Dan Saladino - Eating to Extinction

The food we eat has been shaped by many great social, economic and cultural forces. It is the result of thousands of years of agriculture, selective breeding, accidental crossing of genes and unique technological development, which has enabled humans in almost every ecological area to grow, hunt, catch and cook food unique to their lives and cultures. But it is under threat. Dan Saladino's excellent book explains why. 

Saladino's book documents the enormous historical diversity of our food. In the Svalbard seed valut there are an amazing 213,000 samples of different types of wheat, and 21,000 different potato types. There are dozens of further examples, but to quote from his introduction:

At Brogdale in Kent, home of the UK's National Fruit Collection ,there are 2,000 varieties of apple while at the University of California Riverside more than 1,000 different varieties of citrus are being conserved. Across the planet there are 8,000 livestock breeds (of cows, sheep, pigs and so on) being saved, mostly on small farms, many at risk of extinction. Much of our food supply has been narrowed down to a tiny fraction of this diverse array of plants and animals, and in some cases we are dependent on just on variety of a handful of breeds.

This narrowing of food diversity has accelerated in the last century, particularly in the post-war period. It brings with it several threats, not least that of missing tastes. As we loose types of fruit, vegetables or other crops, we lose the potential for different foods and tastes that were enjoyed by our ancestors, but will be lost forever. Perhaps more importantly, we risk loosing breeds of animals and plants that are more suitable for a warming world, a changing climate or are able to withstand disease. In those seed banks are sometimes the seeds that could feed future generations on a hotter planet. But the skills and knowledge needed to find them, or husband them is also threatened.

Why has this extraordinary change taken place? Take one of the world's most important crops - maize. There are literarily thousands of different types of maize. But a handful dominant today, following the introduction of new US strains that have displaced native maize from its centres of origin in South America. These new strains where designed to maximise yields and ensure that US agriculture dominanted the Cold War period. But

The mazine boom producd more calories but helped to make the global food system more uniform, less diverse and increasingly brittle. Evidence for this came in dramatic fashion in the early 1970s. At the time, 85 percent of the crop grown in the Corn Belt shared a single genetic trait susceptible to a fungal disease... The disease spread rapidly through corn fields, resulting hte loss of one billion bushels of maize at a cost of $6 billion to farmers.

In the context of wheat, Saladino explains why this has happened.:

The entire system, the wheat breeding programmes and the approved list, is also designed around one type of of product: white bread made with refined flour for which most of the nutrients in the grain are removed in the milling process. Again, by law, these nutrients are then put back in through the process of 'fortification;. This isn't the fault of the plant breeders; they are paid to create what the current food system demands: cheap grain and a commodity that can turn a profit on global markets. After 12,000 years of farming such a rich variety of wheat, what a strange state of affairs we find ourselves in.

It is, indeed, strange. Capitalism has concentrated food production into a few select types, that maximise profit at the expense of diversity, flavour, resiliance and sustainability. 

Saladino's book tells these, and other unique stories, extremely well. It is part travelogue, party foodie guide and part historical work that shows how food has been shaped by the development of capitalism. For instance the slave trade moved people and commodities between Europe, the Americas and Africa. Enslaved Africans brought with them their seeds and food culture, but were forced to work on plantations that furthered the concentration of food and other crops into a few select types. The industiralisation of fishing and agriculture have ensured that monocrops in animals and plants haved pushed out other types of food, at enormous rish to wider ecosystems. The example of fish, particularly salmon, epitomises this process.

Saladino's book celebrates those who rescue, protect and farm forgotten and minority crops. Because he is a "foodie" he enjoys tasting and eating these rarer foodstuffs, and its a testament to Saladino's ideas that these are never handled as exotic, rather a celebration and understanding of different food cultures. 

