Enjoy a mug of Lamb's Wool with your slice of King's cake.
5 tart apples
1 cup hard cider (such as Woodchuck or Hornsby's)
4 pints of dark ale (such as Newcastle Brown)
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons butter
2 cinnamon sticks
1 tablespoon whole cloves (not ground)
one lemon
one orange
sugar to taste
Preheat oven to 350° F. Peel, core, and halve apples. Place cut side down in a glass baking dish. Pour cider over. Sprinkle 1/4 cup brown sugar on top and dot with butter. Bake for 45 minutes until very soft. Remove from oven and set aside.
Peel lemon and orange with a vegetable peeler. Cut peel into 1-2 inch pieces. Put ale, cinnamon sticks, cloves, and lemon and orange peel into a medium saucepan and heat gently over a low flame until warm. (Do not boil) Add sugar to taste. Pour into a serving bowl and top with apple halves. Serve in mugs or other heat-proof glassware.
Patum Peperium will return after Epiphany. Until then, Happy New Year.
God rest ye merry, gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember, Christ, our Saviour
Was born on Christmas day
To save us all from Satan's power
When we were gone astray
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy...
Sir Basil Seal's Guide
for heretics planning to attend Midnight Mass
(Please Stay Away)
As some of you know, it is somewhat the fashion for the Prods (read heretics) to crash our party, as it were, and attend the Midnight Mass. Usually at the largest and most ornate cathedral available in the area. This is, of course, a true case of "church envy" which the Prods (read heretics) only openly admit to at Christmas. Well, if you must, and one must welcome all kinds into the house of God, one supposes, I have set forth some rules for you to follow. This will help to alleviate our pain as you drink the Holy Water and generally stink up the place:
Note: I personally will be at the Tridentine, or Latin Mass, I like to keep it old and cold, but don't think for one minute that I won't be watching...The following pertains to the Norvus Ordo, or New Order Mass (don't even get me started), since your heathen hide won't be allowed into a Latin Mass. Do not come and sully the Latin Mass. Visit the New Order Mass and let the Vatican II folks reap what they have sown.
The Midnight Mass, held at the stroke of midnight as Christmas Eve ticks into Christmas Day, has its origins in the belief that Christ was born at exactly that hour.
Note: For you prods and sadly, for some Catholics, Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Not J. C. Penny.
Note: A Roman Catholic priest is addressed as 'Father' and you will address a bishop as...Well, you won't address a bishop as he wouldn't speak to a Luther loving heretic such as yourself.
Rule 1: Arrive early and take a seat in the very back...Please leave the good seats available for the true Christians. And if you don't turn off that damn cell phone and Ipod, you will be taken out and burned at the stake. Burned nicely, but burned none the less. Peace, brother.
Rule 2: Dress appropriately, although I have personally driven shorts and t-shirt wearing supposed Catholics from the Temple myself, I would ask that you refrain from dressing like your children as usual and wear adult clothing, i.e. suits for men and dresses for women (Note to Episcopalians: dresses are for women only). At least remove the baseball cap and put some damn socks on, you reformation rabble...
Rule 3: Open your heart to the spirit and symbolism of Christmas portrayed in the Mass. There will usually be lots of sacred music, Christmas decorations, candles, scripture readings and perhaps a crèche. Unlike a mainline Prod service, the Mass is actually a worship service in which God is present. And our God does not believe you are the center of his universe. Get over it.
Rule 4: This is important, so listen carefully...If you are not a Roman Catholic, do not, I repeat, do not take communion in a Roman Catholic Church. Sleep quietly, pretending to pray, while the true Christians receive communion. It is considered very rude to leave during this part of the Mass, so sit tight, it will not kill you to miss part of American Idol on this occasion.
Rule 5: When everyone kneels, you kneel. When everyone stands, you stand. When everyone sits down, you sit down. There is a Missal in the rack before you, inside you will find the service, so you can follow along. Sorry, no video is available, you will actually have to read it... If you need help, ask a Catholic. Before entering a pew, Catholics genuflect toward the alter, so do not knock some poor old blue hair down in your rush to take her seat. And while you are there, it would probably be good to genuflect and then prostate yourself before the altar and beg forgiveness for being the miserable heretic that you are.
