The Jewish State / Theodore Herzl -- N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1988

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I read scores of books about the Arab-Zionist conflict.  In the course of that, I compiled a chronology of violence and other events in the history of the conflict.  The chronology grew to nearly 200 pages before other projects brought that research to a halt.  Recently, I dusted off that chronology and found it curious that I had never read the seminal Zionist work The Jewish State by Theodore Herzl.  This was because I was mainly looking to chronical the history of the conflict and not its ideological origins.  So my reading it now was long overdue.

In the 19th century, Europe underwent significant political changes due to the rise of nationalism.  It was then that Germany and Italy both became unified countries.  Other nationalist, independence movements appeared elsewhere in Europe, including Hungary, Greece, Norway, Belgium, Ireland, Romania, Serbia, and elsewhere.  It was in this context that the right of self-determination of peoples gathered international support.  What counted as "a people" was, however, a matter of debate.  It was in this context the Herzl proposed in the last decade of the 19th century that Jews should be considered "a people" with the same right to self-determination as any other people.  That they were scattered across Europe (and elsewhere) simply posed a logistical problem that could be solved by concentrating the population in a specific geographic area and creating a majority population capable of enforcing their right to self-determination.

I had no preconceived notions about Herzl's The Jewish State, but I was surprised to discover just how programmatic it is.  Herzl sought to offer a practical plan for how the Jewish people could create a viable state out of their dispersed population.  To start, a geographic gathering place would be needed.  Herzl suggested Argentina and Palestine.  Of Argentina, he wrote,

Argentina is one of the most fertile countries in the world, extends over a vast area, has a sparse population and a mild climate.  The Argentine Republic would derive considerable profit from the cession of a portion of its territory to us.  The present infiltration of Jews has certainly produced some discontent, and it would be necessary to enlighten the Republic on the intrinsic difference of our new movement.

Of Palestine, he wrote, 

Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home.  The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvelous potency.  If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake to regulate the whole finances of Turkey.  We should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. We should as a neutral State remain in contact with all Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence.

In both cases, Herzl recognized significant obstacles to forming a Jewish state in lands already occupied by other peoples.  To overcome these obstacles, Herzl proposed the formation of two agencies: the Society of Jews and the Jewish Company.  

The Society of Jews would be responsible for what we might now call "urban planning on an national scale."  The Society would assess the resources available to accommodate the influx of immigrants and design the national infrastructure.  It would also be responsible for establishing the political and governmental institutions of the new state. 

The Jewish Company would be responsible for helping to liquidate the assets of European Jews seeking to emigrate to the new state and to arrange for the purchase of land (developed and undeveloped) which would then be sold or provided to the immigrants.  The Jewish Company would act roughly as a real estate agent, but it would also have the responsibility of raising revenue for the development and expansion of the Jewish state.  Herzl believed that the high price of land and assets owned by Jews in Europe compared to the low prices in the new Jewish state would allow for the easy colonization of the new state.

He furthermore predicted that different classes of Jews would emigrate in different waves.  The first emigrants would be from the lower classes which suffered most from European anti-Semitism and had little to lose by emigrating to a new land.  These emigrants would be employed to build homes, schools, roads, and other infrastructure in return for passage to the new state, room, and board.  It's hard not to see them as indentured servants.  As conditions in the new state improved, middle class Jews would be drawn to emigrate and upper class Jews would find making investments in the new state attractive.

It is interesting how much Herzl's plan actually played out in the decades after he published his book.  Two agencies came into being that more or less enacted his two-agency plan: The Jewish Agency for Palestine (later Israel) did the work of the Society of Jews and the Jewish National Fund did the work of the Jewish Company.  Herzl's expectation that Jews would flee Europe as a result of anti-Semitism and the promise of protection in the new Jewish state came to pass writ large in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust.

As the 20th century wore on, the recognition of the right of the self-determination of peoples led to the end of the classical colonial era and the independence of colonies around the world.  It has, however, created significant problems for the Zionist movement and the indigenous Palestinian population.  Both make claims to their right of self-determination, while occupying the same territory.  It reveals a challenge to the right of a people for self-determination that is playing out in many places around the world.  

With the advent of international air travel, once homogenous and geographically separated peoples have become increasingly mixed, making the very notion of a people even more difficult to circumscribe.  In Europe and the United States, rightwing movements have risen to oppose immigration and to identify the native population as a people.  These movements are based on a not-so disguised ethnic identity.  

It is, however, long past the time when a people can be easily identified ethnically.  We live, instead, in self-governing societies that are ethnically diverse; so any appeal to the self-determination of a people, must find a basis other than ethnicity for that right or risk the imposition of the rule of one ethnicity over others.  The most obvious alternative to ethnicity is citizenship within a liberal democratic state in which each citizen has the same standing in relation to the law and the state.  