But repeatedly we return to the way that the food industry is distorted by profit, through massive multinationals that limit seeds, enforce pesticide and fertilisers and trap farmers in massive debts. Saladino says that "more of the world's seeds - the foundation of the food system - are becomign intellectual property and highly profitable commodities". The sense of food as a way to profit runs through the whole of the book.

This book begins as a cry against the loss of food diversity. But as it proceeds the reader increasingly realises that the problem is the whole economic system. There is, of course, hope. Much of the book celebrates small producers who are rescuing, resurrecting and saving unique foods - from alcoholic drinks to rare wheats. All of these individuals are rightly heroes. But Saladino also recognises that this is really taking place in the context of an overwhelmingly powerful and dangerous system. It needs to be got rid of. As Saladino writes:

Our future food is going to depend on multiple systems of agricutlure. Some will be highly industrialised and mechanised, others smaller in scale and richer in their variety of crops and animals. Diversity can help each of these systems become as successful and resilient as they can possibly be. As we've seen, efforts are already under way to make this happen, from the reappearance of landrace fields of wheat to the work banana breeders are doing, using wild genetics and rethinking the monoculture model. Saving diversity gives us options.

But this will only ever be a breathing space. Unless we scrap capitalism, the profit orientated food system will continue to spread it's ugly tentacles, destroying and driving to extinction, rare and unique foods. This is a threat to us all. Eating to Extinction is a reminder that we must right to change things.

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Louise Bryant - Six Red Months in Russia

Louise Bryant arrived in Petrograd in late September 1917. She went as a journalist to cover the Russian Revolution for radical US newspaper The Masses tasked with reporting from a "woman's point of view". Her articles are gathered together in Six Red Months in Russia and give an inspiring insight into the period between the Kornilov Coup and the first months of Soviet Power after the October Revolution. 

Bryant went to Russia, alongside her partner John Reed, as a convinced socialist. But there is no doubt that her experiences there further transformed her outlook. She writes with sympathy and passion. Her bravery on the front lines, during the insurrection and travelling alone through Russia are examples of the best of journalism. 

While the book is notable for its interviews or portraits of key figures like Kerensky and Kollontai, the most interesting and touching parts are those that deal with events of the Revolution and small moments that illuminate the wider transformation of society. There's a notable account of a Revolutionary Tribunal. This is far from the bloodthirsty events of bourgeois imagination, rather they demonstrate how mass democratic participation allows for justice to take place. For an hour, after a worker is convicted of stealing from a newspaper seller, the audience agrees that he must give his galoshes to the victim. The victim is pleased - she has none to wear while selling papers and the guilty man is pleased as his conscience is cleared!

There are, of course, more world shattering events to describe. Bryant describes the storming of the Winter Palace, notable mostly for the discipline with which revolutionary troops ensured that looting did not take place. She was there for the meetings of the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic and its dissolving by troops, very much without a whimper. Her account of the meetings of the All Russia Soviet are fascinating as she describes the passionate contributions from delegates from across the country, discussing their demands and concerns.

Bryant is primarily concerned with justifying the Revolution to her US audience. Repeatedly she counters anti-Soviet propaganda, denying the lies that declare that barbarity has falled. She frequently has to challenge the idea that the revolutionaries are pro-Germany. In fact this leads to one of the slight contradictions of the book, because she is very concerned that her readers see the Russian revolutionaries as potential allies of America. It almost feels like she's ignoring the great elephant in the room - US imperialism. I suspect her views on this changed quickly when US troops began their military counter-revolutionary campaigns alongside the White Armies. 

The book will perhaps be best enjoyed by those who know already the outlines of the revolutionary year of 1917. Bryant's anecdotes and accounts illuminate the wider dynamics very well. Here she writes about a priest refusing to pay a fare on a street car, claiming exemption as a "man of God":

Immediately the passengers became excited. They were mostly peasants and they began to argue hotly. A man of God, they claimed, was no different from any other man - all were equal since the revolution. But the priest was stubborn and not until the crowd threatened to take him to the Revolutionary Tribunal did he consent to pay, grumbling.

