aegagrus's reviews
72 reviews

A Prison in the Woods is not a stridently ideological work, and does not make a serious effort to draw from its subject matter a critical thesis that might inform current-day movements against mass incarceration. There are positives and negatives to this approach. 

While subtitled "environment and incarceration", this is primarily a work about local politics and local economics. The chapters on Ray Brook, Gabriels, Lyon Mountain, and Tupper Lake each present a detailed, well-researched account of the local controversies surrounding the construction of new prisons in these communities between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. One useful takeaway is the degree to which locals' bargaining power when dealing with state or federal institutions is highly variable and fluctuates according to regional, political, and historical context. The most useful takeaway, though, is the throughline that opposition to prison expansion in each case was dominated by affluent/seasonal residents of the North Country who view the Adirondacks as an area for outdoor recreation and leisure activities, and worried (in obviously racist terms) about the degree to which new prisons would make these communities more like the downstate communities they were trying to get away from. While the working class year-round residents of these communities did share some concerns relating to local input/control and environmental damage/resource management, ultimately they tended to view prisons as sources of employment in a struggling region that had lost the mining and logging industries it once relied upon. While this form of prison NIMBYism did win some victories in the North Country, it has enormous drawbacks: treating environmental concerns as an instrument for social ends rather than as important issues in and of themself, and fracturing the movement by weakening any long-term effort to link local environmental concerns with the broader concerns about mass incarceration and racial disparity being articulated by anti-penal activists. Further, Jefferson Hall notes that once prisons were established in these communities, seasonal and more affluent residents tended to soften their stance when the free or cheap labor performed by incarcerated men became more integral to the area's infrastructure, local services, and commerce -- further ensuring that opposition to prison construction remained localized and unsustained.  

By contrast, the first chapter, about the 19th century construction of Clinton State Prison in Dannemora, does provide some useful background about New York's role in the development of US penal norms and the North Country's role in the development of New York's correctional system, but ultimately feels fairly inconclusive and disconnected from the much-later case studies that make up the bulk of the book. Jefferson Hall concludes with a brief plea for public memorials and education campaigns to remind North Country residents to what extent their region and its infrastructure today was created by incarcerated labor (even if many of the prisons in question have since closed) -- a point which is well-taken, but also somewhat extraneous and underdeveloped. 

Moving and inventive. Though the circumstances Nagamatsu imagines are extremely grim, this is not a book about apocalyptic events eroding our moral compasses. Rather, this is a book about caring for one another in the midst of unsolvable crisis. Nagamatsu's various narrators navigate their grim world with a great deal of compassion and decency. Many of their stories include severed or strained connections to family or loved ones; often they are unable to care for certain people or to care in certain ways. However, each of them, in their own way, cares for others. This is a book about compassionately attending to those to whom you can attend, and making peace with the memories of those to whom you could not. 

Nagamatsu's plague-stricken world sees death reassert its often-hidden presence in the public square, and imagines creative ways in which society might address this change. Not all of these mortuary or palliative practices are ultimately helpful or sustainable, but Nagamatsu makes sure that we notice the compassion, mourning, and hope behind each one. 

Nagamatsu ties these stories together using a framing device from science fiction, which mostly becomes relevant late in the novel. I did not think this aspect of the novel added very much, but I didn't think it detracted much either.

Framing mechanisms aside, this is ultimately (and self-consciously) a book about climate change, about environmental catastrophes, and about the imperfect but essential ways we are called to care for one another, now and in the years to come. 

In Man is Not Alone, Abraham Joshua Heschel avoids the sterile functionalism he sees in anthropological or psychological accounts of religion by reasoning from direct experience. However, in so doing, he becomes quite presumptuous about the content of human experience. William James' treatment of the subject is certainly narrower in scope, but at least James engages with first-hand narratives and accounts from other people. R. Heschel, writing in a self-assured tone of pastoral explication, doesn't -- at least not in these pages. His writing is sometimes quite compelling, but sometimes grating in its tone and generalizing certitude.