Rule 6: If you are given a candle, hold onto it...There will be a time during the service where you will have to pull it from your nose, (or if an Episcopalian, other orifices), and light it.
Rule 7: If you are at a non-Latin Mass, you will need to have washed your filthy hands...You will be asked to make the sign of peace, or some such nonsense, which means shake hands all around like Methodists. (A Methodist is a Baptist who can read) I personally never do this as a sign of solidarity with the Holy Father, so you can stand still and glare balefully at those around you if you like, I do. Do not use this as an excuse to grope the girls and women, (or men if you're an Episcopalian). Don't give anyone germs, or worse...
There you have it...Please don't, but if you must go, follow these simple rules, but it would be best if you just stayed home and watched the telly and played your new video game, like you always do. Merry Christmas.
Roman Catholics have overtaken Anglicans as the country's dominant religious group. More people attend Mass every Sunday than worship with the Church of England, figures seen by The Sunday Telegraph show.
This means that the established Church has lost its place as the nation's most popular Christian denomination after more than four centuries of unrivalled influence following the [English] Reformation.
Last night, leading figures gave warning that the Church of England could become a minority faith and that the findings should act as a wake-up call...
Oh and there's a most simple answer to Rev. Alister McGrath's question:
The Rev Alister McGrath, professor of historical theology at Oxford University, said that the church attendance findings from the organisation Christian Research should act as a wake-up call to the Church of England.
"While it can rightly point to the weight of history, the importance of cultural memory, the largest number of church buildings and nominal church members in defence of its continued status as the established church, there is clearly a problem emerging," said Prof McGrath, one of Anglicanism's most respected figures.
"What happens if the established church becomes a minority church?"
What happens? It means you must admit your King (Henry VIII) was wrong...and transubtantiation happens...purgatory is real...the sacrament of reconciliation is necessary...praying to Mother Mary and the Saints is fine...female priests are not priests...homosexuality is a sin...and driving a hybrid, sipping green tea, and recycling won't have any bearing on whether or not you get into Heaven.
*On a related note, here are things to ponder concerning Blair's conversion to Catholicism. Longtime readers will recall that Patum Peperium was following Blair's pathtoRome
Thanks in part to lengthy work commutes both from my former home in New Jersey and my new one in the D.C. area, I did more reading this past year than any other year since my bookworm peak back in middle school. Of the books that I read for the first time, here are some of my favorites. They are all Catholic, and nearly all of them spiritual reading -- I'm trying to make up for all that time lost during my pagan years:
Introduction to the Devout Life, St. Francis de Sales - I was reading this at the RiRa Irish pub in Arlington's Clarendon neighborhood when the waiter brought me my dinner salad with the dressing already on it. Naturally, I sent the dish back, since I always ask to have the dressing on the side. My eyes then went back down to the page, and the saint's very next line urged the reader never to complain when food served was not to one's liking, but rather to accept it as a mortification. Now, he tells me. *Sigh* The book is full of surprises like that, alternately wonderful and damning.
The Love of Eternal Wisdom, St. Louis de Montfort - Reading this right after de Sales was like a one-two punch. The book is a challenge to grow in one's relationship with God through love, trust, prayer, and self-denial. I was surprised at how powerful de Montfort's prose was, as I was expecting the highly anecdotal and, to my mind, overly sentimental style of his Secret of the Rosary.
One passage in the book stuck with me -- ironically, an anecdote, but a terrifically mysterious and affecting one. Here it is in an online translation (the one in the version I read, published by Montfort Publications, is better):
" Not long ago an unhappy man, enraged because he had lost all his money at gambling, drew his sword against heaven, blaming our Lord for the loss of his money. Then, instead of thunderbolts and fiery darts falling upon this man, there came fluttering down from the sky a little piece of paper. Quite taken aback, he caught the paper, opened it and read, 'O God, have me rcy on me.; The sword fell from his hands, and, stirred to the depths of his heart, he fell on his knees and begged for mercy."
