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Show 2E Thy Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday, February The best of American Heritage 9, 14Hb Sense of History: Tbe Best Writtbe pages of AMERICAS' from ing HERITAGE; Houghton MifRin Co.. Mr Jensen's recollections of creakand ornate dining ing staterooms rooms Did a trip to Boston on a cost $4.50 and was a huge dinner obtainable for $1.75? That, my (riends, is really history A 1: (Xribunc Back in 1984 a group of thoughtful historians and journalists, regretting the increasingly obvious fact that few Americans gave much thought to their nation's history, gathered their forces and finances to found American Heritage. It was not quite a magazine. Instead, its issues rather resembled hard covered, beautifully illustrated, tall, slender books. Its success was immediate. Seemingly a very sizeable number of potential readers were interested in the lives and times of earlier American generations. But they had been turned off" by the professorial style of most hisand could be "turned on" bv tories Among authors represented in a collection of articles from American Heritage are Bruce Catton and Barbara Tuchman. Book aljc Suit ialif 827 pp., $24.95. the livelier writing style of the new periodical and by the brightness of Us exceedingly ions well-chose- illustrat- n Lacks Illustrations Alas, the volume at hand, a collection of 50 or so of the best pieces ever to appear in the pages of American Heritage, is totally lacking in illustrations. Which is a pity, since I'm certain many subscribers not thoughtful enough to retain their issues would like to again enjoy the - Two views of Martin Luther King Jr. essay, the book is splendid. It conveys, in vivid detail, the 381 days when black Montgomerians walked, hitchhiked or rode in car pools, rather than ride the buses to work; the bloody, unprovoked attacks on the Freedom Riders in Rock Hill, S.C., Birmingham, Ala., and Montgomery, Ala.; and the violent confrontation between marchers kneeling in prayer and mounted police with nightsticks on the highway outside Selma, Ala The civil rights movement was successful in part because of sympathetic media coverage. Americans simply could not ignore the courageous and determined faces of the men, women and children who marched in the face of blistering water hoses and slate troopers wielding billy clubs. Their faces appeared each day on television and in newspapers and magazines. Rich Personal Accounts By making extensive use of previously published oral histories and biographies, Witherspoon effectively As a photo King Jr.: lo the Mountaintop, by William floger W Duubleday; 244 pp., $40. King Remembered, by Flip '.'Mjilm Lutber Schulke and Penelope Ortner Mclhee, foreword by Jesse Jackson; pp., Norton hardcover $16.95; Pocket Books paperback, $7.95. . Martin Luther King Jr.: To the Mountanitap and King Remembered both set out to chronicle King's life and the major events of the civil rights movement, beginning with King's childhood as the son of a Baptist minister in Atlanta, through the turbulent decades of the 1950s and 1960s, and ending with his death in Memphis, Tenn., while marching on behalf of sanitation workers. 208 Witherspoon is an accomplished journalist whose work has appeared Esin Time, Black Enterprise, sence and other national magazines. He currently is an editorial writer for the Dallas Times Herald. His repor-toristyle of weaving personal interviews, quotes from King and narrative has resulted in a highly readable account of the major civil rights campaigns, from the Montgomery bus boycott to the Memphis sanitation workers strike. Calling To the Mountaintup, "an oral history, an academic biography and a photo essay," Witherspoon and his collaborators interviewed a number of foot soldiers of the movement and culled scores of photographs from private sources and news service files e' integrates accounts first-perso- n throughout the narrative to convey in richly personal terms the contribuinditions of so many viduals. Activists such as Jo Ann Robinson of Montgomery and Fred Shuttles-wortof Birmingham tell the story of s those who organized efforts. King referred to them as "the ground crew." indigenous h behind-the-scene- Hemingways journalism For 3l a years between 1921) and Krnest Hemingway supported himself, bis new wife and first-borby contributing articles to the Taranto Star From a variety of locations in Europe and America, he hacked out 172 commentaries and news articles. good, bad or indifferent, the pieces paid the bills while he worked on lus "serious" writing, his first fic1924, n tion With the help of the Star's librarian, editor William White has gathered the 172 into one volume, creating Dateline: Toronto. (Scribner's, no Hemingway buff would do without. Dip here and there of the novelist to be. for especially in the sports pieces like 'Pamplona in July," published