How the CIA Turned Doctor Zhivago into a Propaganda Weapon Against the Soviet Union

in Books, History, Literature, Politics | April 9th, 2014

Humanity has long pondered the relative might of the pen and the sword. While one time-worn aphorism does grant the advantage to the pen, most of us have entertained doubts: the sword, metaphorically or literally, seems to have won out across an awfully wide swath of history. Still, the pen has scored some impressive victories, some even in living memory. Take, for example, the CIA’s recently revealed use of Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago as a propaganda weapon. Repressed in Pasternak’s native Russia, the book first appeared in Italy in 1957. The following year, the British suggested to America’s Central Intelligence Agency that the book stood a decent chance of winning hearts and minds behind the Iron Curtain — if, of course, they could get a few copies in there. A CIA memo sent across its own Soviet Russia Division subsequently pronounced Doctor Zhivago as possessed of “great propaganda value, not only for its intrinsic message and thought-provoking nature, but also for the circumstances of its publication. We have the opportunity to make Soviet citizens wonder what is wrong with their government, when a fine literary work by the man acknowledged to be the greatest living Russian writer is not even available in his own country in his own language for his own people to read.”

That evaluation comes from one of the over 130 declassified documents used by Peter Finn and Petra Couvée in their brand new history of this act of real-life literary espionage, The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book. You can read an in-depth article on some of the events involved in this operation — the CIA’s printing of both hardcover and miniature paperback Russian-language editions, the not-so-clandestine distribution of copies at 1958’s Brussels Universal and International Exposition, the CIA’s unexpected alliance with the Vatican in this mission, the inept probing by Soviet “researchers” — at the Washington Post.

You can also watch a CBS This Morning clip on the book just above. Dramatic though this “Zhivago Affair” sounds, it came as neither the first nor last American use of culture as a means of destabilizing the Soviet Union. We’ve even previously featured two others: secretly-funded abstract expressionist painting, and Louis Armstrong’s 1965 East Berlin and Budapest concerts. Cold War America may have had the sword, in the form of its vast nuclear arsenal, polished and ready, but clearly it retained a certain regard for the pen — and brush, and trumpet — as well.

How the CIA Secretly Funded Abstract Expressionism During the Cold War

Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Old Books Bound in Human Skin Found in Harvard Libraries (and Elsewhere in Boston)

in Books, History | April 6th, 2014

For at least a decade now, the “death of print” has seemed all but inevitable. Amidst all the nostalgia for printed literature, it’s easy to forget that mass-produced books and media, and a literate population, are fairly recent phenomena in human history. Books—whether printed or hand-copied—had a totemic status for thousands of years, given that they were kept under the protection of an educated elite, who were among the few able to read and interpret them. Even after the age of printing, books were rare and hard to come by, largely too expensive for most people to afford until the advent of paperbacks.

A grisly reminder of the book’s status as an almost magical object surfaced in Harvard’s rare book collection a few years ago. In 2006, librarians discovered at least three volumes bound in human skin—and as travel site Roadtrippers reports, “in one case, skin harvested from a man who was flayed alive.” Gruesome as all this seems, the practice of skin-binding was apparently not the sole province of serial killers:

As it turns out, the practice of using human skin to bind books was actually pretty popular during the 17th century. It’s referred to as Anthropodermic bibliopegy and proved pretty common when it came to anatomical textbooks. Medical professionals would often use the flesh of cadavers they’d dissected during their research.

The book supposedly made of flayed skin is a Spanish law text from the seventeenth century titled Practicarum quaestionum circa leges regias (above). Despite an inscription naming the deceased and claiming his skin as the binding, this volume has actually just been identified as sheepskin—according to a Harvard Law Library blog post from yesterday—“thanks to a technique for identifying proteins that was developed in the last twenty years.” Speculates the Law Library post:

Perhaps before it arrived at HLS [Harvard Law School] in 1946, the book was bound in a different binding at some point in its history. Or perhaps the inscription was simply the product of someone’s macabre imagination.

