Settler Progressivism and the Antipodes

History, thankfully, is never finished. While the contours and highlights of a period might be readily agreed upon, questions of causality and correlation can remain contentious. Sorting out why something happened is often extremely difficult. A well-crafted argument, from a different viewpoint, will inevitably foster new thinking and raise new queries.

Australian historian Marilyn Lake has done just that in an outstanding work, Progressive New World: How Settler Colonialism and Transpacific Exchange Shaped American Reform. Lake is a professor of history at the University of Melbourne and an indefatigable researcher, spending years in America on this book. Starting from a less considered perspective – how did Australian reformers interact and influence American thought leaders in the Progressive Era – Lake paints a fascinating picture of mutual admiration through decades of robust exchange. The book, though, is about much more than a back and forth of people and ideas. Lake fashions a strong claim for the centrality of Whiteness as an organizing principle of multiple strains of “reform.”

The book opens with a prehistory of progressivism, grounded in elite responses to the major economic and social transformations in Australia and the United States. The intersections are fascinating and telling. In the 1870s Charles Pearson, an English historian of the Middle Ages who had a farm in South Australia, wrote National Life and Character: A Forecast, spelling out how White colonialism could effectively reshape the nation. Pearson was friends with Harvard historian Charles Eliot Norton, whose cousin, Francis Parkman, wrote extensively about the American frontier. Harvard-educated Theodore Roosevelt, before he became president, was an active writer who favorably reviewed Pearson’s book, locating it within the larger context of settler colonial advancement. Lake shows how these thinkers and leaders aligned progress with White democracy, White manhood, and self-government through a particular strain of state action. Indigenous peoples, the argument ran, lacked the character and self-discipline necessary for democracy and self-determination. These claims would play out over the decades in the American west, Hawaii, the Philippines, Cuba – literally all over the world. Elite institutions and networking, as Lake meticulously documents, facilitated the mutual group-think and collective action.

The allure of the frontier, hardy White men taming the elements and creating new social structures, appealed immensely to many of these thinkers. There were many of elites who embraced the conceit, too, as Lake’s list of elite thinkers who wrote to each other, visited each other, and supported each other is extensive. Part of the book are what akin to a late 1800s Who’s Who, with Harvard connections at the core. As they traveled the United States and Australia, these reformers wrote extensively, building a case for a new kind of political leadership, a form of sate socialism that would expand democracy and preserve community. Australian political leader Alfred Deakin, for example, traveled extensively through the US and was friends with many, including Harvard philosopher Josiah Royce. Among Deakin’s political accomplishments was an Aborigines Protection Act and a Water Supply and Irrigation Act, both of which supported White settler colonialism. This sort of state involvement and action was central to conceptions of a muscular progressive government (as well as the focus on many progressive scholars and thinkers). Deakin would later serve as Australia’s prime minister, effecting a legacy that structured Australia through the early part of the twentieth century.

Lake gives close attention to the Australian Ballot, or “secret ballot,” a reform that swept through the United States. Massachusetts was the first to adopt it in 1888 and with in a decade it was the norm in American elections. In years prior, political parties gave voters a printed ballot and voting was a public exercise. Through the Australian reform, the state printed ballots and voting was done in secret. It was very well received and scholars have shown how it reduced turnout of immigrants. The reform, in other words, was not about expanding the franchise and democracy. Lake highlights how an Australian reformer, Catherine Helen Spence, gave more than a hundred talks in her travels across the United States in 1893, advancing multiple reforms and the Australian ballot. Importantly, Spence’s push for proportional representation was not favorably received.

Many key leaders in the United States met with or became connected to Spence. Women reformers increasingly were able to take important roles in the US and Australia, especially when it came to issues around suffrage. In Australia, women won the right to vote and stand for election in 1902. Lake does not go deep into the history of the fight for women’s suffrage in the US. Rather, she explores how issues of women’s rights were framed by international exchange. One of the first women to stand for parliament, Vida Goldstein, figures prominently in this narrative – as well as her time in the United States and her visit with President Roosevelt.

Progressive New World investigates other progressive themes, including child reform, labor policies and social works. Lake calls out, in detail, the complaints voiced by indigenous peoples on both sides of the Pacific regarding state-sponsored paternalism. This proved especially true in issues of education.

Lake’s rigorous scholarship gives the narrative a close-to-the-source veracity. Surprisingly missing is a high-level summary that pulls these threads together. The pieces are all present. Moreover, the very terms employed through out beg for interrogation. What does it mean to be a settler? In an urban environment, such as Chicago, or the Australian frontier, settlement houses and white settlers seemed to employ similar language and tools. How did that identity, and the values it presented, affect future generations understanding of the role of government and political leadership?

