Southern Bookman

Those who served at D-Day

D-Day's 75th anniversary brings a gallery of stories.

Most who served and died in the Normandy invasion of June 6, 1944 remain unknown heroes.

Those who survived to remember make up a distinguished gallery.

Some were already famous: Henry Fonda. Atlanta golfer Robert Tyre "Bobby" Jones, at age 44 one of the oldest men who served on that long and violent day.

New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling gave the magazine's readers a three-part account of the invasion. The United Press's Walter Cronkite landed in a glider behind German lines with the 101st Airborne. Later, he joined Edward R. Morrow's CBS News. Robert Capa took famous photos of the invasion's early moments.

Some found fame after the war. Soldier J.D. Salinger carried parts of "The Catcher in the Rye" in his backpack when he hit the beach. He later joined Liebling in the club of famous New Yorker writers.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti's experience made him a pacifist poet and publisher. He recently celebrated his 100th birthday.

Andy Rooney joined Cronkite at CBS News and delivered acerbic commentaries for "60 Minutes."  Charles Durning, David Niven and Alec Guinness went on to stellar acting careers.

Larry "Yogi" Berra led the New York Yankees to 10 World Series championships.

All remembered D-Day as the most memorable experience of their lives.

 

Walt Whitman, Herman Melville and Julia Ward Howe: 19th century titans were born 200 years ago

It looks like a Walt Whitman summer in New York City.

The bicentennial of the 19th century poet's birth is being marked with exhibitions at the Grolier Club, the New York Public Library and the Morgan Library, according to The New York Times. Artifacts from the "Leaves of Grass" author's career will be displayed, including manuscripts, first editions and a lock of his hair.

This is also the bicentennial of Herman Melville's birth. The "Moby Dick" author also will be honored in New York City. Like Whitman, who began his career as a Brooklyn newspaperman, Melville is associated with the great city, especially his enigmatic short story "Bartleby the Scrivener."

And, as Elaine Showalter reminds us in a New York Review of Books article, it's also the bicentennial of the birth of Julia Ward Howe, who wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and other works and fought for women's voting rights.

The three 19th century titans speak to us of an America haunted by the Civil War and riven by racial violence and economic disparities but bursting with creative and entrepreneurial energy.

Theirs was a raw country, rising to world dominance with new businesses, inventions and literature against a backdrop of persistent poverty and repression, especially in the South. Their words still speak to us.

 

 

Farewell, Tony Horwitz

Author Tony Horwitz's death Monday at age 60 was truly shocking.

Horwitz had just published his latest book, "Spying on the South," and was on a book tour. He died while walking in Chevy Chase, Md., on the same day that he was to appear at the famed Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.

After surviving Mideast battlefields, hazardous factories, Civil War re-enactments, Pacific voyages, Australian hikes and Southern dive bars, Horwitz succumbed to a heart attack while on a routine Memorial Day walk, according to his wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks.

Following the example of George Plimpton in the 1960s, Horwitz believed in participatory journalism, as his Washington Post obituary emphasized.

He was one of the lucky few who rise through the newspaper reporting ranks to establish careers as independent authors of books.

With a home on Martha's Vineyard, he could have enjoyed life as a public intellectual appearing on television talk shows and going to writers' conferences. Instead, he was a restless journalist driven to carry out difficult reporting in the field, as his friend, author Michael Lewis, said.

After stints at smaller newspapers, Horwitz won a Pulitzer at the Wall Street Journal for his on-site investigation of hazardous work at Southern chicken plants. He and Brooks also covered the first Gulf War and other Mideast turmoil for the Journal.

Wall Street Journal colleagues recalled that Horwitz possessed special talent for reporting and writing. Newspaper reporters traditionally excelled at one or the other, although that musty division fell away with the advent of college-educated journalists.

After working at the New Yorker, Horwitz broke free from the bonds of newspaper and magazine writing with "Confederates in the Attic," an examination of the culture of Civil War battle re-enactors.

The book was hailed as a modern journalistic classic, assigned in college and high school courses. A new generation of neo-Confederate sympathizers condemned the book, harassing Horwitz at readings.

"Confederates in the Attic" found that political and social divisions that split the country in the 19th century persisted in late 20th century America. The book's themes look even more prescient as conflict deepens.

Continuing a tradition established by de Tocqueville, Horwitz in his latest book toured the South to talk to its disgruntled working-class residents.

While de Tocqueville traveled across the then young United States, Horwitz was the latest Northern or European writer to view the South as an exotic land. Such attempts to interpret the South also have deep roots; Horwitz followed paths traced by Frederick Law Olmsted before the Civil War.

