divinemissem2015: books & NYC history

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picking up @ library today!

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EMMA GOLDMAN

My latest obsession is Emma Goldman.

She's a Jewish Russian feminist anarchist immigrant in Gilded Age NYC and spoke her mind like no other. She was loved, hated, respected, worshipped, imprisoned, deported.... what is there NOT to like?

I am currently reading and loving

on anarchism "as a movement for individual self-expression rather than a revolution of the collective":

the hatred she bore the centralized state was rooted in what she took to be government's brutish contempt for the feeling life of the individual... 'comrades' were those who, in the name of revolution, were bent on honoring the complete human being.

Hotly, she defended her need to define anarchism as she experienced it, with or without radical consensus. After all, what good was a revolution if at the end of the day one couldn't speak one's mind freely? To retreat from this insight, she insisted, was to ensure political disaster.

and who does not want this said about her?:

Life takes on an intenser quality when she is there, something cosmic in the air, a feeling of worlds in the making.

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20 Exchange Place

I see 20 Exchange Place right outside my office  window.

20 Exchange Place occupies the full block bounded by Exchange Place (named for the Merchant’s Exchange), William Street, Beaver Street, and Hanover Street.

It was completed in 1931 in the style the architects called “Modern Classic,” which is today known as “Art Deco” (there is some disagreement about this as the building does not have the full complement of specific Art Deco ornaments) and bc I heart fonts, here are examples of the famous Art Deco font:

It was designed by Cross & Cross in 1929 as the  World’s Tallest Building™ (to beat the 1913 Woolworth Building) at 846.4’ and a budget of $9.5 million ($132M in 2015 dollars), but, due to the Great Depression (thanks Republican Hoover)the completed building was  NYC’s 4th tallest building. It was saved from that ignominy by being the Tallest Building With A Predominantly Stone Façade™

The architects wrote about their building thusly: “The architects hold no brief for any particular architectural style and have been at some pains to clothe the structure in material and form to serve as  a frank expression of the mechanical and economic forces involved and at the same time to express, with some degree of originality, the place of the building in thelife of its location.”

The original plans called for “at the top will be an illuminated globe fifteen feet in diameter supported by four eagles of heroic size.” Tragically, the heroic eagles would also fall victim to the Depression (much like the U.S. until it was saved by my main man FDR).

A 1932 guidebook had this to say:

“Everything in connection with this monumental  building expresses beauty, completeness and grandeur. ...every detail of this colossal structure is right up to theminute. The building throughout is the very last word in all that spells DELUXE.... No one  visiting New York should fail to visit the “City Bank Farmers  Trust” edifice – this magnificent and beautiful pile of marble, stone, and masonry is one of the sights of the city.”

It was built to be the Wall Street headquarters of the City Bank Farmers Trust Company, which would become CitiBank, and the National City Bank of New York, and also housed a branch of the Canadian Bank of Commerce.  The National City Bank was founded in 1812; prior to that it was the NYC branch of the First Bank of the United States (everything is connected – my man Alexander Hamilton set that bank up). It merged with the Farmers Loan and Trust Company in 1929.

I am sad to report that the 14 “Giants of Finance” at the top of the building don’t refer to any particular giants and I cannot find anything as to why there are 14, and why half are scowling and half are smiling. Perhaps they are sellers and buyers?

The main entrance is through a dramatic arch  surrounded by 11 coins of carved granite that represented the many countries in which the  institution had offices. The best one is this from BCE Greece.

In 1996, the building was designated a City Landmark  by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. is the report prepared by the  Commission recommending it for landmark status.

It is currently in use as a residential building and  as a set for movies.

On the left, the coin features a Roman fasces, the bundle of sticks with an axe that was a symbol of the ancient Roman Republic and co-opted by the Italian Fascists. At the lower right is carved “Meglio Vivere un Giorno da Leone Che Cento Anni da Pecora” (“It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as sheep”), an older proverb that Mussolini had taken as his own. I do not know if the designers knew that when they inscribed it.

More Links

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Stefan Zweig

I saw “The Grand Budapest Hotel” on TV in early 2015- it was the first (& so far only) movie I started again right after it ended – really fell in love with it- because I’m in love with Austria, & esp fin de siecle Vienna.

When I was overdosing on articles about that movie, I found Wes Anderson talking about “stealing” the movie from Stefan Zweig. BBC  NPR  Sydney Morning Herald New Yorker Guardian: 

That led me to The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World , which I am so in love with that I only read a chapter or so at a time because I don’t want it to ever be over!

Stefan Zweig was born in Vienna in 1881 to wealthy Jewish parents (who “were Jewish only through accident of birth”). As an adult, he was close to Theodor Herzl, the  founder of Zionism. Zweig, however, was a believer in internationalism & Europeanism. In WWI, Zweig, a pacifist, served in the Archives of the Ministry of War. He married Friderike Maria von Winternitz in 1920 & they divorced in 1938. A year later he married his secretary, Lotte Altmann.

When Hitler rose to power, Zweig moved to London & then Bath. In 1940, he moved to NYC to escape Hitler’s advance.

In 1940, they moved to Petrópolis, a German-colonized mountain town near Rio de Janeiro. As more & more intolerance, authoritarianism, & Nazism seeemd to take over Europe & European culture, he felt hopeless about the future of the world. On February 23, 1942, he & his wife were found dead, holding hands, of a barbiturate overdose in their house.

