As long as I am levitating in the mid-last century, I should note that Alfred Hitchcock’s groundbreaking film Psycho, released in 1960, is the subject of David Thomson’s latest book, The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchock Taught America to Love Murder (Basic Books).

Thomson, who is best known as a film critic and the author of the quintessential A Biographical Dictionary of Film, wields an impressive erudition, offering an analytical point of view in the most useful kind of commentary—placing the objects of his investigation in their cultural contexts. Which is to say that even if you are not a fan of slasher films or celebrity starlets (e.g., Nicole Kidman), there is great value in Thomson’s monographs as well as his compendia. In this case, we are provided with the facts of Hitchcock’s production including his battle with studio censors, as well as Samurai cineaste Thomson’s argument that Psycho—an unusually violent film for 1960s America (who doesn’t know the archetypal shower scene?) profoundly changed movies and America forever. It not only altered what films could show but our expectations of them. —Robert Birnbaum, Dec. 23, 2009

Pulitzer-winning Brown University history mentor emeritus (The Radicalism of the American Revolution, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787) Gordon Wood has a lucid and elucidating take on history’s popularizers—like David McCullough, Walter Isaackson, Jon Meacheam, Stephen Ambrose—pointing out that it is not quality of prose that discourages readers from plumbing the waters of academic scholarship, but usually the narrow choice of subject matter. He concludes:

…the academics have generally left narrative history writing to the non-academic historians, who unfortunately often write without much concern for or much knowledge of the extensive scholarship that exists. If academic historians want popular narrative history that is solidly based on the monographic literature, then they will have to write it themselves.

Well, Wood, as the hipoisie says, talks the talk and walks the walk. His new opus, which is part of Oxford University Press’s Oxford History of the United States series (currently numbering 13 volumes, which they proudly point out includes three Pulitzer Prize winners), Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, picks up where his Creation volume left off. In the quarter-century he scrutinizes, a time of tempestuous transformation, Wood points out that the young nation changed in ways the founders did not anticipate—shifting from a young republic to a country with imperial/expansionist aspirations (y’all remember the Louisiana Purchase, don’t ya?). Wood asserts:

By the end of that second war against the British in 1815 the central impulses of the Revolution had run their course. Americans believed that their Republic was at last secure and independent, free from hostile merchantile empires and the ravages of the European wars that had tormented them for over two decades…With nearly an entire continent at their disposal, they believed that they were at last ready to exploit the great possibilities that lay before them. At the same time, however, many of them had come to realize thazt their future as a united and freedom3 loving people was being thwarted by the continuing presence of slavery in their midst. The grand experiment in republicanism was not over after all and would have to be further tested.

 —Robert Birnbaum, Dec. 16, 2009

Recently one of our esteemed senators (his name escapes me), in talking about our world-leading incarceration rate, offered that having so many people in jail might suggest that Americans are so terrible that we need to lock up so many. There are other explanations, of course, but they are more troublesome to the prison industrial complex.

It does seem, though, that this country loves its crime stories, and some of those more celebrated or infamous crimes are, of course, homicide.

Ohio State University historian Randolph Roth has compiled a substantial historical investigation, American Homicide (Harvard University Press), covering a period from the American colonial era to the present day, that concludes “the United States is distinctive in its level of violence among unrelated adults—friends, acquaintances, and strangers.” And if that’s not news, here’s what Roth identifies as factors in the fluctuation in those levels over the history of the USA and other Western nations: “political instability; a loss of government legitimacy; a loss of fellow-feeling among members of society caused by racial, religious, or political antagonism; and a loss of faith in the social hierarchy.” He points out these phenomena are why America leads the industrialized world in murder.

Harvard University historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore has a fascinating discussion of crime and punishment in a piece called “Rap Sheet,” which includes incisive commentary on Professor Roth’s tome and a citation of Cesare Beccaria’s treatise “On Crimes and Punishments,” published in 1764.

Long ago, Beccaria pointed out the meaningfulness of the correspondence, over time, between crime and punishment, between one kind of violence and another. If the history of murder contains a lesson, Beccaria believed, it was this: “The countries and times most notorious for severity of punishment have always been those in which the bloodiest and most inhumane of deeds were committed.”

