Book Description
In this groundbreaking history of the Armenian Genocide, the critically acclaimed author of the memoir Black Dog of Fate brings us a riveting narrative of the massacres of the Armenians in the 1890s and genocide in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Using rarely seen archival documents and remarkable first-person accounts, Peter Balakian presents the chilling history of how the Young Turk government implemented the first modern genocide behind the cover of World War I. And in the telling, he also resurrects an extraordinary lost chapter of American history.
During the United States' ascension in the global arena at the turn of the twentieth century, America's humanitarian movement for Armenia was an important part of the rising nation's first epoch of internationalism. Intellectuals, politicians, diplomats, religious leaders, and ordinary citizens came together to try to save the Armenians. The Burning Tigris reconstructs this landmark American cause that was spearheaded by the passionate commitments and commentaries of a remarkable cast of public figures, including Julia Ward Howe, Clara Barton, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Alice Stone Blackwell, Stephen Crane, and Ezra Pound, as well as courageous missionaries, diplomats, and relief workers who recorded their eyewitness accounts and often risked their lives in the killing fields of Armenia.
The crisis of the "starving Armenians" was so embedded in American popular culture that, in an age when a loaf of bread cost a nickel, the American people sent more than $100 million in aid through the American Committee on Armenian Atrocities and its successor, Near East Relief. In 1915 alone, the New York Times published 145 articles about the Armenian Genocide.
Theodore Roosevelt called the extermination of the Armenians "the greatest crime of the war." But in the turmoil following World War I, it was a crime that went largely unpunished. In depicting the 1919 Ottoman court-martial trials, Balakian reveals the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide confessing their guilt -- an astonishing fact given the Turkish government's continued denial of the Genocide.
After World War I, U.S. oil interests in the Middle East steered America away from the course it had pursued for four decades. As Balakian eloquently points out, America's struggle between human rights and national self-interest -- a pattern that would be repeated again and again -- resonates powerfully today. In crucial ways, America's involvement with the Armenian Genocide is a paradigm for the modern age.
Customer Reviews:
A Reader-Friendly Tutorial of the Genocides.......2007-07-17
This book is full of well-documented facts and quotes related to the continued massacres of the people of Armenia and those living in other countries under Turkish rule.
The chronological format allows readers a comprehensible "understanding" of each successive "event" from the late-1800s thru the failed post-World War I efforts of international leaders to establish and protect a free and independent Armenia following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
My hope is that a well-known movie director will ask author Peter Balakian to write a screen play based upon this book. It would be more gripping and powerful than SCHINDLER!S LIST!
One Brilliant & Truly Enticing Read on Armenian Genocide.......2007-02-12
"The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response", Peter Balakian, HarperCollins, NY, 2003, ISBN 0-06-019840-0, HC 392 pgs., plus Notes 40 pgs., Biblio. 10 pgs., Index 15 pgs., 3 Maps & 15 pgs. B/W photos, etc. 9 1/4" x 6 1/4"
A brilliant, intimate narrative of multiple massacres of Armenian peoples is set forth by accomplished writer Peter Balakian, a Professor of Humanities. The book is divided into 4 parts: I Emergence of Human Rights, II Turkish Road to Genocide, III American Witess(es), & IV Failed Mission. The Epilogue "Turkish Denial...and U.S. Complicity" is especially informative & revealing of those motives behind inaction by various world powers whose true motives, eminently, the U.S., were bound up in an insatiable pursuit for stakes in oil reserves, especially those in Mesopotamia, & for military bases in the Near East, especially Turkey.
Historically, we are informed Armenia was conquered by Caesar in 63 B.C., adopted Christianity by 301 A.D., was driven into Cilicea by Seljuk Turks in 11th Century, destroyed by Muslim Mamluks in 1375 then overrun by oppressive Ottoman Turks (Muslim) in 1443 who legally designated them "infidels". The crumbling Ottoman Empire headed by the "bloody sultan" Turkish caliph Abdul Hamid II from August 31, 1876 to July 24, 1908 is credited with the "Hamidian massacres" or "holocaust" of 5,000 - 200,000 Armenians in Erzinjan. Sultan's power, assumed by nationalist "Young Turks" of the CUP, sought Muslim orthodoxy, implemented the shari'a (sacred Muslim Qu'ran law), & provoked frenzied Armenian massacres, beatings, rapes, deportations & pillaging ("continuum of destruction") in 1909 in Adana.