Treasures in Clay, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen - This is, to my mind, the autobiography of a saint. It had special meaning for me because I read it during a time when I was overtouring -- using my vacation days to give talks in far-off cities promoting my book. Learning how Archbishop Sheen kept God at the center of his life even as the demands of his pastoral responsibilities and his fame pulled him in countless different directions was a great inspiration.
St. Therese: A Treasured Love Story, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen - This is the only freebie on my list -- it just arrived last week from Basilica Press and I devoured it in two days. It is a never-before-published collection of talks Archbishop Sheen gave on St. Therese of Lisieux. Although many of its observations will be familiar to Sheen fans, the clear and concise way the Archbishop assembled his thoughts is a pure joy to read. The latter half of the book, particularly the final talk -- "St. Therese, Sin, and Mercy" -- delves deeply and intensely into topics I had not before seen Sheen before, particularly the saving power of the Precious Blood.
Ways of Forgiveness, Ways of Loving , and Ways of Knowing - all by Father John Edwards S.J., available from Family Publications. Early this year, after the Sunday Times of London published an article I'd written about my conversion to chastity -- bearing a misleading headline labeling me a "former groupie," and putting racy words in my mouth like "shag" -- I was surprised to receive a fan letter from a Jesuit priest. Father Edwards wrote an extremely kind note of appreciation. I sent him a copy of my Thrill of the Chaste along with a thank-you and asked for his prayers.
Two weeks later, I was overwhelmed to receive a package containing two of Father Edwards's books: Ways of Forgiveness, about both God's forgiveness and forgiving others, and Ways of Loving , which has the tantalizing subtitle "Sex, Chastity, the Mass." Later, after I had the pleasure of meeting him during a trip to London in October, he also sent me Ways of Knowing, about discernment and particularly discerning one's vocation in life.
Father Edwards is a glorious, bona fide Ignatian Jesuit, through and through, a Korean War veteran with a warrior's heart and a poet's pen. He writes in a clear, simple, loving, yet bitingly insightful style, with a very British twinkle in his eye. Reading him is like hearing a very reverent Stanley Holloway recite the first epistle of St. John.
One of the messages that runs through Father Edwards's work has been particularly therapeutic for me this past year. He stresses the theological truth that, if we confess our sins, aligning our will to God's, then whatever we suffer -- including our temptations -- will bring us closer to Christ. It is right there in the Church's prayer of absolution: " "May the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of all the saints and also whatever good you do or evil you endure merit for you the remission of your sins, the increase of grace and the reward of everlasting life. Amen." This truth is a great consolation for those who suffer the pain of depression, loneliness, or other temptations to which their will does not consent.
Honorable mention (conflict-of-interest alert):
Sex and the Sacred City, Steve Kellmeyer - The author of this book is a friend of mine -- we are collaborating on a curriculum for study groups on Pope John Paul II's theology of the body -- but I read and loved Sex and the Sacred City before we started working together. What I appreciated most about it is that it conveys the richness of the theology of the body in language that is not only easily understandable, but truly engaging -- in just 88 short pages.
Dawn Eden, in between her numerous speaking engaments, can be found at appear"http://dawneden.com/blogger.html#.com">Dawn Patrol.
The Great Christmas Books Series Old Dominion Tory
Assuming that Mr. and Mrs. Peperium do not banish me from this good and cheery company after my first essay concerning non-existent books, I developed a list of three books that are available for giving and receiving this Christmas season (although the second selection might demand nosing about a used bookshop or Amazon).
An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson
This magnificent book chronicles the U.S. Army’s first offensive campaign in World War II—the Allied invasion of Morocco and Algeria and subsequent battles in Tunisia—and the first test of the Anglo-American alliance. Atkinson brilliantly examines the conduct of the Americans from the top (Roosevelt and Churchill’s meeting in Morocco) to bottom (the desperate fight of an Iowa National Guard unit at Kasserine Pass. The relatively small scale of the forces involved allow him to focus on such figures as the full-of-fight George Patton and the senior commanders of the “Big Red One”—Terry Allen and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the former a prayerful and hard-charging cavalryman, the latter a man displaying energy and drive unexpected in a man of 56 years old.
