History.

NONFICTION

****

American Creation

Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic

By Joseph J. Ellis

Ideas, not just men.

Joseph Ellis is best known for his portrayals of the Founding Fathers: Thomas Jefferson in the National Book Award--winning American Sphinx, George Washington in His Excellency: George Washington, and Jefferson, Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Aaron Burr in his Pulitzer Prize--winning group portrait, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. Now Ellis attempts something like a moving picture, examining the characters of the Revolutionary era through six pivotal events. The names are familiar--Valley Forge, Constitutional Convention, Louisiana Purchase--but Ellis's analysis is anything but, as he uses each episode to reveal the complexities of a different Founding Father. He also introduces readers to important but overlooked personalities such as Robert Livingston, whose negotiations with Napoleon's government led to the Louisiana Purchase, and the crafty Creek leader Alexander McGillivray. But the true stars of Ellis's book are the American ideas that, like the Founding Fathers, continue to be debated today.

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Knopf. 283 pages. $26.95. ISBN: 030726369X

Chicago Tribune *****

"American Creation is one of the most enjoyable and thought-provoking books I've read in years. ... This gift [for suspense] is all the more remarkable because the suspense is built almost entirely from the intrigue of ideas rather than the visceral emotions of flesh and blood adventures." DEBBY APPLEGATE

Milwaukee Jrnl Sentinel ****

"If there is anyone who emerges as consistently heroic in Ellis' judgment, it is Washington, whose rectitude and realism did much to hold the country together. ... [Ellis] proves himself once again to be a superb guide to the people and events that shaped the young United States." PHILIP SEIB

NY Times Book Review ****

"It is difficult to imagine an educated American who does not know that the Revolution was selective and that the Revolutionaries, many of them slaveholders who were complicit in the bloodthirsty treatment of Indians, were flawed and imperfect. But Ellis rescues his enterprise by going beyond the familiar critique of the founding to explore a point that remains underappreciated: that America was constructed to foster arguments, not to settle them." JOE MEACHAM

Rocky Mountain News ****

"The events that occurred during this period were a collection of ironies, contradictions, improvisations and compromises that defined the political and physical face of America. Some of the issues debated at our creation are still being debated today." DAN DANBORN

Christian Science Monitor ****

"How did the same leaders manage to be so great in some instances and so dreadfully wrong in others? Ellis tries to answer the question in his modest but useful book." RANDY DOTINGA

Washington Post ****

"[C]an it be that Ellis is just a trifle guilty of the 'presentism'--seeing the past through the prism of the present--that he elsewhere deplores? It is possible to agree that slavery and the decimation of the native population are the great stains upon the moral standing of this country, yet also to understand that people of intelligence and good will saw things differently then." JONATHAN YARDLEY

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Reviewers embraced American Creation for the same reason they enjoyed Ellis's previous books: his treatment of the Founding Fathers is neither idolatrous nor iconoclastic. He portrays them as the fascinating, complex, and human characters they really were. Some historians disagreed with details of Ellis's interpretation, but they tended to emphasize that, like the founders themselves, Ellis has created a useful framework in which the ideas of the Revolutionary period can be discussed. Ellis's prose, on the other hand, did not inspire any comparisons with Thomas Jefferson's; in fact, several reviewers suggested another round of editing. But all critics agreed that the author's masterful handling of the material checked and balanced the occasional tyrannical sentence.

****

American Transcendentalism

A History

By Philip F. Gura

Transcendental meditations.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau, as well as lesser-known figures (such as Orestes Brownson, George Ripley, Bronson Alcott, and Theodore Parker), all star in American Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism, a transformative movement that introduced the public intellectual to American culture, was characterized by a call for self-reliance and individualism--values influenced by European Romanticism, religious debate, and German philosophy. Besides providing biographies of many of the key players and analyzing their works, reforms, and beliefs, the author defines the complex, elusive "many-headed Hydra"--much more than a literary phenomenon--that flourished between 1830 and 1850 and spread from New England into varied spheres. It was a time, Gura writes, as fraught with civil upheaval and radical ideas as the 1960s.

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Hill and Wang. 365 pages. $27.50. ISBN: 0809034778

San Francisco Chronicle *****

"This book on American transcendentalism, a culmination and extension of his past work, brilliantly synthesizes religious, intellectual and cultural history, providing a rich and essential account of the movement. ... Thanks to Gura's excellent work, the movement is shown as a time when spiritual ideals motivated people to action to refine and redirect the imperfect American experiment."

KATHERINE MARINO

Washington Post *****

"There's nothing perfunctory or dryly academic about American Transcendentalism. ... Above all, his exciting, even eye-opening book shows us that from 1830 to 1850 a group of New England preachers and intellectuals confronted what has proved to be the great polarizing tension in American history, that between hyperindividualism and the claims of social justice and human brotherhood."