Nevertheless, other human skin-bound books exist—as far as librarians and scientists can determine. Former director of libraries for the University of Kentucky Lawrence S. Thompson claims that the practice dates as far back as a 13th century French Bible and became more common in the 16th and 17th centuries. A 1933 Crimson article mentioned another skin-bound book in a collection of miniature books, including this graphic detail: “removal of 20 square inches of skin from his back failed to impair the health of its donor, who is still alive and in the best of condition.”

Another skin-bound volume, which Thompson calls “the most famous of all anthropodermic bindings,” resides across the river from Harvard at independent library the Boston Athenaeum. Called The Highwayman: Narrative of the Life of James Allen alias George Walton (above), the book is a memoir of the titular outlaw. The author, reports the Crimson, “was impressed by the courage of a man whom he once attacked, and when Walton was facing execution, he asked to have his memoir bound in his own skin and presented to the brave man.” Thumb through (so to speak) a digital copy of Walton’s 1837 memoir above, and imagine being the recipient of such a gift.

via Roadtrippers

How a Book Thief Forged a Rare Edition of Galileo’s Scientific Work, and Almost Pulled it Off

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Batgirl Fights for Equal Pay in a 1960s Television Ad Supporting The Equal Pay Act

in History, Politics, Television | April 1st, 2014

Featured on the Emily’s List Facebook Page today is this “PSA from the 1960s,” where “Batgirl advocates for equal pay while saving Batman and Robin.” Emily’s List, a PAC aiming to put more pro-choice Democrat female candidates into political office, goes on to note, “Over 50 years ago, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, a law designed to end wage discrimination against women. Unfortunately, the fight’s still got many rounds left.”

Indeed, a 2008 Census Bureau report shows that women’s median annual earnings were 77.5% of men’s earnings, and efforts to address that imbalance with The Paycheck Fairness Act have been filibustered successfully by Republicans in the Senate. Although President Obama supports the measure, data shows women aren’t faring well financially in the Obama White House either. Where’s Batgirl when we need her?

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by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Eleanor Roosevelt’s Durable Wisdom on Curiosity, Empathy, Education & Responding to Criticism

in Education, History, Life, Politics | April 1st, 2014

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was a prolific columnist and writer, with an impressive list of clips produced both during FDR’s tenure in the White House and afterwards. George Washington University’s Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project tallies up her output: 8,000 columns, 580 articles, 27 books, and 100,000 letters (not to mention speeches and appearances). Many of those columns and articles can be found on their website.

Their archive offers every one of Roosevelt’s “My Day” columns, which ran through United Features Syndicate from 1936–1962. These short pieces acted like a daily diary, chronicling Roosevelt’s travels, the books she read, the people she visited, her evolving political philosophy, and, occasionally, her reflections on such topics as education, empathy, apathy, friendship, stress, and the scourge of excessive mail (“I love my personal letters and I am really deeply interested in much of my mail, but when I see it in a mass I would sometimes like to run away! I just closed my eyes in this case and went to bed!”)

The “My Day” archive is a little difficult to navigate—you have to browse by year, or search by keyword—but the archive’s short list of selected longer articles is a bit simpler to survey. Some of my favorites:

“In Defense of Curiosity” (Saturday Evening Post, 1935): Roosevelt often drew fire for her insatiable interest in all areas of national life—a characteristic that people thought of as unladylike. This article argues that women, too, should be curious, and that curiosity is the basis for happiness, imagination, and empathy.

“How to Take Criticism” (Ladies Home Journal, 1944): Roosevelt had a lot of haters. This longer piece mulls over the different types of criticism that she received during her public career, and asks how one should distinguish between worthy and unworthy critiques.

“Building Character” (The Parent’s Magazine, 1931): An editorial on the importance of providing children with challenges, clearly meant to reassure parents worried about the effects of the Depression on their kids.

“Good Citizenship: The Purpose of Education” (Pictorial Review, 1930): Much of this piece is about the importance of fair compensation for good teachers. “There are many inadequate teachers today,” Roosevelt wrote. “Perhaps our standards should be higher, but they cannot be until we learn to value and understand the function of the teacher in our midst. While we have put much money in buildings and laboratories and gymnasiums, we have forgotten that they are but the shell, and will never live and create a vital spark in the minds and hearts of our youth unless some teacher furnishes the inspiration. A child responds naturally to high ideals, and we are all of us creatures of habit.”

