Nebraska Books

Written by John McKenna

Interior Places, by Lisa Knopp, is an extraordinary journey below the facile, surface reality of an unexamined life into those deep, interior worlds where Truths like gemstones lie awaiting discovery. This splendid collection of sixteen essays spans a tremendous variety of subjects, approaches, and insights. Through it all, Knopp is able to craft each essay with the skill of an expert gemologist--each paragraph becomes a facet of the overall design that makes the interior theme glow with all the iridescence of a peacock's tail. Interior Places combines personal passions with public issues, careful scholarship with surprisingly fresh personal slants, and metaphorical formulations with ecstatic revelations. This book immediately rewards the more casual reader, and it also rewards the more thoughtful reader interested in parsing experiences for enduring truths. Interior Places is a rare and valuable gem, an important book, a must read.

As Knopp shows in her earlier collections of essays Flight Dreams, Field of Vision, and most recently, The Nature of Home, she writes in the tradition of literary journalism. An essay like "In the Corn" is scholarly and compelling at the same time. Although I grew up on a farm where corn was a crop, Knopp teaches me more about maize (Zea mays) and its origins and dependency on mankind for propagation than I had ever known. But this essay is more than a disquisition into corn, for her pen conflates maize into more than a crop; it blossoms into a metaphor. As one subtitle asserts--"metaphor clarifies and obscures." So that when Knopp looks at the prairie of her home state of Iowa and her adopted state of Nebraska, while driving past fields of corn, she says, "When I look down the corn rows, one identical vanishing point after another whips past." In an important way, this is a metaphor for Knopp's insight into the ordinary world where infinity lurks in the ordinary.

The ability to tease the universal from the particular, the world from a grain of sand, to reference Blake, is the business of all creative nonfiction writers and Knopp is a master of finding universal truths in the world at hand. One of her most charming essays, "A Bit of Land," describes the astonishingly varied and variegated backyard of her small house in Lincoln, Nebraska. Nurtured by her hand and also by her benign neglect, an incredible array of flora and fauna thrive in her backyard. Including Knopp herself and her two children, Meredith and Ian, a triumvirate that might be the most interesting inhabitants of her wilding quarter acre. As in everything Knopp turns her penetrating and observant mind to, she concludes about her backyard that it's "a bit of land whose wonders I have yet to exhaust." Both for herself and for the reader, so we know that she will return to marvel again at the extraordinary in the ordinary and post an irresistibly charming invitation for the reader to accompany her on her musings.

One of the essays that remains in the mind of this reader is "Tending" which describes Knopp, accompanied by her daughter Meredith, as they volunteer to help hand out food to indigent people at a local food bank. Not only does this essay reveal Knopp's considerable idealism and social-consciousness but it also is a considerably clear-eyed look at the regulars who line up to give and to receive groceries at the food bank. Knopp might be a romantic at heart (she is) but she also is capable of skewering three pushy, quarrelsome rogues whom Knopp dubbs "The Aunties." Selfish and self-involved these three harpies give Knopp a perfect opportunity to paint the repulsive with a light touch.

Knopp is a philosopher at heart and her disquisitions encompass a wide range of topics--from natural history, to social justice, to personal ethics. In the essay, "Departure Moon," she uses the changing appearance of the moon and the changes that perspective and place bring to make an important inquiry into the mutability of human, and her, life. She laments life and loss but concludes that she accepts mutability, accepts "a planet teeming with life and death, arrivals and departures, arisings and passings." It's "the only place to live." Knopp is achingly aware of her own mortality and of the ephemeral nature of her relationship to her children. It is clear her essaying is, in part, an attempt to fix some part of that relationship more enduringly in time.

In "Traces," set at the funeral of her beloved grandmother, Knopp hopes "my children [will] carry some of these fragments with them to guard against the day when my memories have been whittled down to nubs . . .." Yet she also realizes and accepts that change is inevitable and in the essay, "Surrender," she uses the metaphor of capturing (for banding) and releasing song birds as a metaphor for rearing and releasing one's children. "I realized that the bird in the open palm was also a symbol of my mother's idea of how to parent. Let them go when they want; let them return when they want. Don't grasp." As any parent knows, that is a difficult balance. Perfect balance is difficult in life and in art, but Knopp's Interior Places achieves this difficult balance with great grace and great beauty.