MICHAEL DIRDA

Christian Science Monitor ****

"The stories of these thinkers are intriguing, and Gura does a good job of conveying a sense of the intellectual electricity of the times. But there is also a current of sadness running through much of the book because, in the end, what Gura is writing is, in many ways, the story of a failure."

MARJORIE KEHE

Los Angeles Times ****

"In American Transcendentalism: A History, Gura untangles this complex web of ideas and characters and weaves them into a clear, coherent and compelling tale of America's first, and maybe greatest, major intellectual movement."

DEBBY APPLEGATE

Seattle Times ****

"Many of us are familiar with the names of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. But in American Transcendentalism, a new history of generous scope and considerable depth, Philip F. Gura illuminates a much broader panoply of intriguing characters who contributed to this movement."

BARBARA LLOYD MCMICHAEL

Boston Globe ****

"Despite its compact form in a text of just over 300 pages, Gura's expert account is comprehensive. ... [The] general reader whom many of us are may long for the simpler, more focused treatment of the subject that this thoroughgoing study never set out to provide."

PHILIP MCFARLAND

Chicago Tribune ****

"Since American Transcendentalism is a biography of ideas as much as a portrait of those who held them, it is peppered with point-counterpoint exchanges (Is belief in miracles a requisite of faith? for example), whether from Gura's research of periodicals of the time or the lectures and letters of the principals. As popular writing, what can seem to be minutia slows down his narrative significantly at points."

ART WINSLOW

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Philip F. Gura's bona fides are impeccable. He is professor of American literature and culture at the University of North Carolina and has written books on transcendentalism, early American history, and the American theologian Jonathan Edwards. Far from being one of those ubiquitous, cleverly packaged academic tomes in sheep's clothing, Gura's book breathes life into an important period in American history. Even though Gura limits his study to around 300 pages (plus notes), a strategy that results in a "lean, impassioned prose chockablock with anecdote and information" (Washington Post), a couple of critics still wonder if the lay reader's interest will hold. What is the best reason for us to read this synthesis? "The deepest scholarship, like the greatest art, not only enriches our lives," The Washington Post's Michael Dirda reminds us, "but also implicitly asks us to examine them, even to cross-examine them."

****

The Telephone Gambit

Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret

By Seth Shulman

Elisha Gray? Doesn't ring a Bell.

March 10, 1876. An acid spill in a Boston laboratory. A quick shout for help. An unlikely response from the assistant, Watson. Alexander Graham Bell has invented the telephone. Settled history, right? Not so fast. In The Telephone Gambit, a historical whodunit combining intrigue, subterfuge, and love, Seth Shulman claims that the telephone's invention might properly be credited to Elisha Gray, an unassuming, talented Ohio inventor who filed his patent for the device on the same day as Bell. Gray held a missing piece to the puzzle--a piece that his otherwise scrupulous and well-liked rival seems to have obtained through deception in what Shulman deems "a stunning fissure in the polished facade of Bell's legacy."

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Norton. 256 pages. $24.95. ISBN: 0393062066

Christian Science Monitor *****

"The Telephone Gambit succeeds splendidly as an edge-of-your-seat historical tale. Yet it also manages to go somewhere deeper, leaving readers with intriguing questions about the ways in which truth may remain undiscovered, even when lying open in plain sight."

MARJORIE KEHE

Wall Street Journal *****

"As Mr. Shulman shows in this page-turner of a book, what we think we know about the past is not always true. ... The Telephone Gambit is solid history, and Seth Shulman makes it as much fun to read as an Agatha Christie whodunit by using the techniques of historiography the way Hercule Poirot used his 'little gray cells.'"

JOHN STEELE GORDON

Boston Globe ****

"The historian's role is to ask tough questions and doggedly follow the evidence. Seth Shulman provides a stellar example of historical investigation at its probing best."

CHUCK LEDDY

Cleveland Plain Dealer ****

"This story has been told so many times that it seems heretical to question it. But science journalist Seth Shulman does exactly that in his smoothly written, impeccably researched book."

PHILLIP MANNING

Los Angeles Times **

"The Telephone Gambit contains no suspense or surprise, no shadings of ambiguity. ... And while Shulman deftly explains the intricacies of electrical currents in user-friendly prose, he's a clumsy storyteller."

MARK COLEMAN

CRITICAL SUMMARY

In Unlocking the Sky (2003), Seth Shulman showed his knack for historical detection by making credible claims that aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss deserves the same accolades for his work as the Wright brothers for theirs. In The Telephone Gambit, Shulman, who researched the book while a resident scholar in MIT's Dibner Institute, sets his sights on Alexander Graham Bell. He comes away with a stunning and plausible conclusion as he discredits Bell's claim to the world's most valuable patent. Drawing on research from Bell's own notebooks and other sources, Shulman combines deft sleuthing and a nose for a good story with what every critic except the reviewer for the Los Angeles Times deems lively, compact prose. The Telephone Gambit is a necessary addendum to textbook history.