His work has been called both “poor, lightweight & superficial” &  humanist, simple, & effective. He wrote novellas, biographies (Magellan, Mary Queen of Scots, Marie-Antoinette), & his memoir, The World of Tomorrow, which he finished the day he killed himself. His memoir has been called a record of life in Central Europe from 1881-1942.

He also wrote the libretto for Richard Strauss (who defied the Nazis by refusing to remove Zweig’s name from the program. Goebbels refused to attend the premiere on June 24, 1935 in Dresden as planned, & the opera was banned after 3 performances).

Now comes a new book: Ostend, which is

“the true story of two of the twentieth century’s great writers exiled from Nazi Germany to a Belgian seaside resort, & the world they built there: written with a novelist’s eye for pacing, chronology, & language—a  dazzling work of historical nonfiction.”

“It’s the summer of 1936, & the writer Stefan Zweig is in crisis. His German publisher no longer wants him, his marriage is collapsing, & his home in Austria has been seized. He’s been dreaming of Ostend, the Belgian beach town—a paradise of promenades, parasols, & old friends. So he journeys there with his new lover, Lotte Altmann, & reunites with his semi-estranged fellow writer & close friend Joseph Roth, himself newly in love. For a moment, they create a fragile paradise. But as Europe begins to crumble around them, the writers find themselves trapped on vacation, in exile, watching the world burn. In Ostend, Volker Weidermann lyrically recounts ‘the summer before the dark,’ when a coterie of artists, intellectuals, drunks, revolutionaries, & madmen found themselves in limbo while Europe teetered on the edge of fascism & total war.”

 Other interesting books:

Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars: 

The collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918 left all Austrians in a state of political, social, and economic turmoil, but Jews in particular found their lives shaken to the core. Although Jews’ former comfort zone suddenly disappeared, the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy also created plenty of room for innovation and change in the realm of culture. Jews eagerly took up the challenge to fill this void, and they became heavily invested in culture as a way to shape their new, but also vexed, self-understandings.

By isolating the years between the World Wars and examining formative events in both Vienna and the provinces, Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars demonstrates that an intensified marking of people, places, and events as “Jewish” accompanied the crises occurring in the wake of Austria-Hungary’s collapse, with profound effects on Austria’s cultural legacy. In some cases, the consequences of this marking resulted in grave injustices. Philipp Halsmann, for example, was wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of his father years before he became a world-famous photographer. And the men who shot and killed writer Hugo Bettauer and philosopher Moritz Schlick received inadequate punishment for their murderous deeds.

But engagements with the terms of Jewish difference also characterized the creation of culture, as shown in Hugo Bettauer’s satirical novel The City without Jews and its film adaptation, other texts by Veza Canetti, David Vogel, A.M. Fuchs, Vicki Baum, and Mela Hartwig, and performances at the Salzburg Festival and the Yiddish theater in Vienna. By examining the lives, works, and deeds of a broad range of Austrians, Lisa Silverman reveals how the social codings of politics, gender, and nation received a powerful boost when articulated along the lines of Jewish difference.

Messages from a Lost World: Europe on the Brink

Stefan Zweig was a leading talisman of a united Europe of unfettered movement, of pro-active cultural exchange, humane decency and tolerance, all polar opposites of the Nationalist regimes he loathed, and which came to power in the 1930s. In these poignant essays and addresses, forged in the last years or even months of his life, he shows his profound concern for and dedication to the survival of Europe’s spiritual integrity.

These essays form the natural accompaniment to Zweig’s renowned memoir The World of Yesterday, registering the same themes and evoking the same nostalgia for a world brutally consigned to history. They can be seen as a vital addendum to that major work or as a prefiguration. But perhaps even more so than the prose of the memoir, these essays, few in number but rich in content, reveal the essence of Zweig’s thought.

Red Vienna, White Socialism, and the Blues

After the First World War, Vienna was overrun by jazz, Hollywood movies, and Fordism; its citizens were both fascinated and appalled by the waves of American ideas and products. To make sense of the American phenomenon, readers turned to Ann Tizia Leitich, the New York-based correspondent for Vienna’s prominent daily Neue Freie Presse and other newspapers. Rob McFarland tells the story of Leitich’s escape, occasioned by a personal crisis, from Austria to America in 1921, and of her rise as a journalist, cultural historian, and novelist. By the early 1930s, she had met Pres. Coolidge, Sen. Sol Bloom, the writer Upton Sinclair, and the critic H. L. Mencken. Her devoted readers - including the novelist Stefan Zweig and the Austrian chancellor Ignatz Seipl - sought in her witty, insightful descriptions of the United States some American vitality to invigorate their own moribund culture and economy. Chronicling Leitich’s career as a journalist, cultural historian, and novelist and providing close readings of her writings about America, this book reveals her as an important cultural mediator between Austria and America.

The Grand Spas of Central Europe: A History of Intrigue, Politics, Art, and Healing

Written with verve and affection, the book explores the grand spa towns, which in their prime were an equivalent of today’s major medical centers, rehab retreats, golf resorts, conference complexes, fashion shows, music festivals, and sexual hideaways—all rolled into one. Conventional medicine being quite primitive through most of this era, people went to the spas in hopes of curing everything from cancer to gout. But often as not “curists” also went to play, to be entertained, and to socialize. In their heyday the grand spas were hotbeds of cultural creativity, true meccas of the arts. High-level politics was another grand spa specialty, with statesmen descending on the Kurorte to negotiate treaties, craft alliances, and plan wars.

