Here’s a boatload of my reviews which have been piling up.

#The Dark Heart Of Italy by Tobias Jones, 2003

I didn’t enjoy the book, but I sort of enjoy that it just exists, because it’s the latest generation of a tiny but noble and ancient genre of books - which goes something like “British Man Goes to Foreign Land and Has a Bad Time because of Culture Shock, Then Has a Good Time Unsubtly Thinking he Passes a Native, Then Has a Bad Time Again from Deeper and More Lasting Culture Shock, Then Probably Goes Home and Writes This Book.” Also known as “British travelogues,” or really, just “travelogues.” British travelers have been writing these books since they first had the idea to travel as far as I can tell, and they’re marvelous historic records, but as this one is not yet firmly in the past, man oh man do you spend the book just wanting to smack the fountain pen and glass of barolo out of Jones’s stupid hands, as he does irritating things like italicizing all the Italian words in the book (even the Italian words everyone totally knows), which he drops on you like relentless little bombs of token culture just so you’ll be sure to notice that he speaks Italian so very well. In Italy they eat pizza. Also his writing is ponderous.

But, okay yes, his book totally hits the main value of travelogues - foreigners notice things about cultures that are so important and ingrained to the culture that actual members of the culture don’t even think about them, and then some of them write it down. So thank you, Jones, for making this interesting historic record of how 20th century Italians related to their history in life, politics, the media, and beyond, which all seems pretty messy. Thankfully he moved back to the UK right after it was published and presumably there someone made him stop acting like “Lawrence of Italia.”

#The Last Eunuch Of China by Yinghua Jia, translated by Haichen Sun, English translation published 2008

(Okay, so I write these reviews one at a time in a Google Drive doc and them and lump them together for bigger Saturday posts, and I already quoted part of this review in an answer a few weeks ago because it magically came up, BUT WHATEVER, here’s the full review for your review. And now my secrets have been revealed... )

Have you ever wondered what a Chinese pop history reads like? Well get this book and find out, because it’s a Chinese pop history book about the end of the Qing dynasty translated into English, but not in any way else really altered for the US market. Shoot the cover’s even got that ugly monospace font that you get with the Chinese font in Windows. For real though, the translation is actually really solid and has been completely proofread, but it’s not TOO smooth so as to let you forget that you are reading a Chinese book, like it has that delightful bad-translation thing of not having a good grasp of formal and informal registers, and therefore mixing and matching high-brow and slangy language with a certain cheerful tone-deafness that never fails to please me. Also at the end it kept referring to people pushing an elderly Sun Yaoting around in a “handcart” and I was like guys why, but I finally saw a picture where he was sitting in a wheelchair. Whoops. It’s also written entirely in imaginary dialog, like a novel. That’s probably the hardest part to get past.

And now for the good parts. This book is a refreshing change of pace from the usual Chinese historiographical treatment of eunuchs, which is very negative, because the author has a clear affection for his subject, and presents Sun Yaoting only positively, and his compatriots in a range of human colors. The author knew Sun Yaoting pretty well in his later life, and said he made 100 hours of recordings in the process of writing this book. The author even helped arrange for Sun Yaoting’s headstone (traditionally a family duty), which was very kind of him.

However, as a warning: if you don’t already have a decent grasp of Chinese culture before entering this book you’re going to have a bad time. They do take the time to explain some of the basic terms like “rice bowl” but there’s no information given on the Chinese concepts of guanxi/face/social networks etc, Confucianism, the importance of extended family networks and relationships, and, if you didn’t already understand these things, Sun Yaoting’s life and career is going to strike you as unusual or corrupt. So that’s kinda poor form, but like I said, this book was written for Chinese people to read and not for Foreigners to read, so just be grateful it was translated at all and on the cultural stuff you’re going to just have to get that somewhere else.

(Also someone added this book to the Goodreads list “Interesting Jobs” which is pretty funny.)

