Category Archives: Non-fiction

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Splendid and the Vile,’ by Erik Larson

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Diarist Phyllis Warner found that she and fellow Londoners were surprised by their own resilience. “Finding we can take it is a great relief to most of us,” she wrote on September 22. “I think that each one of us was secretly afraid that he wouldn’t be able to, that he would rush shrieking to shelter, that his nerve would give, that he would in some way collapse, so that this has been a pleasant surprise.”

Author Erik Larson has found himself a useful and profitable niche, writing about famous characters and events in historical accounts that combine the actions of famous persons with the lives of ordinary people, to give us a many-faceted picture. The Splendid and the Vile is his account of London during the Blitz; mostly set in the crucial year of 1940. The spotlight is, naturally, on Winston Churchill and his closest circle – his cabinet ministers and department heads, and his family. But we also get to see events through the eyes of ordinary citizens. And from time to time he looks across the channel to see how Hitler and his henchmen – who couldn’t understand why Churchill repeatedly snubbed their “friendly” peace offers — reacted and responded.

And meanwhile, the ordinary public suffered, died, and (most of them) survived.

It was a harrowing time, and this is a harrowing book. But also fascinating, informative, and sometimes even darkly comic. Historical figures come alive through their own words. The great drama and surprise in the book is something neither Hitler, nor even Churchill, really foresaw – the amazing courage of the English people; what they were willing to endure to defend their civilization.

What troubled me most as I read was something not in the book – the knowledge that this epic crusade for western civilization would end in the abandonment of eastern Europe to Stalin. Plus the knowledge that the children and grandchildren of these brave people would happily accede to the demolition of that civilization in our time.

Still and all, The Splendid and the Vile is an excellent look at a pivotal point in history. Highly recommended.

Non-fiction, Religion, Uncategorized

‘The Hyperions’ Movie, And Can We Just All Get Along?

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We watched a new superhero comedy/drama called “The Hyperions” over the holiday. It’s the story of a super-enabled family that has broken up, because though they talk about being family, they have been managed more like a business team. Two of the original team members are young adults now, and they want their powers back.

The trailer leaves the impression the movie is pretty darn funny, but it doesn’t quite bring the laughs. It’s funny, just not that funny. Instead it leans into Vista Mandulbaum’s anger against her inventor/showman father, Professor Ruckus Mandulbaum, who seems to have wounded her and damaged the whole team only after she rebels and leaves. That makes this more a feel-good family drama with superhero comedy thrown in.

Cary Elwes carries the story as the absent-minded, perpetually frumpy Professor Mandulbaum. Penelope Mitchell Vista, the first of the Hyperions, conveys most of the story’s emotional weight, and everyone else is fine.

I chaffed most when the characters couldn’t talk honestly with each because of issues. One of my daughters thought the story could have shown us happy family moments in order to help us care about their pain more. Most of the violence is muted and sometimes light-hearted. It’s not really a superhero story. It’s a family-business story about superheros, and overall I enjoyed it.

What else to do we have?

Western Civilization: Susannah Black Roberts responds to an argument in Stephen Wolfe’s book on Christian Nationalism. He says no one seeks the well-being of everyone around; he only seeks that for himself and his own kind. The idea that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness applies to all mankind is not sound. We only seek that for those in our own ethnicity. To support this thesis, Roberts writes, Wolfe cherry picks from a wide range of author in the western tradition. And then she quotes Chesterton.

Once England: Here’s a photo of a map of England showing the monasteries dissolved by King Henry VIII.

Streaming TV: Ted Kluck says The Handmaid’s Tale could be good hate-watching, if you like shows on the preachy-preachy side.

Thomas Jefferson: World News Group’s book of the year is Thomas Kidd’s Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh. “In this biography, Kidd shows us an original thinker attempting to cobble together his own brand of spirituality. Jefferson held unorthodox views long before he wrote the Declaration of Independence, but he wasn’t a Deist who saw God as an uninvolved Creator. He believed in God’s providence, but he saw that providence at work in America’s founding rather than in the saving of souls or the creation of the Church.”

Non-fiction, Uncategorized

First Thanksgiving in Virginia, Elite Evangelicalism, and Everything Decays

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Phil Wade

I hope everyone here, there, and elsewhere has had a happy Thanksgiving. I realize this is an American holiday, but it’s just one more way you should allow America into your hearts and lives for your own and your country’s flourishing. I’m talking to you, United Kingdom. You never should have let all the good people leave your empire, you sick tyrant.

