The unicorns are here! This week’s roundup includes books coverage and essays on exercise. Yes, really. But it’s okay to read about exercise and not feel like you need to go for a run or something after.
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J. Cameron Moore reviews Elizabeth Stice’s new book on WWI over at Front Porch Republic, and it’s a fantastic review, worthy of the book itself. A taste:
Stice sets out to analyze how everyday French and British soldiers’ ideas of empire shaped their experience of the war. How did their imaginations of far-flung colonies frame their perception of the war raging in the heart of Europe? How did the Mahdi of Sudan provide a lens to view the mud of Flanders? Stice’s method for determining what Private Smith in Forward Trench Bravo thought about Mali or Mafeking is the trench newspaper. Published by soldiers and for soldiers, trench newspapers offer a record of what in The Everlasting Man Chesterton calls psychological history or history from the inside, that is, an account of “what things meant in the mind of a man, especially an ordinary man.” Reading broadly across the publications for their presentation of and assumptions about empire, Stice demonstrates that imperial experiences and premises shaped Entente soldiers’ experience of the war while at the same time the participation of colonial, Dominion, and protectorate forces in the war began to reshape the relationship between metropole and colony.
Trench newspapers built camaraderie and helped troops endure. Self-confessedly non-political they were instead a record of jokes, personalities, news, and life in the trenches. For instance, in a 1917 advertisement for drawing lessons, The Wipers Times included the following endorsement: “The other day by mischance I was left out in No Man’s Land. I rapidly drew a picture with a piece of chalk of a tank going into action, and while the Huns were firing at this I succeeded in return to the trenches unobserved. Could You Have Done This?” When John Ball, the protagonist of In Parenthesis arrives in the dark at the front line for the first time, he can already “sense near here habitation, a folk-life here, a people, a culture already developed, already venerable and rooted.” Trench newspapers are a window into that people and culture.
As such, these papers provide the means for understanding how imperial concerns shaped the way Entente soldiers perceived themselves and the war. But even more importantly to my mind, the papers provide a window into the human soul and how humor springs eternal in the human breast, even in the most inhuman conditions imaginable.
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Congratulations to David Austin Walsh, whose book launched this week. A book launch event was held last week, where you can hear three leading scholars talk about the book.
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Speaking of books, congratulations to Joel J. Miller, book reviewer extraordinaire, on his book contract! I appreciated his update both for the good news (looking forward to his book) and for the back story about this project. What is this book about? A taste from Joel’s explanation:
It’s a history of the book as an information technology. I flip the calendar back a couple millennia and fan forward through the centuries exploring how the book became an essential tool on the shaping of our world.
Tools transform their users. Books altered human thought and thinking, changed how we organized information and people, helped us reimagine everything from government to education, the natural world, relationships, philosophy, worship, even ourselves. Muhammad called Jews and Christians people of the book. But the truth is whether directly or indirectly, religious or not, that name fits us all.
As Barbara Tuchman once wrote, “Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible.”
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Andrew Spencer offers some reflections from his recent book, Hope for God’s Creation, in advance of this weekend’s Earth Day. A taste:
In my book, I argue that real improvement is only possible by someone who loves the thing being improved. G. K. Chesterton notes, “Before any cosmic act of reform, we must have a cosmic oath of allegiance.” Some environmentalists want to reform humanity, but they do not care for humans. Some Christians who ignore their duty toward creation think themselves totally distinct from creation, so they can ignore its fate while waiting for their release from the physical world. Hope comes from loving both humanity as an abstract category and loving particular humans individually, which is a much harder thing. Hope arises when the knowledge that creation and new creation exist on a continuum, and humans are part of both. Hope remains because of the knowledge that though our efforts may fail to make things better, it’s worth trying because God is going to renew everything one day.
Romans 8 is helpful in defining Christian hope. The creation hopes to be set free from its futility by the sovereign work of God. (vv. 20–21) We humans, also, like creation, are waiting for the redemption of our physical bodies. (v. 23)
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LuElla D’Amico leads us to switch gears to exercise. This essay of hers this week was delightfully unexpected and fun: “Dancing with TheWeightSaint: Richard Simmons’ (Surprisingly) Unsung Ministry.” A taste:
While most Catholics I know are talking about the new Mother Cabrini movie—the tenacious saint with dark, soulful eyes and a long, black habit that she wears like armor—there’s another film about a self-described “extreme Catholic” whom I believe we are remiss if we don’t acknowledge. This American saint-in-the-making sports merry, coffee-brown eyes and fuzzy hair plugs. His religious armor consists of glittery, neon tank tops and vibrant, almost too short shorts. He laughs loudly, sings show tunes even louder, and dances like there’s no tomorrow. Like Cabrini, he’s also saved countless lives and isn’t afraid of reaching out to those quite different from and less well-off than himself.
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On an exercise-related note, I’ve been eyeing Sabrina Little’s new book, and here’s a lovely short reflection she wrote this week about books and book-related heroes to inspire the craze of running 100-milers. A taste:
Ultrarunning is an odd sport, in that it straddles both competition and adventure. But this makes many of the great hero stories instructive and relatable.
We can learn from, and deeply appreciate, the misadventures and vulnerabilities of great heroes from the past. And perhaps in reading about various journeys through the Underworld — or being pursued by a monster and that monster’s angry mom — our misadventures seem mild by comparison.
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If you’re not the run-100-miles-for-fun type, there are other forms of exercise for you too. Dixie Dillon Lane invites fellow introverts to embrace “tech resistance.” Go ahead, take a hike–and no, she doesn’t mean it as an insult. Really, take a hike.
(Or, as I’ve done twice in the past week and a half, take the kids to the zoo! Most enjoyable way to hit 10,000 steps before 3pm, I promise you! Plus giraffes.)