In aftermath of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) Armenian Genocide (AG) pinnacled after the coup d-etat of Jan. 26, 1913 led by Talat Pasha, Enver Pasha, Jemal Pasha (Young Turk Trio) & Ziya Gokalp launching nationalistic indoctrination ("New Religion") with paramilitary training of youths, to revitalize into Golden Age as had Genghis Khan, seeking to destroy Armenians as "dangerous microbes." The brutal, gory details of bastinado, nail extraction, crucifixion, head splitting, eye gouging, mass burnings, starvations, mass drownings, rapes, etc. were carried out on CUP's killing agenda, an hierarchial command motivated by jihad that included Special Organization killing squads, Kurdish Hamidiye forces, gendarmes, & military police all used in the 1914-1915 AG when some 1,000,000. died. Final killings (6,000) were at Kars in October 1920 and in Smyrna on September 1922 by the Kemalist army. But the hatred & official Turkish denials persist, most plausibly stemming from the inhumane, replusive, ghoulish & fiendish massacres although threat of reparations including land exists.
If one were to read one book on the AG, this would be that book to choose: -- it is heavily informative, extraordinarily readable via first-person accounts with just enough repetition of different 'sources' providing supportive details as to leave a most favorable imprinting.
Excellent historic documentation........2006-12-20
Very useful research and information on a key historic event, namely the Armenian Genocide.
Excellent book.......2006-11-05
Even though I posted my review once on another Genocide related article, I just couldn't resist posting it here. Sorry for the inconvenience..
To the Turkish "review"ers:
This is the case always when any is published about any subject that bears the name Armenia. Armenia is "fake, bandit, criminal, murderous, genocidal" and the list goes on and on... I again ask objectively and scholarly as to where, when, how, who, why are these people charged with these heavy charges, when it was the OTTOMAN EMPIRE which ruled for over 630 years, over the known Christian world, from the doors of Vienna to the shores of Yemen, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black sea shores and Persia. During that period how many millions of Christians were forcefully converted to Islam, tortured, massacred, brutalized, their properties, wives and daughters confiscated and dishonored, and also how many wars did it have against even Muslim powers like the Persian Kingdom, the Berbers, the Albanians, the Kurds and Arabs?
Sure, it is easy to yeal "WE DIDN'T DO IT!" in regards to the Armenian Genocide.. Oh but hold it! Don't the Neo-Nazis say the same about the Holocaust? Don't the Khmer militia say the same about Cambodia? Don't SOME Hutus say the same about the Tutsis? DOES THE GOVERNMENT OF SUDAN OR DOES YOUR GOVERNMENT IN TURKEY OR AZERBAIJAN say there is a Genocide going on in SUDAN? (I know exactly why can't you say it). Sudan would tell you to "look into a mirror..."
Do you want just one example of Genocide commited not only against the Armenians, but against every Christian minority for 630 years? WHERE DID YOU RECRUIT THE JANISSARIES FROM...? Being christian children forcefully taken as tax from their parents and grown as turks to massacre christians is or isn't a classical, methodological, systematic way to shrink or eliminate a race? What about the 300,000 Armenians massacred by the Hamidiye forces between 1894-1896? What about the 30,000 plus Armenians butchered in Adana in 1909? What about the 1,500,000 Armenians, and more than 400,000 Greeks, 250,000 Assyrians, and thousands of other non-turkic minorities between 1915 and 1923...? Some Turkish diplomats were shot during the Cold War by Armenian activists? What a pity... 30 plus diplomats for you weigh more than millions upon millions of other people... Elif Shafak the daughter of one of those diplomats shot, is more couragous than anyone to objectively examine for the truth and getting convinced that Turkey did commit the ultimate crime against humanity, that these Armenians acted for the recognition of the Genocide (even though the ways were extreme and sometimes unjustified.) Wasn't it the interior minister of Azerbaijan who in 2005 said that "Armenia would not exist in 30 years from now..? Any better words for Genocide?
Let the honest, unbiased, historically sound minded person objectively examine the events, and come to the conclusions. Conclusions that are nowadays reached by Turkish intellectuals (Akcam, Berktay, Muge, Ertem, Zarakoglu, Shafak, and many more) who recognize and condemn the first Genocide of the 20th Century.
"NOW GO AND LOOK INTO A MIRROR..."
An oft-overlooked aspect of the Armenian Massacres.......2006-09-30
The reason I bought the Burning Tigris is that, unlike some histories of the Armenian Massacre, it gives extensive information about those around the world who DID care, who DID help. Too often I've heard people say, "No one did anything to help." But it is heartening to know that many did try, and that America was in the forefront. The record of the efforts to alleviate the suffering of the victims, and protest the genocide serves in itself as a proof that this atrocity occurred.
Sadly, denial and persecution continues, as one may see by some of the reviews here. However, Armenians have all the more reason to be grateful to America for giving us freedom and safety. Writing bad reviews and denying facts is the worst Ottoman-defending Turks can do to us now.