Returning to Herzl's vision of the Jewish state, it begins to look like an ethnocratic remnant of a fading past.  If current global trends make headway in Israel/Palestine, the future of the Jewish state might not be a state living side-by-side with a Palestinian state nor a Jewish ethnocracy from "the river to the sea." Instead, there might emerge a single, liberal democratic state in which all citizens enjoy the same rights equally.  That, however, will certainly require a radical shift in the identity politics of the region.

Catching Up

It has been quite some time (since June 2015) that I posted anything to this blog. I was for most of that time on sabbatical, drafting a book on Indian Buddhism.  Consequently, my writing efforts were directed away from reviewing books and toward writing one.  Since coming back from the sabbatical, I have not recovered my habit of reviewing the books I read; however, my hope is to recover that habit.  To catch up, though, I merely plan to record here a number of the books that I read over that last few months.  After all, this blog is primarily a means to record for myself the books I have read. Perhaps one day, I'll return to the most important ones and provide reviews.

Powell, James Lawrence, <i>The Inquisition of Climate Science</i>, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 2001.  This work is a brief (192 page) book describing the concerted efforts by climate change deniers to sew doubt about the fact and effects of our changing climate.  It also recounts many of the highest profile attacks on climate scientists by deniers.

Stern, Nicholas, <i>The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review</i>, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2006.  This work is a major landmark (if not the major landmark) in the literature related to the economics of climate change.  It has been criticized for employing an inordinately low discount rate, but this mainly reflects a moral judgement regarding the importance of the well-being of future generations.

Nordhaus, William, <i>The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World</i>. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2013.  The importance of this work is perhaps second only to <i>The Stern Review</i> with regard to the economics of climate change.  William Nordhaus (not be confused with his son Ted Nordhaus) is an eminent environmental economist.  His analysis of the economic consequences of climate change and climate change mitigation strategies differs somewhat from Nicholas Stern's analysis.  Nordhaus applies a higher discount rate making which has the consequence of estimating a higher relative cost for mitigating climate change and he is more sanguine regarding future generations' abilities to adapt to climate change.  Nonetheless, he strongly advocates a carbon tax and stresses the importance of acting quickly and decisively to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

Jamieson, Dale, <i>Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed -- and What It Means for Our Future</i>, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2014.  This work, by a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado.  Jamieson provides and account of how governments have failed to address climate change in a time frame adequate to preserve the kind of planet that existed prior to the industrial revolution.  He acknowledges that we live in the Anthropocene Era, viz., a geological era in which the actions of human beings are having a determining effect on the natural history of the planet.  He also provides chapters on the ethics of responding to climate change.

Medvedev, Zhores A., <i>The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko</i>, I. Michael Lerner, trans., N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1969.  This is an account of the period from 1929-1961 during which the influence of T.D. Lysenko distorted Soviet genetics and agricultural sciences.  The account is written by a Soviet scientist who had first hand experience with the internal struggles to maintain the integrity of Soviet science.

Joravsky, David, <i>The Lysenko Affair</i>, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970.  Joravsky is an American historian, emeritus professor at Northwestern University specializing in Soviet studies.  This work is recognized as among the very best accounts of the Soviet science under the influence of T.D. Lysenko.

Wood, Mary Christina, <i>Nature's Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age</i>, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 2014.  I consider this book the best of the year.  It describes the decline of environmental regulations established by the promising environmental laws of the 1970s.  According to Wood, environmental regulatory agencies have become captured by the industries that they were designed to regulate.  Consequently, their primary role now is to approve exceptions to environmental restrictions -- essentially blessing the very damages they were designed to protect us from.  Wood argues that our best response to this is to employ trust law to require Congress and the executive branch to protect the public's interest in a livable environment.  Basic to this approach is the idea that the natural world is like a trust, with government serving as its trustee on behalf of current and future generations.

Speth, James Gustave and Peer M. Haas, <i>Global Environmental Governance</i>, Washington D.C.: Island Press, 2006.  This work provides a brief history of the international efforts to reach an agreement on how to protect the climate from anthropogenic changes.

Kolbert, Elizabeth, <i>Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change</i>, N.Y.: Bloomsbury, 2006.  This work is among the most important of several books that were published around this time on the contemporary and pending damages that climate change presents.  Ten years on, it is depressing to see how little has been accomplished to address the problems that Kolbert describes.

