Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano

So much oppression, can’t keep track of it no more

Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015) was a Uruguayan journalist and one of his nation’s most prominent literary figures. He often wrote about the history, politics, and culture of Latin America, particularly how that region’s history of subjection to imperialist conquest has influenced its modern condition. Galeano’s literary works often blur the line between fiction and nonfiction. His 2009 book Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone, is written in much the same style and format as his earlier Memory of Fire trilogy: a rapid-fire string of brief vignettes depicting famous or lesser-known personages from history. Though the events depicted are real, Galeano’s scenes often contain fictionalized details, dialogue, and interior reflections, in much the same manner as historical novels. Whereas Galeano focused exclusively on the history of Latin America in his Memory of Fire series, in Mirrors he sets his sights on the entire world. Both works, however, are similarly concerned with depicting instances of oppression, intolerance, imperialism, and violence.

The worldwide broadening of scope allows Galeano to tackle the oppression of various marginalized groups, among them Latinos, Blacks, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, Gypsies, women, homosexuals, the poor, and even nature itself. Though the vignettes are seemingly unrelated, a certain thread pertaining to one of these topics will continue for several episodes before flowing seamlessly into the next string of horror stories of slavery and other atrocities. Despite the horrendous and tragic subject matter, Galeano often approaches each vignette with a sort of gallows humor, along the lines of “Isn’t it ridiculous the justifications that [the oppressor] came up with for torturing [the oppressed]?” Throughout the book, the Catholic Church frequently fills in the oppressor blank, as does the U.S. government and various Latin American dictators. Perhaps no one in this book, however, is charged with as many sins as the British, toward whom Galeano apparently harbors a great deal of resentment.

Mirrors is essentially a people’s history of the world that views events through a welcome leftist lens but is written in a more creative-nonfiction style than the works of academic historians like Howard Zinn. The global scope of Mirrors is less effective than the Latin American focus of the Memory of Fire books, and the reader simply learns less as a result. Often Mirrors simply reads like a catalog of atrocities, many of which are common knowledge. Though coverage of each incident is necessarily brief, Galeano sometimes reveals little-known facts and figures. This book’s most important accomplishment, however, is making the reader aware of unfamiliar individuals and events that might be worthy of further investigation in other sources. Naturally, given Galeano’s area of expertise, many of those lesser-known figures come from Spanish and Latin American history.

In many of the myriad scenes that comprise Mirrors, Galeano’s unique perspective on history is enlightening, thought-provoking, and even amusing. At other times, however, the book is just a bummer that challenges one’s faith in humanity and one’s hope for the future. A run of several pages in which Galeano ponders mankind’s destruction of the environment, for example, doesn’t teach you much and doesn’t offer any solutions. It’s just depressing. Still, the benefits of Mirrors outweigh its faults. Galeano keeps the reader interested throughout, and one can’t help looking at the world in a new way after reading his insightful take on the frequently shameful history of mankind.
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The Yellow Dog by Georges Simenon

Maigret in Finistère

First published in 1931, The Yellow Dog is the sixth novel in Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret series, a series that would grow to include 75 novels, the last being published in 1972. Originally published in French as Le Chien jaune, The Yellow Dog has also been published under the titles of Maigret and the Yellow Dog, Maigret and the Concarneau Murders, and A Face for a Clue.

The story takes place in Concarneau, a town in Finistère, the western-most department of Brittany. Though he is employed by the Police Judiciaire of Paris, Maigret has been stationed in the nearby city of Rennes, where he is acting as a consultant to the police department there. When a shooting occurs in Concarneau, he is called in to investigate. At the time Simenon wrote the book, Concarneau had a population of about 6,000. The portrait he paints of the city is that of an insular coastal town, where a few of the town’s notable gentlemen, although provincial small fry compared to wealthy Parisiennes, nevertheless manage to lord their minor aristocracy over the common folk of Concarneau. These leading citizens form a small group of regulars at the Admiral Hotel, where they drink, play cards, and mess around with women. One night, one of these card players is walking home after an evening at the hotel bar. When he stops in the doorway of an abandoned house to light a cigarette, he is shot through the door. Given the circumstances, it seems like it may be a random violent act, but when Maigret arrives to discuss the case with the in-crowd at the Admiral, they discover poison in their glasses, indicating that someone is out to get them.

