Book Description
The first "behind-the-scenes" history of FDR's secret mission to invade North Africa.
Customer Reviews:
WWII history.......2007-02-18
Read this if you want to know what US schools do not teach about the real history of WWII. Fascinating.
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- A Secret Society that Really Influenced Events
- A Secret Society that Really Influenced Events
- Dreadful!
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The Cambridge Apostles: A History of Cambridge University's Elite Intellectual Secret Society
Richard Deacon
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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ASIN: 0374118205 |
Book Description
This is the story of the Apostles - Cambridge University's elite intellectual secret society - from its modest beginning in the 1820s to the revelation in recent decades that two of the most notorious "moles" for the Soviet secret service - Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt - were Apostles.
Customer Reviews:
A Secret Society that Really Influenced Events.......2002-06-18
Interest in The Apostles, a secretive club of Cambridge University dons and undergraduates, was aroused after the exposure of Anthony Blunt as leader of a Soviet spy ring that included Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean (who defected to the Soviet Union in 1951) and also the infamous H.A.R. (Kim) Philby. Their point of connection was Cambridge, and a further connection was The Apostles, to which Blunt and Burgess belonged, and to which it was alleged Maclean belonged (although Richard Deacon finds nothing to suggest he did). Blunt's and Burgess's homosexuality also figured into the luridness of the reports: what was this cenacle of sodomites and traitors?
As Richard Deacon makes clear, The Apostles - the Cambridge Conversazione Society - was both more and less than this. In the atmosphere within which it existed at Cambridge, heterodoxy and homosexuality flourished more-or-less openly. Cambridge had long been hospitable to the evangelical or low-church wing of the Church of England, and had sided with the Puritans during the English civil war. The Calvinist doctrine of election (the notion that certain individuals are predestined to be saved) easily metamorphoses into gnosticism (the concept that an elect or élite can have a special and superior insight into the purposes and ways of Deity) and antinomianism (the belief that individuals so filled with grace are above the ordinary laws and manners of society). It has a fondness for compulsory righteousness, as evidenced by the rule of Calvin himself in Geneva, Cromwell in England, and the Puritans in Massachusetts. Such views are tailor-made for the encouragement of arrogant self-anointed élitism.
Single-sex environments such as those involuntarily present in prisons and (in the past) on shipboard, encourage homosexuality faute de mieux; environments that are rigidly single-sex by choice (as the recent scandals in the Roman Catholic church show) attract those who are homosexual by preference. Even though Protestant in theology, the great English universities retained well into the nineteenth century their monastic/clerical character, and were such environments. Fellows of colleges (dons) were typically in holy orders, and it was not until 1882 that Cambridge fellows were allowed to marry. Deacon describes an atmosphere of misogyny which found open and ugly expression amongst many homosexuals, who justified their behavior on the grounds that men were superior to women, hence the love of one man for another was a superior form of love to that of man for woman. Much classical learning has been adduced to this point (see the twelfth volume of the Palatine anthology). This constitutes the "Higher Sodomy" to which Deacon devotes a chapter of his book. Conservative proponents of classical education and single-sex schooling might well take cautionary note!
Communism had many adherents at Cambridge, even in the late nineteenth century, and reached an apogee in the between-the-wars period. British universities until quite recently drew exclusively from the upper and upper-middle classes, amongst whom trade and commerce were scorned as unworthy of the attentions of gentlemen. Marxist hostility to capitalism found an oddly congenial fit with this aristocratic disdain for business as an occupation. It also fit well with Cambridge's low-church enthusiasm for reforms involving shaking-up the social order and chucking-out forms, manners, and institutions that persisted out of longstanding custom. Santayana, speaking from the experience of a proper Bostonian upbringing, remarked that liberalism was what remained after Christianity had been excised from Calvinism, leaving only the latter's fanaticism. Such was the background of university leftism at Cambridge.