McKibben, Bill, <i>Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet</i>, N.Y.: N.Y.: Henry Holt and Co., 2010.  Bill McKibben may be remembered as the most important voice warning Americans about the damage that we are doing to the climate.  His work <i>Eaarth</i> asserts that our actions have already ensured that our planet will become qualitatively different from the one which has been our home.  Thus, he slightly alters the spelling of the planet's name.  His description of unavoidable changes are clear and illuminating, fully justifying his rather radical observation.  McKibben suggests ways in which we might alter our lifestyles in a way that will allow us to live "lightly, carefully, and gracefully" such that we can live reasonably well despite the terrible consequences of our past actions.

Brechin, Gray, <i>Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin</i>, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.  This work is a history of the city of San Francisco and the social, political, and particularly the environmental consequences of its development.  The story begins with the devastation produced by mining gold and clear cutting California's forests and concludes with the establishment of the academic institutions that developed nuclear weapons.  It provides an unflinching critique of the consequences of the unrestrained economic exploitation of people an nature for private gain.

Shelley, Mary, <i>The Last Man</i>, London: Henry Colburn, 1826.  This little-known novel by the author of <i>Frankenstein</i> describes in three volumes the extinction of humanity as a result of a virulent plague.  The story come to us from 1818 when visitors to a "gloomy cavern of the Cumaean Sibyl," where they find written prophecies, often of events now just past.  Among the prophesies is an account of the last man to perish in the world-wide plague.  Though set in the last decade, the world Shelley describes is little different from her own time.  It is without electricity or internal combustion engines and the struggle between monarchists and republicans is only now becoming resolved in favor of republicanism.  The first volume works primarily to introduce and develop the novel's characters.  Its story mostly concerns interpersonal relations and political ambitions.  The plague makes no appearance.  Indeed, appart from passing mention, it only appears one third of the way through the second volume.  From there the novel describes the epidemic decimation of England.  The third volume recounts the surviving remnants of the country trekking to Switzerland where they hope to find refuge from the plague.  Ultimately three survivors continue on to Rome.  The novel ends with the last man determining to sail a bark along the oceans' shores in search of another survivor.  "Thus around the shores of deserted earth, while the sun is high, and the moon waxes or wanes, angels, the spirits of the dead, and the ever-open eyeof the Supreme, will behold the tiny bark, freighted with Verney--the LAST MAN."  If the Victorians were obsessed with death, Shelley's <i>The Last Man</i> is an extreme expression of this obsession.  Not only does every character die, but the entire human race is extinguished.  The early volume is graced with the romantic prose of the time and peppered with reflections on life, love, and death, but once the plague appears, there is hardly a page in the novel which is not a meditation on mortality.

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary together with Sellic Spell / J.R.R. Tolkien, trans. -- Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014

Several years ago, I heard a rumor that a translation by Tolkien of Beowulf was found in his papers and that an eminent Tolkien scholar was working on editing it for publication.  Later, I heard that the scholar had abandoned the task.  So I was very pleasantly surprised to find Tolkien's translation of Beowulf on sale at my campus bookstore, edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher.  Tolkien's relationship to Beowulf and Beowulf scholarship is legendary.  In 1936, he published an influential study of the entitled, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics."  More than anything, that study elevated the reputation of Beowulf to the preeminent literary status that it has today.  Prior to that, Beowulf was seen mostly as a hotch-potch of story fragments which W.P. Ker described as putting peripheral matters at the center and central matters at the periphery.  According to Tolkien, the tangential narratives and allusions to other histories and legends lent depth and context to the story and that the centrality of the monsters (Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon) and how they were treated by the author offered an important insight into the poem and its telling.  For example, the reference to Grendel as being of the race of Cain and the connection between the dragon and Satan showed that Beowulf was neither fully a pagan epic nor a Christian homily.  Instead, it was a retelling of an earlier pagan legend by a Christian author.  The author's Christian world view could not help but make him (or her?) include a Christian slant on the drama.

It is clear that Tolkien's understanding of Beowulf is first rate if not second to none and so his edition of the poem can not be ignored.  Tolkien was also the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University and so his mastery of Old English verse is also of the first order.  At one time in his life he wrote a poem entitled The Fall of Arthur in the alliterative verse form of Old English.  This form is composed of verses made up of two phrases each usually made up of two stressed and two unstressed units of the form:  x / x / | x / x /.   The alliteration occurs when the third stressed unit is the same sound as the sound of the fist stressed unit and sometimes also the second unit.  For example: "the Geat prince went / for Grendel's mother" or "funeral fires / fumes of wood smoke."  Of course, every line in Old English meter is not slavishly fitted to these forms, but any attempt to capture the sound of the Old English poetry would tend to follow these patterns.  Tolkien, however, chose not to write his edition of Beowulf in verse.  Instead, the narrative is presented in prose.  This permits him to more easily capture the meaning of the poem since he is able to choose Modern English expressions that do not alliterate, but what is lost in poetry is gained in semantic accuracy.  At the same time Tolkien's rendition of the story is colored by his sense of drama.  His diction and word order make the work suitably archaic and often quite stirring.  Anyone with an appreciation for his prose will thoroughly enjoy his rendition.