Amazon.com
For quite some time after the 1977 publication of The Public Burning, it was almost impossible to find a copy. The book's own publisher seemed--no, was reluctant to admit it even existed. That's because this imaginative reconstruction of the 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted for giving atom bomb secrets to the Soviets, was the first major work of modern fiction to feature a still-living historical figure as a prominent character. The book's obscurity was the publisher's attempt to avoid legal repercussions from Richard Nixon, who over the course of the book engages in a romantic interlude with Ethel Rosenberg and graphically surrenders himself to a rapacious Uncle Sam.
Now that Nixon's dead, however, readers are free to marvel at one of the few American novels to rival Joyce's Ulysses for sustained stylistic inventiveness. Snippets of speeches and articles from Time are recast in poetic form, entire scenes are presented in dramatic verse, as events in the Rosenberg case move towards their historically destined conclusion. --Ron Hogan
Customer Reviews:
The Treasonous Truth.......2007-09-04
The sheer brilliance of 'The Public Burning' cannot be understated. From the virtuousity of the writing to the subtle intelligence of its criticisms, this book still stands as a classic. Importantly, this novel is not merely an unfavourable take on the culture of the cold war but is a broader interrogation of the ways in which history folds into fantasy in American life, how law becomes theatre, war becomes spectacle, politics an electrocution. Its cartoonish aspects are not simply Coover's attempt to indict the era through mockery nor an invitation to stand over people in the past. Instead, they are a representation of a culture that can only ever come to terms with itself through cartoons, a nation that needs its enemies animated, its champions superheroic, its values decomplicated in dusty bromides and staid clichés. Most intriguing perhaps is the treatment of Eisenhower: in Coover's world, an example of how even the most moderate and benign public figures are entangled in the extremities of violence and cynicism that are not just the work of the political fringes nor the province of any one political party over another but are instead the popular centrifuge around which the idea of America assembles itself. There is no doubt that this is a highly political book but it is not political because it is partisan (a work of the Left raging against the Right) but rather because it is sceptical of politics altogether. All Americans assemble to see the Rosenbergs fry -- wherever they may lie on the political spectrum, Democrat or Republican, conservative or dissident. What burns in this novel is the public -- the very idea of a public entity or a civic realm which is constituted through well-intentioned notions of truth, security, justice, freedom and faith, but which cannot have any of these without an allegiance to the idea of the nation itself, an allegiance which will allow dissent within tight bounds but which will put those too far outside this boundary - especially those who move against the state in a criminal way - to a showy, spectacular death. At the heart of all this lies Nixon, not just because the disgraced future President is an indication of democratic bankruptcy, a representative of how power has become so misplaced, but also because he embodies the emptiness of the idea of the nation itself, the coercive need to 'act American' which is necessary to put into motion this patriotic stir of activity, this great rollicking farce. I note that some reviewers here have taken issue with the apparent lack of depth in the characters Coover offers in this book - Uncle Sam as snake-oil salesman, Nixon as buffoon and so on -- but this misses the author's real aim: to assemble already well-worn clichés in such an intense concentration that they expose the impossibility of character in such a culture, to demonstrate how the idea of America strings itself together in a series of lip-service wisdoms about history and destiny that ultimately eclipse individuality and place any person in proximity to the electric chair, implicating everyone in the violent lunacy of the legal execution, which, because it is carried out in the name of the people, cannot help but involve the people in their entirety. Too often authors attempt to criticise America by putting forward a vision of what the 'real' America actually is or what the 'true' America should be, an alternative in either way to how the inherent worth of the country has been corrupted. Coover, on the other hand, will have none of this: the carnivalesque inferno he conjures out of the careful blend of fiction and fact is aimed at decimating any salvageable idea of the nation at all, of tearing the whole logic of allegiance to the ground. In this sense, and quite proudly and profoundly, 'The Public Burning' is as treasonous to America as the Rosenbergs were deemed to be themselves.