I enjoyed the setting of the novel because I have actually traveled to Finistère, not Concarneau but some cities nearby. As usual, Simenon reveals aspects of French life to his readers beyond what the typical tourist sees, and he brings to his mysteries a perspicacious understanding of human nature that rings true to life. Even in a small town where the disparity between the haves and have-nots may not be as wide as one would find in a major urban center, there is nonetheless a line drawn between the two. Those on the right side of that line, who are friends with the right people, can get away with much. The town’s prominent residents hide some ethically questionable behavior behind their moral facades as upstanding citizens. Simenon also illustrates how small-town crimes generate rumors and paranoia that sweep through the populace like wildfire.

The Maigret novels are consistently very good, so as one would expect, The Yellow Dog is a finely crafted mystery. Even so, I don’t think there’s anything truly memorable or remarkable about this particular Maigret novel that sets it above Simenon’s usual standard of quality. (The title is unusual for a Maigret novel, but the yellow dog in question is more of a bystander than an integral participant in the case.) Because Maigret is removed from his normal milieu of Paris, it seems like less of his personality is explored than in most Maigret mysteries. I don’t believe his wife, for example, is even mentioned in this novel. The resolution to the mystery ends up being an admirably complicated affair with several moving parts, some of which the reader can see coming, but some of which are a total surprise. In summation, this is probably not among Maigret’s best, but even his average cases are better than the rest.  

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Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt by Nina Burleigh

Just as much military history as science history

Nina Burleigh’s 2007 book Mirage is a history of the French invasion of Egypt from 1798 to 1801. Napoleon, at this time still a general and not yet emperor, led a force of 50,000 soldiers and sailors to conquer Egypt in the name of France. He also brought along 151 “savants”—scientists, artists, engineers, and a poet—to conduct research, study the land and its inhabitants, and document the natural and cultural history of the region. The focus of Mirage is ostensibly directed toward the work and travels of these savants, but the book is also very much a history of a military campaign and a critique of Napoleon’s leadership.

When the expedition departed, only Napoleon and a few of his closest colleagues knew the final destination of the voyage. The savants who volunteered for the journey weren’t informed they were going to Egypt until they were halfway across the Mediterranean. When the French reached the North African Coast, they were attacked by the English navy (England also had claims to Egypt) and routed in the Battle of the Nile. Thousands of French soldiers and sailors lost their lives in the battle, and all of the savants’ scientific equipment ended up at the bottom of Abukir Bay. When the scientists reached Alexandria, they found the city much shabbier and more desolate than the exotic Oriental paradise they had imagined. Thus was the inauspicious start to an arduous undertaking that would last three years and take many French lives.

The majority of the book is about the harsh conditions and hazards that the French invaders—soldiers and savants alike—were forced to endure, including but not limited to the punishing desert heat, starvation, swarms of insects, eye diseases, an epidemic of bubonic plague, and deadly altercations with Mamelukes, Turks, and Brits. The savants had the added danger of being despised by the very troops they were accompanying. They enjoyed the favor of Napoleon, however, who was quite a scientific dilettante. Most of the book is a catalog of horror stories of desert warfare. Burleigh doesn’t really delve deeply into the scientific and archaeological achievements of the expedition until about chapter 8 (of 12). The final chapter discusses the making of the mammoth 23-volume book Description de l’Egypte, a lavishly illustrated compendium of all the savants’ scientific and cultural discoveries. Burleigh follows the lives of several of the savants through their post-expedition careers up until their deaths.

As I’ve explained above, this isn’t strictly a science history or a story of archaeological exploration, even if the subtitle and packaging make it out to be one. Nevertheless, there is plenty here for enthusiasts of science history and exploration narratives to enjoy. Among the savants that Burleigh highlights are the mathematician Gaspard Monge, chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, zoologist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, physicist Joseph Fourier, physician René-Nicolas Desgenettes, and the MacGyver-like inventor Nicolas Conté. Burleigh’s book is relatively brief, but it does provide an admirably comprehensive overview of the expedition. Of course, you’ll find more detailed information in more specialized monographs, and after reading Mirage you might very well want to look up individual biographies of some of the more interesting savants. I for one would very much like to learn more about the scientific and archaeological discoveries of these explorers, and I have Burleigh to thank for inspiring my curiosity with this well-researched and accessible history of the expedition.  

