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sciencespies · 4 years ago

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Catherine the Great's Lost Treasure, the Rise of Animal Rights and Other New Books to Read

https://sciencespies.com/nature/catherine-the-greats-lost-treasure-the-rise-of-animal-rights-and-other-new-books-to-read/

Catherine the Great's Lost Treasure, the Rise of Animal Rights and Other New Books to Read

By the end of her reign, Catherine the Great had acquired more than 4,000 paintings, 38,000 books, 10,000 engraved gems, 16,000 coins and medals, and 10,000 drawings. But as writers Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees point out in The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure, this collection—which later formed the foundation of the State Hermitage Museum—could have been even greater. A cache of Dutch masterpieces acquired by the art-loving Russian empress vanished when the ship carrying them sank in 1771 with its priceless artwork aboard.

The latest installment in our series highlighting new book releases, which launched in late March to support authors whose works have been overshadowed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, explores the loss and rediscovery of Catherine the Great’s sunken merchant ship, a leader of the fledgling animal rights movement, the stories of three daughters of World War II leaders, humanity’s connection to the cosmos, and the life of “Black Spartacus” Toussaint Louverture.

Representing the fields of history, science, arts and culture, innovation, and travel, selections represent texts that piqued our curiosity with their new approaches to oft-discussed topics, elevation of overlooked stories and artful prose. We’ve linked to Amazon for your convenience, but be sure to check with your local bookstore to see if it supports social distancing-appropriate delivery or pickup measures, too.

The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure: Catherine the Great, a Golden Age Masterpiece, and a Legendary Shipwreck by Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees

When Dutch merchant Gerrit Braamcamp died in June 1771, his executors held an estate sale featuring what Easter, a historian, and Vorhees, a travel writer, describe as “the most dazzling assemblage of Flemish and Dutch Old Masters ever to reach the auctioneer’s block.” Highlights included Paulus Potter’s Large Herd of Oxen, Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee and Gerard ter Borch’s Woman at Her Toilette. But one work eclipsed the rest: The Nursery, a 1660 triptych by Rembrandt student Gerrit Dou, who was—at the time—widely believed to have surpassed his teacher’s already prodigious talents.

Following an unprecedented bidding war, Catherine’s representatives secured The Nursery, as well as a number of other top lots, for the empress, a self-proclaimed “glutton for art.” The cultural trove departed Amsterdam on September 5, stowed in the cargo hold of the Saint Petersburg-bound Vrouw Maria alongside sugar, coffee, fine linen, fabric and raw materials for Russian craftsmen.

Just under a month after it left port, the merchant vessel fell afoul of a storm in the waters off of modern-day Finland. Though all of its crew members escaped unscathed, the Vrouw Maria itself sustained significant damage; over the next several days, the ship slowly sank beneath the waves, consigning its contents to the ocean floor.

The czarina’s efforts to recover her artwork failed, as did all salvage missions undertaken over the next 200 years. Then, in June 1999, an expedition led by the aptly named Pro Vrouw Maria Association located the wreck in a state of almost perfect preservation.

The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure deftly catalogs the fierce legal battles that ensued following the ship’s discovery. Buoyed by the tantalizing possibility that the vessel’s cargo remained intact, Finland and Russia both laid claim to the wreckage. Ultimately, the Finnish National Board of Antiquities decided to leave the Vrouw Maria in situ, leaving the question of the artworks’ fate unresolved. As Kirkus notes in its review of the book, “[I]t’s an entertaining yarn whose ending is yet to be written.

A Traitor to His Species: Henry Bergh and the Birth of the Animal Rights Movement by Ernest Freeberg

For most animals, life in Gilded Age America was fraught with exploitation and violence. Workers pushed horses to the limits of their endurance, dogcatchers drowned strays, and merchants transported livestock on lengthy journeys without food or water. Dog fighting, cockfighting, rat baiting and other similarly abusive practices were also common. Much of this mistreatment stemmed from the widespread belief that animals lacked feelings and were incapable of experiencing pain—a view that Henry Bergh, a wealthy New Yorker who’d previously served as a diplomat in imperial Russia, strongly contested.