New York Public Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Download and Use

in History, Maps, Technology | March 31st, 2014

When I was a kid, my father brought home from I know not where an enormous collection of National Geographic magazines spanning the years 1917 to 1985. I found, tucked in almost every issue, one of the magazine’s gorgeous maps—of the Moon, St. Petersburg, the Himalayas, Eastern Europe’s ever-shifting boundaries. I became a cartography enthusiast and geographical sponge, poring over them for years just for the sheer enjoyment of it, a pleasure that remains with me today. Whether you’re like me and simply love the imaginative exercise of tracing a map’s lines and contours and absorbing information, or you love to do that and you get paid for it, you’ll find innumerable ways to spend your time on the new Open Access Maps project at the New York Public Library. The NYPL announces the release with the explanation below:

The Lionel Pincus & Princess Firyal Map Division is very proud to announce the release of more than 20,000 cartographic works as high resolution downloads. We believe these maps have no known US copyright restrictions.* To the extent that some jurisdictions grant NYPL an additional copyright in the digital reproductions of these maps, NYPL is distributing these images under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. The maps can be viewed through the New York Public Library’s Digital Collections page, and downloaded (!), through the Map Warper.

What does this mean? Simply put, “it means you can have the maps, all of them if you want, for free, in high resolution.” Maps like that above, of New York’s Central Park, issued in 1863, ten years before Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux completed their historic re-design.

Can you—as I did with my neatly folded, yellowing archive—have all the maps in full-color print? Well, no, unless you’re prepared to bear the cost in ink and paper and have some specialized printing equipment that can render each map in its original dimensions. But you can access something worlds away from what I could have imagined—a digital enhancement technology called “warping,” also known as “georectification.”

This, explains the NYPL, “is the process where digital images of maps are stretched, placing the maps themselves into their geographic context, rendered either on the website or with tools such as Google Earth.” For example, below see a “warping” of the 1916 Redraft of the 1660 “Castello Plan” for then-New Amsterdam over a current-day Google Earth image of lower Manhattan (and note how much the island has been expanded past its 17th century shores). The “warping” technology is open access, meaning that “anybody with a computer can create an account, log in, and begin warping and tracing maps.” User contributions remain, “a la Wikipedia,” and add “one more piece to this new historical geographic data model.”

The “warper” is a special feature that helps place historical maps in a modern visual field, but it in no way ruins the enjoyment of those maps as archival pieces or art objects. You can see cartographer John Wolcott Adams original 1916 Castello Plan redraft below, and visit NYPL’s Digital Collections for a high resolution image, fully zoomable and, yes, printable. For more on the incredible warping technology NYPL makes available to us, see this extended blog post, “Unbinding the Atlas: Working with Digital Maps.” Over ten thousand of the collection’s maps are of New York and New Jersey, dating from 1852 to 1922, including property, zoning, and topographic maps. In addition, over one thousand of the maps depict Mid-Atlantic cities from the 16th to the 19th centuries, and over 700 are topographic maps of the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1877 and 1914. That should be enough to keep any amateur or professional map-lover busy for a good long while. Start digging into the maps here.

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 12 ) |

Thomas Edison & His Trusty Kinetoscope Create the First Movie Filmed In The US (c. 1889)

in Film, History | March 25th, 2014

Thomas Edison is undoubtedly America’s best-known inventor. Nicknamed “The Wizard of Menlo Park” for his prolific creativity, Edison amassed a whopping 1093 patents throughout his lifetime. His most important inventions, such as the incandescent light bulb and the phonograph, were not merely revolutionary in and of themselves: they led directly to the establishment of vast industries, such as power utilities and the music business. It is one of his lesser known inventions, however, that led to the production of the first film shot in the United States, which you can view above.

