98 SMITHSONIAN.COM | September 2013

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travelogue has easygoing philosoph-ical weight as well. To explain how individual perception contributes to a broader understanding of our e ect on the earth, he writes: Measured by the magnitude of our collective impacts, we are far greater than ever, but individually, we are just about as small as everand this is the scale at which we perceive the world.

Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin

by Jill Lepore

The latest book by the Harvard his-torian, who is known for fascinating stories woven from meticulous de-tail, is something of an odd beast: a sketchy account of Jane Franklin, Ben Franklins sister, a woman who stood very close to history but whose con-ventional historic importance seems slight. For a long time, I abandoned the project altogether, writes Lepore, and what she nally produced is not so much a conventional biography as what she calls a meditation on silence in the archives. Jane Franklin was perhaps the person to whom Benjamin felt closest, but she did not possess her brothers eloquence. She could barely spell. But that didnt stop them from carrying on a lifelong correspondence, which serves as the backbone of this book. Jane emerges as a spunky, relat-able, sympathetic character: the one who took care of the extensive and often-troublesome Franklin family in New England while Ben was o making his name in Phila-

Books

by Chlo Schama

Reckoning with 1945. Plus: discoveries at sea, Benjamin Franklins quiet sister and down and out in the South

Year Zero: A History of 1945

by Ian Buruma

Setting out to tell the story of how the modern world emerge[d] from the wreckage of World War II, the Dutch writer Ian Buruma gives him-self a di cult assignment . Its im-possible to talk about 1945 without talking about 1944 and 43 and so on, although plenty of historiansfrom Adam Goodheart (1861: The Civil War Awakening) to Joseph Ellis (Revolu-tionary Summer: The Birth of Ameri-

can Independence)have lately leaned upon a limited time frame to justify their scope. Because the book is orga-nized thematicallyexultation, re-venge, the rule of lawrather than geographically, it swings from Paris to Saigon to Manchuria to London. The quick shifts can be dizzying, but you have to respect Buruma for attempt-ing to present such a full portrait andunusual for histories of World War IIfor giving equal weight to both European and Asian events. And when he zooms in on the particulars of a given hardship, his writing is moving and evocative. To convey the depriva-tion that gripped immense expanses of the world in 1945, he describes, for instance, Tokyos Ueno Station, crawl-ing with orphans collecting cigarette

butts, a kind of urban beehive full of the homeless. In Germany, their counterparts were camouf laged in lth, the only clean spots the whites of their eyes, according to one British soldier. Year Zero had been rather eclipsed in the worlds collec-tive memory by the years of destruc-tion that preceded it, writes Buruma. But he makes a compelling case that many of the modern triumphs and traumas yet to come took root in this fateful year of retribution, revenge, su ering and healing.

Telling Our Way to the Sea: A Voyage of Discovery in the Sea of Cortez

by Aaron Hirsh

For ten years, Aaron Hirsh, a biol-ogist, took college students on an annual weeklong trip to the Sea of Cortez, the body of water separating the Baja Peninsula from the rest of Mexico. (His wife, biologist Veron-ica Volny, and their friend, historian of science Graham Burnett, helped lead the voyages.) After the group arrives at a remote shing village, they observe creatures ranging from a 200,000-pound fin whalesuch scale contradicts the fact that this thing belongs in the elementary men-tal category called animalsto a sea cucumber that the students take turns holding in their hands. Hirsh makes both of these experiences awesome; when the sea cucumber -nally objects to the manhandling by dissolving the collagen cables that hold its organs together and shooting its dark purple innards from its anus, the students are as stunned and full of wonder as when they face the mag-ni cent whale. I cant remember the last time I read a science book with such elegant writing, and Hirshs

delphia, France and England. Thank-

ing her for caring for their sick, elderly

mother, Ben wrote just after their

mothers death: Our distance made it

impracticable for us to attend her, but

you have supplied all. Such tender mo-

ments humanize this towering fi gure,

serving as a reminder of his humble

past and the pressing familial concerns

that followed him throughout his life.