Bryant writes about crime and prisons a fair bit, not least to argue that the Revolution, at least in 1917, was remarkably lenient. Counter-revolutionaries are repeatedly allowed to go free, as the revolutionaries are keen to avoid punishment. During the winter the cells are better heated than the journalists' hotel rooms. A joke by Bryant about this to the Bolshevik guards, who have all experienced imprisonment, gets the dour response that loss of liberty is the worst punishment possible.

Bryant's eye for detail and humour and her ability to capture events in short articles makes this an excellent, if not well known, addition to accounts of 1917. Her frequent focus on women highlights the contributions of many, and reminds the reader of the enormous strides forward made in the early years of the revolution in terms of emancipatory politics. The participation of women in the struggle and the fighting is celebrated, as well as the role of key female figures of the revolution. But Bryant also tells the story from the other side, interviewing the wealthy families still present in Petrograd and discussing the work of spies and counter-revolutionaries. Frankly its a marvellous book that really illuminates how October 1917 was a revolution off and by the most ordinary of people. As Bryant returns home her last article shows how much she has been changed: "I was homesick for my own country, but I thought of the German advance and my heart ached. I wanted to go back and offer my life for the revolution."

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M.T. Anderson - Symphony for the City of the Dead

Dmitri Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony is one of the greatest pieces of music of the twentieth century. It was shaped by two great events. The Russian Revolution and the siege of Leningrad which took place during the Nazi's genocidal war against the Soviet Union. Listening to the piece today evokes many feelings, and it has been read in a number of ways. Its performances during the Second World War, coloured by the fact it was mostly penned by Shostakovich while in Leningrad under siege, made it a masterpiece for many listeners who might not normally have listened to Shostakovich's style.

M.T. Anderson's biographical account of the Seventh and Shostakovich frames the symphony just like this. He explores how Shostakovich's life and attachment to the city of Leningrad, as well as the wider context of Revolution and War meant that he was able to produce this masterpiece. But the problem is not Anderson's framing, but the story he tells.

The problem is that Anderson doesn't really understand the Russian Revolution. He appreciates it's mass nature, and the way it lead to a flourishing of art, culture and music. He writes of Petrograd "swarming" with new art movements, "cubofuturists and neo-primitivists, constructivists and Suprematists, Rayonists and Productivists". This is good because it is normally neglected in histories of the period, though it is a shame that Anderson doesn't explain any of these things. The problem is that the Revolution, for Anderson, is an expression of Bolshevik violence and greed, rather than an attempt at mass human liberation. Lenin, according to Anderson, "believed that the people themselves often did not understand what they truly needed". Anderson lacks any real subtle understanding or analysis of the dynamics of the Russian Revolution and the Civil War that follows. Nor does he display any real clarity on the nature of revolutionary politics. For Anderson there's nothing but continuity from Lenin to Stalin. There's no real sense of Stalin's counter-revolution drowning the hopes and dreams of the revolution itself in a "river of blood".

Anderson is at least on firmer ground when it comes to the music. He explores Shostakovich's works in their context, while defying attempts to simply place them in the straight jacket of that context. The reader and listener are invited to bring their own interpretations while Anderson's supplies a (sometimes flawed) context:

There are few composters whose music and whose own lives reflect so exactly the trials and triumphos of a nation. The music of his yo8uth was electric with the boldness and experimentaion of Leningrad's explosive revouitions. With his music of the 30s, he came to know the grotesque brutality of the Terror. As Stalin closed his fist around Leningrad and the arrests and disappearances began, Shostakovich was in the middle of it. His Fifth Symphony, composed in a time of mute fear, was an answer to the authorities - but, at the same time, it spoke other truths, out of the side of its mouth, to all who had suffered loos and could not speak... He gave a voice to the silenced. 