It has to be said, however, that this book is not so much a defence of the Rosenbergs themselves or their crimes as it is a critique of the law that convicted them. It is a misreading of this book to assume the Rosenbergs are made into heroes, or that their operatic casting as victims should make us excuse their proven or potential guilt. Rather, Coover looks to them not to pardon them but to tell a story that will act as a counternarrative to how guilt and innocence were decided in this case. To this day, the controversy surrounding the Rosenberg trial is not so much to do with whether they were foreign agents (it seems Julius Rosenberg was involved in espionage, though the evidence is still out on his wife, Ethel) or whether the information they provided to the Russians was of any actual use (there is still some debate over this) but rather the gross miscarriage of justice embodied in the way they were put to death. As Justice Douglas explains early in the book to Uncle Sam, the US Constitution states that "no person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court." In the Rosenberg case, there was only one witness - Julius' brother-in-law, David Greenglass - and no confession. As such, to get around this, government prosecutors tried the Rosenbergs on a lesser conspiracy law, a piece of legislation which had been enacted by Congress to circumvent the 'two witness' provision by revising it so that only one witness's testimony could permit a conviction. And yet the hypocrisy of this was not the law in and of itself but the fact that the Rosenbergs were convicted on this lesser law even as they were sentenced to death on a higher law. Their prosecution went against the provisions of the Constitution but they were also handed the maximum punishment for treason - death - that only the Constitution allows. In other words, what enabled them to be executed was the very document that was shunned by prosecutors in the first place. This kind of legal cherrypicking is at the heart of Coover's critique because it demonstrates how the Constitution - designed not only to protect the nation from traitors but also to prevent the misuse of power - was corrupted in this case to serve the so-called national interest. If Coover wants this book to be traitorous in its searing critique of the idea of America, he also wants it to be constitutional. In fact, what Coover ironically shows us is that to be treasonous and to be a constitutionalist is one and the same in the USA so many years on from its founding. To think ourselves outside the nation is to actually think toward the document that brought it into being. In this sense, 'The Public Burning' is neither a simple-minded polemic against the cynicism of a culture nor a ham-fisted attempt to excuse the inexcusable. In the end, and with great courage and sensitivity, it is one long oath to a nation that could have been but never was.
Thanks, Kevin.......2005-03-18
It's good to have red-baiting reviewers like Kevin Bowman to prove Robert Coover's point a half-century after the Rosenbergs died and nearly thirty years after his book appeared. Gee, even an evil intellectual ("vindictive college professor") turns up in Kevin's review. Talk about fully-formed characters.
It's a great book. You don't have to agree with the politics. There are parts where Coover goes way over the top, as you might expect with any 800 pound gorilla of a novel like this. It's true, it is a little "sophomoric" sometimes. It's profound more often, though, and not just because Coover takes potshots at Luce's Time Magazine.
Seriously, this is an unjustly ignored masterpiece. Let's hope there are more vindictive college professors out there.
Godawful .......2005-02-25
Any book based on the premise that the Rosenbergs were innocent, deserving of beatification, victims of awful America, is not going to date well. 1977, I suppose, was a kind of high-water mark for that sort of thinking. If you have a friend who thinks Stalin was unfairly maligned, this may be the book for him.
I was forced to read this book cover to cover by a vindictive college professor who assigned it to me (and me alone) as the subject for a class writing project. I loathed every minute of it. From its doctrinaire anti-anti-communist, anti-Americanism; its sub-Dos Passos modernism; its sophomoric delight in scatology (giggle, giggle, tee hee, Nixon has sex with Ethel Rosenberg and is then anally raped by Uncle Sam). There are no fully-formed characters, just endless making of puerile political points. Nixon-bad. Time Magazine-bad. America-bad. Ethel Rosenberg-saint and martyr.
Its like a bad book treatment of a very bad Ken Russell movie. I'd rather eat jagged metal bits than be forced to read this pompous, train-wreck of a book ever again.
No more than a sideshow attraction.......2004-12-21
Every now and then I finish a book and ask, "Now why did this author write that?" I'm not talking about trash reading. We know what that's for; entertainment. No, when I ask "Why?" after finishing a book, it's generally a longer work with artistic ambitions and evidently an important point to make. I just can't tell what that point might be.
Take "The Public Burning". The author, Robert Coover, is widely considered to be one of the leading lights of American experimental fiction. The novel is a semi-fictionalized narrative of the days preceding the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, here as in real life convicted of treason for selling atomic secrets to the Russians. It's a good read, but what's the value in telling a true story in such an odd way? The true story is dramatic enough as is. Coover never quite answers that, and it weakens his book.
Feel free to skip this part if you know the historical facts:
Back in the 1950s, the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear bomb. Many assumed that the Soviets must have stolen nuclear information from the U.S. through a network of spies, and the FBI picked the Rosenbergs as the guilty parties. They were convicted and sentenced to death, and despite a last-minute stay of execution by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, they went to the electric chair on June 19, 1953.
In his novel, Coover recasts the Rosenberg execution as a piece of political theater, deliberately staged by the Eisenhower administration to boost American morale, and therefore set to take place as the novel opens not at the Sing Sing death house, but in the middle of Times Square. Uncle Sam, here a real person, is a sort of superhero, possessed of remarkable powers in his neverending battle against the Phantom, his appropriately shady Communist counterpart. And perhaps most bizarrely, while half the chapters have the usual third-person narrator telling the story in a kind of hyper-inflated circus language, the other chapters are narrated by none other than Vice President Richard Nixon.
