November 2005    

Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage Author: Stephanie Coontz Publisher: Viking $25.95 Cloth (432 P.) ISBN: 067003407X B&T         YBP It turns out that "traditional family values" are not as traditional as we might think. Stephanie Coontz neatly outlines the history of marriage, its varied forms, and its raison d'etre from pre-historic times to the modern day. What she reveals is staggeringly different from what we've all been taught: not only is the love-based marriage a relatively recent phenomenon, but the male breadwinner marriage, popularly thought to be the dominant type for hundreds of years, only reached its culmination in the 1950s and declined soon after. Put into historical context, the state of marriage has always been in flux. Furthermore, Coontz shows that every "deviant" form of marriage has been tried elsewhere. Love-based marriages were rare until very recently; earlier marriages were based on potential economic, political, or social gains. Often both partners would enter into the same profession to fund the family. The very concept of "family" meant the legal kin base rather than the nuclear father, mother, and 2 ½ children model. Coontz argues that the culmination of the male breadwinner family in the 1950s was the result of a slow but sure recognition of women as separate but equal humans (rather than as a "lesser man"), along with the insidious idea that marriage should be based on mutual affection above all other considerations. Its breakdown was the fault in equal parts of both men's and women's dissatisfaction with the rigid gender roles assigned to them in an age of recognized (if not always enacted) equality of the sexes. Its final demise as the dominant marriage type was in the advent of effective birth control and the rise of women in the labor force, with corresponding legal protections being enacted for unwed mothers and their children. The rest is recent history; more people are single than married than ever before, and more people than ever are cohabitating and having children out of wedlock on purpose rather than by accident. Richard Nixon commented in the 1970's that gay marriage was for the year 2000. He wasn't far off. Coontz lays heavy argument that this trend is not only here to stay but in the end cannot be stopped. In an age where students of family studies discuss whether a parent should stay home rather than whether the mother should stay home, and in which acceptance of stay-at-home fathers is on the rise, the new fluctuations of the institution called marriage are only natural. To keep it viable, Coontz argues, it can and must bend. An excellent addition to collections of public policy or family studies, and recommended for anyone curious about the social history of marriage in light of recent attempts to define it. -- Aileen G.R. Chute Sneaking Into the Flying Circus: How the Media Turn Our Presidential Campaigns into Freak Shows Author: Alexandra Pelosi Publisher: Free Press $25.00 Cloth (299 p.) ISBN: 0743263049 B&T         YBP Every four years we here in New Hampshire contract a Primary Fever which doesn't properly go away until after the general election. Well known and not-so-known candidates come flooding into our small state and we receive unprecedented national attention from the major media conglomerates. Those of us with the privilege of voting in the very first primary take all this media coverage very seriously. But it really is just a traveling circus. The media complain that one candidate is too well managed at the same time they punish another for thinking on his feet. Some townspeople, after being trampled and run over by the press in their own hometowns, vow never to vote again, while others joyfully join in the fray. It all leaves one wondering which came first: the press or the politician. Alexandra Pelosi, creator of the documentaries Journeys with George and Diary of a Political Tourist, and incidentally the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to become minority leader in the House, puts into writing her thoughts about the role of the media in the American political process as she travels around with each of the Democratic contenders. Her outlook is not a flattering one. One year into the second term of George Bush, Alexandra Pelosi expertly throws us back into the chaos of candidates leading up to the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary. From seemingly inconsequential details such as John Kerry's Swiss cheese faux pas (everyone knows you don't put Swiss cheese on a Philly cheese steak) to the infamous Howard Dean "scream", Pelosi exposes the whole range of media idiosyncrasies which shape not only public opinion but also the political campaigns they are covering. This is a scholarly, yet not dry, treatment of the role of mass media in American politics. Pelosi throws out hectic sentences here and there as she rushes from campaign bus to campaign bus trying to get in on the story like all of her journalistic peers. The best part about this book is that Pelosi is not standing outside of the system bemoaning its problems, but is unabashedly a part of it: dutifully reporting that Howard Dean's wife is nowhere to be seen and wondering about the political implications of this, while at the same time noticing that none of her married journalist friends dragged their spouses along either; complaining that John Edwards never strays off message while noting that maverick Dean has been demoted from his front-runner status because of the off-message "scream". The pace of this book is as hectic as the primary itself, and if you don't remember the details beforehand you'll be delightfully (or spitefully) surprised that it all comes flooding back in a heartbeat. -- Aileen G.R. Chute Sounding the Trumpet: the Making of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address Author: Richard J. Tofel Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Press $25.00 Cloth (214 p.) ISBN: 1566636108 B&T         YBP History is often taught over vast clusters of time-often fractured by "eras" or "ages"-designed to provide a beginning and an end. Other works of history focus on a narrow range of time and often give flavor to the old Jesuit lament that much of modern scholarship languishes in an effort to learn more and more about less and less. Rarely, do we encounter a book that treats a very specific subject, but uses the subject as a lens to project the larger issues of that time. Such rare writing invites us to live within the moments it chronicles. Richard J. Tofel's new book is one of those rare books. It tells the story of the preparation of President Kennedy's inaugural address, but also invites us into the time of national reckoning when the cold war blew artic and the Age of Aquarius had not yet dawned. It describes the excitement and trepidation of the United States as a 43 year old from Massachusetts moved to become a world leader. Tofel, a lawyer by training and also once an editor with the Wall Street Journal, manages to crisply detail the tale of the speech. We observe the loyalty of JFK advisor Ted Sorenson, the machinations of the legendary John Kenneth Galbraith and the passion of Adlai Stephenson, as well as others--all seeking to claim their stakes by influencing the inaugural address. We watch as the president moves from his razor-thin victory in November to the inauguration. You sense JFK adjusting to the weighty responsibilities of the transition to power while anxiously