I am profoundly impressed by the Marilyn Lakes work. Furthermore, I am especially keen on seeing how a new generation of thinkers respond to her book and deepen a new understanding of progressivism.

David Potash

April 7, 2025 Reviews

Hispanics and the KKK in the 20s

Outstanding historical research is near – and the findings can be quite enlightening.

The Ku Klux Klan was formed in the years after the Civil War as a paramilitary terrorist organization, committed to assuring white rule in the defeated states of the Confederacy. The KKK spread violence, fear and death, murdering thousands, until the US federal government stepped in and through military, police and judicial action, suppressed it. The KKK returned in a new format in the 1910s, growing in size and influence. The early twentieth century Klan grew through mass marketing techniques, along with white robes and communal events – cross burning and lynching. Membership was possibly as high as 8 million by the middle of the 1920s. Numbers, though, dropped precipitously by the end of the decade. Ever since the KKK has existed as a fringe organization, focused on white nationalism.

The Ku Klux Klan’s Campaign Against Hispanics, 1921-1925, a thorough work of history, was written by Juan O. Sanchez in 2018. The book is the result of several decades of rigorous research by Sanchez, who tracked down and collected numerous primary and secondary source documents from the period. He focused on Spanish language publications, but as he learned more about the period, Sanchez’s reach extended. The book is a testament to dogged investigation and systematic study. It aims to document facts, not make arguments, and it does so extremely effectively.

Between a strong introductory overview and a clear summary, Sanchez’s chapters look at Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, and California. The Klan had a stronghold in Texas with more than 300 local organizations in the state. 1922 marked the KKK’s greatest electoral successes. The Klan was virulently anti-Mexican and it was only in the cities with large numbers of Mexican American was there organized anti-KKK resistance. The Mexican government was also an influence in protecting Hispanic Americans’ rights. Sanchez’s research highlights the many ways that the Spanish-speaking local press advanced pro-American anti-Klan arguments, as well as the rhetoric of KKK publications and editorials. The story was similar in other states, though the influence of the KKK was strongest in Texas. Sanchez shows how local conditions and opportunities framed local discussion, debate and action across the Southwest.

Big picture, The KKK’s Campaign Against Hispanics highlights the broad acceptance by many White Americans that Mexican Americans were dangerous criminals, robbing native born Americans of jobs, opportunities and wealth. The KKK repeatedly castigated Mexican Americans as a “mongrel race” with tendencies towards drunkenness, laziness, and criminality. Speaking Spanish was called un-American. Importantly, Sanchez’s sources underscore the KKK’s deep antipathy towards Catholicism. Religion and race were used complementarily by the Klan, which had deep ties to local Protestant churches and leadership. Mexican-Americans, they insisted, were not “real” Americans. God’s national order, the Klan affirmed, had Protestant white Americans at the top. Moreover, as Sanchez’s work documents, the KKK was as anti-Hispanic as it was anti-Black.

The KKK’s rise in the first half of the 1920s reflected long-standing trends in American society and politics. During this period controls over unions increased, immigration was great constricted, and a wide range of non-white groups were targeted. Happily, by the latter half of the decade more inclusive voices prevailed in the Southwest, thanks in great part to the organized resistance led by Spanish-language newspapers. Juan Sanchez’s scholarship ably documents a history of racism, intolerance, and resistance. It is history well worth studying and considering.

David Potash

March 22, 2025 Reviews

A Man of Sand

What makes a person, if not their values? A hundred plus years ago, someone who had commitment, courage and character was said to have sand. That meant they were a person of substance, someone you could trust. A person with sand would do what they promised, no matter the consequences. One earns sand, through conflict and hard work over time. Sand is a most worthy encomium. The late congressman John Lewis was a man of sand.

The historian and professor David Greenberg recently turned his practiced eye to Lewis. The resulting biography, John Lewis: A Life, bears much in common with its subject. It is a methodical, consistent and powerful study. There is nothing flashy about John Lewis or the book. It tells the history of a most compelling man who truly made a difference through diligence, courage, and a commitment to living his values. It is exactly the kind of history that stands in opposition to opportunism. Greenberg knows how to research and how to write history effectively, keeping the story moving and giving just enough detail to make you think that you might really know the subject.