In addition to the rendition of the poem itself, Christopher Tolkien has included a commentary on the text that was taken from Tolkien's lecture notes.  The commentary is nearly twice the length of the poem and this more than anything will provide the reader with deep insight into the poem and to the pagan times about which the poem is written.  For example, Tolkien explains the passage, "Leave here our warlike shields" with the annotation: "Note the prohibition of weapons or accoutrements of battle in the hall.  to walk in with spear and shield was like walking in nowadays with your hat on.  The basis of these rules was of course fear and prudence amid the ever-present dangers of an heroic age, but they were made part of the ritual, of good manners."  The annotation goes on further to point out that this custom was appropriate to a king's hall and that "It was death in Scandinavia to cause a brawl in a king's hall."

The presence of the commentary in the same volume as the rendition gives a reader three extremely attractive options:  (1)  Read the narrative strait through without reference to the commentary.  This allows you to best appreciate Tolkien's own literary techniques.  (2) Read the the commentary along with the narrative.  This provides you with a deep understanding of the story with Tolkien as your guide.  (3) Read the commentary alone.  This provides you with a fascinating study of Old English and the customs of pagan Northern Europe.  It's hard to decide which of these approaches is best.  Perhaps three readings of the work would be ideal.

Spice: The History of a Temptation / Jack Turner-- N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004

In the penultimate paragraph of Spice: A History of a Temptation, author Jack Turner describes his work as a "long ramble" through the history of spices. There could be no more apt description of the work, though it might be better titled A History of Europe's Encounters with and Responses to South Asian Spices, as the work is more limited than its actual title suggests.

In general, the work begins with a chapter covering the Age of Discovery and the efforts of European seafaring powers to acquire Asian spices. Following this are two chapters on spices as used in cooking, a chapter on spices used for health and funerary practices, a chapter on spices as aphrodisiacs, and a chapter on spices used for religious and spiritual rituals. Two concluding chapters describe the reaction against spices and the decline of their importance in international trade and European culture from the twelfth century to the eighteenth century.

To its credit, the work is a scholarly tour de force. Turner uncovered numerous references to spices in wide variety of European literary and historical sources and in practically every major European language. Unfortunately, Turner's organization of his material is blunt and his conclusions are limited. One is left with the sense that in the course of his research he collected every reference to spices he could find, drafted brief descriptions of their import, and filed them into a few categories: food, health, sex, and religion, etc. Then within these categories, he linked his references with whatever connective discussion he could devise. The result is a long ramble indeed.

Perhaps the most valuable element of the work is the 24 pages describing his sources and bibliography. These pages will give a serious scholar an excellent starting point for doing more in depth and hopefully more consequential work in one or another of Turner's subjects. Unfortunately, many of Turner's sources will be hard to acquire outside of the extraordinary libraries that served Turner's research.

One particular avenue of research the begs examination is the relationship between class, economics, and spices. Turner make frequent mention of how expensive spices have been through out history and how this affected their popularity or desirability, but he does not take this up in much detail. One is left wondering just how the purchase of spices was supported and how it affect the European economy and social structure. One gets only an inkling of a sense about how Asian spices competed with European spices and who were their main markets. Much of the work covers the period of the Middle Ages, and while there is a relatively fine chapter on the reactions of the Christian Church to spices, one does not get a clear picture of role that spices played in the interrelations of the Church, the European nobility, commercial enterprises, and the great mass of people who composed European peasantry.

There are occasional sections in which a more extended story is told, e.g., Colombus's voyages, Magellan's voyages, Bernard of Clairvaux's criticism of spices, and Pierre Poivre's efforts to steal clove and nutmeg plants from the Dutch monopoly for the benefit of France. There is also a fascinating description of the mythical medieval "land of Cockayne" where "the only virtues were gluttony, leisure, and pleasure, the only vices exertion and care." The churches in Cockayne "were made of pastry, fish, and meat and buttressed with puddings. There were rivers 'great and fine,' flowing not with water -- a rarity in Cockayne -- but with 'oile, milk, hony and wine,'" and of course spices were a pervasive.

One must admire Turner's scholarship. His mastery of classical, medieval, and modern sources on spices is genuinely delicious, but in the end, one wishes the meal he serves was little more nutritious.

