Beach Haven

The title serves as a content descriptor. The biographies are short, typically a dozen pages. It seems to be a primer for those just starting to look at history. The subtitle states, “Twenty life stories of outstanding American men and women in the arts, sciences and public life.” Given the space, time of writing and intended audience, one should not expect anything in-depth about the number of subjects chosen or revealing anything beyond a cursory look at each of them. Despite this limited approach, the book is quite helpful at introducing some of the people I personally know little to nothing about.

Some of the chapters seem to be adapted by the various authors from large historical books they’ve published, or perhaps a periodical piece on the same topic. The editor chose different historians for each chapter. Those authors selected are clearly experts on the individual the personal biographical sketches introduce. To wet the curiosity of a potential scholar, the list of subjects include: Roger Williams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Paul Revere, Daniel Webster, Washington Irving, Stephen Foster, Louis Agassiz, Emily Dickenson, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Charles Townsend Copeland, Grant Wood, Carl Sandburg, the Wright Brothers, Marian Anderson, Agnes de Mille, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Thoreau.
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If you are like me, you’ve heard of most, but all, of these. Like me, you likely have varying familiarity with either their myth or perhaps have read some of their created works. Despite that, I for one managed to pick up some insights on even those I felt quite familiar with. One potential outcome of a biographical skim like this one is the reader may become more interested in one or more of the people highlighted. That interest could lead the reader down a deeper study, but the shallow pieces in the work can also keep the exploratory investment small.

Daudet, Alphonse. 1903 & 1917. The Siege of Berlin. Vol. XIII French Fiction, in The Harvard Classics Self of Fiction, edited by William Allan Neilson and Charles W. Eliot, 431-437. New York: P F Collier & Son Company.

This story depicts a physician recounting to a friend an experience he had with a former patient. Much earlier in his career he had been called to the home of a former French colonel who was prostrate on the floor and near death. He was attended by his granddaughter. His son, her father, was away fighting the Prussians and all of France worried over the progress of the war.

Eventually the colonel regained some consciousness and in his stupor sought confirmation that the war was going well for the French. The doctor affirmed this untruth and the man improved slightly. Between the granddaughter and doctor they decided to try fabricating French victories over the Germans, and each time they did the patient improved.

As the war drug on ever more badly from French troops, they deluded the colonel of the opposite. They made up victories that were not happening, and hid the advances of the enemy. Eventually Paris was under siege. The conspiratorial caretakers instead described how Berlin was under siege by French troops. As canon fire could be heard in the distance they told him it was celebratory, and that soon their troops would be parading down the Champs Elysees through the Arc Triomphe. The patient’s apartment overlooked the likely parade route. He prepared to receive the troops by stepping out onto the balcony in his best uniform. Eventually the ‘treatment’ ended as he saw the Prussian helmets approaching with their spiked domes. He fell prostrate again on the floor, this time dead.

Daudet approaches the story with a combination of descriptive action, inner thoughts, and dialog at times hushed between the physician and granddaughter, or confident when either of them gave assurances to their patient. Daudet in some ways links the fear and despair of the French public over the actual war with the concerns he depicts in the caretakers of the colonel. 

Nye, David E. 2007. Technology Matters: Questions to Live With. Cambridge & London: The MIT Press.

As the subtitle suggests, David Nye poses a series of philosophical questions focused on ideas related to technology. Perhaps the first is the biggest; what is technology? Regardless how one approaches this question the answers are essentially ambiguous. Important arguments throughout the work confirm that humans, humanity, and technology are inextricably connected.

Here is a list of the other big questions Nye pursues, each as individual chapters. Does technology control us? Is technology predictable? How do historians understand technology? Does technology inspire cultural uniformity or diversity? Does technology contribute to sustainable abundance or ecological crisis? How does technology affect how we work (do we work more, less, better or worse)? Should ‘the market’ select technologies? Does technology bring more security or escalate danger? Through technology do we expand consciousness or encapsulate it? Will technology lead to an inevitable future, or are there many potential outcomes?

All of these questions have many-sided arguments, and all the arguments have a number of proponents offering nuanced perspectives. In this work, David Nye brings out good representation of the many camps addressing the questions. Nye offers a philosophical examination of how technology and humanity interact and influence each other. As one might guess about a philosophy-focused treatise, there are no real final answers, and plenty of opportunity for the reader to take sides.