Review: The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

“If not for Mrs. Parks nobody would have ever heard of Martin Luther King Jr.” – E.D. Nixon

After reading Jeanne Theoharis’ “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” I have to say that if not for Mrs. Parks there is a lot we never would have heard of and the world today would be a worse place for it. Growing up, and well into adulthood all I knew about Rosa Parks was the popular myth, she was a tired seamstress who was tired and refused to give up her seat. Earning a degree in history I learned that that story was a simplification of the real story. Reading Theoharis’ book i discovered that what I learned in college was a simplification of the truth.

I don’t know why some books are harder for me to review and with other books the review almost writes itself. This is one of the difficult ones. It is a great book. I think it could be the best book I read this year and I read some very good books this year. That could be part of my problem. It is good on many levels. I learned Mrs. Rosa Parks life story as well as can be written until the last archive of her papers is opened to researchers. I also learned about classism and the power of showing up.

I have to recommend this book to anyone interested in the Civil Rights Movement or American culture. It is well written, well researched, and well reasoned. I hope it gets wide exposure, the country could use some of Mrs. Parks tenacity and hope.

Review: Over-the-Rhine Tour Guide

OTR Tour Guide

Dr. Don Heinrich Tolzmann, long associated with the University of Cincinnati and German-American studies, is someone who I am aware of but have never met. When I saw his book, Over-the-Rhine tour guide : Cincinnati’s historic German district, Over-the-Rhine, and environs, I had to buy it. I am more than aware of Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. My paternal grandparents lived there for over 50 years. I lived there for a year in addition to all the time I spent at my grandparents. When I was completing my BA in history I wrote my capstone paper on the history of the neighborhoods economy. I have always been big fan of the neighborhood and would argue with anyone, everyone that has referred to it as “blighted”. It was just having some hard times.

That is not the case today. The city is investing in a new streetcar line, the neighborhood is gentrifying, business are opening, and homes are being remodeled and, thanks to the entire neighborhood being listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, 943 buildings in all, it is like stepping into an old European town. It is again becoming what Jane Jacobs called a “livable city” and it is filled with history. Not all the history is good but it is all worth remembering. That is why I had high hopes for this guide.

Over the Rhine is defined by the route of the old Miami-Erie Canal, now Central Parkway, so I was a little concerned when he started the guide outside the neighborhood. Dayton Street, old mansions that belonged to the families that owned the breweries and old brewery buildings along Central Avenue (originality in naming streets is not a quality Cincinnati is known for) seemed to be a reasonable inclusion but i grew concerned when the tour entered the neighborhood on Elm Street and failed to even note the YMCA building on the north west corner of Elm and Central Parkway. It is an impressive example of early 20th century architecture and as the early home of both the Salmon P. Chase Law School and a program to train auto mechanics it has history that should be mentioned.

I did learn a lot from the book. Tolzmann was very good at giving the history of the impressive 19th century churches that I admired since my childhood but, until now, knew very little about. He describes several important residences in the neighborhood, stories I had never heard, from serial killers to Civil War generals and politicians.

Unfortunately the tour spends more time outside the neighborhood, I think the surrounding areas were given as much attention as the neighborhood itself was. Some of the points of interest were relevant to OTR, Mecklenburg Gardens, the resort at the top of the Elm Street Incline for one, but most were less interesting than overlooked locations inside the neighborhood. Some connections were overlooked, the Main Street incline was built to take people from OTR to the Zoo, why not mention it with the zoo or use it to introduce the zoo? The Freie Presse building, a German language newspaper that served the overwhelmingly German population of OTR and Cincinnati in general from 1874 until 1964 still stands just south of OTR at 905 Vine Street. Several other locations in the vicinity are covered that have less relevance to OTR. Why not the Freie Press?

The most disappointing feature of the book was the route of the tour itself. Often the path Tolzmann follows doubles back on itself making for needless confusion. The neighborhood vast majority of the buildings are on the seven north south running streets or the three major east west connectors, How difficult would it have been to simply work in a grid, up one street and down the next?

I have to confess that part of my disappointment with the book could be that it scooped me. Researching my capstone paper the thought of an online tour kept popping into my mind but, I studied history not programing. For the few people that will be interested in the topic this book is a good resource. I just wish it was a better one.

