Pittsburgh to Publish a Panorama of 19th Century Printed Views of the City

Historical print and antique map expert Christopher W. Lane has put together a stunning collection of reproductions of various views of the Pittsburgh, PA from books, magazines, illustrated newspapers, lithographs, and other types of material from the 19th century. A Panorama of Pittsburgh: Nineteenth-Century Printed Views offers 140 full-color illustrations, and is published in conjunction with the Frick Art and Historical Center in Pittsburgh. The book offers various views of Pittsburgh, from an idyllic little village on a confluence of rivers in 1817, to the Great Conflagration in April, 1845 where over 1,000 houses burned to the ground. We see the development of Pittsburgh as an industrial powerhouse and how this was depicted in everything from fine art to advertising materials.

2008 is the 250th anniversary of the founding of Pittsburgh in 1758. This book is a fitting tribute, and belongs on the shelf next to the classic book University of Pittsburgh Press published originally in 1990, Arthur G. Smith’s Pittsburgh Then and Now. Lane’s book is an instant classic as he provides visual and written examples of prints, and he has provided here the most comprehensive listing of depictions of Pittsburgh ever assembled.

Prometheus Books to publish rare Mark Twain collection

S.T. Joshi has done it again. He’s come up with an incredible collection of uncommon writings by Mark Twain in What Is Man? And Other Irreverent Essays. As an editor and literary sleuth Joshi, an independent scholar who has edited collections of great American writers such as H.L. Mencken and H.P. Lovecraft, among others, has weeded out key writings by Twain on religion. Reminiscent of the French Enlightenment writer Voltaire, Twain had an unbounded contempt for religious hypocrisy and obstructionism. He peppered his essays with a razor sharp satirical wit, and his writing is characteristically sardonic and humorous in these essays.

Many of the essays in this book have not been readily available before, and Joshi provides helpful annotations to explain various historical, literary and religious references. The main essay in the book is What Is Man? (1906), a long philosophical dialogue about the nature of religion, where Twain asserts that altruism does not exist, that every human action is the product of outside influences, and we help others primarily as a means to make ourselves comfortable. Twain condemns religious exclusivity, the dreadful treatment of animals by a supposedly moral human race, and what he calls the hypocritical Christian thirst for money. Twain pulls no punches here, as he did in the posthumous collection of his writings, Letters from the Earth.

Although Twain maintained until the end of his life that he believed in God, he expressed a deep skepticism toward such religious beliefs as “special Providence” (God’s interference in the affairs of individuals), the concept of hell, the religious basis of morality, and the divine inspiration of the Bible. He had serious concerns about central religious tenants, and it’s clear that these weighed on his mind for much of his life. Twain’s family was uncomfortable with some of his writings (for instance, Letters from the Earth was not published until 1962, well after his death in 1910), and editor Joshi and Prometheus Books have done readers a great service by bringing Twain’s obscure but lively philosophical writings on religion to a wider audience.

There are many surprises to be had in any Twain collection, he was an undisputed master of many styles of writing, and Joshi provides a comprehensive introduction that elucidates Twain’s shifting attitudes towards religion in general. What we have here is a true American original, Mark Twain, thought by many to be the Father of American Literature, taking a straight aim at the multifarious claims of religion – metaphysical, moral and political – and exposing what he saw as their fallacies and deliberate obscurantism.



.

Tennessee revisits its Vernacular Architecture series with a powerhouse Victorian Studies book

Anna Vemer Andrzejewski is an assistant professor of art history at University of Wisconsin at Madison and she had written an unusual and innovative book about how surveillance played a key role in the building of prisons in 19th century America, and how this dynamic spilled over into the construction of post offices, factories, offices, and even houses. Building Power: Architecture and Surveillance in Victorian America shows how surveillance influenced a diverse array of the built environment in this country from roughly 1865 to 1918. She goes so far to say that surveillance not only motivated a range of common buildings but also was and is a defining practice of modernism.

French philosopher Michel Foucault is the author of Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, and the classic Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, and his ideas are what informs Andrzejewski’s arguments. Foucault wrote extensively about the idea of ever-present gaze and control, and the kind of insidious power that “reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives.” The argument is complex and way too multilayered to paraphrase here, to say nothing of the fact that it’s been translated from the French, but Foucault also goes back to English political philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s central idea of the Panopticon, that is, a building, as a prison, hospital, library, or the like, so arranged that all parts of the interior are visible from a single point.

Andrzejewski’s title and the very concept of Building Power is an interesting play on words, a reference to Foucault’s panoptic theory. Even so, she builds and expands on Foucault’s creative arguments and illustrates how diverse American spaces were built with close scrutiny in mind in Victorian America, and how this complicated landscape influenced all aspects of everyday life and the principles of modernism. The book is illustrated with 80 photographs, and, according to architectural historian Ken Breisch from the University of Southern California, Andrzejewski’s “comparative method is original and yields new insight into the widespread role of surveillance in American life.”