collaborating in the preparation of his speech. You see the emerging cabinet members-the eventual drivers of the administration-interacting with the president-elect. You learn how the speech was crafted and how it was delivered. You get firsthand reactions to the speech. And, you get to understand what it was like as this new president assumed power in a world where a young and defiant Fidel Castro enjoyed the support of communist party boss Nikita Khrushchev. It was a world where nuclear capacity and fear of bombardment tugged at the elbows of policymakers. The book is well indexed and filled with notes. Various appendices demonstrate the progression of the speech from the transition period to the Inauguration. The book gives us a lens into the early days of the Kennedy administration. It allows us to glimpse the fledgling New Frontier. It also allows us to enjoy the timeless call to national service the inaugural speech invited and allows us to imagine-albeit briefly-that our presidents do summon us to the challenges of citizenship. -- Jim Ryan Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier's Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo Bay Author: Eric Saar with Viveca Novak Publisher: Penguin $24.95 Cloth (292 p.) ISBN: 1594200661 B&T         YBP Inside the Wire is a personal narrative by an Army linguist who volunteered to serve in Cuba, fully expecting that he would be working with the "worst of the worst" of the captives in the war on terror. Being a personal narrative, the book has an immediacy which I appreciated but it also suffers from a kind of informality that does not always serve the seriousness of the subject well. Saar's frustration at the disconnect between his expectations and the reality of what was happening at Guantanamo Bay was the cause of his eventual disillusionment. I occasionally wished his co-author, Viveca Novak, a correspondent for Time, had tempered his idiomatic writing once he got his immediate impressions onto paper. Of course, other than this book, there is little else to read about this topic apart from declassified military reports and journalism based on the few people willing to talk honestly to reporters. We need to be grateful for Saar's willingness to speak out. Until there is a thorough history of the situation written, this book will have to do. It is difficult to review this book without also reviewing the circumstances under which the situation of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay came into being. I have long believed that the harm to America's reputation in holding these people without regard to basic human rights, the Geneva Convention, or even lip-service to our Constitution is not outweighed by the value of any intelligence we may obtain from them. Eric Saar, with first hand experience, came to the same conclusion and, though I realized this before I read the book, it was my hope that, through this account, even someone in complete agreement with U.S. actions in regard to the detainees might come to some understanding of how badly things are handled there. From that perspective Saar's book is a moderate success. No doubt there are perhaps a dozen or so inmates in Cuba who deserve to be taken behind some building and shot. And I'd be willing to stipulate that there could be as many as a hundred detainees who should be locked away for a good long time, if not the rest of their lives. But the rest of the 600 or so prisoners in Guantanamo Bay were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, coerced into fighting for the Taliban or innocent bystanders sold to U.S. forces by the Northern Alliance for the huge bounties offered indiscriminately for any warm body regardless of actual guilt. These people could be let go without any harm to American interests whatsoever, except that after the treatment they've received at the hands of the U.S. armed forces, they now actually DO have a grudge against America. The problem, as Saar's book points out, is that we don't know which detainee falls into which category, and without trials or hearings conducted under adequate rules of evidence and with non-military representation, it is unlikely that anyone will ever know. There were, at the book's writing, 12 year-olds being held as well as 70 year-olds. There were detainees who have not been questioned for more than six months because everyone knows they have nothing to tell. And yet they stay. Saar began to realize all this after only two weeks in Cuba and by the time he left it was painfully apparent to him that hundreds of detainees were being held simply because it would be too embarrassing to let them go and admit the errors. Once you start riding that tiger and poking him with sticks while you do, it's very difficult to get down. Saar was stationed at Guantanamo Bay at the same time as two Muslims later accused of espionage and, while these two were eventually exonerated, Saar has interesting things to say about how the Army handled these trumped up charges. He was also the translator during the well-reported incident of the female intelligence officer who disrobed during an interrogation session and pretended to smear a detainee with her menstrual blood to make him believe he was religiously unclean. His comments are interesting here as well, but one wishes, as I've mentioned before, that he could have plumbed this experience a little more deeply. Still, we need to be glad he spoke up at all. Most surprisingly, Saar tells of the intense animosity the various U.S. personnel at Guantanamo have for each other. The military police hate the detainees, but they also hate the translators for being too "cozy" with the prisoners. The intelligence personnel don't completely trust the military police and accuse them of ruining relationships they try to establish with the detainees. The Muslim personnel complain that the others don't respect Islam and the Christian personnel claim the Muslim staff discriminates against them. The translators feel as though they are in the middle of it all because no one quite believes they are giving complete translations. Saar makes it clear that incompetence and inhumanity combined at Guantanamo Bay to create a surreal world where intelligence would almost never be found and truth could almost never be told. As a small example he mentions that suicide attempts by detainees went under-reported by calling them "manipulative self-injurious behaviors" which included 120 "hanging gestures". Inside the Wire ends in June 2003 and Saar finishes his book with an epilogue of what has happened nationally and personally between then and publication. He also includes copies of official documents relating to treatment of detainees and interrogation techniques approved by the administration. In this epilogue he also mentions the lack of accountability among the higher ranks and begins to touch on motivation and meaning in regards to what America is doing at Guantanamo Bay. I would have liked to have seen more of that as well as Saar's thoughts on the connections between practices there and abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. You would do well to read this book for one man's account of his own experiences in a hellish situation but we will also need to wait for a more thorough history, assuming it's ever allowed to be written. -- Rob Norton Published by YBP Library Services 999 Maple St., Contoocook, NH 03229 USA v: 800.258.3774   f: 603.746.5628 w: www.ybp.com   e: academia@ybp.com All rights reserved.