thinking about history book review

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Thinking about History by Sarah Maza (review)

James J. Sheehan
The MIT Press
Volume 49, Number 2, Autumn 2018
pp. 319-321
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Thinking About History

Read the introduction . An audiobook version is available .

History: General History

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"Essential."

"As I continued reading, I became increasingly grateful that someone this thoughtful and skilled had chosen to research and write this book. . . . Through structure, content, and clear, vivid writing, Thinking about History makes a valuable contribution to the history of history. The first half of the book offers a narrative explaining the changing fields of historical research, the who, where, and what historians choose to write about. She identifies and illuminates works that were catalysts for change, going deep into the authors’ evidence. Her careful structure and organization make difficult concepts and movements blindingly clear. . . . I got a lot of pleasure from reading Maza’s book. It gave me a chance to reunite with old friends and encounter new histories, to see what authors took from and did with each other’s work, to find out what methods and ideas have spoken not just to me but to the profession as a whole."

The Journal of American History

“Maza has finally provided us with a strong synthetic and contemporary work that reflects the development of historical writing over the last few decades. Nothing out there combines the accessibility and range of Thinking About History ; it is a literate, current, and inviting survey. Maza successfully captures the complexity of issues that have teased historians over the centuries. She raises the right questions, discusses the right scholarship, and engages with the right fields. Thinking About History is a model of concise and reflective historiographical coverage and the best synthesis of its kind.”

David Brown, Elizabethtown College

“Maza offers many intelligent reflections on how history is ‘done’ these days, after a period of fifty years or so during which historians have rethought their practice of the discipline. She also gives her readers an excellent crash course in the various different schools of, or approaches to, history that have emerged in that time. Thinking About History is the best concise overview of Western historiography over this period that I know of.”

Allan Megill, University of Virginia

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Thinking About History

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The Boomerang

Understand history. Understand the world.

Erika Harlitz-Kern

Sarah Maza, THINKING ABOUT HISTORY, or History as Slime Toy.

Consider the slime toy. It is obviously an entity, a thing, right in front of you there it is. But as soon as you try and grab it, it slips out of your hand. Try and describe it–or worse, explain it–and you quickly run out of words. Or perhaps you find yourself forced to use too many words, and in the end you stop talking out of exasperation with yourself and the thing you are trying to define.

History is like a slime toy. They are both functioning contradictions. A slime toy is solid and liquid. It is slippery and dry. It is pleasant and unpleasant. Meanwhile, history is the past and the study of that past. It is a story and the creation of that story. It is a science and a liberal art. It is an artifact and a text. It is concrete and abstract. It is physical and ephemeral. It is popular and esoteric. It is the pursuit of the amateur and the expert.

Because of its amorphous nature, everyone has an opinion on history, and everyone thinks they can teach and write history. However, if we take a closer look at what history is–if we try and investigate that slime toy before it slips out of our hand–we will soon discover that history is a complicated thing with a long and complicated history of its own.

In her excellent book Thinking about History (The Chicago University Press, 2017), Sarah Maza, professor of history at Northwestern University, addresses the issues of the amorphousness of history and how that came to be. Divided into six chapters, Thinking about History discusses the who, what, where, and how of history production, as well as the-chicken-and-the-egg debate of historical causes and meanings, and the rise and fall of historical objectivity. The book is a fresh take on the history of history (historiography) that successfully breaks down the inherent Eurocentrism of the field. In doing so, it demonstrates how the parameters set up for what history is and should be are inherently northern European, Protestant, patriarchal, and imperialist, which still to this day actively disqualifies the histories of societies considered outside of the so-called “West” and groups considered not part of the mainstream.

Historiography might seem like a niche subject, but it is at the core of the polarization that we see in society today. At the heart of the so-called culture wars is a fight over history: who gets to write history; who should be included in that history; and what should that history be about.

As Maza demonstrates in her book, historians themselves have a lot to answer for in this mess. It is because of the biases, prejudices, and performative objectivity of historians in the past that we have ended up where we are. But, at the same time, it is also made clear that the key to solving the problem of polarization lies with the culprits.

In her conclusion, Maza states that for “the past to serve its best purpose we must not freeze it in place, we must argue about it” because history “becomes useless or boring at best, and dangerous at worst, when it jells into consensual orthodoxy of any sort.” Even though history studies the past, it does so in response to the needs of the present-day, and as such, history is one of the most important subjects we can study.

For history to be able to address the issues of today, we historians need to learn about our own sordid history. A very good place to start is with Sarah Maza’s Thinking about History.

In the words of my friend, the Australian, I shall return.

________________________________________________________

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Thinking About History by Sarah Maza

2019, Journal of American History

AF Masten's review of Maza's book.

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How to Write a History Book Review

Writing a book review is one of the fundamental skills that every historian must learn. An undergraduate student’s book review should accomplish two main goals:

Lay out an author’s argument, and
Most importantly, critique the historical argument.

It is important to remember that a book review is not a book report. You need to do more than simply lay out the contents or plot-line of a book. You may briefly summarize the historical narrative or contents but must focus your review on the historical argument being made and how effectively the author has supported this argument with historical evidence. If you can, you may also fit that argument into the wider historiography about the subject.

The 'How to ... ' of Historical Book Reviews Writing a book review may seem very difficult, but in fact there are some simple rules you can follow to make the process much easier.

Before you read, find out about the author’s prior work What academic discipline was the author trained in? What other books, articles, or conference papers has s/he written? How does this book relate to or follow from the previous work of the author? Has the author or this book won any awards? This information helps you understand the author’s argument and critique the book.

As you read, write notes for each of the following topics.

Write a few sentences about the author’s approach or genre of history. Is the focus on gender? Class? Race? Politics? Culture? Labor? Law? Something else? A combination? If you can identify the type of history the historian has written, it will be easier to determine the historical argument the author is making.
Summarize the author’s subject and argument. In a few sentences, describe the time period, major events, geographical scope and group or groups of people who are being investigated in the book. Why has the author chosen the starting and ending dates of the book’s narrative? Next, discover the major thesis or theses of the book, the argument(s) that the author makes and attempts to support with evidence. These are usually, but not always, presented in a book’s introduction. It might help to look for the major question that the author is attempting to answer and then try to write his or her answer to that question in a sentence or two. Sometimes there is a broad argument supported by a series of supporting arguments. It is not always easy to discern the main argument but this is the most important part of your book review.
What is the structure of the book? Are the chapters organized chronologically, thematically, by group of historical actors, from general to specific, or in some other way? How does the structure of the work enhance or detract from the argument?
Look closely at the kinds of evidence the author has used to prove the argument. Is the argument based on data, narrative, or both? Are narrative anecdotes the basis of the argument or do they supplement other evidence? Are there other kinds of evidence that the author should have included? Is the evidence convincing? If so, find a particularly supportive example and explain how it supports the author’s thesis. If not, give an example and explain what part of the argument is not supported by evidence. You may find that some evidence works, while some does not. Explain both sides, give examples, and let your readers know what you think overall.
Closely related to the kinds of evidence are the kinds of sources the author uses. What different kinds of primary sources are used? What type of source is most important in the argument? Do these sources allow the author to adequately explore the subject? Are there important issues that the author cannot address based on these sources? How about the secondary sources? Are there one or more secondary books that the author seems to lean heavily on in support of the argument? Are there works that the author disagrees with in the text? This will tell the reader how the work fits into the historiography of the subject and whether it is presenting a major new interpretation.
Is the argument convincing as a whole? Is there a particular place where it breaks down? Why? Is there a particular element that works best? Why? Would you recommend this book to others, and if so, for whom is it appropriate? General readers? Undergraduates? Graduates and specialists in this historical subject? Why? Would you put any qualifications on that recommendation?

