The three Punic Wars Rome fought against Carthage were as iconic to the Romans as they are to us. Romans passed on the stories as part of their historical tradition and even threatened their misbehaving kids with Hannibal the way that we do the boogeyman. The most popular of those three wars saw Hannibal crossing the Alps with his elephants, and then proceeding all the way to Rome. Collecting old Roman allies, Hannibal proves that while he is a good tactician, his strategy skills are lacking. Nevertheless, he is the sort of leader than the Romans can respect even as they fear him. Livy pays homage to this war in typical Livy style, less about the battles and maneuvers than about the dynamics and implications. This text is a great deal easier to read than some of Livy’s other writings, complete with dramatic battle scenes and impressive tactics. It is at times emotional, at times heated, and at times you will wonder who the good buy and bad guys are regardless of Livy’s intent (he does, after all, say there is nothing better than being a Roman). Clearly, in the end, the Romans win and fight the good fight.

But before you begin to think that this is a mere make believe story loosely based on fact, think again. You will get a distinct sense of what it means for a Roman to be a Roman, and come to understand the virtues they prized and vices they condemned. Livy also, whether intentional or not, shows us how the Romans saw the outside world and the other peoples surrounding them. Also, within the social and political context, we see events taking place that were true to life and will have lasting impacts on the political order of Rome later. For instance, the ending of the law that limited terms to once every 10 years. By necessity of war, the law had to be thrown out of the proverbial window. This will have a very negative impact on the Republic and contribute to the later chaos with men like Marius.

You’ll love the Romans and feel nothing but awe for Hannibal despite his overall failure… Livy certainly does!

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Disclaimer(s):

- More can be found in my Reviews section or on my Biblio page. If you would like to see my book list for 2009, go here.

- If you would like me to review your book, send an email to me at morbidromantic@gmail.com. Read my Book Review Policy for more information.

What can one possibly say about one of the classics of Roman history? Writing in the time of Augustus, Livy was an imperial historian writing about Roman’s foundation and early history. His writing is a combination of truth, rumor, legend, and personal interpretation. To say that Livy has given a direct history of Rome is to give him too much credit, but one has to take into account how history was told then as compared to today. Though Livy’s various stories are interjected with made up speeches and events, and he now and then slips in a statement to legitimize his contemporary world, he still exercises a distinct awareness of source use and interpretation of evidence. Countless times throughout the text Livy compares different accounts of the same event to reach a conclusion, which shows he had a concern for portraying the relative truth to his audience.

Is it sitting around the house pleasure reading? No, definitely not. The audience is students and scholars of Roman history. The language in the text can get a bit confusing and you will find yourself now and then flipping around to sort out the details and events. However, there is a lot going on that is exciting if you can get through the language. You have founders disappearing is clouds, animals dropping from the sky, and Kings killing each other off. It’s exciting! And, of course, it is essential to the study of Roman history. If you want to know Roman history, you have to read Livy sooner or later.
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Disclaimer(s):

- More can be found in my Reviews section or on my Biblio page. If you would like to see my book list for 2009, go here.

- If you would like me to review your book, send an email to me at morbidromantic@gmail.com. Read my Book Review Policy for more information.

Gary Forsythe looks at the disputed beginnings of early Rome, tracing its archaic roots through the age of kings and finally to the illustrious Republic. Evidence for much of what he recreates is scarce, and that is particularly what Forsythe wants to address in his very critical work. What we have available, as Forsythe notes, is archeology lacking context and sources such as Livy that contain as much fiction as they truth. Sifting through the sources, Forsythe weights evidence against truth, compares documents, and disputes much of what we know about early Rome.

The book is invaluable to anyone who wants to learn about Rome, and moreso, Roman historiography. However, I think that Forsythe was a bit too extreme in his critical analysis. His constant discussions of reputable sources and information leads one with a wholly unsatisfied feeling. He disputes entirely too much, yet historically we know that he must. In the end, though, as a reader and a student of history I felt like I knew nothing more about Rome. All I knew were the various interpretations and no final conclusion to sum it all up. While this without a doubt speaks to the complexity of early Roman history and the complications of sources to creating an historical narrative.

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Disclaimer(s):

- More can be found in my Reviews section or on my Biblio page. If you would like to see my book list for 2009, go here.

- If you would like me to review your book, send an email to me at morbidromantic@gmail.com. Read my Book Review Policy for more information.

Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore redefines the standard chronology of the Civil Rights movement, popularly known for its post-WWII activity. Post-WWII civil rights action would culminate in achievement with Brown v. Board of Education and the 1964 and 1965 Acts of President Johnson. As the title of the book indicates, and according to Gilmore, civil rights in fact had far earlier and far more radical origins in Communism, labor, Fascism and anti-Fascism, and the Popular Front. She substantiates her thesis by tracing the activity of these movements, and by placing within them the African Americans and whites involved who both worked together and in opposition to one another to end or continue Jim Crow. The issue of black civil rights is typically isolated to the United States and is considered to be historically a distinct American problem. By highlighting the involvement of radical movements that found their roots in Europe, Gilmore places African American civil rights on an international stage and redefines it within the context of what the world was experiencing and how this weaved into American culture.

Gilmore shows that in America there was an active Communist Party that was focused on illuminating how racism created class differences, and had a purpose to overcome this class inequality by organizing Southern black laborers into a force white supremacists could not reckon with. The CPUSA would become a major player in calling for an end to Jim Crow and white supremacy, and would operate at the same time of the NAACP, whom the communists considered too conservative and bourgeois. The distinction between the two is one where the Communist Party favored direct action and the NAACP preferred legal means to solve issues, and Gilmore states that when placed alongside Communism, the conservative nature of the NAACP is stark (7). In emphasizing this simplistic distinction between the two, Gilmore slights the NAACP of some of its own influence and early contribution. Though less radical in comparison to a system like Communism, the NAACP nevertheless operated within a legal system that was hostile to them. When placed within the cultural context of America in the early 20th century, the NAACP was also radical in its own way because it defied the ‘place’ of the African American, and the organization enjoyed many successes of its own. For example, the NAACP played a major role in the 1923 Moore v. Dempsey decision that strengthened due process and African American’s Constitutional rights. It was not only the Communist Party that took an interest in labor either, though Gilmore makes it seem as if labor was a CPUSA concern only and does not mention that the NAACP was involved in the creation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first African American labor union (52). Though these successes are certainly not as radical as labor marches through the streets of Gastonia, they are still significant to early civil rights radicalism.

In keeping with the international scope of civil rights and the importance of the Communist Party, Gilmore brings to light that Africa Americans even went to Russia, had audience with Stalin himself, and many even let out sighs of relief to be in a country where they could, for the first time, enjoy life without fear. African American civil rights and Communism are two movements not typically linked together. In placing them together, Gilmore effectively rewrites civil rights history to include world wide involvement. She does similarly with Fascism in the United States. Gilmore reveals that Fascist ideology was intertwined with white supremacy (106), yet Gilmore does not adequately make the connection between the ideologies of Fascism and white supremacy to explain how white supremacists co-opted Fascism into their beliefs. Additionally, Gilmore splits up the influence of Fascism into two different sections, one in which she describes how some Americans embraced it early on, and then how later Fascism became linked with Communism and Nazi policy, and was thereafter largely rejected within America. Gilmore skips from one to the other without describing the intermediate years and how white supremacists that were once Fascist came to reject the ideology. Gilmore makes it clear why they did, but does not trace how or what happened to the former Black Shirt white supremacist American Fascists.

Gilmore focuses her narrative on select people and groups, which allows her to make her points without filling pages with names and events that would have made the monograph dense and less fluid. Through the experiences of her select characters, Gilmore documents the progress of movements and is then allowed to move on with her point made by their examples. As she admits in her introduction, she leaves out a significant portion of people in the South who played major roles in the Civil Rights movement (11). As reviewer Michael Dennis points out, the people ignored “forged precisely the kind of political linkages that defined the popular front and did a good deal more grass roots organizing in the South than Fort-Whiteman.” While leaving out these groups of people and their contributions does not weaken the argument Gilmore is trying to make, adding them would have strengthened her narrative by illustrating the scope of the work the Popular Front involved itself in. While she leaves out some groups and people, she includes other often overlooked players such as Truman’s committee on civil rights, adding another layer to the retelling of conventional civil rights history (409).