Scholars have conducted the study of culture in two general ways: as an observer science, where behavior and world-views are measurable and subject to impartial observation; and as an interpretive art, where a scholar actually participates in the understanding of a given culture. In view of increasingly manifest problems with both stances, this book proposes an alternative, one that capitalizes on the strengths of both schools of cultural analysis and in fact underpins the work of major social theorists of the modern era, including Adorno, Foucault, and Bourdieu. The study develops a practical model of culture and method of interpretation that are built around the concept of "constructing constellations." According to this concept--drawn from the work of Simmel, Kracauer, Benjamin and Adorno--cultures are made up of social fields, embedded social practices that are continually created and patterned in various relations, akin to constellations. The central task of interpretive social research, the book contends, is to thematize such fields and practices in context-transforming ways. The book concludes with an examination of embedded actions and beliefs in urban settings, focusing especially on ghetto life in New York and the world of boxing in Chicago.

The Invention of the Creek Nation by Steven Hahn is an excellent look into what has traditionally been defined as the Creek Confederacy. Hahn takes issue with this gross misnomer and tries to sort out to the extent that the Creek nation as defined by the British ever existed. It is a superb look at the internal politics and international relations of the time through the eyes of colonial records of the three European powers. The end result of this investigations shows a fractured political unit comprised of many tribes. At best there can be seen two competing states of the Upper Creek and Lower Creek however their often existed many more. Hahn summarizes much of the recent literature making this an excellent overview for those who wish to learn about the Creek. The book does an excellent job of showing the Creek perspective on politics and showing how Creek leaders tried to keep a neutralist stance in war. Overall an excellent book on this tribe and one that will be immensely valuable for not only those looking at Native American history but colonial history.

I subscribe to The Forward and enjoy the columns and book reviews by Ilan Stavans. His style is potent. He makes accessible very difficult writers and topics, like Walter Benjamin, George Steiner, and Elias Canetti. Most of his columns are in this book. The theme of the Jewish cannon has been discussed lately but Stavans does it in a way that is open and democratic. An excellent read, worth every minute of it. Stavans is the type of writer of essays that will be read in the future.

Professor Robinson has contributed a refreshing new look to a much confused aspect of the Battle of Gettysburg. Jeb Stuart was, and remains, a controversial figure--a love `em or hate `em sort of guy. And that's the rub. Over the past 140 years much has been written about his role in the Battle of Gettysburg, and unfortunately it has been written with an emotional pen. The facts have been buried and lost under mountains of hyperbole and replaced by contorted logic and strained reasoning.

Is Jeb Stuart to blame for the Confederate loss at Gettysburg? Did he follow Robert E. Lee's orders or was he the innocent victim of vague and flawed command direction?

Professor Robinson's book recalibrates the past through an objective analysis that's steeped in a clear and easy to follow writing style. He has meticulously combed the record, presented the unvarnished facts, and drawn the common sense conclusions that inevitably follow.

Gettysburg was a defining chapter in American history, and it continues to capture the passions of many. Serious students and casual tourists will greatly benefit from this well written book. It is more than a new look at much written cavalry subject; it is a framework to better understand this pivotal battle of the Civil War.

Marcus Spiegel may have been atypical in that he was Jewish, but his experiences in the war are much more universal. This is a great book for highlighting the changing views of the purpose of the war, and the personal struggles many Union soldiers went through--in particular those who were northern Democrats--as the aims of the wat changed from restoration of the Union to also include ending the institution of slavery. Spiegel's story is the story of a loyal Democract--a Democrat who is loyal to his commander-in-chief, Republican Abraham Lincoln, and wh serves his country faithfully nonetheless. His story also highlights his slow transformation in his own wordl view. At the outset Spiegel shared the racist views of most of his white neighbors, and disliked abolitionists. By the end of the war, however, he considers himself an abolitionist of a sort. If you want to begin to understand the complexity of northern attitudes toward slaves and slavery, this is a good place to start.