Bergh launched his campaign for animal rights in 1866, establishing the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) as a nonprofit with the power to “arrest and prosecute offenders,” per Kirkus. As Ernest Freeberg, a historian at the University of Tennessee, writes in his new biography of the unlikely activist, some Gilded Age Americans responded with “a mix of applause and mockery,” while others “who resented this interference with their economic interests, comforts, or conveniences” fiercely resisted Bergh’s call to action.

One such opponent was circus magnate P.T. Barnum, who’d built his empire by exploiting animals and people alike. Pitted against Barnum and other leading figures of the period, the naturally theatrical Bergh often found himself subjected to ridicule. Critics even labeled him a “traitor to his species.” Despite these obstacles, Bergh persisted in his campaign, arguing that while humans had the right to use animals (he personally was fond of both turtles and turtle soup), they lacked the authority to abuse them. By the time of Bergh’s death in 1888, notes Kirkus, “[M]ost states were enforcing ASPCA–backed anti-cruelty laws, and [the] universal feeling that animals did not suffer had become a minority view.”

The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War by Catherine Grace Katz

The February 1945 Yalta Conference is perhaps best known for producing a photograph of three Allied leaders—U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin—posing alongside each other as if they were the best of friends. In fact, these blithe smiles belied the contentious nature of the peace summit, which acted less as an affirmation of alliance than as a predecessor to the Cold War.

In The Daughters of Yalta, historian Catherine Grace Katz offers a behind-the-scenes look at the eight-day conference through the eyes of Roosevelt’s daughter, Anna; Churchill’s daughter Sarah, who was then serving in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force; and Kathleen Harriman, daughter of American ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman. Each played a key role in the meeting: Anna helped her father hide his rapidly declining health, while Sarah assumed the role of Churchill’s “all-around protector, supporter, and confidant,” according to Katz. Kathy, a competitive skier and war correspondent, actually learned Russian in order to act as Averell’s “de facto protocol officer,” notes Publishers Weekly.

An array of personal ties compounded the many political factors already at play during the conference. Churchill’s daughter-in-law Pamela was having an affair with Averell, for instance, and Kathy had had a brief affair with Anna’s married brother. But while Katz dedicates ample space to Yalta’s interpersonal intrigue, her main focus is the women’s roles as “daughter diplomats. As she explains on her website, “Their fathers could work through them to gather information, to deliver subtle but important messages that could not be explicitly expressed by a member of the government, and to give the leaders plausible deniability on thorny diplomatic issues in which they could not be directly involved.”

The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars by Jo Marchant

Humans’ fascination with the night sky is as old as civilization itself, writes Smithsonian contributor Jo Marchant in The Human Cosmos. Citing case studies as varied as Ireland’s Hill of Tara, the Native American Chumash people, ancient Assyrians who associated lunar eclipses with their king’s demise, and drawings of what could be constellations at Lascaux Cave, the journalist traces the trajectory of humanity’s relationship with the stars from prehistoric times to the present, covering 20,000 years in just 400 pages.

Marchant’s overarching argument, according to Publishers Weekly, is that technology “separates people from the actual world.” By relying on GPS, computers and other modern tools, she suggests that society has created a “disconnect between humanity and the heavens.”

To correct this imbalance, Marchant prescribes a shift in perspective. As she explains in the book’s prologue, “I hope that zooming out to survey the deep history of human beliefs about the cosmos might help us probe the edges of our own worldview and perhaps look beyond: How did we become passive machines in a pointless universe? How have those beliefs shaped how we live? And where might we go from here?”

Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh

As alluded to by its title, Sudhir Hazareesingh’s latest book centers on a larger-than-life figure: Toussaint Louverture, a Haitian general and revolutionary whom the historian describes as the “first black superhero of the modern age.” Born into slavery around 1740, Louverture worked as a coachman on a plantation in Saint-Domingue (later Haiti). “[I]ntelligent, daring and athletic,” writes Clive Davis in the Times’ review of Black Spartacus, he gained his freedom in the 1770s and proceeded to embark on a number of business ventures, including renting a coffee plantation staffed by at least one enslaved individual.

In 1791, enslaved people living on Hispaniola, the French-controlled half of Saint-Domingue, revolted. Though Louverture initially stayed out of the conflict, he was eventually spurred to action by both his Catholic religion and Enlightenment belief in equality. Given command of thousands of formerly enslaved rebels, the burgeoning military man soon emerged as one of the movement’s key leaders.

Afraid that the unrest would spread to its own colony of Jamaica—and eager to cause trouble for its European neighbor—the British government sent in troops to put down the rebellion. France, faced with the possibility of defeat, sought to secure the rebels’ loyalty by abolishing slavery across its colonies. Louverture, in turn, allied with his former enemy, fighting Spanish and British colonizers on behalf of France.

By the end of the century, notes David A. Bell for the Guardian, “[H]e had outmaneuvered a series of French officials, overcome black rivals, emerged as the colony’s uncontested strongman, and brought it to the brink of independence.” In doing so, Louverture attracted the attention of newly minted French leader Napoleon Bonaparte, who sent 20,000 French troops to reassert control over the island. Though the French campaign ultimately failed, Napoleon did manage to end his rival’s grasp on power. Promised safe passage to peace talks, Louverture instead found himself arrested and imprisoned in France, where he died in 1803—just one year before Haiti officially won its independence.

Black Spartacus draws on archival documents housed in Britain, France, the United States and Spain to present a comprehensive portrait of an oft-mischaracterized man. “Toussaint,” writes Hazareesingh, “embodied the many facets of Saint-Domingue’s revolution by confronting the dominant forces of his age—slavery, settler colonialism, imperial domination, racial hierarchy and European cultural supremacy—and bending them to his will.”

