bahareads's Reviews (1.09k)

 Blood and Boundaries is set up in three chapters that can be read independently from each other and still make sense to the reader. The three chapters are on Moriscos, Conversos, and Mestizos. Stuart Schwartz does assume the reader is already knowledgeable about the basics so he does not coddle the reader at all. Blood and Boundaries is deceptively simplistic in its information; it's a little book that packs a big punch. Schwartz is covering the structure of race in Latin America, as well as cultural racism and phenom racism. He shows blood purity does not translate to the Americas very well. The structure of the book goes from political and religious exclusion to social and blood exclusion from chapter to chapter. Classification is a main theme throughout the book.

The amount of people in Latin American society changes how the government operates. Law versus practice is a major part of the book. It's hard to enforce. Identity: the public versus private and the bastardization of people is what Schwartz focuses on. He shows the reader that Spain and Portugal had different ways of dealing with Moriscos and Conversos in their respective societies across the Atlantic. It is a great read overall; a good discussion book. 

 Atlantic Rue is an story that sucks the reader right away. For being about novella length it was a great story! If you want a cold, creepy read for this time of the year, Atlantic Rue is perfect. The multiple POVs can be a little difficult to distinguish the first few switches but Adderley does a great with character development. World development and scenes were amazingly vivid for being a short read. I felt myself in the story. The synopsis gives little away from the storyline but I wish it was a little bit more detailed and gave a prospective reader more to work with.

Thank you to the author Jack Adderley for sending me this book. 

Review #2
I'm back after re-reading No Gods, No Monsters in a group setting. Reading it again with others definitely gave me insight into things I missed, and rereading it myself I was able to see connections I brushed over previously. why it got so little star rating on GR, I'll never know.

Once again you will be engaged with this text. Turnbull knows how to engage his readers. His writing style is made to draw his readers in. He gives close thought and attention to detail in all of his works. The disjointed nature of the narrative was not as jarring this time around. It was easy to pick up other characters from one narrative to the next. The different POVs add to what is happening between the different forces at play. I cannot wait to see how everything unfolds once again.

Review #1
Turnbull knows how to write a page-turner. From the beginning to the end of No Gods, No Monsters Turnbull kept me reading. The flow of the writing and the mystery of it all kept me wanting to pick up the book throughout the day. I will say you will not walk away from this book without being engaged with the text.

The disjointed plot and narrative of No Gods, No Monsters kept me in confusion for a lot of the book. I wonder constantly where we were going with the plot, I know this is part of a series but Turnbull definitely sets this book up to be an intro into the trilogy. I thought there was a lot of learning still be done about the characters, the plot, and the settings and we barely learn any of it. The amount of characters he has throughout this book is too much to remember until the very end of the book. ps. It’s hilarious how he acknowledges he has too many characters in his acknowledgements like at least you know sir.

No Gods, No Monsters will be interesting for those who like disconnected narratives and a lot of characters. Turnbull's writing is a thing of beauty. The mystery of the whole story will keep you reading and will make you pick up the next book. I can't wait to learn more about the monsters, magic and how it ties into the world as a whole for everyone involved in the main narrative.

Thank you to Blackstone Publishing for sending me a review copy!

 

Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 was an amazing book to read for me. I enjoyed it so so so much. I had to lead a discussion on it in class for two weeks and Colley's writing style is very enjoyable. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 can appeal to a general audience and historians. One of her central arguments is Britons in the past dealt with multiple identities. She talks about how pan-Britishness is a shadow of what it once was and how Britishness has de-evolved over time.

Covering the struggle with France and Francophobia, Colley shows how the competition with France caused Great Britain to evolve. The binding together of Scotland, Wales, and England is shown throughout the book. The idea of religion, specifically Protestantism, being a general binding agent for the people and a separating influence to the Brits from the rest of Europe. Protestantism was a backbone for Britons, but it also shows national identity was bound up with self-interest. Protestantism was patriotism and Patriotism brings profits. Colley covers how mercantilism helps with the growth of Great Britain, its trained navy, and its international prestige.

War helps to bind the Scots and Welsh to the English. Linda Colley shows how the seven years war and the American War helped to bring Great Britain together again. The Scots play a huge part in making British imperialism move towards political style, post-American War. While I was in class, we talked about the view of George the III from the American perspective versus the British perspective and it is crazy how two nations can spin history to fit their narrative. Seeing how the Hanover dynasty brought monarchy's popularity up and George III left the monarchy more British and a rule book for every other monarch after him to follow up until World War I.

The Battle of Waterloo was the culminating point of the British empire helping it grow to its pinnacle under Victoria. The Catholic Emancipation shifts the binding forces of Great Britain and how the Reform Act of 1832 and the Emmanicapation of slavery throughout the British empire helped unite Great Britain again under one common banner. Colley shows The Hanover dynasty ushered in Nationalistic thought and united people together but Welsh, Scottish, and English still had divides; regionalism was still a thing. There's a lot more information Colley covers but this really hit me. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 is a great read.

