nixonian in its unsavoriness, is that of illegal foreign contributions to the Nixon campaign from the brutal Greek military junta in power at the time. These were said to total half a million dollars, and the Nixon campaign was concerned that the Democrats might have knowledge of such contributions. Then there’s the CIA connection: did James McCord and Gordon Liddy, former Agency employees, have their own, CIA-friendly agendas in the burglary? A final sub-theory is that the Democrats somehow had advance knowledge of the break-in and set a trap for the burglars. It’s also feasible that various overlapping elements of some or all the theories are correct. As the fellow said, we’ll probably never know the whole story.
     Curiously, concern that the Democratic office might have the goods on the Chennault Affair seems not to have been an issue, at least as far as the conspirators were concerned. It’s very possible that Nixon considered the information so sensitive that he didn’t even entrust it to his redoubtable Plumbers.
   [6] And truth be told, he did some good things. His most enduring, forward-looking accomplishments were in domestic policy, another Nixon irony, since he considered himself a foreign affairs specialist – a president is always judged by what he did in foreign policy, he often said. Nixon is also quoted as saying history would be kind to him, but historians would not, because most historians are leftists. A strange logic, perhaps, but there it is.
  [7] Nixon’s paranoia was at least partially justified in that there were plenty of people intent on doing just that: taking power away from him.
  [8] The ever Machiavellian Nixon may have been seeing Dr. Hutschnecker to learn psychological tricks to use against political opponents. This may have been the true motivation for Nixon’s visits. Then again, the insight into political psychology may have been an unintended benefit. We’ll never know for sure: in the eight books he authored, Nixon never once mentions Dr. Hutschnecker.
   [9] Guenther Reinhardt wasn’t above doing a little communist hunting himself. In 1952 he authored a book titled Crimes Without Punishment, which Robb describes as ‘a masterpiece of guilt-by-association.’ In the book’s 322 pages Reinhardt alleges that Soviet agents or sympathizers have infiltrated all elements of American life. Hundreds of individuals were named. Most of the charges lacked any documentation or proof.

Further reading

Farrell, John A., Richard Nixon: the Life, Doubleday, 2017.
Greenberg, David, Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image, Norton, 2003.
Hughes, Ken. Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate, Univ. of Virginia Press, 2014.
Lane, Penny, director. Our Nixon [videorecording (DVD)]; producers, Brian Frye, Penny Lane; Cinedigm, 2014.
McGinniss, Joe, The Selling of the President 1968, Trident Press, 1969.
Summers, Anthony, Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon, Viking, 2000.
Wine-Banks, Jill, The Watergate Girl: My Fight for Truth and Justice Against a Criminal President, Henry Holt & Co., 2020.

Cry of the city

    Wilson, Ben. Metropolis: a history of the city, humankind’s greatest invention. New York, Doubleday, 2020. 
   “ … a colourful journey through 7,000 years and twenty-six world cities that shows how urban living has been the spur and incubator to humankind's greatest innovations … Ben Wilson, author of bestselling and award-winning books on British history, now tells the grand, glorious story of how city living has allowed human culture to flourish. Beginning in 5,000 BC with Uruk, the world's first city, immortalized in The Epic of Gilgamesh, he shows us that cities were never a necessity, but that once they existed, their density created such a blossoming of human endeavour, producing new professions, art forms, worship and trade, that they kickstarted civilization itself.” (excerpted from the publisher’s summary).

    I’m a city person at heart. Today I live in what most would call a medium size city (~ 500,000), though to me it has overtones of the big city, but with some of the charms of a small town. Ah … definitions. In any case I like the things one can find in a city, the history, people, coffee shops, bookstores, restaurants, concerts, architecture, historic districts, and such. There are other, more subjective, eminently less tangible, pulls of the urban: the mystery and glamour of a city, and indeed its flip side, danger and sordidness. Aside: this might go a long way toward explaining the fondness for my favorite cinematic genre, film noir, with its rather uneasy combination of the romantic and the criminal in an urban milieu [1]. By the way Wilson doesn’t neglect the dangerous and sordid aspects of cities in Metropolis, far from it. But I’m running ahead of myself.