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johnark · 6 years ago

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I have just finished reading James Comey’s book, A Higher Loyalty. There are quite a few points I gleaned from this book. First, Comey makes it clear to the reader that he is a man of great integrity and unimpeachable character. Soon the book introduced the era of USA torture, murder and illegal, secret prisons. Back when it was going on with Cheney – Bush and we knew about it, I looked into who could have created a legal opinion justifying this activity. I couldn’t find any info along this line. Evil is evil. You can’t justify evil by saying “it’s not as evil as it could have been, or as evil as it was before or we needed it as a matter of national security.” Torture is illegal. It is immoral. It is in violation of USA law and the Geneva Accord, which we signed. There is no way it can be justified or legalized. After it was all over and Cheney - Bush were gone, some low-level names began to become known – Comey’s name never came up. Now, by his own admission, we know he was right in the thick of it. Integrity? Character? He participated in “legalizing” it. I put him right in there with Cheney – Bush. Another now prominent figure is in the thick of this by his own indirect admission. That is the now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He was Bush’s Legal Secretary during this time. This meant that all documents to and from the White House passed through him and many of the WH documents were created by him. He bragged under oath to the congress during his confirmation hearings that he was with President Bush this whole time and “went everywhere with President Bush.” So Kavanaugh was at the center of this illegal activity. It is no wonder that both former President Bush and Trump quickly invoked executive privilege when an attempt was made to acquire the about 102,000 documents in Kavanaugh’s ‘Bush file.’ The information in these documents would surely negatively expose all three of them - Bush, Cheney and Kavanaugh. Also, regarding Kavanaugh, I believe Christine Blasey Ford. In response to the accusations against him, Kavanaugh launched into an angry, aggressive, vitriolic, chaotic, tantrum brimming with rambling sarcasm, scorn and conspiracy theories. This appalling partisan rebuttal to the accusations brought by Ford was disgusting. Certainly not the conduct and temperament you would expect from a Justice of the Supreme Court. Incidentally, I also believed Anita Hill in the confirmation hearing of Clarence Thomas. The Thomas rebuttal to Hill’s testimony is eerily similar to the Kavanaugh diatribe. Thomas had Senator Orin Hatch’s angry, aggressive support. Kavanaugh had Senator Lindsey Graham’s angry aggressive support. I can’t help but wonder if the Thomas case was a template for the Kavanaugh case. Neither Kavanaugh nor Thomas should be on the Supreme Court. A supreme court judge should be above reproach in all things in addition to being a judicial intellect. OK. Back to this book. Judging from his��book, Comey holds most politicians in very low regard. Hillary among them, and further than that I think he is and was prejudiced against Hillary. He was involved in the Clinton ‘Whitewater’ investigations. He was involved with Kenneth Starr in his Clinton investigations. No convictions after years of hard work. He prosecuted Marc Rich, oil trader and big Clinton donor, and after years of work, convicted him of tax evasion and trading with Iran. Rich fled to Switzerland and was given safe haven. Later Comey and a team went to Switzerland thinking to bring Rich back to the USA. That fizzled. And just before Bill Clinton’s second term ended, Bill pardoned Rich. Comey then investigated the Clintons’ and Mar Rich’s ex-wife for a potential illegal contribution to the Clinton Library. Again after lots of work, no criminal liability was found. Years and years and years of hard work on Clinton related potential prosecutions, resulting in nothing – absolutely nothing. When Hillary was NY Senator and Comey was US Attorney for the Southern District in NY, Hillary refused to meet him. With this background, and there is even more that I don’t mention, I definitely feel that Comey was and is prejudiced against Hillary Clinton. Now I come to the salient point in all this ‘Clinton – Comey’ dialog. Comey states that on 6 July 2015, he received a referral from “the inspector general of the intelligence community” regarding Secretary Clinton’s possible mishandling of classified information while using her personal email system. Is there some reason why Comey doesn’t state in the book “referral from the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, Jim Clapper?” He mentions the agency and person like this later on in the book. Was this referral really from Jim Clapper, of from some GOP political faction? Anyway, four days later, on 10 July 2015 a criminal investigation was opened. This entire investigation, another year plus, of Comey investigating Clinton matters, is quite interesting with lots of very interesting points. I’ll make only one. In one email that was made public the dialog on the page appeared like this:

According to the media the FBI said this indicated that the material was classified as c for confidential. I would interpret this as item c of items a, b and c in that document. I have seen a lot of confidential material and that is not the way confidential material is identified. Anyway, I fast forward. On 1 November 2015 during the campaigning for president (Comey I), Comey disclosed to the media that Hillary was under investigation regarding possible misuse of classified information. It is not written in the FBI mission statement, but it is unwritten policy that the FBI will make no announcements or statements during an election that could in any way influence the election. This quickly became one of the main topics of debate, if it wasn’t already. Although the FBI knew their conclusion in May, they waited until 5 July 2016 (Comey II), four months before the election, to disclose that the one year investigation found nothing illegal. However, the intense political rhetoric on the topic continued. On 28 October 2016 (Comey III), 11 days before Election Day, Comey announced that he was reopening the “Clinton email investigation.” Political rhetoric exploded. On Sunday, 6 November 2016, with the election on Tuesday, 8 November 2016, Comey announced that he was closing the investigation, again, and for a final time, this time. For Comey, this was another year and a half investigating the Clintons and no conviction. However, I think that this time he delivered a blow to the Clintons that far surpassed any result that he could have achieved through the courts. He deprived Hillary of the office of President of the United States. I think he knew this as he did it. I think he believes that his actions tilted the scale for Trump. Hillary says that she thinks that. I also think Trump thinks that. Then why did Trump fire him? Trump thought Comey knowingly tipped the scale in his favor, that Comey was ‘one of the team.’ Observe how Trump actively tried to pull Comey closer into the ‘inner circle’ with several one on one meetings and a personal one on one dinner. That first meeting that Comey had with Trump in NY’s Trump Tower was very interesting. Trump really looked like he thought Comey was “one of the team.” Perhaps Comey knew at that time that a Trump presidency was a disaster, not worth getting the satisfaction of finally getting to whack the Clintons. However, I think that after Comey met Trump and personally discovered without question the type of person he had helped to put into the White House, he realized what a blunder it was. Trump demanded loyalty. Comey could not play the game, and in fact criticized Trump in front of Reince Priebus in the Oval Office on 8 February 2017. That was the end for Comey. Trump then ‘fired with malice’ the Director in such a way as to humiliate him. Comey got the news via TV when he was delivering a speech in LA. Trump intended to cut him loose with no security and no secure transport back to Washington. Andrew McCabe was elevated to Director with the firing and he authorized security and secure transport back to Washington – just as if Comey was still Director. This infuriated Trump and McCabe was soon out the door as well. And with more malice than with Comey. Trump fired McCabe on the day before he was to retire. Don’t cross Trump in any way or there will be dire consequences. The ego demands it. Rex Tillerson, former Secretary of State, remarked in a conference at the Pentagon that Trump was a moron. He learned of his dismissal on TV, as did Comey. He was replaced by Mike Pompeo, a guy who apparently has kissed the ring. H.R. McMaster, former NSA Director, remarked in a private dinner that Trump was an idiot. He was replaced by John Bolton, another guy who apparently has kissed the ring. Anyway, it is now obvious that only those who stroke his ego and never, never ever criticize him in any way will remain long in the inner circle.

