"The History of the Jews" by Paul Johnson (1987)

"Hence when the ghetto walls fell, and the Jews walked out into freedom, they found they were entering a new, less tangible but equally hostile ghetto of suspicion.  They had exchanged ancient disabilities for modern anti-Semitism."

Paul Johnson is an English historian and politician.  He's known for his conservative views.  Many years ago I also read his Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830.

The History of the Jews, as you might expect, starts in antiquity and ends in the late 80s, when this book was published.  It's divided into seven sections, which are: Israelites, Judaism, Cathedocracy, Ghetto, Emancipation, Holocaust and Zion.  Zion, which closes the book, describes how the state of Israel came to be.

I was familiar with most of the theology, thinkers and historical incidents presented in this book, though there were a couple surprises.  If you've taken a course (or read a book) on the development of religion in the ancient world you'll probably feel the same way.  I didn't find much of interest in this book until the last two chapters, these dealing with the Jewish dilemma during and after World War II.

In terms of style I have nothing bad to say about Paul Johnson.  He can be plodding at times, but he states his arguments clearly and offers a lot of supporting evidence.  This was even more the case in The Birth of the Modern, which I found to be the more insightful of the two books.

My one complaint about this treatment of Jewish history is that it felt like it needed another chapter: Diaspora.  Outlining the history of Jews in lands beyond the Middle East, the United States and Europe would have added another dimension to discussions of both the Holocaust and Israel, and would have also made the book as a whole feel more relevant to a wider number of readers.  To some extent the author does do this in the Zion chapter, but his analyses of more remote Jewish communities are very brief, and obscured by a more statistical approach to the subject.

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"Crow Killer" by Raymond W. Thorp and Robert Bunker (1969)

"It was clear from the manner in which his guard eyed Johnson that he had never counted coup.  He fingered his long knife lovingly, in an almost desperate desire to be the warrior who might take the scalp of the Crow Killer."

This is the book that inspired the movie Jeremiah Johnson.  There is little biographical information available on the authors.

Jeremiah was, by the way, his middle name.  In real life he was a Mountain Man known as John Johnson (or John Johnston).  He headed west toward the Rockies before the Civil War, took a member of the Flathead tribe to wife, returned home from a trapping expedition to find her murdered by the Crow, and spent years wreaking vengeance upon the Crow for their transgression.  We are fairly sure that most of this really happened, though in the case of John Johns(t)on it's hard to separate myth from fact.

He earned the nickname "Liver-Eating" from his practice of removing the livers of his Crow enemies and eating them raw.  Several of his acquaintances testified to this practice, and given the times and places Johnson inhabited I'm confident that the stories are true.  He was a man living on the very edge of civilization, and the details of his exploits aren't always pleasant.

This said, I really enjoyed Crow Killer, and it forms an excellent companion to the movie it inspired.  It reads like something Robert Louis Stevenson might have written, and the points at which its narrative intersects with history will be of great interest to anyone versed in the Wild West.

Oh, and anyone who enjoyed The Revenant would probably also like this book.  Some of Johnson's exploits and associates seem to have influenced that movie, too.

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