I resonated most with R. Heschel's understanding of the imperative nature of religion. "Religion...begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us". He identifies the power and presence of the Ineffable, but most importantly sees in the Ineffable the beginning of an obligation. I was also struck by his insistence that our sense of the Ineffable is an "authentic insight". Meaningfulness is not the product of our own cognition: "to assume that reality is chaotic, bare of significance, as long as man does not approach it with the magic touch of his mind" is a position "too sophisticated to be reasonable". While nothing R. Heschel says here will persuade an arch-existentialist who disagrees with this assertion, I find in it a deeply insightful and important bedrock for any theological discussion. Developing this notion of compulsion, R. Heschel describes piety in terms of being attuned to what is asked of us; to the meaningfulness of life and to the weight of our responsibilities. As in C. S. Lewis' The Weight of Glory, this notion of seriousness of spiritual intent is extremely compelling to me.

R. Heschel's description of Jewish religion in terms of covenant as an instrument of reciprocal concern & need, and in terms of a constant and historical yearning -- for a more complete closeness to God and for a better world -- is also valuable. I also like his image of humanity as "the knot in which heaven and earth are interlaced" -- an argument that our nature as both spiritual and material beings leads us to fill this necessary role as a point of ontological contact between realms (I would object to the anthropocentrism here, but am nonetheless compelled by the cosmology). His other forays into moral theology strike me somewhat dubiously. He writes that dogmas are merely allusive, but seems to hold dogmatic positions about unity being the root of all healthy ethical thought (a claim he makes to disparage polytheism), and about magic/"primitive spirituality" being a foe to true religion for its orientation around human ends. Again, he is not obviously drawing from sources other than his own understandings of human life and human nature, and at these and other points he makes wide leaps in assuming that certain feelings are more "authentic" or credible than others, that certain thought processes and patterns are universal, and/or that an honest encounter with the spiritual world will invariably lead towards moral-theological conclusions mirroring his own. This was somewhat tiresome and grating. Interestingly, I don't think I would have been as put-off if he had simply phrased these universals as originating from a doctrinal stance (which may be worth interrogating). As it was, by positioning himself as departing from a experiential universals, but not seeming to be very willing to believe or engage with alternate experiential accounts, R. Heschel ended up testing my patience somewhat. 

Stunning. So much to sit with and to consider. Includes meditations on the fraught-but-necessady rhetorical assertion of species difference (e.g. in the chapter discussing activism against aerial pesticide application in Mindanao), and on non-reciprocal but intimate relationships and encounters (e.g. in the chapter on the ambivalent comradeship between displaced humans and stray dogs in post-extractive Baku). There are no easy answers here, and there is much that I found challenging in an extremely useful way -- most especially in the chapter profiling a maker of artisinal rodent traps in Tanzania, situating his livelihood (which necessarily entails killing) as embodying much of the generative ethos of multispecies negotiation. Ultimately, this volume is a ringing endorsement of thoughtfulness -- of viewing justice from multiple frames, and of "slowing down" before making ethical judgements which flatten and smooth over the rough edges of the multispecies world in which we live. 

Certainly an academic book, and won't be everyone's speed. But it was definitely mine. 

Cathedral is a strong example of historical fiction which finds credibility not in meticulously-documented particulars (a la Hilary Mantel) but in a well-rounded understanding of its milieu -- in this case, 13th century Alsace. Hopkins' world-building is evidently rooted in an engagement with rigorous academic histories, making his depiction of the medieval world much richer and more compelling than many authors'. Over the course of a sprawling and interwoven saga, he effectively develops themes including the gradual shift in power from the agrarian aristocracy to the urban mercantile elite and the subtly pernicious ways in which Western European Jews were dispossessed of their livelihoods (at times without personal malice) and forced to migrate eastward, especially to modern-day Poland. The crass, insouciant Baron Volmar von Kronthal and the brooding, disillusioned cleric Eugenius von Zabern are particularly strong characters, respectively revealing much about the mindsets and habits of petty noblemen and clerical administrators. There were only a few points at which I doubted the historical vision on which the story was based. One early sequence involved a historically contentious depiction of

Catharism

. More notably, characters occasionally gave voice to sentiments which seemed a little on the nose in an anachronistic way. Unfortunately, this was most often true of Grete Gerber, the only woman among our principal characters, a dynamic which weakened the book somewhat. 