After having written up your analyses of each of these topics, you are ready to compose your review. There is no one way to format a book review but here is a common format that can be varied according to what you think needs to be highlighted and what length is required.

Introduce the author, the historical period and topic of the book. Tell the reader what genre of history this work belongs to or what approach the author has used. Set out the main argument.
Summarize the book’s organization and give a little more detail about the author’s sub-arguments. Here you would also work in your assessment of the evidence and sources used.
Strengths and weaknesses or flaws in the book are usually discussed next. It is up to you to decide in what order these should come, but if you assess the book positively overall, do not spend inordinate space on the book’s faults and vice versa.
In the conclusion, you may state your recommendations for readership unless that has been covered in your discussion of the book’s strengths and weaknesses. You might review how convincing the argument was, say something about the importance or uniqueness of the argument and topic, or describe how the author adds to our understanding of a particular historical question.

About Reading and Readers

Redeeming Our Thinking About History by Vern S. Poythress

The Russian invasion of Ukraine echoes the German invasion of Europe 80 years ago. Both Putin and Hitler recite history to justify the war. When a holocaust memorial was damaged in an airstrike, President Zelensky tweeted: “What is the point of saying ‘never again’ for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar? At least 5 killed. History repeating…” The question we pose today is “How should we think of history?”

Hi, my name is Terence and I’m your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review “Redeeming Our Thinking About History: A God-Centered Approach” by Vern S. Poythress. 256 pages, published by Crossway in 2022. Available for USD18.99 in Amazon Kindle and, as of this recording, it’s available for pre-order in Logos for USD11.99. I am reviewing a review copy courtesy of Crossway. Crossway had no input on this review.

Vern S. Poythress is a distinguished professor of New Testament, biblical interpretation, and systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary where he has taught for 44 years. He has six academic qualifications, thereby establishing that he is a smart man.

His best friend is John Frame. Or at least I think he is because they both share a blog, frame-poythress.org and you only share a blog with your bestie right? I mention John Frame because if you are a fan of John Frame, then you might like this book which builds on Frame’s perspectives.

Poythress is a prolific writer. Relevant to today’s review is a series that began 16 years ago. In 2006, he wrote Redeeming Science, in 2011 Redeeming Sociology, 2014 Redeeming Philosophy, 2015 Redeeming Mathematics, and in 2022 Redeeming History. Or rather it should be Redeeming History instead it’s Redeeming Our Thinking About History.

I love history. I love to redeem my thoughts on it. I jumped in to the book with high expectations.

Table of Contents

The book is divided into five main parts:

What We Need In Order To Think About History
History in the Bible.
Understanding God’s Purposes in History. (This is the main thesis of the book.)

What Does History Writing Look Like?

Alternative Versions of How To Think About History

There are 26 chapters over 256 pages. Some chapters are really short, the shortest chapter is 3 pages. Now, I will highlight one or two points from each part.

What We Need In Order to Think About History

In Part 1, Poythress argues that history consists of three aspects: Events, People and Meaning. Initially, I pushed back at the idea that people are necessary for history because the first five days of Genesis did not have people and so by his definition the study of the cosmos seems unfairly excluded. But I let it pass. It’s early in the book and also because of the way Poythress links people and history: the historian is a person and for history to have meaning you must have people. Fine. Let’s move on.

All history have these three aspects: Events, People and Meaning. The three aspects depend on each other, so you can’t have one without the other two. And all three have God as their source. God controls all events within history. God controls all humans in history. If you have not come to terms that God is in control over everything including people, then Poythress makes a concise case to show you that it’s true. As for the third aspect, you know the cliche, “There is a reason for everything”? Well, ultimately it is God who gives a reason or the meaning for history. As images of God, we try to puzzle it out and Poythress’ central thesis of this book is historians should articulate God’s purpose in history. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Having described the three aspects, the mutual dependencies and the divine foundation, there are useful discussions like the ethical, spiritual, component of history, the need to understand people and historical causes.

However I think there is an unnecessary distraction here. Poythress unnecessary links the three aspects: Events, People and Meaning with the Triune God. Three aspects in history, three persons in the Trinity. I won’t say that Poythress draws a hard and strong connection but it felt forced and thus distracting. If you are a guy who manages to think of a fourth or fifth aspect to history, you can’t propose it because you will break the Trinity relationship. It would be heresy!

Redeeming Our Thoughts About History Vern Poythress

History in the Bible

In Part 2, after telling us what we need in order to analyse history, he shows us history in the Bible, this wonderful book’s unity, diversity and uniqueness. He is saying here, we can learn how to think about history by looking at how God thinks about history. He writes:

God is interested in each person. He is interested in history. It is legitimate for us to be interested too. The Bible also indicates that God is concerned about many other subjects. He gives us commands. He tells us about himself. He shows us the way of salvation. So we should not forget that a focus on events and their meanings—the historical aspect—is part of a larger whole in God’s purposes.

Understanding God’s Purpose in History

Part 3, “Understanding God’s Purpose in History” is better in posing and framing the question than it is at answering it. Let me ask you, “Is it possible for us to understand God’s purpose in history outside of the Bible.” For example, “Would you attempt to explain God’s purpose for World War 1 and 2?” Please observe that we can explain God’s purpose for Assyria to invade Samaria and for Babylon to destroy Jerusalem.

As I read Poythress’ book and reflect on the news. Can we, dare we, explain God’s purpose for Russia to invade Ukraine? The retired evangelist, Pat Robertson, quotes Ezekiel 38 and says, I quote, “Putin is being driven to move against Israel because God says, ‘I’m going to put hooks in your jaws.'” Leave aside your response whether you agree or disagree with Robertson’s interpretation of Ezekiel here. Put that aside. The question is are we sufficiently informed to know the divine purposes in history, whether it’s yesterday’s news or events from a thousand years ago?

Poythress shows us that we already claim to know the divine purpose. When we give thanks to God for answered prayers, we say it was God’s purpose to bless us. When we tell people how we were saved by Jesus, we say it was God’s purpose to save us. So in these little bits of church history or personal history, we readily recognise the purposes of God. Therefore how the individual pieces together of his or her life to glorify God is analogous to what the historian pieces together of small and great events to glorify God.

In these chapters, even as Poythress asks the historian to be more bold in describing the Divine Purpose, he also sounds caution. His favourite cautionary verse is Job’s friends over-reached. They claimed to know more of God’s purposes and was proven fools. In the same vein, Poythress warns on seeing God’s purpose from our favourite causes, I quote here:

We all like to think that God supports our causes, our desires. Too often, sinful and biased desires begin to claim our allegiance. We give allegiance to them instead of subordinating our desires to God’s desires. “My church, my political group, my theology, my family is supported by God,” we reason. So it is easy to deceive ourselves and claim in a proud and self-satisfied way that all events favorable to our cause are expressions of God’s purpose to favor our cause.

In Part 4 which consists of three chapters, Poythress shows how the historian can interpret the Hand of God in historical events. The easy chapter is the first one. It’s on Rome. Christians against pagans. We have strong confidence to know God’s will for Christians and non-Christians. The next chapter is harder, the Reformation. It’s Christians against Christians. But it’s still doable. When it comes to events within church history it is easier to guess or estimate God’s purposes. We do it all the time when we read biographies. God has prepared Corrie ten Boom, Jim Elliot, Martyn Lloyd Jones and R.C. Sproul for a purpose. And we can trace it through the joys and trials, ups and downs of their lives. So it’s easier to see God’s purpose when writing history about Christians but what about for non-Christians?