The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun by Merrill D. Peterson
In the antebellum period, there were dynamic presidents, but they were few—e.g., Andrew Jackson and James Polk. The center of American politics and government truly was the Congress and three men—Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John Calhoun—came to personify it and the national struggles that consumed the nation during this era. Merrill Peterson, who also has written authoritative studies of Thomas Jefferson and the Adams-Jefferson relationship, provides a detailed, engaging narrative of these political titans lives and careers, careers that saw the demise of the Federalist Party, the rise of sectionalism, and the emergence of slavery as the dominant issue in American politics.
When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House by Patricia O’Toole
When Theodore Roosevelt left the White House in March 1909, he was only 50 years old and apparently was satisfied to spend the remainder of his days exploring and writing. Yet, being so used to power and enjoying its exercise as well as so deeply engaged in national and international affairs, he soon was drawn back into politics. O’Toole narrates the last decade of Theodore Roosevelt’s life—a time of triumphs, disappointments, and tragedies—in a brisk and detailed narrative that shows all sides of his complex personality to include his behind-the-scenes maneuverings and often pugnacious approach to people and issues. Yet, as much “TR” could be abrasive and bombastic, one comes away from this book feeling like a journalist that O’Toole paraphrases, “[Y]ou had to hate the Colonel a whole lot to keep from loving him.”
Mrs. P, our illustrious editrix, intends these book lists as Christmas gift recommendations. I, in sharp contradistinction, have written my picks and pans, my Christmas recommendations and my Christmas warnings. For lo, full many a glossy book on the store shelf, bedecked with many a carefully chosen blurb (written, no doubt, by carefully chosen friends of the author) has mislead the unwary Yuletide shopper. Likewise, many readers, eager to get their hooks on so-and-so's latest, has topped their wish list with said tome, only to find he has inadvertently asked Santa for a 597-page lump of coal.
And so I offer a review of everything I've read this year, the good, the bad and the indifferent, with one important caveat: Most of these books are no longer at my fingertips, being the rightful property of our local library. Therefore instead of quotes and page numbers to buttress my judgments, I can only offer impressions.
Religion:
The Well and the Shallows by G. K. Chesterton
The Cube and the Cathedral by George Weigel
The Truth of Catholicism by George Weigel
People—editors as well as readers—always claim to be taken aback at how current G. K. Chesterton sounds when addressing topics like marriage and culture. I think he can’t help it. He is, after all, addressing the concerns that have preoccupied the best conservative and religious thinkers from Day One. What makes The Well and the Shallows, his last book of essays, so pertinent for the Peperium household is a long piece dealing with what Chesterton calls, “my six conversions” from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. And sure enough, right there as bold as brass and bright as day, are six points of contention within the Anglican/Episcopal church that helps convert us. What I liked especially about this essay was his understanding—a very Catholic understanding—that conversion isn’t necessarily a Road-to-Damascus experience. The other pieces are somewhat more topical than I’m used to, but the overriding themes are, as usual, timeless. Though I read this volume with great pleasure—except for the first essay, which failed to grab my interest—I couldn’t help wondering if, in his last years, Chesterton’s gift for dexterous verbal gymnastics didn’t sometimes get in the way of his meaning.
Weigel? He’s Weigel. Clear, concise, passionate without ever getting sloppy. I read The Truth of Catholicism as part of my ongoing effort to arm myself for the day when one of our children comes home from the playground saying so-and-so says we don’t have to pray to saints or have statues or fast or say rosaries or whatever. It did not disappoint. As bold as it’s title, Weigel lays out the Catholic position on 10 major topics with unflinching honesty. Cube and the Cathedral is really an extended meditation on the current state of European and American culture. Yes, things are bad, he assures us. But what I liked most is that, unlike recent works by Theodore Darlrymple and Mark Steyn, Weigel has the courage—brought on by faith—to hope. Also, I agree with him that the Catholic insistence on the dignity of the individual is the real bedrock of democracy—no matter what Protestant historians or our monarchist friends might say to the contrary.
History:
“There are times when I think that the process of writing a PhD dissertation permanently damages a writer’s ability to construct a decent historical narrative.”
