HISTORY

09-4-0395

Cockcroft, James D., ed. Salvador Allende Reader. Hoboken, N.J.: Ocean Press, 2000. 300 pp. Assisted by Jane Carolina Channing. Trans. from Spanish by Moises Espinoza and Nancy Nuñez. ISBN 1-876175-24-9, $19.95 (pb).

The moment may have arrived when General Augusto Pinochet will finally be forced to testify regarding the overthrow of the regime of President Salvador Allende. Most propitious it is, therefore, that the voice of the overthrown president has been revived in this timely and unprecedented collection in English of 20 of Allende’s speeches, writings, and interviews.

With the exception of one item, these cover the period from his election day interview (4 September 1970) on Canadian radio to his final radio address in Santiago on 11 September 1973—"In these moments the planes are flying overhead. They may riddle us with bullets. But know that we are here." From 1939 there is a passionate prologue by the young Dr. Allende to a government report on health and medicine in Chile as he served as minister of health in the Popular Front government of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda.

The collection further includes his victory speech the day after his election, his inaugural address on 5 November, his first annual message to Congress on 21 May 1971, and his UN address on 4 December 1972. Interspersed with these are pronouncements on agrarian reform, the role of the armed forces, and trade and development. There are also gracious comments on Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda and affectionate words for Fidel Castro.

The usefulness of this collection is further enhanced by a concise introductory political biography of Allende, a chronology of his life and of Chilean events from 1962 to 1975, and the program of the Popular Unity alliance for the 1970 presidential campaign.

—Edward A. Riedinger
Ohio State University Libraries

09-4-0396

Dawkins, Marvin P. and Kinloch, Graham C. African American Golfers during the Jim Crow Era. Westport, Conn.: Greewood/Praeger, 2000. 200 pp. ISBN 0-275-93940-6, $49.95.

This is a fascinating book—crammed with facts and written in a no-nonsense style. Not only do the authors cover the topic implied by the title, but they also touch on U.S. and golf history in general. They also relate golf to developments in other sports.

The book works on two levels: It can be read as a history for the casual reader or used as a reference for the scholar. The authors take readers from the beginning of black golf right through the court cases that brought desegregation to the links. Along the way readers learn about the black pioneers who led the way as well as some white men who helped them. Black elite golfers, like their white counterparts, refused to allow women in their clubs, so black women golfers did what white women golfers had done—they started their own clubs. As a golf historian, I was aware that it was a dentist who invented the tee. Here I learned for the first time that it was a black dentist. Most readers will know about Joe Louis as a world champion boxer. This book devotes a whole chapter to Louis the golfer. Not only was he a good player, but he also was instrumental in bringing black golf to where it is today.

Another nice touch is interviews with some of the old black golfers who were on the cutting edge. I hope the authors are currently documenting the Tiger Woods era. It would make a great sequel.

—Douglas A. Lonnstrom
Siena College

09-4-0397

Kelley, Robin D. G. and Lewis, Earl, eds. To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000. 784 pp. ISBN 0-19-513945-3, $35.00.

Anyone enamored with history will find this compendium riveting to the very end. This publication has an excellent chance to become required supplementary reading in a course on African- American history when used with John Hope Franklin’s From Slavery to Freedom (1947). The book’s supplementary role reflects its general layout. Each of the 11 chapters in the chronology of African-American history is by a historian who has published previously on what he or she has written for the text. The chapters are quite extensive, but the reading is exciting and holds the reader’s attention. Although there is some repetition in the early chapters, the writers’ energy and ability to argue persuasively overshadow this minor flaw. In addition, that large context—that larger world—into which the African-American story is told strengthens the supplementary role of the book.

That larger world is evident with the first and second chapters, by Colin A. Palmer and Peter R. Wood. Slavery as an institution impacting the Americas is presented on a historical continuum in which the reader is able to see the interconnectedness of those enslaved, the brutal nature of the institution of slavery, and the interdependence of both the enslaved and the enslavers. The story that is told is of an African people in the process of humanizing the Americas. That larger context is really evident in all the chapters, but with the above two and Chapter 9, "We Changed the World: 1945-1970," it is gripping.

This is a book that we all can learn from, and it is appropriate reading for high school through college. As was stated so well in the text, "If there is one thing we have learned from this book, it is that the problems facing African Americans are not simply outgrowths of a crisis in black America. They are products of America’s crisis. . . . America’s future is bound up with the descendants of slaves and the circumstances they must endure."

—A. J. Williams-Myers
State University of New York–New Paltz

09-4-0398

Osborne, Milton. The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future. New York: Grove/Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000. 320 pp. ISBN 0-87113-806-9, $25.00.

The Mekong River is to Southeast Asia what the Yangtse is to China and the Mississippi is to the United States. Osborne, professor and diplomat turned consultant and writer on Southeast Asia, brings a half-century’s personal experience to this narrative of the Mekong’s political history. Who controls the Mekong controls the region—but the river defies control. First Cambodia, the great Khmer empire of Angkor Wat, then France, confident of its mission civilisatrice, sent their explorers, merchants, and soldiers along a river whose tricks and vagaries broke hearts and defied engineering. Osborne is particularly successful in using the Mekong to symbolize the hopes, and the failure, of a French imperium in Indochina that rested on more than brutal exploitation.

Another central theme of this work is the ongoing effort by postimperial governments to harness the Mekong comprehensively for economic purposes. Osborne is no reflexive adversary of large-scale development. Nevertheless, in discussing what should be done and who should pay for it, Osborne’s sympathies are clearly with the river. Readers of this near-lyrical narrative are likely to reach a similar conclusion.

—Dennis E. Showalter
Colorado College