The Persians: a Book Review

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University. His book, The Persians: The Age of the Great Kings, is a culmination of what seems to be a lifetime of researching this most enigmatic of ancient empires. It as an endlessly fascinating and informative narrative history. And for people who believe themselves to be students of ancient history, particularly the classical world, it can be a challenging read.

After an introductory section delineating what is meant by ‘Persian,’ trying to define the similarities and differences between Medes, Parthians, and other ethnicities that are rolled into the broader group, the author begins his history at the conquest of much of Asia, Asia Minor, and the Mediterranean basin by King Cyrus the Great, climaxing in his taking of mighty Babylon. His son and successor Cambyses adds Egypt to the realm, and the empire seems unstoppable.

The history continues through the succession of Great Kings of the Achaemenid dynasty over the next two centuries, all of whom took the regnal names of Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes, or Artaxerxes. There is court intrigue enough for ten histories, a few minor wars and squabbles with satraps (appointed governors) in Asia Minor, Egypt, and elsewhere, but the empire remains strong throughout. As a matter of fact, it is Llewellyn-Jones’s contention that this is not the average ‘decline and fall’ history of so many ancient empires: the Persian Empire was taken in a quick series of decisive battles by Alexander the Great–an achievement of world-changing importance.

The challenge in the book comes from engagement with the author’s main thesis. He insists, rightly so, I believe, that most students of ancient history understand the Persians only through a Western lens. We read in Herodotus and other Greek historians that the Persian kings were wealthy beyond belief, holding huge harems, living a lavish and sybaritic lifestyle. That they were cruel and pitiless to their enemies. We study the invasions of Greece, the burning of Athens, and the eventual triumph of the Athenians over the forces of Darius. But Llewellyn-Jones wants to offer us what he calls ‘the Persian version.’ While his version of events seems revisionist, sometimes in the extreme, it is also undeniably steeped in decades of study.

He redefines the harem system in the Achaemenid court as a carefully worked out plan to ensure royal succession; it was not, he insists, about the king’s sex drive. Even the many polygynous (and often incestuous) marriages of the king, with sisters, aunts, nieces, and daughters, were meant to ensure the purity of the Achaemenid bloodline. He glosses the empire’s many mass executions and gruesome tortures by pointing out the sometimes surprising generosity of the Great Kings towards enemies, their religious tolerance and preference for local governance. But after the intimately detailed description of those tortures and executions, in which the author almost seems to delight, it’s a balance many will miss.

And finally, in what is likely to be most troubling to many readers, he redefines much of the interaction between the Persian Empire and the classical world. The Battle of Thermopylae, despite the hero worship of King Leonidas and his band of 300 Spartans, was simply a brilliant victory for Darius. It was only later, in their superior use of naval power, that the Athenians repulsed the Persian invasion. There are more such instances to give one pause to consider whether we know history at all.

But it is a brilliant, readable history, highly recommended.

A Plague upon Our House: A Review

Dr. Scott W. Atlas, a Stanford University professor and expert on health policy, became famous (or infamous, depending on your politics) during the middle days of the COVID pandemic in 2020. From his research he developed policy views contrary to the widely espoused policies of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and Dr. Robert Redfield, the experts who shaped most of the federal government response to the health emergency. Because his suggested policies aligned with the views of people who opposed widespread lock-downs and other ‘hysterical’ reactions in the country at large, he was a frequent guest on Fox News and other conservative-leaning media and was eventually asked to become an advisor to the President, arriving in Washington in August 2020. 

In his book A Plague upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America, Dr. Atlas stresses repeatedly that he—and he alone—was doing ongoing research into the trends and developments of the disease. He came to every meeting in Washington with his briefcase packed full of the latest peer-reviewed papers from scientists across the world. His conclusions from all this research were that the lock-downs of schools, universities, and businesses were disastrous for Americans, with little to no effect; that widespread testing of everyone yielded a false picture of the disease’s spread, since so many people who tested positive were asymptomatic and never got sick, let alone being hospitalized; and that the correct course was to move quickly to protect the most vulnerable—mostly seniors—and reopen society at large to allow people in low-risk groups to get back to work, to school, and to their normal lives. 

