SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2010
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“The Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth,” Jeff Kinney’s latest kids’ book, outsold “Decision Points,” George W. Bush’s memoir, by nearly 2 to 1 on Nov. 9, the day both books officially went on sale.
HISTORY REVIEWBY DAVIDGREENBERG
Sweet land of liberty — and empire
THE TWO FACES OF
AMERICAN FREEDOM By Aziz Rana Harvard Univ. 415 pp. $29.95
P
eople love to complain that academic history is too specialized. But there are good reasons whywedon’t see more
first-rate works that tackle big subjects over large swaths of time. One is that they’re very hard to write. Not many schol- ars are capable of freshly ana- lyzing the whole of our nation’s history, from settlement to the present, and conveying their interpretation with depth, per- suasive power and lively prose. To cross that high bar, you need to possess either formidable historical knowledge or uncom- mon skills in developing and presenting original ideas and arguments. Ideally, you’d have both of these things. Unfortu- nately, fewpeople do. This fundamental challenge
of writing groundbreaking his- torical syntheses, I think, ex- plains why, despite its com- mendable ambition, Aziz Rana’s “Two Faces of American Freedom” comes as something of a disappointment. An assis- tant professor of law at Cornell University, Rana has in his first book attempted a synthesis that follows in the footsteps of such scholarly heavyweights as Christopher Lasch (“The True
developed ideas with a some- what rarified but interesting new area of scholarship focus- ing on settler societies — colo- nial outposts where newcomers mixed with indigenous peoples. America’s relentless territorial expansion in the 19th century, Rana argues, made it nothing less than a “settler empire,” in his phrase. He traces that idea and the contradictions it con- tains—a generous provision of liberty, but tied to the exclusion of those defined as less than full American citizens — through a series of wide-ranging episodes in American political and legal history;werevisit Shays’s rebel- lion, the Dred Scott decision, the populist movement of the Gilded Age, the women’s suf- frage crusade, and more. But theoutcomeis, for Rana, always bleak and repressive. Viewing U.S. global leadership in the 20th century as a new form of imperialism, he links American intervention abroad to the de- mise of settlerism at home. The upshot: “empire has become the master rather than the ser- vant of freedom.” All this strikesmeas a bit of a
reach. The conclusion itself is dubious since — notwithstand- ing certain shameful presiden- tial policies, such as the open- ended jailing of suspected ter- rorists without trial — most of the world envies the unprece- dented freedoms enjoyed by Americans, even those in Guam, Puerto Rico or other parts of the “empire.” But the larger problem lies
“Empire has become the master [not] the servant of freedom.” —Aziz Rana
and Only Heaven”), Michael Sandel (“Democracy’s Discon- tent”) and Robert Wiebe (“Self- Rule”), to name but a few — all of whom bemoaned America’s supposed slide from a Jefferso- nian republic of self-sufficient farmers and workmen to a vast administrative state that allows citizens only token participa- tion in national political deci- sions. The scholars who have fol-
lowed this thread through our history have often looked for alternatives to today’s ostensi- bly jejune politics in the so- called classical republicanism of 19th-century America — a political culture centered in lo- cal communities and rooted in civic virtue. Yet, as its analysts have usually grasped, the cul- ture of republicanism, which empowered elite civic leaders trusted by the community, was exclusionary, denying women and racial and ethnic minori- ties full claims to American citizenship. Indeed, historians have perennially wrestled with the irony that social inclusion has increased alongside — per- hapsbecauseof—the growthof the federal power that Rana and other communitarians de- cry. I've never been convinced
that it’s either desirable or pos- sible to return to a world even remotely like the small r-repub- lican culture of the Federalist era. Still, the historian-enthusi- asts of republicanism, with their wide-ranging books, have contributed amply to the histo- ry of political ideas by demon- strating that liberalism has hardly been the sole intellectual tradition in America, as was once commonly supposed. Rananowseeks to add to this
discussion not so much by con- ducting original research as by melding his predecessors’ well-
not in Rana’s arguments, which are provocative if sometimes a little flaccid. Rather it lies in the nature of this undertaking it- self. Almost any rising academ- ic is going to be pulled in one direction by the institutional demands of writing a first book aimed at gaining credibility within an academic discipline, while the aspirations of a book like this to offer “a large-scale act of historical reconstruc- tion,” as Rana puts it, tug in another. Rana thus seems torn about