in October 1923. This is surely Hemingway in full style "It was Algabeno's bull This one and the next five. He handled $19 95), a book s them all. Did it all. Cape play easy, graceful, confident Beautiful work with the muleta. And serious, deadly killing. Five bulls he killed, one after the other, and each one was a separate problem to be worked out with death.. They were all very wonderful bulls " Here is the tone, the pacing and the macho fatalism that marked Hemingway's Work. This is sometimes fine reading especially the poieven gnant "War Medals for Sale if most of it is pretty shabby journalism. Hemingway was never one to let the facts get in the way of a good story, nor did he hesitate to "polish" a quote to make a dull story better More important for him then and for the reader now is what he was trying to express, those feelings he would transform into the themes of his life's w ork. Ed Cray, Los Angeles Times. . Schulke recalls that he first met King in the late 1950s when he was on assignment for Jet, and credits King with a sophisticated appreciation for the effective use of the media in capturing the drama and pathos of the civil rights struggle. Because of their warm and trusting relationship, King Remembered includes a number of photographs of King in personal settings with his family and friends which give the reader an intimate glimpse into the life of a public figure. In recounting the major events in King's life and times, McPhee. like Witherspoon, has effectively used oral histories with movement figures to highlight their own dramatic personal stones. McPhee's narrative is n and adequately details the major civil rights campaigns Sources Not Noted Unlike Witherspoon, however, who identifies the sources of all of his quotations, none of the Schulke-McPhe- e sources are noted. Readers thus will not be able to use the Sehulte-McPhe- e book to locate more original source material on a particular individual or subject. Both the introduction to King Remembered, written by Jesse Jack-son- , and the books last chapter analyze the major contributions of the civil rights movement and how far America has come in light of Kings D. Lousie Cook for the Dallas goal. Times Herald. (Cook is the director of the King Library and Archives, a program of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. She was the editor of "The Papers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee" and "The Papers of the Congress of Racial Equality." both published in Sanford, N.C., bv Microfilming Corp. of America leaders who often worked for years laying the foundation for the local civil rights campaigns in Montgomery, Birmingham and Selma, Ala.; Albany. Ga.; St. Augustine, Fla.; and Chicago. Historical Distortions Unfortunately, scholars will be disappointed to note a number of historical distortions and misspellings of names of King's relatives and friends throughout the text, making it somewhat unreliable as an "academic biography. One of the most glaring examples concerns perhaps King's most famous speech, I Have a Dream." Witherspoon relates an interesting but erroneous account of King's drafting of the speech, when he says the King ". . worked feverishly night before on an elaboration of the speech he had made in Detroit, when he first spoke of his dream of a better America." Earlier Theme In truth, King had employed the "I Have a Dream" theme on several previous occasions, and told one interviewer shortly after the March on Washington that his use of "I Have a Dream" on that day had been purely spontaneous. Listening to the recordings made at the march that day also reveals that the author reproduces King's remarks inaccurately, a mistake common to many accounts of the days address. In a caption under a photograph of King and Malcolm X. the author says. (King) met with Malcolm X and found that the Muslim leader had changed, and their views now were very similar." In fact, on the only occasion they met. the two exchanged only brief pleasantries. Oversimplifies Position Such oversimplification ignores the fact that while Malcolm X had, at the time of that chance encounter, moderated his statements with regard to whites, he never renounced violence as a tactic for social change, while King remained steadfastly opposed to the use of physical force of any kind. King Remembered is a collaborative effort between Schulke, a photojournalist who himself influenced King's use of the electronic and print media, and McPhee, a writer and television producer who worked with Schulke on his er book. well-writte- . award-winnin- 1982.) If you are stirred even slightly by the true tales of Civil War or World War II derring do, there's a fine report by Bruce Catton on our war between the states titled "Hayfoot, Straw foot." A piece by Charles Cawthon concerning the battle for St Lo may make the eyes of men who Currier L Ives reprints. World War recruiting