With this book, Lepore asserts the im-

portance of the peripheral fi gures who

supported the central ones. But even

when an expert shines a light on a quiet

story of a quiet life of quiet sorrow and

quieter opinions, its hard to make that

fi gure come fully alive.

Men We Reaped: A Memoir

by Jesmyn Ward

Toward the end of Jesmyn Wards

moving memoir, the National Book

Awardwinning author of Salvage

the Bones describes the fi rst time she

drank alcohol as a kid and the morning

after, when, desperately hung over, she

confessed her cooking-sherry binge to

her younger brother. He of ers an ad-

mission of his own as theyre standing

outside in the Mississippi winter: Hes

selling crack. This moment encapsu-

lates the rather bleak mood of Wards

memoir, in which she juxtaposes the

universal experience of growing up

against the peculiar and oppressive

challenges of being black and poor in

the South in the 1980s and 90s. The

book is structured around the deaths

of fi ve young men (the men we reaped

of the title): Wards brother, her cousin

and three other close friends who

might as well have been family mem-

bers, so fl uid are the boundaries of this

community. Ward punctuates the story

of her own early life with the tales of

these men to show the proximity of

death in down-and-out Mississippi.

Upon learning that a community park

is also zoned as a burial site, she writes

poignantly: One day our graves will

swallow up our playground. There are

glimmers of hopeand lots of love

here, but the overall impression is that

Ward, who had an early benefactor and

made her way to an Ivy League college,

was very lucky to get out.

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Chinese LanternHard by the Yangtze River, ten miles from Nanjing,

a giant, glowing hollowed-out trapezoid hovers above the

trees. The otherworldly Sifang Art Museum, designed by the

American architect Steven Holl, is set to open later this year, an

edgy sign of the ancient citys rapid modernization. The 15,000-square-

foot museum, part of a planned complex of signature structures intended to

put Nanjing on the art-world map , has two strikingly dif erent levels. The lower

one, with its plant-covered roof and black concrete walls, nestles into a hill by the

river ; inside are traditional white-walled galleries. Some 30 feet abovereached by an el-

evator or an outdoor stairway that would not be out of place dangling from a fl ying sauceris

a more futuristic space. A narrow room, enlivened by translucent polycarbonate paneling, makes

three sharp turns but doesnt meet up with itself. At the far end, an event space looks out across the

river to Nanjing, whose skyline features the four-year-old, 1,480-foot Zifeng Tower, one of the worlds ten

tallest skyscrapers. Holl says his design evokes the shifting viewpoints and parallel perspectives in Chinese

paintings, and the gleaming white and stark black surfaces are a nod to the spare elegance of Chinese calligraphy. All

the color in the museum will come from the art on displayand from the people who visit, says Holl. ELIZABETH QUILL QILA

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lecture titles

1. Taking on the Other

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2. Being Paleolithic

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4. Being Egyptian

5. Belonging to an

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6. Practicing Egyptian

Religion

7. Being a Dead Egyptian

8. Being an Egyptian

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9. Being Minoan and

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10. Being Greek

11. Growing Up Greek

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Criminal

31. Relaxing Roman Style

32. Practicing Roman

Religion

33. Being Jewish under

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34. Being Christian

under Roman Rule

35. Being a Celt in

Ancient Britain

36. Being a Roman Briton

37. Being Anglo-Saxon

38. Being a Viking Raider

39. Living under

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40. Being Medieval

41. Being Poor in the

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42. Being a Medieval

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43. Being a Medieval

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44. Being a Medieval

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Taiwans National Palace MuseumTaiwans National Palace Museum houses more than 650,000

cultural artifacts spanning several thousand years of Chinese

history. Unparalleled in its richness and depth, the

fascinating collection includes jade, ceramics, ancient

bronze castings, scroll paintings, porcelain and calligraphy.

Chinas intriguing and complex cultural history is represented

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Jadeite Cabbage With Insects, Ching Dynasty