****

What Hath God Wrought

The Transformation of America, 1815-1848

By Daniel Walker Howe

The revolution will be telegraphed.

In our national drama, the first half of the 19th century is often regarded as an intermission between the era of the Founding Fathers and the Civil War. Yet according to Daniel Walker Howe, the events of these years set up nearly everything that followed--not just the War between the States but conflicts that animate American life even today. Howe delivers a comprehensive account of the period and explores markets, religion, voluntary organizations, territorial growth, literature, social reform, political parties, and the concept of democracy. No economic determinist, he holds a particular place in his heart for the Whig Party (the book is dedicated to the memory of John Quincy Adams) and especially for the communications revolution brought about by the telegraph of Samuel Morse (whose biblically themed first telegram inspired the title).

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Oxford University Press. 928 pages. $35. ISBN: 0195078942

Atlantic *****

"Howe covers it all--the Jacksonian and market 'revolutions,' the rise of sectional tensions, westward expansion, the Transcendentalists, revivalism--through astute pen portraits, authoritative analysis, and gripping narrative. The Oxford series has been uneven, but this volume is a masterpiece."

New York Sun ****

"An expert in the field, Mr. Howe has skillfully framed a story, between the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War, that becomes eloquent once you think about it: The rise of nationalism, the temperance movement, and booming growth all add up to an America much more familiar to us than that of James Madison. ... Lauded by other historians as an important yet accessible landmark, Mr. Howe's study promises odd new angles on America in an election year."

BENJAMIN LYTAL

New Yorker ****

"The women's-rights movement, which grew out of the antislavery movement, which grew out of revivalism, which was made possible by advances in transportation and communication, is the strongest evidence for the interpretive weight that Howe places on social, cultural, and religious forces as agents of change, and makes What Hath God Wrought a bold challenge. ... Howe's synthesis does what a synthesis is supposed to do: it brings all these things together."

JILL LEPORE

Washington Post ****

"Howe brings an impressive array of strengths to the daunting task of encapsulating these busy, complicated three-plus decades within a single admittedly, very long) volume. ... [Howe] is a genuine rarity: an English intellectual who not merely writes about the United States but actually understands it."

JONATHAN YARDLEY

Baltimore Sun ***

"What Hath God Wrought examines is the dark side of American history--and the impending crisis over slavery. But Howe is too Whiggish not to see its 'more hopeful aspects.'"

GLENN C. ALTSCHULER

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Both academics and lay readers praised What Hath God Wrought, but they appreciated it for different reasons. It is certainly an exhaustively researched and well-written historical survey--exactly what a volume in the Oxford History Series ought to be. American historians admired its elegant synthesis but also understood that Howe is attempting to lead his readers and colleagues away from the strictly economic explanations that have often dominated writing on this period. Historian Jill Lepore, for example, thought that the change in perspective helps Howe subtly explain many aspects of the period, such as the women's rights movement. Only historian Glenn C. Altschuler believed that Howe has some "axioms to grind" in his reworking of so-called Jacksonian Democracy. Howe's approach also brings nonacademic readers back into the conversation, though at over 900 pages, the book is probably best suited for history buffs.

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*****

Agent Zigzag

A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal

By Ben Macintyre

The original 007?

Eddie Chapman, a suave Errol Flynn look-alike who financed his flashy Depression-era lifestyle with petty crime, was serving time for burglary in Jersey when the Nazis invaded the Channel Islands. Faced with imprisonment in a concentration camp, he convinced his German captors of his abhorrence of all things British and was recruited as a spy. After rigorous training in France, Chapman parachuted into the English countryside on his first mission and promptly offered himself up to MI5 as a double agent. Code-named Zigzag, he traveled throughout occupied Europe, gathering intelligence for the Allies while feeding the Nazis a steady diet of misinformation. His outrageous adventures and narrow escapes made him an unlikely wartime hero whose charm and audacity saved countless lives.

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Harmony. 384 pages. $25.95. ISBN: 0307353400

Evening Standard (UK) *****

"Agent Zigzag ... is buzzing with life, rich in characterization and throbbing with incident. ... It's Macintyre's forensic eye for the telling minutia and his puckish style that rehydrate the old Second World War files and bring them back to life again."

PAUL CONNOLLY

New York Times *****

"[Chapman's] incredible wartime adventures, recounted in Ben Macintyre's rollicking, spellbinding Agent Zigzag, blend the spy-versus-spy machinations of John le carre with the high farce of Evelyn Waugh."