Is this fair? A more recent Shostakovich biography Simon Behrman has argued convincingly that Shostakovich carried with him an essence of revolution throughout his life:

In one masterpiece after another, he attempted to engage us in the fefining themses of our age: revolution, war, oppression; occasionally giving us hope, more often despair, but consistently reaching out to a mass audience at the highest artistic level. In this aspect of his life and work, he carried the spirit of the October revolution throughout his life, and has bequeathed it to us in his music.

This seems much fairer to Shostakovich and the essence of his mustic

Politics aside, I found myself constantly frustrated with Anderson's book. It patronises the reader, offering superficial banalities while describing the most shocking of events. He writes, for instance, "despite the fact that Hitler and Stalin both called thesmelves socialists, Hitler's Nazi Fascism and Stalin's Societ Communism, were, in many ways natural politicial enemies". There is little attempt here to actually understand what either of these appalling regimes were. Nor perhaps why people who were Communists across Europe fought fascism on the streets and into World War Two. This undermines the author's analysis of Shostakovich's music because he cannot really understand why the people of Russia, and Shostakovich himself, rallied to a regime that was so dispicable. 

So sadly, despite some interesting moments and some excellent illustrations, I must conclude that Symphony for the City of the Dead offers little to the serious reader of Russian and music history.

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Behrman - Shostakovich: Socialism, Stalin & Symphonies

George MacDonald Fraser - Flashman and the Redskins

George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman novels are not particularly fashionable these days. They are very dated in places, not particularly because of Flashman's offensive beliefs, but more so, I suspect because of Fraser's politics. Had Fraser lived longer, there's no doubt he would have written more of the Flashman series, and fans would have gobbled them up. But Fraser's rightwing ideas do not sit well with a new generation coming to terms with colonialism and the legacy of the British Empire.

So why pick up the unpleasantly named Flashman and the Redskins? I re-read this for deeply personal reasons. I first read the book in the late 1980s when I was besotted with Flashman's cowardly run through history. As a teenager the title character's racism and misogyny did not distract me. I was there for the adventure and escapism. This book in particular has a personal importance as it was one of the reads that led me into a lifelong interest in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. At the books climax, Flashman finds himself, through ill-luck, and misogyny, at the Greasy Grass wearing a dinner jacket. A close acquatinance of Custer's he fails to get them to retreat and only luck saves him.

Fraser's telling of the battle closely follows many accounts, and he is unearring accurate in details. As fans of Flashman will know, Fraser seeks out historical accounts where a suitable anonymous person is present at some historical juncture and inserts Flashman there. But it is Fraser's romatic retelling of the Bighorn and his own visit there which inserted the Montana battlefield into my subconcious. Nearly forty years later I too was able to visit the Greasy Grass.

But what of the novel? It is in two parts, one telling Flashman's experiences as a Forty-Niner, travelling with a wagon train to Santa Fe, two waggons full of prostitutes and slaves for a brothel with his (third?) concurant wife. There's plenty of unpleasantness here. Flashman uses racist terms, sells slaves and enjoys bigamy and adultery. He sneers at (and fears) the Native Americans and hates anyone who isn't of European extraction (though it doesn't stop him having sex with them). 

But what shines through is two fold. The first is Fraser's unscruipilous attention to detail, drawing heavily on contemporary eyewitness accounts he is able to paint a very realistic picture of life on the Plains and the North West frontieer. The second thing is Fraser's own remarkable duality when it comes to the oppressed and the victim. He has his main character decry them at every opportunity, yet he also avoids romantacising the Native Americans (though Flashman's wife certainly does this) instead recognising that they have a particular way of life that suited the Plains and was destroyed by the European settlers. But while it's wrong to place the beliefs of a character in the mouth of an author, it is  also hard not to see Fraser as agreeing that the Natives were violent and uncivilised. It makes for an contradictory read.