A great read for anyone interested in the innerworkings of the Army of the Potomac. Dyer served closely with Gens. Hancock, Gibbon, Hooker, and Howard, giving pesonal insight to these men. He also goes into the lives to the fighing soldier in great detail. Being a top-notch surgeon, the men are always on the forefront of his mind. Dyer works tirelessly for the care and well being of the men. He is especially interested in making sure the men get vegetables, as Dyer is recognized as the first to realize that scurvy is a major problem in the Army. Perfect for anyone interested in how the medical corp oppereated from battlefield care, to the ambulence corp, to division hospitals up to to the large hospitals of the north. Tactfully edited by Chesson.

This book is best read in conjunction with Larpenteur's FORTY YEARS A FUR TRADER,and Denig's FIVE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UPPER MISSOURI,& ASSINABOINE to fully appreciate the cultural specifics & interrelationships between white traders,Indians,& Metis peoples in mid 19th century Dakota & Montana territories.Unlike present day politically correct/"sensitive" accounts, Kurz was a Swiss artist who lived with & sketched the Indian tribes of the upper & lower Missouri River from 1846-1852 as he found them. Dispite overall sympathy for the plight of their rapidly changing cultures,he depicts various tribes in brutally accurate & often unflattering accounts. History with all its bumps & warts is a phenomena sadly lacking today particularly with regard to Native American/White relations on the frontier. It's a humanizing account-acknowledging the endemic savage violence Indians were capable of directing toward each other. The lethal depridations of Smallpox,Influenza, & Cholera, on native populations are also described with disturbing directness. I would recommend this & the other titles mentioned for any reader who is interested in historical accuracy with often upsetting bluntness.

To cite Meriwether Lewis as Editor of this and other volumes of this University of Nebraska Press edition, edited by Moulton, is an injustice to Moulton. Lewis' efforts never got beyond a pros- pectus. Further, to list Clark as merely a con- tributor, is unforgiveable.

Number twelve in a distinguished, and, multivolume effort by Dr. Gary Moulton, The University of Nebraska, The "Herbarium" volume of "The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition" is the most comprehensive, edited botanical reference of the known plant specimens of the Corps of Discovery, 1803-1806.

As an impressive culmination to the Journals, the herbarium collection finalizes the extensive botanical scholarship contained in the notes produced by Dr. Moulton in the previous eleven volumes, published periodically over the past twenty years. The product of extensive research into the known world repositories of the extent plant specimens, this volume contains only one known error in terms of inclusion of a plant specimen that cannot be attributed to the expedition's collection. This one specimen at the Charleston Museum has been discounted since publication.

Nevertheless, this volume contains relatively high-quality image reproductions of the known 238 specimens in the Lewis and Clark Herbarium, in addition to a clear introduction to the history of the Herbarium collection and the scholarship behind its most recent publication. 227 specimens are currently housed in the Academy of Natural Science in Philadelphia, and the remaining 11 are housed in the Kew Gardens, London. Of this list, 177 are distinct, individual specimens.

In the future, it is more than likely, despite this exhaustive effort on the part of Moulton, that a few new specimens will emerge from the depths of the American Philosophical Society, The Academy of Natural Sciences, and Kew.

Until such a time, this volume is an absolute necessity for anyone seriously interested in understanding the natural history ramifications of the expedition, the study of Lewis and Clark, and, for that matter, America's landscape legacy. One wonders how many more specimens would have been added to this collection if Lewis' early collections for the lower-Missouri had not been lost to decay during the expedition itself.

"Volume 12, Herbarium of the Lewis and Clark Expedition," Gary E. Moulton, Editor, The University of Nebraska Press, completes a fantastic series and must be added to complete one's collection of the first eleven volumes of the truly great American literary epic.

The only wish of this author would be the publication of high-resolution, color digital images of the Herbarium on CD or DVD, as a compendium to this volume. Perhaps in this way, we could all experience more clearly the wonder of viewing this most valuable treasure.

Dr. Gary Moulton should be congratulated for a job very well-done.

Alex Philp The University of Montana