 —Robert Birnbaum, Dec. 10, 2009

The unlikely course of historian/activist (or vice versa), Howard Zinn’s subversive (I take that to be a good thing) A People’s History of the United States—first published in 1981 to selling over a million copies and spawning a historiographic cottage industry (there now being a number of titles prefixed by A People’s History)—is a study in determination. Echoing the sentiment, “the voice of reason is small but persistent” reportedly emblazoned on the Freud Memorial in Vienna.

Who can say what might have been the awareness of the Zinn magnum opus without his tireless crisscrossing of the United States speaking and participating in colloquy and echoing the lessons and messages drawn from the People’s History? But that is another good story. An adjunct to the original tome, Voices of a People’s History (Seven Stories Press) collects the works of outsiders, rebels, and disenfranchised Americans—Frederick Douglass, George Jackson, Chief Joseph, Martin Luther King Jr., Plough Jogger, Sacco and Vanzetti, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Mark Twain, and Malcolm X. Zinn and Anthony Arnove sync this compendium of source materials to the chapters in the People’s History and Howard annotates the selections.

The publication of the updated and expanded second edition of Voices coincides with the History Channel’s Sunday evening, December 13, 8 PM, broadcast of The People Speak, which was directed and produced by Chris Moore, Anthony Arnove, and Howard Zinn. Readers include Matt Damon, Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei, Josh Brolin, Don Cheadle, Kerry Washington, Viggo Mortensen, Bruce Springsteen, and John Legend. —Robert Birnbaum, Dec. 4, 2009

Speaking of the incomparable Gore Vidal, his newest book Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History’s Glare (Abrams Books) is, if you treasure this sort of thing (which I do), an amazing memoir (more than 500 images) rendered with a variety of artifacts—photographs, letters, manuscripts—from his archives and a great complement to Vidal’s published memoirs, Palimpsest and Point to Point Navigation.

It bears repeating that there is no one like Vidal both in his grasp of American history and the array of mid-century American events with which he was connected: the Kennedys, Eleanor Roosevelt, Hollywood, and his well-publicized feuds with William Buckley and Norman Mailer. Seeing the past 50 years or so through Vidal’s tchotkes is a nonpareil delight. —Robert Birnbaum, Nov. 20, 2009

Let’s face it, the Jews have long been a troublesome people for the rest of the planet. Of course, that topic or virtually anything to do with Jews is a minefield of issues especially since the Jews control the media and the banks and a speck of dust on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. For most people, their latent anti-Semitism is a barely a tic on their panoply of biases and disaffections. But there is that crucial and volatile problem which is, of course, the state of Israel and its right to exist. And more to the point the claims made to reify that right together with oil imperialism, the clash of civilizations, and again the millenia-old contempt for the the Christ killers—all of which have dovetailed into the great cauldron of dilemmas we know as the Middle East.

One can take it on board that every nation and ethnicity has a mythology of creation. Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, in his bestselling (outside the U.S.) and award-winning (in France) The Invention of the Jewish People (Verso), examines the myths and correspondent taboos about Jewish/Israeli history, beginning with questioning whether there was a forced exile in the first century at the hands of the Romans. Essentially, Sands argues most Jews actually descend from converts widely dispersed across the Middle East and Eastern Europe—a stance that casts historic geographic claims in a harsh new light. Which also shines on the millenia-old claim of Jewish distinct ethnicity.

Historian Tony Judt (Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945), not a favorite of the Israel lobby, gushes: “…a remarkable book. In cool, scholarly prose he has, quite simply, normalized Jewish history… Anyone interested in understanding the contemporary Middle East should read this book.”

Debunking of age-old myths aside, that’s why you should know about this book. —Robert Birnbaum, Nov. 10, 2009

New York City may be the American megalopolis hated by outlanders and flyover-zone residents (in part because apparently that’s where that unfortunate rubric originated), but L.A. seems to draw more negative commentary. Artists like Jack Kerouac and Alejandro Jodorowsky have called it “the loneliest city on the planet.” I harbor no such feelings, though I am amused by the metaphor that has N.Y.C. as the opening of the U.S.A.’s alimentary system and L.A., you guessed it, at the terminal end.