Gilmore’s limited focus allows her to incorporate an element of familiarity that makes her story easier and more enjoyable to read. The people involved in the movements she writes about become more than just names, but people with personalities. The emotional connection forged with these people give the book a sense of intimacy. Much like in her previous book, Gender & Jim Crow, Gilmore uses this feeling of familiarity to make assumptions about people’s feelings and motivations that cannot be supported by evidence. For instance, Gilmore assumes that Louise Thompson must have been hiding something about her feelings for African American Communist Lovett Fort-Whiteman (143). She does the same when she attempts to psychoanalyze the reticence of Alain Locke and attributes it to an attraction to the charismatic Langston Hughes (137). These are things that Gilmore herself simply cannot know without personal testimony. In some cases, Gilmore is able to more successfully pull off her personal narratives. When she describes the death of Fort-Whiteman, she adds a touching reflection of his last moments that closes up the extraordinary life of this very unique man (154). It is in moments like those that Gilmore fosters a true emotional connection between her book and the reader. The combination of humanization and the personalization of events with a unique historical interpretation make Defying Dixie an essential book on the civil rights movement. Defying Dixie adds a new layer to the understanding of how the civil rights movement progressed, and what influenced the later movement. While it does not rewrite the entirety of the movement, it inserts a new level that should not be overlooked.

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Disclaimer(s):

- More can be found in my Reviews section or on my Biblio page. If you would like to see my book list for 2009, go here.

- If you would like me to review your book, send an email to me at morbidromantic@gmail.com. Read my Book Review Policy for more information.

Sweet Smell of Decay bt Paul Lawrence (Won in a contest)
With The Sweet Smell of Decay, Paul Lawrence introduces us to a memorable fictional creation, Harry Lytle, in the first of a new series entitled The Chronicles of Harry Lytle. Firmly located in Restoration England, these are universally enjoyable novels which combine wonderful period detail and atmosphere with a riveting page-turning quality. It’s London,1664, and Harry has a big problem. He’s just discovered he has a young cousin, Anne Giles, and he’s had the pleasure of meeting her for the first time – mutilated and laid out on the slab for an autopsy. His father has tasked him with job of tracking down Anne’s murderer. Harry has some robust assistance from one David Dowling, a resourceful and impressively well-built, but equally hygiene-deficient, butcher. Together they follow a trail of blood, conspiracy and corruption that takes them to the dark and murky corners of Restoration London, featuring a great cast of ne’er-do-wells, cheeky wenches, harmless witches, likeable villains, and not a few unsavoury fellows keen on sending Lytle and his companion to an early grave.

Last Act in Palmyra by Lindsey Davis (Paperbackswap)
If Travis McGee traveled in time back to treacherous, civilized Rome in 72 A.D., he might be something like Marcus Didius Falco. Appearing in his sixth adventure, the resourceful, bantering court investigator, who is graced with more humor than his south Florida counterpart and who hates injustice without being a drone about it, is such a regular guy that it’s easy to forget he’s not speaking figuratively when he talks about the latest model of chariot. Falco was denied a promised promotion into the upper class by the emperor Vespasian after his last escapade (in Poseidon’s Gold), a promotion required for him to marry his lover, the patrician Helena Justina. To get out of town with Helena, he takes on a job for one of the emperor’s less trustworthy underlings, heading for Syria to do a little snooping; at the same time he’s also on the lookout for a runaway girl who may have been kidnapped by a Syrian. While sightseeing, Falco and Helena discover, in a cistern, the body of a playwright who had been with an acting troupe out of Rome. For various reasons, Falco and Helena sign on with the troupe in order to find the killer, with Falco taking on the little appreciated duties of the playwright for cover. Accompanying the troupe on their travels, readers get a history lesson they may wish they had had in high school, all the while being treated to a polished narrative.

Voodoo Season by Jewell Parker Rhodes (Paperbackswap)
Medicine and voodoo may seem at odds, but Marie Levant, first-year resident at New Orleans’s Charity Hospital, discovers she has a gift for more than one kind of healing. Rhodes develops this theme to full advantage in her second book (after Voodoo Dreams) about this descendant of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen. Strange forces are at work in the humid heat, and Marie is plagued by disturbing dreams and the sense that she has lived this life before. She employs her inner strength and feminist powers in pursuit of the murderer of the gentle and handsome young man who shared her bed one evening, awakening feelings she had too long ignored. Marie’s mother fled to Chicago when she was small and cleaned houses to survive. When the mother died mysteriously, the daughter went into foster care. Events intensify with Marie’s delivery of a dead girl’s living baby. She feels herself the mother and resolves to find the baby’s origins. Rhodes’s tale of spiritual empowerment and prophetic vision reveals the practice of voodoo as good as well as evil. Nonbelievers along with the initiated will be riveted throughout.

