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History books as Christmas presents

Are you still scratching your head as to what to get that person in your life for Christmas?

Well, maybe we can be of help to you. Because on this week’s programme, we talked about history books as Christmas presents.

We gathered together a diverse panel of guests who came armed with their recommendations. They were barrister, Marion McKeone; historian, Sandra Scanlon; actor, David Herlihy and writer, Colm Toibin.

David Herlihy’s choices

Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood (Vintage Classics) first published in 1939
Goodbye to Berlin is a short novel by Christopher Isherwood. It’s a semi-autobiographical account of Isherwood’s time in 1930s Berlin, describes pre-Nazi Germany and the people he met. It is episodic, dealing as it does with a large cast over a period of several years from late 1930 to early 1933. It is written as a connected series of six short stories and novellas. These are: “A Berlin Diary (Autumn 1930)”, “Sally Bowles”, “On Ruegen Island (Summer 1931)”, “The Nowaks”, “The Landauers”, and “A Berlin Diary (Winter 1932-3)”.
The book, first published in 1939, highlights the groups of people who would be most at risk from Nazi intimidation. It was described by contemporary writer George Orwell as “Brilliant sketches of a society in decay”.
The novel was adapted into a Broadway play by John Van Druten (1951), which was then adapted for a film under the name I Am A Camera (1955) with Laurence Harvey and Julie Harris, with screenplay by John Collier and music by Malcolm Arnold. The book was then adapted into the musical Cabaret (1966) and film Cabaret (1972).

Citizen Lord: Edward Fitzgerald, 1763-98 by Stella Tillyard (Vintage 1998)
The sequel to "Aristocrats", this tells the story of the headstrong and passionate 18th century Irish revolutionary, Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Son of a duke, heir to estates and influence, Lord Edward died in a Dublin gaol, a rebel and a traitor. Born in 1763, he joined the British army as a teenager, fought in the American War of Independence and was elected to the Irish parliament in 1783. However, his radical sentiments soon showed themselves, through beliefs in the goodness of man and the importance of liberty and equality. Returning to North America with the army in 1787, Lord Edward spent time with the Iroquois and was adopted by them as an Indian chief. Back in Europe he became a disciple of the Republican Thomas Paine, visited revolutionary France and joined the Irish underground in the 1790s.

Ireland's Arctic Siege: The Big Freeze of 1947 by Kevin Corrigan Kearns (Gill & McMillan 2011)

The Irish winter of 1947 was the coldest and longest of the 20th Century. From shortly after Christmas to almost Easter, the country was gripped by snow and ice; transport ground to a halt. The normal supply of goods and services was suspended. All this happened in a country much poorer than modern Ireland. It was only two years after the end of the war. There was still rationing in Britain. The Irish economy was woefully underdeveloped. There was no central heating, and the distribution systems for coal and turf broke down. Even in relatively affluent middle class suburbs, people were reduced to breaking up furniture for kindling in an attempt to keep warm. In rural parts, the old and vulnerable were hopelessly isolated. People died. In time, the memory faded and it was just remembered as an exceptionally cold winter. Kevin Kearns gets behind the headlines to reveal in tremendous detail the hardship, depravation and loss of life that gripped a vulnerable country as a result of an extended period of freakishly cold weather.

Put Money in Thy Purse by Michael Mc Liammoir
About the making of the film, Othello. He was Iago to Welles's Moor, and therefore had firsthand experience of what it's like to make a film piecemeal. When the money ran out, cast and crew were left stranded in hotels whilst Orson went off to act in other people's films. It took him four years to make the film.

Sandra Scanlon’s choices

White Heat 1964-1970: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties by Dominic Sandbrook (Abacus, 2007).
Weighing in at nearly a thousand pages, it is as comprehensive as one could wish, dealing with revolutions in the arts (the Beatles, of course, are central -- and iconic -- figures here), as well as the relentless bloodletting in Northern Ireland, and political scandals in Westminster (the John Profumo/Christine Keeler affair being the most significant). The book quotes on it jackets Harold Wilson's much-repeated comment ‘Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution’ -- and Sandbrook, taking his title from this quote, makes the strongest possible case for this being a revolutionary period -- even if several of the revolutions involved (such as the hippie-inspired ‘Summer of Love’) actually came to nothing. The changes in society during this period were seismic: cultural and political (as mentioned above), but also technological. In the sports arena, Britain featured a resounding World Cup triumph in 1966).
In many ways, as the author demonstrates, Britain became a significant player again in this era and featured once again on the world stage in a fashion it had not achieved in the 1950s. But the outward accoutrements of these revolutions in society nurtured some clandestine (and less palatable) undercurrents, and Sandbrook anatomises these with quite as much skill as he devotes to the more celebratory sections of the book. The range of references involved is quite stunning, and the period concentrated on (1964 to 1970) is not likely to receive such a comprehensive airing again. --Barry Forshaw