Hopkins' writing is dramatic and fluid, belying his history as a filmmaker. He is especially good at montage-like scenes depicting complex social machinery -- I was quite moved by his description of the elaborate ecosystem of stonework and other architectural craft involved in the building of the Cathedral, and again by his description of the ever-changing world of merchants and pilgrims and those claiming sanctuary and priests and schoolboys and tradesmen and countless others who flow through the cathedral or congregate in its courtyards. 

I did find most of the epilogue/flash-forward sections somewhat unnecessary and emotionally cheap (excepting the

flash-forward interludes describing a 14th century pogrom

, which make an important point about the long-term ramifications of the some of what occurs in the main story). On the whole, though, the emotional note on which the book ends is perfect -- we are reminded of the extraordinary long process of building and establishing a great cathedral, a process which drags on over many generations and comprises the life's work of many who knew that neither they nor their children nor their children's children would see the work's fruition. In the end, all of our characters exit the tale in an emotionally ambivalent fashion, leaving behind unfinished business. The only sense of resolution and finality is provided by the iconic structure itself -- the monumental, enduring cathedral. 

Describing the schemes and exploits of various residents of a women's hostel in London in 1945, Spark writes with much humor but little malice. Although the young womens' plans and self-images are all somewhat fanciful -- the male characters' intellectual and political pretensions are equally so -- Spark is not satirizing the pettiness of their concerns but observing their lives with amusement and compassion. Alongside the author, we become interested in the ambiguous lives they lead as wartime draws to a close and Britain prepares for what is to come next. 

Spark's trademark time-jumping is mostly used as an elegant frame-narrative and as a way to add flavor (and some retrospective sense of proportion) to a concise central narrative. When we eventually come to this narrative's tragic conclusion, further poignancy is added to the characters being depicted. We close with a quite compelling look at a kind of sincere but businesslike mourning which feels insightfully appropriate to the specific time and the specific place being depicted (that is, England in the year 1945). 

The clever biblical allegory at play is thoughtfully done, although not heavy-handed enough to force itself upon the reader. 

Very finely done. Balances rhetorical gravitas and quirk/idiosyncracy. Also balances philosophical seriousness and freewheeling reference points/imagery. There is a lot to learn here about poetry as craft. Some choices in phrasing a bit dated. 

Gemma Hollman provides a smart, sympathetic look at both Queen Philippa of Hainault and Alice Perrers. Hollman presents Philippa's marriage to and royal partnership with Edward III as remarkably stable for most of their lives, while also effectively illustrating the regular see-sawing between triumphs (military victories, marriages, births) and tragedies (military defeats, childhood mortality) that carried across their long reign. Hollman also does a good job explaining the ways in which Philippa was called upon to intervene with Edward in an appropriately Queenly, feminine way, ritually appealing for clemency and mercy to be given to those convicted of wrongdoings, especially women and vulnerable people. Through Philippa's exercise of this function, we gain a broader understanding of the idealized notion of Queenhood and feminine influence in 14th-century England. 

Turning to Edward's later affair with Alice Perrers, Hollman's work is at its most forensic, piecing together the story of Perrers' rise from an obscure mercantile background to immense wealth and influence by relying on records of petitions, legal judgements, and land transactions. Importantly, Hollman takes great lengths to be charitable and generous to both women (and, indeed, to Edward). While she does deny that each might have used their position for personal enrichment, especially Alice, she is also careful to foreground the existence of real care and affection between each of these women and Edward. Unfortunately, her evidence for this is always going to be sketchier, given the largely hostile attitude of contemporary chroniclers towards Alice (both due to their misogyny and to their political agenda against her mercantile clique and in favor of the landed nobility), as well as the fact that "hard evidence" (e.g. business transactions and legal judgements) is much easier to come by. While some of this material is speculative, Hollman's allowance for genuinely loving relationships is an important corrective to overly functionalist historical narratives. Her evident tenderness towards these long-deceased women is also key to our investment in the story she is telling. 