Okay, what else have we got?

First Thanksgiving: “After a rough two-and-a-half months on the Atlantic, [the Margaret, a 35-foot-long ship with 36 settlers and crew] entered the Chesapeake Bay on November 28, 1619. It took another week to navigate the stormy bay, but they arrived at their destination, Berkeley Hundred, later called Berkeley Plantation, on December 4. They disembarked and prayed.”

Ben Franklin: In a new biography, D. G. Hart presents Benjamin Franklin as an example of a “spiritual, but not religious” American Protestantism. “As much of a cliché as pulling himself-up-by-his-bootstraps is, his wit and striving say as much about Protestantism as it does about American character.”

Cultural Elites: Carl Trueman is thankful for David French‘s articles supporting the Respect for Marriage Act. “Elite evangelicalism is clearly making its peace with the sexual revolution and those of us who will not follow suit are destined for the margins.”

The Ends of History: Michael Bonner has written a defense of civilization. “All this is to say that the ‘whole new world’ we were promised in the 90s is much like the old one, only worse. The theory of irreversible progress seems increasingly implausible. It seems that anyone of any walk of life or partisan stripe could agree with Livy that ‘we can bear neither our vices nor their remedies’.”

Education: Can Christian Higher Education Stay the Course? “I could rattle off a litany of universities that remain under the auspices of Mainline Protestant denominations but where an effort to think Christianly beyond the bounds of theology is foreign to its educational mission and has been for a long time.”

Non-fiction, Religion

Is There a Homogeneous ‘West’?

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In 1958, humor rag Punch published an essay by C.S. Lewis called “Revival or Decay?” in which Lewis criticized broad-brush assessments of his day–the same assessments people still make. Here’s his closing paragraph.

Is there a homogeneous ‘West’? I doubt it. Everything that can go on is going on all round us. Religions buzz about us like bees. A serious sex worship–quite different from the cherry lechery endemic in our species–is one of them. Traces of embryonic religions occur in science-fiction. Meanwhile, as always, the Christian way too is followed. But nowadays, when it is not followed, it need not be feigned. That fact covers a good deal of what is called the decay of religion. Apart from that, is the present so very different from other ages of ‘the West’ from anywhere else?

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘River Kings,’ by Cat Jarman

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A friend gave me a copy of Cat Jarman’s River Kings out of the blue, and I read it with great interest. I wasn’t always comfortable with the book, but it does very well in the job the author (a Scandinavian-English archaeologist) sets out to do. I believe its sales have been successful, and it deserves them.

The story begins with a nice narrative “hook” – a carnelian bead found in excavations at a Viking burial site in Repton, England. Carnelian is a semi-precious stone that was popular among the Vikings (especially with Viking women) and was imported from India. That is a long road to come by, and Dr. Jarman follows that road – through known evidence and speculation – to show how the great Viking trade system passed through England to the Baltic, down through Russia to Constantinople and the Caspian Sea region, eventually linking up with sources of carnelian. At each step along the way she describes how people and objects moved, how the world worked, and what social and economic forces impelled trade. She has the professional ability to provide many fascinating details of Viking Age life, and I benefited from reading this book.

My sole real quibble is purely a subjective one. As a woman of the 21st Century, the author looks everywhere for evidence of women’s activity and influence, as well as for signs of what we call today “cultural diversity.” She finds them and emphasizes them.

This is perfectly fair. I do the same in my own studies, though I’m looking for different things. If I disagree with her on some points, she’s the one with the credentials, so the burden’s on me. And I have to admit, she provided evidence I wasn’t aware of on the touchy subject of women warriors. I’m still skeptical about them, but the other side’s argument is stronger than I thought.

I recommend River Kings. It is informative, interesting, and well-written.

Blogs, Socials, Non-fiction, Reading

Let’s Just Say I Know What I Know, Midwestern History, And Truthful Jokes

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It’s easy to overgeneralize, and when someone is battle-scarred, he may overgeneralize combatively.

