#Stacy Schiff

[dearemma]

Witches could be muttering, contentious malcontents or inexplicably strong and unaccountably smart. They could commit the capital offense of having more wit than their neighbors, as a minister said of the third Massachusetts woman hanged for witchcraft, in 1656.

The Witches: Salem, 1692, Stacy Schiff

[absurdreverie]

crow black sky/getting lost in the woods/entering a dream-

"The sky over New England was crow black, pitch-black, Bible black, so black it could be difficult to keep to the path, so black that a line of trees might freely migrate to another location." Stacy Schiff, The Witches

[thetudorslovers]

"America’s tiny reign of terror, Salem represents one of the rare moments in our enlightened past when the candles are knocked out and everyone seems to be groping about in the dark, the place where all good stories begin. At a time of shuddering devastation, they all stepped in as the dragon-slayers. Witchcraft tied up loose ends, accounting for the arbitrary, the eerie, and the unneighborly.

The sky over New England was crow black, pitch-black, Bible black, so black it could be difficult at night to keep to the path, so black that a line of trees might freely migrate to another location or that you might find yourself pursued after nightfall by a rabid black hog, leaving you to crawl home, bloody and disoriented, on all fours.

Salem is in part a story of what happens when a set of unanswerable questions meets a set of unquestioned answers. Although, the witch hunt stands as a cobwebbed, crowd-sourced cautionary tale, a reminder that—as a minister at odds with the crisis noted—extreme right can blunder into extreme wrong." - Stacy Schiff, The Witches: Salem, 1692

[unhonestlymirror]

I've finished Cleopatra: A Life

[46ten]

Let’s talk about Samuel Adams, Father of the American Revolution

Stacy Schiff published an acclaimed biography last year (2022), although it’s certainly not “a revelatory biography from a Pulitzer Prize-winner about the most essential Founding Father—the one who stood behind the change in thinking that produced the American Revolution.” IOW, it’s not a work of scholarship, and I don’t recall a discussion of the “change in thinking” (what does that mean?) that Adams supposedly inspired. 

This is definitely a hagiography, but with the focus on the Nation-state builders, it’s good to see some focus on the “original” fighters for liberty. Samuel Adams, at various times, gets thrown back in the bin when it’s deemed that we shouldn’t be talking about people working to overthrow the government - see popular historian take on Lincoln masterfully shifting the focus of the American founding from the resistance fighters and revolutionary firebrands (the folks the early 19th century THOUGHT of as the Founders) to the architects of the American state, a shift that has stayed with us because it was deemed not a good to champion challenging the government (though Schiff herself is a bit all over the place about respect for Adams at the end and immediately after his lifetime). But Samuel Adams is the RIGHT kind of trouble-maker, which Schiff describes from the very beginning - “moral,” “principled, “humble.” Ah, for the day when one doesn’t need to meet the definition of a moral paragon to be acclaimed in American history. I realize I’ve just written to go read this book, and then stated that books like this are of limited value, but my point is it does have valuable information, but be aware of the undercurrents in this approach. 

Schiff’s prose is appealing, and she tells the real story of Paul Revere better than I’ve seen it anywhere, so the book may be worth it for that alone. But like all popular biographies of this type, beware the lack of context.

Petty point 1.

First, what’s with the makeover on these guys? This guy:

THIS GUY: 

Becomes THIS GUY??!!

I complained about this with Alexander Hamilton, too. 

(And I got distracted by this picture of James Watt, as he seems to be a model for some of this re-working.) 

Petty point 2.

The back author blurb is a long paragraph praising the book by Ron Chernow, so I should probably have thrown this book in the trash.  "A glorious book that is as entertaining as it is vitally important.” —Ron Chernow. Why is it vitally important? I still don’t know. 

Real point 3. 

Adams deliberately destroyed a lot of his correspondence - folks really did want to kill him and issued posters with a ransom so that the Tories could hang him, and took to the grave the stories of lots of events about the American revolution, “Dryly he noted that some individuals enjoyed every political gift except that of discretion.” 