#When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II by Molly Guptill Manning, 2014

(FCC required disclaimer: my copy of this book was free from the publisher, because librarians are deeply influential and powerful people, at least in terms of bookbuying anyway.)

This one’s gotten a lot of press already, so this review is for the few people here who don’t keep up on the news too much I suppose! This is a story-style history book, and it tells the story of the military library program in WWII. There had previously been a mass library program in WWI, which was driven by donations and run by civilian volunteers, and which had fallen into neglect in the interwar period, the books of its program largely dispersed to non-military libraries. So this book traces the revival of the librarian-run civilian donation program (Victory Book Campaign), and then the switch-over from using donated books for soldiers (which really sucked in terms of book quality) to the military mass-ordering special edition cheap paperbacks directly for the servicemen. It also talks in depth about what value the new-ish format of paperbacks had - their low weight made them easier to hold when you were on your back in a hospital bed, easier to be stuffed into your kit on patrol and carried around for miles, ideal to be passed around (or even broken up into chapters to share, as we all know was highlighted in one episode of MASH).

But there’s a very nice little story here, drawing out both the value of pleasure reading in relieving stress, as well as how the success of mass distribution paperbacks to servicemen finally got publishers to stop hugging the hardback and embrace the glory of pulp for the masses. (The parallels to the rise of the ebook are pretty easily drawn here, though the author doesn’t do that.) The writing veers into passages that are pretty openly trying to stir up your emotions about the glory of reading etc (there is a passage about how some men propped themselves up to read as they waited to die of their injuries during the Invasion of Normandy which made me have to put the book down and do something else for a while), so the book has A Message aside from just telling history, and it’s a very nice message, but this is what makes it popular history.

I think this would make a nice gift-book for dads and dad-types, especially if your dad is the sort of dad who likes emotional stories about WWII soldiers (like all dads love this I’m pretty sure), and reading (probably most dads like reading).

#Marcus Didus Falco mystery series

I started these in December, currently I am on #4. OHHH my goodness are these fun! Mystery novels set in first century Rome. Lots of jokes referencing later historical events. Cheerfully anachronistic. The romantic Nick-and-Nora relationship develops slowly over the span of the books. If you like Rome or mysteries or Roman mysteries treat yourself.

I came across an upsetting review last month for John Bauschatz's Law and Enforcement in Ptolemaic Egypt (link). I haven't read the book yet myself, but according to the reviewer, Bauschatz consciously avoids using Egyptian sources in favor of Greek ones. The closing remarks are scathing:

But Bauschatz prefers to turn a blind eye on everything which might call into question his preconceived notion of Greek cultural supremacy, and does not hesitate to use ridicule, omission of evidence and even counterfactual arguments: Egyptians in general are portrayed as “traditionally litigious” (p. 174) and “materially poor and poorly educated” (p.176); “it seems unlikely that a policeman would have gone out of his way to translate a request scribbled in an undecipherable Demotic on a scrap of papyrus” (p. 331). Bauschatz’s allegation that Egyptian settlements had to await the Ptolemies to come by supposedly Greek institutions like courtrooms, prisons, offices and archives (p. 330) – curiously all attested before under Egyptian appellations – heads a series of similarly wrong statements easily rebutted by Egyptian evidence.

Bauschatz’s valiant endeavor to master the vast Greek source material is laudable indeed. But his one-sided Hellenocentric approach has caused him to miss the chance to write a truly comprehensive and historiographically sound study of the Ptolemaic law enforcement system.

I honestly hope this assessment is exaggerated, though experience leads me to suspect that it's not. Helleno/Romano-centrism remains a serious problem in the areas I research, and I find that many ancient historians (or, as is often the case, classicists) are hesitant or careless in examining non-Greek/Latin sources. So while the subject of law enforcement in the ancient world interests me immensely, I think I'll temporarily hold off from this particular study to spare myself the frustration. :(