Hollman concludes by drawing a comparison between the socially unacceptable way in which Alice obtained wealth and power and the socially-prescribed ways in which Philippa did so, modeling the ideal of a "good Queen". Her point is sound, but she does not spend much time developing a broader theory behind it or teasing out its implications. Instead, The Queen and the Mistress is most valuable as an example of how to do pre-modern history in a compassionate and generous-spirited way, which may require accepting a degree of speculation and uncertainty in the service of bringing a fuller humanity to the lives of her subjects. 

As a resident of what was once the Burned-Over District, I thoroughly appreciated this. Although North Star Country is fairly narrow in focus and mostly chronological in structure, its ten chapters did not always seem to comprise a cohesive throughline. To greater or lesser extents, each chapter seemed unique in its purpose and methods.

Chapter 1 described the unique spiritual environment of central and western New York during the Second Great Awakening. Thanks to a combination of Charles Grandison Finney's style of revivalism and the cultural influence of congregationalist New Englanders moving into the region, the region's religious culture was fervent, but typified by a highly-demanding, highly-idealistic, inward-looking moral perfectionism (in contrast to the more charismatic revivalism emerging elsewhere). Moving into Chapter 2, Sernett explains that this spiritual milieu was the basis on which Garrisonian abolitionists put down roots in the region and eventually displaced the advocates of recolonization. The Garrisonians' philosophy of "moral suasion" demanded that those complicit in slavery be convinced of the error of their ways, publicly repent, and change their behavior out of genuine conviction. It was an ethically uncompromising but practically unrealistic stance, rejecting political action in favor of an untarnished clarion call of conviction. I found these chapters very useful in contextualizing the very specific kind of "radicalism" the Garrisonians embodied, which is somewhat alien to our own context.

Chapters 3 and 4 describe the nascent abolitionist movements in the region beginning to meddle with organizational politics, breaking with the New England Garrisonians to establish the small Liberty Party, grappling with the promise and limitations of single-issue electoral politics, and agitating within their communities and churches, notably forming many "comeouter" congregations which explicitly broke with the organized Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian bodies of the time. Sernett does a good job recounting these internecine debates and struggles, as well as the characters involved -- by this time, many noteworthy abolitionists (both Black and white) called the region home, including Frederick Douglass, who had moved to Rochester. Notably, though, all of this politicking occurs in the context of a still-marginal movement -- even when the abolitionists did field candidates under their Liberty ticket, their electoral success was extremely limited and eventually swallowed up by the larger (and less firmly anti-slavery) Free Soil movement. While the political narrative is compelling, and Sernett does make some effective points about the role of Black abolitionists in rejecting the anti-political approach earlier expounded by Garrison and his allies, he doesn't spend much time here laying out the medium- or long-term implications of this marginal politicking in terms of actually convincing people or altering outcomes.

Chapter 5 moves away from the political fringes to describe how anti-slavery sentiment became more widespread in Upstate cities after the Fugitive Slave Law of 1851, most notably Syracuse, where the famous "Jerry Rescue" and other acts of popular resistance to slave hunters and federal agents took place. Sernett distinguishes between the ardently abolitionist instigators of these vigilante actions and the crowds gathering in their support, many of whom harbored more resentment towards southern interference than antipathy towards slavery itself; however, I found myself wishing for more exploration as to how often and how easily the latter evolved into the former. Chapters 6 through 8 follow in a similar vein of describing specific cities and towns and their role in the national abolitionist project, describing Douglass' base of operations in Rochester, Harriet Tubman's base of operations in Auburn, the local influence of Samuel J. May in Syracuse, and the way in which John Brown used Upstate New York as a space in which to network with prominent abolitionists, develop plans, and raise money, in between his missions to Kansas and eventually to Harper's Ferry. These chapters also contain some very effective descriptions of how the relatively small but vocal Black communities in many of these cities organized and played a key role in the cities' overall character and the landscape of anti-slavery agitation.

