United Kingdom Books

Paul Salter has done a great job in putting this book together. The only reason someone will be disappointed with it is because the person will not have read the title carefully before buying it. It is essentially a guide for Land's End to John O'Groats riders (End-to-End) and not a book about cycling every popular route in Britain. The book has information on everything that a person could ask for. It takes the cyclists through 22 destinations (including Land's End and John O'Groats) and for each, Paul has listed down campsites, B&Bs, Hostels and bike shops. The routes and distances between destinations are clearly marked on very detailed maps, and the altitude profile of each leg is provided with names of villages/towns clearly marked along the profile. He provides a rich commentary of the sites to see along each leg of the trip and also a short history of Britain. This makes it an interesting read. The book has a detailed section on preparing for the trip and other essential information about getting ready to ride in Britain. A must buy!!!

One of the games people sometimes play is around the question, "If you could have anyone to dinner that you'd like, who would you have?" Bill Bryson is at the top of my list (along with Barbara Kingsolver and John McPhee). I've never not liked one of Bryson's books. This one is another winner. Some of the content is a bit "rehashy" for devoted readers, but Bryson rehashed is much better than most other writers. The processes revealed here make for a better understanding of the author's work. Great read.

This is a finely written account of one of England's very best contemporary painters. The author in a learned but easy to read style gives a clear exposition of the painter from abstract rebel in the 1960's to representational painter in the 1980's and 90's.

This is a beautiful book highlighting in particular the truely brillant images of New York City. Bill Jacklin is an Englishman in New York who is building, in a fine body of work, a visual narrative of New York that few if any can match. His work is a more complete and more intrinsically sympathetic account of his chosen city than David Hockney's pictures of LA. Mr Taylor has done the painter and the readers of this book proud with a model monograph.

Ivan Fallon has done a great job in tracing the life of the now late Sir James Goldsmith - from the Goldschmidt family's Jewish Frankfurt roots to their position amongst the ennobled members of the House of Lords. At one time James, the former 'enfant terrible' of the French business world was one of the wealthiest men in the world. Apart from his business interests Goldsmith's life was truly unique, spanning the effects of World War II, the dying embers of French and English aristocracy and his charge into the go-go eighties as an rambuntious takeover entrepreneur. Mr. Goldsmith will forever be remembered as the man of many eccentricities and conflicting personalities - the man who had multiple family arrangements, a debonaire who raided American companies, a tireless self-promoter who despised media while owning newspapers, and a conservative turned conservationist in his later life. Sir James exhibited undeniable charisma, purpose and self-belief in his life and this essence has been expressed well by Fallon. A great buy despite the price - as a quote on the inside sleave states, one can learn business not by studying textbooks but by reading business biographies, and this has to be one of the best.

Climatic change has a profound effect on the distribution of animals and plants. for instance, between 1850 and 1950, a period of climatic amelioration, Britain gained several new species from southern and eastern Europe, including Collared Dove, Celti's Warbler, Savi's Warbler, Firecrest and Golden Oriole. The situation has been further complicated by the "greenhouse effect", with northern and southern species "invading" Britain. This study traces and explains the changes in bird distribution in the Northern Hemisphere, with special reference to Britain and Europe, relating them not only to climatic change, but also to other environmental factors.

The Birth of the English Common Law, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press 1973, 1988, R.C. van Caenegem

In The Birth of the English Common Law (2nd ed) van Caenegem by a thorough analysis of primary sources produces a coherent and fascinating exposition of the birth of the common law. The author explores centuries old controversies; did the common law arrive with the Conqueror in 1066 or was there a nascent common law in operation in pre-conquest England? Did the jury pre-date the conquest? The work is replete with fascinating insights concerning medieval society of general interest. The notion that the ordeal (trial by water or fire), and battle were surpassed as modes of proof because the royal courts were able to offer jury verdicts that were considered more reliable is just one example. Promotion of the jury in the royal courts of the Norman rulers accompanied the development of a centralized judiciary. The common law did not so much arrive with William, but flourished in Norman courts because it surpassed existing methods and found acceptance by the English. The loss of the continental Crown possessions saw the common law thrive in England alone. Van Caenegem, in a measured way, paying due attention to those of a different mind, makes a fascinating case that England did not make the common law. Rather, the common law made England.