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil war Era by James McPherson (Penguin Books, 2001 - latest edition)

McPherson recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War including the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. From there it moves into a masterful chronicle of the war itself--the battles, the strategic manoeuvring by each side, the politics, and the personalities

Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis, with Michael D'Orso (Mariner Books, 1999)

As Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Congressman John Lewis was at the epicenter of the civil rights movement in the late '50s and '60s. Arrested more than forty times, he was one of its youngest and most courageous leaders. Writing with charm, warmth, and honesty, Lewis moves from the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins as he reflects on the era to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he led more than five hundred marchers on what became known as "Bloody Sunday." Though there have been exceptional books on the movement, Lewis's profound personal story is "destined to become a classic in civil rights literature" (Los Angeles Times).

The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism: A Short History by David Farber (Princeton University Press, 2010).

David Farber traces the history of modern conservatism from its revolt against New Deal liberalism, to its breathtaking resurgence under Ronald Reagan, to its spectacular defeat with the election of Barack Obama.
The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism provides rare insight into how conservatives captured the American political imagination by claiming moral superiority, downplaying economic inequality, relishing bellicosity, and embracing nationalism. This concise and accessible history reveals how these conservative leaders discovered a winning formula that enabled them to forge a powerful and formidable political majority.

 
Colm Toibin’s choices

Evening's Empire A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe by Craig Koslofsky (Cambridge University Press 2011)

Evening's Empire is a study of the myriad ways in which early modern people understood, experienced, and transformed the night. Using diaries, letters, and legal records together with representations of the night in early modern religion, literature and art, Craig Koslofsky opens up an entirely new perspective on early modern Europe. He shows how princes, courtiers, burghers and common people 'nocturnalized' political expression, the public sphere and the use of daily time. Fear of the night was now mingled with improved opportunities for labour and leisure: the modern night was beginning to assume its characteristic shape. Evening's Empire takes the evocative history of the night into early modern politics, culture and society, revealing its importance to key themes from witchcraft, piety, and gender to colonization, race, and the Enlightenment

Public Works: Infrastructure, Irish Modernism, and the Postcolonial by Michael Rubenstein (University of Notre Dame Press 2010)
Michael Rubenstein documents the relationship between Irish modernism and a restricted segment of the material culture of the modern state known colloquially as "public utilities" or "water, gas, and electricity." The water tap, the toilet, the gas jet, and the electrical light switch: these are all sites, in Irish modernism, of unexpected literary and linguistic intensities that burst through the routines of everyday life, defamiliarizing and reconceptualizing that which we might not normally consider worthy of literary attention.
In analyses of literary works by James Joyce, Flann O'Brien, Elizabeth Bowen, Denis Johnston, Samuel Beckett, and Patrick Chamoiseau, Rubenstein asks us to think about the industrial networks of the twentieth century alongside self-consciously "national" literary works and to understand them as different but inherently related forms of public works. In doing so his book maps thematic and formal relationships between national infrastructure and national literature, revealing an intimate dialogue between the nation's literary arts and the state's engineering cultures.

Blue: The History of a Color by Michel Pastoureau (Princeton University Press 2000)
Blue has a long and topsy-turvy history in the Western world. Once considered a hot color, it is now icy cool. The ancient Greeks scorned it as ugly and barbaric, but most Americans and Europeans now pick it as their favorite color. In this entertaining history, the renowned medievalist Michel Pastoureau traces the changing meanings of blue from its rare appearances in prehistoric art to its international ubiquity today in blue jeans and Gauloises cigarette packs.
Any history of color is, above all, a social history. Pastoureau investigates how the ever-changing role of blue in society has been reflected in manuscripts, stained glass, heraldry, clothing, paintings, and popular culture. Beginning with the almost total absence of blue from ancient Western art and language, the story moves to medieval Europe. As people began to associate blue with the Virgin Mary, the color entered the Church despite the efforts of chromophobic prelates. Blue was reborn as a royal color in the twelfth century and functioned as a formidable political and military force through the French Revolution. As blue triumphed in the modern era, new shades were created, and blue became the color of romance. Finally, Pastoureau follows blue into contemporary times, when military clothing gave way to the everyday uniform of blue jeans, and blue became the universal and unifying color of the Earth as seen from space.

Black: The History of a Colour by Michael Pastoureau (Princeton University Press 2008)
Black--favorite color of priests and penitents, artists and ascetics, fashion designers and fascists--has always stood for powerfully opposed ideas: authority and humility, sin and holiness, rebellion and conformity, wealth and poverty, good and bad. In this beautiful and richly illustrated book, the acclaimed author of Blue now tells the fascinating social history of the color black in Europe.
In the beginning was black, Michel Pastoureau tells us. The archetypal color of darkness and death, black was associated in the early Christian period with hell and the devil but also with monastic virtue. In the medieval era, black became the habit of courtiers and a hallmark of royal luxury. Black took on new meanings for early modern Europeans as they began to print words and images in black and white, and to absorb Isaac Newton's announcement that black was no color after all. During the romantic period, black was melancholy's friend, while in the twentieth century black (and white) came to dominate art, print, photography, and film, and was finally restored to the status of a true color.