Part two of the book deals with Flashman's return to America in the 1870s, his presence at the failed attempt by the US government to buy the Black Hills and then at key moments in the preparations for the military encursion into Sioux terrority that led to the defeat at the Bighorn. Again, Fraser's research is exempliary. His footnotes are full of references that I really want to follow up for background on events, and Flashman's presence fits well into the real history.

Here is Western history in its gory, violent, racist detail - Flashman is present at a scalp hunt by White militia as they hunt Apache men, women and children for scalps. Its unpleasant, but the problem is that it is played merely as a way to get Flashman from one sticky situation into another. Fraser doesn't avoid the unpleasantness, but it does not detain him. I have noted elsewhere that Fraser's Flashman liberally uses the N word. Fraser might think this is reflective of the language of the times, but its not something that appears in contemporary accounts such as this one of the Indian Rising of 1857.

Given Fraser's worldview then, it is notable that his comupance in this novel, is closely related to his racist, philandering, sexist and arrogant behaviour. Flashman is suitably hoist by his petard. It makes for a satisfying ending. But should you, dear follower, read the book? I would argue that for all its attention to historical accuracy, its not a book that stands up well. Those of use who read it for nostalgic reasons are one thing. But if you are new to Flashman, the language, framework and ideas are likely to cause offence. While Fraser mentions many genuine heroes through the book, his anti-hero is the centre of the novel and it leaves far to bitter a taste in the mouth. When I was a teenager I wanted Flashman to escape. Now I hate him. A transition that you can follow through the various reviews below.

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Jeanne O'Neill & Riga Winthrop - Fort Connah: A Page in Montana's History

Fort Connah is likely the oldest standing building in Montana in the United States, but has an importance far beyond its age and architecture. It was one of the original “forts” constructed by the Hudson Bay Company to assist in the extraction of millions of furs from North America through trade with furtrappers and Native Americans. While called a fort, the building had no military value, and was not garrisoned - it was living accomodation and storage for the McDonald family who lived and ran the trading post.

I was determined to visit Fort Connah earlier this year following my reading of James Hunters’ book Glencoe and the Indians. While on a visit, when we had been shown around by very kind and friendly members of the Connah restoration society, I picked up this short book by Jeanne O’Neill and Riga Winthrop. 

The book was published in 2002 when restoration of the Fort was still in the early stages. For those who know the history the book offers little new information. It is really a short introduction to the sigificance of Fort Connah to Montana’s history. As such it deservers a wider readership as I certainly felt that the site was little known, even to locals.

O’Neil and Winthrop locate their history very much in colonial development of the region. The fur industry, they write, “was just the beginning of a history of rape and plunder, of a cycle of boom and bust”. In fact the determining history of Fort Connah was not events on the ground, but wider economic and political contexts, which the authors do due justice too.

Fort Connah in May 2024

The book is short and typical of the peculiarly American local history publication that proliferates in locally in the States. It gives great insights into niche areas, normally only of interest to locals, and in the case of Fort Connah those with the surname McDonald. For, as Hunter’s work has shown, the influence of Scottish migrants on Flathead was significant. Angus McDonald who is buried near the Fort along with his Native American wife Catherine, where the head of a new tribe of locals who have come to play an important role in local history since the end of the 1800s. Angus was, it must be argued, not a genocidal immigrant and clearly, from this account at least, cared deeply for the indigenous  people and their knowledge. O’Neill and Winthrop repeat accounts of him telling Native American history while sharing a drink with visitors. Angus’ life - from Scotland to fur-trapper, Fort manager and then cattle farmer - forms the backbone to this story. But the book does cover more. SOme of this is a little peripheral, but adds to the flavour.

This book is perhaps somewhat specialised, but ought to be read by those heading to Flathead for their holidays. It is an good general introduction to a history of the area that deserves to be better known and would help ensure that Fort Connah and it’s intriguing history is preserved even further.  