Before we get to Tricky Dick, however, let's consider the carnival-barker narration of the other chapters. It's filled with comic-book jargon, interjections on the order of "Good Heavens!" and various other cheesy rhetorical devices. Uncle Sam himself speaks like a snake-oil salesman, tossing in many a "Whoopee-ti-yi-yo!" and things like that as the execution approaches.
Evidently, this book seeks to present the United States as a nation of con men and suckers, but in the midst of all the tinsel and ballyhoo (directed by Cecil B. DeMille, with sets by Walt Disney), it seems like a lot of fun. Coover shows a nice balance between the exhilaration of rah-rah Americanism and the horror of the rot under the surface. It's all part of the same long, strange trip, and you can't have one without the other.
With a similar schizophrenia, in his sections of this book, Nixon has a sort of poetry in his soul and genuine sense of mission, both of them about as banal as you please. That sounds like a contradiction in terms, I know, but what else can you say about a character who comes right out and says that he loves his wife primarily because she belongs to him? Who can't decide between serving his country and serving himself, and often conflates the two? And who spends half his time parsing every one of Uncle Sam's most moronic clichés like it was the entrails of some sacrificial chicken?
If this description reminds you of your favorite national politican, Republican or Democrat, I assure you that's not a coincidence. Nixon himself once said, in real life, that John Kennedy was what people wanted to be, and he himself what they actually were. In any case, his fictionalized counterpart here is doubtless what we're afraid we are. He is Vice President of the United States, for God's sake, and he's still a loser. He sweats and stinks through the pages in desperate need of a shave or a toilet, he strains to justify himself and his past in the middle of a national crisis, he can't even relax while playing golf. And needless to say, the more he struggles for victory, the more clownish he becomes. By the time the book is over, a jammed Times Square has had an eyeful of Dick Nixon with his pants around his ankles, and there are worse humiliations in store for him.
Okay, so far we've got an examination of the American split personality from two very different and complementary points of view, filtered through an actual historical event and featuring historical figures. I was intrigued. So why did I feel so let down when I reached the last page?
I think it's because, when you get right down to cases, nothing really happens in "The Public Burning". Ethel and Julius Rosenberg die, Uncle Sam taps Nixon as a future president, and things go back to the way they were before. For all the flash and dazzle, the comic book zip, the world of this book and the world we live in are pretty much alike. Which isn't a bad thing, but the flourish made me anticipate something more, some explosive scream at the end. Instead, "The Public Burning" reads like Coover simply observed these events through a literary kaleidoscope and wrote down what he saw. That makes for good painting sometimes, but not necessarily good novels; "The Public Burning" is an amusing experiment, but so what?
In short, this book would have made a truly fascinating short piece, and even as is it's a lot of fun to read for the language alone. Really good full-length novels, on the other hand, leave what Anthony Burgess called some kind of residue in the mind. "The Public Burning" just slides right through. Bring on the next one.
Benshlomo says, 500-odd pages ought to weigh more than this.
Unfinished.......2002-03-24
Perhaps it's unfair of me to rate this book, since I didn't make it to the end. It was disappointing, since I've liked others of Coover's books. This one is written in a stream of consciousness style reminiscent of James Joyce/"Ulysses" (which I liked a lot). Similarly, it also is incredibly literate and erudite, lots of language play which still somehow was mostly just hard and not fun the way language should and can be. I could appreciate the humor intellectually, but it wasn't really funny. The subject matter is a cynical take on a dark subject, the Rosenberg executions. I can certainly understand why its release was so contoversial. It might help to know more about the period but as someone who came of political age (later) during the Watergate years I know little about Nixon as VP and many of the social references were lost on me.
Average customer rating:
- Forest Fire Not the Problem, Forest Service Is
- A Justifiably Burning Issue
- A good case for abolishing the Forest Service
- Searing Insights on a Hot Topic
- Fire Liar for Hire?
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A Burning Issue: A Case for Abolishing the U.S. Forest Service (The Political Economy Forum)
Robert H. Nelson
Manufacturer: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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ASIN: 0847697355 |
Book Description
In A Burning Issue, Robert Nelson makes a compelling case for abolishing the U.S. Forest Service. Created in the early 20th century to provide scientific management of the nation's forests, the U.S. Forest Service was, for many years, regarded as a model agency in the federal government. Nelson contends that this reputation is undeserved and the Forest Service's performance today is unacceptable. Nelson advocates replacing the service with a decentralized system to manage the protection of our national forests.
Customer Reviews:
Forest Fire Not the Problem, Forest Service Is.......2001-10-18
Excerpted from a book review by Ronald N. Johnson in the Independent Review (Fall 2001)
In A Burning Issue, Robert Nelson argues that the U.S. Forest Service is demoralized within and besieged from without by a wide array of interest groups. He attributes this sorry state of affairs to the Forest Service's inability to define its mission in a time of rapidly changing values in American society. His solution to this predicament is to abolish the agency.