The Apostles refined and concentrated the expression of attitudes widely present in the larger setting of Cambridge. To be sure, there were many Apostles who were neither communists nor homosexuals. Certainly very few were Soviet spies. But those who were, were entirely predictable products of their surroundings, nurtured and encouraged by the closed society of the Apostles.
I discovered this book because of my interest in élites and their institutions. Much that is in print on these subjects is conspiracy-theory claptrap, typically from the point of view of one or the other political extremes. Judeo-Masonic, Illuminati, Satanic plots abound in the screeds of right-wing authors, while evil collusions amongst rich WASPy denizens of the Bohemian Grove and Skull and Bones to grow richer at the expense of the working class characterize the polemics of the left. Richard Deacon's book fits neither mould, realistically describing a secret society the members of which influenced world events in a genuinely collusive fashion. Unlike the participants in Bohemian High and Low Jinks, the Apostles did not meet for just a few days each year, they lived together in a collegiate setting. Unlike the Yalies of Skull and Bones, the Apostles numbered amongst their active ranks numerous fellows (i.e., faculty members) as well as undergraduates, some of whom were artists or intellectuals of the first rank, like Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ludwig Wittgenstein, or John Maynard Keynes. Ideas and their consequences, rather than crude fraternity stunts and pranks, were of real interest to them.
Deacon's book is sometimes ill-digested and repetitive. Also some of its obiter dicta raise fascinating unanswered questions. The papers delivered by members are said to be placed, with formal ceremony, in a trunk called the Ark. Christopher McIntosh, in his book "The Rosicrucians" (one of the few sane treatments of that subject) says that in sixteenth-century Germany there existed an Orden der Unzertrennlichen whose members studied alchemy; "[t]he results of successful alchemical experiments were recorded and placed in an 'Archa,' a secret chest whose contents were continually being added to." The resemblance is striking, and it would be interesting to know how much farther back than the nominal foundation of the Apostles in 1820 its customs and practices really go.
A Secret Society that Really Influenced Events.......2002-06-18
Interest in The Apostles, a secretive club of Cambridge University dons and undergraduates, was aroused after the exposure of Anthony Blunt as leader of a Soviet spy ring that included Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean (who defected to the Soviet Union in 1951) and also the infamous H.A.R. (Kim) Philby. Their point of connection was Cambridge, and a further connection was The Apostles, to which Blunt and Burgess belonged, and to which it was alleged Maclean belonged (although Richard Deacon finds nothing to suggest he did). Blunt's and Burgess's homosexuality also figured into the luridness of the reports: what was this cenacle of sodomites and traitors?
As Richard Deacon makes clear, The Apostles - the Cambridge Conversazione Society - was both more and less than this. In the atmosphere within which it existed at Cambridge, heterodoxy and homosexuality flourished more-or-less openly. Cambridge had long been hospitable to the evangelical or low-church wing of the Church of England, and had sided with the Puritans during the English civil war. The Calvinist doctrine of election (the notion that certain individuals are predestined to be saved) easily metamorphoses into gnosticism (the concept that an elect or élite can have a special and superior insight into the purposes and ways of Deity) and antinomianism (the belief that individuals so filled with grace are above the ordinary laws and manners of society). It has a fondness for compulsory righteousness, as evidenced by the rule of Calvin himself in Geneva, Cromwell in England, and the Puritans in Massachusetts. Such views are tailor-made for the encouragement of arrogant self-anointed élitism.
Single-sex environments such as those involuntarily present in prisons and (in the past) on shipboard, encourage homosexuality faute de mieux; environments that are rigidly single-sex by choice (as the recent scandals in the Roman Catholic church show) attract those who are homosexual by preference. Even though Protestant in theology, the great English universities retained well into the nineteenth century their monastic/clerical character, and were such environments. Fellows of colleges (dons) were typically in holy orders, and it was not until 1882 that Cambridge fellows were allowed to marry. Deacon describes an atmosphere of misogyny which found open and ugly expression amongst many homosexuals, who justified their behavior on the grounds that men were superior to women, hence the love of one man for another was a superior form of love to that of man for woman. Much classical learning has been adduced to this point (see the twelfth volume of the Palatine anthology). This constitutes the "Higher Sodomy" to which Deacon devotes a chapter of his book. Conservative proponents of classical education and single-sex schooling might well take cautionary note!