On Page 213 in the book, the first mention of the Steele Report appeared in a conference with President Obama on 5 January 2017. I say ‘appeared’ because here is the way it was presented. Clapper explained to Obama that here was an unusual matter that needed to be brought to Mr. Trump’s attention: additional material – what would become commonly called “the Steele dossier” – that contained a variety of allegations about Trump.

Steele said that he shared his information with the FBI in the summer and fall of 2016, well before the election. Steele came to believe that the FBI was concentrating resources on the Clinton/email matter and giving little if any attention to his information and in fact that people in the FBI were blocking an investigation of the material rather than pursuing an investigation. He thought they were influenced by Rudy Giuliani, a Trump advisor at the time. At any point there was no real investigation of the material in the report. Comey certainly didn’t deal with this “dossier” with the same zeal he used on the “Clinton referral.” Comey continues in his book The material had been assembled by an individual considered reliable, a former allied intelligence officer, but had not been fully validated. The material included some wild stuff. Among that stuff were unconfirmed allegations that the president-elect had been engaged in unusual sexual activities with prostitutes in Russia while on a trip to Moscow in 2013, activities that at one point involved prostitutes urinating on a hotel bed in the presidential suite of the Ritz-Carlton that the Obamas had used while on a visit there. Another allegation was that these activities were filmed by Russian intelligence for the possible purpose of blackmail against the president-elect.

Many people will think that this is just too weird, too preposterous to be factual. Regrettably, I think this is just the kind of crude, obscene, perverted, vindictive activity that Trump would initiate. On 30 April 2011 Obama had ridiculed Trump at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. Trump has boycotted the event since then. Trump’s ego will allow no limits to his vindictiveness, even in a petty way. I also think that is why he is so determined to unravel anything and everything that he can that Obama accomplished as President. If the Ritz-Carlton event really happened, we can be certain that Putin has a video of it. Putin political opponents and former KGB agents verify that recording prominent foreigners in Russia is standard procedure for Putin. Just in case it can be useful at some time.