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The Box with the Broken Seals by E. Phillips Oppenheim

Too many gentlemen spoil a thriller

British author E. Phillips Oppenheim was a popular and prolific author of thrillers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The plots of his novels often revolve around murder mysteries and/or British-vs.-German espionage. His novel The Box with the Broken Seals, published in 1919, falls into the latter category. This book has also been published under the title of The Strange Case of Jocelyn Thew.

The novel is set during World War I. As the story opens, two secret service agents, one British and one American, arrive in Chicago hoping to capture a spy who has stolen state secrets. They soon realize, however, that they are the victims of a diversion, sent on a wild goose chase by the man they’re hunting. The spy they’re after, a renowned gentleman-thief and “adventurer” named Jocelyn Thew, is really in New York, about to depart on a ship to Europe. Thew has stolen some diplomatic papers and plans to sell them to the Germans, if he can get them overseas. (The title of the book refers to the sealed dispatch boxes in which diplomatic documents were traditionally transported.) In typically vague Oppenheim fashion, the reader is never given the details of what is contained in these mysterious papers; they are merely an object for all parties in the book to chase. Thew is motivated by a grudge against England, a taste for the finer life that wealth brings, and a zest for the competitive game of matching his wits against law enforcement agencies. Of the two secret service agents with which we started the novel, the American is never heard from again, but the Brit, named Crawshay, will not be deterred from pursuing the trail of his dastardly quarry.

Like many of Oppenheim’s novels, The Box with the Broken Seals is moderately entertaining, but not much to get excited about for readers approaching the book a century after its publication. Here Oppenheim delivers a rather simple plot that is drawn out with too many redundant dinner-party conversations. The cleverest plot element to come out of the novel is a unique method of smuggling that could perhaps be advantageously utilized in a better thriller than this.

Oppenheim’s novels often suffer from a predictability that’s enforced by the restrictive self-imposed conventions of his time. In Oppenheim’s world, for example, a woman could never be capable of committing a crime, which thus renders half of humanity harmless as far as possible suspects go. Also, a gentleman could never truly be a villain, particularly a British gentleman of noble blood with an aristocratic title, no matter how small. Only working-class riffraff and servants can truly be evil. In this book, as in many of Oppenheim’s others, the hero and his opponent, both being gentlemen, engage in cordial relations while matching wits and develop a mutual admiration for one another. With Jocelyn Thew displaying all the refined qualities of the upper class, it’s basically a given in an Oppenheim plot that he will turn out to be not such a bad guy after all. Knowing that kills pretty much any suspense the spy story might generate.

Oppenheim’s novels call to mind old pre-Hitchcock spy movies that you might see on Turner Classic Movies. If you like those kinds of movies, and don’t mind a little antiquated hokeyness and predictability, then you’ll probably like this too.

Poland: The First Thousand Years by Patrice M. Dabrowski

Two different books before and after the Enlightenment

My interest in Poland springs from my partial Polish heritage. Researching my family’s history led me to an interest in Polish history, literature, and film. Unlike the history of some Western European countries such as England, France, or Italy, however, Poland’s past is not common knowledge taught in America’s schools. It can be difficult to appreciate a nation’s arts and letters when one doesn’t have the historical context upon which its cultural works are based. For a while, therefore, I’ve kept my eyes open for a concise yet comprehensive history of Poland, one that’s neither too academic nor too dumbed-down for the layman. I found what I was looking for with Patrice Dabrowski’s 2014 book Poland: The First Thousand Years. This history nails the sweet spot where erudition and accessibility meet. For her distinguished career as a scholar in Polish studies, Dabrowski was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland in 2014.

