Eastern University Books

The Deathbed Playboy is a wonderful read. Dacey's tonal range is wide. The poems are smart, tender, and often funny. Smart, but not pedantic. Tender, but not gooey and manipulative. Funny, but not frivolous. The title poem, "The Deathbed Playboy," is a stunner. The tension between the humor and grief is palpable, and the funny and frantic reflections of the speaker are heartbreaking.

So many contemporary books of poetry sound like they were all ghost-written by one glib Writing Workshop star. Dacey has a distinctive voice. It's generous, sly, comic and wonderfully accessible. This one goes on my gift-giving list

This is an excellent and well-researched survey of US-Israeli relations between 1953 and 1962. Ben-Zvi recounts how at first the US Government sought to contain the supposed Soviet threat to the Middle East by uniting the nations of the region, and saw Israel as a hindrance to this.

But the anti-colonial revolutions of 1957-58 destroyed this policy. The US Government moved to support `moderate' Arab regimes against Arab nationalism. In April 1957, President Eisenhower sent the US 6th Fleet to help King Hussein of Jordan, and $30 million aid, after Hussein had dismissed the elected Government and declared martial law. Eisenhower then got Turkey, Iraq and Jordan to mobilise their armed forces against Syria, after nationalist forces gained power there.

In July 1958, the Iraqi people overthrew their pro-British Government. The US Government sent 14,000 troops to Lebanon to threaten Iraq, also to prevent revolution in Lebanon. The British Government sent 2,200 paratroops to Jordan to help Hussein: Israel allowed them to fly their troops in through Israeli airspace. This convinced the US Government that it should support Israel.

In August 1962, President Kennedy decided to sell Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel, hoping it would then let the US inspect Israel's nuclear weapons facilities at Dimona and would allow 100,000-150,000 Palestinians to return home. Israel rejected both proposals, yet still got the Hawks.

This set a pattern for the next 35 years: Israel received huge military and economic support, but made no policy concessions. The US Government developed Israel as its military proxy in the Middle East, however unpopular this made Israel, and the USA. The costs to the region have been enormous: regular wars, the continual repression of the Palestinians, lack of political and economic progress. But this policy finally failed in the Gulf War, when the USA had to keep Israel out of the coalition against Iraq, for fear of wrecking it.

This is the best of a number of books that I have read that discuss the entire region - the writing style is accessible and the amount of information contained is quite comprehensive. Ten of my Hungarian, Slovak and Croatian friends who have borrowed my copy have pronounced it the best book on the region they had read in any language.

I strongly recommend this work as one of the finest studies of "the missing link" in democracy-building in post-Communist eastern Europe. The author's thesis is that "little people don't matter" - democracy is "too serious a business" to be left to the herd - echoes the political elitism which has always dominated this region, reinforced by contemporary "money first" free market Western pseudo-democracy.

Which brings me to two relatively mild critiques of Ost's presentation. Precisely because we're dealing with central Europe and aristocratic notions that persisted all through the "Peoples' Republic," Polish intellectuals still carried a residue of class snobbery, no matter how temporarily infatuated with Solidarity in 1980. They were thus primed by class culture to eventually turn away from the workers. Only alluded to in Ost's work, but of equal importance, was the wining and dining of these people on their Western junkets, filling their heads with schemes of personal enrichment, leading them to believe that the privileges pushed on them on these Western visits would continue to be theirs back home if they followed said advisors. A pure case of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," without the redeeming epiphany. The experience of Solidarity's leadership in the halls of the West is quite similar to that of the African National Congress of South Africa, as given in William Gumede's "Thabo Mbeki and the Soul of the ANC." In both cases the "vanguard leadership" of a radical, grass-roots organization was separated from its base in the name of furthering Western interests, to the lasting harm of the people they purported to lead.