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18 Beaver Street

Walking on Beaver Street, and, as usual, looking up, I saw this, which is a statue of Hebe: the cupbearer of the gods who served ambrosia at the heavenly feast.

which is on top of Yip’s Restaurant. While I don’t think that’s what the owners of the building imagined, I think they would be happy it’s still a restaurant.

In 1883 Alfred Wiehl and Eugene Widmann commissioned H. J. Schwarzmann & Co. (“a gentleman of original thought and remarkable for beautiful designing”) to design and erect their new “four-story brick and brown stone store and restaurant,” at an estimated cost of $20,000 or about $450,000 today.

from Daytonian in Manhattan (which makes me think of Ted Mosby), Schwarzmann:

contrasted the red brick façade with wide courses of carved brownstone and at the fourth floor  introduced pilasters dripping with ornate floral decorations. The attic floor erupted as a Northern Renaissance Revival gable surmounted by a statue of Hebe, the cupbearer to the gods.

The two floor restaurant served German food and wine to downtown workers and seamen.  

On the night that William McKinley was elected President, friends of Wiehl had a baby, which was named in honor of the president. What happened next is adorable:

On March 19, 1897, the Evening Star reported:  

“A funny request turned up at the White House today. Alfred Wiehl of 18 Beaver street, New York, requested that a vial which accompanied his note be filled with water from a White House faucet, the water to be used in baptizing ‘Franze Mckinley Draz’ in New York tomorrow night.”

The Times added 

“Secretary Porter complied with Mr. Wiehl’s request and a bottle of White House water was immediately sent to the Metropolis in order that it might reach there in time for the christening.”

Here is a menu from 1914.

Here is the 1903 price list for their wholesale liquor operation.

from the July 30, 1904 edition of “Brooklyn Life”: 

FADS AND FASHIONS. OF the “bowls” that the Teutons prepare, the most poetic one for the summertime is “Mai Wein.” This they first mix when the lilies-of-the-valley, called in German “Mai Gloecken” (May bells) bloom. It is a delightful treat throughout the whole summer, and a welcome substitute for claret punch, which is heavier than the “Mai Wein,” often making even a jolly party rather stupid. “Mai Trink” promotes gayety and sociability, and unless measured according to ideas “strictly temperance,” is an innocent sort of mixed drink. Instead of Mumm’s Extra Dry, you may use California champagne. First a small amount of the indispensable Waldmeister is put in a bottle of white wine over night. Then after straining this, you add one bottle of champagne and one of mineral water, Apollinaris preferred. You pour this into a bowl containing cracked ice, strawberries, slices of pineapple and also oranges sliced. One tablespoonful of some good cordial is added. Then, if served on the piazza on a moonlight night, “your sky,” to translate an old German saying, “will be full of fiddles.” At Brooklyn card-parties, claret punch either too thin or too sour, or made heavy with rum, when there should be just a taste  to t,often it, is the favorite beverage, but the “Mai Wein” is  lighter and more unusual. A GREAT many musicians and artists, noted throughout the country, will remember “Mai Wein,” as enjoyed at the old home, out in Flatbush, of Mr. Alfred Wiehl and Mr. Eugene Widmann. Mr. Franz Kaltenborn and Mr. J. Adolph Mollenhauer are among the lesser lights who once had a part in the good times at this house. Stories and reminiscences have been recounted there of great men such as Wagner tales never put in print. Mr. Wiehl and Mr. Widmann married two beautiful sisters, and while the families had separate homes in the winter it was their custom to cooperate in the summera plan abandoned only within the last few years. Each has a family of young people, Mr. Arthur Wiehl being well known to society outside of artistic and musical circles. Before the death of the late Arthur W. Palmer he always had an active part in all the social functions at both the city and country residences of Mr. and Mrs. Lowell M. Palmer. At the Flatbush residence of the Wiehls and Widmanns, to return to the subject of “Mai Wein,” this drink was always served when the lilies-of-the-valley bloomed. Mr. Wiehl, senior, is himself a very clever artist, and by gaslight in his own bedroom (to illustrate how unconventional are his methods) he  often paints pictures sold for several hundreds of dollars. To struggling artists he invariably gives kindly aid, and at the Wiehl and Widmann restaurant in New York there is always an exhibit of paintings, Mr. Wiehl, out of pure goodness of heart, allowing young men to show their work in this way. At this restaurant the members of the German “Round Table”  have met for years for a weekly luncheon and celebration of birthdays, in ways Teutonic and gemuetlich, a good old word, altogether untranslatable. To this club belong Mr. H. C. Richard, one of the founders of the American News Company, and Mr. Louis C. Raegner, the lawyer, formerly of Brooklyn. The vacant chair is that of the late Adolph Schwarzmann, publisher of Puck, who died last February. Outside of the contingent of German birth, the place  is quite as well known among American men of wealth as the Cafe Martin or Delmonico’s, and artists, musicians and doctors go there for the dishes they learned to like during student days at Weimar, Dresden and Stuttgart.