These positions were vilified by many experts, by his own colleagues at Stanford, and especially in the press, where they were caricatured as pressing recklessly for herd immunity; a position which Dr. Atlas repeatedly insists he never championed. Reading A Plague Upon our House, one gets the sense of opportunities tragically lost. Whether Dr. Atlas was 100% correct in his policy prescriptions is a conclusion best left to experts. But one does get the strong idea that he had some promising ideas that were ignored in a craven yielding to the politics of the moment.  

Before analyzing this, I would make a few points about flaws in the book itself. Any decent non-fiction book, and especially one whose author speaks so much about the research, the science, the published views of immunologists and epidemiologists from across the world, should make some of that research available for the interested reader. This book included no citations, no footnotes, not even the most cursory bibliography. It does not even have an index. Is this a minor quibble? I read in the book that because of lock-downs of K-12 schools, more than 200,000 cases of child abuse went unreported because school is where most such cases are first observed and reported. This is a troubling statistic, and I would like to see how this number was arrived at: but there is no source cited, so I just must leave it as something Dr. Atlas claims.  

Further, Dr. Atlas makes some of the same mistakes he accuses others of making. He says that people who opposed him often set up straw men to knock down. But he does the same, as when he repeatedly asserts that Dr. Birx wanted to eradicate every case of COVID-19, an obviously unattainable goal. I do not think this is at all what Drs. Birx and Fauci were trying; they only wanted to mitigate the spread of the disease across all demographics, not just among Dr. Atlas’s suggested senior population. But he uses the silliness of reaching complete elimination of cases to make his opponents look naive and unrealistic. Dr. Atlas also complains bitterly about supposed medical experts who cannot elucidate or understand the difference between correlation and causation when interpreting statistics about the spread of COVID. And yet he makes the startling claim that ‘unemployment caused . . . drug abuse, child abuse, and even loss of lives.’ (P. 111, author’s emphasis) No, Dr. Atlas, unemployment is correlated with those things.  

Though he seriously derides the ethics and reliability of anonymous sources, his book is full to bursting with references to mostly unnamed people who sent him supportive emails, of White House staffers and academic colleagues who encouraged him to ‘keep telling the truth.’ 

But the most glaring problem with Dr. Atlas’s book is that he claims repeatedly to be unpolitical and to despise politics, all while playing right on key every political note in the current GOP playbook.  

One of these is his condemnation of the media, whom he sees as blinded by their hatred of Donald Trump. He calls the press ‘the most despicable group of unprincipled liars one could ever imagine . . .’ (P. 123) But he narrates many instances where the press printed things that had been leaked to them by members of the White House staff or the COVID Task Force. If it is lying for newspapers to print what they are told by White House sources, then I do not think Dr. Atlas and I have the same definition of the word. He also writes that throughout the summer and fall of 2020, Donald Trump was speaking of policy directions while his medical advisors, in the highly visible persons of Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, were expressing contrary directions. Given this, was it so reprehensible for reporters to seek any source that might clarify things?  

As things deteriorate and it becomes clear that none of his advice is going to be heeded, he casts about for someone to blame, and lands, of course, on Vice President Mike Pence, who is fair games in the post-2020 election environment. Pence oversaw the White House COVID Task Force. It was he who led all those meetings where Dr. Birx recited what Dr. Atlas calls inaccurate findings and unreliable reports on the effectiveness of loc-kdowns and mask mandates, and did nothing. It was Pence who spoke pallid support for Dr. Atlas’s work but never moved to create new policies from it. Atlas writes, ‘The closest advisors to the president, including the VP, seemed more concerned with politics, even though the Task Force was putting out the wrong advice, contrary to the President’s desire . . .’ (P. 256)  

And this gets at the biggest political game Dr. Atlas plays, the deifying of Donald Trump. In his book, the President is engaged, conversant with the facts, full of pointed questions for the experts around him. When he contracts COVID, Dr. Atlas does not worry because he knows what a vigorous man Donald Trump is. When a press conference is interrupted by the threat of a man with a gun outside the White House, the president takes it bravely in stride and quickly resumes the press conference, though the reporters, Dr. Atlas impishly notes, were ‘scared silly.’ But if Donald Trump had only the good of the country at heart and wanted policies that would lead to that, why didn’t he do those things? He has ongoing, very public disputes with Dr. Anthony Fauci, but never moves to replace him, or Dr. Birx, or any of the medical experts whose advice runs counter to his own ideas. Trump, like Pence and everyone else at the White House, yields to political expediency rather than what will help the country. As Atlas finally notes in the book’s final pages, this was a massive error of judgment, and one unexpected from a chief executive whose very persona bespoke the ability to fire people who displeased him.  