I worked at a men’s conference in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, several years ago, during which a speaker made some mildly controversial points in an aggressive manner. I think this man felt he was under attack because he lacked support for his work. He probably had to argue for his point of view, if not the reality of his experience (it was on the fringe). “Nobody knows what’s happening,” he’d say. “Why doesn’t anyone see this?” he might ask. And at least one time, that question would have been answered with the fact that many of those in the room knew saw what he saw. We agreed. We didn’t need to be persuaded, and we weren’t fighting him on that point.

Too many of us are willing to say no one is talking about something important, when the truth is we only know something of what’s being discussed in our small circle, including the limited amount of news we can consume. The noise or silence on select social media can convince us that everyone is or isn’t talking about something.

The solution, of course, is humility. We know what we know, and even that could be wrong. We walk on to the best of our knowledge coram Deo.

Midwesterners Unite: A review of a new history of the American Midwest. “In contrast to prevailing clichés and the modern platitudes about backwardness, sterility, racial injustice, and oppression, an in-depth look at the history of the American Midwest reveals a land of democratic vigor, cultural strength, racial and gender progress, and civic energy — a Good Country, a place lost to the mists of time by chronic neglect but one well worth recovering, for the sake of both the accuracy of our history and our own well-being.”

Reading: Contrasting styles, subjects, and tones can act as palate cleansers between books. “They have to be short, they have to be relatively undemanding, and if it’s a re-read, so much the better.”

Satire: The head of the Babylon Bee talks about writing jokes that smack of the truth and the blowback his company has received from media outlets. “The absurd has become sacred only because it hasn’t been sufficiently mocked.”

English-American-Scottish Words: George Grant has an audio piece on the clash of words between the English speakers of America, Britain, and Scotland.

Theater: “Excuse me, sir; are you with the show?”
“Well, let’s just say I’m not against it.”

Photo: Old gas station, Odebolt, Iowa. 1987. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Vikings at War,’ by Hjardar and Vike

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If the originator of the insult failed to respond to the challenge to fight he was considered an unmanly, false and unreliable coward. The punishment for that was to be outlawed, which meant that anybody could take his life without having to pay a fine. If the offended party declined to fight, the penalty was less severe, but he had lost the trust of society and could no longer speak at the ting or swear an oath.

Now and then a book comes along in the field of popular Viking studies that makes me want to stand up and yell, “Hey! Read this one!” to my fellow reenactors. Such a book is Vikings at War by Kim Hjardar and Vegard Vike (both of them Norwegian scholars. Hjardar is also a reenactor). Vikings at War is a great big book, and it’s packed with stuff you’ll want to know if you’re into Vikings.

Various sections of the work cover: 1. The Vikings (that is, who they were and where they came from), 2. The Art of War, 3. Viking Fortifications, 4. Viking Ships, 5. Viking Weapons, and 6. Viking Invasions (covering the various theaters of action in which the Vikings fought, from the Middle East to America).

Embarrassing as it is for an old know-it-all like me to admit, I learned a lot from Vikings at War. Particularly interesting (to me) was the examination of the Vikings’ activities in France, where their infamous depredations were often carried out at the invitation of the French nobility, who enlisted them as allies in their internecine fights.

Long ago, on my web page, I wrote that too much had been made by 20th Century scholars of Vikings being essentially peaceful. That they had their peaceful side I had no doubt, but I felt the theme was being oversold. If the recent movie, “The Northman,” hadn’t already convinced me that this is no longer a problem, Vikings at War would have done it. Hjardar and Vike understand that being a merchant doesn’t necessarily make you peaceful (especially when slaves are your major merchandise), and that a Viking man, whatever his occupation, was always prepared to defend his honor with the weapons he carried at all times.

Every student of the Viking Age will find things to quibble with here, as in any book. The description of the “incident” at Portland which opens the book is imaginative, and includes details which (I think) are not necessarily supported by the record. Viking feminists will find fault with the authors’ reluctance to wholeheartedly embrace the idea that shield maidens were a common phenomenon in the Viking Age (I agree with the authors). Although the authors cite one of the books written by Prof. Torgrim Titlestad (for whom I’ve translated), they don’t entirely endorse his theories.

