Category: Book Review

The City That Does Not Age The History of Sofia: Book Review

By Bistra Johnson

CentralMarketHall-Sofia-C Attribution

The Central Market Hall, in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo by  © Plamen Agov • studiolemontree.com, is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.  The dome of the Sofia Synagogue may be seen in the background. 

In the early twentieth century travelers could take a train, the Orient Express, from the heart of Europe to the very threshold of the Middle East. The train stopped at strategic cities along the way. One of these was Sofia, Bulgaria. It is the history of this city that Bistra Johnson describes in her delightful book, The City the Does Not Age: A History of Sofia.

Since antiquity, Sofia has been at the crossroads of East and West, North and South. Its significance was recognized over the centuries by ambitious leaders, who invaded and conquered the city. Dramatic stories about these leaders fill the pages of The City that Does Not Age. The book takes us on a journey through time.

Sofia was an administrative center during the reign of Trajan (Roman Empire). It was ravaged by Attila the Hun and rebuilt by the Emperor Justinian (Byzantine Empire). The city accommodated Germans in WWII and the Soviet Union after the war. Today, Sofia’s population reflects its variegated past. Three of the largest minorities are Turks, Russians and Roma. Though most of Bulgaria’s Jewish population emigrated after WWII, the city of Sofia is home to the largest synagogue in Southeastern Europe.

Over the centuries, Sofia has suffered floods, plagues and earthquakes. Each of these is described by Ms. Johnson with scrupulous attention to the historic record. The author quotes liberally from sources. These will serve, for any student of history, as a trove for future reference. Ms. Johnson’s presentation of the material is enlivened by asides about personalities that helped to shape the destiny of Sofia. The book is extremely well-organized and this organization enhances its readability.

For me, one welcome addition would have been maps. That’s a personal preference. I find it easier to visualize events when I study a map.

People who are interested in history will love this book. This is especially true for those who want to learn about the history of Eastern Europe.

I highly recommend Bistra Johnson’s The City the Does not Age: A History of Sofia.

A. G. Moore 3/2017

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SnowPoems: Book Review

By   Ron Paul Speakes

snow-brockensnowedtrees

Rime ice on trees on the Brocken, in Harz, Germany.  By Andreas Tille.  Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License

 

There is poetry that warms and seduces. That is not the sort of charm you will find in Ron Paul Speakes’ SnowPoems. These poems do not coddle. They cut through consciousness with cool logic. The absence of romanticized embellishment might lead a reader to miss the depth of feeling behind the thought.  Beware.   Feeling will surprise the unsuspecting, with the searing intensity of burning snow, as in

…………………………………..blossom by

Blossom, the alba-like world will flutter

To earth to be gathered in history’s

Urns for the rites that can cut the ties

To Jack’s scattered memory

To Ronnie’s abandoned memory

Speakes explains in his preface that SnowPoems is about the post-WWII era and that the events described are intertwined with snow imagery.  But this poetry is about more than snow, and a specific period in history.  It is about time and human destiny.

The collection is bracketed by a poem at the beginning that references the dawning of the human race, with

Visas to the Levant, to India, China and the

Icy North, to the latent Americas

and another poem at the end that hints of a journey, which continues

…on the slit streets of the Internet…..

Googling, as memory looks at us from the screen

With organs swollen with the longing of antiquity

As they wander through time and space, love and loss, wanderers ponder and ask an oracle

What will become of us? What will become of us?

Snow binds the separate pieces of this collection.   And the pieces are harmonized by another overriding element: sympathy.  It may be a perplexing, even indifferent universe that hosts the human race, but our guide in SnowPoems leads us gently.  His mission is not to describe a destination for our journey.  His goal is to open our eyes and help us see more clearly the path we travel.   In that purpose, Ron Paul Speakes succeeds brilliantly.

I highly recommend Ron Paul Speakes’ SnowPoems.

A. G. Moore     3/5/2017

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The Duality Code: Book Review

By
W. K. Choy

yin-and-yang
This image was captured from Google Translate.  The concept is represented in traditional Chinese characters.

 

The title of this book, The Duality Code, will lead some readers to expect a spy mystery. In a way, that expectation is correct. There is a mystery, one that involves an obscure code. And there is intrigue, even murder. The startling aspect of the murders is that these are occasioned by disagreements over language.

W. K. Choy guides us through the sometimes gruesome history of China’s language wars. As he does so, he deciphers the mystery of China’s ancient language. Choy provides detailed analyses of relationships between Chinese written characters and he explains the difference between traditional and simplified Chinese characters.

According to Choy, the Duality Code has its roots in pre-modern China, in a warrior class called the shi. The “code” is secret in the sense that mastery of it, even today, is reserved for the highly educated. It is partly because Chinese characters were historically complex, according to Choy, that the literacy rate in China remained low, until recent times. Attempts toward simplification in the twentieth century included the suggestion that Chinese characters be eliminated altogether in favor of an alphabet-based system. Such a reform, it was believed, would make the language more accessible to ordinary people. However, the reform was never instituted.

Choy writes about how language has been a cultural football in China, and how the rules of this game have been brutal at times. For example, the Emperor Qin Shihuang ordered (in 212 BCE) that four hundred and sixty Confucian scholars be buried alive. He wanted to control scholarship and the use of language in his empire. Mao Tse-tung, centuries later, also wanted to control scholarship and the use of language. In furtherance of that end, Mao boasted, “We are a hundred times worse (than Qin Shihuang)…We have buried forty-six thousand Confucian scholars”.

I learned a great deal about the Chinese language from reading The Duality Code. I know now, for example, that Chinese characters are logographic. Each character represents a concept. This is distinct from alphabet-based languages, in which letters are combined to represent speech sounds. Sounds, in Chinese, are not associated with the characters. Therefore, Chinese characters may also be used by people who speak other languages.

Chinese characters can be combined (described and diagrammed in detail by Choy). Some characters are pictographic–their shape approximately resembles the idea they are intended to convey.

This book has much to offer besides an analysis of Chinese language. There’s history, political theory and philosophy. There’s commentary on the role of language in culture. W. K. Choy has a broad command of a variety of subjects. Readers of this book may not understand everything that is offered, because there is so much here. Choy’s analysis of language morphology is very clear and logical. For those with the ambition and time, it can serve as a veritable course on the Chinese language.

I found a wealth of information in The Duality Code, and not all of it specific to China. The book is unlike any I’ve read. It is challenging and entertaining. It is a cultural history and technical analysis. For Western readers, this will likely be an eye-opener. It was for me.

I highly recommend W. K. Choy’s Duality Code.

A. G. Moore  2/3/2017

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