Chapters 9 and 10, which are primarily devoted to the experience of Black and white Upstate New Yorkers leading up to and during the Civil War, are well-constructed, but somewhat more general, and provided the fewest specific takeaways or themes.

To turn to the book as a whole. I deeply appreciate the way Sernett recontextualizes many towns, cities, and landmarks with which I'm familiar in the light of their important history, when the corridor down the Erie Canal from Utica to Buffalo had a profound religious, cultural, and political impact on the nation. I did find myself wanting more in terms of a thesis being advanced, a theme or argument being developed across the entire set of chapters, and specific implications or takeaways, especially for Chapters 6-10, which feature some of the book's most direct and memorable storytelling but also seem to provide the least in terms of a conceptual or narrative upshot.

Ultimately, however, I think I have been somewhat jaded by the norm in academic history to claim a revolutionary perspective or insight, even when one is not readily apparent. Sernett does not hide why he constructed North Star Country the way he did, seeing it primarily as a project of stewardship; a way of recognizing, honoring, and preserving the history of a region in which he too resides. While this imperative may lead to a book which has less of a unique perspective on its own, and may at times seem to present a bit of a patchwork of topics, considering Sernett's book in the light of his stated priorities, it is hard to term it anything but a great success. 

The New Yorker describes The Shadow King as "an epic of nationhood and resistance". In one sense, I agree: Mengiste has composed her novel using the sweeping, heroic register of patriotic mythology. In another sense, The Shadow King is more of a meta-epic; a contested epic. Her characters all seem to instinctively understand the significance of the moment into which they are thrust.  As Benito Mussolini's Italy invades Haile Selassie's Ethiopia, the book's various narrators are all trying to fashion from this moment a defining story. They are choreographing an epic -- or, more accurately, multiple epics, in that each character's narrative vision is distinct. 

Mengiste's attentiveness to pagentry and performance, to what is remembered and what is elided, has three notable effects. First, it allows her to be extremely clear about what is glossed over in our historical vision -- in particular, sexual violence -- and about the implicit and explicit sacrifices that are made for the stories we will eventually tell. Second, it helps her present nuanced characters, not by exonerating evil or destructive acts, but by treating each character as a piece of a longer  thread of family and cultural influences. In effect, she sidesteps the challenge of managing readers' moral evaluations of these characters; their individual blameworthiness isn't the point. We are much more concerned with their place in history: from whence they have come, and where they are going. The result is that her characters are treated with a great deal of complexity and compassion. Third, Mengiste's exploration of what happens when a narrative runs its course and is no longer recognized is extremely effective. In particular,

there is a brief but stunning scene at the end in which Minim, a peasant who temporarily played the role of a body-double for the exiled emperor, rousing his countryfolk to fight against the occupation, comes to terms with his renewed anonymity after the war has ended; with the secret weight he now bears.

The Shadow King is pretty dense with structural devices, including photographic descriptions breaking up the main text, a Greek chorus, and interludes from the perspective of Haile Selaisse, far from events on the ground. I found the photographs to be a really effective device; one of our characters is a photographer, and the contrast between the moments in which he takes his pictures and the stories told by the pictures themselves is trenchant. I also liked the Haile Selaisse interludes -- the emperor's sense of the Italian invasion as a problem he must first reconcile intellectually is very intriguing. I was somewhat less sold by the Greek chorus, as I felt that its sweeping, declarative tone -- and the points it was employed to emphasize -- were both largely present in the main body of the text already. 

Misc. thoughts: 
 - Mengiste is very good at incorporating language differences, and different degrees of language fluency, into her scenes. 
 - The book's description in blurbs and on its jacket copy (presumably from the publisher) strikes me as a little inaccurate; this certainly is the story of a woman at war -- and of the sexual violence often glossed over in historical memory of warfare -- but not exclusively or even primarily. All of the characters who narrate parts of this story are important as Mengiste explores the construction and contestation of national and individual narratives.