Conservative Thought / Karl Mannheim in From Karl Mannheim -- London: Transaction Publishers, 1993

Political labels get thrown around as though they mean something, but when pressed, it's not particularly easy to say what it means to be "liberal" or "conservative." Add to that "neoliberal," "neoconservative," "progressive," "socialist," "libertarian, "communist," "green," "leftist," "right-winger," and any number of other labels, and defining any of them seems pointless. Still, the political landscape is not without some noticeable groupings. In 1925, the sociologist Karl Mannheim published an essay entitled, "Conservative Thought" in which he argued that political groupings of this sort can be distinguished by specific "styles of thought" (though a style of thought will not be limited to politics). Styles of thought characterize more than just the subjective thinking of individuals. At the same time, they are not entirely objective. Individuals participate in a style of thought which will survive their coming and going, but it does not exist apart from the individuals.

To illustrate this theory, he examines conservatism during the first half of the 19th century in Germany. As he believes that styles of thought are highly nuanced, it is necessary to limit his claims to a small temporal and geographic range; however, he acknowledges that some similarities exist between temporally and spatially related populations. It may be more accurate to say that similarities exist between styles of thought in population that are in significant communication with each other or descend from the same ancestal style of thought.

In general, early 19th century German conservativism was a reaction to enlightenment rationalism, the central elements of which were constructed deductively from logical principles and embraced a theory of natural law in moral and political philosophy. This theory included the doctrine of popular sovereignty, the inalienable rights of man expressed in terms of negative freedom, and the justification of the state based on a social contract emerging from the state of nature. Enlightenment rationalism extolled constitutions and contracts and was prevalent among the new capitalist bourgeoisie and to some extent the proletariat. Above all, the enlightenment saw existing social arrangements as defective -- to be rectified by bringing about more just arrangements. This required enlightenment thinkers to step away from what is actual and image abstract, non-existing states of society that would be preferable to the present.

In contrast, German conservativism was firmly rooted in the actual world and saw the present as a culmination and continuation of the past which evolved as it did for good reason. Any change would need to be gradual. Conservativism employed a number of ideas or methods that are found in Hegel: dialectical, historicist logic; property, not as an alienable commodity, but as necessarily bound to its owner; and a positive concept of freedom. Persons where essentially unequal and their liberty was vested in their estate, not in themselves as individuals. In many respects, German conservativism romanticized medieval relations and employed the writers of the romantic movement to articulate their style of thinking.

Mannheim's effort to capture the essence of a socio-political movement in its style of thought is quite valuable. It goes beyond thinking of the social group as a collection of people adhering to a set of public policy positions, and provides some understanding of why those policy positions hang together. However, any effort to distill a complex socio-political phenomenon into a crisp, coherent theory is surely going to miss much of what is really happening in the world. Anomalies and counter-examples are sure to be readily found, but insofar as they can be incorporated into the social theory, one can conclude that a consistent socio-political current has been discovered at a specific time and place. Without knowing more about the place, period, and people that Mannheim studies, it is difficult to know how accurately he has captured the essentials of 19th century German conservatives, but no doubt he is not completely off the mark, and from my perspective, quite close to the mark.

Only a little of Mannheim's picture of 19th century German conservativism has survived to to become contemporary conservativism in Germany and elsewhere. Today, ethnic, religious, educational, and linguistic diversity, along with gender and sexual orientation differences complicate any analysis based on the early 19th century style of thought. One also wonders if Mannheim's analysis sufficiently includes class interests in understanding socio-political groupings. In many respects, contemporary conservativism is a descendant of the bourgeois capitalism of the enlightenment and only opportunistically inherits some of the attachment to the past that the older form of conservativism manifested. This suggests that was really motivates the style of thought that is conservativism, is a commitment to the interests of the dominant class, just as the 19th century's conservativism was a motivated by a commitment to the fading dominant class of the 18th century.

The Life and Growth of Language: An Outline of Linguistic Science / William Dwight Whitney -- NY: D. Appleton and Co., 1896

In 1786, Sir William Jones published The Sanskrit Language in which he remarked on similarities between Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek and suggested that all three developed from a common extinct language now called "Proto-Indo-European." Jones's observations were an important landmark in the study of language. One century later, the field of philology was in its golden age. William Dwight Whitney was among the leading philologist of the era. He was professor of Sanskrit and editor of The Century Dictionary, an English language dictionary surpassed only by the Oxford English Dictionary.

Whitney published a general treatment of language and the principles of comparative philology in 1875 entitled The Life and Growth of Language: An Outline of Linguistic Science, which covered much of the same ground that appeared in his 1867 work, Language and the Study of Language. Life and the Growth of Language is an excellent exposition of the state of the art in philology during its heyday. It combines a clear explanation of basic linguistic concepts with hypotheses about how languages change over time. This is illustrated with analyses of specific word forms as they are transformed by the tendencies among speakers that alter language.