The contours of Lewis’s life are well-known. He lived it, after all, in the public eye for decades. He was dedicated to public service. Born into a poor family and large family in Alabama, Lewis was an inveterate reader as a child. Small, shy and studious, Lewis went away to college just as the Civil Rights movement was starting to push for integrated higher education. Lewis wrote to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to seek his help gaining admission to Troy University, which was segregated at the time. Lewis decided to attend an HBCU instead, but he made a mark on King and others in the movement. As a college student in Nashville, Lewis studied theology and became very active in civil rights. Totally committed to the nonviolence of Gandhi and others, Lewis stood out for his discipline. He was a leader through his intensity, lack of ego, and drive. Lewis was a man of great courage: physical, moral and interpersonal.

By 1961 Lewis was one of the original Freedom Riders. He became chair of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) in 1963. As Greenberg details, Lewis was everywhere in the movement, helping others, preaching and practicing nonviolence. He was always more interested in doing the work and effecting change, not being in the spotlight. Greenberg details the horrific hatred that Lewis and so many others in the movement encountered. People were murdered, beaten, threatened with regularity. The racism of the South in the 1950s and 1960s did not change without thousands putting their bodies and lives on the line. Lewis did so regularly and he practiced what he preached, perhaps most famously in the marches at Selma. The book is a chilling reminder of the danger and difficulty of pursuing civil rights.

Greenberg’s history is balanced and comprehensive. While Lewis did so much before the age of 24, the biography gives equal attention to the other roles he placed, including advocating for voting rights and serving on the Atlantic City Council, where he fought a major highway development. Lewis entered Congress in the 1980s and he served until 1980, where he had an outsize influence in a wide range of issues. In many ways, Lewis became a moral figure in Congress, more than a politician. Several of the racist leaders who attacked Lewis reached out to him, seeking forgiveness and understanding. Lewis follow up, again and again. He was that good a person. He understood, too, that he represented something bigger than himself.

The research supporting the book is extensive. Greenberg truly did his homework, giving anecdotes and first person accounts that give the work texture and character. Lewis had edges and an ego, as he cheerfully would admit. But he also found ways, repeatedly, to push himself and others. He wrote, lobbied, and led, truly having an extraordinarily full and meaningful life. He truly was an American hero.

One of my favorite quotes is from John Lewis, something he said repeatedly throughout his life: sometimes we have to make good trouble. Lewis’s “good trouble” was the kind of activism that makes for better people, better communities and a better nation. Reading about John Lewis is inspirational. Pick up this book and you may want to engage in a bit of “good trouble.” It did for me.

David Potash

March 12, 2025 Reviews

Karma Smiles With Sharp Teeth

John Collier might be one of the most successful writers you have never heard of. Perhaps because of his ordinary name? His reluctance to pursue the spotlight? Collier avoided interviews and drew upon a well of British reserve. Nonetheless, whether you read one of his many pieces in the New Yorker, or saw a movie or play written or rewritten by him, or perhaps remember a Twilight Zone episode that remains rooted in your mind, there is a right good chance that Collier was the author.

Collier’s most effective metier may be the short story and an exquisite collection of his works in found in Fancies and Goodnights. First published in 1951, the book has been reprinted many, many times. It is classic, a delicious assortment and every offering comes with a bite. The latest reissue hails from the NYRB and it features a glowing introduction from Ray Bradbury, who writes “I can name no other writer in the twentieth century whose work has given me such consistent pleasure.” Collier’s prose is elegant, sophisticated, and very smart, with nary a wasted word.

Fancies and Goodnights is eminently enjoyable. It is as strong as any collection of short stories you might find, from O. Henry to de Maupassant to Chekhov. In reflection, I realized something unexpected from these many tales with a twist. Collier’s stories are consistently moral. They are far from didactic – no bland parables here – yet each, in its own way, carries a powerful message. Hubris receives a comeuppance, villainy is betrayed, and excess is justly trimmed. And in each of these, the end arrives without warning. They are simply great fun and very much “just desserts.”

Were you ever to be tasked with teaching ethics, as you debate this philosopher or that jurist, please consider Collier. His stories and their lessons would stick, delightfully so.

David Potash

March 10, 2025 Reviews

Building Blocks of Righteous Foundations

Have humans always been irrevocably divided? Is difference inevitable, simply a function of human nature? These are expansive questions, difficult to consider and challenging to attempt to address. One has to employ a structure, a disciplinary framework, to even ponder them. Jonathan Haidt, a professor at NYU, enthusiastically has made moral psychology a relevant tool for these kind of imponderable issues. In his 2012 tome, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Haidt goes big. It is an engaging, encyclopedic, and provocative read.