"The leading policy issue today on the national forest system--issues that demonstrate the inability of the current Forest Service to deal with the basic problems of the national forests--revolve around forest fire and its ecological consequences." Federal fire policy has sought to eliminate fire, but has instead merely changed its time and place. Wildfires have gone from being high-frequency, low-intensity events, which sustained certain ecosystems, to low-frequency, high-intensity fires prompting costly suppression attempts that have often proved futile.
According to Nelson, a variety of interest groups have converged to sustain the fire-suppression policy. There is litle question that interest groups shape policies and political behavior, but Nelson's book would not win high praise from academics for its application of public-choice concepts. Although Nelson may have correctly identified the underlying interest groups, he does not offer evidence to support his claims about their politicking. However, such an analysis is not his objective. Rather, he seeks to make the case not only that Forest Service fire policy, along with reductions in timber harvests, has been a costly mistake, but that the alternative approach advocated by many so-called environmentalists is also fraught with contradictions and costs.
Although I concur with Nelson's recommendation to abolish the Forest Service, I think it is an unlikely outcome, and his intermediate or short-run proposal offers only limited benefits. Nevertheless, his book should be required reading for all students of government, not only those concerned with Forest Service policy, because it provides an excellent source in any attempt to understand the consequences of allowing a governmental agency to become so buffeted by competing pressure groups that it loses direction and becomes an even more costly entity.
A Justifiably Burning Issue.......2001-02-22
This is a superb analysis of a once great government agency. Mr. Nelson makes a compelling case for abolishing the Forest Service -- his book merits the thoughtful attention of anyone concerned with the preservation and responsible management of our nation's national forests....this includes the Forest Service itself!
A good case for abolishing the Forest Service.......2000-11-23
Robert Nelson argues that it's time to abolish the U.S. Forest Service. Nelson spent 18 years in the Department of Interior's policy shop, and he knows the issues. His book covers the history of the Forest Service and its policies that lead - to some extent - to this year's devastating Western wildfires. The service has made too many resource management mistakes. It doesn't have the same interest in forestry and grazing management as the people who reside in the areas the service manages. Nelson makes a convincing case that the people with strong local interests in resource management could certainly do no worse than the Forest Service when it comes to preventing devastating fires, so let's give them a chance. As Nelson explains, ecosystem management from on high is used to justify anything the service might want to do, but top the top-down approach doesn't work any longer for resource management. And, as Nelson writes, it's not just the executive branch that needs a new approach. Congress might not know what it's doing, either: "Federal politics is today dominated by national television networks and other media that distort as often as clarify the real forest issues. If decisions for the forests of the West are made in Washington, most democratically elected representatives will be far removed from the places where their decisions take effect. Many members of Congress will have never visited the national forests where their votes will be determining future policy." This book should be assigned to all forestry majors, in colleges everywhere. (Note-I wrote about this book for Timberlinemag.com.)
Searing Insights on a Hot Topic.......2000-09-06
The recent wildfires in New Mexico and Colorado are a painful illustration of the costs of federal land management. America's National Parks and National Forests are in disarray; millions of acres are just one spark away from complete conflaguration. Thus, the latest political economy forum book, Robert Nelson's A Burning Issue: A Case for Abolishing the U.s. Forest Service could not be more timely. Nelson, a professor at the University of Maryland (and a former colleague of mine at the Competitive Enterprise Institute) lays out why Smokey the Bear must shoulder much of the blame for turning the national forests into a tinderbox. Political management of the U.S. Forest Service lies at the heart of its current difficulties, Nelson explains. It is not simply a matter of the wrong leadership or wrong institutional mission. Building on his earlier work on federal land management, Nelson shows why neither the progressive era doctrine of "scientific management," nor newer notions of "ecosystem management" or "natural regulation" can solve the current mess. Only a wholesale reconstitution of the forest service's structure and responsibilities will suffice. Indeed, Nelson explains why America's forests, and neighboring communities, would be safer were the forest service eliminated altogether in favor of decentralized forest units directly responsible for their management and care. For the forests' sake, hope that such an approach becomes politically viable before the next fiery maelstrom ignites.
[Note, this review originally appeared as part of my column in the Washington Times.]