That’s what I was looking forward to in this chapter which is titled, “Histories of Other Civilizations”. When I first opened the book, I scanned through the table of contents, and I saw this chapter heading and my mind was just waiting for it. In this chapter, Poythress writes:

What about the history of Greece before the coming of Christ? What about the history of the Incan empire before the coming of Europeans? What about the history of the Chinese empire before the time of modern missions? Even after the gospel begins to penetrate a particular culture, there are still many events that do not have a clear, direct relation to the increased spread of the gospel. There are power struggles, wars, famines, and technological advances. How do we understand such events in the light of the gospel and the manifestation of God’s glory in salvation in Christ?

If we can answer all these questions he posed we can also answer the earlier questions I posed, how are Christians to think about God’s purposes in World War 2 and in Ukraine today.

And to my great disappointment, this chapter is only three pages long. His answer is hinted in the sub-heading: The Principle of Limited Knowledge. We could commend him for not over-reaching, for not speculating the mysteries of God but the way the whole book is set up, arguing boldly that we can and should describe God’s purpose in history, I expected a stronger example to clinch the case.

Alternative Versions of How to Think about History

The final part, Part 5, is subtitled “Competing Ways of Doing History among Christians”. In these last five chapters, Poythress is mainly interacting with Jay D. Green’s book, “Christian Historiography: Five Rival Versions”. It’s an obvious change of pace because Poythress doesn’t engage so vigorously with anyone in any of the previous chapters.

However, it is clear that Poythress is putting forward one particular way of thinking about history, and that is Providentialism. I quote:

We know that God controls events because he tells us that he does. But what are his purposes in bringing events to pass? That is a more difficult question. In a narrower sense, a “providential view” of history describes God’s purposes in events. It does not merely say that God did something, but why he did it. Let us call this kind of approach “providentialism.”

Throughout this book, it is clear that what Vern Poythress means by redeeming our thinking about history is not just seeing people as sinners and God as judge and maker of the Earth, but redeeming is to see God’s purposes in history.

When it comes to Christian events, to me, it is a given. It’s describing that water is wet. It is easier to see God’s divine purposes in the church and individuals. But tell me how to describe God’s purposes in non-Christian events.

The way he frames the question is tantalising, you want more. The way he answers the question is disappointing. It’s like going to a restaurant, the waiter describes this menu item, a mouth-watering taste extravaganza, then tells you, “It’s all in the chef’s mind. No one has ever tasted it before.”

The lack of examples, or rather answers to his own question of how to think about Greek, Incan and Chinese history is a let down. And what makes it worse is I think we can. We can trace Greek philosophy, military, economic or political thought to Christianity’s history because when the two spheres overlap. But I argue, if you are a student of Incan or Chinese history, you can also see how the spheres overlap. And as soon as you can link any history to Christianity’s history, we can begin to estimate God’s purposes. The frustration is Poythress is content to tell us such history writing exists and should flourish but doesn’t show us examples of it.

Another criticism I have for this book is it works hard to connect the ideas to Poythress and Frame’s previous work when it should work harder to connect to the works of other historians. In the bibliography, there are 16 references to Poythress and 6 citations to Frame and their ideas were discussed in the book. However, there were references in the bibliography, which judging from the titles, should have been brought in as part of the discussion. The only writing Poythress thoroughly engages with is Green’s Christian Historiography, citing it in the last five chapters of the book.

Providentialism, the idea of writing history with God’s purposes in mind, was as Poythress describes it, “fairly common in the past, but it has become controversial.” Are there any historians doing it now? If we cannot find contemporary historians doing it, can we have examples of past historians or biographers? We want to know what is a good example of history writing because we don’t want to be like Job’s friends, who seeing what happened to people divined the wrong meaning for those events.

This is the only book by Vern Poythress I have ever read but it makes me wonder about the other “Redeeming” books in the series. If the other books are like this one, then it reads like a guy who has an analytical tool or framework, which he applies to philosophy, science, mathematics, sociology and history. And there is nothing wrong with that, it’s good that we can develop and learn new ways of seeing things.

In the case of this book, he sets up the case and fails to deliver. It’s just missing one ingredient, show us how it’s done right. Unless it’s never been done right before. If true, then is Providentialism just nice in theory but impossible in practice?

Poythress makes the audacious claim that this is a God-centred Approach. That’s an oversell. That’s why I expected more. If anything, this book should be titled, A Providence Centred Approach. It would be less audacious and more accurate to the thesis of the book.

Has this book redeemed my thinking on history? When I was watching the documentary, “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing”, Poythress was right in saying we everyone, Christians, non-Christians do inject a moral view in our history. We need to find a villain in the story. So secular history is not absent of morality, it’s just absent of religious morality.

When I read on the five views of how to think about history, I was thinking how “Bullies and Saints: An Honest Look at the Good and Evil of Christian History” by John Dickson, ticked all the boxes.

So despite my criticism, Poythress’ book has challenged my thinking on history. The writing is accessible and he clearly wants to set his thoughts on biblical foundations. I just wished he had fully answered the question he posed, “How can we describe God’s purposes in history, specifically non-Biblical and non-Christian history?”

This is a Reading and Readers review of Redeeming Our Thinking About History: A God-Centered Approach by Vern S. Poythress. Available in Amazon Kindle for USD18.99. As of this recording, it’s available as pre-order from Logos.com for USD11.99. I got a review copy of this book courtesy of the publisher Crossway but they had no input on this review.

God determines Events, People and Meaning. Listening to this podcast is an event that connects you and I together. But what is the meaning or the purpose of this event? There must be meaning because we don’t believe in coincidences, right? We believe in God’s Providence. So perhaps, and I want to be careful here, I don’t want to over-reach, perhaps the purpose of listening to this podcast, and potentially subscribing to this podcast, is for me to introduce to you books that will refresh and nourish the soul. Always remember that God’s purposes are great and wonderful. May you walk in His Will. Thanks for listening.

“Redeeming Our Thinking About History: A God-Centered Approach by Vern S. Poythress. Amazon . Logos .
Bullies and Saints by John Dickson. Review .
Providence by John Piper. Review .

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The central characters -- Miri, baby Nora, and the

"In Germany when I was little, we lived in a mixed

As a teen, Catherine de' Medici was married off to

When a tween girl character returns from a secret

Educational Value

Lots of historical detail, both about the era of Catherine de' Medici and her often-murderous doings, and the Holocaust, which threatens the main characters after the Nazi takeover of France and their antisemitic propaganda campaigns. Like many Jewish people, Miri's family has fled Germany in the wake of Kristallnacht and landed in Paris, where they're no longer safe. Details of day-to-day life are vividly presented as Miri navigates new dangers and helps refugees escape. More historic detail and references for more reading are presented in an author's note. Phrases and blessings in Hebrew and Yiddish. Words and phrases in French. Miri recalls her father reading her The Secret Garden , and gardening is an important theme. Critical thinking skills about facts learned from books -- "Who wrote the books? My enemies, or my friends?"

Positive Messages

Strong messages of courage, kindness, empathy, keeping your promises. "We don't choose how we feel, but we choose how we act. Choose courage." Also, people are complicated -- not everyone who seems a friend can be trusted, but sometimes people can realize they've been thinking and doing badly, and can now do better. The Holocaust and religious massacres of the past are seen through the lens of everything being about money and power.

Positive Role Models

Miri shows courage and determination in taking baby Nora and running, and continues to do so when called upon in unexpected ways, like smuggling refugees to safety; she struggles with survivor's guilt and misses her family, but draws strength from the love her parents raised her with. Several courageous, kind nuns risk their lives to protect her and other Jewish children -- while keeping them a secret from other nuns who are OK with the Nazis. A mysterious character suggests alternative explanations for Catherine de' Medici's lurid and murderous deeds like the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572; like Miri, readers can decide for themselves what to believe.