Thematically and stylistically, Dabrowski’s Poland reads as if it were two different books stuck together between the covers of one volume. The dividing line is the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791, which occurs about 60 percent of the way through the book. Everything up to that point is an old-school royal history. It’s all about the succession of kings from one to the next, along with the battles, royal marriages, and elections that influenced the path to the throne. One gets almost no idea of what life was like for the Poles who were not high up on the ladder of nobility. This portion of the book reads a lot like a high school history textbook (if there were a high school course devoted exclusively to Poland). The text, though very informative, relates events in a rather cursory, just-the-facts fashion that imparts the necessary names, dates, and places to the reader. There isn’t much analysis beyond these facts, no social history, and Dabrowski doesn’t really elucidate any broader historical trends or push any thesis. I suspect this approach is due to what’s available in the historical record from these earlier centuries and the sheer volume of a millennium of events that Dabrowski feels she’s obligated to cram into one volume.

After the 1791 constitution, however, this becomes a totally different book, and a much better one. While Dabrowski still manages to deliver the names, dates, and places of all the important historical events, the writing in the book’s latter half is much more thoughtful and penetrating. All facets of Polish history and society are covered. The reader gets a vivid impression of what life was like for Poles of all classes and backgrounds. The text reads as if Dabrowski were actually shaping the historiography of Poland (as she should be, since she’s a historian and an expert in this area) rather than just relating events. Her coverage of the 19th and 20th centuries is everything that anyone interested in Polish history could hope for­—comprehensive, fascinating, erudite, and thought-provoking.

I’m not a historian, but I imagine the one-volume history, as a scholarly endeavor, is a bit of a thankless job. The author is expected to include everything, and for every event she discusses there’s a scholarly monograph that examines it more deeply and thoroughly. Nevertheless, it takes a very knowledgeable scholar and a very competent writer to put together an all-encompassing synthesis that’s suitable for general readers but also passes muster among academicians. Dabrowski deserves commendation for her formidable achievement in compiling and composing this welcome history of Poland. The reader comes away with a very enlightening education in that nation’s turbulent past.  

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The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

A believably scary what-might-have-been, for most of its length

Following his historic solo flight from New York to Paris, Charles Lindbergh was the most famous and beloved American alive. Unfortunately, however, this handsome, charming, and charismatic hero had white supremacist views that were very similar to the Nazis. He made openly antisemitic remarks and was an advocate of eugenics (selective breeding of human beings) for the advancement of the white race. What if Lindbergh had developed a closer relationship to the Nazis and used his celebrity to further an antisemitic agenda in the United States? Author Philip Roth asks that question in his novel The Plot Against America, published in 2004.

In this alternate history, Lindbergh runs for president in 1940 on an isolationist platform and defeats the incumbent Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, is startled and appalled by the election results and fearful of what effect Lindbergh’s presidency will have on the lives of America’s Jews. The novel is narrated by the family’s nine-year-old son, Philip Roth, an alternate version of the author himself. It is probably safe to assume that portions of the novel are based on the real Philip Roth’s own youth in Newark, before the plot ventures off into an alternate universe.

Although this book is a political thriller of sorts, much of the narrative is simply a realistic look at the life of a Jewish boy and his family in the 1940s. If you’re looking for a Robert Ludlum-type thriller about evil Nazis plotting a terrorist takeover of America, this isn’t it. Prior to reading the book, if you’re aware of its premise, you might expect concentration camps and jack-booted stormtroopers marching through the streets of Newark. To my surprise, this Nazi invasion is much more toned-down and realistic in nature, which is the book’s strength. Although the plot burns on a slow fuse, for most of it’s length it is quite believable. The fact is, prior to America’s entry into World War II, there were many Nazi sympathizers in America, ultraconservatives who hated and feared communism, and at that time America as a whole was probably pretty antisemitic. Roth builds upon this historic reality without exaggerating it to the point of a science fiction dystopia or a tongue-in-cheek satire like Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here. In fact, Lindbergh’s actions as president in this novel are actually more subtle and less overtly totalitarian than many of the brash displays of executive power by presidents in our recent history. Events in this book escalate on a gradual scale, but they still bear terrifying implications, not just for Jews but for any American who values democracy and freedom.