What is completely missing in Atlas’s telling is the fact that this intelligent, concerned President was out on the campaign trail repeatedly and loudly insisting that COVID was a hoax, a made-up plot to make him look bad and steal the upcoming election. It was a message heard by, and heeded by, many millions. Instead, Dr. Atlas writes of Donald Trump’s gut instinct about how best to deal with the pandemic, and his differing views on policies. He will not bring himself to admit that the worst damage was done not by bad medical advice, or by Vice President Pence and other White House staff focusing on the politics of the moment, but by an idolized President who could not separate his own personal grievance from the need to protect Americans. And some of the best things that the Trump Administration did, such as hastening the creation of safe and effective vaccines, were undermined by the lingering effects of his own rhetoric, leaving the incoming Biden Administration an uphill (and likely insurmountable) battle to get people to take those vaccines.  

When America eventually puts the whole pandemic into the rear-view mirror, there will be a need for honest, objective histories of what was done right and what was done wrong during this dark time. Sadly, this book will not be one of them. 

Fallen Idols: A Timely Book

I just read a book called Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues that Made History. It is by Alex von Tunzelmann, a British historian. Her book is largely written in response to the spate of statues being torn down, vandalized, or removed by officials over the past few years, especially as a part of the Black Lives Matter movement and other political forces.

The author’s basic thesis is that there are four main arguments against removing statues, and that none of the four carry much credibility, especially when viewed in a historical perspective. These arguments are:

1. The subject of the statue was a man of his time and should not be judged by current standards.
2. Removing statues erases history.
3. The violent removal of statues goes against law and order, which much be maintained.
4. Removing statues opens up a slippery slope to further depredations on our history and culture.

She presents the history of twelve statues, from that of King George III, removed by American colonists in the run-up to the Revolutionary War, to a statue of George Washington, removed by protesters in Portland, Oregon in 2020. Along the way we also read about statues of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, and African colonizers King Leopold II of Belgium and Cecil Rhodes, all of whom were at one time admired, but subsequently saw their reputations destroyed and their statues removed.

The point that becomes clear is that if one wants to make the four standard arguments against removal of say, a statue of Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis, then one must logically defend the statues of Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, or Josef Stalin.

Her defense of the removal of statues in many cases is not likely to change any minds, given the intense rhetoric against it originating in some quarters. Her thesis is steeped in a deep knowledge of history, but she avers that the opponents of the political progress represented by removing statues come from a rigid, mostly ahistorical background, one that creates and defends mythologies they find comforting. Just the same, it does offer much to open debate and discussion on the matter.

A highly recommended read.

Chef Boyardee

I’m reading a book called Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American, by Ian MacAllen. So far, it’s pretty interesting. An early chapter offers a capsule history of where pasta originated (and no, Marco Polo did not bring it back from China).

                But the most interesting part so far was a quick history of Ettore Boiardi, an Italian-American chef of the early 20^th century, whose pastas and sauces became so popular that he started canning them for sale. As his products were sold in more markets, salespeople complained that customers could not pronounce his name, so he changed the spelling to the now famous Chef Boyardee.

                Many thousands of cans of his spaghetti were sent to G.I.s overseas in World War II, and when they got home, they had a taste for spaghetti, not just his brand, which helped solidify the popularity of ‘Italian’ food in America. Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti also went with American troops to occupied Japan, and the popularity of American-style spaghetti in that nation dates from those days.

                Red Sauce is a new book, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2022. So far, I can highly recommend it.