Speaking of Wiehl’s artistry, here is an article from the 1929 Brooklyn Eagle:

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The Cunard Building, Lusitania, WWI, and you.

As with most things involving me, what started as simple photos taken of 25 Broadway led to a huge tangent. Enjoy this romp through the early 20th century, including appearances by William Jennings Bryan, Clarence Darrow, and Archduke Ferdinand.

Info from:

The erection of the Cunard Building signaled NYC’s growing supremacy as a world port. The building, which was to display display “Cunard’s business success and its good taste”, like its ships, featured modern conveniences (36 elevators), and the prospectus announced that “no expense or care will be omitted to make it...worthy of internationally known tenant whose name building bears.” The Cunard Building was designed by Benjamin Wistar Morris, who received critical acclaim for this building, which was completed in 1921. The interior of the building is even more “glorious” and “spectacular” and “rivals the concourse of Grand Central Terminal as one of the city’s most impressive and huge interior, non-religious spaces.” On May 21, 1921, NYT described the 65-foot-high, 185-foot-long hall as “a series of mural decorative effects probably unsurpassed in the annals of commercial building construction.” The exterior also features sculptural elements of the Four Winds, Neptune, ship windows, and seahorses with riders. The structure heralded a wave of tall new office buildings for the shipping industry built in the 1920s along lower Broadway.

In 1921, the architecture critic of Architecture Forum, wrote:

“I knew at once that Mr. Morris...had had a creative impulse. I have been immensely impressed by the convenience, the ingenious handling of space, and all the nominally prosaic virtues of his design, but what make[s] it exciting is its beauty, the proof  of which affords that a skyscraper may be made a work of art.”

In “New York 1930, Architecture and Urbanism Between The Two World Wars,” it is noted “The great hall was a glorious last statement of the ambitions of the American Renaissance, and just as surely a last gasp of the economic imperialism of Britain’s Edwardian Age.”

As buildings got taller, the streets grew darker. In 1916, NYC passed building codes requiring new buildings to have more natural light and ventilation. The new zoning restricted building uses to specific areas of the city, and controlled the height and bulk of  new structures. The Cunard Building “is an early and outstanding example of the effect of the zoning law on the tall office building. Its neo-Renaissance cladding is a prominent example of the historicizing overlay which many architects of that time applied as an aid  to composing their building envelopes newly configured by the 1916 resolution.” One architect said about the 1916 law: “the architect had graduated from being a designer of mere facades to ‘a sculptor in building masses.”

THE CUNARD COMPANY

Founded in 1840 by Canadian Samuel Cunard, the Cunard company pioneered transatlantic shipping and travel. From the 1850s on, Cunard was located near Bowling Green, as part of “Steamship  Row.” As early as 1660, this location contained  several Dutch colonial dwellings, at least some of which belonged to seafarers. In the 1800s, the  Russian-American Line Steamship Company and the  Anchor Line Steamship Company were also located in this area (this is also the area in which Aaron Burr lived).

Cunard started in the marine trade in 1833, when a  ship he co-owned was the first Canadian steamboat to cross the Atlantic. In 1839, he won the contract from Britain to carry the mail to and from Liverpool, Halifax, and Boston. In 1840, he established The British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, which was a turning point in the conquest of steam over sail.

By the late 1800s, Cunard was the big player in the Atlantic passenger, known as the most luxurious line. Steerage passengers also added to Cunard’s profits. Cunard was constantly innovating to increase speed, safety, and comfort (although probably not for the steerage passengers). After contributing substantially to the war effort, Cunard emerged from WW I healthier than many shipping companies; it connected New York to Liverpool, Bristol, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, Southampton, and Cherbourg, while other routes serviced Philadelphia, Boston, and Portland, Maine.

After the completion of the new buildings, Cunard suffered enormous losses in the Great Depression, but when Cunard and White Star Lines merged in 1934, it carried over one-quarter of North Atlantic passengers, double ts nearest rival.

Cunard again assisted the Allied effort in World War II. After peaking in 1957, ship travel began to decline due to competition from air travel.

Cunard is still known for its peacetime safety record and for the long periods during which it held the fastest crossing times (“the Blue Ribbon”) in North Atlantic steamship travel.

LUSITANIA

Of course, Cunard was the line of the Lusitania (how do you tell the White Star ships from the Cunard line? Cunard ship names end in –ia (Carpathia, Lusitania, Brittania), all White Stars end in – ic (Titanic, Adriatic)) (side note: Lusitania left from Pier 54, the same one where the Brittania docked with the Titanic survivors. Weird).

This brings me to two books I listened to over the summer of the broken leg – DEAD WAKE by Erik Larsen and Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age by Greg King.

Two facts I did not know before: (1) the German government took out an ad in the NYT warning passengers on trans-Atlantic voyages that a state of war exists between Germany and Great Britain and her allies; (2) the ship sank in the middle of the day with perfect weather. The image of all those people in lifeboats  and drowning under the sunshine and blue sky is almost too much for me to bear- I have an “easier” time with the Titanic tragedy in the middle of the night.

Construction began in 1903 with the goal of building the fastest Atlantic ship.   Lusitania’s maiden voyage was from Liverpool to New York in September 1907. The “Greyhound of the Seas” she won the Blue Ribbon for the fastest Atlantic crossing. The Brits took this title from the Germans who were on a run of six titles (foreshadowing??).