 

 

Jonathan Schorsch has a gold mine of information in The Hidden Lives of Jews and Africans . Research and interpreting against the grain of information is a new technique I've never heard of before reading this book. There are some editing errors and Schorsch needs an editor to clean up his writing; it was hard to keep track of the main narrative of the book at times. I felt like each chapter was its own essay that had been compiled for this book. I appreciate the main premise of The Hidden Lives of Jews and Africans ; seeing how Jewish conversos and Afroiberans perceived each other in Atlantic society sparks so many ideas and thoughts in my mind about situations and research topics. I think it is a tragic part of history that there aren't more primary sources on things because of a lack of literacy or care on the part of people back then. Jonathan Schorsch does produce many definite answers in The Hidden Lives of Jews and Africans but he produces ideas and questions that stick with the reader after they've finished this book.

 

 Cult of The Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680 - 1800 gives great insight into the building of nationalism in France. Bell says his book's purpose is on having national identity being a person's whole being, not on the history of the national identity of France. David Bell seems to reflect Liah Greenfield's belief in the French building their nationalism around the collective. I appreciated all the topics Bell covered here from subtle propaganda, the deconstruction of kingship's connection to God, France's shifting political atmosphere and the cult of great men and its substitution for religion. There's are just a few ideas that stuck out to me within the book. I did not like Bell's writing, I found it hard to track at times and boring at other times.

I enjoy toxic erotica and this was great. 

 

psa: I skimmed some of the book.

Manisha Sinha does considerable work with The Slave’s Cause. Sinha tasks herself with showing the reader that abolitionism was primarily driven by enslaved and free blacks. In every chapter, Sinha does her utter best to show how African Americans led the charge for their own freedom. The sheer size and information in the book leave the reader something to be in awe over after they have finished the work.

Sinha explains abolition as occurring in different waves in American history. The layout of the abolition movement in The Slave’s Cause is linear, starting in 1781 and ending with the Emancipation Proclamation. Sinha forces readers to rethink how American history and the abolition period has been taught to them. Shifting the narrative from the white savior lens to the lens of African Americans, who she claims, did the gritty base work of the abolition movement.

Manisha Sinha displays the duality of Christianity in American society and in the abolition movement. Sinha says, “the ideological underpinnings of black antislavery lay in an antiracist construction of Christianity” (37). The deconstruction of weaponized Christianity from racists by Anglo-Americans and African Americans through the Great Awakenings helped give life to those who struggled with the racist message of slaveholding Christianity. Sinha shows abolition’s religious beginnings were not just with the white church but religious African Americans helped lead the way as well.

Hammering the point of African Americans leading the abolition movement in the United States, Sinha explains in “the first wave of Anglo-American abolition was not, as is commonly thought, an all-white movement” (138). African Americans added credibility and shouldered the movement and would continue to do some until emancipation. The explanation of African Americans helping the movement provides clarity for how it spread and kept going until the emancipation of the slaves. Emancipation might have occurred naturally over time but the constant drive and unwavering determination of African Americans sped the process up in American history. Black abolitionists led the charge for racial solidarity and “highly critical public voice against the persistence of enslavement and discrimination” (139).

Women play an important role in the abolition movement. Manisha Sinha states women carried the abolition movement. They were “most effective foot soldiers” and “African American women played a crucial part in the rise of militant black abolitionism” (275). Women are often overlooked in historical narratives, but Sinha prepares an entire chapter to the influence of women in abolition and how abolition influenced women. Never shirking from the main narrative, Sinha pushes black women being at the “forefront of female abolitionism” (279). The idea of women leading the charge in abolition can be mind-boggling for modern readers but Sinha presents careful evidence of how and why they guided the movement effectively.

I believe Sinha opens a new chapter in the historiography of abolition. She lays out abolition history in way I have not been exposed to before; the idea of African Americans being the driving force of abolition is not something I was taught. Hammering home the idea of African Americans as the primary leaders behind abolition is new to me. Showing the various characters who helped push abolition in its different waves was overwhelming to me. Familiar faces like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Jacobs were comforting. However seeing so many lesser-known and unnamed African Americans who played their part in pioneering the abolition movement made me realize Sinha is doing a revisionist work, and perhaps other historians should look at doing the same thing. Manisha Sinha’s book is worth reading multiple times to glean all the information in it.

 

 The Lima Inquisition: Plight of Crypto-Jews in Seventeenth-Century Peru is an in-depth look at the Inquisition period in Lima, Peru. The key points Ana Schaposchnik lays out in her book is how crypto-Jews present themselves as Christians to the outside world while adhering to Jewish traditions and how they were able to get away with the pretense for so long. Schaposchnik also shows how crypto-Jews would stall their trials through various methods of false confession and recantation. This book surveyed crypto-Jews' perspectives and experiences in jail, their thought process during the torture sessions, and how the Inquisition changed societies on both sides of the Atlantic. The 1639 Auto General de Fe is analyzed by itself and in light of the evidence of the Lima Inquisition. Ana Schaposchnik lays The Lima Inquisition out in six chapters, laying the foundation with how heresy and Inquisitional issues are dealt with in the Iberian World and continuing to a microscopic look at the community of Portuguese new Christians and crypto-Jews in Peru before ending the book with a look at the condemned individuals that had been chartered throughout the entire book.