Amazing Webster Groves

Yesterday, Don Corrigan stopped by my office to give the library a copy of his brand new book Amazing Webster Groves. I have spent most of my time since then reading through it. Anyone who lives in Webster Groves, or grew up in Webster Groves, or is simply interested in one of St. Louis County’s most historic and storied suburbs, will be fascinated by this well-written, beautifully illustrated book.

That latter point is important. Having myself co-authored an illustrated book on Webster Groves, and having done years of research on this city, I thought I had seen every historic photo there was. So many of the same pictures are used repeatedly in books on Webster Groves. Somehow, Don has found quite a few new pictures of people and places. You would expect no less from an author who has his deep experience in journalism.

He also dives more deeply into personalities who have made the history of our town so vibrant. Everyone knows about John Helfenstein, Richard Lockwood, Charlotte Peters, and Clarissa Start. But do you know about Yvonne Logan, the 1950s activist who led the Baby Tooth Survey, which found high levels of Strontium-90, a by-product of nuclear testing, in children? Or Phoebe Snetsinger, avid birdwatcher, who held the record for the most comprehensive life-list of birds seen? Or how about Wally Armbruster, ad-man extraordinaire, who created some of the most famous advertising slogans in American history? (If cows could, they’d give Milnot . . .) The list goes on.

As a librarian and overall literary person, I appreciated his chapter The Literati: A Community of Writers. Everyone knows that Jonathan Franzen hails from Webster Groves–Jane Smiley and John Lutz too. But Don profiles no fewer than a dozen writers, from early pioneering women journalists to Missouri Poet Laureate David Clewell. Webster Groves has indeed been a community of writers.

Don Corrigan’s Amazing Webster Groves should be on sale soon at area book stores. He is appearing at several places around town to talk about and sign the book. He will be at the library on Friday, May 20 from 6:30 to 8. Our Friends of the Library group plans to provide refreshments for the event, so it should be a fun time for all. Copies of the book will be sold.

A Christmas Carol

Odd as it may sound, yesterday I read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens for the first time. Like most people in America (and I suppose in the UK), I have lived my life watching various filmed versions of this most famous of all Christmas stories (I mean, aside from the Christmas Story), not to mention probably the most famous ghost story. I even portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in a 7th grade Speech & Drama class. I don’t know why I was given the role, I can’t act at all, but I will chalk it up to the fact that I could commit the lines to memory quickly. Among the many portrayals of the old miser, in films classic and modern, I share the opinion of several critics that Michael Caine was the best Ebenezer Scrooge ever–even though he played the part in The Muppets Christmas Carol. As one critic put it, it was genius that Michael Caine decided to play the part perfectly straight, even though he was playing across from Muppets.

But for all my immersion in the story, I had never actually sat down to read it. I read it in a volume called The Complete Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens. For anyone who does not know, he wrote quite a few. Many of them he attributed to his childhood nanny, whom he called ‘Mercy,’ but proclaimed, ‘she showed me none.’ He was frightened stiff by many of her stories, but she would not relent in the telling of them.

The longest story in the book (one he does not attribute to Mercy) is A Christmas Carol. This being my first reading, I do have some observations. One is that when Jacob Marley’s ghost first appears to Scrooge, he explains that three spirits will visit him over three nights. Since the story begins on Christmas Eve, that would make it December 27th when Scrooge awakes to find everything in order and his spirit transformed. But he hears the church bells and inquires of the boy on the street what day it is, and is told it is Christmas Day. ‘The spirits have done it all in one night,’ he muses, ‘They can do anything they like.’ Okay, I guess that explains it. But it still seems to me to be a narrative flaw. Why does Dickens just not have Marley say he will be visited by three spirits tonight?

Another observation is the usual thing readers encounter when watching movies based on books: the book is so much richer than the movie. Almost every movie version of A Christmas Carol chooses the same things from the book to portray. They want two central conflicts, one between Scrooge and the Cratchit family, the other between the spirit of Christmas and Scrooge’s own miserly character. This works wonderfully for movies and leads quickly to sentimental resolutions.