Old Dominion made this observation in an email not long ago, apropos of some of the books discussed below. I really think he’s on to something.
Almost a Miracle by John Ferling
This is one of those books that make me thankful for libraries. If not for ours I would have readily, blindly, plunked down my $35 or whatever it is for the privilege of laboring through this snarfy, ill-tempered volume.
I don’t want to be unkind here, but Ferling just doesn’t give his subjects any breaks. While at times I thought he was on a debunking mission—especially in the cases of Washington and Lafayette—I found precious few figures who he wanted to bunk in their place. Washington gets the worst of it throughout. I’m not saying his leadership was flawless—far from it. But Ferling just can’t stop carping. He reminds us ad nauseum that the master of Mount Vernon was also the master of quite a number of slaves. He implies that Washington feasted at Valley Forge while his men starved—a relative assessment at best. In dismissing the Conway Cabal he succeeds in accusing Washington of dismissing the man (Conway) who was about to re-train the army at Valley Forge a la Baron von Steuben—and who would have done a better job! So when he does bring himself to finally say something nice about Washington (you have to wait until page 400-something) it’s such an obvious shift of tone that it only serves to make the book seem that much more disjointed.
I say disjointed because, unlike Ketchum or Fleming (see below), Ferling lacks a point of view. He seems unconvinced that the United States was a good idea. He remains agnostic as to whether remaining in the Imperial orbit would have been better—for us or for the world at large. Whether this problem is due to the PhD hunt I can’t say—Ferling would have earned his a while ago. All I can say is that the more I read, the less I was convinced he had a passion (an overused word, I know) for his subject. The whole book, save for the very promising opening section, breathes a spirit of exhaustion—a spirit that the reader soon catches. That Ferling had the energy to finish writing it (or that I had the energy to finish reading it) strikes me as something more than a miracle.
Decisive Day: Bunker Hill
The Winter Soldiers
Victory at Yorktown all by Richard Ketchum
If Richard Ketchum possesses a doctorate he certainly doesn’t write like it. Anything in the nature of history issued from his word processor is worth reading. Approachable scholarship may be the best way to put it. The figures that populate his books live. And he recreates the environments in which they live to perfection. Decisive Day tells the story—and what a story—of, as the title foreshadows, Bunker Hill. The Winter Soldiers covers the Trenton-Princeton campaigns. The tone of the Yorktown book is different in a way I can’t quite put my finger on. More relaxed, perhaps; less dense and careful—probably because he wrote it recently, whereas the two earlier books were written to establish the reputation he now enjoys. But his point of view has not changed. As with Thomas Fleming, here is good (America, Washington, Greene) and evil (the British, Arnold, Tarleton). These books aren’t morality plays—the heroes are flawed and the bad guys have good points—but they are written from a secure and considered point of view which makes them exciting to read. As with Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote, you learn without knowing it, because you’re enjoying the story so much.
The Battle for New York by Barnet Schecter
The thesis of this book is supposed to be startling: that New York City dominated both American and British military thinking throughout the war. As further reading has revealed, that thesis is somewhat less startling than the book’s blurb writer would have us think.
Nevertheless, The Battle for New York was enjoyable and served my main purpose: to more deeply embed the sequence of Revolutionary events in my mind. The writer’s intimate knowledge of modern-day Gotham enhanced the reading enormously (it was thrilling to learn that the last time I stood in front of the Fifth Avenue branch of the New York Public Library, I was standing about where Washington was nearly captured while trying to rally men fleeing from the British cannonade and landing at Kip’s Bay). The battlefield guide in the back of the book will be Xeroxed and brought along on our next jaunt to NYC.
Washington’s Secret War by Thomas Fleming
As Old Dominion already knows, I enjoyed this book immensely. But only after reading a few more books that covered the same subject did I know why: Fleming isn’t afraid to take sides. Like Richard Ketchum, he knows there are such things as good and evil in the world. Whether he is right in maintaining that there really was a “Conway Cabal” afoot in the winter of 1777 / 78 aimed at unseating Washington in favor of Gates is beside the point. I don’t even mind that further reading has proven that Fleming’s thesis, served up as a revelation, is actually an old notion currently out of favor with most historians—Ferling treats the idea, like so much else, with open contempt; Lengel rejects it as well, though agreeing with Fleming that it displays The General’s masterly command of political infighting.
