Customer Comments

Ashley Bowen-Murphy has commented on (15) products.

Disowning Slavery : Gradual Emancipation and ""Race"" in New England, 1780-1860 (98 Edition) by Joanne Pope Melish

Ashley Bowen-Murphy, January 29, 2013

This is a fantastic exploration of the construction of race, New England's abolition movement and process, and regional nationalism. I appreciated that Melish explored the creation of "whiteness" and "blackness" from the perspective of both white New Englanders and Black slaves, freemen, and activists. She also does a nice job pushing back against New England's self-styled moral superiority over the South on the question of slavery and racism. (Importantly, she does this without suggesting that Southern slavery was somehow the same as it was in New England).

It's an academic text but is written in an accessible fashion. It's worthwhile reading for anyone interested in New England history, the history of slavery and abolition, and folks interested in getting past the simplified North = good, South = bad study of slavery in the United States.

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Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Ashley Bowen-Murphy, January 3, 2013

Flynn's "Gone Girl" takes the unreliable narrator to the next level. Everyone in the novel is deeply un-likeable, untrustworthy, and profoundly flawed. Even after reading the "twist," Flynn kept me unsure of who to believe up until the very, very end. It's not a light book but it's fantastically engrossing.

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War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America by Beth Linker

Ashley Bowen-Murphy, January 3, 2013

This is a fantastic, thought-provoking book. On a fundamental level, it asks us to consider what a soldier is: workman or hero. At the turn of the last century, several different political and social factions had a stake in defining his role. If the nation considers soldiers "employees" in the military, then the government's obligations change. I appreciated the way that Linker drew connections between Progressive Era military/veterans' legislation and the emerging workmen's compensation laws (see 27-30). According to Linker, President Wilson wanted to "build a veterans' compensation system... that would treat soldiers more like laborers than valorized men of the military" (28). Reconfiguring the military as an employer, rather than a "calling," works on a few different levels. For one thing, it does not threaten the equation of work and manhood so important to the Progressives. Second, it allows the military to cover only those injuries that a soldier sustains "on the job" (although, as all the authors we've read point out, defining "on the job" when it comes to the military is incredibly difficult). Third, it implicitly sanctions criticizing veterans and their behavior in a way that the heroic construction precludes.

Linker's text explains the historical roots of the amputee as "ideal" veteran. Although she could have gone into more detail, War's Waste highlights the traits that make for "good" and "bad" wounded soldiers. For our purposes, it might be interesting to consider the traits today that make for a "good" veteran and which ones make for a "bad" veteran. As I thought I about this in light of the Civil War and World War I history in Linker's book, I realized that little has changed since the Civil War. Visible wounds are still "easier" to process and a clear recovery, measured in easy metrics like employment and a heterosexual partnership, still indicate a "return to normal." Plus, it seems like American culture still has not really reconciled the soldier as employee or the soldier as hero. American public discourse still oscillates madly between valorizing the veteran and an obsession with the deficit/federal budget. It occurs to me that perhaps American culture still has not reconciled the soldiers' multiple roles.

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Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South by Stephanie Mccurry

Ashley Bowen-Murphy, January 3, 2013

Despite the Confederate States of America’s (CSA) efforts to enshrine an exclusively white, male citizenship in its founding documents, southern women and slaves emerged as powerful political actors during the course of the Civil War. Stephanie McCurry’s well-researched, easily readable Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, traces this development and argues that military necessity often augmented the growing political power of slaves and women. As “soldiers’ wives,” poor women embraced an identity that bound their “politics of subsistence” to the state’s obligation to its citizen-soldiers. Slaves, who formed their own understanding of the war long before emancipation, employed a variety of tactics to negate the instrumental view of slave labor enshrined in the CSA Constitution. Even though soldiers’ wives and slaves did not consider themselves allies, the persistence with which both groups entered the political sphere raised similar sets of complex questions about citizenship, consent of the governed, and the reciprocal obligations between a state and its citizenry. The CSA’s response to soldiers’ wives and slaves eventually undid the very logic of the state itself. It was precisely the official recognition of women and slaves as political actors, coupled with the implicit acknowledgement of the Confederate political system’s failure, that constitutes the “reckoning” at the heart of McCurry’s text.

McCurry's book will appeal to Civil War buffs and folks interested in women's or African American history.

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Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape by Kirk Savage

Ashley Bowen-Murphy, July 4, 2012

A fantastic overview of the politics, emotion, and philosophy behind DC's monumental core. Savage provides a comprehensive account of the development of the National Mall in the late 19th century. He spends a decent chunk of the book exploring L'Enfant's plan for the city and the Washington Monument while breezing through monuments built after the mid-1930s. Although initially disappointed that the Washington Monument, kind of a dull fixture in the DC skyline compared to the Jefferson or Lincoln memorials, formed a central part of the book, Savage's analysis convinced me of its incredible importance to the Mall's appearance today.

The book is well illustrated (although entirely in black and white), important given that many of the statues he discusses are not particularly famous.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in urban planning, memorial practices, 19th and 20th century history, or museum studies.

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