I always enjoy getting a pile of new books at Christmas and this past year has been no exception. In the midst of the pile, were two books by two of my favorite historians: Jonathan D. Spence and Barry Strauss.
I first encountered Spence in grad school during a Historiography class. We were looking at historical methodology and Spence's "Treason by the Book" was on the table. It was a fascinating read; written like a novel and yet methodologically pure. It even had a deftly inserted discussion of lexicographical transmission in early Ching China. To boil down what impressed me: the book was both good art and good history.
I didn't encounter Barry Strauss until I had been out of grad school for a few years. I was going through a Victor Davis-Hanson phase (oh whatever shall we do with the Xenophon of Selma?) and noticed that he had a buddy over at Cornell. That, and a Harvard catalog, led me to pick up a copy of "The Trojan War" by Barry Strauss. I found in Strauss what I also found in Spence: an attempt to write history that was methodologically pure and yet still and artistic and engaging read.
Moving back to this past Christmas then, I was eager to dig into Spence's "Death of Woman Wang" and Strauss' "Salamis." Neither disappointed. If you have a taste for history, I can recommend them both. My only caveat: Strauss is a little more of a popular level read than Spence.
To sum up what I really like about these authors though, I have to say that they are both historians who understand "history" as "story." Historians bring order out of the chaos of past events and, in so doing, allow the great "Democracy of the Dead" to speak, however imperfectly, to the world of the living. The problem with much recent historical writing, at least of the sort produced by the academic guild and not inspired amateurs, is that it denies the dead a compelling voice. In fact, the voices of the dead are often muffled beneath layers of intentionally obscurantist prose designed to keep the secrets of past ages safely within the guild where they can be handled by "reverent" hands and not sullied with actual use by the unwashed masses. Of course, in reaction to this, many amateur historians have cropped up who can turn the past into a ripping yarn, but lack the training and focus to make sure it is really the dead who get center stage and not the writer or his agenda. At their best, Spence and Strauss avoid these two pitfalls and allow us moments of genuine contact with that great half of humanity that has gone before.
I first encountered Spence in grad school during a Historiography class. We were looking at historical methodology and Spence's "Treason by the Book" was on the table. It was a fascinating read; written like a novel and yet methodologically pure. It even had a deftly inserted discussion of lexicographical transmission in early Ching China. To boil down what impressed me: the book was both good art and good history.
I didn't encounter Barry Strauss until I had been out of grad school for a few years. I was going through a Victor Davis-Hanson phase (oh whatever shall we do with the Xenophon of Selma?) and noticed that he had a buddy over at Cornell. That, and a Harvard catalog, led me to pick up a copy of "The Trojan War" by Barry Strauss. I found in Strauss what I also found in Spence: an attempt to write history that was methodologically pure and yet still and artistic and engaging read.
Moving back to this past Christmas then, I was eager to dig into Spence's "Death of Woman Wang" and Strauss' "Salamis." Neither disappointed. If you have a taste for history, I can recommend them both. My only caveat: Strauss is a little more of a popular level read than Spence.
To sum up what I really like about these authors though, I have to say that they are both historians who understand "history" as "story." Historians bring order out of the chaos of past events and, in so doing, allow the great "Democracy of the Dead" to speak, however imperfectly, to the world of the living. The problem with much recent historical writing, at least of the sort produced by the academic guild and not inspired amateurs, is that it denies the dead a compelling voice. In fact, the voices of the dead are often muffled beneath layers of intentionally obscurantist prose designed to keep the secrets of past ages safely within the guild where they can be handled by "reverent" hands and not sullied with actual use by the unwashed masses. Of course, in reaction to this, many amateur historians have cropped up who can turn the past into a ripping yarn, but lack the training and focus to make sure it is really the dead who get center stage and not the writer or his agenda. At their best, Spence and Strauss avoid these two pitfalls and allow us moments of genuine contact with that great half of humanity that has gone before.
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