The Personal Librarian of J. P. Morgan

I've been reading "The personal librarian" the story of J.P. Morgan's curator of his rare books and manuscript collection, Belle da Costa Greene. I'm not impressed with the novel. I just came across the bio of her father, the first black graduate of Harvard, Richard Theodore Greener. http://www.mixedracestudies.org/?tag=richard-theodore-greener If the fictionalized account of Belle's life is to be believed, then her father abandoned his family to suit his own ambitions and had a Japanese concubine and two children when he was the first black diplomat to Russia in the early 20th century. That said, she's not to blame for her father's abandonment of her mother and large family. However, the writing is clunky and awkward, and it's a very preachy book about the struggles of a light skinned woman passing as a white in order to have a good life using her remarkable talent and intelligence. But she also had an affair with a married man (who had other lovers) and an abortion when her Jewish lover chose his wife and station over her (she wanted her child). Maybe I'm just tired of reading about amazingly successful people who are seen as victims. Porch reading. I've talked to others who have read it, and many LOVE this book, so don't be afraid to pick it up.

Belle da Costa Greene (1883-1950) • (blackpast.org)

Belle da Costa Greene, the Morgan’s First Librarian and Director | History of the Morgan | The Morgan Library & Museum

A Look at Belle da Costa Greene | Rare Book Collections @ Princeton

The Women Who Made the Morgan: Belle da Costa Greene, Felice Stampfle, and Edith Porada - YouTube Lecture, March 3, 2021

https://youtu.be/uiHz5YKAnhg Her letters to Bernard Berenson (1865–1959), lecture, June 19, 2021

https://youtu.be/JWcaePIBLCU Unmasking a forgery. The Spanish Forger.

Summary and Review: The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Murray - The Bibliofile (the-bibliofile.com)

The Personal Librarian Summary & Study Guide (bookrags.com)

a book review by Judith Reveal: The Personal Librarian (nyjournalofbooks.com)

Belle da Costa Greene - Wikipedia

Bernard Berenson - Wikipedia

I agree with John Kerry, the world today is less violent than the 20th century

John Kerry is wrong about a lot, but I think history proves him correct about the 21st century being safer than the 20th, at least so far, although we’re only 15 years into it. It's aggravating that conservative talkers and news shows jumped on that as somehow downplaying what we face now.  Obama has still made a mess of things--we would have been much safer if he hadn't blown up the pull out from Iraq which allowed ISIS to expand, but at least in 2015, the world is safer than in 1970 or 1944.

"Our citizens, our world today is actually, despite ISIL, despite the visible killings that you see and how horrific they are, we are actually living in a period of less daily threat to Americans and to people in the world than normally, less deaths, less violent deaths today than through the last century." John Kerry

Governments killed their own citizens in the 20th century to the tune of about 100 million--and that's not counting the world wars--and there is nothing around today, not ISIS, Taliban or al-qaeda that can match the cruelty and killing of the Communists of USSR and China, the North Koreans who starved millions of their citizens and the National Socialists of Germany or the Turks who killed millions of Armenian Christians under their control.  I think he said it poorly in light of the current news about various threats, but even a few months a go I blogged on this topic, and I think I was using conservative sources.   The jihadists are trying to build up steam for their Caliphate, but so far are no match for the terror and crime of the 20th century.  Because the Democrats are being eaten from the inside by their own radicals and Communists, Kerry probably doesn't dare mention the history behind those words, or that it was the president [Reagan], the pope [John Paul II] and the prime minister [Thatcher] who made the 21st century safer for all of us by bringing down the Soviet Union.

But, the 20th century looked pretty good and progressive until 1914, so maybe we’ll have to wait and see about it being safer today.  So far, I think we are.

Gilbert’s History of the Twentieth Century, v. 3: 1952-1999

What a find!  I was browsing the shelves at Volunteers of American on Henderson Rd. today and found this title by the prolific, incredible British writer, Martin Gilbert. Now I’ll have to watch for the other volumes.

“Sir Martin John Gilbert is a British historian and Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford. He is the author of over eighty books, including works on the Holocaust and Jewish history. Gilbert is a leading historian of the modern world, and is known as the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill.”

I first came across him reading “Letters to Auntie Fori: The 5,000-Year History of the Jewish People and Their Faith.”  He met Auntie in 1958 through his college friend who was Indian and over the years became her “adopted nephew.”  When she was 90 she revealed to him that she was actually a Hungarian Jew, but knew nothing about her heritage or that religion.  Thus began a series of letters to Auntie explaining her heritage. It is probably the most interesting way to learn Jewish history.