Another aspect of Ost's work is his excellent description of how and why the Polish working class turned from the liberals to embrace a nationalist-"family values" platform that has nothing to do with their economic plight. But Ost tends to glide over the fact that the nationalist right could so easily take up this slack precisely because of its deep roots in Poland. Poland is like Ireland, in its wedding of underdog nationalism to Catholicism, and as in Ireland the Church has taken on itself the task of keeping a poor population content with its economic lot while turning anger elsewhere. There is nothing post-Communist in this, as witness Jan Gross' "Fear," describing how violent anti-Semitism wracked Poland across all class lines in the mid-1940s. Because of the deep-seated nature of Catholic nationalism it was poised to take over the social base of Poland, much more so than in Czechoslovakia or Hungary, unless liberals and social democrats could offer a competing ideal. The tragedy in Poland, as Ost so ably describes, was that they could have - but didn't want to.

Most of our traditional histories of China paint a picture of a mainly monolithic state passing through a more-or-less straight line of Dynasties functioning around the designated "Han" peoples. Even where Dynasties were ruled by non-Han peoples (the Yuan, e.g.), we have been given the view that the essence of the "real" China was still the central "Han" culture.

In recent years we have seen numerous studies, archeological discoveries and discourses written about the geographic areas of current China outside of the classical area. The inescapable conclusion that must be drawn from these is that China is, and always was, an extraordinarily multicultural entity.

"Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient China" is an important addition to the literature on early China. Chu was possibly the most important of the states existing in China during the Eastern Zhou period (771/770 - 221 BCE), until its ultimate demise at the hands of the Qin. In fact, the later overthrow of the Qin was led by descendents of Chu - an aristocrat (Xiang Yu) and a commoner (Liu Bang, who, having disposed of Xiang Yu, would become the first Han emperor).

Edited by the eminent scholars Constance Cook and John Major, "Defining Chu" draws together a group of highly regarded Sinologists to explicate the culture and history of the Chu state. Including essays on geography, spatial organization, art, culture, ideology and religion, the book is an important addition to the library of anyone interested in ancient China.

While not entirely casting aside the traditional historic view of China, the book demonstrates the complexity and multicultural aspects of the early Chinese landscape, additionally countering even some more recent views of China as being a historically reclusive and defensive entity. Perhaps more importantly, this book, along with others recently published, demonstrates the sophistication of the various cultures in the general area of China outside of the "Han", which have frequently received the sobriquet of "barbarian" or other tag reflecting a lesser level of sophistication (albeit the definition of "barbarian" being somewhat different in traditional Chinese usage from the current highly perjorative one).

It takes some nit-picking to find shortcomings in the book, but the devil is frequently in the details. The maps provided by the authors in Chapters 1 and 2 do not relate to the text in a straightforward fashion. Readers unfamiliar with the geography will have difficulty in pinpointing the locations discussed, as there is no map placing Chu within the more general geographic entity of China. Reign dates are somewhat inconsistent in Blakeley's essay, with marginal differences showing in repeated references. The essay by Heather Peters seems to lack a central focus, leaving one with a disjointed view of life in the towns.

The shortcomings are trivial, however, in the overall thrust of the book, which is written in a highly entertaining and vigorous style (unlike many histories, I'm afraid to say).

Anyone who has an interest in the culture and life during this seminally important period of Chinese history should buy this book.

This excellent review of the process of democritization holds significant parallels with and implications for current events. The author captures concisely and eloquently the role of the international community while holding one's interest with specific examples.

Mr. Vogt is a wonderful source of knowledge when it comes to World War II history, especially when dealing with the Nazis. He taught a class at my university last year on the Holocaust and showed us all so many different facets of this terrible event than could ever be unearthed without serious research.

This work is useful in understanding how the eastern areas dealt with their territories at the conclusion of the war. Again what is made most abundantly clear is Mr. Vogt's lengthy academic research into this area. This work makes it easier for all of us to understand a specialized area of history that has been so far unjustly ignored.

In this book, (his 1924 Ph.D. thesis), Nobel laureate Ivo Andric observes, that Europe's Turkish conquerors brought their Christian subjects "no cultural content or sense of higher historic mission, even to those South Slavs who accepted Islam." Rather, they delivered a "hegemony" that "brutalized custom, and meant a step to the rear in every respect."