whether to present himself as a confident master or an apt pu- pil. On the one hand, striving to establish his own authority, he makes grand promises about his book. “I reinterpret the last- ing implications of our political origins and shed light on ques- tions of how settler identity, economic independence and ethnic assimilation grounded popular contests regarding so- cial inclusion,” he writes; “I then reconceive the central causes and consequences of the American Revolution by rein- terpreting the Revolution as a settler revolt.” In other ways, though, Rana
lacks the quiet self-confidence needed for a study like this. The book suffers from academic jar- gon, a preference for the ab- stract over the concrete, and a tendency to brandish other scholars’ insights as tokens of erudition. (“This book is an experiment in what Michael Walzer has called ‘connected criticism.’ ”) These stylistic hab- its may assure finicky academ- ics that the requisite literature has been digested, but they can also signal a lack of comfort with one’sownideas. Successful syntheses convey their authori- ty not through brash claims, mystifying jargon or literary name-dropping but through a fearsome command of detail, deftly deployed. But if “Two Faces” doesn’t
offer a fully comprehensive (or fully comprehensible) account of liberty and empire, it is to be admired for trying to reconcile clashing impulses in the Ameri- can past — exclusion and toler- ance, security and freedom, hu- manitarianism and imperial- ism. Scholars will be wrestling with these dilemmas and iro- nies for a long time, and Rana will surely have more to say on the subject.
bookworld@washpost.com
David Greenberg, a professor of history at Rutgers University, is a fellow at theWoodrowWilson International Center for Scholars for 2010-11.
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DETROIT NEWS/WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY Workers carry signs and use sound trucks during a 43-day strike at the Chevrolet Plant in Flint,Mich., in 1937. HISTORY REVIEWBY MICHAELKAZIN
Labor’s lost love T
THERE IS POWER IN A UNION The Epic Story of Labor in America By Philip Dray Doubleday. 772 pp. $35
he great British historian E.P. Thompson once wrote that he aimed to “rescue” his subjects from “the enormous condescen- sion of posterity.” In this book,
Philip Dray seeks to use the past to help American unionists escape the substantial disdain of the present.His thick, engrossing narrative about close to 200 years of labor history is dedicated to the simple proposi- tion that unions, while hardly without their flaws, did much to turn the United States into amoredecent,moreegalitarian society and might do so again, if they ever reverse a decline that began some four decades ago. “Against the gathered power of moneyed interests, the state, the ideology of the free market, and often public opinion,” argues Dray, union activists “clung tenaciously to the faith that they deserved to be seen as human beings, not cogs or commodities, and that America would be the better for it if they were. In this they were certainly right.” To illustrate his argument, Dray devotes
much of his book to dramatic tales about strikers in major industries whose conflicts often dominated the headlines of their day. In 1860, female shoemakers marched through the streets of Lynn,Mass., holding aloft a banner that read, “American Ladies Will Not Be Slaves; Give Us a Fair Compen- sation and We Will Labour Cheerfully.” Abraham Lincoln, campaigning 100 miles away, gave them his blessing. A generation later, a massive strike for an eight-hour day shut down factories and building sites in Chicago, then the nation’s leading industri- al city. But at an anarchist rally inHaymar- ket Square called to protest the police murder of four strikers, someone threw a bomb that killed seven policemen, and the resulting backlash set the cause of shorter hours back for decades. Whenhe pivots to the 20th century,Dray
steps back from protest marches and picket lines to scrutinize matters of state. He details the politics that drove passage of suchlandmarklawsas the 1935WagnerAct,
which gave the federal government the power to hold union elections and punish employers who fired organizers, and the 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments, written by conservatives to roll back union power. Dray still manages to squeeze in descrip- tions of the 1937 Flint sit-down strike, which established the might of the United Auto Workers, and the illegal, unpopular 1981 work stoppage by PATCO, the air-traf- fic controllers union, which led that erst- while union president Ronald Reagan to fire every striker and encouraged many private employers to plan for “a union-free environment.” None of these stories will be newto readers who have a modest acquain- tance with labor’s triumphs and losses. But Dray retells them with a vigor, clarity and moral passion often absent from more limited academic studies. In particular, his biographical sketches