Back to the Steele Report, Jim Comey was assigned by James Clapper to present the material in the Steele Report to Trump in one of their one on ones. Trump really seems to like these one on ones. Trump took it all in with denials, of course, thinking that Comey was on the team. The ‘on the team’ status began to unravel with a one on one private dinner at the White House on 27 January 2017. Trump wanted Comey to commit to personal and FBI loyalty to him. Comey was well aware at this time who the man he was dealing with really is. The dinner consumes eight pages in the book and clearly reveals Comey’s opinion of Donald Trump. Comey said that there wasn’t a dinner conversation, not a lecture either, just Trump rambling, often repeating lies that he had told and that were proven as such. Trump said that he needed loyalty, that he expected loyalty. Comey said that he wasn’t on anybody’s side politically and could not be counted on in the traditional political sense. At one point Trump brought up what he called the “golden showers thing” (if he called it that, then he was certainly not naïve regarding this activity) and said that it bothered him if there was even a one percent chance that Melania thought it was true. Doesn’t this Trump statement tell us something? Trump’s “on the team” view of Comey certainly dimmed at this dinner. Then it was completely extinguished with Comey’s critical remark to Trump in the Oval Office on 8 February 2017.

Comey states in the Epilogue to the book: Donald Trump’s presidency threatens much of what is good in this nation. We all bear responsibility for the deeply flawed choices put before voters during the 2016 election (note, he includes Clinton here), and our country is paying a high price: this president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values. His leadership is transactional, ego driven, and about personal loyalty. We are fortunate some ethical leaders have chosen to serve and to stay at senior levels of government, but they cannot prevent all the damage from the forest fire that is the Trump presidency. Their task is to try to contain it.

There is something else in Comey’s book that is unrelated to the 2016 election and Donald Trump that is interesting and merits contemplation. That is the contrast between Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby and David Petraeus. Martha Stewart was suspected of insider trading. The FBI could not prove that, but did convict her of lying to the FBI. She was sentenced to five months in federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia which she served. Scooter Libby was Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff. Cheney – Bush were quite busy fabricating WMD information to support an illegal invasion of Iraq: in violation of the UN Charter and in violation of USA law. There were phony centrifuge claims, yellow cake in Niger, etc. They sent Joe Wilson to Niger; but he would not play along and reported there was no attempt by Iraq to buy nuclear material and that in fact Niger had none. The CIA (Valerie Plame) disputed the centrifuge fabrications. This surely infuriated Cheney and surely he disclosed (or ordered the disclosure) of Valerie as a covert CIA agent. This would accurately reflect his vindictive, revengeful nature. Disclosing the identity of a covert agent is a criminal offense. Joe and Valerie were married and this ended both careers. Obviously Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby fell on his sword for Cheney. After a three year investigation, Libby was convicted of lying to federal investigators, perjury and obstruction of justice. George Bush commuted his sentence and Trump pardoned him. And incidentally Cheney-Bush had Colin Powel go before the UN to “make the case for war” with Iraq with all the WMD material they had fabricated. Everyone who was observing the facts knew this was not flawed intelligence, but rather fabricated information. The USA media went along with it. The European media disputed all the claims almost immediately. In the USA only the AP, Reuters and the UN Atomic Energy Commission stuck to the facts which indicated that Iraq had no WMDs, was not trying to acquire them, and the entire country was in a shambles due to the sanctions. Now to David Petraeus of military fame in Iraq. He became Director of the CIA after Iraq and Afghanistan and it was in that role when he disclosed top secret information to his girlfriend and even allowed her to photograph some of it. He then lied repeatedly to the FBI about all of it. He was given a plea agreement. He admitted guilt and agreed to a $40,000 fine and probation for two years. Stewart – Libby – Petraeus, all guilty of lying to the FBI and two of them of much more. Only Stewart goes to prison. What’s the difference here? Along this train of thought, Oliver North could also be included.

Comey commented in his book about the size of Trumps hands. In this case this is certainly a crude, naughty, profane statement.

However, here in the Trump era this sort of commentary seems to be widely accepted. Rude, crude humor previously was confined to private conversations even that which is subtle. Now, thanks to The Donald, it seems to be the norm in all levels of media. Remember, this began on national TV during the campaign debates. Now we see it in a best seller book.

#ComeyTrumpClintonCheney #Comey*Trump #JohnArk20 #6Oct2018

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