The Righteous Mind is organized into three sections. The first explores the power and prevalence of emotion in making moral judgements. Haidt weaves his personal history, experiments, and the works of others into a compelling argument. It is reminiscent, yet from a somewhat different perspective, of the seminal found in Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Emotions are often at the very foundation of how we make judgments, a fact that critical thinkers have explored for centuries. Disgust, for example, can drive out reason. Haidt notes that time and reflection dull the power of emotion, giving space to more deliberate reason.

The second section is meatier and more expansive. Drawing from contemporary politics, a wide range of experiments, interdisciplinary thinkers and personal reflection. Haidt spells out a theory of moral decision-making. He posits a framework of six continua: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation, and liberty/oppression. Individuals tend to make moral decisions through these, and we tend to prioritize one or more of these. Haidt’s research suggests that American liberals tend to prioritize judgements on the care/harm and fairness/cheating continua. Conservatives in the US are more likely to use other continua. Global exploration – Haidt spent time in India – shows how different cultures prioritize different values and, subsequently, the frameworks for moral judgements. Adding to the complexity, class has a powerful impact.

Haidt does not claim that his continua are determinative. Rather, they are posited as a potential, or probable structure for further investigation. His research and insights are important, for they can give us better ways of asking questions by interrogating the questions themselves.

Group behaviors, from competition to the hive effect, figures prominently in the third section of the book. Here Haidt is less assured, wondering about evolutionary effects and the possibilities for societal interventions to improve group understanding. Throughout the work, Haidt relies on metaphors to explain these complicated concepts. The elephant and the rider for emotions and reason is an example that is woven throughout.

The Righteous Mind is a book for contemplation, discussion, and more discussion. It is not determinative. Nor does Haidt suggest that it offers all the answers. Nonetheless, give it time and all manner of downstream questions will come to mind. I thought about, for instance, the power of communication – how different people receive, digest and understand information – in this complex framework. If we are relative certain regarding the questions we’re asking – and the questions behind the questions – then what remains to be considered is the information in the hopper to be judged. There is a great deal in Haidt’s book as he moves across disciplines and time, much to consider. And as Haidt has written many other well-received books, I anticipate more reading and mulling.

David Potash

March 2, 2025 Reviews

Stories All in Good Time

One of my dearest friends is a major fan of the writer Tim O’Brien. We met in the same college course and together read Going After Cacciato. She followed up over the years, reading more O’Brien, enthusing. O’Brien’s literature on the Vietnam War garnered all manner of awards. I read other things, and when I read about Vietnam, it was non-fiction. O’Brien became an item on my never completely forgotten but rarely considered list of things we promise ourselves to do. Like dance lessons. An obligation as much for myself as anyone. Several years ago I purchased a copy of O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. More than a wildly successful best-seller, the novel received accolades across the board and was called a “book of the century” by the New York Times. I was certain I would read it.

It sat on different shelves, was boxed up as I moved, and unpacked – again and again.

When the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, spoke of restoring America’s “warrior culture” something clicked. I considered how we have talked about, read about, and thought about warriors. I have never had to serve in war and for that, I am grateful. As an historian, though, I have long been fascinated by war, accounts of war, and how people have understood and explained war. Mass conflicts – often our most important collective actions – shape our world and our understanding of ourselves and each other. Hegseth’s comments brought to mind many books, including John Keegan’s Face of Battle, Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and Catch-22 by Heller. So many extraordinary works of art come out of war. And I finally reached for The Things They Carried.

It is a brilliant, moving book, a terrific novel about terrible things. It is a book that can make you smile and weep, for it is grounded in the powerful and challenging ways in which we try to make sense of all that resists order and sense. Is there a better way to write about the Vietnam War if we care about those who fought it? The novel shines as a work of literature and memorial, real and imagined, of fellow humans. Not abstract others who become othered, but fellow people.

A well-crafted story, provided it is told and heard, can render the other as familiar, recast the simple into the complex. The Things They Carried is about Vietnam and life and love and meaning.

Thank you so much for the recommendation. Sorry that it took so long. I don’t have a good excuse. You were right. It is a hell of a great book. And I’m glad that I finally gave it time.

David Potash

February 17, 2025 Reviews

You’re Wondering Now

Was there a period in your life when music and culture synergized? When a song was more than a song? Those experiences when music and dance and the overall vibe felt like something bigger, possibly even transcendent? A sense, even years later, of that feeling of total immersion?