The British Navy subsidized the construction and in return, if war broke at, the ship would come into government service. In 1913, ammunition magazines and gun mounts on her decks were installed.

On May 1, 1915, the ship departed New York City bound for Liverpool, with almost all her hidden cargo consisting of munitions and contraband destined for the British war effort. Lusitania was carrying, undeclared, ammunition, and artillery shells and fuses, 46 tons of aluminium powder, and, a large quantity of nitrocellulose (explosives). There was a large shipment of “fur” sent by Dupont de Nemours, and tons of butter and lard directed to the Royal Navy Weapons Testing Establishment. (It is odd that furs and perishable foods would be send and not  be kept cool; further, the cargo was insured but never claimed as a loss.)

Those aboard Lusitania felt secure that she could easily outdistance any submarine, but, even so, about half the passengers who were supposed to sail that day did not make the trip. Many were deterred by the German warning, but several prominent people were supposed to be on the Lusitania but weren’t because of financial issues, including: Arturo Toscanini, Jerome Kern, Isadora Duncan, and William Morris, who also was supposed to sail on Titanic. Like Titanic, many wealthy Americans were on board, including Alfred Vanderbilt.

At 2:10 PM on May 7 off the coast of Ireland, German submarine U20 hit Lusitania with a torpedo, and a second explosion ripped the liner apart (that can happen with ammunition and explosives on board). The ship listed so badly and quickly that lifeboats crashed into passengers crowded on deck, or dumped passengers into the water. Within 18 minutes she sank, killing 1,119 of the 1,924 aboard, including 114 Americans.

German Walter Schwieger was captain of the U-Boat that sank the Lusitania. He watched through his periscope as the torpedo exploded and noted the result in his log, 

The ship stops immediately and heals over to starboard quickly, immersing simultaneously at the bow. It appears as if the ship were going to capsize very shortly. Great confusion is rife on board; the boats are made ready and some of them lowered into the water.  In connection therewith great panic must have reigned; some boats, full to capacity are rushed from above, touch the water with either stem or stern first and founder immediately.

YES! A CONSPIRACY!!!

If you know me at all, I am always ready for and open to a conspiracy theory. 

There are 2 regarding those shady Brits and Lusitania: (1) Lusitania was deliberately placed in danger by the British, so as to entice a U-Boat attack and drag the US into the war as a British ally. A week before the sinking, Churchill wrote to the President of the British Board of Trade, stating that it was “most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope especially of embroiling the US with Germany.” {BUT Lusitania was not “neutral shipping”} I have seen references to George V asking, the night before, what would happen if the Lusitania was attacked the next day, but I have not been able to find a reliable source for that. Capt. Turner refused to answer some  questions at the inquiry on the grounds of national security. Also: The British authorities were aware that a German submarine was in the path of the Lusitania, but didn’t divert the ship to a safer route; failed to provide a destroyer escort, although destroyers were available in a nearby port, and several were provided for Lusitania’s first trip from Liverpool to New York; and, Lusitania was ordered to reduce speed in the war zone. (2) bombardment of Lusitania: a diver has reported that the ship is “like Swiss  cheese” and there are several unexploded mines around her. Prof Kingston of Trinity College, Dublin:  “There’s no doubt at all about it that the Royal Navy and the British government have taken very  considerable steps over the years to try to prevent whatever can be found out about the Lusitania.”

Some passengers, including Vanderbilt, supposedly received telegrams warning that the ship was “doomed” and they should not sail on it. Now, even I have a  hard time believing this, and I’m a 9/11 truther.

WWI

WWI officially began on June 28th, 1914 when a member of the Black Hand secret society, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated Serbian Archduke Franz Ferdinand (which would not have happened if his car hadn’t taken a wrong turn), (in a case proving that everything coming together eventually, Greg King also wrote “The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance That Changed the World”) and the various European treaties required the countries to gird themselves for war (this is an especially interesting time for me because thanks to Queen Victoria’s many children, Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm were cousins, and, the Tsar’s presence at the front rather than in St. Petersburg led to Rasputin having the ear of the Empress, which led to the Russian Revolution).

After the sinking of the Lusitania, the British opined (hoped) that the U.S. would declare war on Germany, but Wilson, following the general US opinion, refused to act, only insisting that Germany must apologize for the sinking, compensate U.S. victims,  and promise to avoid any similar occurrence in the future. (In 1916 Wilson was elected President for a second term, largely because of the slogan “He kept  us out of war”). Secretary of State Bryan was of the opinion that “ships carrying contraband should be prohibited from carrying passengers ...like putting women and children in front of an army.” Bryan, known as the “Great Commoner” from Nebraska, ran for President in 1896, 1900, and 1908 as a Democrat. He was best known for his 1896 “Cross of Gold” speech, in which he promoted “free silver” as opposed to the gold standard, concluding “you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” His involvement in politics started the movement of the Democratic Party from Jacksonian rugged individualism to a more interventionist government. As Secretary of State, he promoted conciliation treaties, in which countries agreed that, if they could not resolve a dispute, they would wait a year before going to war and would seek outside intervention and mediation. He even advocated restrictions on American citizens and companies to prevent them  from drawing the nation into war. Even with Wilson’s relatively tempered response to Lusitania, Bryan resigned instead of supporting what he thought was war mongering. After  his resignation, he worked in favor of peace, prohibition, womens suffrage, and against the teaching of the evolution. You may remember him from such episodes as the Scopes trial in 1925 where he  went mano-a-mano (or tete-a-tete) with Clarence Darrow, during which Bryan was shown to have a rather shallow understanding of science (because Clarence Darrow is super awesome).