Donald Trump's support among Southern conservatives has made such sociological probes common. Whether they present an accurate picture is debatable.

The South's complexities are difficult to fathom, even for an astute reporter and writer like Horwitz. These  journeys to the Southern heart of darkness make Southerners roll their eyes, and hasten to replay Randy Newman's "Good Ole Boys."

It sounds as if Horwitz in "Spying on the South" made as good an effort at understanding the region as any, but what an alienating title. With the rise of Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and other cities in the 1960s, the South lost its strangeness and appeared like the rest of the nation. Or perhaps not.

Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina and Florida remain primitive, while their metro areas hurtle through the 21st century. Texas and Virginia look like vanguards until they don't. There is no Mind of the South, but many.

After an exhaustive journey across the region, Horwitz died young in the city known as the crossroads of the North and South,  where the country's violent divisions roil beneath marble monuments.

 

Nathaniel Philbrick tells how George Washington orchestrated Yorktown victory, American independence

I spent Memorial Day morning completing Nathaniel Philbrick's "In The Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown."

Along with Washington's patience and leadership in keeping peace among different factions, I was struck by how big a role the French played in the U.S. gaining independence.

The French navy's control of the Chesapeake Bay after a victory over the British fleet ensured the American victory at Yorktown, where  the French army's siege tactics led to British Gen. Cornwallis' surrender.

Philbrick, who also wrote a readable account of the early days of the Revolution in Boston and the Battle of Bunker Hill, shows that Washington often was dependent on French leaders such as  Admiral de Grasse. Washington marshaled the highest diplomatic skills to persuade French leaders to support American aims.

Sometimes, they resisted, as when DeGrasse refused to send French ships up the York River, which might have allowed Cornwallis' forces to escape. A sudden storm dashed Cornwallis' plans.

Washington initially resisted moving his army to Virginia to bottle up Cornwallis. At first, he planned to attack British-held New York, a strategy that Philbrick struggles to justify.

Philbrick exposes Washington's repellent actions in regard to slavery. Several of Washington's slaves escaped, and apparently joined Cornwallis's army along with hundreds of other slaves. During the Yorktown siege, with food running low, Cornwallis expelled the slaves, many of whom starved or fell victim to disease.

After the battle, Washington attempted to recapture his slaves, hiring a professional slave hunter, according to Philbrick. After a peace agreement with the British had been signed,  ending the war,Washington sought to prevent thousands of former slaves from leaving New York with British forces. The British insisted on the slaves retaining their freedom and traveling to Britain.

Washington in his later years did criticize slavery, and in his will freed his slaves, upon the death of his wife, Martha. But during his lifetime, he sought to uphold slavery at his home of Mount Vernon. Washington also resisted a venture by Lafayette to establish a farming venture that would operate without slavery.

The American commander agreed to aide John Laurens' proposal to establish black regiments in the Continental Army. I was astonished that Washington commanded the most integrated American army until Vietnam.

Yet, Philbrick notes that Washington's efforts to recapture slaves after Yorktown sowed the seeds of the Civil War.

Philbrick's book is part of a renewed interest in the Revolutionary War in recent years, fueled by the success of the musical "Hamilton" and popular biographies of Washington, Jefferson, Adams and other Founding Fathers.

While the Revolutionary War receives new attention, interest in the Civil War was waned, according to an article Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal's Cameron McWhirter. Visitation to Civil War battlefields like Gettysburg and Chickamauga has declined, McWhirter reported.

One reason is the campaign to remove Confederate monuments, and the violence at Charlottesville over the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, McWhirter found.

Another cause is a declining knowledge of American history among young people. When I was growing up, Civil War interest was high among Southern males. Now, aging Civil War re-enactors are not being replaced by younger participants, McWhirter found.

Books on the Revolutionary War reveal that it was a nasty conflict,  a civil war between the rebels and American British loyalists. Philbrick relates brutal British tactics such as throwing small-pox-stricken slaves into wells to poison drinking water. As another recent book details, the fighting continued for two years after Yorktown in a bitter civil war in the Carolinas.

Now, noted World War II historian Rick Atkinson has turned to the Revolutionary War. Atkinson's recently released "The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777:" is the first of a three-volume history of the war, following his trilogy about the allied victory over Germany in World War II.

The most striking scene in Philbrick's book is Washington bidding farewell to his officers in New York City. As Philbrick relates, Washington stood for a strong central government while refusing efforts to make him an American king.  Our current president tramples Washington's legacy.

 

As Montgomery booms from its legacy of black violence, Alabama Legislature upholds repression

Montgomery's history of racial violence is bringing a building boom to the Confederacy's first capital.

