The Pullman Porter, written by Vanita Oelschlager, would be published by Vanita Books in May, 2014.
History in itself is so vast and full of variety that it never fails to amaze you with how small and inconsequential events and unimportant personalities end up creating something with overreaching consequences. American history is no less interesting with many a books already having been written about it. I have recently bought A History of the American People by Paul Johnson but haven’t started it yet owing to its size and the unhindered dedication it requires in terms of reading effort – both due to the 1000+ pages and Paul Johnson’s gift as an acclaimed writer. Though large, voluminous books always attract me, of late the ones which delve in enough detail for one to start with a topic have interested me as well. On twitter, History In An Hour tweets about its recent books and other blog posts which give you a fair overview of history in, well actually under, an hour. Its founder Rupert Colley is a former librarian and is currently penning historical fiction.
The role which trains have played in getting countries connected is a story told often and especially the American one. Various documentaries and shows on Discovery Channel have covered in vivid detail how testing were the conditions in which the railroads were setup in America. But I didn’t know until I read this book was how porters have played an important role in the building and development of the American-African middle class. Vanita’s book is primarily aimed at children, but can nonetheless make for an interesting read for adults as well with the colorful graphics and pensive underpinnings.
A New York Times blog about the same makes for a good read.
Arlo Guthrie – City of New Orleans (recommended by Vanita)
Many interesting historical snippets caught my attention in the book: Malcolm X, whose movie I believe is highly underrated on IMDB, was a descendant of a Pullman Porter and that E.D. Nixon was himself a Pullman Porter! At the same time the book is also a reflection of the inhumanly existence American-Africans and how the Civil Rights Movement was a step in the right direction of reclaiming their lost dignity.
An interesting and a short pictorial book to educate your children about the Pullman Porters and the redeeming of just rights.
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I remember clearly there were some chapters thrown in my history school textbook about World War I and how it got started by the assassination of the archduke Franz Ferdinand. Long years have passed since and it was only a matter of time before I started pushing my curiousity against matters of importance which happened almost 100 years ago. I have found dynasties confusing – the overflowing names, fancy titles, grandfather-father-son having the same names, and the incessant list of relatives, children, palaces and officers which unmistakably haze me if not presented along with a well drawn graphical chart. So when the book started with a Cast of Characters and Introduction, both of which had slippery names and non-existential background for me, I was left wondering whether to search for each name on the web and educate myself or to continue reading surrounded by the dark presence of ignorance. I decided on the former and wasn’t disappointed for Greg King and Sue Woolmans, who diligently give an unperturbed historical background about: the Habsburg Dynasty (with family trees of the Habsburgs and the Hohenbergs), the fast-diminishing peace in the World and especially Europe, and the fragile situation that existed under the Austro-Hungarian Empire with Magyars, Serbs and southern Slavs. Their comparison of Countess Sophie Chotek with Cinderella and Franz Ferdinand with Prince Charming was delightful while keeping things simple in the Introduction. Sophie von Hohenberg, great-granddaughter of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Chotek, has written the Foreword, which is a grim outline of the excruciating struggles the Hohenbergs and the descendants of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Chotek have faced since the fateful Sarajevo visit of the archduke and Sophie on St. Vitus’s Day (28th June, 1914).
Austria-Hungary Empire in 1910 (source: Wikipedia)
“For centuries Vienna had provided the Habsburg dynasty with a theatrical stage set from which to dominate Europe. They ruled from the Alps to the warm waters of the Mediterranean, from the sunshine of Trieste to the dark, mysterious forests of Transylvania, Bohemia, and the edges of imperial Russia“. The authors start their book with setting up a historical context of the dynasty and the then existing finer aspects of relationships between uncles, aunts, cousins and children. Franz Josef I was the Emperor of Austria and “Apostolic King of Hungary; King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slovenia, Galicia, and Jerusalem; Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Tuscany, Krakow and Transylvania; Duke of Lothringia, Salzburg, and Bukovina”! Such glorious and never-ending titles these were. Franz Josef’s son Rudolf, a debauched serial philanderer, had blasted his own brains off with a revolver on 30th January, 1889 after killing her latest mistress, the young Baroness Mary Vetsera. Karl Ludwig, Franz Ferdinand’s father, gave up his right to accession and paved way for Franz Ferdinand to become the archduke, who would head the empire after Franz Josef’s death. The excessive formalities of royal families and their ways with living are no less intriguing. And it is hilarious to read how in the dead of a night Franz Josef scolded his doctor for not appearing in the customary tailcoat to treat him.