Signora Da Vinci by Robin Maxwell (Paperbackswap)
Maxwell (Mademoiselle Boleyn) re-creates Renaissance Italy in splendid detail, but fails to deliver a convincing narrative in her tale of da Vinci’s mother, Caterina, an apothecary’s daughter who is schooled from an early age in the art of alchemy. At 14, Caterina falls in love with Piero da Vinci, an older man above her station. After he promises to marry her, they make love, and the seed of the great artist is planted. But their plans doesn’t work out: Piero’s family forbids him from marrying Caterina and later takes baby Leonardo from his unwed mother. Leonardo is not treated well by the da Vinci family, but in his occasional visits to the apothecary shop, precocious Leonardo thrives. Soon his skillful drawings compel Caterina to seek an artist’s apprenticeship for Leonardo in Florence, where he matures into a highly accomplished artist. Caterina misses him so terribly that she plans a hard-to-imagine reunion that changes her life in unbelievable ways. While the setting and known events of the artist’s life are meticulously rendered, the plot relies too much on suspension of disbelief.

Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz (Paperbackswap)
Cruz has revamped traditional vampire lore in this story featuring a group of attractive, privileged Manhattan teens who attend a prestigious private school. Schuyler Van Alen, 15, the last of the line in a distinguished family, is being raised by her distant and forbidding grandmother. Schuyler, her friend Oliver, and their new friend Dylan are treated like outsiders by the clique of popular, athletic, and beautiful teens made up of Mimi Force, her twin brother, and her best friend. What they have in common is the fact that they are all Blue Bloods, or vampires. They don’t realize that they aren’t normal until they reach age 15. Then the symptoms manifest themselves and they begin to crave raw meat, have nightmares about events in history, and get prominent blue veins in their arms. Their immortality and way of life are threatened after Blue Blood teens start getting murdered by a splinter group called the Silver Bloods. This novel constantly name-drops and is full of product placements, drinking, drugs, nonexplicit sex, and superficial characterizations, but the intriguing plot will keep teens reading. De la Cruz’s explanation for the disappearance of the Colony of Roanoke is unique and the idea that models don’t gain weight because they are Blue Bloods rather than anorexic is unusual.

Cicero by Anthony Everitt (Paperbackswap)
Using Cicero’s letters to his good friend Atticus, among other sources, Everitt recreates the fascinating world of political intrigue, sexual decadence and civil unrest of Republican Rome. Against this backdrop, he offers a lively chronicle of Cicero’s life. Best known as Rome’s finest orator and rhetorician, Cicero (103 -43 B.C.) situated himself at the center of Roman politics. By the time he was 30, Cicero became a Roman senator, and 10 years later he was consul. Opposing Julius Caesar and his attempt to form a new Roman government, Cicero remained a thorn in Caesar’s side until the emperor’s assassination. Cicero supported Pompey’s attempts during Caesar’s reign to bring Rome back to republicanism. Along the way, Cicero put down conspiracies, won acquittal for a man convicted of parricide, challenged the dictator Sulla with powerful rhetoric about the decadence of Sulla’s regime and wrote philosophical treatises. Everitt deftly shows how Cicero used his oratorical skills to argue circles around his opponents. More important, Everitt portrays Cicero as a man born at the wrong time. While Cicero vainly tried to find better men to run government and better laws to keep them in order, Republican Rome was falling down around him, never to return to the glory of Cicero’s youth. A first-rate complement to Elizabeth Rawson’s Cicero or T.N. Mitchell’s monumental two-volume biography, Everitt’s first book is a brilliant study that captures Cicero’s internal struggles and insecurities as well as his external political successes.

(Paperbackswap)
In this Edgar Award-nominated mystery, John Maddox Roberts takes readers back to a Rome filled with violence and evil. Vicious gangs ruled the streets of Crassus and Pompey, routinely preying on plebeian and patrician alike, so the garroting of a lowly ex-slaved and the disembowelment of a foreign merchant in the dangerous Subura district seemed of little consequence to the Roman hierarchy. But Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger–highborn commander of the local vigiles–was determined to investigate. Despite official apathy, brazen bribes, and sinister threates, Decius uncovers a world of corruption at the highest levels of his government that threatens to destroy him and the government he serves.