Diverse Representations

The central characters -- Miri, baby Nora, and their families -- are Jewish and trying to escape the Nazis. So are some other characters met along the way, who don't necessarily fit stereotypes. Many people in the French village, mostly Catholic, seem to agree with the Nazis, but others risk their lives to get Jewish refugees, downed pilots, and others to safety. A character mentions she's been raised to believe that Jews have horns, and is amazed that Miri does not. Another says "Maybe what you believe or what religion you follow doesn't determine what kind of person you are." Miri feels a lot of urgency about keeping Jewish baby Nora from being baptized by the French family who's adopted her. Details about Jewish life, especially Sabbath traditions. A character, now an old woman, has been mocked and disrespected her whole life because she has a rare, incurable condition that makes her smell like fish -- and is not only kind, she frequently puts her life on the line to help others. A character suggests that evil, violent deeds committed in the name of, say, religion, are actually all about money, power, or both, for somebody.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

"In Germany when I was little, we lived in a mixed neighborhood, Jews and Christians all together. I'd never thought to distrust our Christian neighbors until the night someone set our house on fire." Miri is hiding from Nazis who want to kill her and her loved ones because they're Jewish, and helps others fleeing the Nazis to escape. In the past, she witnesses Nazis beating her Jewish neighbor and feels responsible for not saving him when they take him away. A tween character describes seeing Nazis shoot a Jewish man in her old neighborhood. Scenes of gun-brandishing Nazis rounding up Jewish families and herding them onto buses (to concentration camps). A French policeman who was once nice to Miri slaps her hard. Catherine de' Medici's massacre of Huguenots in 1572 gets a lot of examination and implicit comparison to the Holocaust. The gory death of her husband Henri II is described in gleeful detail.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

As a teen, Catherine de' Medici was married off to Henri, 15-year-old future king of France, who was already in love with Diane de Poitiers. Diane remained his mistress throughout his life, and she and Catherine were, apparently, fake friends for much of that time, as Catherine kicked Diane out of Diane's castle and took it for herself as soon as Henri was dead.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

When a tween girl character returns from a secret mission with her clothes soaked in blood, which is sure to cause comment from her dorm-mates, a clever nun comes to the rescue by blaming it on menstruation, producing the necessary products, and telling the other girls to back off.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Night War marks two-time Newbery Honor recipient Kimberly Brubaker Bradley 's return to the World War II era with a tale of Miri, a 12-year-old Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis in a French convent, located near a famous castle that once belonged to Catherine de' Medici (and her husband and the king's mistress before that). Tween girls gleefully rehash Catherine's lurid doings, especially her massacre of political rivals on religious pretexts in 1572. Some characters' families have been rounded up by Nazis and are presumed dead; a girl recalls seeing a Jewish man shot by Nazis in her old neighborhood. A Jewish tween tries very hard to keep a Jewish baby from being baptized. Grief, loss, courage, and choosing the best thing to do, even in dire situations, are important themes. So is the ability to change your mind when you get better information. Part Holocaust-era thriller, part ghost story, part historical adventure, it's fraught with ethical dilemmas, moral debates, no-win situations, inspiring surprises and unlikely heroes. There are a lot of issues being considered, like whether things like religious or racial bigotry are actually all about who has money and power. It's a lot to take in, and also a lot to think about.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

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What's the Story?

As THE NIGHT WAR opens, 12-year-old Miriam Schreiber and her parents are among many Jewish families who fled Germany when the Nazis took power and settled in a Paris neighborhood. Now it's 1942, the Nazis have taken Paris, Jews are openly mistreated -- and when the long-feared roundup comes, a neighbor thrusts her baby into Miri's arms and tells her to run. Which she does -- and narrowly escapes when a clever nun, a total stranger, convinces the suspicious policeman that she's an errant, but Catholic, orphan. Soon Miri and baby Nora are in the back of a truck bound for the country, where Miri becomes one of several girls in an orphanage run by nuns -- some of whom are risking their lives to get Jewish refugees to safety and, in a desperate moment, enlist Miri to help. Miri, meanwhile, is trying to find baby Nora -- and keep her Christian foster parents from baptizing her.

Is It Any Good?

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley packs a lot of peril, courage, history and nuance into her tale of a Jewish tween fleeing Nazis, landing in an orphanage run by nuns, and smuggling refugees to safety. Also, there's a ghost. The Night War combines a thrilling plot with a lot of ethical issues, daily-life details from Nazi-occupied France, and the idea that atrocities come down to money and power. Sometimes it seems to be trying to do too much, but it's an exciting, thought-provoking read that celebrates doing the right thing, especially when all your choices are bad. And, accepting that maybe you're wrong sometimes.

"Sister Anchovy put her fork down and cleared her throat. 'Jacqueline,' she said, 'the grace of God is unfathomable. If God has made promises to other people -- let us say for example the Jewish people, who believed in God long before the birth of Christ -- those promises will be upheld just as firmly as the promises made to the followers of Christ.'

"Jacqueline's eyes widened. 'That's not true. My mother says only Catholics can go to heaven.''

"'Your mother,' Sister Anchovy said, 'will not be the one who decides.'"

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Holocaust stories -- especially those about people who put themselves at risk to protect others and get them to safety, rather than just look the other way. How does The Night War compare to other stories about this time you've read?

A character suggests that a lot of racist and religious bigotry isn't actually about race and religion at all, it's about money and power, and who has them. What do you think?

The Chateau de Chenonceau, where much of the action takes place, is a real castle with a real history. Do you think you'd like to visit it, now that you've read this story?

Miri shows a lot of courage throughout this story. Where do you think she gets her courage? How can you be brave when you need to be?

Book Details

Author : Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Genre : Historical Fiction
Topics : Adventures , Friendship , Great Girl Role Models , History
Character Strengths : Courage , Empathy , Perseverance , Teamwork
Book type : Fiction
Publisher : Dial Books for Young Readers
Publication date : April 9, 2024
Publisher's recommended age(s) : 9 - 12
Number of pages : 288
Available on : Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
Award : Common Sense Selection
Last updated : April 26, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Thinking about History Audio CD – Unabridged, November 9, 2021

Language English
Publisher Tantor Audio
Publication date November 9, 2021
ISBN-13 979-8212121736
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About the author.

Elizabeth Wiley , an Earphones Award-winning narrator, is a seasoned actor, dialect coach, and theater professor. In addition to her growing portfolio of audiobooks, her voice can be heard in The Idea of America , Colonial Williamsburg's virtual learning curriculum; in Paul Meier's e-textbook Speaking Shakespeare ; and modeling US-English on one of the world's top language-learning products.

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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tantor Audio; Unabridged edition (November 9, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8212121736
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.3 ounces
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This is a blocky collage illustration in shades of orange, green, blue and white that depicts two baseball players and a baseball.

If You Read One Romance This Spring, Make It This One

Our romance columnist recommends three terrific new books, but the one she loves most is Cat Sebastian’s “You Should Be So Lucky.”

Credit... Michela Buttignol

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By Olivia Waite

Olivia Waite is the Book Review’s romance fiction columnist. She writes queer historical romance, fantasy and critical essays on the genre’s history and future.

April 24, 2024

Spring! There’s no better time of year for a baseball romance. We’ll wind up the column with a much-anticipated book by Cat Sebastian, but we lead off with KT Hoffman’s endearing and tender new novel, THE PROSPECTS (Dial, 346 pp., paperback, $18) .

The minor-league baseball player Gene Ionescu is almost living his best life. He’s a professional ballplayer, even if it’s for a minor-league team. He’s transitioned and is generally accepted as the guy he is, even if a trans man still doesn’t have quite the same locker room experience as a cis man. In this liminal space, he makes a finicky distinction between hope — which he exercises as dutifully as a muscle — and actual wanting, which would inevitably lead to disappointment because hasn’t it always?