Fire Liar for Hire?.......2000-08-17
With nearly 5 billion acres ablaze out West this summer, Nelson's book is well-timed if poorly thought out. His thesis is that the Forest Service should be abolished entirely and he's being funded by the Competitive Enterprise Institute -- a "shill tank" for less government and more big business profiteering -- to say as much. The problem is that the REAL problem (as Nelson admits) is too much fire suppression for too long out west. Nelson argues that a "fuel buildup" out west requires more "mechanical thinning," (i.e. logging for private profit on public lands). In reality, however, mechanical thinning is simply too expensive to do the job, while proscribed fires require a LARGER Forest Service budget to be effectively managed. It's hard to read Nelson's book without seeing it as being little more than a clever stalking horse: an industry-funded case statement for more rape and ruin of the forest. A visit to the Competitive Enterprise Institute's web site (one of Nelson's employers) makes it clear they have never seen an environmental or public health law they liked. Nelson's book is less a case statement for forest protection than it is for continued massive subsidies for industry exploitation of public land. When Nelson says "mechancial thinning" will not pay for itself, he is really calling for massive public subsidies of the timber industry. When Nelson advocates "recovering" lost revenue from "thinning" the forest, he is really advocating chopping down healthy forests for commercial purposes. Bottom line: this book blows a lot more smoke than any of the fires out west. We need more science and less "forest liar" propaganda.
Book Description
A little over a century ago, bubonic plague--the same Black Death that decimated medieval Europe--arrived on the shores of Hawaii just as the islands were about to become a U.S. territory. In this absorbing narrative, James Mohr tells the story of that fearful visitation and its fiery climax--a vast conflagration that engulfed Honolulu's Chinatown. Mohr tells this gripping tale largely through the eyes of the people caught up in the disaster, from members of the white elite to Chinese doctors, Japanese businessmen, and Hawaiian reporters. At the heart of the narrative are three American physicians--the Honolulu Board of Health--who became virtual dictators when the government granted them absolute control over the armed forces and the treasury. The doctors soon quarantined Chinatown, where the plague was killing one or two people a day and clearly spreading. They resisted intense pressure from the white community to burn down all of Chinatown at once and instead ordered a careful, controlled burning of buildings where plague victims had died. But a freak wind whipped one of those small fires into a roaring inferno that destroyed everything in its path, consuming roughly thirty-eight acres of densely packed wooden structures in a single afternoon. Some 5000 people lost their homes and all their possessions and were marched in shock to detention camps, where they were confined under armed guard for weeks. Next to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Chinatown fire is the worst civic disaster in Hawaiian history. A dramatic account of people struggling in the face of mounting catastrophe, Plague and Fire is a stimulating and thought-provoking read.
Customer Reviews:
A complex collision of science, politics & culture.......2006-11-09
When the plague came to Kahului on Maui in 1900, the little port village was burned down without fuss, and the sickness was ended.
It was very different in Honolulu on the more populous (though still small) island of Oahu, where the disease arrived somewhat earlier. In "Plague and Fire," University of Oregon historian James Mohr has done a masterly job of sorting out a complicated situation.
The world was -- again -- in the grip of a pandemic in the late 1890s, and the disease hit Hawaii just in the middle of two extraordinary changes, one political, one scientific.
Hawaii had been annexed by the United States, although its Territorial government was not yet organized and the Republic government was still running things.
And scientific doctors were finally about to understand plague. The bacillus had been discovered five years earlier, though the vector, rat fleas, was not proven until around 1905.
People reacted to the outbreak of plague, as they always had, with fear, compassion and opportunism.
Three physicians, Nathaniel Emerson, Francis Day and Clifford Wood, were in a position to react as no one ever had before in the centuries of the Black Death. They were the effective members of the Honolulu Board of Health, and as adherents of the new bacteriological approach to epidemic disease, they felt confident they could eradicate the disease, not merely ameliorate its effects.
It was a brave opinion, as equally modern doctors were failing to do that in places like Hong Kong. Emerson, Day and Wood, however, were given dictatorial powers, and Hawaii's scientifically-minded president, Sanford Dole, insulated them, as much as possible, from political pressures.
For half a year, the doctors ran Honolulu, spending most of the money in the treasury, restricting civil liberties and destroying property.
Though Mohr does not say so, it probably was Honolulu's cosmopolitan conflicts that made success possible.
In Bombay or Hong Kong, scientific medicos were opposed by unified, antiscientific cultures.
In Honolulu, the up-to-date haole (white) doctors were supported by the Japanese doctors, also Western-trained. Emerson, Day and Wood were opposed by most Chinese doctors and by the older, unscientific generation of American and European physicians.
The plague started in Chinatown, a slum housing around 5,000 people, not all Chinese.
Public health measures had to take account of cultural differences. Chinese objected to cremating plague victims as a public health measure, Japanese did not, for example.
The residents of Chinatown had a well-founded suspicion of the motives of the white elites. There were plenty in each community who saw the plague as a commercial opportunity.
The burning of most of Chinatown was not the board's policy, which was to burn individual buildings where plague occurred.
As Mohr says, they might eventually have burned Chinatown lot by lot, but it was a fluke of weather that burned most of it in one day.