Review: Democracy in Black

Democracy in Black

Eddie Glaude’s “Democracy in Black” convinced me of one thing I have long suspected. The best decision I ever made was to be born white and male. Except that I never made that decision, no one does, so why on Earth should I profit from it? Why in a nation formed from Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” argument that heredity proves nothing, not even the son of a King can be counted on to be a good leader, or even a good man. But it does. Thanks to my fortuitous choice of parents I can drive a little sloppy, I have been able to count on finding work when I need it, I can be disrespectful to a police officer and live.

Although when I requested to review this book I expected more of a history than an essay it was definitely not a disappointment. Glaude exposes the way things are in a blunt manner that I think we should hear more. He explores enough modern history to make it clear who he means when he discusses black political leaders and how they have allowed their focus to drift away from improving the community to self improvement and ego building. Then he exposes, explains, how the black community has disintegrated. Thanks to this there is no training ground for new leaders to develop who can unite the community and lead them to rise to the challenges of our times. I would point out that the same community disintegration has happened in the white community but that is not the topic of this book.

The main topic is what I alluded to in the first paragraph. The unfortunate fact that in the United States white lives are believed to matter more than the life of any person of color, most obviously the lives of black men and women. I understand the history of how our color, or lack of it, has been used from Colonial times to divide and control the work force but I am always amazed at how many people that look like me buy into it. I am not rich and I am not good looking but the (lack of) color of my skin is not the only thing I can be proud of. How pathetic are those who only have that lack of color as evidence of their own worth?

Glaude was adamant that the attitude that white lives matter more needs to change but he was relentless in pointing out the failures of past attempts to change America’s attitude on “race”. When he pointed out that the leaders of Ferguson’s protests had no faith in the power of the vote I started to lose hope. Thankfully he managed to find some reason to be optimistic by the end of the book. Unfortunately it will not be easy to finally get to where all Americans act as though they believe these words from the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”

Review: Encyclopedia of asylum therapeutics, 1750/1950s”

Encyclopedia of asylum therapeutics, 1750/1950s

I have been fascinated with medical history for nearly a decade now so when I saw a chance to review Mary de Young’s book “Encyclopedia of asylum therapeutics, 1750/1950s” I jumped at it. By the time it arrived I was having second thoughts, I have not read anything about the history of psychiatry, the book is an imposing 353 pages of double column text, and I had just struggled through a book that failed to catch my interest at least in part because I felt it lacked organization. This book was obviously organized, as an encyclopedia. I was concerned about its readability, how many encyclopedias compel you to keep reading? This one.

I should have expected that the early treatment for various real and imagined mental disorders would have been based on the same Greek theories of humoral balance as physical medicine was up until the middle of the 19th century. Even the same players were showing up, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a founding father, medical advisor to the Lewis and Clark expedition, and professor of medicine at the College of Philadelphia Department of Medicine turns up in more than a few entries. Benjamin Franklin came up with an electricity based treatment and, when it seemed to work, he wrote that it could have been her faith in the treatment that cured her, not the treatment. This was decades before the term “placebo effect” was even coined. So many of the “treatments” documented here by de Young were also used to treat physical illnesses and she explains them so clearly that this book is a valuable resource for any student of medical history.

If you have ever questioned why so many horror movies are set in asylums this book holds the answer. Bethlem Asylum, also known as Bedlam, and its treatment regimens are frequently discussed and they, and the rational for them, are fascinating. If someone is manic, they need a calming influence, try music, try putting them in a pink room*, try bleeding them, try bathing them in static electricity.** If they are sullen, refuse to interact with the world, raise their spirits, try music, try a green room, try bleeding, try a cat piano, a cat piano is a box containing a number of trapped cats and is equipped with a keyboard that cause a nail studded hammer to hit a cat’s tail. It is believed to be imaginary but imagine the cacophony it would create. I can imagine it would wake the dead as well as get the attention of any mental patient.

In another book that I read recently it was pointed out that in the late 1800s there was a movement painting masturbation as both evil and very dangerous. I noticed in this book a change in the language, before the late 1800s it was very possible to be institutionalized for “excessive masturbation” but then the explanation of a patient’s madness became simply “masterbation”. The extreme range of treatments for any madness that the doctors associated with sex was frightening. “Wiring”, surgical implantation of a wire into the end head of a man’s penis to stop, well, you know what it was intended to stop. This was about the same time that male babies in the US began to be circumcised, not to “prevent disease” but in an attempt to make masterbation less appealing.

More modern treatment are covered, transorbital lobotomy is accompanied by a photograph I found a little disturbing outside of a zombie movie. There is also enlightenment for social commentators on current causes. Ritual clitorectomeys are desturbing in other cultures but before we demonize them maybe we need to understand the use of the procedure, and other sexual surgeries, in our history.