In her recently published monograph, Lisa Forman Cody explores the intersection of two seemingly distinct eighteenth century phenomena; the assent of the male midwife and scientists as authorities over birth and reproduction, and the formation of a British national identity. Examining the period from 1660 to 1830, Cody contends that the transformations which made reproduction a public and masculine topic also supported new Enlightenment ideals of individual and community identity. She argues that "representations of sex, pregnancy, and birth practices could help to constitute other sorts of concepts and identities in addition to gender, and . . . offered a natural set of categories through which eighteenth-century Britons could imagine their own identities and those of others" (p. 4). Yet, while reproduction was used to demarcate organic differences between gender, class, religious, and racial identities, the figure of the male midwife was accepted as a scientific authority because he represented a paradoxical amalgamation of both male and female gender traits. He embodied male Enlightenment rationality and objectivity, using scientific knowledge to deliver babies, while also possessing empathetic compassion for the laboring female body giving birth. This is in slight opposition to Thomas Laquer's argument that the eighteenth century saw the emergence of incommensurable sexual difference, whereby males and females became considered physically and mentally appositional.

Cody's monograph is organized chronologically and thematically, while methodologically she is influenced by both Foucaultian theories of sexuality and discourse analysis, as well as feminist theory. As the turn of the eighteenth century approached, pregnancy and birth were considered to be private feminine domains regulated by female midwives. Birth was an experience inaccessible to male understanding, and female midwives maintained their authority over reproductive practice based on professions of subjective experience - as women they had (or could) experience birth and therefore knew what was best for reproducing mothers. As Cody writes, "They - and not men - possessed this special authority so long as there remained an underlying assumption that knowledge of the body and birth derived from feeling and gendered experience" (p. 45). During this time there were few male midwives, the most notable being the Chamberlen family of surgeons in London. Male midwives tended to be called only in cases of emergency, and male midwife practice grew out of the ancient medical field of gynecology, concerned with infertility, miscarriage, and female emotionality.

However, the early modern patriarchal state and social model engendered that questions of paternity and illegitimacy were of significant economic and political importance. Since female midwives were authorities of reproductive practice, they were called on to testify in cases of paternity and infanticide, often with significant social consequences. As objective rationality, empirical observation, and the discovery of natural laws were increasingly valued by the natural philosophers of the seventeenth century, reproductive knowledge came to represent a sphere of mystery which engendered political and cultural anxieties about midwives and they lying-in birth process. Midwives and birthing mothers were seen as women outside of patriarchal control, able to engage in deception with political significance. Contemporaries commented on subterfuge reproductive practices and monstrous births, linking such disturbances to Catholics and threats to patriarchal authority.

As the natural scientists enquired into reproductive process into the eighteenth century, they made scientific inroads into a territory of knowledge and practice considered to be feminine and private. They were often met with public criticism and satire, depicted paradoxically as both lecherous men attempting to gain unregulated access to female bodies or effeminate doctors engaging in traditional female activities. Yet, Cody argues that while these scientific men did not initially "conquer the female reproductive body . . . they did very effectively open up the categories of sex and reproduction as public topics, fit for scientific exploration more broadly" (p. 119).

By the mid-1750s, male midwives were becoming increasingly common in Britain, especially among middling and elite families. Cody argues that as these men employed enlightened reason and objectivity to justify their authority over the reproductive process, they constructed new images of motherhood which depicted women as emotional, weak, and vulnerable. Although medical men dismissed the early modern belief that the maternal imagination could transform unborn children into monstrous beings, such as in the 1726 case of Mary Toft who supposedly gave birth to nearly twenty rabbits, they did depict the female mind as weak and passionate. This claim of emotional subjectivity functioned to justify rational man-midwife authority over birth; as women, female midwives were unable to objectively oversee the birthing process in order to do what was best for mother, child, and the state. At the same time, reproduction took on a greater political significance - foreign beliefs in monstrous births signified incivility and superstitious religious identity.

Cody traces the emergence of a specifically British discipline of male midwifery. The majority of male midwives during the eighteenth century were from Scotland because obstetrics was one of the only medical professions that allowed the possibility of advancement without an elite surgical background due to its marginal medical status. Because of their borderland status, they acted as diplomats during child labor. They transversed the borders of gender identity, employing both male objective scientific reason while showing female emotion and sympathy for pregnant mothers. This argument is particularly insightful, and shows how the Scottish "celtic fringe" was intimately involved in the project of constructing a truley British form of man-midwifery.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, reproductive knowledge and became increasingly linked to political and imperial pejoratives of the British government. Cody contends that the revolution in America was viewed by commentators sympathetic to the colonial cause as an example of unnatural and illegitimate British rule. This was often depicted in images that escaped censorship by the unnatural male pregnancy of George III. Sex and reproduction became the dominant metaphor used to represent political authority and national identity. Indeed, reproductive biology became central to taxonomic categorization of race and species of animals and humans. Birth practices and distinctions between female reproductive anatomies were used to distinguish between women of different nations and races. Britons increasingly viewed the other as monstrously sexed, in relation to their own appropriately gendered identity.