Be all that as it may, I’m grateful to Fleming for grasping the essential point that historians are, or should be, storytellers. And a good story needs a point of view. Southall Freeman thinks the Southern Confederacy was, if not a good idea, a noble enterprise. Bruce Catton believes the Union was both noble and a good idea. Whether you agree with them or not, you can’t put down the story they tell. It’s what makes Washington’s Secret War such a great read; I look forward to tackling his new The Perils of Peace (now at our local library!)
Revolutionary Characters: What made the founders different by Gordon Wood
Usually when I see the word “provocative” in a review, I assume the people being provoked are folks like me: average Joes just trying to raise their families with a minimum of moral pollution. Hence the Whitney Biennial is “provocative”, as is Pound-Puppy-Pooch’s latest CD.
I’m applying the word to this book because of the opposite reason: Gordon S. Wood really makes you think differently. Granted, the Revolutionary period is new ground for me. While I know every angle of the “Was-Longstreet-Sulking-On-The-Second-Day-At-Gettysburg” controversy, imbroglios like the Conway Cabal or assessments of Washington’s leadership are fresh territory. So when Woods points out that, among the founders, Franklin had lived the longest under British rule and had the most to lose by making a revolution, he may be stating what old hands would consider obvious, for me it was fresh. His appreciation of Washington’s character and dubiety concerning the quality of Jefferson’s mind (Woods sees him as a synthesizer of current intellectual fashions rather than a truly original thinker; indeed, as a man anxious to stay intellectually fashionable) came to me as, in the words of Bertie Wooster, rare and refreshing fruit.
Empires at War: The French and Indian War and the Struggle for North America, 1754-1763
The virtue of this book is its length. Unlike Parkman’s magisterial but unwieldy France and England in North America, or Fred Anderson’s superb but long Crucible of War, the author gives a fast-moving narrative of the French and Indian War (“Seven Year’s War” for Europeans) that leaves you with a good sense of the “shape” of the conflict. Getting the “shape” of the Revolution has been the aim of this year’s reading—an aim assisted in no little way by Empires at War. Don’t get me wrong. This is far from a great book. I probably would have enjoyed it less had I not read Parkman and Anderson. There are no startling new perspectives (not that you necessarily need startling new perspectives…unless you’re a blurb writer). But this war—especially as a prelude to our Revolution—makes more sense to me now.
General George Washington: A Military Life by Edward Lengel
Edward Lengel enjoys an advantage over every other Washington historian I’ve mentioned so far. Because of his position as an associate editor and military history specialist on the Papers of George Washington documentary editing project at the University of Virginia he can wander at will—barefoot if he wants—through the accumulated literary remains of The General. If he has, you wouldn’t know it from this book.
One would think that a writer in Lengel’s favored situation would offer some new perspectives (here’s where new perspectives might, with justice, be expected) or at least better evidence for previous scholarly guesswork. Alas, pages go by without a quote from Washington’s pen. In what purports to be “A Military Life” high points like the withdrawal from Brooklyn—one of Washington’s most adroit military maneuvers—merit barely a page. Questions like the existence or non-existence of the “Conway Cabal” are answered without any reference to the great man’s papers. Assertions and conjectures spring up, buttressed by nary a scrap of evidence.
Things aren’t all bad. Lengel’s writing comes in and out of focus—especially toward the end, where he treats us to the best treatment of the Newburgh Address crisis I’ve come across in my (admittedly limited) reading. Elsewhere where he’s good he’s really pretty darn good (Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine Creek, Germantown and Monmouth Courthouse) and the maps are superb. Washington’s Secret War would have profited by including Lengel’s map of the Valley Forge encampment.
Alas, the library didn’t save me this time. After finishing Empires at War while out of town on business, I actually bought this one in order to prevent myself falling into a depression for want of military history reading. But it could have been worse. I almost bought Ferling’s political history of the Revolution, A Leap in the Dark. After Miracle, I fear that book probably lives up to its title, too.