The writing is clear, as clear as the topic permits anyway, and very well documented. The citations are at the end of each section, a system I find much easier to use than crowding all of them in the back of the book. As much as I enjoyed the book it is a very specialized topic. I doubt it will become a bestseller but if you are interested in medical history this book is indispensable.

* As I write this, belittling chromotherapy, the color cure, I see this article about current experiments with using colored light as a treatment. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01782378

** I have to wonder it the ozone produced by the static electricity might have had some effect on the patient, possibly a mild euphoria from the oxygen boost?.

Review: The story the soldiers wouldn’t tell : sex in the Civil War.

The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell

Dr. Thomas P. Lowry’s 1994 book, “The story the soldiers wouldn’t tell : sex in the Civil War” is still, as far as I can see, the primary book on its topic. That is not bad for a 21 year old history text, but then it is about sex, a topic Americans seem to deny exists. Lowry is a great writer, he controls the scholarly temptation to rely on a multitude of polysyllabic verbiage and keeps it simple and direct. He even manages to keep it light sometimes he is almost funny. He also is a good historian and I expect a good medical doctor. The book is well organized, he makes sure to show us what we need to know before we need to know it. the first two chapters, “Our Founding Fathers” and “The Birds and the Bees” set the stage by showing us what the relationship was between the male armies of the Revolution and the females of the era and then what Americans knew or thought they knew about sex.

General Braddock starting out on his march to Fort Dunquesne limited his army to six women per company and the British arrived in America with one woman for each ten men. Officially the woman were not there to serve the carnal desires of the officers and men but to cook and clean to remove men from those duties. Some were wives of the men or officers. The number of women following the troops as they moved from encampment to encampment and battle to battle grew. Wives and families who still depended on their men for sustenance and protection, women needing paid work who would cook and clean. Doing what men and women do they formed relationships and had sex. Some of the camp followers were willing to have sex for money.

Lowry assumes that people’s behavior and biology don’t change much is a few hundred years so he says that he expects that what Kinsey discovered in the 1940s and 50s was true in the 1840s and 50s. Then he goes to the sources to show us that maybe the people of the 19th century were the reason that Americans are still so ashamed and afraid of their biology. The Church of the Latter Day Saints and their “sister wives”, John Humphry Noyes’ Oneida Colony and its “Complex Marriage”, then there was Sylvester Graham’s views on sex, I will never look at a graham cracker the same way.

Using the soldier’s own words from letters written to home and to friends Lowry shows that the young men in the U. S. Civil War behaved like young men always have but, using statistics on the ratio of couples marrying while already expecting a child he does show that during times of unrest “illicit” sexual activity, sex outside of marriage, increases. Regardless of the praise Mark Twain and other writers gave to the originality of 19th century cursing the remaining letters and court transcripts prove otherwise.

Some of the most interesting revelations Dr. Lowry uncovered concerned venereal diseases, the medical topic that brought him to this subject. In two occupied southern cities the military officer in control set up systems of licensing prostitutes who agreed to submit to weekly medical checks. If they were found to be sick they received free treatment and were isolated from their occupation until a doctor cleared them. Both cities saw a remarkable drop in the rate of disease among the troops and the working women. I am not a student of the U. S. Civil War but apparently the Army of the Pacific, the federal troops from the Pacific area who fought against tribal nations during the war performed very poorly. Apparently many military historians have speculated why that was but Dr. Lowry may have come across the answer, very nearly half of the troops, and officers, suffered from VD during their deployments. As Lowry points out the symptoms of syphilis and gonorrhea do not make riding and fighting any easier.

Lowry gives a full chapter to love and romance, looking at the letters of longing between soldiers and their partners at home. He examines evidence of rape, officers, and clerics, who were not gentlemen, possible transvestites, contraception, abortion, and homosexuality, a term that was not invented until a generation after the war although the term “sodomy” had been in use since the late 13th century. He examines the question of Abraham Lincoln’s sexuality and comes up with what I feel has to be the final answer on that question, there is evidence to support both sides of the argument but nothing to prove either.

“The story the soldiers wouldn’t tell” was an interesting and entertaining read and with it Lowry opened a window into a seldom investigated are of American history. This is one of the better books I have read so far this year and may be the best.

Review: Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement

Household Workers Unite

I love labor history. I find learning about how the underdog resisted and, sometimes, triumphed over adversity exciting. You can imagine how I felt when I was selected to review Premilla Nadasan’s “Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement” I was overjoyed. That joy faded soon after I started reading.