From this non-fiction, Andric draws the history infused in his fictional Bridge over the Drina, which won him the Nobel prize for literature. Here, he provides considerable evidence of Islam's institutional enslavement of children under the Seljuks and Ottomans, over 500 years, in Greece and Serbia.

Unfortunately, this history seems very much alive in the Islamic wars against non-Muslim dhimmis ongoing from Indonesia and Malaysia to the Philippines and southern Sudan. In any case, this book provides evidence that while the vast majority of Muslims may indeed be peaceful, their tolerance is less apparent in Islamic tradition and laws, as recorded by jurists from al-Mawardi to our own time, or by the historical record.

Andric's history of classical Islam's European actions should give one pause, particularly since, as Robert Spencer explains in Onward Muslim Soldiers, classical Islam remains very much in vogue among radicals today.

This book provides a much-needed snapshot of classical Islam's historical effects.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

Dialogues in Arab Politics has a lot on the importance of norms and social structure in international relations. Michael N. Barnett analyzes the norms and social structure at a regional context. Like Stephen M. Walt's The Origins of Alliances Barnett takes his case from the Middle East. He examines three quarter centuries of the Arab politics from the constructivist perspective; hence he re-conceptualizes the history of Arab politics. In so doing, he insists on norms and symbols of Arab politics, normative fragmentation among Arabs, symbolic exchanges and social processes. He puts norms and identities as the critical variables in shaping state interests by examining the Arab politics in that process. He defines dialogues as the times the Arab states begin to discuss about the desired regional order. The discussion is circumscribed by norms of Arabism and sovereignty. Barnett defines Arabism as source of both Arab identity and interests. He also deems norm of Arabism as expression of their interests. Norms of Arabism have been also used as an instrument by one state in order to manipulate and/control the foreign policies of other Arab states. In this respect, norms can be both constraining as well as instrumental factors. Norms and identities have also greatly influenced the Arabs in their unification goal as well as their relations with the West and Israel. Pan-Arabism was relevant from the Baghdad Pact to the 1967 War and it declined its force after the 1967 war and it disappeared from the agenda by the end of the Gulf War. Then the norm of Arabism was replaced by norm of sovereignty in Arab politics. The normative shift eventually changed the foreign policies of the Arab states that they begun to focus on state interests not on Arab interests. Overall, Dialogues in Arab Politics makes a great contribution to the growing constructivist literature in recent years.

This new work put out under the auspices of the British Museum has what it takes to become THE standard desk reference on the Ancient Near East. Entries are clear and concise (the longest run to two and a half columns). Also, they are good about letting the reader know which archaeological and historical issues are still matters of dispute (in other words, there seems to be no faking of certainty). Although there are no color plates, almost every page has a well-chosen and informative photograph or illustration. Maps and charts are simple and easy to absorb. The editors and their staff get major points for the quality and extent of their cross-referencing and indexing. It's very easy to spend hours following all the interesting leads and connections from one article to another. Many alphabatized reference works don't even bother with an index ("The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization" is an example of a work that desperately needs one); but, as anyone who has to do quick look-ups on the fly knows, an index is a great asset in any single-volume desk reference work.

Information the publisher should have given to Amazon.com: (1) The definition of the Ancient Near East the editors follow is the one used by the British Museum: Mesopotamia, Iran, Anatola, the Caucasus, the Levant and Arabia; (2) The chronological range covered by the entries stretches from 1.5 million years ago to the fall of Babylon to the Persian Cyrus the Great in 539 B.C. [Yes, dates are identified as "B.C.", not "B.C.E."]; (3) Besides information about the ANE that you'd expect to find, this dictionary includes information on the discoverers as well--the people and institutions who made significant contributions to ANE studies. (Although I'm not qualified to judge, I suspect the Brits are over-represented.)

Things I would like to see added in subsequent editions: (1) A general introduction that give the reader some context and background; (2) A timeline that relates what was happening in the ANE to the growth of civilization in Egypt. (I accept the need to limit discussion of Egypt in the individual entries, but would have appreciated a schematic that gave me a workable overview. Don't the Assyriologists ever talk to the Egyptologists at the British Museum?)

Overall an excellent work! I'm glad to own a copy.