Hotels are rising and historic buildings undergoing revitalization because of Bryan Stevenson's two memorials to black victims of slavery and lynching, as reported in a New York Times article Wednesday.

Visitors are streaming to Montgomery to view Stevenson's Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice. The Legacy Museum in downtown Montgomery documents the old cotton port's past as one of the South's top slavery markets. The National Memorial remembers those lynched in the United States, primarily in Southern states, from Reconstruction until after World War II.

As Montgomery, Birmingham, Atlanta, Charleston and other cities express sorrow for their slavery legacies, Southern legislatures pass repressive anti-abortion laws.

The horror of lynching was intertwined with white men's desire to control women's sexuality. Many of the lynchings resulted from perceptions of black men's insults to white women. Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and other states' harsh laws to criminalize abortion echo Jim Crow laws from the Reconstruction era.

As downtown Montgomery atones for its racially violent past, the state has entered a new era of repression with its anti-abortion law.

 

 

Katha Pollitt revisits 1969 Harvard student strike

Nation columnist Katha Pollitt attended the 50-year reunion of student strikers who shut down Harvard University in 1969.

Pollitt expressed pleasure that the aging radicals are still leftists who have followed socially conscious careers. None have become investment bankers or hedge fund sharks.

Displaying her usual wit and clear writing, Pollitt delves into the ideologies of competing left-wing groups whose dogmatic disputes all too often bogged down the era's campus politics.

Despite the internecine squabbles, the Harvard SDS took control, bringing such gains as an outstanding African-American studies program and the construction of affordable housing.  Pollitt also notes that the strike led to a longtime ban of ROTC from campus.

While I've read extensively about the 1969 student riot at Columbia, another center of Ivy League radicalism, and the free speech movement at Berkeley, I didn't know about the Harvard action until reading Pollitt's piece. The Harvard strike sounded a bit more well-ordered than the actions at Cal and Columbia.

Pollitt notes that the Harvard strike received little faculty support, crediting the eminent philosopher John Rawls for bailing out the students from the Cambridge, Mass., jail.

During the reunion, the old leftists from what was then the new left also met with today's student activists, whose main challenge is climate change, not the Vietnam War.

While Pollitt took a satisfied tone, I felt the same regret that rises whenever I hear on the '60s channel, "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius."

With all of its excesses, the '60s protests brought real gains in civil rights and concern for the environment.

But, capped by Donald Trump's excruciating win over Hilary Clinton, the country now appears in full retreat from those progressive accomplishments. With malevolent Mitch McConnell packing the courts with Trump's regressive judges, the reversals appear intractable.

A new generation of activists raises hope, but so far their efforts lack the momentum of the 1960s. The threat of climate change and mass extinctions is even greater.

 

 

Peter Jackson's "They Shall Not Grow Old" Makes World War I Experience Real

Except for bad teeth, the World War I British soldiers in Peter Jackson's "They Shall Not Grow Old" look like guys you might see today at a soccer match or in a pub.

The colorized and computer-enhanced film footage from the British Imperial War Museum makes the men in the trenches seem contemporary, as if seen on the TV news. The voices narrating the film come from oral history recordings made in the 1960s, '70s and '80s.

Their youthful faces, camaraderie and good humor in the midst of appalling primitive conditions testify to a lost sense of duty. They share with aplomb indignities, absence of privacy and the presence of death.

The compressed narrative roughly follows the war's progress, from the army's mobilization to their lives in the trenches, to their experience off-duty, to the final victory over Germany. The film doesn't correspond to major battles. According to reports, scenes of soldiers going over the top of the trenches are from rehearsals, not actual battle.

No French or American troops are seen. Dead German soldiers and German prisoners are frequently shown, and the British narrators admit an empathy with their foes, whom they fondly call "Jerry."

One narrator says the British felt closer to the Germans than they did to their French allies. The British and Germans come from the same working class occupations and close-knit families.

The colorization is a little unnatural, but realistic enough. Jackson and his crew adjusted the film speed to do away with the herky-jerky movements associated with early 20th century movies.

Their war ended 100 years ago, launching the 20th century's brutal history. Jackson's film makes us feel that we know the common soldiers, that they are like us.

Widespread species extinctions threaten human existence, report warns

The dinosaurs were killed off by a meteor. Now, we are the meteor rapidly destroying life on Earth.

Human activity at its present rate will bring the extinction of a million plant and animal species, according to a U.N. report.

The extinctions are the largest in human history, the report found. Human life depends on the threatened ecosystems, the report warned.