    Getting back to my preference for (mostly) all things urban, no surprise then that I’m just not much of a rural or small town guy. I grew up in a small midwestern town of – on a good day – 3,000 residents, actually to be technically correct in an even smaller town, village really, on the outskirts of said small town. Anyhow this might explain it. I’m essentially a private sort who prefers the low keyed and low profile to the flamboyant and heart-on-sleeve. Thus the anonymity of the big city is one of its attractions. In any event when I spotted Wilson’s Metropolis on the new book shelf at the library it piqued my interest and I scooped it up right away.

    For the most part Metropolis lived up to its somewhat ponderous subtitle: “a history of the city, humankind's greatest invention,” and indeed there are juicy tidbits and a wealth of detail on just about every page. However, such an all-encompassing survey will of necessity be selective, and as a result the emphases may seem arbitrary. Some of my favorites – Berlin, San Francisco, Mexico City – receive rather short shrift while others get, arguably, more attention than they deserve [2]. Indeed, nothing gets an enthusiast’s back up when favorites are passed over or minimized. There are other things that might inspire a quibble or two. The detailed, user-friendly index is a plus, but the tightly scrunched, squint inducing ‘Notes’ section, for all its admirable content, does the reader no favors. There’s also the conspicuous absence of a general bibliography, which would have been welcome. Moreover, Wilson’s obvious infatuation with the material sometimes results in a tendency to wander and get over-wordy.  

    But now to the considerable merits of Metropolis. With the exception the aforementioned lack of a general bibliography, it has all the usual suspects that bespeak of academic patina: maps; well-chosen illustrations with detailed credits; thorough index; and a blizzard of footnotes. Broadly speaking, Wilson employs a chronologic approach in which each chapter discusses mostly self-contained aspects as they apply to one or a few cities of similar size, setting or historical era. Still, for all its factual density, Metropolis reads beautifully. Wilson writes in an eminently user-friendly style that’s a pleasing combination of the erudite and the popular.

   The well-turned introduction in particular describes most of the issues to be covered within and contains some of the best prose nuggets of the entire book. Indeed some of the text reveals the touch of the poet and poet-philosopher in its smoothly flowing eloquence. One of my favorite passages is:

   “Cities are, for all their successes, harsh, merciless environments. If they offer the chance for higher incomes and education, they can also warp our souls, fray our minds and pollute our lungs. They are places to survive and negotiate as best we can – cauldrons of noise, pollution and nerve-shredding overcrowding … city life is overwhelming; its energies, ceaseless change and millions of inconveniences, big and small, push us to our limits. Throughout history, cities have been seen as fundamentally contrary to our nature and instincts, places that nurture vice, incubate diseases and induce social pathologies … in their beauty and ugliness, joy and misery, and in the inordinate, bewildering range of their complexity and contradictions, cities are a tableau of the human condition, things to love and hate in equal measure.”

   In similar fashion throughout the book, Wilson is honest about the downsides of urban life, symbolized for Christians since time immemorial as Babylon. Likewise, and especially compelling, is the description of the total destruction that cities have experienced during times of war, especially the unvarnished accounts of the saturation bombings during World War II. A surprising emphasis was the approach Wilson takes to Rome, in which he devotes considerable space to the city’s thermal bathes and their central place in the calculus of what a civilized city should be.

   [1] I was delighted to see two, albeit fleeting, references to noir in Metropolis.
   [2] To be sure Wilson does give some coverage (about three pages) to Tenochtitlan, the Aztec city that eventually metamorphosed into modern day Mexico City.

Revisionism and its discontents

    Zinn, Howard, A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.
   Jeff Riggenbach, Why American History is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism, Auburn, Mises Institute, 2009.

Revisionism. The policy or practice of revision or modification; departure from the original interpretation of a theory, etc.; esp. the revision of Marxism on evolutionary socialist or pluralist principles. 2. The theory or practice of revising one's attitude to a previously accepted situation or point of view; spec. (orig. U.S.) a movement or process involving the revision of an established or accepted version of historical events.
Revisionist.orig?. U.S. A person who questions or revises a previously accepted version of historical phenomena or events.