Communism had many adherents at Cambridge, even in the late nineteenth century, and reached an apogee in the between-the-wars period. British universities until quite recently drew exclusively from the upper and upper-middle classes, amongst whom trade and commerce were scorned as unworthy of the attentions of gentlemen. Marxist hostility to capitalism found an oddly congenial fit with this aristocratic disdain for business as an occupation. It also fit well with Cambridge's low-church enthusiasm for reforms involving shaking-up the social order and chucking-out forms, manners, and institutions that persisted out of longstanding custom. Santayana, speaking from the experience of a proper Bostonian upbringing, remarked that liberalism was what remained after Christianity had been excised from Calvinism, leaving only the latter's fanaticism. Such was the background of university leftism at Cambridge.
The Apostles refined and concentrated the expression of attitudes widely present in the larger setting of Cambridge. To be sure, there were many Apostles who were neither communists nor homosexuals. Certainly very few were Soviet spies. But those who were, were entirely predictable products of their surroundings, nurtured and encouraged by the closed society of the Apostles.
I discovered this book because of my interest in élites and their institutions. Much that is in print on these subjects is conspiracy-theory claptrap, typically from the point of view of one or the other political extremes. Judeo-Masonic, Illuminati, Satanic plots abound in the screeds of right-wing authors, while evil collusions amongst rich WASPy denizens of the Bohemian Grove and Skull & Bones to grow richer at the expense of the working class characterize the polemics of the left. Richard Deacon's book fits neither mould, realistically describing a secret society the members of which influenced world events in a genuinely collusive fashion. Unlike the participants in Bohemian High and Low Jinks, the Apostles did not meet for just a few days each year, they lived together in a collegiate setting. Unlike the Yalies of Skull and Bones, the Apostles numbered amongst their active ranks numerous fellows (i.e., faculty members) as well as undergraduates, some of whom were artists or intellectuals of the first rank, like Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ludwig Wittgenstein, or John Maynard Keynes. Ideas and their consequences, rather than crude fraternity stunts and pranks, were of real interest to them.
Deacon's book is sometimes ill-digested and repetitive. Also some of its obiter dicta raise fascinating unanswered questions. The papers delivered by members are said to be placed, with formal ceremony, in a trunk called the Ark. Christopher McIntosh, in his book "The Rosicrucians" (one of the few sane treatments of that subject) says that in sixteenth-century Germany there existed an Orden der Unzertrennlichen whose members stuidied alchemy; "[t]he results of successful alchemical experiments were recorded and placed in an 'Archa,' a secret chest whose contents were continually being added to." The resemblance is striking, and it would be interesting to know how much farther back than the nominal foundation of the Apostles in 1820 its customs and practices really go.
Dreadful!.......1998-07-13
This is a deeply prejudiced, homophobic book which is written without a background grasp of the intellectual and academic world to which it refers. It repeatedly makes unsubstantiated assertions, its critical apparatus is unprofessional and its use if language often misleading. One example of his bias is that the author maintains that Eddie Marsh was more influential in the world outside the Apostles than Maynard Keynes in unspecified fields but including, by implication, the arts. No mention is made of the fact that Keynes established two major arts organisations that still exist, namely, a theatre in Cambridge and the Arts Council of Great Britain. Likewise his assertion that the cultivation of religious and philosophical doubts by members of the Apostles led to "the loss of the will to govern" in Britain!
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Chairman Mao Meets the Apostle Paul: Christianity, Communism, and the Hope of China
Khiok-Khng Yeo
Manufacturer: Brazos Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1587430347 |
Book Description
Yeo brings new light to a reading of Pauls letters by juxtaposing them with the history of twentieth-century China, especially the reign of Chairman Mao.