On September 9, 1915, Germany announced that attacks were only allowed on ships that were definitely British, while neutral ships were to be treated under the Prize Law rules (when vessels and cargo are captured during armed conflict, an admiralty court later determined the status of the vessel and property and the manner in which it was to be disposed of), and no attacks on passenger liners were to be permitted at all. This allowed the U.S. to stay neutral until 1917.

In January 1917 Germany announced it would again conduct full unrestricted submarine warfare. This decision caused the U.S. to sever diplomatic relations with Germany.

So the time was ripe for the U.S. to abandon its neutrality, and the Zimmermann Telegram was the breaking point. In January 1917, British code breakers (of Room 40, the predecessor to Blatchley Park, where Turing worked during the next war) deciphered a telegram from the the German Foreign Minister Zimmerman to the German Minister to Mexico. In it, the Minister was instructed that if the U.S. entered the war on the side of the Allies, he was to offer Mexico’s president German military and financial support for a Mexican attack on the U.S. and in exchange Mexico would be free to annex “lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.” David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers, wrote: “No other single cryptanalysis has had such enormous consequences”. It is his opinion that “never before or since has so  much turned upon the solution of a secret message.”

To protect their intelligence from detection, the British waited until February 24, 1917 to present the telegram to Wilson. American newspapers published news of the telegram on March 1, 1917. As a result, on  April 6, 1917, Congress passed Wilson’s request to declare war on Germany.

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Books found @ NYPL’s Author at the Library series calendar

20th Century History

1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR--Two Tales of Politics, Betrayal, and Unlikely Destiny

Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff

Democratic Art: The New Deal's Influence on American Culture

The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire

When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944

Double Agent: The First Hero of World War II and How the FBI Outwitted and Destroyed a Nazi Spy Ring

NYC 

The Spirit of New York: Defining Events in the Empire State's History

Point of View New York City: A Visual Game of the City You Think You Know

New York Power

Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America

Urban Appetites: Food and Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York

"No One Helped": Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy

Walking New York: Reflections of American Writers from Walt Whitman to Teju Cole

Abandoned NYC

The Liar's Ball: The Extraordinary Saga of How One Building Broke the World's Toughest Tycoons

Hiking the Road to Ruins: Daytrips and Camping Adventures to Iron Mines, Old Military Sites, and Things Abandoned in the New York City Area...and Beyond

Seeking New York: The Stories Behind the Historic Architecture of Manhattan

New York's Legal Landmarks: A Guide to Legal Edifices, Institutions, Lore, History, and Curiosities on the City's Streets

Gowanus: Brooklyn's Curious Canal

Economics

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

Presidents

Abe & Fido: Lincoln's Love of Animals and the Touching Story of His Favorite Canine Companion

Chasing History: One Man's Roadtrip Through the Presidential Libraries

Uncategorized Awesomeness

Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity--What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves

The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World 

Why We Love Serial Killers: The Curious Appeal of the World's Most Savage Murderers 

Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians 

The Birth of Politics: Eight Greek and Roman Political Ideas and Why They Matter 

Our Marvelous Bodies: An Introduction to the Physiology of Human Health

Ashes Under Water: The SS Eastland and the Shipwreck That Shook America

Some Very Interesting Cats Perhaps You Weren't Aware Of 

[bookmania]

😭😭😭

[sagansense]

Accurate.

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2016 books I’m excited about!

 History

Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938

Kissinger’s Shadow: “In his fascinating new book, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin argues that to understand the crisis of contemporary America―its never-ending wars abroad and political polarization at home―we have to understand Henry Kissinger.”

Rightful Heritage: FDR and the Land of America - “Douglas Brinkley’s The Wilderness Warrior celebrated Theodore Roosevelt’s spirit of outdoor exploration and bold vision to protect 234 million acres of wild America. Now, in Rightful Heritage, Brinkley turns his attention to the other indefatigable environmental leader—Teddy’s distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, chronicling his essential yet under-sung legacy as the founder of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and premier protector of America’s public lands.”

Devil’s Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich: “This exploration of the private wartime diary of Alfred Rosenberg—Hitler’s “chief philosopher” and architect of Nazi ideology—interweaves the story of its recent discovery with the revelation of its never-before-published contents, which are contextualized by the authors: The result is a unprecedented, page-turning narrative of the Nazi rise to power, the Holocaust, and Hitler’s post-invasion plans for Russia.”

Science

Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart: Growing up in the high desert of California, Jim Doty was poor, with an alcoholic father and a mother chronically depressed and paralyzed by a stroke. Today he is the director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, of which the Dalai Lama is a founding benefactor. But back then his life was at a dead end until at twelve he wandered into a magic shop looking for a plastic thumb. Instead he met Ruth, a woman who taught him a series of exercises to ease his own suffering and manifest his greatest desires.