Picture northern New Jersey, 1980, teenagers from different backgrounds bonding as friends as they sing along to the The Specials first album. It is British ska, drawing from Jamaican music and English rock, with an infectious beat and a message of racial unity and tolerance. The music, the look and the energy spoke to us profoundly. We sang, we danced, and sang some more. When there was an opportunity to see one of the English ska bands live, we took it. I guarantee, too, that there are more than a few of us who can recite all the lyrics to Blank Expression without a hitch.

While I am still wondering now why English ska resonated so much with me and my friends at that time, I now know a great deal about the how the music and scene came to pass. The sudden explosion and flourishing of ska – The Specials, Madness, The Selecter – took place at a critical juncture in English history. From 1979 through the early years of Thatcher, England suffered through economic depression, racism, anti-immigrant violence, and profound social changes. There were moments of integration and episodes of hate. It also was a crucible for tremendous creativity and positivity. At the center of the movement, for a brief spell, was one record company: 2 Tone. All this is explained beautifully in Daniel Rachel’s magisterial Too Much, Too Young: The 2 Tone Records Story. The book is almost encyclopedic in its enthusiasm and attention.

Rachel is a musician turned prolific author. His research is prodigious. He talked with just about everyone involved in the scene and he’s generous with his sourcing, from the press to interviews. Particularly important to understanding the movement is the context, ande her Rachel sets the stage very effectively. Britain in 1979 saw massive industrial and service strikes, resistance to integration, and the rise of the National Front, neo-Nazi skinheads. The forces of whte nationalism were bitterly fought by integrationists, anti-Fascists, and wide array of people committed to democracy. The connection between politics and pop was vitally important. Rachel reminds us that in 1976, Eric Clapton spoke in support of Enoch Powell (white nationalist – “Rivers of Blood” speech) and ridding the country of foreigners. Importantly, Dave Wakeling, who would later be a founding member of the English Beat – an equally important ska band that was with 2 Tone for a brief spell, saw the Clapton show and was outraged.

Out of this dire landscape in Coventry, an industrial midland city leveled in World War II, young Black and White musicians started making music together. It wasn’t the only spot in England where this was happening, but it truly revamped the young people’s music scene. The genius who catalyzed the dynamic into the Specials was Jerry Dammers. His dream was to start a band doing original music with a mission. He pulled together friends from other bands, hoping to join punk and reggae. Dammers wanted anti-racism to be central to the effort. Rock Against Racism was gaining influence at the time. The Specials embodied all of this with outstanding music and live shows that captivated Britain. Rachel’s quotes about those who saw the Specials live are dead-on. There put on amazing shows. It was a movement with drive and passion.

Rachel’s narratives weaves together the hard work and the spectacular rise of the Specials, from back of the house booking negotiations to the shows that were plagued with violence. Dammers and team negotiated a special deal with Chrysalis Records, enabling a semi-independent label they called 2 Tone. Joining was Madness, a north London collective doing a different brand of ska, and The Selecter, also from the midlands. In a relatively short period of time with a ton of touring, the bands vaulted to the top of the charts in England. It was a phenomenon. Their success in the United States, perhaps save for the odd pocket here and there, was much less secure.

For those who liked the music and the scene, Too Much Too Young is filled with details and anecdotes. There we other bands, too, such as The Bodysnatchers to The Beat. I found it fascinating and I regularly reached for the stereo to enjoy tracks, riffs and lyrics while reading the book. It is real history, though, much more substantial than a fan glossy. The struggles, the economic deals and the problems are covered in detail. It is a rough business and not everyone played by the rules. Rachel is frank about the misogyny, the drama, and the personalities. By the early 1980s, conflicts led to the break up of the Specials and the Selecter. Tastes and times changed, as they always do.

The music, though, remains. So, too, do memories of the energy, the joy, and the power of ska. They are vividly captured in Rachel’s book. And for me, they were special moments indeed, a time of tremendous musical positivity, bringing people together in support of love and unity. It’s a theme that I think about often today.

David Potash

February 9, 2025 Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

Mead and a Mighty Read

The Long Ships is an brilliant saga, extremely entertaining, delightfully amoral, anachronistic and surprisingly funny for all its gore and death. Written in two parts in the 1940s by Frans G. Bengtsson, the book quickly became popular in Swedish literature. Reissued by the New York Review of Books in a translation from Michael Meyer, it is a 20th century classic, an adventure for the ages.

