The Road - Cormac McCarthy

A spare tale of father and son traveling through a post-apocalyptical wasteland. McCarthy seems to be inviting the reader to ask how different certain aspects really are to the world we inhabit. What do we hold closest? What will we sacrifice for? What does tolerable and intolerable loss look like? What does it mean to each of us to carry the fire?
 

The Caine Mutiny - Herman Wouk

 

A naval adventure primarily concerned with issues of duty and honor, in which there are no easy answers. The version I read referred to Queeg as perhaps the greatest ship's captain in American literature. Well, Ahab still stands head and shoulders above the rest. A quick and enjoyable read, Wouk's book is nevertheless freighted with complexity. Because we see Quueg's actions from the crew's perspective we enter the court martial trail on their side. By the end it is unclear whose side we are 'supposed' to be on. Perhaps there is no right answer.

The Afrikaners - Hermann Giliomee

Re-read, re-post (some changes): Survival. Hermann Giliomee looks at the history of a people who dominated twentieth century South Africa and sees how a heritage of marginalization and struggle led to an ever-present concern that their people and their way of life requires defending. By the last decades of the twentieth century the ruling National Party of South Africa was holding on by the only means it knew: doubling-down on separation, exacerbating formal inequality. Any other approach, any compromise, was seen as a threat to the volk. Giliomee contends that ceding power was seen as analogous to authorizing a cultural death.

Telling the story of the Dutch settlers who became Boers and then emerged as Afrikaners Giliomee recounts a people occupying an uncertain middle ground. Never Company people, nor fully accepted as part of imperial British society, nor willing to 'lower' themselves to the status of black Africans, the Boers initially defined themselves by what they were not. As their cultural identity became forged through a shared 19th century mythology the Afrikaner began to emerge as emblematic of a people and a way of life. Slagtersnek, the Great Trek, Dingaan's Day, and the Anglo-Boer War all were the foundation of a fiercely independent people who saw themselves besieged. Once the Union of South Africa was inaugurated the volk sought to ensure that they maintained control over their small corner of the world.

Yet, the prospects of survival change. As the world pressed in upon South Africa, as liberals at home and abroad, and as black South Africans increasingly found their political voice, survival of the government and survival of the volk were once again separated. The government could not stand; the volk had to find a new means of defining themselves in a composite society. The next chapter of the Afrikaners has only begun.

On a re-reading one cannot help but think that Giliomee somewhat talks around the problem. He notes that in the latter-half of the twentieth century, South Africa enjoyed unprecedented economic growth and relatively low rates of unemployment. But he does not examine what this might have looked like if the majority of population had been able to be any more than drawers of water, hewers of wood, and diggers in mines. Though he makes gestures towards the unsavory human costs of apartheid, his history makes it sound as though the end of minority rule was a concession and compromise made primarily within South Africa's white community. He emphasizes that other countries ensure minority rights in a way South Africa's post-1994 political system does not. In so doing, he risks returning to a vision of South Africa society that is primarily racial in character. There is a human cost to majority rule, as there was to apartheid. Reading Mark Mathabane's Kaffir Boy gives one a certain picture of which was worse.

Life is Like a Kudu Horn - Margaret Jacobsohn

 A memoir of dedication and adventure in northwest Namibia. Jacobsohn and a small number of what she dubs the "lunatic fringe" forged a new path for community conservation in this post-apartheid country.

See the full review here.

Cities of the Plain - Cormac McCarthy

Third of the Border Trilogy and the end of the story of John Grady Cole and Billy Parnham. Back and forth across the border of Mexico as a way of life is disappearing. Great scenes chasing dogs along canyon rims, horses in the barn at night, and the lingering of Billy.

Nixonland - Rick Perlstein

 Perlstein convincingly argues that the 1960s, so often treated as the period when the counter-culture exploded and America was transformed, is better understood as a period of backlash and division. How, Perlstein asks, did American go from electing Democrat Lyndon Johnson by an overwhelming margin in 1964 to giving Richard Nixon a reelection landslide in 1972? The answer he provides is that during this period America was riven by generational, political, economic, security, and class conflicts that created political divisions that persist. Into this period of uncertainty and insecurity stepped the master political manipulator - Richard Nixon.

Perlstein's argument is really that conservative backlash, more than liberal or progressive transformation, is the more complete and accurate way to account for American politics in the latter-half of the twentieth century. Given that the divides he examines feel entirely relevant and contemporary (even though the book was written more than 15 years ago) is testament to his argument. I was thoroughly convinced. This, in combination with Perlstein's highly-readable prose makes this a great work of social and political history.

Frontiers - Noel Mostert

 Mostert interprets South African history as pivoting on the events collectively known as the Frontier Wars along the eastern boundary of the Cape Colony in the early to mid-nineteenth century. As a contribution to the historiography of (de)colonialism, Mostert's detail reveals that the subjugation of South Africa by the British empire was not a fait accompli. Along the frontier at the Kei River and Zuurveld, the Xhosa people were caught between the hammer of the British and anvil of the Zulu. Within this tenuous zone were also Boers, missionaries, traders, settlers, and fluctuating political alliances among and between all players that did not remain static.

Invasion may at least partially describe what the Xhosa experienced. While they, as well as the Khoe-San and Zulu, had long inhabited the region, when Europeans arrived they enforced their rules and norms. Yet, one of the chief political difficulties was that powerful Europeans, such as military men and governors, frequently did not stick around for very long. This, in combination with the dynamic political winds back in London, meant that colonial policies seemingly changed from year to year. Cattle raiding could be tolerated and then punished, with little forewarning. One of the interesting aspects is Mostert's implicit contention that by the time of the millenaria predictions in the 1850s, the Xhosa world had already been transformed beyond recognition.

This is a useful reference for understanding the forge of South African hitory and the ways in which the Cape encapsulated much of mid-nineteenth century globalization. It pulses with interesting characters and is a careful work of compelling scholarship.