But there’s a treasure trove of information here, which will make every reader richer and wiser in knowledge of the field. This is a book that belongs on the Viking shelf of anybody who has a Viking shelf. A magisterial work. Well written and highly recommended.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Faded Map,’ by Alistair Moffat

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One of the most outstanding figures of the Dark Ages was St Adomnan. Much more than merely the biographer of St Columba, he was a politician and intellectual of considerable power. Perhaps his most notable initiative was the Law of the Innocents. At the Synod of Birr in central Ireland held in 697, he proposed that women, children and clergy be protected  from the brutal realities of Dark Ages warfare. Nothing else like it had been promulgated in Europe.

I bought Alistair Moffat’s The Faded Map on a sort of a whim. It’s not directly related to my central interests, but it seemed intriguing, and it relates to all that Arthurian stuff I’ve always been drawn to. And I’ve got to say, the book proved to be more than I hoped. Fascinating stuff, and written in a lively style.

“The principal focus of this book is failure,” the author writes. The subject is what we currently know as lowland Scotland and northern England, which until the early medieval period was generally occupied and ruled by British Gaels related to the Welsh. Threatened by Picts and Scots from the north, Anglo-Saxons from the south and east, and eventually Vikings (though they made shifting alliances with all these groups as circumstances dictated), these kingdoms were gradually pushed back and subsumed, so that their southern territories became parts of British Northumbria and their northern territories parts of Scotland.

The story is a fascinating one (at least to me), as it touches on much legendary material, and provides perspective on the Viking Age at the end. I was particularly gratified that the author entirely subscribes to the historical view endorsed by Prof. Titlestad in his (wonderfully translated) book, Viking Legacy, that ancient legend and poetry ought to be considered (cautiously) by historians:

But why should word of mouth be more untrustworthy than a written source? Who would rely on the British tabloid newspapers of the last thirty years as an honest record of anything? The bards of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries are to be trusted no less – and no more – than the scribes of the same period.

In short, I found The Faded Map a delight to read. Highly recommended.

Non-fiction, Reading

There are no Gaelic yes-men.

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I’m currently reading a book of history, The Faded Map by Alistair Moffat. It’s about ancient Scotland. In it I found this passage, which is of particular interest when considering the English language, which is spoken by so many of our readers.

Scots Gaelic is not like English, German or any of the Latin-based languages of southern Europe. There is no word for yes or for no. If a Gaelic speaker asks A bheil an t’acras ort? (‘Are you hungry?’), the answers use the verb forms Tha (‘I am’) or Chaneil (‘I am not’). This makes for greater precision and clearer understanding on either side of a question.

In other words, one of my grandfather’s favorites jokes would have been impossible if he’d been a Gael. If somebody asked Grandpa a question of choice, like, “Would you like apple or blueberry pie?” Grandpa would answer, “Yes.” Taking advantage, as you see, of the ambiguity of our English usage. (And possibly getting himself more pie.)

Languages evolve to deal with universal and localized communication problems, but they solve them in different ways. No language is superior to any other.

Except for English, of course. English is the best. Sure, it’s irrational in many ways, but that’s just to keep the riffraff out.

Also, Norwegian is pretty good.

Goofing, Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down,’ by Dave Barry

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I picked up another Dave Barry book, offered at a bargain price. Short review: I enjoyed Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down. I had a suspicion it would be funny, and it was. (The title, by the way, refers to a couple essays on modern, low-flow toilets.)

It was odd that, though this book only came out around the turn of the millennium (which doesn’t seem that long ago to me at my age), it describes a palpably different world. This was before 9/11. Before Covid-19 and the Lockdown. Many of the everyday annoyances that Barry jokes about here seem to come from a long-ago, golden age when you could be annoyed when little things went sour, because they usually went okay. Most of the time.

Memories, memories.

Here’s a few excerpts:

So your school is having a science fair! Great! The science fair has long been a favorite educational tool in the American school system, and for a good reason: Your teachers hate you.

**

The reason Congress did not get around to ordering an audit any sooner is that it has been extremely busy with its primary functions, which are (1) spending money; (2) declaring National Cottage Cheese Appreciation Week, and (3) authorizing the IRS to hammer taxpayers for inadequate record-keeping.

**

Q. When should I arrive at the airport?

A. You should arrive two hours before your scheduled departure time, so that you will be among the first to know that your flight has been delayed due to mechanical problems.

**

The most stressful part [of registering for a baby shower] is picking out the stroller. Today’s baby stroller is an extremely high-tech piece of equipment, comparable in complexity to the B-1 bomber, but more expensive.

Recommended.