Though partly mistaken in its medical theory, the approach had the virtue of working. Deaths were limited to a few score.
Mohr has mined a large store of contemporary documents and, just as informative, the oral tradition of Chinatown that has been diligently recorded by a handful of local historians.
"Plague and Fire" reveals, in its intricacies, a great deal about what Hawaii was like as it entered its modern era; and something about how we came to behave as we do today.
A well-balanced reassessment of the desperate measures implemented in response to a public health crisis.......2006-02-26
On a single day in 1900, over 5,000 Honolulu residents--nearly all of them living in the Chinatown section--lost their homes and belongings in a fire that swept through the district and destroyed a number of landmarks (including the venerated Kaumakapili Church). Although health officials set the fire, they had meant to contain it to a small set of hovels that had been home to a recent victim of a plague epidemic. The winds shifted and the church steeple caught fire, acting as a torch and sprinkling embers throughout the entire neighborhood. Miraculously, not a single person died in the fire.
Following the debacle, the newly homeless residents were placed in quarantine camps for several weeks, until fears of plague had abated. For decades after, the Chinatown Fire entered Honolulu lore, and some residents never shed the belief that the conflagration had been deliberately set. And not without reason: many local leaders and white-run newspaper editorial boards had been urging that the entire neighborhood be leveled and burned to stem the fearful spread of plague. (In addition, despite native resistance, the white community was working to make the recently annexed Hawaii a territory of the United States.) Although James Mohr's valuable, readable, and well-researched book examines the racial, class, and imperial politics that fueled the debate over what to do about the plague epidemic, he ultimately exonerates the motives of the health authorities for setting the fire.
But he has a larger purpose than showing that the fire was merely a well-intended public policy gone awry. He describes how officials responded to the medical emergency of the plague and, more specifically, he details the unprecedented powers granted to a trio of doctors appointed to respond to the crisis. The doctors were given complete authority over police and governance functions, as well as the treasury, until four weeks after the last confirmed case of plague. From this narrative emerge three heroes: Nathaniel Emerson, Francis Day, and Clifford Wood, all graduates of American medical schools who had emigrated to Hawaii, who had served extensively as public health officers, who had little previous political experience, and who ruined their own health and nearly destroyed their careers by accepting the assignment.
Because of the efforts of this trio, Honolulu's Plague of 1900 was far less severe than it might have been otherwise. Mohr does not claim that their methods were perfect or that their motives were uninfluenced by prejudice; instead he concludes that, given their limited medical knowledge (particularly concerning how plague infection was communicated), their policies were remarkably humanitarian and effective. Furthermore, they stubbornly resisted the "racist desires of the Citizens' Sanitary Commission, of many white businessmen, and of the traditional physicians in their own medical community," and, under extraordinary strain, implemented measures that were, for their time, sensitive both to the needs of the poor who lived in the affected neighborhood and, later, to the well-being of the homeless who were placed in the quarantine camps. While stopping short of suggesting that emergency powers during health catastrophes might be surrendered to medical authorities, Mohr certainly makes the case that selfless, politically neutral professionals might be capable of responsible and responsive governance during times of crisis, particularly when such powers are granted with clearly defined limits.
Hawaii, History, Medicine, & Law collide in Gripping Tale.......2004-12-04
The Boston Globe gave it a rave review (Nov. 18, 2004) and it's well deserved. Recommended reading for anyone interested in U.S. history, medicine, public health, or legal history. Travelling to Hawaii? Take this along and see a very different side of paradise!
Average customer rating:
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Burning Money
J. Peter Grace
Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Politics
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0025449303 |
Average customer rating:
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The Burning Of The Rice: A Cambodian Success Story
Don Puckeridge
Manufacturer: Sid Harta Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Political
| Leaders & Notable People
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Travel
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Memoirs
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Economic Policy & Development
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Cambodia
| Asia
| Travel
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 1877059730 |
Customer Reviews:
Adventure & Science.......2007-03-24
This book tells the story of how Cambodian recovered from years of famine through the application of rice research. The book is a good read -- a combination of history, science and adventure.
Average customer rating:
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The Public Burning
Robert COOVER
Manufacturer: Allen Lane
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
| Classics
| Comic
| Contemporary
| Literary
ASIN: 0713911239 |
Books:
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- CIO Wisdom: Best Practices from Silicon Valley
- Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries
- Depression Fallout: The Impact of Depression on Couples and What You Can Do to Preserve the Bond
- Devil May Cry (A Dark-Hunter Novel, Book 11)
- Dian Hanson': The History of Girly Magazines: 1900-1969 (Klotz)
- Distant Shores: A Tenth-Anniversary Celebration (Star Trek: Voyager)
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