In which I offer, and ask for, book recommendations
I recently received an email from a young, smart history bugg and aspiring writer of my acquaintance asking me if I could recommend a history book or two that had impressed me or influenced my writing.* I quickly put together a short list of books, focusing for the most part on books I had read with the same fascination as a novel–what we call Flashlight Reads over on the Non-Fiction Fans Facebook group. I kept going back to pull “just one more” off the shelf.
Here’s the list I came up with, in alphabetical order by last name:
Tanim Ansary. Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
Sarah Gristwood. Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the War of the Roses
Sarah Gristwood. Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth Century Europe
David Howarth. 1066: The Year of the Conquest.
Steve Kemper. A Labyrinth of Kingdoms: 10,000 Miles through Islamic Africa.
Lynne Olson. Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood that Helped Turn the Tide of War.
E. P. Thompson. The Making of the English Working Class.
Pretty much anything by Barbara Tuchman
Holly Tucker. City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic and the First Police Chief of Paris
It’s a random list. Chosen quickly, and heavily weighted toward books I’ve read recently because those are the ones at the front of my brain. Even as I type, I’m tempted to cheat and add one or ten more.
I’m curious. What would your list look like?
* I didn’t even try to limit myself to one or two. To do that in any meaningful way you have to define your terms.
Madame Lenormand’s Fortune Telling Cards
Back in February I spoke at the Civil War Museum at Kenosha, Wisconsin, as part of their annual Civil War medicine weekend. I was a featured speaker, but the heart of the weekend was the 17th Corps Field Hospital–a Civil War reenactment unit from the Midwest that “heals the sick and treats the wounded ‘Under the Yellow Flag'” at events across the country from February through October. Like the best re-enactors, they are accurate and passionate. They are also skilled performers. I urge you to attend one of their events if you get the chance.
As I wandered through the re-enactors’ displays, I passed a woman seating at a small table in the corner. She was dressed in period appropriate-clothing, but her dress was more elaborate than any nurse would have worn and she had no exhibits laid out. “Read your cards?” she asked as I went by.
I needed to distract myself from the inevitable pre-speech jitters,* so I sat down, prepared to be intrigued by tarot cards yet again. To my surprise, I was treated to a history lesson along with my card reading. Instead of using tarot cards, the reader used Lenormand cards, named after Madame Lenormand, a famous nineteenth century French fortune teller. (At least some sources claim that Lenormand adapted the deck from a pre-existing parlor game, the “Game of Hope”.)
We don’t know much about Lenormand’s early life–her biographies are inconsistent and have the whiff of mythology. She is generally believed to come from Normandy–le normand. What we do know is that Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand (1772-1843) rose to fame during the Napoleonic era, reading the cards of notable figures who passed through Paris. According to one account, she once read Napoleon’s cards. Instead of telling him what he wanted to hear, she informed him that according to the cards he would ultimately be unsuccessful in his military conquests–a piece of fortune-telling integrity that landed her in jail for a time.
Lenormand successfully plied her trade in Paris for forty years, making enough good predictions for influential people to earn both a reputation and a small fortune.
As far as my reading went, that’s between me, the card reader and the cards.**
*Those jitters are crucial. They seem to be tied to the energy that makes the speech come alive. But they aren’t comfortable.
**I just realized that this is my second divination post in a row. Not a theme. Just a coincidence.
Oracle Bones
Historical texts sometimes take surprising forms. The earliest Chinese written records for instance are the “oracle bones” that were used in used in the art of “scapulimancy”, or bone divination, in Shang dynasty China (ca. 1600 -1046 BCE).
The language used on the oracle bones was rediscovered in 1899 by a Chinese scholar named Wang, who was stunned to realize that the piece of “dragon bone” he had purchased to pound into medication was inscribed with what looked like a primitive form of Chinese writing. Wang’s discovery gave scholars information on Shang dynasty history that didn’t appear in official dynastic histories. (Including the story of general Fu Hao (d. ca.1200 BCE) who flourished and fought to defend the Shang dynasty—the earliest woman warrior I know of for whom we have a name and a story. )
Royal diviners used the shoulder blade of an ox or the bottom shell of a turtle to help Shang aristocrats seek the advice of their ancestors or other supernatural beings. (In fact, they seem to have preferred using turtle shells. But “oracle turtles” lacks a certain gravitas in English.) The diviner inscribed his questions on its surface, exposed the bone or shell to heat, and interpreted the resulting cracks for answers. They asked for forecasts regarding weather,* and crops. They asked about the outcome of hunting trips, travel, military campaigns and childbirth. They questioned when certain kinds of religious ceremonies should be performed and what their dreams meant.
Now those questions give us a glimpse into the lives and concerns of people long gone. Lots of glimpses. Chinese archaeologists have excavated roughly 100,000 examples from fifteen separate sites near Anyang, the site of the Shang capital. Who knows how many thousands of inscribed oracle bones were pounded into powder for medicine before Wang rediscovered their purpose?
*Some human concerns are constant across the millennia.