Book Description
BROTHER JOE: A 20th CENTURY APOSTLE is the biography of Joseph W. Mathews (1911-1977), a reformer of ecumenical institutions -- especially the Christian church -- as they would be about honoring their traditions of care for the world. The biographer, Bishop James K. Mathews, his younger brother, spins the story of "Joe" from early years, education, church ministry, service in WWII, re-education with H. Richard Niebuhr, academe, Christian Faith and Life Community, Order:Ecumenical/Ecumenical Institute/Institute of Cultural Affairs, worldwide spirit movement. Joe was in the reformer style of Benedict, Luther, Wesley, Bonhoeffer, and Gandhi in vision and strategic savvy, catalyzing a 20th century spirit understanding and framework for individual, community, and global care.
Customer Reviews:
Compelling, challenging, and life changing.......2006-08-30
Joe Mathews liked to scare people, though his intent was to evoke a liberating sense of freedom and a weighty, awesome sense of responsibility. Being challenged to become a significant participant in "bending history" in the twentieth century, and in the process to discover a new, profound context for a meaningful existence in community can be exhilirating, downright dangerous vis á vis established norms, and a very scary experience indeed.
That, in essence, was what Joe Mathews was about. I know--I was there, and it happened to me. And so were thousands of others whose lives Joe touched, directly and indirectly, before and long after his sudden, untimely death from cancer in 1977 at age 66.
Now, almost 30 years later, we finally have the gift of a biographical account of Joe's life and impact on the inhabited earth, penned at the age of 93 by the ultimate living authority on the Mathews family, his younger brother `Ken', United Methodist Bishop James K. Mathews, a giant in the church who knew Gandhi, collaborated in India with E. Stanley Jones, and married his daughter Eunice!
Don't be disappointed by the fundamental elusiveness of his subject or the failure of one book to wrap up a definitive account of Brother Joe's contribution to humanity.
It is enough that we now can know much more about how Joe Mathews' global consciousness was shaped by his family, his theological training, his military experience, and his phenomenal struggle to break through the limits of a clouded and irrelevant religious tradition.
What you won't read here is much about Joe's inner journey of spiritual doubt and chaos in the trenches of WWII as he faced the breakdown of all the religious metaphors that he had been raised to believe in. Joe wasn't one to flood you with an overwhelming sense of his inner spiritual muck. What he chose to share was the incredible spiritual fruit that came, painfully, from his solitary wrestling with the Angel of his destiny.
Dare we do any less than that for the sake of our brothers and sisters on this planet?
Note: a companion volume of Joe Mathews' personal `talks' and essays, titled `Bending History', was published in 2005, and is available from ResurgencePublishing dot com. And there will be more to come as we pursue the rediscovery of this 20th century Apostle.
Book Description
Between 1901 and 1907, a broad coalition of Protestant churches sought to expel newly elected Reed Smoot from the Senate, arguing that as an apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Smoot was a lawbreaker and therefore unfit to be a lawmaker. The resulting Senate investigative hearing featured testimony on every peculiarity of Mormonism, especially its polygamous family structure. The Smoot hearing ultimately mediated a compromise between Progressive Era Protestantism and Mormonism and resolved the nation's long-standing "Mormon Problem." On a broader scale, Kathleen Flake shows how this landmark hearing provided the occasion for the country--through its elected representatives, the daily press, citizen petitions, and social reform activism--to reconsider the scope of religious free exercise in the new century.
Flake contends that the Smoot hearing was the forge in which the Latter-day Saints, the Protestants, and the Senate hammered out a model for church-state relations, shaping for a new generation of non-Protestant and non-Christian Americans what it meant to be free and religious. In addition, she discusses the Latter-day Saints' use of narrative and collective memory to retain their religious identity even as they changed to meet the nation's demands.