I expected a scholarly work of history., something that started with a detailed look at the conditions that lead to the early attempts at organizing household workers. Then I expected to learn, step by step, how the movement progressed and changed and suffered setbacks through the decades. All that should have been, in my expectations, stuffed with details that many people would consider to be dry. What I found was a disjointed collection of micro-biographies that, like Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, seemed unstuck in time.

Like any scholarly writer Nadasan repeats points. I am used to seeing controversial points the author is trying to prove whenever they provide fresh evidence. Here the points are that household workers work in intimate settings with their employers and unlike factory workers they are dispersed from each other. Are those controversial points? Do they need repeating? Another repeated point is that organizers cannot reach household workers congregated in one spot like factory workers are. I shook my head every time I read that. No factory, no shop, no mine ever allowed union organizers on the premises to talk to workers. Every union organizer had to come up with ways to find workers and bring them together. Nadasan points to several strategies that organizers of household workers used to find them, often more that one at a time, on the bus, in church, and by talking to local businessmen.

I confess I had to give up on this book about fifty pages shy of the end. I just could not force myself to struggle on to the end. I hope my opinions are not from some personal bias of mine, some readers and writers just do not suit each other. I don’t think that is the case here. Nadasan’s writes well and she makes her points are clear. She picked an interesting topic but somehow turned out a disappointing book. I hope I will be able to find other writings on the attempts to organize household workers.

Review: Wall Street Under Oath

Wall Street Under Oath

Years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 banking disaster, I first heard of Ferdinand Pecora, the lawyer that led the Senate investigations into the shady dealings that brought on the 1929 crash and the Great Depression, and the book he wrote about that experience, “Wall Street Under Oath: the story of our modern money changers”. Pecora’s name popped up in another book I read recently, “Striptease: the untold history of the girlie show”, he was the New York prosecutor sent after the Minsky brothers. I tried to find a copy of this book when I first heard of it, I like to own the books I read, but I only found two copies and they were offered at $500 each. Even though it was reissued in 1973 no other copies turned up. With the “Great Recession” stirring interest in the banking wrongdoings I would have expected that every dusty copy sitting on a shelf somewhere would come on the market. It did not happen so when I was reminded of Pecora and went looking again I compromised and, with a friend in a university and interlibrary loans I managed to get a copy.

Trial lawyers seem to be good writers. Pecora is no exception. The introduction is a little stuffy but it still floored me. Here are the first three short paragraphs.

“Under the surface of the governmental regulation of the securities market, the same forces that produce the riotous speculative excesses of the “wild bull market” of 1929 still give evidences of their existence and influence. Though repressed for the present, it cannot be doubted that given a suitable opportunity they would spring back into pernicious activity.

Frequently we are told that this regulation has been throttling the country’s prosperity. Bitterly hostile was Wall Street to the enactment of the regulatory legislation. it now looks forward to the day when it shall, as it hopes, resume the reins of its former power.

That its leaders are imminently fitted to guide our nation, and that they would make a much better job of it than any other body of men, Wall Street does not for a moment doubt. Indeed, if you now hearken to the oracles of The Street, you will hear now and then that the money-changers have been much maligned. You will be told that the whole group of high-minded men, innocent of social or economic wrongdoing, were expelled from the temple because of the excesses of a few. You will be assured that they had nothing to do with the misfortunes that overtook the country in 1929-1933; that they were simply scapegoats, sacrificed on the altar of unreasonable public opinion to satisfy the wrath of a howling mob blindly seeking victims.”

Pecora organizes the book according to the nature of the “crimes”. I use the quotes because although some of the practices were not technically illegal they are definitely a violation of any fiduciary responsibility the bank officers had to their customers and stockholders. Almost ninety years later the amount of money they mercilessly extracted from the trusting public is still staggering. Even more impressive than the amount of money is the arrogance of the bankes. Pecora illustrates this with a nice selection of transcripts from the testimony bankers gave under oath. If we are to believe that they were as ignorant of basic banking practices and of what was going on around them then we have to believe it was God’s work that they made so much money when the nation went broke.

The only thing that bothered me about the book had to do with the passage of time since it was written. When Pecora wrote that it was unnecessary to detail a person’s story because it was in the headlines for the last few years I wanted pull him out of his grave and tell him that I never heard of the guy. I needed to know details of the story. Since I could never get it from Pecora now I have another bit of research to distract myself with.