The book tells us tales of Red Orm, an imaginary Viking, and his exploits from roughly 980 AD – 1010 AD. The son of a chief, Orm is kidnapped as a youth from Skania (now southern Sweden). He becomes a slave in Andalusia, fights his way to freedom, and engages in all manner of adventure and conflict as he travels through much of Europe before making his way home. There are friendships, family drama, battles, losses, victories and love. Enough takes places for multiple seasons of a cable drama. While it may sound like any number of epics, The Long Ships is something special.

Bengtsson based his plot points on historical examples and the research shows. The goal, though, is not veracity or scholarship. Instead, the author wants to tell us stories grounded in care and literality. What makes the book work is how Bengtsson tells the story: think old-school prose with a soupcon of modern awareness. No internal dialogue graces the pages. The characters are clearly drawn and their actions – and words – speed the text. Wants and desires are clear. Everything is extraordinarily straightforward and direct. When a character is conflicted, their condition is spelled out. Our characters are pragmatic and relatable, even though they are living and struggling in a violent world. Bengtsson does not romanticize the Vikings. Life could be brutal. There’s a tremendous linear quality to the book, a trait that makes one yearn for straightforwardness in our day-to-day.

This is not to say that characters in The Long Ships do not engage with difficult questions. They often wrestle with all manner of problems and issues. The book is situated as the Vikings’ dominance shifted to something different – perhaps more civilized, as the Catholic Church would frame it? The theme of religion is frequently explored. Red Orm became Muslim simply to stay alive, and later he decides to become a Christian. They were, after all, sometimes luckier. Some characters convert and others do not, and there are multiple points of view about why to, or why not, to do so. Bengtsson very much appreciates the context that frames these themes. The Viking tradition of raiding, after all, is a less than moral activity. It is violent and awful. Our heroes are ne’er-do-wells, often blessed with a dry sense of humor. Males drive the action, yet female characters are central to the story. How do people live and make choices in such world? Bengtsson’s world gives us a sense of how some might be and act. While assessing its historical accuracy is best left to experts, for the reader, it rings as true.

The Long Ships stands out as engaging and epic as Tolkien without taking itself too seriously. It is a mighty good read. As Michael Chabon puts it in his introduction, the novel “stands ready . . . to bring lasting pleasure to every single human being on the face of the earth.”

David Potash

January 20, 2025 Reviews

With A Big Thanks to Libraries – 2024 Edition

Every book mentioned here is interesting. If it wasn’t worth it, I wouldn’t say anything about it – so “briefly noted” seems appropriate. More to the point, I find there to be so much interesting in reading and I’m especially thankful for libraries and librarians. They keep us all in good books. Visit one today and say hi to a librarian. I am so grateful for them and their recommendations.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*CK, by Mark Manson, is a short, snappy action-oriented book of basic philosophy and self-help. Drawing from common sense, the skeptics, and some thoughtful observations of human nature, Manson does, in fact, care quite a bit (regardless of the swearing). He urges readers to think hard about our values and live our lives according to them. Values are not wealth, popularity or external signs; they come from within. Moving beyond all the hype and posturing (Mason has a big online presence), this is a book of hope and optimism.

Jillian Lauren’s Some Girls: My Life in a Harem is neither titillating nor sexy, but it is very interesting. It is a memoir of discovery and exploitation. Lauren, briefly an NYU student from New Jersey, grew up in an abusive household. She doesn’t dwell on how toxic it was, but looking from the outside, it truly must have been awful. How does a smart ambitious young woman cope and/or deal with her demons? She started dancing/stripping as a teenager, moved into escort work, and took advantage of an opportunity to be a paid “guest” in a large group of women for royalty in Brunei. At that time, beautiful young women (actresses, dancers, models from around the world) were offered substantial money to live and attend “parties” with royalty. Chosen party-goers had the opportunity to sleep with royalty, and favored guests would stay for months on end, receiving expensive gifts. It was a most extraordinary experience, creepy as all get out, yet somehow normalized for those that found themselves within it. Lauren is extremely smart, too smart to be a victim or to not be aware of where she is and what was transpiring. Journaling through her time was a way to cope. It took two exits before Lauren re-arranged her life, all while in her early 20s, and returned to the US with lots of money. Judgments are easy; understanding is difficult. The book is about discovery, power, gender and sex. It is worth consideration particularly in the name of understanding.