The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova (Won in a contest)
The Swan Thieves revisits certain themes and strategies of The Historian, chief among them an academic hero who is drawn into a quest for knowledge about the central mystery, only to develop an obsession that becomes the driving force of the plot. Each chapter marks a point of view shift from the previous one, with the narrative shared among a variety of characters telling the story in a variety of ways. The events range from the present moment back to the 19th century of the painters Beatrice de Clerval and her uncle Olivier Vignot, whose intertwined lives, letters, and paintings are at the heart of the story.This time out, Kostova’s central character, Andrew Marlow, has a license to ask prying questions as he unravels the secrets and pursues the truth, because he is a psychiatrist. (Before Freud, genre quest novels depended on sleuths like Sherlock Holmes to play this role.) Even though Marlow comes across as a sensible, trained therapist, after only the briefest of encounters with his newly hospitalized patient, the renowned painter Robert Oliver, Marlow develops an obsessive desire to solve the mystery of why Oliver attempted to slash a painting in the National Gallery. Marlow is himself a painter, and the Oliver case has been given to him because of his knowledge of art. But Oliver is uncooperative and mute, though he conveniently gives Marlow permission to talk to anyone in his life before falling silent. Oliver’s inexplicable behavior, which includes poring over a stolen cache of old letters written in French, triggers what I can only call a rampant countertransference response in Marlow, whose overwhelming obsession becomes a strange and frequently far-fetched journey of discovery as he persists to the point of trespass and invasion. Is this the crossing of the ultimate border promised by the ARC’s jacket copy, the enactment of the fantasy of one’s therapist developing an obsessive fascination that blots out all other reality?

Gender & Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore approaches the postbellum disenfranchisement of African American men and the accompanying racism and violence through the lens of gender history. Though the title is misleading in that it speaks of women and their involvement with politics and white supremacy, it is not merely a work of women’s history. Gilmore actually encompasses more than just the stories and accounts of women in her study. In staying true to gender history, Gilmore constructs narratives that illustrate the changing social perceptions of femininity and masculinity in North Carolina following the Reconstruction, and then further divides gender by race lines. In doing so, she presents an illuminating image of how gender and race became linked, describing how it defined both whites and blacks, and how race came to define gender expectations and cultivated racial stereotypes. Finally, she describes how racist ideas became the backbone for an exclusionary policy that would remove political power and much upward mobility from blacks, ushering in the age of Jim Crow law. Gilmore’s study gives to historians a new way to look at the justifications of Jim Crow because it establishes an evolving social perception of what separated blacks from whites and how ideas of race were constructed to the disfavor of black Americans. Throughout, she links everything to women and how they were perceived, treated, and personally acted, which makes this book a good addition to women’s history, as well as to the wider scope of gender history.

The narrative in Gender & Jim Crow focuses on a prominent African American family, the Petteys. From humble origins, Charles and Sarah Pettey were icons of the promises of Reconstruction and freedom. Educated and bold proponents of black enfranchisement and rights, they encompassed the hopes of their generation that they too could obtain an equal standing with whites, and are representative of that overall optimism. One of the greatest strengths of Gender & Jim Crow is how Gilmore uses the Pettey family to illustrate just how divergent the social ideals of blacks and whites were at the time, and how Jim Crow stunted the progress of many deserving and intelligent blacks. Gilmore expresses perfectly the dynamics of how social ideas come from history and experience by stating that blacks shared a tradition of relative gender egalitarianism, which allowed black women to become more prominent than white women were allowed to be within the patriarchal restrictions of their separate society. In doing so, Gilmore is able to present a very telling picture of how both distinct groups defined their own identity, and just what elements made up those identities. While these concepts are by no means new, Gilmore is clear cut and yet unique in her gender and sexually based approach.

By paying enough attention to the workings of the Pettey family, their ups and their downs, the book is intimately presented and is a compelling and interesting read. The firsthand accounts within give life to the story rather than have it rendered through fact and theory alone. However, limiting the focus of a book to a small group can distort the scope of the facts and lead to misinterpretations of the general overall experience since not everyone shared in the same events, emotions, and fortunes. One person’s experiences are not common to all. Gilmore avoids that trap successfully by incorporating the firsthand accounts of other blacks and whites, so her book neither distorts the scope of her subject nor presents a severely limited picture too small in scale to be a major part of larger political and social happenings. There is a range of personalities, conflicting and coming together, to round out the Pettey family. Lower class African Americans are, however, severely unrepresented. So much less vocal, and often times unable to leave behind a documentary trail through writing, the volumes of information left behind by educated, higher class African Americans dim their voices. The hardships endured by the lower class, and the natural limitations of people without money or sufficient education, would make their stories much less dramatic, but they were still impacted by Jim Crow and certainly had something to say. After all, the title of the book does not say it is only about middle class blacks, and lower class whites are discussed in depth. Gilmore does the same by including details about the black experience throughout the Deep South, letting readers know that her focus remains in North Carolina, which was not representative of the entire south.