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Scott H. Hendrix - Martin Luther: A Very Short Introduction

This Very Short Introduction to Martin Luther's life and ideas is a step above the previous one I read on the Reformation. It is a readable, concise and surprising detailed account of Luther, in just over 100 pages. It is particularly good in understanding how Luther's work can be understood and misunderstood because of the complexity of Luther's own approach:

Luther's hermeneutical principles were flexible, a mixture of things that modern interpreters tend to keep searate: what a text could have meant in the past and what it could or should mean today. Sometimes [Luther] would apply a biblical statement literally to his 16th-century classroom or congregation, and other times he would dismiss a passage because it belonged to yesterday and had no direct relevance for today.

But, Hendrix adds, that Luther "lived in the world of the Bible". This is something that can be hard to grasp - Luther's worldview and his experience was the Bible. But Luther was also shaped by wider politicals and society. This is perhaps where the Introduction is less helpful. Here we should not fault the author too much. Hendrix does note that "like other reforms, Martin Luther failed to find in the Bibe many features of the piety practised by believers around him". Like other theologians, Luther could not find everything in the Bible he needed to respond to world events, and here he responded as a man of his class and material interests should. I think, principly of Luther's reponse to the Peasant War, which was no doubt fuelled by the Reformation, but was simultanously rejected by Luther.

This "real politik" from Luther, meant he saw in the Princes and Nobles, not threats to the people, or corrupt hypocrits, but as Hendrix suggestions, potential allies. For instance, "the consolidation and expansion of the German Reformation resulted from steadfast cooperation between evangelical rulers and theologians, because the threat of suppression, stemming from Emperor Charles and his Catholic advisers, was noth political and religious."

The danger is that we can end up seeing the Reformation (and Luther) simply as a set of ideas to be implemented and for people to be won to, rather than as a process that arises, in part, from the material circumstances of society.

So while this is an excellent introduction to Luther, read is alongside other biographies and accounts of the period to grasp Luther's full impact and place within German society.

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Peter Marshall - The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction

Peter Marshall is the author of a number of significant and important works on the Reformation, including his book on the English Reformation which I recommended a few years ago. This, one of the excellent Very Short Introduction series, is a straightforward introduction which covers the main events and in the broadest way. Readers who know Reformation history will no doubt find their particular interests or favourite bits are covered, but superficially, but it is a good broad overview of events.

Marshall is good on some consequences of the Reformation. For instance he explores sexuality and society, including the position of women. He argues the Reformation "reinforced patriarchy", because it reasserted the role of the family, the "Protestant social institution par excellence, the building-block of the Christian community". Consequently he argues that the Reformation left women in a diminished position, offering "women on the dual package of marriage and motherhood".

The problem is that Marshall doesn't really offer much deeper analysis. He opens (and indeed finishes) by saying that the Reformation created the world we live in today. Which is a bit obvious really. But what created the Reformation? Here he rejects those "Marxists, as well as subscribers to treny sociaological and literary theories" who want to "deconstruct" the real "political, class-based or economic motivations" behind the Reformation. Here he suggests that "any approach which beings with a rigid... distinction between the religious and the secular is unlikely to get us very far". But Marxism didn't do this. In fact, it notes that social and economic changes were precisely what created the tensions that allowed Luther's ideas to get a mass holding.

In fact I suggest that Marshall is wrong to imply that Marxists have only seen the Reformation and the German Peasant War as being "secular". 

By avoiding the wider social drivers behind the Reformation, Marshall ends up suggesting that it was the ideas that drove events forward. This is, of course, partly true. But the ideas got a resonance because of their context.

While I was frustrated with this aspect of this short book, it is a valuable book in terms of how it summarises the evens of the Reformation and the ideas at its core. In particular Marshall is very sharp on what happens in areas outside of Germany, and the religious consequences (in terms of religious organisations) of the Reformation. If you need a quick introduction this is good, but it is limited. 

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Marshall - Heretics & Believers: A History of the English Reformation