The great bulk of his book examines various Indo-European languages which he claims belong to the most well-developed language family. His examples show the genetic links between modern languages by examining three basic linguistic forms: inflective, agglutinative, and word order languages. All languages make use of each of these forms, though normally one is dominant. In Latin which is mainly inflective, case endings express the role that the word plays in the sentence; suffixes tell us, for example, whether the noun is the subject of the sentence or the object. In English, this information normally is revealed by the order of the words in the sentence. Agglutinative languages employ specific words to express cases and link them together in complex, compound words. Whitney's prime examples of agglutinative languages are Scythian and Chinese, in which words tend to be single syllables. These syllables are brought together to express numerous semantic relations, e.g., cases common in English, as well as passive, reflexive, causative, negative, and impossible action.

These linguistic properties are explained in the course of showing how language changes, sometimes to the extent of altering the dominant structure the language. For example, Modern English, a word order language, developed out of Old English, a inflected language; however, contrary to this trend, some Modern English inflections were formed from older agglutinative or word order features. Whitney's example of this is the past tense suffix "-ed." According to Whitney, it is the worn away expression of "did." "Did" is still used to indicate the past tense as in expressions like "he did love." The origin of the -ed ending came from a slightly different word order, "he love did." The existence of both "he did love" and "he loved" in Modern English indicates that early English was probably agglutinative where "did" served to indicate the past tense.

The Life and Growth of Language drives home the plasticity of language. Suffixes and prefixes are formed out of words worn away by lazy speakers. Conversely, word orders are standardize or specific words are employed to express what was expressed previously by now neglected inflections. Whitney describes other changes to the language related to the invention of new words and word borrowings. Both often take place as a result of significant cultural changes due to new technologies or modes of life or due to exposure to foreign cultures through trade, migration, or conquest. According to Whitney, many words originated in onomatopoeias.

In the later chapters, Whitney describes features of other language families, highlighting the amazing diversity of linguistic forms. For example, outside Indo-European languages, the distinction between verb and other parts of speech is not so stark. Single words are made to do the work of numerous parts of speech and are distinguished only by their inflections. Whitney observes that intonation is critical to distinguishing Chinese words, Native American languages make an important distinction between animate and inanimate objects rather like some languages distinguish genders, and Scythian employs fifteen to twenty separated cases.

Philologists of Whitney's time believed that the relationship between languages could be recognized by the similarity between certain core words, e.g., mother, father, brother, and others that were not likely to be replaced by new or borrowed words. Famously, Jones recognized the similarity of the Latin and Greek "pater" and "mater" and the Sanskrit "piter" and "matar," along with other similar words. Similarities between the grammatical structure of two languages provided an even stronger argument for their common ancestry. Such arguments, however, are not always convincing since accidental commonalities clearly appear between languages.

The difficulty of establishing strong connections between languages raises an important question about the "science" of philology. Whitney examines this in his last chapter. His sensitivity to the difficulties of drawing sound conclusions is, however, limited by the progress of the philosophy of science of the 19th century. While not yet widely and clearly articulated, verificationism and induction was the state of the art in the philosophy of science in Whitney's day. Falsificationism and the hypothetico-deductive method was still 50 to 75 years away from its seminal articulation in Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

Since philology was concerned chiefly with reconstructing dead language that had no written record, there was little to no possibility of testing an hypothesis. All that could be done was to formulate elegant, but untestable theories that linked existing languages. This short-coming may well have been the main reason that philology did not last far into the 20th century as a science. However, with recent advances in archaeology and genetics, a larger body of evidence has become available to support philological claims. Furthermore, more recent philosophers of science and epistemologists, e.g., W.V.O. Quine and Nelson Goodman have enhanced the significance of theory construction in the progress of science, potentially establishing greater respect for future philological activity.

Whitney's work is surprisingly advanced when compared to 20th century linguistics. It is evidence that the advances in 20th century linguistics were not radical departures from the ideas of the 19th century, but merely clearer expressions of nascent older ideas. Similarly, Whitney views Indo-European languages as somehow more developed than those of other families. This reflects his time, but he also exhibits a budding awareness that all human languages are essentially equally sophisticated and are a product of a common natural human capacity. There are many passages that make Whitney sound like a typical 19th century ethnocentric imperialist and other that seem to recognize that non-Indo-European languages, even "primitive" languages, are no less sophisticated than Indo-European languages. In these passages, the difference for Whitney is mostly in the size of the languages' vocabularies, and he recognizes that this is merely a reflection of a more complex industrial society.