The cover of “The Prospects” is an illustration of two baseball players colliding during a play.

Enter Luis Estrada, Gene’s former college teammate.

Luis, the son of a major-league star, was drafted before graduation. Now he steals Gene’s place at shortstop and upsets his balance — at least, until they’re forced to room together on a road trip and discover that making out turns their physical chemistry from something destructive into something electric. But dating a teammate is a terrible idea — especially when you’re certain the teammate is going to be called up and will leave you behind.

Except that isn’t quite how it goes. We’re right there with Gene as he struggles with going from almost enough to more than plenty, as he stops letting life happen to him and learns to actually reach for something. Because what if true happiness is right there, and it’s even sweeter than you dreamed?

The difference between wishing for good things and working toward them is precisely where Lily Chu’s THE TAKEDOWN (Sourcebooks Casablanca, 384 pp., $16.99) finds its footing. The diversity consultant Dee Kwan clings to positive thinking through layoffs, microaggressions and familial health challenges. All the while, her mother insists that a positive attitude is more important than any minor speed bump like your parents and grandmother moving in with you or a house that now smells constantly of medicinal weed. Her one true comfort is the online puzzle game where she’s usually first in the rankings.

Then Dee lands a new job, only to find her nearest gaming rival, Teddy, there. Even worse, he’s the son of the C.E.O. whose toxic corporate culture she’s being paid to improve.

Dee fixes upon improving Teddy’s dad’s company as a stand-in for fixing the world (and her own life). Teddy, on the other hand, has detached himself emotionally from his job, bruised by past disappointments. Chu’s couple find their solution in making small but significant changes to what’s immediate and reachable — relationships both romantic and otherwise. What they learn is that effort and hope have to work together: One without the other is never enough.

But sometimes there is no hope. Illness worsens, accidents strike, you lose people you love. It’s inevitable, as Cat Sebastian’s blunt, beautiful midcentury historical makes clear: “Unless a couple has the good fortune to get hit by the same freight train, their story ends in exactly one way.”

At the start of YOU SHOULD BE SO LUCKY (Avon, 382 pp., paperback, $18.99) , the journalist Mark Bailey is only 16 months out from the death of his partner. He’s coasting. It’s only when he’s assigned to write about a flailing baseball player on the sad-sack New York Robins that he finds something to connect to: “What’s happening to Eddie O’Leary is an end . That’s something Mark knows about; that’s something Mark can write about.”

Eddie, “a wad of bad ideas rolled into the approximate shape and size of a professional baseball player,” doesn’t know why he is suddenly terrible at a game he loves. He’s lonely and new to the city and shunned by the teammates he bad-mouthed to the press. He’s grateful for Mark’s attention even though he knows it’s an assignment, and he’s quick to notice all the little kind impulses Mark would die rather than admit to. Their romance is like watching a Labrador puppy fall in love with a pampered Persian cat, all eager impulse on one side and arch contrariness on the other.

People think the ending is what defines a romance, and it does, but that’s not what a romance is for. The end is where you stop, but the journey is why you go. Whether we’re talking about love, baseball or life itself, Sebastian’s book bluntly scorns measuring success merely by end results: “The crowd is hopeful, but it isn’t the kind of hope that comes with a fighting chance. It’s a hope that doesn’t need success to validate it. It’s something like affection, maybe with a bit of loyalty mixed in.”

Hoping, loving are things you do for their own sake, to mark being a human among other humans. Or as Eddie puts it: “Sometimes you want to look at a guy and say: Well, he’s f——-, but he’s trying.”

I can think of no better summary of why we do any art. If you read one romance this spring, make it this one.

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Taylor Swift Renews Her Vows With Heartbreak in Audacious, Transfixing ‘Tortured Poets Department’: Album Review

By Chris Willman

Chris Willman

Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

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Now, everyone gets to go back on “Red” alert. “ The Tortured Poets Department ” gives everyone a full dose of the never-getting-over-it Taylor that no one really wanted to get over. As breakup albums go, it’s a doozy, as they would have said back in Clara Bow’s day — an unapologetically dramatic (if often witty) record that will be soundtracking untold millions of tragic rifts to come. If you’ve been putting one off, now might not be a bad time to schedule it.

For where it sits in her catalog musically, it feels like the synth-pop of “Midnights,” with most of the feel-good buzz stripped out; or like the less acoustic based moments of “Folklore” and “Evermore,” with her penchant for pure autobiography stripped back in. It feels bracing, and wounded, and cocky, and — not to be undervalued in this age — handmade, however many times she stacks her own vocals for an ironic or real choral effect. Occasionally the music gets stripped down all the way to a piano, but it has the effect of feeling naked even when she goes for a bop that feels big enough to join the setlist in her stadium tour resumption, like “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”

The first time you listen to the album, you may be stricken by the “Wait, did she really just say that?” moments. (And no, we’re not referring to the already famous Charlie Puth shout-out, though that probably counts, too.) Whatever feeling you might have had hearing “Dear John” for the first time, if you’re old enough to go back that far with her, that may be the feeling you have here listening to the eviscerating “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” or a few other tracks that don’t take much in the way of prisoners. Going back to it, on second, fifth and tenth listens, it’s easier to keep track of the fact that the entire album is not that emotionally intense, and that there are romantic, fun and even silly numbers strewn throughout it, if those aren’t necessarily the most striking ones on first blush. Yes, it’s a pop album as much as a vein-opening album, although it may not produce the biggest number of Top 10 hits of anything in her catalog. It doesn’t seem designed not to produce those, either; returning co-producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner aren’t exactly looking to keep her off the radio. But it’s easily among her most lyrics-forward efforts, rife with a language lover’s wordplay, tumults of sequential similes and — her best weapon — moments of sheer bluntness.

Who is the worst man that she delights in writing about through the majority of the album? Perhaps not the one you were guessing, weeks ago. There are archetypal good guy and bad boy figures who have been part of her life, whom everyone will transpose onto this material. Coming into “Tortured Poets,” the joke was that someone should keep Joe Alwyn, publicly identified as her steady for six-plus years, under mental health watch when the album comes out. As it turns out, he will probably be able to sleep just fine. The other bloke, the one everyone assumed might be too inconsequential to trouble her or write about — let’s put another name to that archetype: Matty Healy of the 1975 — might lose a little sleep instead, if the fans decide that the cutting “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and other lacerating songs are about him, instead. He might also have cause to feel flattered, because there are plenty of songs extolling him as an object of abject passion and the love of her life — in, literally, the song title “LOML” — before the figure who animated all this gets sliced down to size.

The older love, he gets all of one song, as far as can be ascertained: the not so subtly titled “So Long, London,” a dour sequel to 2019’s effusive “London Boy.” Well, he gets a bit more than that: The amusingly titled “Fresh Out the Slammer” devotes some verses to a man she paints as her longtime jailer (“Handcuffed to the spell I was under / For just one hour of sunshine / Years of labor, locks and ceilings / In the shade of how he was feeling.” But ultimately it’s really devoted to the “pretty baby” who’s her first phone call once she’s been sprung from the relationship she considered her prison.

It’s complicated, as they say. For most of the album, Swift seesaws between songs about being in thrall to never-before-experienced passion and personal compatibility with a guy from the wrong side of the tracks. She feels “Guilty as Sin?” for imagining a consummation that at first seems un-actionable, if far from unthinkable; she swears “But Daddy I Love Him” in the face of family disapproval; she thinks “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” before an epiphany slips out in the song’s hilariously anticlimactic final line: “Woah, maybe I can’t.” Then the most devastating songs about being ghosted pop up in the album’s later going.