He presents Jewish history as the narrative expression–the timeline–of the Jewish faith, and the faith as it is informed by the history. Starting with Adam and Eve, he then brings us to Abraham and his descendants, who worshiped a God who repeatedly, and often dramatically, intervened in their lives. The stories of Genesis and Exodus lead seamlessly on to those of the eras when the land was ruled by the Israelite kings and then by Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome–the Biblical and post-Biblical periods. In Sir Martin’s hands, these stories are rich in incident and achievement. He then traces the long history of the Jews in the Diaspora, ending with an unexpected visit to an outpost of Jewry in Anchorage, Alaska. (Good reads)

However, the book I bought is the third volume (very big)  in a set about the 20th century, most of my life time, and it seems odd to see the events I remember, like the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the assassination attempt on President Reagan written in to history.

Martin Gilbert's three-volume history of the century continues with an enthralling narrative that documents the attempts to preserve human values, to maintain the rule of law, and to uphold the rights and dignity of the individual. Gilbert shows how the conflicts of nations and the aspirations of their rulers served both to threaten humankind through war and civil war, in many regions of the globe, and to create a fairer and more fulfilling life for hundreds, even thousands, of millions of people.For more than four decades, the United States and the Soviet Union--joint victors in the struggle against Germany and Japan--struggled to establish the primacy of their respective systems, while the specter of nuclear war threatened to become a terrible reality.

Here are gripping narrative accounts of the wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Bosnia; the postwar reconstruction of Europe; apartheid; the arms race; the moon landing ; and  the extraordinary advances in medical science.  Mao started a cultural revolution, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy were assassinated, and the computer revolution was begun.  The result is nothing less than extraordinary. (Amazon)

I wish reading were easy for me; I certainly have some wonderful books on my office shelves I haven’t read.

Yes, deaths by war and criminal gun violence are bad—but governments are worse offenders

George Weigel writes that the 19th century ended in August 1914 with the start of WWI and ended in August 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. That was the bloodiest 8 decades in the history of the world, he says.

Yes, there were a lot of wars in the 20th century, but most of the millions who suffered the massacres, tortures and deaths died from governments killing their own people--Soviets starving the Ukrainians, Turks killing the Armenian Christians, Communist Maoists wiping out millions of Chinese, Nazis killing German Jews, the genocide by Pol Pot in Cambodia, Saddam Hussein killing the Kurds and fellow Muslims, genocidal mass slaughter of the Tutsis by the Hutu lead government in Rwanda  and so forth. Their common thread for ruling was statism, sometimes with some ethnic or religious hatred used on the side to make their case.

It comes in many names and versions, but the state owns the people and knows best. In the United States, “we the people” are supposed to control the government.  We have documents that insure this.  So the next time a 9-12 group or a Tea Party gathering demands a smaller government, at least give it some thought.

Do numbers matter?

In the 16th through the 19th centuries Arab Muslims captured and sold black Africans to European slavers who then shipped them to the “new world” for resale in the various colonies of Spain, Portugal, France and England.

"By the end of the seventeenth century, slavery and the products of slave labor comprised the single largest economic enterprise on earth. Over the course of more than two hundred years, European carriers -- British, Spanish, French, and Portuguese -- had shipped more than 2 million Africans across the Atlantic in chains. But that was just the beginning. Spurred by an explod­ing European demand for sugar, traffic in slaves surged, and in the eighteenth century alone more than 6 million Africans were taken from their homeland to plantations in Brazil, the Caribbean, and, to a much smaller extent, British North America. ... Sons of Providence by Charles Rappleye

Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, estimates 54,559,615 abortions since Roe v. Wade in 1973, and about 40% of those are black. Life Site News

Abortion is legal and approved by the state and federal governments of the United States, and has been a plank in the Democrat party political platform for decades.  Legal abortion  has killed more blacks than four centuries of the Atlantic slave trade.

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, whose organization invested $15 million in the election, was overjoyed by the results of Tuesday’s election of a pro-abortion president, as was NARAL President Nancy Keenan.

The Real History of Slavery by Thomas Sowell

The following is a partial review of Thomas Sowell’s book, “Black Rednecks and White Liberals,” and appeared in the October 2005 issue of Freeman, a libertarian publication. Review is by Richard M. Ebeling.  I don’t know how successful this book was—seems to be a compilation of his columns which appeared in newspapers—and I don’t know if there were revisions.  It would be good to review the history of slavery, especially since in modern times, we now know it is a larger enterprise in the 21st century than it was in the 18th century because of selling sex, and cheap labor.  And just as Arabs sold black Africans to the Europeans from raids in the interior of Africa, so Muslims today are capturing and selling slaves in Africa and Asia.  So his conclusion (the reviewer, I assume) that ending it in the British Empire closed that chapter isn’t accurate.

