In Brief

Collecting the Imagination: The First Fifty Years of the Ransom Center, edited by Megan Barnard (Texas, 160 pp., $40). Formerly known as the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, the Ransom Center is a stunning example of the extraordinary uses to which oil revenue can be put. In a half-century of relentless collecting and learned stewardship, the Ransom Center has become one of the great depositories of literary treasures in the world, and place of pilgrimage for students of British and American culture–and the humanities in general.

Selected Correspondence of Charles Ives, edited by Tom C. Owens (California, 410 pp., $45). The greatest American composer, Charles Ives (1874-1954), was an easygoing, erudite, enigmatic man: a Connecticut Yankee who went to Yale, made a fortune as a New York insurance executive, and wrote sonorous, flamboyant, discordant music that still soothes and challenges the listener. Readers will especially appreciate the efforts of the Yale music faculty to obtain an honorary degree for Ives before he died–unsuccessfully, of course.

Christian Art by Rowena Loverance (Harvard, 248 pp., $35). This is by no means the first time the intersection of art and Christianity has been examined by a scholar, but the author, a British Museum staffer and visiting fellow at King’s College London, has written a series of intriguing essays–“Visualizing the divine,” “Representing women,” “Dying and living,” and nine others–perfectly illuminated by dozens of illustrations, from simple calligraphy through the medieval world to Georges Rouault. It would be difficult to think of a more satisfactory introduction to an endlessly rewarding subject.

The Music of Bill Monroe by Neil V. Rosenberg and Charles K. Wolfe (Illinois, 384 pp., $35) is the comprehensive account of the father of bluegrass music, a happy adornment to the Music in American Life series. The authors have discovered and annotated every recording Monroe ever made, chronicled his most important public performances, and tied the package together with a biographical text that puts Monroe, and the folk music of the American South, in full perspective.

For the history buff.

English History Made Brief, Irreverent, and Pleasurable by Lacey Baldwin Smith (Academy Chicago, 264 pp., $17.95). Readers of a certain age will recall 1066 and All That, the 1930 classic by W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman, which (as its subtitle stated) introduced “103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates” and parodied the style of school histories of the time until “America became Top Nation, and history came to a.” Lacey Baldwin Smith, the great Tudor historian at Northwestern and author of Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty, is not going strictly for laughs here, but he has successfully reduced two millennia of English history to a tart, succinct, and witty formula for “what today is worth remembering about the past.”

The Black Hawk War of 1832 by Patrick J. Jung (Oklahoma, 275 pp., $29.95). The Early National period is the great blank space in American history, and the Black Hawk War is largely remembered today for Abraham Lincoln’s two-month service in the Illinois militia, where he “had a good many bloody struggles with the musquetoes.” But as this latest volume in the Campaign and Commanders Series illustrates, the Black Hawk War was a fascinating chapter in the long conflict between white expansion and Indian retreat, when the Sauk warrior Black Hawk sought to forge a tribal alliance to defend homelands on the east bank of the Mississippi. As the author suggests, this was more than just a military mismatch, but a complex story of rivalry among Indians and a bloody education for the U.S. Army.

The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989 by Frederick Taylor (Harper Collins, 512 pp., $27.95). It is altogether too easy to forget that, less than two decades ago, the United States and the Soviet Union faced one another across a barbed-wire frontier, and that Germany’s historic capital was literally divided by an ugly, concrete, serpentine wall. At the time–even when Ronald Reagan exhorted “General Secretary Gorbachev . . . [to] tear down this wall” in 1987–it seemed as if the division was permanent, and that the Soviet sector of Berlin would remain forever tyrannized, impoverished, and isolated. With skill and discernment, Frederick Taylor re-creates the horror of the Wall and what it symbolized for East and West.

For the Civil War buff.

Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 by O. Edward Cunningham, edited by Gary D. Joiner and Timothy B. Smith (Savas Beatie, 520 pp., $34.95). O. Edward Cunningham, who studied under T. Harry Williams at LSU and died in 1997, wrote this expansion of his doctoral dissertation in 1966. Why it remained ignored, and unpublished, for 41 years is a minor academic mystery since it may well be the best, most perceptive, and authoritative account of the Battle of Shiloh. If there was a turning point in the Civil War, this expensive victory (24,000 dead and wounded) of General Ulysses S. Grant over the Confederate Albert Sidney Johnston would qualify: It ended the struggle in the West, established Grant’s reputation, and revealed that the War Between the States would take years, not months.

Nathan Bedford Forrest: In Search of the Enigma by Eddy W. Davison and Daniel Foxx (Pelican, 528 pp., $35). General Grant once said that Forrest was the only Confederate he genuinely feared, and it is not difficult to see why: Behind the rough-hewn exterior lurked a genius of cavalry warfare, whose doctrines of mobility and relentless forward movement greatly influenced tactics in the 20th century. This is the best account of a great American character since Andrew Lytle’s Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company (1931), and a splendid evocation of a complex, startling, and intriguing soldier–who, incidentally, never said he “got thar fustest with the mostest.”