Customer Reviews:
An amazing view into a pivotal time in the chruch.......2007-09-08
I decided to read The Politics of American Religious Identity after reading a recommendation of it by Elder Oaks in his interview for the PBS documentary The Mormons (http://www.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=f11cb868474e3110VgnVCM100000176f620aRCRD&vgnextchannel=9ae411154963d010VgnVCM1000004e94610aRCRD).
Flake's book is a fantastic read of a very fascinating period in Church history. I was struck by her account of how the Church's leadership's understanding of what it meant to be "Mormon" and the Church's core beliefs in the nature of God, priesthood authority, and revelation really came into focus during this time. In her description of these events--from the view of what I assume is a non-Mormon scholar--one can see the divine hand of revelation as God worked through President Joseph F. Smith and the Quorum of the Twelve to refine the Church and its people.
That said, it is a wonderful piece of scholarship and a enjoyable read.
Highly recommended.
We still have a need to shed our religious bigotry.......2007-07-06
This is an excellent book by an expert historian on the events that began the integration of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints into American life. Kathleen Flake discusses in detail the three-year-long hearings to determine if Senator and LDS Apostle Reed Smoot should retain his senate seat.
This book is not only about Reed Smoot, but also about then Church President and Prophet Joseph F. Smith. Perhaps Smith is the most interesting person in the book. His 5-day testimony before the Senate committee shows the quandary of demonstrating that the church was no longer teaching polygamy without alienating church members who were then praciticing that doctrine, which many believed to be the crowning revelation of church founder Joseph Smith, Jr. Perhaps today's faithful may be surprised that the LDS presidency and quorum of the twelve performed plural marriages after the 1890 Manifesto. (An apologetic treatment of this era is located on the FAIR LDS web site under the title "Polygamy, Prophets, and Prevarication.") Despite his careful statements as a witness (to the point of deception), Smith satisfies no one: not the senate, not the American public, and not the Church membership.
The 1900-era LDS church is also an interesting element in this book. The tension between the pioneer generations and their offspring over polygamy and the 1890 Manifesto fits the enduring theme of generational conflict, but also the ability of the LDS church to evolve in response to changing societal conditions.
Joseph F. Smith ultimately led the church through the transition away from polygamy and into American Life by focusing on the First Vision of the church's founder, the Prophet Joseph (who was Joseph F. Smith's Uncle.) To understand why this was effective you will have to read the book. Flake's discussion of Joseph F. Smith's eventual success in this regard is insightful and was a new wrinkle to me. Not only did Joseph F. Smith lead the church away from polygamy but he also revitalized the church's European missions, changed the policy of the "gathering to Zion" into one of building an international church; and encouraged church members to reject their isolationism and engage with their fellow Americans. Joseph F. Smith's support of Smoot's senatorial service while Smoot retained his role as Apostle proves to be a stroke of genius and ranks as perhaps Joseph F. Smith's most daring and visionary act as the President of the LDS church.
Reed Smoot is shown to be a remarkable individual. His senate career was almost 30 years long and in that time he became one of the most powerful senators and an adviser to three presidents, all the while serving in the highest quorum of the LDS church. I would have welcomed more biographical information about Smoot. Indeed this is the one shortcoming of the book.
With regard to religious bigotry in America, this book is poignant. With the candidacy of Mitt Romney, a faithful Mormon, we see the same accusations that were raised 100 years ago against Smoot: Questions of allegiance to the United States, dark implications about sacred LDS temple ordinances, suggestions that the LDS church is a subversive organization that aims to undermine the U.S. government.
It is not surprising that these repeatedly discredited accusations are once again being made by Protestant Churches and individuals. Flake shows that the Smoot Hearings were initiated, articulated, and sponsored by the Protestant churches and leading ministers of the day. Such is the state we once again find ourselves in 2007.
The drive to unseat Smoot ultimately failed for a number of reasons, including a natural inclination of Americans to allow freedom of religion, a movement away from Polygamy by the LDS church (after which the accusations against Smoot changed to questioning his loyalty to the nation), and also by Smoot's engaging personality and exemplary service as a senator.