Half Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life – Edward Wilson:  History is not a prerogative of the human species, Edward O. Wilson declares in Half-Earth, a brave work that becomes a radical redefinition of human history. Demonstrating that we blindly ignore the histories of millions of other species, Wilson warns of a point of no return that is imminent.

Arts

Woman Artists: Linda Nochlin is one of the most accessible, provocative, and innovative art historians of our time. In 1971 she published her essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”―a dramatic feminist call-to-arms that called traditional art historical practices into question and led to a major revision of the discipline.

What the Eye Hears  A History of Tap Dancing –  Magisterial, revelatory, and-most suitably-entertaining, What the Eye Hears offers an authoritative account of the great American art of tap dancing.

Current Events

One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway

Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain- Bill Bryson’s follow up to Notes from a Small Island

Women

Feisty and Feminine: A Rallying Cry for Conservative Women by Penny Nance – know thy enemy:  Tired of inauthentic prattle, CEO and president of Concerned Women for America Penny Young Nance is ready to change the way women today engage the culture. In her debut title, Feisty & Feminine, she takes an honest and transparent look at what it means to be a conservative Christian woman with thoughtful commentary on the real issues confronting American women.   

Perpetual Becoming – Alanis Morissette

We by Gillian Anderson: addresses the spiritual, emotional, and psychological needs of all women and “provides a path to inner freedom and happiness, which in turn will have the power to change the world in which we all live.” AND IT’S SCULLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Mind of Your Own: What Women Can Do About Depression That Big Pharma Can't:  Dr. Brogan illuminates the real cause of depression: it is not a simple neurochemical disorder but rather a complex inflammatory disease—a manifestation of irregularities in the body that start far away from neural synapses and serotonin

Memoirs, Essays

Reasons to Stay Alive – Matt Haig, author of the Humans & a great twitter account; this came out in the UK last year and am so happy to see it here!  Like nearly one in five people, Matt Haig suffers from depression. Reasons to Stay Alive is Matt’s inspiring account of how, minute by minute and day by day, he overcame the disease with the help of reading, writing, and the love of his parents and his girlfriend (and now-wife), Andrea. And eventually, he learned to appreciate life all the more for it.

Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir by Padma Lakshmi – more interested in her time as Salmon Rushdie’s wife

Now Go Out There by Mary Karr: A celebration of curiosity, compassion, and the surprising power of fear, based on the New York Times bestselling author and renowned professor’s 2015 commencement address at Syracuse University. “Being smart and rich are lucky, but being curious & compassionate will save  your ass.”

Jason Headley F*ck That Meditation

The Light of the World: A Memoir-  Elizabeth Alexander finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her husband. Channeling her poetic sensibilities into a rich, lucid price, Alexander tells a love story that is, itself, a story of loss. As she reflects on the beauty of her married life, the trauma resulting from her husband's death, and the solace found in caring for her two teenage sons, Alexander universalizes a very personal quest for meaning and acceptance in the wake of loss.

Fiction

Eligible – by Curtis Sittenfeld, who wrote Prep (loved it!), Sisterland (liked it!), American Wife (didn’t finish it) – a retelling of Pride and Prejudice.

[divinemissem2015]

tbr

fiction

Japanese Lover - Isabel Allende

Cometh the Hour - Jeffrey Archer

A Memoir of the Assassin - historical fiction about John Wilkes Booth 

European History

Fall of the Ottoman Empire - bc Hapsburgs

Red Flag - bc Communism

Death in Florence - bc Medicis

Elizabeth - bc it’s her

Early US History

War of Two - Hamilton & Burr duel - will compare w/ Duel with the Devil

Washington and Hamilton - such a fascinating partnership. Had Hamilton been a citizen, he would have been a President.

Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates - I’m a little wary of this bc I don’t want to read an anti-Muslim rant.

The First Congress - more productive than our current Congress!

Igniting the American Revolution - the years just prior to 1776

The Washingtons - Martha and George - her fortune paid for his place in history and they were sex freaks together

Civil War

A Just and Generous Nation - by a well known Lincoln biographer - argues that the Civil War was an economic war

20th C. US History

President and Apprentice - Eisenhower and Nixon - interested to see if this version is the same as Nixonland.

Class of 65

Lady Bird and Lyndon - bc LBJ

The Generals: Patton, MacArthur, Marshall, and the Winning of World War II - I became obsessed with Patton earlier this year when I read about his anti-Semitism and his deplorable comments re the Displaced Persons. I listened to  American Warlords: How Roosevelt's High Command Led America to Victory in World War II which was terrific and am interested to see how different this one is from that.