Marion McKeone’s Choices

Nelson Mandela's Conversations with Myself by Nelson Mandela (Macmillan 2010)

Foreword by Barack Obama. This real history - sort of scrapbook memoir but so different from the other selfserving rubbish of Blair, Ahern etc. A lesson in how to write an autobiography of historical import

Mandela has opened his personal archive, which offers an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life. "Conversations With Myself" gives readers access to the private man behind the public figure: from letters written in the darkest hours of Mandela's twenty-seven years of imprisonment to the draft of an unfinished sequel to "Long Walk to Freedom". Here he is making notes and even doodling during meetings, or recording troubled dreams on the desk calendar of his cell on Robben Island; writing journals while on the run during the anti-apartheid struggles in the early 1960s, or conversing with friends in almost seventy hours of recorded conversations. In these pages, he is neither an icon nor a saint; here he is like you and me. An intimate journey from the first stirrings of his political conscience to his galvanizing role on the world stage, "Conversations With Myself" is a rare chance to spend time with Nelson Mandela the man, in his own voice: direct, clear, private.

How to Survive the Titanic or the Sinking of J Bruce Ismay by Frances Wilson (Bloomsbury 2011).

When the ship hit the iceberg on 14 April 1912 and a thousand men prepared to die, J Bruce Ismay, the ship's owner and inheritor of the White Star fortune, jumped into a lifeboat with the women and children and rowed away to safety. Accused of cowardice, Ismay became, according to one headline, 'The Most Talked-of Man in the World'. The first victim of a press hate campaign, his reputation never recovered and while other survivors were piecing together their accounts, Ismay never spoke of his beloved ship again. With the help of that great narrator of the sea, Joseph Conrad, whose Lord Jim so uncannily predicted Ismay's fate - and whose manuscript of the story of a man who impulsively betrays a code of honour and lives on under the strain of intolerable guilt went down with the Titanic - Frances Wilson explores the reasons behind Ismay's jump, his desperate need to make sense of the horror of it all, and to find a way of living with lost honour. For those who survived the Titanic the world was never the same again. But as Wilson superbly demonstrates, we all have our own Titanics, and we all need to find ways of surviving them.

Dublin 1911 edited by Catriona Crowe (Royal Irish Academy 2011)

Dublin 1911, will give people a chance, through rich illustration, fold-out census reports and previously unpublished photographs to experience the Dublin of 1911.

The Sugar Barons by Matthew Parker (Hutchinson 2011)

Power, money and corruption in the British Empire: the English families for whom the sugar trade brought wealth beyond their wildest dreams

The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President by Taylor Branch (Simon and Schuster 2009)

The Clinton Tapes invites readers into private dialogue with a gifted, tormented, resilient President of the United States. Here is what President Clinton thought and felt but could not say in public.
This book rests upon a secret project, initiated by Clinton, to preserve for future historians an unfiltered record of presidential experience. During his eight years in office, between 1993 and 2001, Clinton answered questions and told stories in the White House, usually late at night. His friend Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch recorded seventy-nine of these dialogues to compile a trove of raw information about a presidency as it happened. Clinton drew upon the diary transcripts for his memoir in 2004.
Branch recorded his own detailed recollections immediately after each session, covering not only the subjects discussed but also the look and feel of each evening with the president. The text engages Clinton from many angles. Readers hear candid stories, feel buffeting pressures, and weigh vivid descriptions of the White House settings.
The Clinton Tapes highlights major events of Clinton's two terms, including wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, the failure of health care reform, peace initiatives on three continents, the anti-deficit crusade, and titanic political struggles from Whitewater to American history's second presidential impeachment trial. Along the way, Clinton delivers colorful portraits of countless political figures and world leaders from Nelson Mandela to Pope John Paul II.

January Book Club

The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates by Des Ekin (published by O’Brien Press).

In June 1631, pirates from Algiers stormed ashore at the little harbour village of Baltimore in West Cork. They captured almost all of the villagers and bore them away to a life of slavery in North Africa. The prisoners were destined for a variety of fates - some would live out their days as galley slaves, while others would spend long years in the scented seclusion of the harem. Only two of them ever saw Ireland again.

The Sack of Balitmore was the most devastating invasion ever mounted by Islamist forces on Ireland or England. Des Ekin's exhaustive research illuminates the political intrigues that sealed the captives' fate, and provides a vivid insight into life amid the souks and the seraglios of old Algiers.

We'll be discussing this book on our programme on 8 January 2012

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