Petty point 4. 

The hardcover has deckled pages, which makes it really hard to find the picture sections (it has two). 

Petty point 5.

To avoid citing in-text, Schiff’s end notes reference the phrase and then provides the citation. While I understand stylists like to do this for readability of non-fiction for a general audience, it also makes it hard to determine an actual fact/reference from stuff the author just pulled out of their ass. I don’t want to flip back and forth to figure out whether you’re making something up. 

Real point 6. 

Not petty, but grim. I’m about to delve into women and maternity again, so these numbers recall the 17th century admonishment to women that with pregnancy, death awaits you. Elizabeth Checkley, Adams’s first wife, gave birth to six children, of whom only two survived past the age of 2. She likely died of complications from her last childbirth. She was the tenth child that predeceased her own father. Adams had 11 siblings, of whom only three survived their own father. 

Petty point 7.

Every description and scene with John Hancock is petty. “The pomp and retinue of an Eastern prince,” Hancock would revel in glory as he did in frivolity,” “thin-skinned,” Hilarious. 

Petty point 8.

Schiff making stuff up about the use of “esquire.” 

Petty point 9.

“The portraitists arrived only after he had gone gray; Boston was, however, a fair-haired city, and the coloring suggests he had been a blond youth.” Um, what?

Real point 10. 

The aversion to discussing cultural/religious matters in these communities. Schiff points out the high literacy of Boston, but makes no mention of what that can be attributed to. Adams is pious, and a Calvinist, and no discussion of what that means. “It is impossible with Adams to determine where piety ended and politics began; the watermark of Puritanism shined through everything he wrote.” Well, what does it mean, and what do you mean by that comment, Schiff? Adams’s first wife was a pastor’s daughter, but don’t look to any further explanation from Schiff about any of what that could mean. Don’t look to her to provide any explanation of the Adams quote I provide below, either. 

Real point 11. 

Schiff reminded me that Massachusetts only barely ratified the Constitution; Adams was one of those who in the end supported it, but was hesitant to ever again be under a national government. And yet he was a Lt. Gov, but his career was clearly in decline. Schiff treats this topic as if it’s baffling - well, maybe the shifts in national politics may explain it? Changes in Boston commercial and political interests? But we already know that popular biographies don’t have time for stuff like that. 

Finally, a quote from Samuel Adams:

“The truly virtuous man and real patriot is satisfied with the approbation of the wise and discerning; he rejoices in the contemplation of the purity of his intentions, and waits in humble hope for the plaudit of his final judge.”

[nat-reviews-books]

Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff

Ok, it took me about 8 months to finish this one. That does not mean the book was bad, it was just dense, there was a lot of information I did not know going into this book, and that made it difficult for me to read.

As someone who went to college for education, I know about background knowledge and how that can affect how you learn new concepts, so with that being said, I probably should have learned a bit more about the time period I was reading about, and that is definitely something I would suggest to anyone planning to read this book.

I learned a lot reading this book, it was interesting and included a lot of information, which was sometimes overwhelming. Would definitely suggest this book to other history nerds, just make sure you know some background knowledge before you do (I knew very little about this era, don't be like me).

[womanoncesaid]

The vanity extended most of all to his library, arguably the real love of Cicero's life. It is difficult to name anything in which he took more pleasure, aside possibly evasion of the sumptuary laws. Cicero liked to believe himself wealthy. He prided himself on his books. He needed no further reason to dislike Cleopatra: intelligent women who had better libraries than he did offended him on three counts.

Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life

[philologistandbibliophile]

It has always been preferable to attribute a woman’s success to her beauty rather than to her brains, to reduce her to the sum of her sex life. Against a powerful enchantress there is no contest. Against a woman who ensnares a man in the coils of her serpentine intelligence—in her rope of pearls—there should, at least, be some kind of antidote…it is less threatening to believe her fatally attractive than fatally intelligent.

—Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life, p. 298.

[craigfernandez]

[livrosemepub]

As bruxas - Intriga, traição e histeria em Salem - Stacy Schif

Descrição do livro

1692, baía de Massachussets, Nova Inglaterra. A puritana aldeia de Salem assistiu à execução de catorze mulheres, cinco homens e dois cachorros – todos acusados de bruxaria. A feitiçaria se materializou em janeiro, o primeiro enforcamento ocorreu em junho, tudo terminou em setembro. Depois dos julgamentos, fez-se um silêncio crivado de culpa.

Com base em meticulosa pesquisa, a renomada jornalista Stacy Schiff, vencedora do Pulitzer, reconstitui com precisão histórica e prosa vibrante os acontecimentos daquele ano sombrio e o surto coletivo que desencadeou o drama das bruxas de Salem.

Um retrato em que Schiff traz à baila as ansiedades da América do Norte dos primeiros tempos para compará-las, brilhantemente, com as de hoje. Em nossa época de redes sociais, inimigos invisíveis e intolerância às diferenças, esta história sobre o obscurantismo religioso faz mais sentido que nunca. Um capítulo distópico do passado norte-americano que não devemos nunca esquecer – e muito menos repetir.

“Magistral… Stacy Schiff reconstrói detalhadamente não apenas os acontecimentos de 1692, mas o mundo que os criou.” The Los Angeles Times

“Um thriller psicológico opressivo, forense.” The Times

“Stacy Schiff em grande forma, dando a um evento histórico o máximo de vida, mistério e tragédia como a melhor das romancistas.” Vanity Fair

“Sua pesquisa é impecável; nenhum outro escritor foi tão a fundo.” The New York Review of Books

DOWNLOAD EM EPUB

[technicolorrelays]

-The Witches: suspicion, betrayal,and hysteria in 1692 Salem, by Stacy Schiff

[unhonestlymirror]

It seems that Cleopatra treated Antony as a grandmother treats her schoolchild grandson who came for the holidays, and now the same schoolboy comes to Rome, which he openly ignored all these idle months. He celebrated his forty-third birthday in Alexandria, and at the same time he was remembered by the townspeople mainly for his pranks and antics, which is ridiculous because from the very beginning, the accusation of Mark Antony against Octavian was “snotty boy” (for a Roman there was no worse insult: it infuriated Octavian so much that he would then pass a bill in the Senate formally forbidding anyone from calling him that).

(c) "Cleopatra: A Life"

[lillyli-74]

When a woman teams up with a snake a moral storm threatens somewhere.

~Stacy Schiff

[letempsdlamour]

Currently reading- Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

[random-bookquotes]

FROM THOSE THINGS the devil promised we can glimpse what the seventeenth-century girl dreamed of: splendid finery, travel abroad, fashion books, leisure, gold, a husband, help with the housework. Her longings differed little from those of any other orphaned semi-adolescent farm girl stalled in a bleak, storm-prone landscape where animals strayed into the gardens of peevish neighbors who turned up on the doorstep to fulminate, disabling the adults of the house. Insofar as they dared to dream, these girls dreamed—at the ashen end of a New England winter—of journeys to exotic realms and in supersaturated color. From Tituba’s on down, the Salem testimony explodes with invigorating, over-the-rainbow intensity. It is all bluebirds and canaries, yellow dogs, red rats, red meat, red bread, red books. Deprivation, however, had its limits. Even with the regular fasts, there was no hungering after (or enticing with) food. No daughter, niece, cousin, servant, or slave longed for a roast beef with pumpkin sauce or a luscious apple pudding or a dish of sugared almonds. Rather the girls appeared starved for color, expressionist splashes of which light up their testimonies, nearly conjuring ruby slippers.

Stacy Schiff, The Witches: Salem, 1692

[womanoncesaid]

It has always been preferable to attribute a woman’s success to her beauty rather to her brains, to reduce her to the sum of her sex life.

Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life