Now, that, friends, is a righteous tirade. And it’s one of the most thrilling single moments in Swift’s recorded career. “But Daddy I Love Him” has a joke for a title (it’s a line borrowed from “The Little Mermaid”), but the song is an ecstatic companion piece to “That’s the Way I Loved You,” from her second album, now with Swift running off with the bad choice instead of just mourning him. It’s the rare song from her Antonoff/Dessner period that sounds like it could be out of the more “organic”-sounding, band-focused Nathan Chapman era, but with a much more matured writing now than then… even if the song is about embracing the immature.

The album gets off to a deceptively benign start with “Fortnight,” the collaboration with Post Malone that is its first single. Both he and the record’s other featured artist, Florence of Florence + the Machine , wrote the lyrics for their own sections, but Posty hangs back more, as opposed to the true duet with Florence; he echoes Swift’s leads before finally settling in with his own lines right at the end. Seemingly unconnected to the subject matter of the rest of the record, “Fortnight” seems a little like “Midnights” Lite. It rues a past quickie romance that the singer can’t quite move on from, even as she and her ex spend time with each other’s families. It’s breezy, and a good choice for pop radio, but not much of an indication of the more visceral, obsessive stuff to come.

The title track follows next and stays in the summer-breeze mode. It’s jangly-guitar-pop in the mode of “Mirrorball,” from “Folklore”… and it actually feels completely un-tortured, despite the ironic title. After the lovers bond over Charlie Puth being underrated (let’s watch those “One Call Away” streams soar), and over how “you’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith,” an inter-artist romance seems firmly in place. “Who’s gonna hold you like me?” she asks aloud. (She later changes it to “troll you.”) She answers herself: “Nofuckinbody.” Sweet, and If you came to this album for any kind of idyll, enjoy this one while it lasts, which isn’t for long.

From here, the album is kind of all over the map, when it comes to whether she’s in the throes of passion or the throes of despair… with that epic poem in the album booklet to let you know how the pieces all fit together. (The album also includes a separate poem from Stevie Nicks, addressing the same love affair that is the main subject of the album, in a protective way.)

There are detours that don’t have to do with the romantic narrative, but not many. The collaboration with Florence + the Machine, “Florida!!!,” is the album’s funniest track, if maybe its least emotionally inconsequential. It’s literally about escape, and it provides some escapism right in the middle of the record, along with some BAM-BAM-BAM power-chord dynamics in an album that often otherwise trends soft. If you don’t laugh out loud the first time that Taylor’s and Florence’s voices come together in harmony to sing the line “Fuck me up, Florida,” this may not be the album for you.

When the album’s track list was first revealed, it almost seemed like one of those clever fakes that people delight in trolling the web with. Except, who would really believe that, instead of song titles like “Maroon,” Swift would suddenly be coming up with “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” “Fresh Out the Slammer,” “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”? This sounded like a Morrissey track list, not one of Swift’s. But she’s loosened up, in some tonal sense, even as she’s as serious as a heart attack on a lot of these songs. There is blood on the tracks, but also a wit in the way she’s employing language and being willing to make declarations that sound a little outlandish before they make you laugh.

Toward the end of the album, she presents three songs that aren’t “about” anybody else… just about, plainly, Taylor Swift. That’s true of “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” a song that almost sounds like an outtake from the “Reputation” album, or else a close cousin to “Folklore’s” “Mad Woman,” with Swift embracing the role of vengeful witch, in response to being treated as a circus freak — exact contemporary impetus unknown.

Whatever criticisms anyone will make of “The Tortured Poets Department,” though — not enough bangers? too personal? — “edge”-lessness shouldn’t be one of them. In this album’s most bracing songs, it’s like she brought a knife to a fistfight. There’s blood on the tracks, good blood.

Sure to be one of the most talked-about and replayed tracks, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” has a touch of a Robyn-style dancing-through-tears ethos to it. But it’s clearly about the parts of the Eras Tour when she was at her lowest, and faking her way through it. “I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday — every day,” she sings, in the album’s peppiest number — one that recalls a more dance-oriented version of the previous album’s “Mastermind.” It’s not hard to imagine that when she resumes the tour in Paris next month, and has a new era to tag onto the end of the show, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” might be the new climax, in place of “Karma.” “You know you’re good when you can do it with a broken heart,” she humble-brags, “and I’m good, ‘cause I’m miserable / And nobody even knows! / Try and come for my job.”

Not many superstars would devote an entire song to confessing that they’ve only pretended to be the super-happy figure fans thought they were seeing pass through their towns, and that they were seeing a illusion. (Presumably she doesn’t have to fake it in the present day, but that’s the story of the next album, maybe.) But that speaks to the dichotomy that has always been Taylor Swift: on record, as good and honest a confessional a singer-songwriter as any who ever passed through the ports of rock credibility; in concert, a great, fulsome entertainer like Cher squared. Fortunately, in Swift, we’ve never had to settle for just one or the other. No one else is coming for either job — our best heartbreak chronicler or our most uplifting popular entertainer. It’s like that woman in the movie theater says: Heartache feels good in a place like that. And it sure feels grand presented in its most distilled, least razzly-dazzly essence in “The Tortured Poets Department.”

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How our treatment of animals has changed — and hasn’t — in 150 years

‘our kindred creatures’ takes readers through the history of the animal rights movement.

It was a “revolution in kindness,” we read in “ Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals .” That’s how Bill Wasik, the editorial director of the New York Times Magazine, and his wife, the veterinarian Monica Murphy, describe the animal welfare movement, launched in 1866 after the Civil War when Henry Bergh, an American diplomat, founded the ASPCA, the first animal protection organization in the United States.

This well-researched book is an enlightening if somewhat rambling survey of how our treatment of animals has changed over the past century and a half. It is also, frustratingly, a testament to how much has stayed the same.

The story Wasik and Murphy tell begins on the streets of New York, where workhorses forced to haul overloaded carts were routinely whipped by their owners, and dog and cock fights were staged for gambling and entertainment. Such public displays of cruelty offended the new urban elite, who were increasingly taking dogs and cats into their homes as pets. Those who had fought slavery now found other objects for their liberating zeal. The crusade for animal welfare, the authors tell us, was a small part of a larger ethical awakening that swept the nation after its fratricidal bloodbath. Within a year of the founding of the ASPCA, New York state had enacted an anti-cruelty law, and the organization was given the jurisdiction to enforce it. By 1871, Wasik and Murphy write, eight of the nation’s 10 largest cities had their own SPCAs, all of them granted legal powers by their respective states.

No one surpassed Bergh in sheer zeal and theatricality. Daily, the rail-thin son of a German shipping magnate took to the streets of Manhattan to command coach drivers to stop beating their horses, and to haul abusive butchers off to court. The Daily Herald compared Bergh to the inquisitor Torquemada, and cartoonists lampooned the sallow-faced activist with a drooping mustache as a sanctimonious sniveler. By contrast, the New-York Tribune (owned by the vegetarian and reformer Horace Greeley) editorialized that Bergh’s crusade deserved “the approval of all right thinking people.”

The authors dedicate an entertaining chapter to Bergh’s clash with circus magnate P.T. Barnum, who displayed a menagerie of exotic creatures in his American Museum, a five-story emporium in downtown Manhattan, which included hippos and electric eels, assorted snakes, and “the Learned Seals, ‘Ned’ and ‘Fanny.’”

While “Bergh had not ranked animal exhibitions highly, if at all, in his tallies of the worst offenders,” we read, he did draw a line at Barnum’s feeding boa constrictors live rabbits, a display of nature’s innate cruelty that he feared would erode the moral character of the young people who witnessed it. When Barnum went into the circus business after his museum burned down in 1865, Bergh focused on circuses’ mistreatment of animals, objecting to the use of sharpened bullhooks to train elephants. The Barnum and Bailey Circus, he declared, “should not be patronized by respectable and humane citizens.”