But there is so much more in the book that is seems like some screenwriter or director might have chosen to include. The spirits wander more widely, and show Scrooge so much more. The party at Old Fezziwig’s, in the Christmas Past section, is a wonderful Dickens set piece, with the raucous dancing and drinking described in humorous detail. The spirit of Christmas present, especially, takes Scrooge not only to the Cratchit home and to his nephew Fred’s party, but to the Christmas celebrations of poor miners and to two lonely lighthouse keepers who share between them the joy of the day. Most movies have the scene where the Ghost of Christmas Past reveals the two starving children in his robes–Want and Ignorance–and throws Scrooge’s words back in his teeth: ‘If they be like to die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’ But there are many other powerful exchanges between Scrooge and the three spirits–why does this one make the cut? It is almost as if successive movies do not use the book as the basis for their screenplays so much as previous movies.

Of course, all of this is by way of stating the obvious: if you want to know what’s in the book, you must read the book. It is richer and deeper than any movie will ever be. If you, like me, think it’s not worth the time because you know the material so well, all I can say is I’ve learned my lesson.

A Time to Read?

I was talking to a library staff member yesterday about books we are reading. I just finished reading Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, while a friend of mine just finished Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop. The woman I was talking to said she always feels like Dickens is to be read in winter. I get it, many of us feel that certain categories of reading are reserved for certain months or seasons.

The year begins with more reading of self-help books than ever. This is because we’re determined to make good on New Year’s resolutions–books on dieting, exercise, smoking cessation, and improving personal relationships get checked out from libraries. Whether they lead to the results promised in their optimistic titles is another question.

In summer we segue to lighter reading matter. They’re called summer reads, or beach reads–often paperbacks that fit comfortably in the hand, or can be easily packed into a beach bag. Many of these have now made the transition to eBook format. When you’re out sunning or watching the waves gently lap the shore, you don’t want to be reading anything that requires a lot of attention–especially not something with a tragic ending.

By September, major publishers are introducing their fall lists of new, major titles. Everybody wants to get copies of the hottest bestsellers, and this is the season when people are asking each other, ‘Have you read (fill in the blank) yet?’ ‘No,’ we answer, ‘I’ve been meaning to get to it. Have you read (fill in another blank)?’

But there has long been this mystique about winter reading. Things are slower, particularly after the holidays, and we have time to pick up longer novels, those heady classics we’ve wanted to read for years, Jane Austen novels we want to re-read, or books they ‘made us’ read in high school that we want to try again. I used to reserve December for reading exclusively long works, Don Quixote, or Moby Dick, or Les Miserables.

But of course none of these are rules, only tendencies of people. And not everyone is subject to them. Plenty of people read cozy mysteries and romance novels–the stuff of beach reads–all year long, while some people are reading classics of 19th century literature in the heat of summer.

What about you? Do you find yourself reading a certain type of book at a given time of year? Or does the season matter at all?

Webster or Webster Groves?

Across the Mississippi River, not far from here, lies the incorporated village of Millstadt, Illinois. When the village was established, in 1837, it was christened Centerville, because it stood in the midst of Columbia, Belleville, and other small towns. But when it came time to name the post office, it was pointed out that there was already a Centerville nearby. The largely German town fathers decided to rename it Mittelstadt, which means something like Centerville in that language. But the name was misspelled by the U.S. Post Office, and became Millstadt.

I bring this up because it reminds me of a similar story about Webster Groves. The town was first called Webster, after Daniel Webster. But when it came time to name the post office, it came to light that there was already a Webster post office in Missouri, so it was changed to Webster Groves in recognition of the town’s richly forested environs. Nobody misspelled Webster Groves, though there is a long-standing problem of people leaving the ‘s’ off the end, and rendering it Webster Grove. Even today, we receive various mailings at the library addressed to Webster Grove Public Library (or even to Mr. Webster Grove . . . but that is a different matter.)

After decades of existence as a developing area of nice houses, schools, and businesses, Webster Groves was incorporated on April 2, 1896. That means that next month we will pass 125 years as an official city. The library will observe the anniversary by offering social media posts about its early history, and creating bibliographies of the best local history items in our collections. I hope you’ll take some time to read about the history of this wonderful city.