The official report from the investigations are online at

It is much dryer than Pecora’s book but so much easier to find.

Review: One Righteous Man, Samuel Battle, shattering the color line in New York

Samuel Battle and the shattering of the color line in New York

Samuel Battle led an interesting life in interesting times. Arthur Browne’s, “One Righteous Man” a biography of Battle, the first African American on the unified greater New York City police department impressive even though I had a few reservations about it. Born one generation away from slavery Battle grew as a bit of what would later be called a juvenile delinquent but managed to put that behind him as a young adult when he traveled to New York in search of opportunity. He found that the color of his skin meant that doors were shut to him in the north just as they were back home. Battle makes his own opportunities and after several underpaid dead end jobs he finds opportunity as a porter at Grand Central Station. With a secure job he finds a wife and starts to build a life. When the community comes looking for a candidate to become the first black man on the city police force he risks his security and takes the challenge. What he managed to achieve was so incredible that Langston Hughes was commissioned to write his biography.

Browne’s writing is clear and easy to read, like a popular history should be. My biggest concern was, is, could this be more memoir than history? The wealth of Browne’s sources seem to be Battle’s own words, Langston Hughes’ unpublished manuscript and an oral history project a graduate student recorded with Battle. Arthur Brown makes good use of these resources along with Harlem and city newspapers to flesh out not just Battle’s story but it seems, sanitized. It strikes me as disingenuous that the biggest problems Battle had integrating the police force was the silent treatment and sleeping in the attic. I suspect that the baton swinging cops of the 1910s would have been more actively outspoken. Browne includes the story of integrating Harlem and the New York City fire department along with Battle’s story. He also gives us a look at the wider story of African American history in the early 20th century whenever it is needed to fully comprehend the times.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this book is the name dropping, if it is fair to call it that. If pressed I could come up with some people that don’t show up in Battle’s story but he managed to meet and get acquainted with such a range of celebrities and power brokers, from heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, who did not tip, to Eleanor Roosevelt, who deeply impressed Battle by simply giving a glass of water to a black woman speaker at a benefit. That insight into the impact a small kindness can make alone made the book more than worth reading.

Review: Inquiry-based Lessons in U.S. History : Decoding the Past

Book cover Inquiry Based Lessons in U.S. History

“Inquiry-based Lessons in U.S. History : Decoding the Past” is the second middle school history plan I requested to review the book through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program. I have to repeat that I am not a teacher, never have been and, at the grade level this book is for I never want to be. I do have a degree in history, I have been studying American history for a long time, and have grandchildren, children, and personal experience in middle school. I will do my best to evaluate only the parts of the book that I can.

I was really impressed with the first book but this one is a disappointment. First, and this is not a problem with just this book, trying to covering over 500 years worth of history in one class, less than 160 contact hours, is silly. Packing that much content into one course guarantees information overload, nothing will be learned. This is how they taught history when I was in school, I don’t even remember the class. Each chapter in this book could, and have, filled hundreds volumes of scholarly history. Why not narrow the range, of focus on a topic that can be covered in a year and allow the students to learn some skills that will serve them in whatever they study? But that is an issue with the system, the book is not at fault it is merely trying to achieve the impossible goal regulators have set.

That is not to say this book does not have problems. Many of the lessons ask the students to draw a picture to illustrate their understanding. Seriously? This is not second grade. These students have basic communication skills. They need practice writing. One or two “art” assignments that connect well to the subject matter would be acceptable, but as someone who can not even trace a straight line, by middle school I was ready to put away childish things. One of my favorite authors when I was these students age. Robert Heinlein, explained that when he wrote his “juveniles” he never talked down to the readers. It is my feeling that this lesson plan, most of the time, does talk down to the students.

One of the book’s strong points is its use of the Library of Congress’ Teacher’s Guides and Analysis Tool for investigating contemporary engravings and political cartoons. “Reading” pictures was not something I was introduced to until college and it is an important skill for developing critical thinking skills and your attention to detail. Unfortunately early in the book, lesson one of chapter two, the url leading to the sources did not work. I was able to find them but any teacher using this book needs to be forewarned. Two of the questions the students were asked to answer from the engravings were about gender roles. Is that an idea we want to promote in middle school in the 21st century? Instead of asking them to identify men’s work and women’s work how about just identifying the work being done? Instead of separating the work into male / female roles why not ask about the technology, the tools being used?