   “Inevitably history becomes what the historian chooses to point out.” - Simon Winder, The Man Who Saved Britain

   “It is always difficult for the non-historian to remember that there is nothing absolute about historical truth” - Gordon Craig, “The Devil in the Details,” NY Review of Books, Sept. 19, 1996.

    A crusty old professor of mine once told me that all history is opinion. The more I experience of history, and of life itself, the more I’m convinced he was spot on in his assessment. Indeed, like the doctor and lawyer, the (professional) historian is paid for expressing opinions, but he has other privileges, chief among them an especial perk not available even to the two aforementioned honorable professions, that is, to alter the way we see history itself. In other words, and put simpler, historians have the power to, well, rewrite the past [1].
    But not so fast. To wit, over time clichés and 'truisms' gradually creep into the conversation and are accepted uncritically as part of the historical record, and there emerges a historical consensus. Nowhere is this more egregious than in what we might call pop history. In any case, and getting back to revisionism, there are, happily, a few dissenting voices, which we usually refer to as revisionist, or less controversially, contrarian. In a perfect world all history could be characterized as revisionist [2], and rightly so: the historian’s job is to examine conventional interpretations of history and consider new evidence or interpret facts and events in a new light, applying new methodologies and fresh perspectives. In this sense it’s not such a step to also view creative writing as revisionist. We writers of fiction revisit the old formulas and provide new takes in, we hope, fresh and interesting ways.

    Characteristically dry and uncontroversial, the Oxford English Dictionary’s entry above is hard to fault. But revisionism is more complicated than a mere definition, and, like some phrases – ‘feminist,’ ‘liberal,’ or ‘activist’ come to mind – the word itself has taken on a bad odor [3], to the point where it’s more or less synonymous with deliberate falsification and distortion. Recriminations and counter-recriminations abound with charges of conspiracy theory thinking at one extreme and political correctness at the other. Thus anything labelled revisionist carries with it an emotional charge, and as a result it has been both praised and (mostly) damned by both the Left and the Right. Depending on the source, or audience, a revisionist historian may delight or infuriate: one person’s revisionist is another’s responsible, skeptical historian [4]. Like many things in the study of history - and politics - what's a revisionist and what is not is in the eye of the beholder. 

    As a case in point, there’s the calculus of historians like Howard Zinn, whose A People’s History of the United States in particular critiques the ruling classes and their (according to Zinn) self-conferred right to tell history their way, i.e. usually state-friendly [5]. Zinn’s approach to history gives voice to those who don’t have voices, i.e. those who don’t usually write history: poor and working-class people, women, African-Americans, gays and lesbians, the uneducated, among others. Not so surprising, then, Zinn’s opus maximus explodes much of orthodox history. True, it is biased and selective – there’s little history that isn’t – and Zinn doesn’t hide his likes and dislikes. There’s nary a sacred cow that escapes his rapier gaze: Lincoln, FDR, JFK, World Wars I & II, the New Deal. All take their lumps.

    A People’s History has garnered the most mainstream acceptance of any revisionist work – it's even used at a text at some high schools and colleges & universities. [6] It’s also been much reviewed and commented on: at last count well over a thousand (mostly favorable) reviews on Amazon alone.

    Jeff Riggenbach is a kind of Zinn disciple, and his provocatively titled if much less well-known Why American History is Not What They Say offers a fresh and illuminating analysis, both as consideration of U.S. history as well as a meaty introduction to revisionist history in general. Included is a wealth of detail, but some topics and individuals get special attention: the Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Cold War, Zinn, and libertarian guru Murray Rothbard.

    Why American History is Not What They Say presents its case in well organized and engaging, if wordy, style: the detail-rich content includes many sources listed in the text supplemented by a blizzard of footnotes. In fact Riggenbach’s book is so source-rich it wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to describe it as a gigantic bibliographic essay with some history and editorial comment sprinkled in.

    For all its virtues – and flaws – Riggenbach’s tome is hardly the last word on revisionism, the nature of which precludes any conclusive or definitive statements. But Why American History is Not What They Say does an admirable job of synthesizing and summarizing the current state of revisionist art in a relatively even-handed, if ultimately sympathetic, fashion.