Franz Josef was not too impressed with Franz Ferdinand and suspected him to be like his son Rudolf, harbouring dangerous ideas. The dynasty was not bereft of numerous sexual affairs, mistresses, venereal diseases, illegitimate children and depressed cousins and relatives. Franz Ferdinand lived a life of comfort and pleasures in his childhood and youth, which later led to two claims of paternity from his feminine encounters. Franz Ferdinand was also a skilled shooter and known for his passion towards game. He “shot 274, 889 animals in his life-time, although this does not include another thirteen moose he killed in Sweden”! Royals hunted animals for proving their masculinity and adeptness while annihilating innocent, harmless fauna. He was educated and made aware of various streams to gain a holistic understanding before he became an emperor; however he never went deep enough to master any of them.
Franz Ferdinand met Sophie Chotek, who worked as a lady-in-waiting for Archduke Friedrich’s wife, Isabella. “Choteks had been Bohemian barons since 1556, counts of Bohemia since 1723, and counts of the empire since 1745” and “occupied a prominent place among the country’s elite” but “the family had never been deemed equal for the purposes of marriage”. Love blossomed amongst the two and when news reached the emperor Franz Josef about Franz Ferdinand’s intentions of marrying Sophie, a Chotek, he immediately disapproved and thought of it as only a passing phase where his nephew was jailed in the charms of his new mistress. However, Franz Ferdinand persisted in his efforts and the emperor relented but only with the condition that “any marriage between Franz Ferdinand and Sophie would be a morganatic union that would recognize her unsuitability, ban her from membership in the imperial house, and bar nay potential children from the succession”. Franz Ferdinand agreed and so did Sophie, thinking, presumably, that life still would be much better together than being way. The reality of their lives which unfolded later, however, couldn’t have been harsher. The emperor was not only upset but also immensely worried that the morganatic descendants might lay claim to the monarchy and forever destroy the chances of the Habsburg lineage. Franz Ferdinand and Sophie started their lives happily with the joy of expectations brushing aside any blots of doubts. The Habsburgs, however, were not too welcoming. Every occasion was an opportunity for them to prove the ‘unworthy’ status of Sophie – from ballrooms, to plays, to luncheons, to guards and even, finally, much later, in death.
BBC documentary on the assassination
Franz Ferdinand was invited to oversee military maneuvers in Sarajevo and Sophie wanted to accompany him as they had an ominous feeling about being attacked during the trip. Oskar Potiorek, the Governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina, made callous preparations for the archduke and Sophie. The inevitable happened when Gavrilo Princip shot the couple from a distance of less than five feet. His other accomplices were Nedeljko Cabrinovic and Trifko Grabez and all of them had connections with Black Hand. “The two bullets fired that fateful Sunday morning had stripped the nearly thirteen-year-old Sophie, twelve-year-old Max, and ten-year-old Ernst of youthful innocence”, write the authors of the three children. The involvement of Serbian officials is obvious beyond doubt, but many other conspiracy theories remain unproven. The ensuing World War I engulfed Europe and the rest of the World. The ghastly wretched experiences weren’t to end yet. The rise of Hitler and the World War II resulted in Max and Ernst being forced in the concentration camps of Dachau and others; following Hitler’s instructions the “Hohenberg boys” were made to do latrine duty! The authors write, “using spoons, they were forced to clean out the fetid cesspits shared by hundreds of inmates; SS guards taunted them as they worked, hurling rocks into the pools to splash feces onto the brothers’ faces while laughingly calling them “Imperial Highnesses””! The heart wrenching stories of the three children and how they suffered make one’s eyes moist.
The authors have included several rare correspondences, unearthed the personal histories, and even tracked the descendants who are currently spread out in various countries. They have been, however, to a great extent, prejudiced in favour of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie. Franz is rarely, if at all, criticized for any of his decisions. Some of the points – because they are interpretations – can be debated endlessly. Why did Sophie accompany the archduke to Sarajevo? Many believe that it was because she was always treated as a commoner by the Habsburgs and whenever the opportunity presented itself to honour Sophie, the couple were overjoyed and never declined an opportunity. Greg and Sue point out that it was only because of her fear for his life in Sarajevo that she joined him. She already “had been received at the royal courts of Rumania, Berlin, and Great Britain”, so the appeal of being honoured by a few thousand Bosnians wouldn’t have been appealing.
