Read Beat (...and repeat)

"Moses Jacob Ezekiel: Jewish, Confederate, Expatriate Sculptor" by Samantha Baskind

Moses Jacob Ezekiel may be a 19th-century sculptor who’s been largely forgotten, but his work hasn’t been.A member of the Jewish faith who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, Ezekiel is described as a complex figure. Samantha Baskind, an art historian at Cleveland State University, examines some of that complexity in her book, Moses Jacob Ezekiel: Jewish, Confederate, Expatriate Sculptor.As the first Jewish American artist to win international acclaim, Ezekiel (1844-1917) was a proud American yet lived in Rome for 40 years, said Baskind. Ezekiel never gave up his U.S. citizenship, making frequent trips back to the States to visit friends and family.Ezekiel was a celebrity artist in his day, honored by U.S. presidents and European royalty, she said.“Ezekiel felt he should be in Europe to get the proper art education he needed,” said Baskind. The artist spent time in Germany before falling in love with Rome, where his studio became famous in its own right, she said.Some of Ezekiel’s works have lately become the source of controversy. Several of Ezekiel’s monuments depicting Confederate soldiers were taken down in the early 2020s after the murder of George Floyd, she said. An Ezekiel statue of Christopher Columbus was removed in Chicago, noted Baskind.But Ezekiel’s Confederate work represented only a small part of the art he produced, she said, pointing to works like the majestic 1876 monument “Religious Liberty’’ in downtown Philadelphia and the large Thomas Jefferson monument on the University of Virginia campus that showcase his skill as an artist.The UVA campus also displays Ezekiel’s “Blind Homer with His Student Guide,’’ a tribute to the ancient Greek poet. Ezekiel’s works can also be found in several American cities, such as Cincinnati and Louisville.Among the sources Baskind used in researching her book were Ezekiel’s 638-page memoir, along with private correspondence, and records at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, where Ezekiel was a cadet during the Civil War.  Despite a general lack of awareness about the artist, Baskind said she hopes that more people will come to appreciate Ezekiel's diverse body of work. “Ezekiel is an artist whose work is hidden in plain sight,” she said. 

"Saving Ourselves from Big Car" by David Obst

David Obst wants to end America’s love affair with the car.Saving Ourselves from Big Car defines “Big Car” as that complex of companies in the automobile, oil, insurance, media, and concrete industries that promote and entrench auto dependence. Author David Obst (pronounced “oops-t”), the former literary agent for Woodward and Bernstein, is still on the case. Instead of Watergate, he’s exposing how these companies have pursued profit at the expense of the common good.He details how the industry has covered up the dangers of lead additives, fought against seatbelts, and continues to fund opposition to climate change. Obst considers the future of mobility, surveying how cities—from Taipei to Tempe, Copenhagen to Chicago—are experimenting with forms of transportation that offer alternatives to the dominance of cars.Do what you can in your own community to secure an area where people can enjoy life without the necessity of an automobile, urged Obst, who’s involved in doing that very thing in his own hometown of Santa Barbara.When he’s not working on setting up car-free zones in California, Obst is getting college newspapers to work together on sharing stories. “Universities Speak (universitiesspeak.com) is an effort to develop a free college news service. Let’s say the Bradley Scout at Bradley University runs a story. People read it on the campus, and that’s as far as it goes. You send it to us, and we’ll send it across the country. We plan to launch the service in November,” he said.“I’m 80 now, and my wife asks me if I’m ready to retire. I say no because we’re about to lose our democracy. If we don’t fight now, it will be too late,” said Obst.

"Launching Liberty" by Doug Most

When it comes to World War II, you often hear about "the arsenal of democracy," a characterization of U.S. factories that produced all the food, medical supplies, tanks, planes, and tractors that helped win the war.In Launching Liberty, Doug Most writes about the U.S. effort required to build the ships needed to transport those goods overseas.The Liberty Ships were 440-foot cargo ships built to the same exact specifications. Over 2,700 were built between 1941 and 1945. When packed full of cargo, one ship could hold the equivalent of 300 railroad boxcars. That might be 2,800 jeeps or 430,000 K-rations.Most chronicles how American shipyards — and their workers — rose to the wartime challenge. There were 228,000 workers in U.S. shipyards in December 1940. Less than two years later, 2.2 million worked on constructing ships.There was a reason for that build-up. The United States was engaged in a two-front war that included both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.Forgotten, perhaps, is that in the spring of 1942, just a few months after entering the war, the Allies lost 397 ships. Eighty-two of those ships were sunk off the coast of North Carolina and Virginia.The heat was on. Along with the increase in manpower--and woman power--came new ideas on setting up shipyards and on building cargo ships fast.Henry Kaiser, described by Most as "a dynamic builder of highways, dams, and bridges," turned his attention to shipbuilding, having never built a ship in his life before the war. Kaiser and others brought about "the greatest emergency shipbuilding program the world has ever seen," noted Most.The shipyard brought "poor housewives, farmers, plumbers and Phds, inventors and patriotic handymen, brilliant engineers, hard-driving politicians, and billionaire businessmen" together to build giant steel cargo ships faster than the Germans could sink them," stated Most.The author humanizes the Liberty Ship story with accounts of individuals like Wilmer Patrick Shea, the Marine corporal who lost an arm in battle but returned to the states to become a one-armed welder in the shipyard along with becoming an advocate of the healthcare program that Kaiser offered workers.But it wasn't all smooth sailing. Most talks about a blended workforce required for the construction of so many ships. "But it didn't blend easily," he said.Women and African Americans had to deal with resistance when they joined the shipyard workforce. "Unions were initially dismissive but the barriers did eventually come down," said Most.Most doesn't gloss over the fact that there were problems in the construction of some of the ships. "The Liberty Ships were a critical component of the war program, but they weren't perfect. They had to be done quickly. They had flaws," he said.Yet the fact that the S.S. Robert E. Peary, the Liberty Ship constructed in a record four days, carried supplies as the Allied troops were landing on the beaches of Normandy served as inspiration to all Americans, said Most.