Virginia at War, 1862, edited by William C. Davis and James I. Robertson Jr. (Kentucky, 243 pp., $35). We recommended Virginia at War, 1861 last year, and are pleased to note that the second volume in this series, sponsored by the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech, is just as good as the first. This is a series of excellent essays by distinguished historians–John G. Selby, Harold Holzer, and others, including the two editors–that treat such disparate subjects as the military hospitals of Richmond, how Robert E. Lee rebuilt his army, and the plight of Virginia’s civilians. Virginia was, of course, a principal battlefield of the conflict, but comparable volumes on Tennessee, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Georgia–the list goes on–would be a genuine service to Civil War history.

For students of current affairs.

In Defense of the Bush Doctrine by Robert G. Kaufman (Kentucky, 251 pp., $35). President Bush could use an unapologetic argument for his foreign policy these days, and this is it. Professor Kaufman’s strategic term for the global war on terror is “moral democratic realism,” and he makes a persuasive case. If Sept. 11, 2001, taught us anything, it is the limitations of deterrence and containment, and the lethal character of jihadism. As the president has said, during the past six years, it will be neither simple nor easy to mobilize against terrorism, and sustain resolve; but the stakes are too great to do otherwise–unless, of course, we choose to defeat ourselves.

The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President’s Life After the White House by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. (Thomas Nelson, 320 pp., $26.99). No one has followed the life and career of Bill Clinton with the wit and tenacity of R. Emmett Tyrrell, bon vivant and founding editor of the American Spectator. And the stark possibility, no matter how slight, that Clinton might soon be America’s First Gentleman sends the author once more unto the breach. The Marc Rich pardon, the postmodern marriage, the seven-figure speeches, the Hollywood sycophants, the nonexistent coattails, the quivering lower lip, the penthouse atop the presidential library–they’re all here, and subject to the Tyrrell treatment.

The Great Philanthropists and the Problem of ‘Donor Intent’ by Martin Morse Wooster (Capital Research Center, 275 pp., $14.95). It is fair to assume that, when they died, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Mac Arthur, J. Howard Pew, John D. Rockefeller, and assorted other capitalists had no idea of the concepts, programs, and sheer malign influence their eponymous foundations would someday represent. In his third, revised edition of this classic account, Martin Morse Wooster explains how the legacies of great American entrepreneurs have fallen into the arms of the managerial class, betraying their beliefs and explicit intentions. But it’s not all bad news: Sometimes founding families–the Milbanks, Bradleys, Dukes, and Hiltons–have managed to ensure that their visions endure, and Wooster, with his customary skill and erudition, explains how.

For students of our current civilization.

Counterpoints: 25 Years of The New Criterion on Culture and the Arts, edited by Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer (Ivan R. Dee, 512 pp., $35). Since 1982 the New Criterion has been a balm to observers of the culture, and here is that rare thing: an anthology of essays, published during the past quarter-century, that retains its freshness, nerve, and relevance. If a partial list of contributors–Kenneth Minogue, Keith Windschuttle, Heather Mac Donald, Brooke Allen, Joseph Epstein, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Mark Steyn, Hilton Kramer, John Simon, Karen Wilkin, and the two Rogers, Kimball and Scruton–isn’t enough to whet your appetite, then consider the range of subjects: Frantz Fanon, “The Waste Land,” Aldous Huxley, abstract art, utopian writing, and the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, plus 36 others.

Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past, edited by Wilfred M. McClay (Eerdmans, 506 pp., $25). What it means to be human is an obvious question, of course; but what it means in the context of American life is another matter. Wilfred McClay, the cultural historian and occasional contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, has assembled a thoughtful series of essays by 17 scholars that explore “our understanding of personhood” through different perspectives–in law, medicine, religion, business, art, etc.–and the ways in which these have influenced American views on morality, public life, and the culture as a whole. As if you didn’t know, the “culture wars” have been raging for centuries, not years.

The New York Intellectuals Reader, edited by Neil Jumonville (Routledge, 456 pp., $30). That famous alcove at the City College of New York where, in the 1930s, students met and argued the merits of Marx, chose between Trotsky and Stalin, pondered the future of socialism, and laid the intellectual foundations for the second half of the 20th century, is restored in this remarkable collection. The names are familiar–Sidney Hook, Alfred Kazin, Irving Kristol, Hannah Arendt, Dwight Macdonald, Paul Goodman, Lionel Trilling, Clement Greenberg, Norman Podhoretz, etc.–and the subjects remain contentious and pertinent. Neil Jumonville, a historian at Florida State, provides the pertinent biographical data, and completes the definitive portrait of these remarkable essayists, to whom we are all indebted.

–Philip Terzian