In working with people and their intimate experiences, there are other traps. One of these traps Gilmore succumbs to, but is largely able to justify doing so. When becoming close to a group of people in such a personal subject, there is a tendency to make assumptions about people’s feelings and motivations, which cannot be known unless explicitly stated and not confirmed because these people cannot be asked. For example, with a flair of psychohistory, Gilmore states that white supremacist Thomas Dixon Jr. focused so much on sexuality and the mixing of races because he could not come to terms with the sexuality of the pure white Southern woman, especially his mother. There is no way for Gilmore to know the inner insecurities of Dixon. In other cases of these assumed motivations and feelings, Gilmore is amply able to substantiate them with quotes and actions that illustrate how inner feelings were projected into outward action. For instance, Gilmore looks at the actions of more aggressive blacks and attempts to get into their heads to define the root of their anger and what they hoped to achieve. While Gilmore can never know their inner workings, she does validate her insights by using examples of how blacks defied the limitations placed on them and acted contrary to what was expected of them as an outlet and a show of their own freedom and rights, even if this meant walking on a sidewalk or jabbing with an umbrella.

Gender & Jim Crow is well documented with a vast collection of primary and secondary sources. Personal papers, interviews, and newspaper articles make up the bulk of primary sources, but there are also annual reports, directories, convention meeting minutes, legal documents, and official reports used. Primary sources make up the majority of her sources, which allows her analysis to be driven by original interpretation. Context is strengthened by the use of many secondary sources, and Gilmore makes good use of the scholarship available to corroborate her facts with setting. However, there is not a great deal of recent scholarship used, at least very little within the decade that had preceded the book’s publication. Gilmore neglects what recent scholars may have said on her subject and could have enriched her own study with more updated findings.

So many people assume that Jim Crow was an almost immediate after effect of the freeing of slaves. It is thought that a nearly instantaneous disenfranchisement stopped the possible progress of promising African Americans before they even had a chance to start. Gilmore’s study turns this understanding around and presents a different perspective: African Americans enjoyed a brief period of progress, albeit never entirely unrestricted or without negative feelings from whites. This insight is vital to understanding Jim Crow because it makes even more devastating just what was taken away from African Americans, and just how far they were marginalized. It shows what was truly denied them, and in doing so, it humanizes the subject. Gilmore is also adept at showing how African Americans created new political avenues to give to history an understanding of how blacks adapted to their surroundings and fought for influence such as black women did with Progressive community action. One of the greatest strengths of Gender & Jim Crow is that Gilmore really makes a reader feel the sadness, the frustrations, and the anger coming from both sides. It is not merely a history text, but a story full of unique people. This makes Gender & Jim Crow something that both a scholar and a casual reader can enjoy and understand.¹

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Disclaimer(s):

- More can be found in my Reviews section or on my Biblio page. If you would like to see my book list for 2009, go here.

- If you would like me to review your book, send an email to me at morbidromantic@gmail.com. Read my Book Review Policy for more information.

1. The following review was done as part of a graded assignment and was turned in accordingly.

A Dying Light in Corduba by Lindsey Davis (Paperbackswap)
In this latest addition to a durable series, Marcus Didius Falco travels to the distant province of Baetica, pregnant girlfriend in tow, to investigate a possible olive oil cartel. The emphasis in this historical mystery is as much on historical as mystery, with solid detail and vivid insights that bring the ancient Roman alive. But the plotting, though leisurely, is nicely suspenseful and the ending worth the wait.

Tudor Rose follows the tumultuous events of the life of Elizabeth of York, one of the Plantagenet and the rightful heir to the throne after her father dies and her uncle Richard has her two brothers murdered. Once a young girl with high hopes of being married off to French royalty, dreams that are never realized as the nature of political alliance complicates happiness, Elizabeth (Bess) is thrown into drama and intrigue when, just as her young brother Edward is to be crowned King, he is sent to the Tower of London. Not soon after, so too is her brother Richard. With both sons out of the way, presumed and then verified dead, her father’s brother, the noble Richard rises to the thrown.

She is caught in the middle of an uncle she fears is a murderer and may soon either murder or wish to marry her, and a political alliance with one of the Tudor family in exile. In a plot to rid herself of her uncle, she promises young Henry that she will marry him and give him the crown if he kills her uncle.