This increased discussion of reproductive difference engendered concerns about British population and sexuality in the late eighteenth century. Reproduction and population became matters of state intervention and surveillance due to fears of economic decline engendered by unproductive overpopulation, resulting in poor law reform. At the same time, the 1834 Poor Laws defined the double standard of sexuality for nineteenth century Britons, whereby unwed mothers were determined responsible to for illegitimate children and male sexuality escaped state regulation.

Overall, Cody's monograph is well written and researched. As she argues, the emergence of male midwives was part of the historical narrative by which sexuality came to be defined as a problem of public importance requiring increased surveillance and policing. Although the research concerning the intersection of gender and national identity during the Victorian era is dense, the period under consideration by Cody is relatively understudied. Her book is of great significance to those interested in changing conceptions of gender during the eighteenth century, and helps to shed light on the emergence of Victorian definitions of proper sexuality and gender identity in the 1830s. Similarly, she intelligently shows how gender and sexuality are central to modern conceptions of national identity and racial difference.

When I first saw this book at the AHA conference I was immediately taken by the cartoon of Russell on the cover. The book itself turned out to be as much fun to read as the cover was to look at. This is high politics told in an entertaining way. We need more stuff like this.

We worry about plagues; AIDS is still scary even though it is being treated with considerable success, and the recent (although unfounded) scare about a woman with ebola virus entering Canada made headlines. There may have been bigger plagues before and since, but _The Black Death_ (Tempus Publishing) by William Naphy and Andrew Spicer is about _the_ plague, the one that is commemorated in countless paintings and woodblocks and in literature. It is still a mysterious and scary illness, and while the authors skimp on some of the horrors and medical explanations, they describe the atmosphere around the disease and the changes it wrought in fascinating detail. Christians and Muslims were agreed that the new arrival of the plague was sent upon humans by Divine Will, but Muslim clerics interpreted their Koran as insisting that no one should try to flee a plague deliberately sent from Allah. Bear it with humility, was the advice, and when you die, you get straight admittance to Paradise. Being sent straight from Allah precluded the understanding of the plague as contagious. The fairly monolithic Catholicism of the time could not see the plague as a blessed ticket to paradise. It did not insist that parishioners remain to stick out an infection, but it did insist that people consider their sins and those of their societies.

The decrease in population meant that it was harder to get priests, and that apprenticeships were shortened and younger men became masters; guilds recruited outside of the families that had been their historic sources. Women entered trades which had never welcomed them before. Attempts were made to hold wages down and agricultural workers were forbidden to leave their lands for better prospects. "Sumptuary laws" were instituted to make it illegal for one class to dress like the ones above it, implying that luxury goods were more available to the reduced market. Mere shopkeepers gave fine banquets. The plague is historically significant for bringing a sort of populism. Society was also turned upside down by people fleeing the communities that had nurtured them. People took solace from their saints. Mary was often depicted as wounded by arrows of grief for her son, so she became somewhat of a specific saint for those fearing plague; similarly, Saint Sebastian who was martyred by being an archery target was held to be particularly good for deflecting the arrows of the plague. Just how these secondary religious figures managed to thwart the marksmanship of God was never explained. Then the flagellants came to town, traveling to whip their bodies bloody to appease God's wrath and make the plague go away. They would go to the church, surround it, and start whipping themselves with cruel barbed whips. The clergy were horrified not by the blood, but by the threat to their monopoly on spiritual power, and Pope Clement VI quickly condemned the flagellants in 1349. A frequent recourse of religious people was scapegoating, and as usual the Jews got blamed as the cause of everything. It is nice to think that we have risen above such behavior, and of course we do have enormous technical expertise in dealing with diseases now, as well as refusing to accept that they are simply manifestations of angry deities. However, human nature is not really any different than it was seven centuries ago. Although the plague quite mysteriously collapsed in virulence, there will someday be a new one, I believe, to take a big chunk of us away. (What if ebola transformed into an illness that could be caught as simply as colds are?) _The Black Death_, with its descriptions of the plague process and many illustrations, gives a fine, sobering review of what happened before, and while it makes no attempt at prognostication, I think we may just see such things again.

When taking my college class (Rise and fall of the British Empire), it did not talk enough about Slavery, only a few pages about it. This book gives a clear account of slavery during those times, from an overall view to the day to day lives of the slaves and their owners. It is a must read for anyone that does not know much about this issue.