Slavery is the most divisive subject in U.S. history and I was ready to blast the authors for this untrue, illogical, statement, “For Whites in the slave states, the election of Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, to the presidency, signaled and immediate threat. Compromise, an essential feature of American politics, proved impossible and several Southern states immediately drew up declarations of secession modeled after the Declaration of Independence.” That sounds like an attempt at compromise was made which is untrue. Southern states were attacking U.S. military installations and issuing declarations of secession before Lincoln even reached Washington City. Just how did compromise prove impossible? At first I thought this was the author’s bias coming through but it is more an indication of how completely the South’s “Lost Cause” revision of history has sunk into our culture. When I read the assignment for that lesson I realized that Southern mythology could not survive this textbook. Students are given the Secession Declarations from South Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas, all name slavery as the primary reason for attempting to leave the Union.

The original texts used in the book are important documents and are sure to challenge readers at this grade level. I suspect that there will be push-back on some of the choices from both the left and right, they strike a good balance sure to offend many. They only used two pages from Paine’s “Common Sense”. The book is only 46 pages long, I would have liked to have seen more if not the entire text, but, like I said many people will be second guessing some of the author’s choices. Only in the lesson covering Jackson and the removal of the Eastern Indian Nations did I feel the sources were lacking. There were excerpts from Jackson and Chief John Ross of the Cherokee Nation as well as excerpts of pro and con speeches to Congress. Why repeat Jackson and Ross’ arguments and leave out the Supreme Court’s decision?

As I said, covering the entire history of the United States in one class is a silly, irresponsible requirement that schools, and texts like this, must follow. It guarantees information overload, unless you choose to edit out a lot of information. The closest the text comes to mentioning the labor movement is in one sentence, “One group, the Lowell Mill Girls, became world famous for their independence and culture.” What does that even mean and how does it deserve mention when the “Bread and Roses” Strike is overlooked? Later in the text the Civil Rights Movement follows the Great Depression which followed World War One propaganda. Where are Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam?

As a history text this book does the best it can with the unreasonable expectations that one class cover over 400 years of North American / US history. However, the lessons are uneven. Some seemed so simple and childish that I can’t imagine a middle schooler not being bored with them. Others were exceptional, I can see the discussion on Washington’s Farewell Address working in an adult class. Maybe a second edition will improve the weaker lessons and correct the bad links. Only legislatures can fix the unreasonable requirement to squeeze everything in U.S. history into one school year.

Review: The Earl of Louisiana

The Earl of Louisiana

Abbott Joseph Liebling’s 1961 book “The Earl of Louisiana” has been on my shelves for a long time. I bought it thinking it was about Huey Long and shelved it when I learned otherwise. After seeing the movie “Blaze” I had the opinion that younger brother Earl was a bit of a fool. If Rachel Shteir had not mentioned Liebling so many times in her book “Striptease: the untold history of the girlie show” I doubt I would have bothered to read it at all. I now have a new rule, if a book stays in print for over fifty years I need to read it.

This is not a biography of Earl Long, it is more a memoir of Liebling’s trip to Louisiana to report on the their governor’s mental breakdown. What he found, Louisiana style politics, was so different from what he expected that he stayed on the story even when he had to do it from long distance, covering the British elections. Earl Long, did have a physical breakdown, he was exhausted fighting to stop a bill intended to purge Louisiana’s voting rolls of African Americans. Louisiana, the entire south, was having a resurgence in segregation politics after the Brown V Board decision. Long called the segregationists “grass eaters”, herd animals, and Liebling adopted the practice.

As interesting as it was to have a glimpse into Louisiana politics it was Liebling’s playful use of language that most impressed me. Discussing how every Southern physician seemed to have an opinion on Earl Long’s health and pointing out the partisan divide on the diagnoses Liebling wrote, “Even his own experts, who denied he was demented, said in explanation of his antislavery views that he was beset by arteriosclerosis, several small strokes, oscillatory blood pressure and an irreverent gleam in his eye.” To illustrate the confusing mix of conversations at a campaign office on the night of the election he wrote, “Carried away by the stream of idiom like a drunk on a subway train, I missed a lot of stations.” Liebling had an ear for language. He quoted Earl Long at a campaign stop after opponents started labeling him crazy, “Wouldn’t you rather have a tried and true man, half crazy and half intelligent, than some bladderskite?”

I could go on and on with quotes like that, in places I gave up on highlighting sentences and simply put brackets around entire pages. I remember reviewing another book that had been in print continuously for over fifty years, “How to Lie with Statistics”, this is that good and just as deserving of being read.