Product Description

At a time when the West seems ever more eager to call on military aggression as a means of securing international peace, Nicholson Baker's provocative narrative exploring the political misjudgements and personal biases that gave birth to the terrifying consequences of the Second World War could not be more pertinent. With original and controversial insights brought about by meticulous research, Human Smoke re-evaluates the political turning points that led up to war, challenging some of the treasured myths we hold about how war came about and how atrocities like the Holocaust were able to happen. Baker reminds us, for instance, not to forget that it was thanks in great part to Churchill and England that Mussolini ascended to power so quickly, and that, before leading the United States against Nazi Germany, a young FDR spent much of his time lobbying for a restriction in the number of Jews admitted to Harvard. Conversely, Human Smoke also reminds us of those who had the foresight to anticipate the coming bloodshed and the courage to oppose the tide of history, as Gandhi demonstrated when he made his symbolic walk to the ocean.Praised by critics and readers alike for his gifted writing and exquisitely observant eye, Baker offers a combination of sweeping narrative history and a series of finely delineated vignettes of the individuals and moments that shaped history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #130471 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 800 pages

About the Author
Nicholson Baker was born in 1957 and attended the Eastman School of Music and Haverford College. He is the author of several novels, including The Mezzanine, Vox and The Fermata, and four works of non fiction, U and I, The Size of Thoughts, Double Fold (winner of the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award), and Human Smoke. He lives in Maine.

Customer Reviews

Bafflingly incoherent and disappointing
I am a huge Nicholson Baker fan, and sharing some of his political outlook I was greatly amused when he wrote a novel about a man plotting to assassinate George W. Bush. I saw this book in a special paperback edition in a bookshop and bought it eagerly, hoping to find out what interesting perspective he might have to bring to the Second World War.

I was surprised to discover, first of all, that Baker seems to be basically in agreement with many of the pacifists of the period, in particular those who believed that bad as the Third Reich was, it was immoral and wrong to put up any kind of fight against it. I find this position difficult to sympathise with or even to comprehend, but what's worse is that some demon in Baker's psyche has prevented him from offering any sort of sustained argument in its favour.

This book doesn't present any argument at all. Nor is it a 'sweeping narrative history'. It's in fact a highly selective annal of the period, in which Baker has chosen incidents that reflect what he seems to think was something very close to a moral equivalence between the Allies and the Axis. He reinforces this impression by using weasel words - for example, when he presents a historical figure whom he finds sympathetic, he records their words without comment, but when it's someone he dislikes or despises he throws in a few eptithets to make them seem more malevolent. So Churchill's scientific advisor Frederick Lindemann is gratuitously described as 'dour and querulous', whereas Victor Klemperer - who on the evidence of his diary was equally dour and querulous, albeit with more reason to be so - is not described as anything. With Churchill himself, we are informed that he owned thousands of toy soldiers and was a physically reckless little boy. Big deal. There is also a rather disingenuous attempt to portray Churchill as an anti-Semite; even if Churchill shared the casual, low-level anti-Semitism of many people of his class and era, it was nothing compared to Hitler's. There seems to be no overall shape to the book, other than mere chronological order of event.

The lack of frame and structure (apart from Baker's mere opinions peeking through here and there) mean that the book reads more like the research material for a book Baker couldn't or didn't want to write. Comments made by politicians in public speeches are presented as if they were statements of sincere private principle, as opposed to political expediency. Newspaper accounts (especially from the New York Times) are accepted without reservation. Self-evidently bad arguments by pacifists are never questioned for a second. They can't be, because Baker's whole method is not about him putting forward an argument: he just presents this evidence as if the conclusion is inescapable. Which it isn't.

I just don't understand how a writer as intelligent and meticulous as Nicholson Baker can have written such a shoddy, sloppy, stupid book. I will keep reading his stuff, but this is an embarrassing blot in a remarkable career.

A fascinating read but ultimately unsatisfying
Human Smoke attracted a great deal of interest when it was published earlier this year, with controversy in abundance. In essence, the book is seen by many as pacifist, and appears to present both sides in the Second World War as having a moral equivalence, holding equal disdain for the human cost of the terrible conflict they provoked.

The book consists of a compilation of hundreds of first-hand quotations, extracts from papers and articles, accounts of conversations, diary extracts and numerous other detailed sources. These all appear in sequential order and provide a day by day account of the development of the war from the perspective of various world nations. These appear at first to be largely unedited, in "raw" form, but of course, the selection was made by Nicholson Baker, and we read nothing in the book about his selection criteria.

However, it soon becomes apparent that one of his objectives is to show the huge resistance to joining in the conflict, particularly in America, and how this resistance was eventually suppressed. Baker shows that there was a huge concern for European Jewry and the starving people of Europe, with Americans digging deep into their pockets to support relief operations. However, there was strong governmental and labour movement resistance to changing immigration quotas to allow more Jews to escape to America from German persecution. Baker quotes the example of one family who eventually managed to enter America after travelling from Berlin via Moscow, Japan, Costa Rica, Panama and Chile. They were the lucky ones, others of their ilk being deported from Germany to entirely infeasible destinations where they were to perish as stateless persons.