"Wisdom of the Marsh" by Clare Howard (Photographs by David Zalaznik)

If draining the swamp strikes you as a good idea, you're not listening to Clare Howard and David Zalaznik.The pair, former journalists with the Peoria Journal Star, have just written their second book extolling the benefits of wetlands.Their first, In the Spirit of Wetlands (2022), captured the beauty and importance of wetlands in Illinois. This time, Wisdom of the Marsh (Syracuse University Press) focuses on the Montezuma Wetlands Complex in central New York."Wetlands are much more than swamps, bogs, fens, marshes, and moors," noted Howard in the book's introduction. "Wetlands help us change the way we think."The benefits of wetlands have become more pronounced in recent years. Wetlands filter impurities and pollutants from water, protect against wildfires and flooding, and provide a habitat for wildlife.The National Park Service reports that by the mid-1980s, the United States had lost more than half of its original wetlands to development and agriculture. Additionally, a 2023 Supreme Court ruling has removed environmental protections from nearly half of the country's wetlands, according to Howard.The New York complex that's the focus of Wisdom of the Marsh supports more than 368 species of fish and wildlife, as well as 242 species of migrating birds, half of which are endangered or threatened. It was in the Montezuma Wetlands area where the bald eagle was successfully reintroduced in the United States after almost being wiped out.Once home to the Cayuga Nation, where People of the Great Swamp lived in harmony with plants and wildlife, the area changed once settlers moved in. The native people were forced out, and the great swamp was reduced by diking, farming, and the construction of canals, said Howard.But Howard and Zalaznik's focus on the Montezuma complex shows how wetlands are now being embraced and expanded. Cornell University professor Eric Cheyfitz and the late William Mitsch of Ohio State University are among the many interviewed for the book who cite the challenges--and benefits--in advocating for wetlands.Zalaznik's picture of the Northern Harrier Hawk, otherwise known as the gray ghost, flying through the Montezuma complex, is a vivid example of the importance of wetlands."Combating climate change is not all about Spartan sacrifice, scarcity, discomfort, and duplicative layers of government oversight," said Howard.It also involves listening--and understanding--the wisdom of the marsh.

"Hollywood and Hitler: 1933-1939" by Thomas Doherty

Hollywood came under scrutiny after World War II as the fear of Communism gripped the country.The Cold War came to Hollywood in 1947 when the House Un-American Activities Committee held a notorious round of hearings over possible Communist infiltration in the movie industry.Films were analyzed for messages that might be interpreted as promoting Communist views, such as Song of Russia, a wartime musical released when the Soviet Union was a U.S. ally.No pre-war congressional investigation ever called film executives on the carpet for failing to identify the threat to this country in the 1930s, an era when “Nazis were all but invisible in American movies at a time when depicting their savagery might have done the most good,” noted the New York Times.In his book, Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939, Thomas Doherty, a film historian and Brandeis University professor, explains that there were several reasons for U.S. moviemakers to avoid the issue before Warner Brothers released Confessions of a Nazi Spy in 1939.Americans were suffering through the depths of the Depression in the 1930s. Jobs were hard to find. People went to the movies to forget their troubles, watching fare like The Wizard of Oz or Fred and Ginger dancing in art-deco apartments, said Doherty.MGM boss Sam Goldwyn said if you want to send a message, use Western Union, emphasizing Hollywood’s overriding mission was to provide entertainment, Doherty noted.Other factors impeding a flow of message movies included the film industry’s production code that restricted movies from reflecting unfairly on any foreign country, he said. The Third Reich wasn’t above exerting pressure on Hollywood, itself, with German consul Georg Gyssling lobbying hard to keep Nazi references off the big screen.Studios also did business overseas, and Germany represented a big European market for U.S. films, said Doherty.But Doherty said there some outliers, films that did address the dangers that Nazi aggression presented before the mainstream studios finally got around to the subject.The first film to do so was Hitler’s Reign of Terror, “an oddball quasi-documentary” made by Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr. that was released in 1934, said Doherty, noting that the film contains some striking footage of Vanderbilt on the streets of Vienna and Berlin amid Nazi brownshirts.A member of one of America’s wealthiest families, Vanderbilt was a globetrotting raconteur who included “a truly bizarre sequence” with the reenactment of an interview between Vanderbilt and someone posing as Hitler. Vanderbilt asks “the money question,” said Doherty: “What about the Jews, your Excellency?”“The film gets a limited release in 1934. It’s controversial. The German embassy wants to censor it. It doesn’t have much impact. But whatever you say about Vanderbilt, the film is very prophetic,” said Doherty, noting that Vanderbilt points to the militaristic path that Germany was on, predicting war in Europe “in five or six years.”Hitler’s Reign of Terror gets an exclusive screening at the Peoria Women’s Club, 301 NE Madison Ave., on Oct. 16 in conjunction with the Peoria Area World Affairs Council. The film will be part of a program commemorating Vanderbilt’s speech at the club in 1939.Doherty cited another independent film, I Am a Captive of Nazi Germany, released in 1936. Isobel Steele, an American journalist and “party girl,” was imprisoned by the Nazis for espionage in 1934. Steele was released, returning to the United States to star in a film of her experience, the first anti-Nazi motion picture to get a production code seal of approval, he said.The film studios finally weighed in when Confessions of a Nazi Spy was released by Warner Brothers in the spring of 1939, a few months before war broke out in Europe.