I would like to believe we have come a long way as a tolerant nation in the past 100 years. However, it appears that we have not.
Wonderful look at the church in transition.......2005-09-30
I've grown up in the LDS church, served a mission, am married in the temple, but I never really knew much about church history past 1847 and the arrival of the saints in the Salt Lake valley. I've started to become more interested in how the isolated Rocky Mountain church has grown into the worldwide organization that it is. At the same time, I'm also interested in politics, having studied law. This book was a real eye-opener for me. I found the explanation about the church deciding to reach back east across the Rockies to find acceptance to be very interesting. I also learned a great deal about Joseph F. Smith. He realized that the controversy surrounding polygamy was so great that it was taking away from the mission of the church to continue to proselytise and grow the kingdom.
It was also interesting to see how members of the United States Senate were actually arguing that Mormons didn't deserve the basic rights of citizenship that we take for granted today. Even in today's heightened sensitivity to different religions of the world, I don't think anyone would suggest that non-Christians duly elected to public office should not be seated in the office to which they were elected. Yet many believed that Reed Smoot should have been ineligible to serve because he was Mormon. Ultimately he was seated due more to political pragmatism rather than because of a true belief in the First Amendment.
Kathleen Flake does an excellent job of presenting all sides of the issues, and provides a large amount of sources in the endnotes. I would definitely recommend this book to all members of the LDS church to help understand how today's worldwide church grew from that small group of "peculiar people" in 19th century Utah.
Almost perfect.......2005-05-05
This is a superbly written book, and one of the few works of professional, objective history that examines 20th century Mormonism. Flake's central thesis is that pressure from the US Government in the form of the Smoot hearings forced the church to abandon polygamy once and for all. Faced with the loss of its most cogent identity marker, the Mormon hierarchy needed to find a way for the Latter-day Saints to distinguish themselves from other denominations. They did so by emphasizing the restoration message contained within Joseph Smith's 1838 account of his first vision. By pointing to the vision's statement that Mormonism was a unique restoration of primitive Christianity, the Saints were able to set aside the practice that had made them unique up to that point: polygamy. Flake's arguments are basically sound, but somewhat overstated. For instance, the first vision had been used for this purpose since at least the 1880s, and she selectively sorts through the existing scholarship on the vision to skirt this fact. She also places too much emphasis on the symbolic importance of the centennial of Joseph Smith's birth and the monument that commemorates it. Nevertheless, this book easily joins the pantheon of "must read" books in Mormon history, and no student of the early 20th century church can fail to grapple with Flake's conclusions. An excellent and highly recommended work.
Insightful observations.......2004-03-15
This is a superb book.
The book brings history to life as it clearly and cleverly recounts a demanding and difficult time in Mormon and US history. It weaves together the social, political, and spiritual themes in an easy to read and engaging way. It offers remarkable insights on how religion and politics co-mingle. It brings to life Senator Smoot and his demanding role as senator and religious leader. It offers insights into the operations of the Mormon church as it dealt with a sensitive and important issue. It offers insights into the political process at the turn of the Century and how political processes are shaped by individuals. Dr. Flake has a unique ability to bring history to life and to help us learn from this history. This book is academically credible and yet easy to access.
Book Description
Veronica Koperski's addition to the much-lauded What Are They Saying About (WATSA) series presents an overview of recent scholarly debate about Paul and the Law with attention to its historical roots.
Chapter one treats scholars who basically remain within the tradition of Luther/Bultmann in asserting that the Law fosters a prideful attitude. Chapters two and three deal with the "new perspective on Paul" initiated with the publications of E. P. Sanders in the 1970s and 1980s. Chapter four presents scholars who, although sensitive to the work of Sanders, reiterate some of the traditional Luther/Bultmann position. In chapter five the focus is Paul's consistency, and chapter six explores scholarship opining that justification by faith can no longer be considered the center of Paul's theology.