Yet it is no happily ever after for them as Elizabeth soon finds that their marriage will not be one of love. After a lifetime of disappointment and fear, she must now endure a husband who is not only ambitious, but entirely awkward at ways of love. His brand of affection is vexing for her indeed. Feeling unloved, Elizabeth must find reasons and things within her life to bring her pleasure. And, as she hopes, to make the husband she gave her crown and the power over all of England to love her finally. Amidst disappointment, fear, and grief, the two of them

I very much enjoyed Tudor Rose, as it is one of my first forays into the realm of Tudor fiction, which is apparently all the rage. Not knowing much about the time period or the family itself, I cannot attest to the historical accuracy of the novel besides saying that the author has taken great pains to bring life and complexity into each and every character. Whether the personalities are true to the people, I liked that each and every one was distinct and evolving, not superficial. Though of course the “everyone loves Bess, she’s perfect and no one can resist her charms and adores her” was a little bit annoying. It took it to that ‘romance novel’ level of perfect lead female characters that I just cannot stand. She was your typical tragic female character who is perfect despite all and suffers through misfortune that only makes her ever more adored by those around her.

Not my type of character.

I was also a bit put off by how quickly certain events moved. It seemed throughout the novel that the author was setting us up for something big and climactic, but then it would all come to an end in the beginning of the first chapter with a few sentences to explain it was taken care of. It felt rather disappointing to be set up for so much drama, only to not get to witness it being played out. This was more common in the beginning on the novel, which I suppose is understandable because to cover everything would have made the book of considerable length.

There was enough to fill up the pages, and not everything was brushed over anti-climactic. I read the book in its entirely in a hotel room in San Diego and very much enjoyed every moment of the experience. I even found myself looking forward to returning to the hotel room to finish the book.

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Disclaimer(s):

- More can be found in my Reviews section or on my Biblio page. If you would like to see my book list for 2009, go here.

- If you would like me to review your book, send an email to me at morbidromantic@gmail.com. Read my Book Review Policy for more information.

1. I received this book for free in exchange for a review

The State in Early Modern France by James B. Collins (Bought from Amazon)
A new edition of James Collins’s acclaimed synthesis that challenged longstanding views of the origins of modern states and absolute monarchy through an analysis of early modern Europe’s most important continental state. Incorporating recent scholarship on the French state and his own research, James Collins has revised the text throughout. He examines recent debates on ‘absolutism’; presents a fresh interpretation of the Fronde and of French society in the eighteenth century; includes additional material on French colonies and overseas trade; and ties recent theoretical work into a new chapter on Louis XIV. He argues that the monarchical state came into being around 1630, matured between 1690 and 1730 and, in a new final chapter, shows that the period May 1787 to June 1789 was an interregnum, with the end of the Ancien Régime coming not in 1789 but with the dissolution of the Assembly of Notables on 25 May 1787.

The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement in the Urban South, 1918-1942 by Claudrena N. Harold (Bought from Amazon)
The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement in the Urban South provides the first detailed examination of the Universal Negro Improvement Association’s rise, maturation, and eventual decline in the urban South between 1918 and 1942. It examines the ways in which Southern black workers fused locally-based traditions, ideologies, and strategies of resistance with the Pan-African agenda of the UNIA to create a dynamic and multifaceted movement. A testament to the multidimensionality of black political subjectivity, Southern Garveyites fashioned a politics reflective of their international, regional, and local attachments. Moving beyond the usual focus on New York and the charismatic personality of Marcus Garvey, this book situates black workers at the center of its analysis and aims to provide a much-needed grassroots perspective on the Garvey movement. More than simply providing a regional history of one of the most important Pan-African movements of the twentieth century, The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement in the Urban South demonstrates the ways in which racial, class, and spatial dynamics resulted in complex, and at times competing articulations of black nationalism.

Breathers by S.G. Browne (Bought from Barnes & Noble)
Andy’s life is a mess. A newly risen zombie, he’s forced to live in his parents’ basement, attend Undead Anonymous meetings just to get out of the house, and endure abuse of all kinds from the living. To make matters worse, he can’t even talk, though that’s because his mouth was sewn shut prior to being embalmed. Things begin to look up when Andy meets Rita, a gorgeous zombie who slashed her own wrists and throat; nebbish, vegetarian Tom, whose arm was stolen by a pack of drunken frat boys; and Ray, an undead renegade who introduces the gang to the wonders of eating “breathers.” Some die-hard horror aficionados may find this take on zombies too full of shtick (e.g., the running joke that falls flat by its second appearance), but Browne confidently balances a love story with ample amounts of gore and gags that should win over fans of George Romero (Night of the Living Dead et seq.) and fans of Shaun of the Dead, too. A welcome deviation in zombie lit.