Instead of resisting Bergh and his irksome crusade, Barnum shrewdly forged an unlikely friendship with his nemesis and eventually joined the board of his local SPCA chapter in Bridgeport, Conn. Whether this marked a sincere late-life conversion or a publicity stunt is hard to say. But Barnum’s public embrace of Bergh and animal rights helped to sway opinion at a critical moment.

Meanwhile, bison were being slaughtered to the edge of extinction on the Great Plains; passenger pigeons, whose massive flocks once darkened American skies, were wiped out in a matter of decades by hunters, as were Carolina parakeets and other birds decimated for feathers to adorn women’s hats. The Audubon Society was established in 1886 to help safeguard imperiled species.

Fashion could be cruel to animals, but so too could science. The authors introduce Caroline Earle White, a Philadelphia Quaker converted to Catholicism. White channeled her religious belief in the sanctity of life to the founding of the American Anti-Vivisection Society, an organization that opposed the testing of animals in laboratories.

The medical establishment of the day fought back. Animal experimentation had produced remarkable benefits, including several lifesaving vaccines developed by the French microbiologist Louis Pasteur in the 1870s and ’80s. However, in less-able hands, the authors point out, millions of animal lives had been needlessly wasted — and continue to be wasted — “to no good end.”

Like so many of the debates initiated by animal activists in the late 19th century, this controversy continues today. Medical experiments, now regulated, are still performed on countless creatures. But a still greater source of mass suffering is the treatment of livestock. Rudyard Kipling, who visited Chicago in 1889, described scenes in the packinghouses where pigs, “still kicking,” were dropped into boiling vats and cattle “were slain at the rate of five a minute.”

The Illinois Humane Society, we read, was co-opted by the burgeoning meat industry. (Beef baron Philip D. Armour was a major contributor and a member of the society’s board of directors.) And while Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel “The Jungle” brought public attention to the abuses of the meatpacking industry, the Federal Meat Inspection Act, passed soon after it was published, would regulate sanitary conditions in plants but not animal suffering.

Serious efforts to improve the treatment of livestock would have to wait for the animal rights movement spurred by the writings of the Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer during the 1970s and beyond. But the authors remind us that progress has been slow. Sows are still imprisoned in metal gestation crates; chickens are raised so tightly packed together that they can barely turn around. America has more cows and pigs than cats and dogs, we read, but their welfare garners far less attention. And, while we remain focused on charismatic species like polar bears and whales, thousands of others teeter on the edge of extinction.

Yet Wasik and Murphy are finally optimistic that the “circle of our care” is slowly expanding. The question is whether this gradual blossoming of compassion will come fast enough in an era of climate change to save our kindred creatures — and ourselves.

Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist.

Our Kindred Creatures

How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals

By Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy

Knopf. 450 pp. $35

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'Rule for the ages': Takeaways from historic Supreme Court arguments in Trump immunity case

WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court appeared inclined Thursday to reject former President Donald Trump’s historic claim that he’s immune from prosecution – but the justices could still limit the charges he faces and delay his trial on election interference charges.

The justices could decide that the lower courts need to investigate whether immunity applies to any of Trump’s actions before he can be tried.

That would likely make it impossible for a trial to be finished before voters decide in November whether to return Trump to the White House.

"Trump had much more success than many court watchers expected,” said John Yoo, a former Justice Department official under George W. Bush. “Only the three liberal justices seemed to reject the idea of immunity outright.”

Trump trial updates Latest news from Trump criminal trial, including cross-examination of David Pecker

Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

If Trump becomes president , he could order the Justice Department to dismiss the charges against him.

Here are the takeaways from the court's more than two-and-a-half hours of debate.

Trump's lawyer agrees some alleged acts can be prosecuted

It was a conservative justice – and one of Trump’s three nominees on the court – who looked for ways for Trump’s trial to proceed.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett first got Trump’s attorney to agree that there’s no immunity for a president’s private actions, as opposed to those taken in his official capacity as president.

Reading from the indictment, Barrett then asked John Sauer if some of the charges against Trump involved only private conduct.

What about conspiring with a private attorney to file false allegations or to using another attorney to spread claims about election fraud he knew were false,” she asked.

Sauer disputed the characterization of the allegations but said that, if true, they cover private actions.

When it was the Justice Department’s turn at the bench, Barrett asked Michael Dreeben about the possibility of the special counsel trying Trump just on the charges that undisputable include only private actions.

“The special counsel has expressed some concern for speed and wanting to move forward,” she said. “Is another option for the special counsel to just proceed based on the private conduct and drop the official conduct?”

Dreeben said the two are interrelated because the steps Trump took as president made his other actions more likely to succeed.

“We would like to present that as an integrated picture to the jury so that it sees the sequence and the gravity of the conduct and why each step occurred,” he said.

Debate over how quickly trial could proceed

Since even Trump’s attorney agreed that the former president is not immune from prosecution from some of the charges, the big question is whether the Supreme Court will direct the lower court to take additional action before seating a jury. That will determine whether a trial can begin before the November election.

Chief Justice John Roberts asked Sauer what should happen if the Supreme Court latches on to his concession that private acts can be prosecuted.

Sauer said the district court should have to determine which charges meet that definition before Trump can be tried.

Justice Sonya Sotomayor backed the Justice Department’s position that the district court judge can decide those issues as the trial unfolds.

"So I'm not sure that I understand why your problems couldn't be taken care of at trial with an instruction if we believe − if the court were to find − I'm not even sure how they could − but if it were to find that some publicacts could not be the basis of criminal liability," she told Sauer.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the UCLA School of Law, predicts the court’s decision will be closer the government's position than it will be to Trump’s sweeping immunity argument. But the justices are likely to find different ways of getting there, which means the opinion will take longer to write, and a majority will want further proceedings.

“The bottom line is that Trump is likely to get what he wants – a further delay of this election subversion case, maybe pushing it to after the election,” Hasen wrote .

Justices revive debate about presidents killing political opponents with immunity

When Sauer argued for Trump at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Florence Pan pressed him on whether a president could order Seal Team 6 to kill his opponent and be immune from prosecution unless impeached and convicted. Sauer said the hypothetical president could only be prosecuted after he was impeached and convicted in Congress.

Justice Samuel Alito said he didn’t want to slander Seal Team 6 because its members are honorable and are bound under the Uniform Code of Military Justice not to obey unlawful orders.

“I'm sure you've thought of lots of hypotheticals where a president could say, ‘I'm using an official power,’ and yet the president uses it in an absolutely outrageous manner,” Alito said.

Sauer tried to steer the conversation away from what the immunity would cover. But Justice Elena Kagan asked whether it could be an official act for a president to order a military coup.

“It’s an official act, but that sure sounds bad, doesn't it?” Kagan asked.

Sauer said it sounded bad but that the framers of the Constitution put checks in place such as impeachment to prevent something like that from happening.

“Well, it certainly sounds very bad, and that's why the Framers have a whole series of structural checks that have successfully for the last 234 years prevented that very kind of extreme hypothetical,” Sauer said.

Justices question whether presidents can pardon themselves

No president has yet pardoned himself and neither the courts nor the Justice Department have issued opinions on whether it’s possible.

But the threat of criminal charges looming over former presidents after the leave office is why Trump contends presidents must be immune from prosecution for their official acts.

Justice Neil Gorsuch raised the issue of whether presidents can pardon themselves because of fears a successor could charge them criminally. He suggested presidents might pardon themselves every four years to avoid the threat.

“It seems to me like one of the incentives that might be created is for presidents to try to pardon themselves,” Gorsuch said. “We’ve never answered whether a president can do that. Happily, it’s never been presented to us.”