All in all, Whitney's The Life and Growth of Language is a fascinating romp through Indo-European philology. Happily, it requires no special knowledge to enjoy the excursion.

History in English Words / Owen Barfield -- Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 1967

A lot of people are very fond of tracing the origins of words, such that a dictionary that does not provide etymological information can be a real disappointment. Our fascination for etymology, however, usually stops short of a passion for philology, i.e., understanding the relationship between words and culture and the principles that lie behind the changes in words and their meanings. The 19th century saw the heyday of philology, though a good deal of philological work was done in the early part of the 20th century; but by that time, there was a struggle in academic English departments between professors of literature and professors of language. With the rise of linguistics departments, the professors of language tended to lose ground in English departments, bringing on the decline of philology.

Owen Barfield's History in English Words is a late reminder of how fascinating philology can be. Barfield strategically selects words that have entered the English language to provide a brisk history of the English speaking people. As the conditions of life and our perspectives on the world changed, our language changed to express these new conditions and perspectives. Our history is revealed in our language.

Barfield's first chapter, "Philology and the Aryans," reaches back to the millennia prior to the advent of English. This is perhaps the most speculative, but also most interesting, facets of philology -- the attempt to identify common roots in recorded languages, to reconstruct prehistoric languages and thereby shed light on prehistoric culture. By the second chapter, "The Settlement of Europe," Barfield's subject becomes historical and he begins employing his primary method of study -- selecting newly introduced words to illustrate the changing currents of culture. In the early Middle Ages, words such as altar, candle, clerk, creed, deacon, hymn, martyr, mass, nun, priest, shrine, and temple entered the English language. This was, of course, a reflection of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, the absence of such institutions among the pagan Anglo-Saxons, and the centrality of religion to the lives of the post-conversion English speakers.

Later, in Modern England, the language was supplemented by a huge infusion of French and Latin words, but also words from other European languages, reflecting the integration of Europe and international commerce. Indeed, the Age of Discovery brought words to English from all over the world; however, the simple borrowing of words from other languages to enrich English does not adequately illustrate Barfield's study. The real work is done in subsequent chapters in which Barfield identifies important currents in the zietgeist of the English speaking people, for example, the rise of experimental science, the discovery of individuality, personality, and reason, and the hegemony of a mechanistic world view. Barfield illustrates each of these new currents of thinking with the new words that entered the English langauge that were needed to express the new ideas.

Much of this is not surprising, but some is quite startling and revealing. Barfield observes that after the Reformation a host of new words entered the language that began with the prefix "self-," e.g., self-conceit, self-liking, self-love, self-confidence, self-command, self-contempt, self-esteem, and self-pity, among others. Today we use most of these words without thinking, but their sudden, simultaneous appearance in our language is evidence of an important change in how people thought of themselves. The explosion of the "self-" prefix seems to reveal something much more subtle and deeper in the cultural changes of the time, whereas the appearance of new scientific terms to describe new instruments and processes is relatively unremarkable.

History in English Words is alternately unenlightening and exquisitely surprising, since much of the changes to our language are ones that we would easily understand and predict, given our general understanding of history, but others reveal a largely imperceptible plasticity of culture not marked by what is obvious to any historian.

The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition / Anne Frank -- NY: Doubleday, 1995.

I never had a strong desire to read Anne Frank's diary. Despite its popularity, I expected that too many entries would be the mundane musing of an adolescent girl. I was moved, however, to pick up the diary after visiting the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. Simply occupying the space that once hid the Frank family and their fellow refugees made me curious about their lives.

I quickly found that the diary's reputation as a semi-sacred testament to the genocide of European jewry was overblown and that entry upon entry was markedly ordinary. I suspect that this would not come as a surprise to anyone more familiar with the work than I was. On only a few occassions did Anne write about the plight of Jews beyond her own conditions. At best, the diary is provides the tiniest glimpse into what Jews were experiencing through out Europe. Certainly, Anne's diary made it possible for people around the world to see deeply into the life of one of the millions of victims of the Nazi crimes, and to that extent, it humanized what might otherwise have been a bewildering story of unfathomable numbers and abstract horrors. Nonetheless, I was surprised at how divorced I felt from the holocaust while reading the diary.

I was, however, drawn into the work in a way that surprised me. More than a primary source for the study of the holocaust, Anne's diary is a fascinating look into the mental life of an adolescent girl struggling with her relationships with mother and father. Her entries deal largely with subjects that might preoccupy any young girl in 21st century America, though her thoughts and feelings were most likely heightened by the constant proximity of her fellow refugees. Nearly as interesting as her difficult relationship with her parents was her slowly developing romantic relationship with Peter van Dan.