WILLIAM GRIMES

Seattle Times *****

"I've never read a better true spy tale than Agent Zigzag. ... Just when things are at their grimmest, something so unintentionally hilarious, ironic or poignant occurs, you have to set the book down for a while just to savor the moment."

MARY ANN GWINN

Washington Post *****

"Chapman's story has been told in fragments in the past, but only when MI5 declassified his files was it possible to present it in all its richness and complexity. Macintyre tells it to perfection, with endless insights into the horror and absurdity of war."

PATRICK ANDERSON

NY Times Book Review *****

"A review cannot possibly convey the sheer fun of this story, with its cast of eccentrics, its close calls and its improbable twists. Or the fascinating moral complexities."

JOSEPH KANON

Times (UK) ****

"With the help of Chapman's newly declassified nine-volume MI5 file, Macintyre succeeds in bringing him vividly to life. It is unlikely that a more engaging study of espionage and deception will be published this year."

CHRISTOPHER ANDREW

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Past writers have attempted to recount this fascinating bit of history, but lack of information and official censorship have kept the full story from being told. Thanks to Britain's Freedom of Information Act, Eddie Chapman's voluminous MI5 files are now available to the public, and Ben Macintyre has made full use of them in this riveting tale. Critics unanimously praised Macintyre's talents: his fluid writing style, his ability to build suspense, and his biting humor. Vivid descriptions, deft characterizations, and exhilarating action scenes (as well as secret codes, invisible ink, explosives disguised as household objects, parachute drops, cyanide capsules, and beautiful women) put Agent Zigzag on a par with any great spy novel or thriller.

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****

A Land So Strange

The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca

By Andres Resendez

Not the destination, but the journey.

When a Spanish expedition embarked for the coast of Florida in 1527, the 600 men who undertook the journey had adventure on their minds. After trials on land and sea--desertion, gross incompetence, skirmishes with hostile Indians, cannibalism, disease, starvation, drowning, and long-distance treks over inhospitable terrain--only four men remained. In a Land So Strange, historian Andres Resendez relates the account--unbelievable in many of the details, if it weren't for corroborating evidence--of explorer Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions. By the time they had crossed North America and sighted the Pacific Ocean on the western coast of Mexico, the group's number had swelled to thousands, including native peoples who treated the men as gods "in a land so strange," de Vaca wrote, "that it seemed impossible to be in it or to escape from it."

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Basic. 314 pages. $26.95. ISBN: 0465068405

Washington Post *****

"When you read a wonderful book, you can't stop talking about it, and so this past week I've been going on and on to friends about a terrific story. ... [A Land So Strange] reads like the most gruesome pulp magazine story, so full of mishap and mad misadventure that, as I went on and on about it to friends, invariably they'd say, 'Wait! Is this fiction or nonfiction?'"

CAROLYN SEE

Dallas Morning News ****

"[Resendez] provides a clear background of the politics of the Spanish Conquest, then spins a yarn of unimaginable hardship and a testament to endurance that elicits head-shaking disbelief on almost every page. ... [This] new interpretation is well-informed, well-written, well-researched and well-suited to providing a new perspective on one of the oldest of American stories."

CLAY REYNOLDS

Houston Chronicle ****

"[The author's] analysis is overcautious: What might have happened fills more pages than what did happen. ... Resendez's graceful tale of four men who came to accept a new land on its own terms is itself a marvel to behold."

BARBARA LISS

Miami Herald ****

"A confident storyteller, Resendez summarizes when he should and lingers in just the right places. ... But what's ultimately most striking about A Land So Strange is not the author's style nor the impressive scope of his research, but--as perhaps it should be--the compelling story itself."

CHARLES GERSHMAN

Providence Journal ****

"This is a voraciously readable and incredible tale of the journey of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, two of his comrades, and one African slave from Seville to Cuba, from a disastrous expedition into the coastal horrors of Florida across the Southwest and south into Mexico, from 1528 to 1536. ... [A Land So Strange] is must and wonderful reading for anyone interested in our mutual histories at a time when Europeans came upon a new world and found themselves irrevocably transformed."

SAM COALE

CRITICAL SUMMARY

In A Land So Strange, University of California, Davis, history professor Andres resendez relates this improbable tale with dynamic grace (Carolyn See of the Washington Post compares the book to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Moby-Dick). The author combines sound research--including more than 70 pages of footnotes and resources for additional study--with a pulp writer's eye for the compelling detail. The author's tale makes sense of La Relacion, Cabeza de Vaca's own account of his ordeal written after his return to Spain. The Dallas Morning News also points out the author's deft interpretation of the text, which is "written in a literary style peculiar to 16th-century Spain and sensitive to the vagaries of the Inquisition." A must-read for anyone interested in the early history of European exploration in North America--or in real-life adventure, compellingly told.