Readers will always find the best and the most recent scholarship in a WATSA book. This one will especially enlighten:
· Scholars who are non-specialists in Paul · Graduate and seminary students who have had a course in Paul · Pastors who are interested in updating their knowledge · Persons active in the Lutheran/Catholic dialogue
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- Epistles of Unrequited Love: 'Friends and Apostles'
- Extremely interesting
- Impressive
- A period piece worth reading
- candid and erotic
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Friends and Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke and James Strachey, 1905-1914
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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Clicking Beat on the Brink of Nada
ASIN: 0300070047 |
Amazon.com
Rupert Brooke is one of the 20th century's best examples of image management. After he died of blood poisoning en route to Gallipoli in 1915, the poet's valor and godlike good looks were soon immortalized. He never had the chance to prove the former save in a handful of verses that are far from his finest, but photographic proof of the latter was unassailable. When Brooke's letters were originally published in 1968, his executor and editor, Geoffrey Keynes, kept well clear of his extensive correspondence with James Strachey (brother of Lytton and now best remembered for his translations of Freud). Keynes went so far as to claim that they would appear in print "over my dead body." Nothing less than homosexual panic was at the heart of such hysteria: Brooke was to be forever deified, not damned as a sodomite.
Now Keith Hale has whittled down Brooke and Strachey's letters and postcards between 1905 and 1914 into a volume in which the inconsequential ("Thursday lunch will be admirably suitable") bumps up against history, emotion, and desire. The last few years of their friendship were decidedly rocky, and Strachey's final words on his complex friend are apposite: "Rupert wasn't nearly so nice as people now imagine; but he was a great deal cleverer." Whether you read their correspondence as proof positive of Brooke's bi- or homosexuality will depend on your views of the construction of sexual identity. But it must be said that the poet's account of one schoolboy seduction is written with an icy objectivity that even Edmund White would envy. These letters remain a fascinating record of longtime companionship--no matter how you use that term. --Kerry Fried
Book Description
The correspondence between the English poet Rupert Brooke and his close friend James Strachey here appears in print for the first time. The letters reveal much about the lives and interests of these two gifted young men, the nature of their relationship, and the activities of many illustrious friends such as Lytton Strachey (James's brother), J.M. Keynes, Virginia Woolf, and Bertrand Russell.
Customer Reviews:
Epistles of Unrequited Love: 'Friends and Apostles'.......2001-10-10
Brooke's heart-stopping good looks are the essence of this epistolatory account of the romantic friendship between James Strachey and England's eternal Golden boy. He who penned the heroically mawkish yet strangely thrilling:'If I should die/ Think only this of me/That there is some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England' is here revealed through Strachey's eyes in the guise of romantic muse, love object, sex god. Unfortunately for Strachey, his passion was unrequited.
Strachey is be-dazzled by Brooke during their first year at Cambridge, and the subsequent correspondence betrays all the hallmarks of adolescent infatuation: in turns importunate, with Strachey's 'declaration' early in 1906; adulatory:'You were so beautiful tonight';desperate: 'I suppose you know what's wrong with me...I'm in love with you'; ever hopeful: 'Why not come quietly to bed with me instead?' in response to Brooke's request for contraceptive information; finally hopeless: 'The sudden sight of him across a room made my heart...bound ... it's no use...' But it is with a start that one realises that this is no adolescent, but rather a scion of the Stracheys - long time members of the intelligentsia, darlings of the Bloomsbury set - assistant editor of 'the Spectator', putative translator of Freud.
And herein lies the fascination. Keith Hale's painstakingly edited and annotated edition of the correspondence vividly presents Strachey's personal drama of unstinting adulation of the man seemingly pursued by a host of admirers of both sexes, but also features most of England's literati and glitterati in supporting roles. Here are Vanessa and Clive Bell, Virginia Woolf, Maynard Keynes, society hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell, together with representatives of an older order - Thomas Hardy, not to mention Henry James who, for goodness sake, Brooke cycles off to call on at Lamb House as casually as if he were the man next door! And interspersed with these semi-mythical figures are the domestic details that form an integral part of Brooke and Strachey's lives. The trivia is engrossing, with its train timetables, motorbuses and postal orders: 'I'll enclose the tickets and a postal order for 10/6.'