“A related theme that Sowell discusses in a chapter on “The Real History of Slavery” is that the institution of human bondage is far older than the experience of black enslavement in colonial and then independent America. Indeed, slavery has burdened the human race during all of recorded history and everywhere around the globe. Its origins and practice have had nothing to do with race or racism. Ancient Greeks enslaved other Greeks; Romans enslaved other Europeans; Asians enslaved Asians; and Africans enslaved Africans, just as the Aztecs enslaved other native groups in what we now call Mexico and Central America. Among the most prominent slave traders and slave owners up to our own time have been Arabs, who enslaved Europeans, black Africans, and Asians. In fact, while officially banned, it is an open secret that such slavery still exists in a number of Muslim countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Equally ignored, Sowell reminds us, is that it was only in the West that slavery was challenged on philosophical and political grounds, and that antislavery efforts became a mass movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Slavery was first ended in the European countries, and then Western pressure in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought about its demise in most of the rest of the world. But this fact has been downplayed because it does not fit into the politically correct fashions of our time. It is significant that in 1984, on the 150th anniversary of the ending of slavery in the British Empire, there was virtually no celebration of what was a historically profound turning point in bringing this terrible institution to a close around the world.’

Repeating myself on George W. Bush

I wrote this in December 2008 after looking through a Sept. 18, 1939 Life magazine about the WWII we hadn't yet entered. It's even more true now.

"The writers even called it a world war--and we weren't in it. I looked through several issues. Despite Bush's failures on the financial front in 2008, I was again so glad that he pursued the terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq and has kept his word for all these years. He acted with virtually total support of both parties, and one by one they fell away, abandoning principals and allies.

Really folks, the USA's record for the 20th century is pretty crummy. Yes, you can talk about the "greatest generation"--they did respond after millions had already died in Europe and China. But we dawdled around in WWI, jumping in at the last moment/months of the war. We abandoned millions of our east European allies to the Soviets in 1945. We negotiated Korea and 55 years later we're still messing with north Korea. Then we ran out on the Vietnamese thanks to our home-grown spoiled boomers like Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and Jane Fonda.

God bless George W. Bush and we'll let history decide if we had any Presidents in the last 100 years who had all the body parts those guys are reputed to possess--spine, balls, and guts."

Socialism is a proven failure

So why does Obama want it so badly? Maybe he doesn‘t remember the 20th century?

"Socialism is the Big Lie of the twentieth century. While it promised prosperity, equality, and security, it delivered poverty, misery, and tyranny. Equality was achieved only in the sense that everyone was equal in his or her misery.

In the same way that a Ponzi scheme or chain letter initially succeeds but eventually collapses, socialism may show early signs of success. But any accomplishments quickly fade as the fundamental deficiencies of central planning emerge. It is the initial illusion of success that gives government intervention its pernicious, seductive appeal. In the long run, socialism has always proven to be a formula for tyranny and misery." The Freeman

You look just like your mother

When my college roommate met me at the Seattle airport in 1996 after many years of not being together, I said to her, "You look just like your mother," and she said to me, "And you look like yours." Both our mothers were younger (mid to late 30s) when we first met, so that shows you how "elderly" mid-life adults look to children. Reading G. Campbell Morgan this morning made me realize how much we Americans look like our mother, England. He is preaching from that passage in Amos, which is a powerful word from God to the people of Israel of that time, but resonates down through the centuries to all peoples, Amos 8:11-13. Amos tells of a famine not of bread, but of the word of the Lord, a famine that will hit the young and healthy the hardest. And so a hundred years ago, early in the 20th century, Morgan is preaching on this passage to Londoners, citizens of the most powerful country in the world. The sun had not yet set on the Union Jack when he said this--the tiny island still ruled India and much of Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia and the annihilation of generations of its sons in WWI and WWII was yet to come

"The prophet of today will see quite clearly the cruelty of Russia, the frivolity of France, the rationalism of Germany, the civic corruption of America. But the prophet cannot forget the relation of privilege and responsibility, and he cannot forget the fiery, burning, searching words of his Lord, that it is to be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for the cities that heard his voice. . . Russia will have a far better chance in the final judgment of the nations than England, because England has had infinitely more light. . . we are living in the midst of a great famine, not of bread, but of the Word of God, what is this famine? It is a curse upon our idolatries. . . The curses of God are the harvests of man's own wrongdoing.

If we have lost our sense of the Word, and
our love for the Word, and
our confidence in the Word, and
our appreciation of the Word,
why is it?
It is God's judgement, but it is an effect following a cause. . .