Hail and Farewell!

This morning, we were pleased to have a visit from Jim Hunter and his mother. As many patrons of Webster Groves Public Library well know, Jim has worked for us for quite a long time. In fact, he is the second longest-serving employee in our history. (The distinction of first place goes to Helen Mardorf, who was a children’s librarian and a director for 45 years. Our Reference Room is dedicated in her honor.) This was his visit to say goodbye.

Jim came to work for us in summer of 1978. He was hired by Anne Horton, a previous director. He worked under seven directors, outlasting all but one of them. Jim was our morning shelver on weekdays. He always walked to and from work from his parents’ home, for many years on Orchard Avenue, but for the past several years at Ashford Condominiums. He was as familiar a presence strolling up and down Lockwood Avenue as anyone in Webster Groves.

Jim was here when we renovated the library building, working in the stacks of our temporary quarters on Brentwood Boulevard, and made the move back with us, working for another eight years, until the COVID pandemic hit last spring. Jim will be missed for his happy morning greetings, and as the library’s number one cheerleader for the Cardinals and the Blues.

After Christmas, Jim and his mother will move to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to join other family members already living there. They are both eager to spend some time on the beach, finding some well-deserved relaxation.

At its last meeting, the library’s board of trustees passed a resolution thanking Jim for his many years of service. We were only sad that, given current health restrictions, we could not have a party for him. I suppose many people these days are retiring and having other milestone events in their lives that must go without the usual fanfare and recognition.

Someone else will take over Jim’s work here at the library–no one can ever replace him.

A Mystery Solved?

For the past fifteen years, the monthly newsletter of Webster Groves Public Library has been called Page 61. This is because of a mystery that has puzzled us for a while. Almost since this library has been in business, whenever a new book is added to the collection, our name and address is stamped on page 61 of that book. Why page 61? Just because it’s the way it’s always been done, and traditions die hard in a public library.

I came to Webster Groves Public Library after spending five years as the Adult Services Librarian at the Richmond Heights Memorial Library. At that library, whenever a new book is added to the collection, their name and address is always stamped on page 61. Coincidence?

A while back we learned that one of our former directors, Marguerite Norville, had also worked for Richmond Heights Memorial Library. (Or, to be accurate, Richmond Heights Public Library. It was rededicated as a Memorial Library in 1976, as a tribute to those who served in Vietnam.) It was most likely that Ms. Norville had been the link between the two, and had carried the practice of stamping page 61 to both. But which was first?

Last year, we had our run of old Webster Groves newspapers digitized. Decades of the Webster Times, Webster Groves News-Times, and Webster Groves Advertiser are now searchable by key words. So we looked up Marguerite Norville, and learned that she actually began her career with Webster Groves Public Library way back when it was moving from the Monday Club, where it had been housed since 1911, to the High School, where it moved in 1928. She worked part-time there until 1935, when the Richmond Heights Public Library was founded, and she became their first Head Librarian. Later, in 1949, just before Webster Groves Public Library moved into its new building at 301 E. Lockwood, Ms. Norville became Head Librarian here.

Clearly she had been back and forth. But we still did not know for sure which library first had the practice of stamping books on page 61. Finally, though, we uncovered a book in our back room called The Missouri State Capitol, which was published in 1928. It bears our name and address stamp on page 61. Assuming we added the tome in its year of publication, the Webster Groves Public Library was doing it years before there was a Richmond Heights Public Library, and most likely, Marguerite Norville carried that practice from here to there–not the other way around.

Oh, dear reader–forgive me, but this is the sort of thing that makes the pulse of a librarian race. A mystery solved, after all these years.

Or is it? As another staff member pointed out to me, there is a penciled inscription on the front flyleaf of The Missouri State Capitol, the simple word, ‘Donation.’ It means that the book could well have been donated at any time. Perhaps someone had it in their own collection until well after 1935, when they decided the library could use it. And so we will never know, for sure, to an absolute certainty, which library first stamped books on page 61.

Marguerite Norville

And so we will continue to call our newsletter Page 61, as it represents to us the mix of tradition and mystery, of art and science, of mind and soul, that a library is and will always be.