of labor officials imbue this routinely ma- ligned group with a certain dignity, even affection. It’s easy to craft a good portrait of John L. Lewis, the longtime chieftain of the Mine Workers, whose bushy eyebrows and stentorian voice were known to nearly every American in the 1930s and ’40s. But Dray also brings to life the relatively ob- scure William Sylvis, an unschooled iron worker whose itinerant exploits in the years after the Civil War made him “the first national leader around whom there grew a cult of personality.” Sylvisbummedrides on trains to spread the gospel that a disunified labor movement would always be a defeat- ed one. He taught Sunday school while neglecting his own family and health and expired a few days past his 40th birthday. “The shawl he wore to the day of his death,” Sylvis's brother remembered, “was filled with little holes burned there by the splash- ing of molten iron from the ladles of molders in strange cities, whom he was beseeching to organize.” Dray also finds a union heroine closer to our own time in Karen Silkwood, whose struggle to expose plutonium leaks at her nuclear processing plant inOklahomaduring the 1970swascut short when she died in a suspicious car accident. All these mini-narratives underscore the
same point.Workers made fewgains unless they organized and fought for them: short- er hours, safety regulations, seniority, paid
vacations, middle-class wages and Labor Day itself (the first American holiday creat- ed by a social movement). Unfortunately, Dray focuses almost ex-
clusively on industrial workers. In so doing, he unintentionally points out a major reason for labor’s contemporary plight. As the manufacture of so many consumer goods has shifted to low-wage nations abroad, unions have failed to sign up more than a small fraction of the millions of service and clerical employees who now compose the majority of the workforce. Labor membership in the private sector of theeconomy has shrunk to a proportion not seen since the 1890s. Public employees are the one shining exception to this gloomy picture. Yet apart from the obligatory tale of
PATCO’s defeat, Dray has little to say about American unionists who work in govern- ment at all levels, where they make up almost 40 percent of all employees. Teach- ers, transit workers and firefighters rarely go on strike, realizing that even brief work stoppages anger and inconvenience taxpay- ers. Still, their unions remain strong and are vital to Democratic campaigns outside the South. In fact, if organized labor had roughly the same proportion of members in the private sector as it does in the public, President Obama’s party would probably have retained control of Congress with ease. Even while on the defensive, unions typical- ly do an excellent job of teaching their members the merits of liberal ideals and programs.
Organized labor may never regain the
kind of influence it had in politics and workplaces during its golden years from the NewDeal through the Great Society. Once a movement undergoes so long a decline, it rarely rebounds. Whatever may happen, Dray, despite his neglect of public workers, has given unionists and their sympathizers a memorable and accurate history, one that reminds us of the honorable part labor played in the quest for what its advocates grandly but not inaccurately called “indus- trial democracy.”
bookworld@washpost.com
Michael Kazin's most recent book is “A Godly Hero: The Life ofWilliam Jennings Bryan.” He teaches history at Georgetown University.
TRAVEL
HOWTO UNDERSTAND ISRAEL IN 60 DAYS OR LESS By Sarah Glidden Vertigo. 208 pp. $24.99
When Sarah Glidden embarks on a trip to Israel, she
expects to return with a crystal-clear understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—without becoming “a brainwashed, raging Zionist.” Throughout her whirlwind tour with Birthright, a program that takes young Jews on free trips to Israel, she’s constantly concerned with countering any pro- Israel propaganda and getting an objective view of the country and its politics. But she quickly learns that nothing is black and white in the Holy Land. In her travel-memoir-as-graphic book, “How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less,” Glidden addresses the nuances
and complexities of Israel’s past and present through humor and history lessons in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and beyond. She manages to make a familiar journey fresh in this graphic format; her illustrations clearly resemble the real-life terrain. Balancing seriousness with sarcasm, she captures the idiosyncrasies of Israeli culture and ponders the difficult questions of how Israel might pursue a peaceful and secure future. Any account from the tour bus—or the camel's hump—
has its limits. Glidden tries hard to uncover the real Israel beyond the holy sites and nationalist narratives, but time, security constraints and the scripted nature of an organized trip rein in her lofty goals. As she leaves the Middle East with more questions than answers, her quest for a deeper understanding is clearly just beginning.
—Lisa Bonos
bonosl@washpost.com
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