A Rage for Glory: The Life of Commodore Stephen Decatur, USN by James Tertius De Kay
During the Tailhook rumpus I recall some conservative pundit pointing out, as so many conservative pundits need to do in these confused times of ours, the utterly obvious: One wants the men who defend our country to have a swagger, a sense of confidence, even a touch of arrogance. Or, as the Secretary of the Navy wrote in 1798, "If our officers cannot be inspired by the true kind of zeal and spirit which will enable us to make up for the want of great force by great activity, we had better burn our ships and commence a navy at some future time when our citizens have more spirit." A few years later Napoleon would squeeze the same idea into an epigram: "In war the moral is to the material as three to one."
As De Kay writes, Stephen Decatur might have been made to order from Secretary Stoddard's specifications. His book is as brief (214 pages) and as fast-paced as the life that is its subject. It is a geat story well told, facts marshalled deftly to create the maximum amount of drama or irony (and what could be more ironic than the man who did the most to discourage dueling in the naescent American Navy dying from a wound recieved in a duel?)
Three stars, four thumbs up, or whatever rating system you prefer. And a huge hat-tip to Old Dominion for culling this little gem from his library (I don't know how he could bring himself to part with it) and sending it on to us.
Literature:
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
This year, I ask the indulgence of Patum Peperium’s writers and its readers for a somewhat whimsical exercise in regards this year’s installment of the Great Christmas Books Series. Back in the 1990s, when I toiled as a book review editor for the magazines Proceedings and Naval History and an acquisitions editor for the Naval Institute Press, my colleagues and I often would discuss the books we would like to see written or, in some cases, write ourselves. I have continued to indulge in this intellectual parlor game ever since, using family and friends as my fellow players. So, here is a list of books that I wish I could give for Christmas, but cannot because, insofar as I know, they have not been written. A warning: this list is tilted toward political history and biography.
Eminent Clintonians
Whatever your opinion of Lytton Strachey’s 1918 book, Eminent Victorians, Strachey did create (for good or ill) a form of collective biography in which the character of an era is seen through the lives of a few of its luminaries. Most of the titles in this vein, if not all of them, concern themselves with Britain—e.g., Andrew Roberts’ 1994 Eminent Churchillians. I suggest, however, an American addition to the genre: Eminent Clintonians.
On the campaign trail for the past few years, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton have done their level best to sell the 1990s as a golden age. Mine is a more jaundiced view. I see the years of 1992 to 2001 as ones in which country took “a holiday from history” and became enthralled by inconsequential people and ideas. The apparent attraction within certain circles of the notion that the 1990s can somehow be restored by the simple act of electing Mrs. Clinton as the President of the United States indicate just how corrosive the 1990s were on the national intellect and spirit.
Choosing the best representatives of this “low, mean decade” is a challenge. Of course, Bill Clinton must be one of the people profiled. Among my ideas are an Internet entrepreneur who made a huge pile in the stock market before “the Hi-Tech bubble” burst and took not many people with it; a cable news host to illustrate the conflation between entertainment and news in the 24-hour news cycle; and James Carville and Mary Matalin as personifications of the intrinsic shallowness of the decade’s politics. The book should have someone who illustrates the deeply unserious culture of the time, too.
For the author, I nominate P. J. O’Rourke, Christopher Buckley, or Christopher Hitchens. The subject deserves the approach that any these gentlemen would bring to the task.
Resurgence: The Fall and Rise of Richard Nixon, 1961-1968
In 1960, Richard Nixon lost the race for U.S. President in a squeaker against John F. Kennedy. Two years later, he had returned to his native California and run for Governor. In this election, he also failed and seemed to write off politics for good when, soon after the election, he told reporters that, “You won’t have Richard Nixon to kick around any more.” Six years later, however, Richard Nixon had returned to be kicked around again by the press in another try at the White House.