For the most part I think Los Angeles has been better depicted in film—L.A. Confidential, Bugsy, Chinatown, The Long Goodbye, The Day of the Locusts—than in fiction; Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, and T. Jefferson Parker notwithstanding. Though I like Michael Connelly’s writing, I have never found his Harry Bosch series particularly instructive or descriptive of LaLaland. Pete Dexter’s under-praised, standalone novel Train was a more evocative snapshot than the Bosch bibliography.

Now comes John Buntin’s completely engaging L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City (Harmony). In a life in which books are prominent in my surroundings and occupy many units of however we measure neurological space, to say I love a particular book doesn’t mean I am any less devoted to countless other tomes. In this instance, Buntin’s new opus, for which I must profess my great admiration. To give some ostensive rationale for my reaction to this book I can point to the works of Michael Lewis, Erik Larsen, and Todd Balf as other examples of books I find especially satisfying. Essentially, it’s a delicious recipe—the imagination to find not-so-obvious connections, excellent reporting and research, and capable and robust prose.

Loathe as I am to reward advertising/publicity-speak, the book’s slogan—“Other cities have histories. Los Angeles has legends”—does adequately shorthand a useful attitude about the unruly metropolis of Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles, better known as L.A. Buntin has latched onto and burnished the stories of two polar characters to propel his account of mid-century Los Angeles: William Parker, late of Deadwood, S.D., who becomes the L.A.P.D. chief and Brooklyn transplant Mickey Cohen, who becomes the town’s regnant mobster. Though each is more than capable of carrying the story, framing the narrative as a kind of cage match leavens it with a healthy dose of dramatic tension.

Not surprisingly, Buntin’s book is not the final word on Los Angeles—as you can see below, there is actually a bus tour of sites mentioned in L.A. Noir. Brilliant! —Robert Birnbaum, Oct. 27, 2009

While I have every confidence that all manner and mode of ideas and activities now labeled with the ungainly appellation “old school” will not suffer the fate of road apples (which is to dry up and become dust in the wind), I do fear that, for example, the study and profession (as an avowal of faith or belief) of history will be relegated to a cloistered sect of astigmatic priests, occupying the rarified heights of the ruins of some ivory edifice. In part this anxiety stems from the torrential shit-stream of what is generously labeled “information,” clotting the collective memory and vision of all sentient beings living in this 365/7 world. While arguably not a necessary agent in the indisputable dumbing down of our species, this infoglut is a self-evident contributor to a pandemic of advanced stages of attention deficiencies. Which is why I am encouraged by the publication of books like Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary (HarperCollins) by Stanford mentor Bertrand M. Patenaude.

Given a decidedly irrational American purview of socialism, in all of its dramatic iterations (except maybe National Socialism) and actors, a study of Lev Davidovich Bronstein—better known as Leon Trotsky—shines useful and illuminating light on key episodes of the Soviet interregnum. In this instance, the more dramatic and colorful part of Trotsky’s life as he becomes persona non grata to the Bolshevik movement and clique of which he, with Lenin, was a founder. As Stalin, the Great Terrorist, consolidated power in the 1930s (i.e., Moscow Trials, Great Terror) and eliminated any and all challenges to his authority (real or imagined), he drove Trotsky into exile to Mexico, where he ultimately was assassinated (via an icepick to the head) in August 1940.

Trotsky’s story has the added frisson of his relationship with famed muralist Diego Rivera and his dalliance with artist and cult figure (and Rivera’s wife) Frida Kahlo, who were both nominally—and occasionally active—Lefties. Patenaude has reportedly combed KGB archives, Trotsky’s correspondence, and accounts by his American entourage (bodyguards and secretaries) to flash back through Trotsky’s life from its poignant endgame.