Unfortunately, the book takes a strange turn towards the end. In Chapter 8 (of 9), all of a sudden the plot becomes really far-fetched. The story ventures into Lindbergh conspiracy theories that undermine the realism of what came before. Then, in the final chapter, Roth regains his sense of humor at an inappropriate time and injects comedy scenes into depictions of events that should have been tragic and profound. The foibles-of-a-young-Jewish-boy humor that worked so well in Chapter 1 feels out of place after a Nazi-inspired pogrom.

Overall, the merits of The Plot Against America outweigh its faults. This is an intelligently created alternate reality that insightfully examines real history and in doing so broadens the reader’s understanding of that history. Whether he’s writing about a Nazi plot or everyday Jewish-American life, Roth’s storytelling is so captivating that you may not even realize you’re getting a valuable lesson in American history, culture, and politics.  

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Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery, The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842 by Nathaniel Philbrick

Captains Outrageous

Following the overland expedition of Lewis and Clark to the Pacific coast of North America, the U.S. government decided to pay some overdue attention to the world’s oceans. Many European nations had already completed globe-circling voyages of discovery, most notably Portugal’s Ferdinand Magellan and Britain’s Captain Cook. After much bureaucratic delay, the United States Exploring Expedition was launched in 1838. In his 2003 book Sea of Glory, Nathaniel Philbrick chronicles the adventures, hardships, successes, and failures of the Ex. Ex. (as it shall hereafter be abbreviated). This U.S. Navy endeavor was led by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, a skilled surveyor but an inexperienced ship’s captain. The expedition’s main goals were to chart the islands of the Pacific to prevent the shipwrecks of American whalers, survey the Pacific coast of North America at the mouth of the Columbia River, and, in a best-case scenario, confirm the speculated existence of an Antarctic continent.

I like to read books about scientific exploration, such as Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, or the Narrative of Captain Cook’s voyages. That’s what I expected when I picked up this book, and its title and subtitle do little to dispel that expectation. Exploration and discovery, however, is not so much what this book is about. It’s really about what a terrible captain Wilkes was, and how he abused his officers and crew. Philbrick is a naval historian, and this book delves heavily into naval regulations, naval discipline, and naval bureaucracy. Although some distinguished scientists sailed with the expedition, there is really only one short chapter devoted to them and their discoveries. Nevertheless, there are a few exciting episodes of danger from icebergs in the Antarctic Ocean and some harrowing tales of conflict with the Natives of the Pacific islands. Although this wasn’t quite the book I expected, and naval history isn’t really my bag, I found Philbrick’s narrative quite riveting, and he kept me thoroughly engaged throughout.

The ending of the book is a bit of a disappointment. That’s mostly the fault of history, but a little of the blame falls on Philbrick as well. He spends most of the book asserting what a horrible commander and unlikable human being Wilkes was. By the end of the book, the reader is ready to hang Wilkes from the nearest yardarm for his egregious behavior. In the final few chapters, however, Philbrick relents and delivers a surprisingly flattering assessment of Wilkes. The fact that Wilkes doesn’t get much comeuppance from the U.S. Navy, who predictably favor an officer over his underlings, is not much of a surprise, but the fact that Wilkes doesn’t even get any comeuppance from Philbrick is dissatisfying and strange. Philbrick spurs you on to hate Wilkes for most of the book, then all of a sudden you’re supposed to do a 180 and admire the expedition leader for his bull-headed tenacity. Philbrick criticizes Wilkes for stealing credit from his crew members for the accomplishments of the Ex. Ex., but in the end, Philbrick gives him most of the credit anyway.

Notwithstanding my few quibbles, this book taught me a great deal about the Ex. Ex., and it makes me want to read more about this lesser-known but important escapade in American history. Philbrick provides extensive bibliographic notes for those who want to learn more. For the more scientifically inclined like me, he recommends William Stanton’s The Great United States Exploring Expedition (1975). In addition, the Ex. Ex.’s official publications, including Wilkes’s Narrative and the subsequent scientific volumes, are available for free reading online at HathiTrust, Biodiversity Heritage Library, and other digital repositories.
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