Sauer, Trump’s lawyer, said if the court rules presidents have immunity, justices wouldn’t have to worry about whether presidents could pardon themselves.

“The legality of that has never been addressed,” Sauer said of self-pardons.

Alito said the court needs to know the Justice Department’s position on whether presidents could pardon themselves because if there is no immunity, “won’t the predictable result be that presidents in the last couple of days of office will pardon themselves from anything they might have been conceivably charged with committing?"

Dreeben, counselor to Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, said the department hasn’t taken a position on whether a president could pardon himself, although a member of the Office of Legal Counsel wrote that “there is no self-pardon authority.”

Dreeben said the issue has only arisen in the case of Richard Nixon, who was pardoned by his successor after the Watergate scandal, and in Trump’s case. But he said a self-pardon would violate a “bedrock principle” that people shouldn’t judge themselves.

More: Trump at Supreme Court: Ham sandwiches and solar eclipses: Justice Alito has questions

Supreme Court `writing a rule for the ages' in Trump case

The justices sounded quite aware of deciding the historic case. Trump is the first former president ever to face criminal charges. Potential immunity from charges isn’t written into the Constitution. And the high court has never ruled on what immunity the president might enjoy.

“We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Gorsuch said.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he was thinking about how the court’s ruling would affect future presidents because a previous Supreme Court decision was mistaken in upholding independent counsels that could investigate presidents, a law that has since lapsed.

"I'm not focused on the here and now of this case," Kavanaugh said. "I'm very concerned about the future."

Alito characterized the case as “more than just a quarrel.”

“What we do is going to apply to all future presidents,” Alito said.

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Thinking About History by Sarah C. Maza
Thinking About History is a really helpful look at the broad discipline that is history, covering current and historical issues in the theory of history. For new historians like myself, it's a wonderful introduction to many types of history--social, cultural, micro-, public, et c. Reading Maza's book helped me define myself as a women's ...
Book Review: Sarah Maza, Thinking About History (University of Chicago
I appreciate that the book is not arranged in a strict chronological fashion, but in useful thematic chapters. Chapter 4, the "how" of history is useful for students thinking about finding sources and writing for an audience for the first time. Chapter 5, "causes and meanings" is perhaps the most philosophical chapter in the book.
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Thinking about History by Sarah Maza (review) Thinking about History. By Sarah Maza (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2017) 255 pp. $60.00 cloth $20.00 paper. Among the many virtues of Maza's book is her recognition that history is defined by practice, not by theories or methods—by what historians do rather than what they have to say ...
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Thinking About History is a model of concise and reflective historiographical coverage and the best synthesis of its kind." ― David Brown, Elizabethtown College "Maza offers many intelligent reflections on how history is 'done' these days, after a period of fifty years or so during which historians have rethought their practice of the ...
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Thinking About History. Sarah Maza. University of Chicago Press, Sep 18, 2017 - History - 264 pages. What distinguishes history as a discipline from other fields of study? That's the animating question of Sarah Maza's Thinking About History, a general introduction to the field of history that revels in its eclecticism and highlights the ...
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This book is vogue in the history departments of US universities. It comports with current popular ideas that the Great Man of History approach is not only outdated but an inappropriate choice of scholarly inquiry since those studies in the past did not adequately condemn colonialism, racism, slavery, and the subjugation and exploitation of women and non-whites.
Amazon.com: Thinking About History: 9780226109169: Maza, Sarah: Books
Thinking About History is a model of concise and reflective historiographical coverage and the best synthesis of its kind." ― David Brown, Elizabethtown College "Maza offers many intelligent reflections on how history is 'done' these days, after a period of fifty years or so during which historians have rethought their practice of the ...
Thinking About History
What distinguishes history as a discipline from other fields of study? That's the animating question of Sarah Maza's Thinking About History, a general introduction to the field of history that revels in its eclecticism and highlights the inherent tensions and controversies that shape it. Designed for the classroom, Thinking About History is organized around big questions: Whose history do we ...
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That's the animating question of Sarah Maza's Thinking About History, a general introduction to the field of history that revels in its eclecticism and highlights the inherent tensions and controversies that shape it. ... and the result is a book that will spark classroom discussion and offer students a view of history as a vibrant, ever ...
Thinking About History
"As I continued reading, I became increasingly grateful that someone this thoughtful and skilled had chosen to research and write this book. . . . Through structure, content, and clear, vivid writing, Thinking about History makes a valuable contribution to the history of history. The first half of the book offers a narrative explaining the changing fields of historical research, the who, where ...
Thinking About History by Sarah Maza, Paperback
Editorial Reviews "As I continued reading, I became increasingly grateful that someone this thoughtful and skilled had chosen to research and write this book. . . . Through structure, content, and clear, vivid writing, Thinking about History makes a valuable contribution to the history of history. The first half of the book offers a narrative ...
Sarah Maza, THINKING ABOUT HISTORY, or History as Slime Toy
Divided into six chapters, Thinking about History discusses the who, what, where, and how of history production, as well as the-chicken-and-the-egg debate of historical causes and meanings, and the rise and fall of historical objectivity. The book is a fresh take on the history of history (historiography) that successfully breaks down the ...
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Buy Thinking About History Illustrated by Maza, Sarah (ISBN: 9780226109336) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. ... 1,076 in United States History (Books) Customer reviews: 4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 179 ratings. About the author. Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Thinking About History (9780226109169): Sarah Maza
ABOUT THIS BOOK. What distinguishes history as a discipline from other fields of study? That's the animating question of Sarah Maza's Thinking About History, a general introduction to the field of history that revels in its eclecticism and highlights the inherent tensions and controversies that shape it. Designed for the classroom, Thinking ...
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Download Free PDF. View PDF. Book Reviews Thinking about History. By Sarah Maza. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. 255 pp. Cloth, $60.00. Paper, $20.00.) There is pleasure to be had in reading a good work of history for yourself, in underlining those particular phrases, evidences, and insights that speak to you.
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Introduce the author, the historical period and topic of the book. Tell the reader what genre of history this work belongs to or what approach the author has used. Set out the main argument. Summarize the book's organization and give a little more detail about the author's sub-arguments. Here you would also work in your assessment of the ...
Redeeming Our Thinking about History: A God-Centered Approach
Each person is not only a product of history but is also constantly interpreting it. "History," according to Vern Poythress, "is indispensable in the Bible and in the Christian faith.". Such is the theme of the author's most recent book, Redeeming Our Thinking About History: A God-Centered Approach. 1.
Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers
This review is from: Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (Paperback) ... The late Harvard professor Richard Neustadt and his colleague Ernest May tackle this subject in an illuminating book, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers. Published in the mid 80s, the book arose out of the professors' classes ...
Redeeming Our Thinking About History by Vern S. Poythress
Hi, my name is Terence and I'm your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review "Redeeming Our Thinking About History: A God-Centered Approach" by Vern S. Poythress. 256 pages, published by Crossway in 2022. Available for USD18.99 in Amazon Kindle and, as of this recording, it's ...
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Moreover, in the two countries where fascist movements achieved power, Italy followed by Germany, "preparing for war, arming for war, educating for war, and fighting a war defined fascist theory ...
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'Native Nations' Review: An Essential American History
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If You Read One Romance Book This Spring, Make It This One
Olivia Waite is the Book Review's romance fiction columnist. She writes queer historical romance, fantasy and critical essays on the genre's history and future. April 24, 2024
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It was a "revolution in kindness," we read in "Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals." That's how Bill Wasik, the editorial director of the New ...
Supreme Court takeaways from arguments in historic Trump immunity case
In the biggest case of the Supreme Court's year, justices knew they were weighing a history-making decision. 'We're writing a rule for the ages,' Gorsuch said.

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