The complexity of the empire, the ideological fights of Franz Ferdinand with Chief of General Staff Conrad von Hotzendorf, the intricacies of the power struggles involving the Romanovs, Kaiser and the rulers from England can’t possibly be captured in this review, but what lingers on is how the romance of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Chotek changed their own destinies, and of their children and grandchildren forever. This is one of those rare books, when I was done reading, which made me feel sad that it came to an end. The vivid and exquisite descriptions of their lives by the authors make you feel and re-live the aspirations, the agonies and the pains of the family and their descendants. To mark 100 years of the assassination of the archduke and the beginning of the First World War, nothing could be better.
Freakonomics, if I am correct, was the book that started the trend of books which picked out the (ir)rationality human behaviour and the way things work. Malcolm Gladwell, Taleb, Daniel Kahneman and many others have made their names on such topics. So when I picked up Sway from the library, I wasn’t expecting to be blown over like a mound of dust facing an onslaught of tepid rains. I already have read Freakonomics, Super Freakonomics, Blink and Outliers and now they function as my mouse pads.
So, well, they start with how an airline pilot, who also happened to be the head of security at KLM, took a wrong decision about taking off and resulted in deaths of 584 people. They arrive at various observations – like one not valuing priceless things if the surroundings or the setup don’t match; some ‘fun centre’ and ‘do good centre’ not functioning at the same time; the importance of dissenting when you feel like even if you are alone; the uselessness of job interviews; our aversion to loss even in the face of disaster. They do drive home the point that humans are, and will remain, irrational no matter how much post-incident justifications they might provide.
The books strengths lies in that two practical observations that have been listed down: of loss aversion and of two different brain centres not functioning together. These can be applied with hopefully pleasure-some results. But apart from that all the other ‘findings’ are nothing out of the extraordinary. Some examples are repeated too often to be given importance – in fact the pilot’s example and of Israel army recruits taking a test is repeated so often that I felt like deliberately skipping those sections.
A light read of 185 pages and can be read from start to end in a couple of hours. Don’t expect to be overwhelmed or to become an ‘always-rational-think-I’ kind of person.
This review comes after having read The Assassination of the Archduke, which was about Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Chotek and their moving lives (the review will be published around 26th September, 2013 – its publication date). I always stumbled upon material of World War II more often than of World War I. This is probably because photography and video techniques had evolved in twenty years since the end of the first one, and also because the horrors of the second one are graver with anti-heroes like Hitler having been portrayed in so many movies. Even documentaries are hard to find about the First World War. DK Eyewitness (Dorling Kindersley) books are atypical in the sense that they are much more visual than textual and may appeal to kids more than grownups. However, they also serve as excellent sources of rare and memorable photographs. They may not satiate the hunger for a deep driven analysis, but surely serve as good works for a quick overview of themes placed along with stunning captures.
‘World War I’ has been written by Simon Adams, photographs have been by Andy Crawford with association of London’s Imperial War Museum. The book begins with the various divisions in Europe which threaten the fragile peace every moment. The assassination of the archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Chotek triggers the stat of the war with Austria-Hungary attacking Serbia, and having Germany on its side. They with Ottoman Empire form the core of the Central Powers, while Russia, France, UK and later USA form the core of the Allies. The book and the remarkable photographs focus more on the military side than the political one. The photos include: the mobilisation posters of Germany, France, Britain and the USA; the various equipments and toiletries a soldier used to carry; the equipment used to dig out trenches which protected the soldiers from artillery and shelling; life spent living inside trenches; guns, tanks, shells, airplanes and even ships which took part in the war – just about everything is in there.
The important role which women played by supporting the effort and the economies of their countries is not left untouched – few photos of women working in factories and some even on the front serve as a grim reminder of the brutality of wars. The battles covered are of: Somme, Verdun, Gallipoli, the Eastern Front between Russia and the Central Powers. As colonialism was widely spread in that period, the involvement of the colonial subjects was no less. The spreading of the war effort in the Middle East (most of which was under the Ottoman Empire) and the resulting divisions is an epic tale. The use of pigeons and traders for espionage underlines how ends were supposed to justify the means in a world where life had little value. The entry of the United States and weakening of the German forces ultimately led to the end of the war at “11 am on the 11thday of the 11th month of 1918”. The photographs surrounding the Treaty of Versailles and of noteworthy leaders like Woodrow Wilson, Vladimir Lenin, Georges Clemenceau, General Foch, David Lloyd George, Vittorio Orlando signaled the victory of the Allies over the Central Powers, remembered by countless cemeteries, memorials and museums built around the world.
This short book, as stated earlier, will not give you an in-depth look at the war, its politics and power-games, but will surely get you interested and initiated, if aren’t already, into the fabulous world of history.
Withered Papyrus 