Ana Schaposchnik systematically approaches topics surrounding the Lima Inquisition. She takes a narrower approach using a micro-historical look towards the Lima Inquisition; it's there that the humanization of crypto-Jews and New Christians in her research sucks the reader into the world of the Inquisition. Assessing different scholarship interpretations of the events in Lima's Inquisition, she uses these theories to shape her research and show how her specific sample size faired in the Inquisition in Lima.
Synthesizing the vast scholarly bibliography and inquisitorial sources The Lima Inquisition is a dense read. Schaposchnik shows that the Inquisition, the accusers and the accusees were not monoliths for their social groups but that the subject is complex and intricate. Each of the chapters in The Lima Inquisition is broken down into sub-sections, touching issues out of the chapter's main topic. Schaposchnik shows the magnitude of the Inquisition network through the correspondence and records of Inquisitors and royal mandates. The network of Portuguese new Christians has demonstrated throughout this book and the large part they played in the economic and social communities they were a part of on both sides of the Atlantic. Schaposchnik looks at Portuguese New Christians across the spectrum of gender and age, as well as causes of imprisonment, making her book well rounded.

The Lima Inquisition has a thesis that can feel lost in the bog of information Schaposchnik gives the reader. The layout of the chapters and the information presented in them has the reader digesting a lot within the one hundred and eighty pages of the book. The overall body of scholarship within The Lima Inquisition shows the sizeable work Schaposchnik did in the book's research but when pointing back to the various theories or methodology used by previous researchers it can distract from the main narrative of The Lima Inquisition. The book can begin to feel like an informational book with no main point driving the narrative.

Ana Schaposchnik does not make broad assumptions but is clear to point out when there is no evidence or information for gaps in the narrative. With all the research shown there appear to be no more minor assumptions either; what is known is what Schaposchnik synthesizes in The Lima Inquisition. It would be fair to assume The Lima Inquisition is based on a PhD thesis, the way it is written is not for a broad audience but for those familiar with the subject of the Inquisition. The Lima Inquisition is a wonderful addition to the wider body of Inquisitional literature. Ana Schaposchnik goes beyond the general research done on the Lima Inquisition. She pays homage to the period with her work, and it is an excellent addition to the historiography of the time. 

Seth Rockman's Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore gives the social, economic, and political history of early Baltimore. Rockman's thesis is how the modern American working class comes from the low-wage workers of the early American republic period. Presenting why the low-wage workers were central to the creation of the United States as the wealthiest western society, Rockman delves into capitalism and the creation of the market revolution of the early republic period and its effects on the consequences of the working people across race and gender. Focusing on individuals to drive the economic and political thread narrative, Rockman creates a story while telling the bare facts and statistics of labour in early Baltimore.

The body of work is broken up into eight chapters with individuals representing the chapter's main idea carrying the narrative of the book forward. The way Rockman sets up the book makes a possibly boring topic come to life in the reader's mind when attached to an individual. The main points touched upon the growing workforce in Baltimore as a whole, men working, women working, how race and social class affected the working class, living wages, failure to make living wages, and how the market affected the working class as whole.

Using the micro example of Baltimore with the focus on labour, Rockman starts off with the impact of slavery on capitalism and how slavery blurred the line of interchangeability of labourers "with term slaves, rented slaves, self-hiring slaves, indentured servants, redemptioners, apprentices, prisoners, children, and paupers occupying the space in between" (Rockman 7). Reading Scraping By can be for a general audience or those interested in race and labour. The work by Seth Rockman is more modern so it can appeal to a wider audience than older pieces on the subject. Readability is a primary key when appealing to the general public and Scraping By has that appeal. The narrative thread throughout the book and Rockman's ability to shape the narrative while driving the main points of his thesis home make this work a read people will find interesting. The thought process and layout of Rockman is easy to read and understand.

Fitting into the category of labour literature, Rockman's work opens up the field for more research in the historiography of gendered economic dependence and the colored labour market. Building on gender, class, and race he offers images of an America that is ever-improving to make national gains. Rockman himself states in the section essay of sources that there is still much work to be done in the area of research and in the city of Baltimore. Unable to touch on everything, Rockman does not point out that Baltimore did not create the idea of mixed labour but recreated a system from an earlier time in American history.

A reviewer had a criticism of Rockman's inability to bring a coherent story of Baltimore's labour class. Claiming that Rockman merges together three separate unskilled labour forces – white male, white female, and African American male and females – into one unskilled labour force narrative is I believe a gross misrepresentation of Rockman's narrative. He tries clearly to show the separation between race and gender throughout his work. Seth Rockman shows his thesis' credence through sources and narrative. Through the lens of Baltimore, readers will learn how the early American republic period gives rise to the creation of the working class of people in America. Seth Rockman puts forth a great work of literature.