But we never stray far from the central motif - that of Strachey's heart-sickness for Brooke. Coupled with our fascination, though, is also the uncomfortably voyeuristic sensation of being privy to Strachey's intimate yearnings and his longing makes for painful reading: 'It is You and my love that makes the universe magical....' and one finds oneself wishing that Brooke could have been kinder.
Hence it is with a start that one reads Brooke's own account of his seduction of a former university acquaintance. One wonders what the besotted Strachey could have made of his graphic and lengthy account of the physical details of his night in bed with Denham Russell-Smith. Brooke's literary executor Geoffrey Keynes vowed that the uncensored Brooke letters would be published 'over my dead body.' And such has certainly been the case as it is only since Keynes' death that the letters have been released.
Brooke's image makers certainly knew how to 'spin', and it is really only now, nearly 90 years later, that we have a clearer view of Brooke the man as opposed to the legend. Perhaps Strachey's words on Brooke , many years following his death, are the most revealing: 'He was not nearly as nice as people now believe him, but a great deal cleverer.'
Extremely interesting.......2000-11-05
This is simply a must-read for Brooke fans and anyone else interested in the aesthetists and their times. It's absolutely fascinating. By the time you finish the introduction, you will be hooked.
Impressive.......1999-11-25
This is quite an achievement in editing. Brooke and Strachey comment on so many of the prominent figures of their time that, coupled with Hale's impressive footnotes and other editorial material, the book serves as a virtual history of Edwardian England. I personally am not crazy about Brooke's poetry, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this work.
A period piece worth reading.......1999-05-07
Much is being made about what this book reveals about Brooke's sexuality, but the main reason for reading it is that it is simply very interesting and educational. One learns so much one never knew about so many of the major literary and political figures in Georgian England. Hale's impressive footnotes are as enjoyable as the letters themselves.
candid and erotic.......1998-12-08
This is probably the closest thing to a Brooke autobiography that the world will ever see. Because of Hale's useful editorial material and his thorough annotations, the letters provide as complete a story of Brooke as most of his biographies. And because Brooke shows sides of himself to Strachey that have been hitherto suppressed by his executors, the book provides a more complex, personal view of Brooke than do his previously published letters or his travel journals. Of particular interest are his graphic description of seducing the younger brother of one of his friends; Strachey's account of a sexual rendezvous involving Duncan Grant, John Maynard Keynes, and a Cockney youth; the account of Strachey being pursued by the famous mountain climber, George Mallory; and Brooke's insane, vulgar, and disturbing ramblings following his nervous collapse in 1912. It's quite an interesting read, really.
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Am I intelligent?
John Raymond Hand
Manufacturer: Polzin Press
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ASIN: B00089CB32 |
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The Apostle Bird
Gary Disher
Manufacturer: Louis Braille Audio
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Binding: Audio Cassette
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ASIN: 0732021804 |
Book Description
The year is 1934, the time of the Great Depression. The place is the settlement of miner's dugouts far from the nearest town in South Australia.
Fifteen-year-old Neil and his parents have come from Adelaide, hoping to strike it lucky, but the gold is elusive, the other miners intolerant, and Neil's only friend is a bully.
The American Ivan and his daughter Kitty arrive. They are mysterious, aloof. Soon rumors spread: Ivan killed a man; Kitty helped him rob banks. Neil is drawn to them despite the rumors. But Kitty saw him shoot the apostle bird. How can he convince her that it was an accident?
Book Description
In Apostle of Human Progress, Edward C. Rafferty presents the first full scale intellectual portrait of Ward. Rafferty shows how Ward's thought laid the foundations for the modern administrative state, and brings out his contributions to twentieth century American liberalism. Classic and comprehensive, this work is ideal for everyone interested in the history of American ideas and thinkers.
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