Thanks to a friend I joined the “Free Britney” movement, wondering why this extraordinary talented and successful women was under the control of the state and her family. She struck me as immensely capable. Why wasn’t she allowed to make her own decisions? Reading Britney Spears’ memoir, The Woman in Me, the reasons for her exploitation became more clear. Above and beyond her amazing talent, Spears is (or now “was”) an extremely generous and trusting soul. Baked into her love of singing, dancing and entertaining is a desire to please. While exploitation of talent is baked into the communication industry, in Spears situation, the actions of her parents and sister were horrific. They used and manipulated her. With Spears’ children as her priority, she worked through many years of extraordinarily unjust external control, eventually retaking personal agency. She is a genuinely nice person who justifiably has rage. Yet she is not about anger or vengeance. It’s difficult to finish the book and not be a bigger fan of Britney is every sense of the world – mixed with outrage at what happened to her.

One of the scariest zombie horror novels I have ever read, Colson Whitehead’s Zone One is truly terrifying. Whitehead is a brilliant author who regularly explores different genres. In this 2011 best-seller, the post-apocalypse world is ravaged by zombies hungry for uninfected humans. Our hero, ironically named “Mark Spitz,” is a “sweeper,” charged with cleaning up what survivors hope are straggling zombies. It is brutal and violent work, yet the story unfolds with care and tenderness as the non-infected remember life before the contagion and try to make sense of their current situation. Whitehead stated that Asimov and King inspired the work. While one can see how Zone One might be read as genre fiction, Whitehead’s attention to detail, his beautiful prose, sets the book apart. Some sections I read aloud – they were that good. It is a haunting book, too, and I am grateful I did not encounter it during the Covid pandemic. Whitehead gets more than a few things right in his imaginative creation of a postlapsarian America. Frightening indeed!

Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art is a very interesting work of cultural criticism. Penned by Lauren Elkin, the book reads at times like one recursive narrative and at others like a series of reflections, a critic’s journal. The book emerged through the pandemic and Elkin’s pregnancy. Both, I think, shaped her thinking about herself, women, and the ways that art empowers, problematizes, constricts and reshapes ontological questions. What and who is, or is not, monstrous. Elkin is breathtakingly smart, and her prose threads seemingly disparate observations and references into something special. The book, though, is neither linear nor easily summarized. Rather, it creates an atmosphere, an ether through which cultural production and objects reveal themselves differently. Yes, I am still working to make sense of this very intriguing book and author.

Shahnaz Habib is a gifted writer, a raconteur and keen observer. In Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel, she displays her discursive talents. Chock full of references, the book is less a history than a selection of explorations. It is entertaining and diverting. I wish more of it would stick, but what remains most vivid is her prose and her perspective. It is a most personal book. Airplane Mode did remind me, from a phenomenological framing, of subject, voice and identity and their power. Sometimes the who, when and how of an account is as important and the account itself.

Under the heading of “Where were they when?” you might want to take a look at I Married Wyatt Earp: The Recollections of Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp. It’s an interesting read, but what makes it more of a puzzle is that it is difficult to determine what is real and what it fiction – on multiple levels. The book’s author, Glenn G. Boyer, purports that the contents were collected and edited by him. On that front, it is a straightforward first person history from Josephine, telling her story from adolescence through decades of marriage to the famous lawman. The gunfight at the OK Corral get attention, to be sure, but it is the balance of their lives together, their trips to Alaska, their never-ending hustling, that give the narrative flavor. While the book was published and republished by the University of Arizona Press, it is not academic, even with notes. Boyer provides his take on some of Josephine’s claims. Historians of the West looked more closely. Many determined that broad parts of the book were fabricated by Boyer. The press eventually distanced itself from the publication. True? False? Like the classic ending of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the west is often much more myth than history. Read it with a grain of salt. Or possibly with a tablespoon and for entertainment’s sake.

Ginger Strand’s Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power and Lies is a different sort of cultural history. Akin to long form journalism with the writer’s presence throughout, this book tackles a fascinating physical site whose history has been contested for centuries. Strand is intrigued by the recurring making and remaking of Niagara, its problematic value in culture over the years. She is drawn to it, embracing the beauty, power and, at times, crassness of it. Yet she is also angry at the inherent falseness in the area’s many misrepresentations. Add to it the exploitation of nature and many who lived in the area, and the best word to describe Niagara Falls is problematic. Remember, too, that the infamous Love Canal was a byproduct of the industrial production drawn to the site. Strand’s mixed emotions give the book a surprising stickiness but ultimate left this reader wanting greater clarity of focus. That might mean different books, but I see that is fine. The subject is worthy of being viewed from many different perspectives, just like visiting the falls themselves.