One fascinating aspect of the flow and ebb of worldwide socialism is the virulence and antipathy attached to a movement or “ism” that included an interest in improving the material conditions of masses of the planet’s disenfranchised (frequently referred to as “the people”). And most interesting to ponder: Though efforts to demonize Marxism/socialism/communism have succeeded spectacularly, there is the claim that while Karl Marx apparently got communism wrong, he had an acute grasp of capitalism. —Robert Birnbaum, Oct. 21, 2009

Since I don’t go out much I can’t tell if there is a lot of hoopla around the publication of the Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors-edited A New Literary History of America (Harvard University Press) —although I do take exception to a use of “America” that is exclusive to the United States—looking at this titanic tome’s web site one might infer such.

I do know our local Mr. Fussy, Alex Beam, was not overly impressed: “With this many monkeys hammering away at this many typewriters, there is bound to be some good material.” Evidencing, shall we say, a certain low level of generosity of spirit.

Though I am not convinced a pastiche of 200 essays qualifies as a history (though part of me wants to argue this is the best kind of history), a compendium on any subject that contains the likes of Sarah Vowell, Michael Ventura, Sean Wilentz, David Treuer, Walter Mosley, David Thomson, Camille Paglia, Helen Vendler, Jonathan Lethem, and many other thinkers is a great value.

Monkeys they are not! —Robert Birnbaum, Oct. 14, 2009

Given the prodigious and intense scholarship devoted to all manner of subjects—central and tangential—to the Holocaust (or “Shoah” as some Jews prefer to call it), it is an encouraging sign that new information or new ways of looking at what we know are still being unearthed.

In The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses (Cambridge University Press), Stephen H. Norwood provides a disturbing—perhaps to some—even shocking account of the nexus existing between the American academy and Nazi Germany. He writes:

In order to understand the whole course of development that leads us to the Holocaust, I think it’s very important to see what influential sectors in the United States were doing. And in the case of higher education, it’s a very shameful record of complicity and indifference to atrocities committed against the Jews from 1933 onward—and actually a lot of collaboration, in terms of participating in well-organized student exchange programs, participating in well-orchestrated Nazi festivals in Germany, sending delegates to those and ignoring protests.

How this came to be is no surprise as Norwood elaborates:

They just didn’t care very deeply about Jews and anti-Semitism because they were themselves involved in maintaining quota barriers against Jewish students. There were very, very few Jews on the faculties of American universities throughout the entire inter-war period. And there are whole fields that were basically off-limits to Jews.

This tome is being touted as “the first systematic exploration of the nature and extent of sympathy for Nazi Germany at American universities during the 1930s”—which falls into the “better late than never” category of inquiry. —Robert Birnbaum, Oct. 5, 2009

Former Boston Globe and Pulitzer Prize-winning scribe Fred Kaplan (who also writes for Slate) can be forgiven for the hyperbolic claim of the subtitle in 1959: The Year Everything Changed (Wiley), as there are at least two other books that pretty much claim the same thing—and, after all, overheated rhetoric has not yet been made a crime (though it would be fitting to give law and order types a taste of what they ladle out). Plus, I personally hate to quibble with a fellow admirer of the greatness of Miles Davis’s landmark recording Kind of Blue.

Kaplan’s list of landmarks, benchmarks, high times, and transformations serves to picture that year and the late ’50s and early ’60s as a quaint movie set. A partial list includes the launch of the Soviet Union’s Lunik I space capsule, Norman Mailer’s Advertisements for Myself (a precursor of the me journalism he would later perfect in The Armies of the Night and Miami and the Siege of Chicago), hip (then referred to as “sick”) comedians Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, the rise of Alan Ginsberg and William Burroughs, the beat generation’s advance guard, the triumph of the Cuban (or at least Fidel Castro’s) Revolution, the recording of the above-mentioned classic from Miles Davis, the publication of William Appleman Williams’s seminal tome, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, photographer Robert Frank’s iconic monograph The Americans (with an introduction by Jack Kerouac), the founding of Motown Records by Berry Gordy—and, oh yeah, Jack St. Clair Kilby’s invention of the microchip.

Donald Fagen (of Steely Dan fame) concises masterfully, “Take a ride on the New Frontier with Fred Kaplan, your insightful (and hip) guide to the space race, thermonuclear war, the civil rights movement, the ‘sick comics,’ the Beats, and the beginnings of the Vietnam War, all to a soundtrack by Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Miles, and Motown.” —Robert Birnbaum, Sep. 1, 2009