posters, paintings of trapthe pers and Indians tribes, and and tavern "primitive" portraits signboards that enlivened the magazine's pages. Well, you can't have everything I remember that war mist unheroicai-lv- . There are pieces dealing with science. such as Joseph Kastner's "The Conundrum of Corn" certain to be instructive to us But the volume brings us some splendid writing and splendid tales, each article in its way is a chapter giving details of life in America's towns and cities and on its farms Each article catches the color and the oddities of another time or place This is not the sort of work to be read at a single setting. Rather, it's a book to browse and to digest Pick and choose a favorite subject such as the American Revolution or life in the Political Profiles as you might expect, there are pieces on politics, including a gem concerning the gentleman whose phrase "I Am the Law" rang in the ears of residents of the East Coast for a multitude of years. He was, of course, Hizzoner Frank Hague, Mayor of Joisy City, a politician whose fiscal peculiarities made even his contemporaries across the river at Tammny Hall a mite envious. Our nation's history has its conundrums, and they don't all concern corn. Francis Russell asks Were Sacco and Vanzetti Innocent? a query you must answer yourself after reading this analysis. And many authors whose historical essays appear here will be familiar. Barbara Tuchman tells of Theodore Roosevelt and his demand for "Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead," a subject that might interest today's White House occupant, he being much concerned at present with new forms of banditry in that part of and ransom-seekinAnd, nation's cities, or just read at random. No matter how you proceed. I suspect you'll enjoy the entire volume, Strange Personalities If you've wondered about the real Johnny Appleseed, hes here. So too is Ethan Allen, a man larger than life if ever such a one lived in our nation, the leader of the Green Mountain Boys who, perhaps drunk, perhaps sober, thundered his demand for the surrender of the redcoats at Fort "in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." There are strange personalities in our own time too, as the gentleman (or was he a gentleman") William Manchester reports upon in "The Man Who Could Speak Japanese." I won't spoil things for readers, except to add that the character in question taught Nipponese aboard a transport headed for Guadalcanal during a war far more recent than that in which Ethan Allen played his role g the world Why the Money Slopped' John Kenneth Galbraith, in "Why the Money Stopped, writes so well of the 1929 Wall Street debacle that you may wish to phone your broker new instructions. Hughes Rudd, often seen and heard on television newscasts, tells us much about piloting small aircraft and spotting for artillery at Monte Casino in his "When I Landed the War was Over." One favorite place concerns Henry Ford, the industrialist who, having asserted several times that he had no use for history, spent many of his millions, and more and more of his time, at Dearborn's reconstituted American Village. There Henry, whose automobiles were assuredly destroying a way of life, painstakingly recreated that way of If you are concerned with life and in our part of the world, don't overlook Wallace Stegner's report on his boyhood years "way out west." And, in an introductory chapter titled "I Wish I had Been There, both Walter Lord and historian John F. Stover wish they could be set down for a little while at least, at Promontory. Utah, in that May of 1869 when the Golden Spike was driven. A reading of their two essays might send you junketing north and west of Brigham City to experience for yourself the spot where the rails were joined. No matter how you proceed. I suspect you'll enjoy the entire volume. Jack Goodman. events mass-produce- d life East River Boats One of my own favorites is Oliver Jensen's "The Old Fall River Line," since I. like Mr. Jensen, watched the big sidewheelers thrashing their way up the East River towards Long Island Sound enroute to impossibly distant Newport and Fall River. The coastwise ships have vanished now. but their deep, resounding whistles in memory, recalled bv still o Photo book in paper photoGraces, Larry Fink's graphs depicting social mores first appeared in 1984, critics exploded with praise. Aperature has now published a pae perback reprint containing 69 of black tie benefits photographs and gallery openings, school graduations and baptisms. He is a stylist who captures the vulnerability of his subjects by allowing his camera to play intimate games duo-ton- g Best Sellers When Social -book of NEW YORK (AP) The isf,5s New Yortt Times Service oeow arP oaseo c comoier saes figures 'ro Un,,M Vaes 2 WO oosves P'cwe sea "e ?erv Fiction Tn.s V.eek 1. 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