Ferdydurke, a comic novel by Witold Gombrowicz, is an absurdist exercise in creative nihilism. It has a plot – a 30 year old is turned into a schoolboy by an evil professor – only in the most generous of terms. One doesn’t read it for the story. Instead, the prose tangles and untangles, jumps and refuses to be tied down. It is a satire on psychedelics. More important than enjoyable, Ferdydurke was banned from its initial publication in Poland in 1937. Everyone found it objectionable. Not that it is obscene or political. Rather, the novel’s deep cynicism, its nihilism, poses threats to logical and traditional ways of thinking. It is radical in its bones. As such, the book represents an important literary step. All that said, it is not something one picks up as a simple read. I found it slow going and I’m confident that I missed the vast majority of references, asides and comic touches.

David Potash

January 2, 2025 Curiouser and Curiouser, Reviews

Shantyboats Aren’t On The Grid

Opening a book like Harlan Hubbard’s Shantyboat: A River Way of Life is akin to wandering into a new world. Eye-opening does not begin to cover it, for Hubbard’s book is an extraordinarily provocative exercise in doing and thinking differently. The book, and the Hubbards, truly caught me by surprise. The more that you learn about them, the more interesting they become.

Hubbard (1900 – 1988) was born in Kentucky. His mother moved him to New York City when he was a child, after the death of his father. He attended art school and after World War I, design school in Cincinnati. Hubbard and his mom returned to Kentucky, where he held a number of jobs while becoming increasingly critical of modern culture. In 1943 he married Anna Eikenhout (1902 – 1986), a librarian. Anna, an Ohio State honors graduate, spoke several languages and was an excellent pianist. Together the Hubbards did something that many of us talk about but very few ever achieve: fashion a life together on their own terms.

The couple built a shantyboat in Brent, Kentucky, on the banks of the Ohio River upstream from Cincinnati, in the fall of 1944. A shantyboat is a small, simple houseboat, something that can be put together and repaired easily by someone good with tools. It is a craft for drifting, not for speedy travel. The Hubbards moved into the rough structure, and nearby tent, almost immediately. It took about two years to make the craft ready for the water. They then floated down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, reaching New Orleans in 1950. Shantyboat is Harlan’s account of the trip, brightened with his illustrations. Published in 1953, the book became something of an underground classic. Hubbard followed up with several other books, as well as a lifetime of making art.

The book does not argue for organic living, avoiding capitalism or the dangers of working for another. It is not a treatise and nor does Harlan complain about modernity. Instead, it is a most direct and straightforward account of how the Hubbards went about their six-year journey. Hubbard explains how they put the boat together, the decisions they made about heating, storage, windows and all the other details that called for attention. If you have to find firewood to burn to stay warm, priorities change. Eating, not surprisingly, takes up much of the couple’s time, for they did not have much money and they did not want a lifestyle that required regular shopping. They grew vegetables, foraged, fished and traded, all with quiet good cheer. If they ever went hungry, it did not appear in the narrative. They always found a way and found ways, too, to help those they met along the way. The community of people they encountered, on and around the river, were supportive and welcoming.

Details give the book a tremendous tangible texture. I didn’t know that groundnuts would make a good alternative to potatoes, or various types of catching river fish. Shantytown is studded with hands-on experience and words of wisdom. Harlan could have given more maps, charts and diagrams. It is that interesting. He is a patient guide, too, for he is up front about learning from others. While it might seem to be a solitary way to live, there were always opportunities and reasons to interact with others.

The boat drifted, which meant there had to be constant attention to where and how the boat was situated. Paying attention to traffic on the river, who was going where and why, was essential. The Hubbards were far from the only people living along the river, either. They met many different characters, found places to stay for extended periods (helped with their farming), and they lived in community while somewhat apart from traditional society. Harlan painted, they wrote, they read, they made music and stayed very busy, with dogs, bees and an endless series of adventures.

One might be tempted to think of their journey as a way of leading a “simple” or “leisurely” life, but that would be far from the truth. Their day-to-day was very full and rich with experience. Who is to say it is better or worse than anyone else’s?

The couple returned to Kentucky and purchased land by the river. Their spot, Payne Hollow, grew over the years. It was a physical expression of the couple’s values and lifestyle. Payne Hollow was their home until their deaths. They had no electricity, no motors and no engines. The Hubbards had their own environmental commitments. Their food never came from a supermarket. A bicycle got them to a local town, when needed. They were quiet, enjoying what each day brought, and it was often visitors. In fact, they became minor celebrities in Kentucky. PBS did a show about them, and Harlan’s art was appreciated and purchased by many.

Shantyboat and the Hubbards are, in a word, inspirational.

David Potash

January 1, 2025 Reviews