In all, I was happy to have finally read a work that has come to be such an important part of the literary history of World War II, but it will remain low on my list of works to recommend for understanding the times in which Anne lived and died.

The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology / Simon Winchester -- NY: Harper Collins, 2001.

The Map that Changed the World by Simon Winchester is really about the man who made the map that changed the world: William Smith. It's an illuminating biography of an 18th century miner and canal builder who hailed from the working class. Smith comes to recognize the repeated sequences of rock lying just below England's topsoil. From these observations, he develops a theory of the history of rock formation and sets out on a long project to map the geology of the British Isles.

Winchester's prose is often repetative and sensational. The early pages read like a poorly written trailer to a movie that you know can't possibly be as good as the trailer suggests. In the end, though, Winchester portrays Smith's life well enough for the reader to understand Smith to be a complex character, incapable of writing the book that would establish his place in the history of science. Instead, Smith's place is established by his authorship of a magnificent map. Even here, the map is only produced when it is sponsored by the leading map maker of the time.

The book combines biography with accounts of class relations in late-Georgian England and a smattering of the fundamental principles of geology. The main story is centered on Smith's life-long struggle to make a living and his roller coaster relationship with his patrons in the English aristocracy. Smith comes off as a gifted geologist and hydrologist, but a pathetic business person and academic scientist. All in all it was not the page turner I had desired, but it was interesting enough, especially for how it illuminated the circumstances surrounding the foundation of the science of geology. I would have appreciated a bit more geology (or even the technicalities of map making) and a little less biography.

Socialism Before the French Revolution: A History / William B. Guthrie -- Macmillan Co., 1907.

By the time this book was published, Marxism dominated the socialist movement, but the revolutionary movement Russia was yet to succeed. The Progressive movement in the US was in full swing, but corporate control in the US was at one of its historical highs. In Socialism before the French Revolution, William Guthrie examines the roots of socialism, particularly in the work of three important writers: Thomas More, Thomas Campanella, and Morelly. Guthrie places these authors on one side of a rough ideological divide that separates (1) thinkers who believe that the natural workings of society generate the best of all possible social arrangements from (2) thinkers who believe that human ingenuity can improve upon these arrangements. The former strand of thinking comes to its culmination with Adam Smith. The latter has its origins in Plato.

Guthrie acknowledges the utopian tendencies in his subjects, but emphasizes numerous practical proposals in each. Topically, Guthrie addresses their views about private property, surplus value, and -- quite interestingly -- the role of the family as an instituion in opposition to socialism and the general good. The analysis of socialism goes beyond the three central figures and touches on several other radical thinkers, particularly various French thinkers. The entire work leaves one thinking these pre-industrial authors were a lot more modern than one would have thougth.

The work earned Guthrie a PhD in political science at Columbia University.

Speeches of John Bright M.P. on the American Question / John Bright -- Boston: Little, Brown, 1865.

John Bright was one of two important advocates for the Northern cause in the British Parliament during the American Civil War. This volume brings together a number of his speeches on the topic. He makes both a moral case and a practical, economic case against British recognition of the Confederacy. It's entertaining to see the issues from the British perspective. Many of the issues of that time have analogues today.

Night / Elie Wiesel -- NY: Hill and Wang, 2006.

Elie Wiesel's Night was first published in English more than ten years after the War. Little scholarship on the Holocaust had been published by then. I can only imagine how shocking and moving the work would have been a the time. It still retains enormous power, but it is a testament to Wiesel's efforts that we "never forget" that much of the spirit of this work is part of our general knowledge and understanding.

The French Revolution, 1789-1799 / Peter McPhee -- Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002

I was a little disappointed in this book. I was hoping for a general overview of the revolution which would identify a number of important dynamics within the revolution and explain their interrelations, along with some fuller account of central figures. While the McPhee does a bit of the former, I still was left feeling that I didn't have a very clear picture of the revolution. I can't say the work did much to correct an embarassing gap in my knowledge of European history. The work included occasional statistical data to establish certain points, but none of it was detailed enough or thorough enough to be terribly meaningful. Nonetheless, the book has a number of redeeming features that other readers may well appreciate.

History of the Reign of Phillip II / William H. Prescott -- Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1878

I have read only the first two volumes of this three volume set. I was surprised how little it tells of Phillip himself. The first volume contains a lot about Charles V, the Spanish war with France, Phillip's marriage to Mary of England, and unrest in the Netherlands. The second volume is largely about the resistence to Spanish rule in the Netherlands, the defense of Malta against a Turkish attack, and the tragic life of Juan Carlos. I find Prescott's writing quite engaging.