Caesar by Colleen McCullough (Paperbackswap)
The story of Caesar’s Gallic Wars (roughly 5851 b.c.) and return to Rome warfare, followed fictively and, in the main, meticulously, from Caesar’s Commentaries. Again, the portraits are memorable–from Brutus (here, a money-mad “wet fish” with acne) to Cleopatra (scrawny, ugly, calmly plotting fratricide)–and the politicking is showy, sly, witty, and often deadly. At the close of Caesar’s Women (1996), McCullough’s fourth massive staging of the power wrests and wrestlings of mighty men of ancient Rome, Julius Caesar, a true colossus of skill and brilliance, had left for “Further Gaul.” Now, while mopping up the revolts in his detested Britannia of “blue-painted relics,” he receives word from Pompey the Great, First Man in Rome and husband of Caesar’s lovely daughter Julia, that Julia and his mother are dead. Grief drains him, but oddly he grows in strength, proceeding to un-Romanized Gaul, pacifying tribe after tribe, and eventually defeating Vercingetorix, an ambitious but inexperienced leader out to unite Gaul, who would not accept Caesar’s offer of Rome’s “light rein” in a “shrinking world.” While Caesar with his beloved legions win Gaul with extraordinary tactics and hardship, his foes in Rome have swung Pompey–once a Golden Boy, now tarnished with fatuous conceit and lack of political savvy–to their cause, which is, simply, to destroy Caesar. Although scrupulous in his observance of law, Caesar crosses the Rubicon to become Rome’s aggressor. (McCullough appropriately uses Plutarch’s account of his utterance: “Let the dice fly high!” instead of the gloomy “The die is cast.”) While temporarily Dictator, afterward, Caesar pursues Pompey’s armies until the Great One’s sad end. In the wings for Book Six: the gorgeous Mark Antony, slinky Octavius, and Cleopatra. Rewarding but rugged terrain for the casual reader. Armchair generals, though, should love this–perhaps with De bello Gallico at the ready. Maps, glossary, and photos of sculptured portraits of the time.

The Betrayal/The Secret/The Burning (The Fear Street Saga 1-3) by R.L. Stine (Paperbackswap)
The Betrayal: Nora knows the secrets behind the horrifying things happening on Fear Street and reveals the dark legacy that marked the start of the terror three hundred years earlier, when a young girl was burned at the stake. The Secret: Tormented by a curse that has plagued them for generations, the Fier family changes its name to Fear, hoping to escape the horrible secret. The Burning: Daniel and Nora, two young lovers from feuding families, must use their forbidden love to stop the awesome evil that stalks Nora and her family. A collector’s edition of a special Fear Street trilogy features a see-through vellum and foil dual stepback cover that comes complete with a fold-out color poster of the Fear Family Tree that describes the Fear Street history.

Malice by Chris Wooding (Won in a contest)
“TALL JAKE, TAKE ME AWAY…” Everyone’s heard the rumors. Call on Tall Jake and he’ll take you to Malice, a world that exists inside a terrifying comic book. A place most kids never leave. Seth and Kady think it’s all a silly myth. But then their friend disappears, and suddenly the rumors don’t seem so silly anymore… Part thriller, part ground-breaking graphic novel … get into this story, and you may never get out!

With The Sweet Smell of Decay, Paul Lawrence introduces us to a memorable fictional creation, Harry Lytle, in the first of a new series entitled The Chronicles of Harry Lytle. Firmly located in Restoration England, these are universally enjoyable novels which combine wonderful period detail and atmosphere with a riveting page-turning quality.

It’s London,1664, and Harry has a big problem. He’s just discovered he has a young cousin, Anne Giles, and he’s had the pleasure of meeting her for the first time – mutilated and laid out on the slab for an autopsy. His father has tasked him with job of tracking down Anne’s murderer. Harry has some robust assistance from one David Dowling, a resourceful and impressively well-built, but equally hygiene-deficient, butcher. Together they follow a trail of blood, conspiracy and corruption that takes them to the dark and murky corners of Restoration London, featuring a great cast of ne’er-do-wells, cheeky wenches, harmless witches, likeable villains, and not a few unsavoury fellows keen on sending Lytle and his companion to an early grave.

I love, love, love the cover.