America had a strong anti-war and anti-draft movement which was eventually suppressed by legal measures, with many supporters serving prison terms because of their opposition to American involvement in the war. Pacifist bravery was considerable, and anyone reading the book cannot but be impressed by Quaker peace and relief efforts which went right to the heart of governments on both sides of the Atlantic. However, the national governments of the Allies were equally determined to avoid war and Baker shows strenuous British efforts to avoid war finally collapsing and Winston Churchill being appointed as Prime Minister to lead the country through the terrible times ahead of them.

The British generally believe that America was slow to enter the war, but Baker shows the arguments on both sides and the eventual development of the conviction that American interests were so threatened by non-involvement that action had to be taken. I had not realised the extent to which America had allied with China against Japan before the war, and Baker shows how Japan felt greatly threatened by American military supplied to China in order to equip them against the Japanese. This provides useful context in understanding the eventual bombing of Pearl Harbour.

Baker pays much attention to the bombing campaigns of both Germany and Britain. At the start of the war an opinion poll in Britain showed almost even numbers for and against bombing civilian populations in Germany. Churchill and his government clearly saw bombing as an attempt to bring about the collapse of the Nazi regime as the population rose up against the horrors brought upon them by German expansion. However, early bombing raids were not as effective as they had hoped, and when their effects were also minimised by German propaganda reports, the uprising did not occur.

The Germans retaliated with severe bombing raids on London and Coventry, and within no time, both sides were locked into an escalation of the bombing campaign which wreaked terrible death and destruction on all sides. However, these were the weapons of the time, and opting out on the part of one side, would surely have only led to the other side destroying their opposition without challenge. I personally find it easy to go along with Winston Churchill who on observing the blitz of London, declared, "they have sown the wind, they shall reap the whirl-wind".

So many questions are left hanging. In taking a neutral position between the two sides, has Baker really taken account of the awesomely horrific findings in the concentration camps, the mega-numbers of Jews, Slavs and minorities slaughtered by the Nazi regime? In the light of what we now know, would the annihilation of the Jewish race from all Nazi-won territories including Great Britain have been an acceptable trade for peace in the USA?

On the plus side, this book is a fascinating read, providing much insight into the thinking of the times. In quoting Churchill so extensively, I get the impression that Baker seeks to show his flaws and to suggest personality shortcomings in his aggressive determination to annihilate Germany. Many readers will however see it as little short of miraculous in these days of political expediency that one man was able to steel the nation at a time when Britain stood alone before Hitler and defeat seemed such a strong probability.

Nicholson Baker presents this huge amount of material with little editorial comment of his own, other than a final afterword or a mere two pages, in which he declares that the American pacifists were right to resist American involvement in the war. But his arguments are not developed beyond this simple statement and his readers are left floundering as to the reasons for his stance. I get the impression that Nicholson Baker feels that his hundreds of quotations are polemic enough to justify taking a pacifist position on the war, but this reader at least, on reading these countless personal accounts, gave thanks for the steely determination of the Allies to prevail over their enemies.

The winners write the history books
I found this book fascinating and was disappointed at the shrill criticisms it received. This review will concentrate on why the book has been so poorly received and why I found the criticisms unjustified. If you want an introduction to what the book is about, it would be better to start with the other reviews.

It is easy to underestimate how much postwar circumstances influence the verdict on a war. In different circumstances America's leaders could have been prosecuted as war criminals for their actions in Vietnam, just like Milosevic and Karadic. That may sound unbelievable but it is a quote from Robert Macnamara (Secretary of State at the time) talking about himself.

We won WWII, we wrote the history books, and we all like to believe it was a conflict of moral simplicity. We need books like this that challenge our complacency. I believe it is because our views are so deeply ingrained that some people are attacking this book.

I agree with one of the criticisms. If you want Nicholson to argue his case in the usual way, you will be disappointed. He doesn't argue at all. Most of the book comprises quotations and reports of quotations. He only writes in his own voice for a few sentences at the very end. As has been pointed out, this isn't historical analysis and can never prove anything. But it does have an advantage. He lets the evidence speak for itself. This means anyone open-minded can find the book interesting regardless of their viewpoint.

A good example is the quotes of Gandhi's comments. Some people will read these as virtuous and uplifting. Others will see them as proof that Gandhi was a fool and the pacifits were mad. Nicholson makes no comment, he merely gives us the quotes.

If you aren't satisfied with this, and prefer a book that debates the subject using historical analysis, Buchanan's "Churchill, Hitler and the unnecessary war" is a good choice.

I wish the book's detractors had said, "That's interesting, there is a lot I didn't know in this book, it highlighted some things that aren't usually admitted, and showed that the picture is murkier than most of us appreciate. But I disagree with his conclusion. I still think Churchill was mostly justified and I won't change my view." Sadly, that's not what the reviewers have said.

One reviewer accuses Nicholson of selective commentary. But the total amount of commentary in the entire book is very close to zero. The criticisms of Churchill are quotes from people who knew him. Nicolson is perfectly entitled to gather such quotations. There are already plenty of books praising Churchill. We rarely hear the negative comments and we should hear them. It is healthy to see the darker side of the man we recently voted the greatest Briton of all time. In any case the book does contain a lot of praise for Churchill.

One reviewer, while plugging his own book on the war, gives this attack: "from the heights of superior morality" Nicholson argues for moral equivalence between the allies and the nazis. The implication is clear: I know better; I know that we were angels and the enemy were devils.

Excuse me, who is being morally superior, Nicholson or the reviewer?

In any case the criticism is based on a misreading. The book suggests that the picture is murkier than people often think. Nowhere does it assert moral equivalence.