    [1] However, the old adage you can have your own views but not your own facts hasn’t always been adhered to, and the practice of embroidering, censoring or softening historical facts to make a more palatable narrative for interested individuals, groups, or nations, certainly didn’t begin with our current climate in which the phenomenon seems to be taking on epic proportions. But that, as the man said, is another story, and another post. In a post elsewhere on this blog, I more or less take on this question directly and opine that all history is spin in that the historian wants to project a certain interpretation of events and persuade the reader to accept said interpretation.
    [2] In his excellent book The Ever-Changing Past: Why All History is Revisionist History (Yale Univ. Press, 2021), author James Banner makes that very point. He demonstrates why historical knowledge is unlikely ever to be absolute, unchallenged and unchanging, and why history as a branch of knowledge is both a science and an art. Using several broad historical examples, he goes on to explain why all historians are revisionists as they seek to more fully understand the past, and how they always bring their distinct dispositions, perspectives, expertise, and yes, biases to the historical subjects they cover.
   [3] Interesting that revisionism as a term doesn’t appear in the august Library of Congress Subject Headings. Rather, the term ‘Historiography’ is used, both as main heading and subheading.
   [4 In recent years World War II has been especially fertile territory for revisionist and quasi-revisionist interpretations that, at least to some extent, take issue with the idea of WW2 as the ultimate Good War. British historian A.J.P. Taylor was one of the first to give an academic patina to World War II revisionist history with his The Origins of the Second World War, published in 1961. Other examples of WW2 revisionism might include: Patrick Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, Crown, 2008; Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: the Beginning of the Second World War and the End of Civilization, Simon & Schuster, 2008; Jörg Friedrich, The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945, Columbia Univ. Press, 2006; David Irving, Hitler's War and the War Path, Focal Point Publications, 1991; George H. Nash, ed., Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath, Hoover Institution Pr., 2011; Jacques R. Pauwels, The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, Lorimer, 2002; Ashley Smith, “World War II: The Good War?” International Socialist Review, Issue 10, Winter 2000; Viktor Suvorov, The Chief Culprit: Stalin’s Grand Design to Start World War II, Naval Institute Press, 2013; M.S. King, The Bad War: The Truth Never Taught About World War II; Sean McMeekin, Stalin's War: A New History of World War II, Basic Books, 2021; Michael C.C. Adams, The Best War Ever: America and World War II, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2015. See also: “A ‘Good War’ No More: The New World War II Revisionism,” in: Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, Hi Hitler!: How the Nazi Past is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture, Cambridge Univ. Pr., 2015, pp. 29-77.
   [5] “In one of his most iconoclastic essays, “The Anatomy of the State,” Murray Rothbard observed that it is crucial to ruling groups to manipulate the thinking of the ruled. They must get the populace to accept that the rulers are truly good people working tirelessly to advance the common good. Toward that end, the rulers employ a bag of tricks, among them the writing of history to cast the State in a positive light.” - George C. Leef, review of Riggenbach’s Why American History is Not What They Say.
   [6] A People’s History “... has gone through five editions and multiple printings, been assigned in thousands of college courses, sold more than a million copies, and made the author something of a celebrity.” [Michael Kazin, “Howard Zinn’s History Lessons,” Dissent, Spring 2004].

Further reading:

Anders, Charlie Jane, “When Does Historical Revisionism Become Alternate History?” 
Bacevich, Andrew J., “The Revisionist Imperative: Rethinking Twentieth Century Wars,”
   Journal of Military History 76 (April 2012), pp. 333–42.
Conger, Cristen, How Revisionist History Works 
Duberman, Martin, Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left, New Press, 2012
Fantina, Robert, Empire, Racism & Genocide: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy, Red Pill
    Press, 2013
Hughes-Warrington, Marnie, Revisionist History, Routledge, 2013.
Judt, Tony, “What Have We Learned, if Anything?” NY Review of Books, 1 May 2008
Kirsch, Adam, "Is World War II still 'the Good War'?" NY Times, May 27, 2011 

Newsinger, John. The Blood Never Dried : A People's History of the British Empire. Second
   edition. London, Bookmarks, 2013.
Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American
    Historical Profession, Cambridge, 1988