NYC

City on a Grid: How New York Became New York

Every Person In NYC

Interior Landmarks: Treasures of New York (at first I thought the title was Inferior Landmarks, which would probably be a super interesting book)

Science

Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells bc seashells

Witch of Lime Street -  Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World

London Fog - I love biographies of things

Jonas Salk - the best part about him is how he didn’t make a fortune off the polio vaccine so every one would have access to it

[divinemissem2015]

WHERE DO YOU FIND YOUR BOOKS TO READ?

my library website- new arrivals and recently ordered Amazon new releases NPR- esp Lopate and Rehm and Fresh Air Heywood Hill PW announcements NYT book review Goodreads friends B&N book tables

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Oyster Books

I am sad that the book streaming apps are folding- both Oyster and Entitle. Here are the books I had on my TBR list in Oyster. 

fiction

Beginning of Spring 

The Absolutist - by the author of The House of Special Purpose

science

A Universe from Nothing -  Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing

history

Devil in the Grove -  Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

Summer for the Gods -  The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion

Three Who Made a Revolution: A Biographical History of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin 

The Long Pursuit - Douglas & Lincoln

The End of Tsarist Russia: The March to World War I and Revolution

Reconstruction Updated Edition: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877  - Eric Foner

essays etc

 Night of the Gun - David Carr

Consider the Lobster 

Lethal But Legal: Corporations, Consumption, and Protecting Public Health - recommended by Nick Offerman

Death of the Liberal Class - Chris Hedges

How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical & Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, & Civil Servants

Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic - v interested in this after reading Methland

Around the World in 80 Dinners: The Ultimate Culinary Adventure

Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants - we shall see how far I can get in this book, as my hatred of rodents runs deep

The Jew Store 

h is for Hawk 

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today's haul

in an attempt to take more control over my library books, I'm going to keep track of what I take out as well, not just what I read. The amount of the former against the latter must be in the hundreds.

The main reason for this is because months ago I started to read A Significant Life but didn't finish it before I had to return it. I thought about it the other day and couldn't remember the title. I know I have it written in my journal of that time, but to go back and read thru all my journals for the year for that one nugget of information was going to be a huge project. I finally came across it in a random library catalog search.

This is also how Nick Hornby starts out each column in The Believer, which, obvi, I think is just great.

Adventures in Human Being

Things No One will Tell Fat Girls- bc I love out there titles.

Brave Enough - bc I love Cheryl Strayed

After the Civil War- obvious

Women Chefs of NY - bc I love people who are passionate about their careers

After Alice - Gregory Maguire. All I need to know.

The Artist Unique - for scraphooking/journaling insp

Modern Mix- bc I am a sucker for "curating personal style with chic and accessible finds"

An Artist's Book of Inspiration - obvi

If the Raindrops United - Judah Friedlander cartoons. All I need to know.

Lincoln's Spymaster- about Pinkerton. I was a little put off when I saw this was YA, but I am still going to go for it.

[divinemissem2015]

Nick Offerman is not Ron Swanson

I am a very lazy thinker at times and rely on my (often mistaken) first impressions.

I do this in real life, but I am especially guilty of it with television actors. They are just so good as their character and I invest so much time in watching them that I actually believe they are real.

So when I saw books by Nick Offerman, I was not interested because I thought they would be full of libertarian drivel by Ron Swanson that would not be funny at all without the talented writers of Parks and Recreation.

I am happy to report that other people think the same thing: people actually reported being "nauseated" by Nick Offerman without his Ron Swanson mustache (can you imagine?? I would DIE! As he said: "But I want to remind them that it's my face they're accusing of making them nauseated." In a related issue, his wife, Megan Mullally (I KNOW! I too was amazed and delighted when I found out!) had her talk show canceled, in my opinion, because people were only tuning in to see Karen Walker interview people. (sidebar [The Grinder reference] [but not really]: Rob Lowe is a REPUBLICAN!! how can that be?? He was Sam Seaborn!) (Rob Lowe takes up a lot of my brain space).

So I was extremely pleasantly surprised by Nick Offerman's wonderful and awesome and marvelous audiobook of Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers. Once I got over Ron Swanson reading to me, it is one of my TOP BOOKS OF ALL TIME. I definitely recommend the audiobook- much like Neil Patrick Harris and BJ Novak, and yes, even Valerie Bertinelli [I listened to these a few years ago, and they were a lot more entertaining and compelling than I ever thought they would be], I think the author's voice and presentation is very important.

Per NPR,  

It's a set of essays about 21 Americans who've personally inspired him. The book is split into three categories: Idealists, Makers, and Freemasons, the secret society.                           

His choices:

George Washington - Freemasons

Benjamin Franklin

James Madison

Frederick Douglass

Theodore Roosevelt - Idealists

Frederick Law Olmstead

Eleanor Roosevelt

Tom Laughlin

Wendell Berry

Barney Frank

Yoko Ono

Michael Pollan

Thomas Lie-Nielsen - Makers

Nat Benjamin

George Nakashima

Carol Burnett

Jeff Tweedy

George Saunders

Laurie Anderson

Willie Nelson

Conan O'Brien

The one comparison to Ron Swanson is his love of hand crafted furniture and boats. Did you know Offerman has his own workshop? I am pretty much in love with this dining table. He is especially in love with handmade tools and the chapter on Thomas Lie-Nielsen is a lovely paean to that. The chapter reminded me of the great Why We Make Things and Why it Matters and then I saw that Offerman recommends that book in his bibliography. This not-Ron-Swanson fellow seems extremely smart to me.

This book is just terrific. First, I learned a LOT (I had never even heard of Wendell Berry or Tom Laughlin). I learned so much more about the ones I already thought I knew a lot about (Olmstead, Nelson, O'Brien {the emails between Offerman and O'Brien are worth the entire book}) Second, I laughed a LOT. Offerman is one magnificent bastard. His humor and presentation is deadpan (one reason you must listen to the audiobook), self-deprecating, and prone to sprawling tangents. (hmmm. I have NO idea why this would appeal to me.)