So Morgan challenges the people of England to first give up the idolatry, then turn to the Word, and then there will be no famine.

The other morning I heard Father John Corapi on EWTN speaking on the culture of death and anti-life forces in America say we Americans have been "educated into embicility" and we are "slaves to our culture." Physical poverty is a terrible thing to see, he said, but if we had eyes to see the spiritual misery of our nation, we would die of fright.

Unity, social action and the weakened church of Europe

So what was happening to the church in the early 20th century that allowed it to be mowed down like wet grass by the National Socialists? (see previous entry) My grasp of 20th century history is pretty much limited to what I was taught in school or saw in the movies (i.e., FDR was our savior even though he extended the Depression 8 years; we were the good guys in WWII and bad guys in all following wars) and what I lived through. Keep in mind, I was either a humanist or a Democrat most of my adult life, or too busy raising a family, and working toward academic promotion and tenure to pay much attention to anything beyond the campus and home on Abington. Here’s a brief summary of about the first 40 years of the European Lutheran church in the 20th century from History of Lutheranism by Eric W. Gritsch (Fortress, 2002).

1) Ecumenism
2) Doctrine divides, service unites

Now, I realize it was a bit more complicated than that, but the leader of the ecumenical movement and all the cleverly named organizations and conferences that mushroomed (mostly in Europe with some participation of American churches) was a Swedish Lutheran, Nathan Söderblom (January 15, 1866-July 12, 1931). He was a man of deep longing for unity among Christians, a goal to which he devoted his life and studies, while pursuing eastern religions and dabbling in Marxism. Just skipping through the highlights of his life in Chapter 7, "New Ventures, 1918- :

1890 International Student Conference (New Haven)
1901 Young Church Movement, with links to Swedish socialists; studies Persian religion in Paris
1908 Proposal for Christian unity with Anglicans and mission work in India
1912-13 Professor at University of Leipzig, Germany
1914 Appointed archbishop of Sweden; Declaration of Peace and Christian Fellowship
1914 Unity efforts set aside by WWI with focus on helping orphaned German and Austrian children as head of World Alliance of Churches for Promoting International Friendship as a way to unite Christians in social action despite national and doctrinal differences
1917 Manifesto signed by leading clerics of Europe calling for a durable peace;
1917 International Christian conference--hand picked delegates; unity, life in society, international law were the topics
1919 World Alliance International Committee, 60 attendees from 14 countries (Netherlands)
1920 Negotiations for Ecumenical Council/Conference for unity and renewal of society (Geneva)
1925 Universal Conference of the Church of Christ on Life and Work (Stockholm) with six topics: 1) church’s obligation to the world, 2) church and economic and industrial problems, 3) church and social and moral problems, 4) church and the mutual relations of nations, 5) church and Christian education, and 6) methods of practical and organizational cooperation between Christian communions
1927 World Conference on Faith and Order (Lausanne); seven topics many doctrinal on sacraments, gospel, nature of the church--much tension--no vote taken
1930 Received Nobel Prize for peace
1931 Gifford lectures, honoring his work on world religions and the mystical unity of humankind

With his life, the chapter parallels what was happening in Germany to the church (mostly Lutherans, since this is a book about Lutherans) who have been participating all along in these calls for unity, cooperation, and mission to social causes

1932 German Lutherans who support Hitler (Reichskirche) and “heroic piety” call for a revival of inner mission and a platform to fulfill the intentions of the Reformation of the 16th century
1933 Hitler elected during economic crisis with the Jews blamed for all of Europe’s economic woes (i.e., evil, greedy, capitalist CEOs); he promises a new Germany; rise of secularization, churches lose influence; the government coordinates all sectors of public and private life.
1933 The Nazis first affirmed support of religious freedom, except when public security was threatened, and ties with ecumenism in other parts of Europe are halted
1934 German confessing church (bekennende Kirche) putting the gospel first, repudiates the false teachings of the government and many eventually go to prison camps and death.
1937 Second Conference for Faith and Order (Edinburgh)
1937 Conference on Life and Work (Oxford) Hitler barred Germans from attending
1938 German pastors are required to sign a loyalty oath or lose their ministry and salary
1939-1945 (World War II) The rise of German National Socialism (and Italian Fascism) during which the believing churches are suppressed; those who support the government (majority) allowed to continue.
1945 Surviving leaders of the German Confessing church establish Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany

In an effort to save the environment, I think the churches of today could just dust off a few of these documents (if they can find them), especially that one in 1925 with the 6 main topics has a very familiar ring, don't you think? Works for PAJAMA Christians.