To me, the seven years of Nixon’s political life between the 1960 Presidential election and his nomination as the GOP’s presidential candidate in 1968 are boundlessly fascinating. After the twin blows of losing in 1960 and 1962, Nixon mustered up the grit, determination, and self-discipline (he always had the brains) to throw himself back into national politics and become his party’s standard bearer. Whatever your opinion of the Richard Nixon whose self destruction in the early 1970s was a painful affair for all concerned, the Richard Nixon of these “wilderness years” deserves serious study—and not a little admiration. If executed well, such a book would be not only a detailed account of one of the greatest political comebacks in American history, but a colorful portrait of the times in which Nixon engineered his resurgence and the people with whom he shared the stage, such as John Kennedy, Nelson Rockefeller, Barry Goldwater, Hubert Humphrey, Robert Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan.
Bosses and Boodlers, Mugwumps and Goo-Goos: A Political History of the Gilded Age, 1865-1896
“America has no native criminal class, except Congress,” quipped Mark Twain. During the three decades after the Civil War, American politics was a rough-and-tumble affair and many of the men involved in it were not of the highest moral caliber. Thus, many writers seems content to write off this period as hopelessly corrupt and, therefore, not worthy of much attention. In fact, since Matthew Josephson published The Politicos in 1938, no author (at least none that I know of) has attempted to portray American politics across this entire period.
More’s the pity because, in these years, the Republican Party (only about a decade old in when Lincoln was reelected) matured into a permanent fixture and the Democrats slowly repaired the divisions wrought by the Civil War. Politics and politicians also dealt with the effects of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration in an atmosphere that was ever more democratic. Bosses developed formidable machines (or built on the foundations of old ones), while, at the same time, reformists fought corruption and often autocratic politics—and in doing so planted the seeds of the Progressive movement and developed a form and style of politics that, arguably, endured until 1960.
A Bountiful Land: A Novel of a Catholic America
On June 10, 1610, Jamestown was on the verge of collapse. During the winter of 1609-1610, known as “The Starving Time,” almost 80% of the colonists had died. That spring, relations with the natives—never entirely good—continued to be frosty. Downcast at the prospects of another bleak winter, the colonists decided to abandon the outpost and head back to England. On their way down the river to the Chesapeake Bay, they spied a ship coming toward them. At first, they thought that their long-standing fear of a Spanish attack was materializing. However, the ship was an English one, the Deliverance, and on board were supplies, more colonists, and a new, more energetic governor, Lord De La Warr. The ships returned to Jamestown and, with the help of some tobacco seeds carried by John Rolfe, the colony put down the roots that eventually would blossom into Virginia.
Like every other counterfactual “history” or “historical novel,” The Bountiful Land would answer questions beginning with those fateful words: What if . . .? In this case: What if the Deliverance did not arrive on June 10, but a week later? What if, upon discovering the abandoned post, Lord De La Warr had ordered the Deliverance back to sea and, eventually, to England? And, finally what if the next ships that sailed up the James were Spanish, carrying hardy conquistadores and resolute Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Benedictines who were determined to establish a colony on the northern edge of New Spain?”
The War of 1812: A Naval History
Happily, there have been a plethora of books about the exciting early days of the United States Navy, when its relatively small number of ships fought Revolutionary France in the Caribbean, took the fight to the Barbary Pirates, and stood up to the might of the Royal Navy. These courageous and skilled sailors won respect for America, ensured its survival, and established a heritage of victory for their successors.
As good and as enjoyable as these books have been, none of these recent authors has taken up the story of the Naval War of 1812 as a stand-alone subject. In fact, I don’t think anyone has since, yes, Theodore Roosevelt.
Now, the idea of following Theodore Roosevelt in anything, even after the space of more than a century, would be intimidating. However, I hope that some enterprising author will take up the task of telling how the U.S. Navy as well as American privateers fought the Royal Navy on the high seas and inland seas from 1812-1815. The importance of the War of 1812 to the development of the United States is again being discussed (thanks in part because of the overall interest in the Early Republic as well as the impending bicentennial of the war. Moreover, there is no shortage of rousing sea fights and colorful characters intrinsic to the story.
Thank you ODT. Now you must indulge my whimsical exercise:
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God rest ye merry, gentlemen
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