While climate change exacerbates the loss of life, the primary causes come from human activity like deforestation, poaching, and overfishing.

Natural habitat is being lost at accelerating rates. In Thailand, rain forests are being turned into palm-oil plantations, devastating wildlife habitats. The death of coral reefs threatens marine diversity.

The report had a ray of hope. "Through transformative change, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably," concluded Sir Robert Wilson, who led the research for the Intergovernmental Seience-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Such a transformative change will also be required to reduce carbon emissions and lessen the devastation of global warming.

Those sounding the alarm about climate change and widespread species extinctions keep saying that humanity has time to take action. Instead, the world accelerates faster and faster toward disaster.

 

Louisiana's Advocate swallows larger Times-Picayune

I was astounded that the Baton Rouge Advocate has bought out the New Orleans Times-Picayune and its NOLA web site.

Advocate owners and local entrepreneurs John and Dathel Georges announced Thursday that they are purchasing the Picayune from the much larger Newhouse Corp. The purchase deal came just a few weeks after the Baton Rouge Advocate won a Pulitzer Prize for a series that brought an end to Louisiana allowing guilty verdicts on 10-2 jury votes.

The Advocate moved into New Orleans in 2012 when the Newhouse Corp. decided to cut back the Picayune's print publication and concentrate on its digital edition.

The Georges' New Orleans Advocate moved into the space left by the Picayune, publishing a print newspaper seven days a week and establishing one of the few competitive newspaper markets in the United States. The New Orleans Advocate established a local office at a historic building on stately St. Charles Avenue.

That proved a winning strategy in the long run. Despite its poverty and low literacy rate, New Orleans preferred reading a daily newspaper rather than getting its news via computer or smart phone.

Beginning in June, a new newspaper bearing both the Picayune and Advocate names will publish a print edition seven days a week, a rare win in recent years for print journalism over the digital model.

While retreating from New Orleans, Newhouse will apparently continue its digital-first strategy in markets across the United States, including Birmingham, Ala.

The Advocate company also will take over the NOLA web site, which will combine with the Advocate's. The Advocate recently switched to a paid subscription model for its web site.

As a Louisiana native and alum of the Baton Rouge Advocate, I'll miss the spirited competition between the two media companies. The Georgeses promised to hire Picayune staffers and continue to run T-P features and comics. I hope that includes the excellent Picayune/NOLA team that covers Louisiana's coastal erosion and other environmental problems. Reporting on LSU sports and state government likely will grow less competitive.

The Georgeses are also strong-arming the competition in the Acadiana capital of Lafayette. According to the Advocate article announcing the purchase of the New Orleans newspaper, the Georges power couple recently doubled the staff of the Lafayette Advocate by raiding staffers from the venerable Lafayette Advertiser.

While the Georgeses' commitment to print newspapers is laudable, they apparently want to own the sole newspaper covering South Louisiana. The disappearance of independent local voices like the Picayune and Advertiser won't be healthy for the state.

 

 

Ponce City Market, the Beltline and Atlanta Botanical Gardens

A visit to the Ponce City Market and the Atlanta Botanical Gardens took us back to the neighborhoods we lived in when we first moved to Atlanta.

Between Virginia Highland, Little Five Points and Poncey Highland, the Ponce City Market in the old Sears catalog building shows the welcome philosophy of finding new uses for old commercial centers, which Atlanta was late to embrace.

Adjacent to an already booming section of the Atlanta Beltline, the multifloored tower houses digital age companies, cool shops and hip bars.

The second floor looks undeveloped, but the popular rooftop and thriving shops and food court on the bottom floor give hope that Atlanta has entered a new age. But the packed parking lot and busy Ponce de Leon and North Avenue testify that the automobile still rules.

In contrast to that center of new age hipness, the Botanical Gardens like the Atlanta History Center is a monument to Atlanta's corporate power.

Along the Botanical Gardens' iron and concrete pathways, engineered waterfalls and rose and orchid palaces, Atlanta's famous old-money names are prevalent. Anne Cox-Chambers, Clark Howell, the Fuquas, Arthur Blank, even an Imlay. In the distance the Midtown office towers rise. One high-rise bears the name of old Atlanta legal power: King and Spalding.

Neglected and low profile when we first moved to Atlanta more than 30 years ago, the Botanical Gardens is now a corporate favorite. A parking garage, fiercely opposed before construction, offers convenient access to the gardens and Piedmont Park, if you can find a space.

Nearby, walkers, roller bladers, bikers and Moms pushing strollers enter Piedmont Park's section of the Beltline. The interlocking intown neighborhoods connected by the Beltline affirm an inclusive urban spirit, illusory as it may be.