The film, called Monkeyshines, No. 1, was recorded at some point between June 1889 and November 1890. Its creation is the work of William Dickson, an employee of Edison’s, who had been in charge of developing the inventor’s idea for a new film-viewing device. The machine that Edison had conceived and Dickson engineered was the Kinetoscope: a large box that housed a system that quickly moved a strip of film over a light source. Users watched the film whiz by from a hole in the top of the box, and by using sequential images, like those in a flip-book, the Kinetoscope gave the impression of movement.

In the film, which Dickson and another Edison employee named William Heise created, a blurry outline of an Edison labs employee moves about, seemingly dancing. The above clip contains both Monkeyshines, No. 1, and its sequel, apparently filmed to conduct further equipment tests, known as Monkeyshines, No. 2. HD video, this is not. Despite having the honor of being the first films to be shot in the US, the Monkeyshines series has garnered an unenthusiastic reaction from present-day critics: the original received a rating of 5.5/10 stars at IMDB. The sequel? A 5.4.

Ilia Blinderman is a Montreal-based culture and science writer. Follow him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writing at the Huffington Post.

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by Ilia Blinderman | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Titanic: The Nazis Create a Mega-Budget Propaganda Film About the Ill-Fated Ship … and Then Banned It (1943)

in Film, History | March 24th, 2014

James Cameron’s Titanic appeared in 1997 as the most expensive film ever made. Werner Klingler and Herbert Selpin’s Titanic appeared in 1943 as the most expensive German film ever made. And the two share even more than their budgets’ record-breaking status, their famously “unsinkable” subject, and their title in common: both endured troubled productions, both feature a late scene where their male hero convinces his lover to just get on a lifeboat already, and both set out to make strong statements indeed. The later, American Titanic has much to say about the cinematic triumph of late-20th-century visual effects, whereas the earlier, German Titanic takes a more negative tack, mounting an indictment of the supposedly savage avarice and thorough corruption of that country’s bitter wartime enemy, Great Britain. In its ill-fated titular ship, the huge-scale propaganda film found what must have seemed like the perfectly opulent illustration of its argument.

But things worked out no better for this Titanic than for the actual Titanic — and indeed, for Germany in the Second World War. “Never shown in Nazi Germany, its director was found hanged by his own braces and is suspected of having been murdered by the Gestapo,” writes David Gerrie in the Daily Mail. “And the ship that took the role of the Titanic, the Cap Arcona, was later sunk with 5,000 concentration camp prisoners on board, a vastly greater loss of life than the 1,517 who died in the Titanic disaster.” For all the time, energy, and money the regime piled into it, the film turned out “far from the masterpiece [Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph] Goebbels had waited two years to see. Fearing Nazi citizens under attack by Allied bombers would be frightened by the sinking, he banned its release in Germany.” Just as Cameron’s Titanic shocked the industry-watchers who had solemnly predicted a megaflop by creating one of the most successful movies of all time, Klingler and Selpin’s Titanic must have given the Nazis quite a start when it emerged as a testament not to Britain’s hubris, but, inadvertently, to their own.

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Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Electric Photo of Nikola Tesla, 1899

in History | March 21st, 2014

Quite the shot: Nikola Tesla appears in a multiple-exposure photo in 1899, while a Tesla coil discharges millions of volts.

Want to see more old sparks flying? Here we have an image of Mark Twain, the literary giant, tinkering in More Tesla’s laboratory in 1894.

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by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

How the CIA Turned Doctor Zhivago into a Propaganda Weapon Against the Soviet Union

Old Books Bound in Human Skin Found in Harvard Libraries (and Elsewhere in Boston)

Batgirl Fights for Equal Pay in a 1960s Television Ad Supporting The Equal Pay Act

Eleanor Roosevelt’s Durable Wisdom on Curiosity, Empathy, Education & Responding to Criticism

New York Public Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Download and Use

Thomas Edison & His Trusty Kinetoscope Create the First Movie Filmed In The US (c. 1889)

Titanic: The Nazis Create a Mega-Budget Propaganda Film About the Ill-Fated Ship … and Then Banned It (1943)

Electric Photo of Nikola Tesla, 1899

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