bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Jerusalem
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

The Zealots were a revolutionary faction in Israel during the Roman occupation, active in the first century A.D. Although the Romans rarely did anything to hamper the Jews of lsrael in the practice of their religion, the Roman worship of their own gods offended many Jews. The affront they felt to their faith, coupled with a series of harsh Roman rulers, set off a revolt that had ruinous consequences for the Jewish people. The first mention of a popular leader resisting Roman rule is that of Judas of Galilee in A.D. 6/7. He preached resistance to the census ordered by the Romans, possibly the same one mentioned in the biblical book of Luke. He was killed in this revolt, and his death gave rise to the Zealots. They were politically active in opposing Roman rule and were fundamentalist in their interpretation of the Jewish Law. They followed the extremely conservative teachings of Shammai, a member of the Sanhedrin, the semi-governing body of interpreters of Jewish Law. Any Israelite who cooperated with Rome became a target of Zealot wrath. A small faction of the Zealots, the Sicarii (from sica, a dagger), became assassins, attacking not only Romans but Jews who cooperated with them. For a time the Zealots remained a religious faction preaching their conservative values, but they came to the fore in A.D. 41, when the Romans attempted to place a statue of the emperor in Jerusalem’s temple. Zealots attacked a Roman patrol, and the Romans responded by violating a neighboThood synagogue. Such incidents could well have been blown out of proportion and used to inflame the population. Still, the uprisings remained limited until the appointment of Gessius Florus as procurator of israel in A.D. 67.
Rome
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

After a thousand years untouched by enemy hands, Rome fell to Alaric the Goth in 410. Having fallen once, it seemed that Rome could never defend itself again. Successive invaders from across the Alps pillaged the Italian peninsula and Rome. The Ostrogothic conquest in 455 put that population in control for the next seven decades. None of this had any real effect on the Roman Empire, however, for the Emperor Constantine had recentered it in Constantinople in 330. Even in what passed for an “empire” in Italy was controlled no longer from Rome, but from Ravenna. Thus, by the sixth century, “the glory that was Rome” had long since faded into fable. Still, the name had power, and in Constantinople the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian longed to re establish single control over the old empire that had stretched from the Middle East to Spain. He possessed the necessary military power and ambition to accomplish this feat, but for some reason was determined to do it on the cheap. Luckily for Justinian, he had the services of one of the most talented generals of all time, Belisarius. Rising from the ranks, the young man had defeated successive enemies in Parthia and North Africa, and Justinian assigned him the task of reconquering Italy. Unfortunately, the emperor allowed him only 5,000 soldiers with which to accomplish this task. Units in the Byzantine military, inheriting a tradition begun by Marius in the old Roman Republic, were raised and maintained by generals rather than directly by the state. Loyalty was personal rather than national, and private armies were often the path to the throne. Although Belisarius never gave his emperor the slightest impression of ambition to rule, history made Justinian overly cautious. This can be the only reason he gave his top general so few men with which to accomplish so much.
Jerusalem
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Late in the eleventh century two major struggles arose, one dealing with the Catholic Church in Europe and one with the Byzantine Empire. In Europe, the pope was trying to stave off a challenge by the Holy Roman Emperor as to who would reign supreme in both European politics and religion. Although officially protector of the Church, the Holy Roman Emperor at times assumed the role of dictator, attempting to name the pope as well as lower-ranking officials in the Church hierarchy. Thus, the pope was looking for something with which to increase his prestige in the eyes of European nobility. In the Byzantine Empire the Seljuk Turks, who had been gradually consolidating their power throughout the Middle East, scored a major victory over the weakening Byzantines at the battle of Manzikert in 1071. That battle placed the bulk of Asia Minor in Turkish hands, with the capital at Constantinople destined to become a target.
Montsegur
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Although Martin Luther is credited with beginning the Reformation, he was not the first to openly point out the worldliness of the Catholic Church. Almost since Constantine’s legal acceptance of Christianity in the fourth century, various sects challenged the belief system the Catholic Church expounded. These doctrinal challenges were deemed by the head of the Church in Rome to be heresies-incorrect practices that not only challenged Catholic doctrine but also the will of God. Thus, to keep the ignorant from following the wrong Path, the heresies needed to be stamped out.
Baghdad
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

In the wake of Genghis Khan’s death in 1227, the Mongols continued conquering, with their horsemen reaching eastern Europe and threatening the Middle East. In the 1230s, the Mongols pastured in the region of modern Georgia and Azerbaijan, while in the Middle East rival populations fought among themselves rather than face the Asian conquerors: crusaders and Muslims struggled in the Holy Land, Byzantines and Seljuk Turks fought over Anatolia, while in Egypt the Mamluke dynasty was beginning its rise to power. In the 1250s the great khan was Mangu. His brother, Hulagu, commanded the Mongols of the southwestern sphere and he began extending Mongol power into Persia. There, the primary obstacle was the cult of the Assassins, who had terrorized the area since 1090. When he was informed that the Assassins were targeting him, Mangu ordered Hulagu to remove them. Hulagu led his troops into the mountains of northern Persia, where the Assassins held a hundred fortresses protecting their main headquarters at Alamut. He reduced a number of them before reaching Alamut, which held out for three years before Grand Master Rukn ad-Din sued for peace.
Nicopolis
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Just as Islam exploded into power in the eighth century in conjunction with the timely weakness of both the Parthians and the Byzantines, so too did Sultan Bayazid I arrive in the Balkans at precisely the right time. Through much of the fourteenth century the region was enjoying a virtual renaissance, primarily under the leadership of Serbian King Stephan Dushan (r. 1331-1355). He was the strongest of the Serbian medieval monarchs, and his many victories brought Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Thessaly, and other, smaller provinces under his thumb. He codified the laws of his dominions and patronized the arts. His campaign to conquer Constantinople, however, saw his death from disease and the resulting death of his kingdom. Without a man of power and vision in control, the provinces turned to their own devices, following political or religious goals at odds with those of their neighbors. Squabbling princes and minor kings oversaw a constant shifting of alliances and influence, none of which could bring unity. They remained safe enough as long as the Ottomans were focused on capturing Constantinople, but when the Byzantine King John V Paleologus was obliged to swear fealty to Sultan Murad in the early 1370s, Muslim forces turned northwestward. Muslim soldiers occupied the Gallipoli peninsula below Constantinople in 1355 and by 1361 took the city of Adrianople, which became their capital. Pope Urban V called for a Crusade to expel them, but it came to grief in 1371 at the River Maritsa.
Granada
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

In A.D. 711 Muslim forces in modern Morocco crossed the Straits of Gibraltar into Spain. This was another in a series of conquests over the previous millennium: Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, and Visigoths. The Visigothic kingdom was too weak and fragmented to stop the onslaught. Not until 732 did the Muslim forces suffer a defeat at Tours in central France, following which they stayed south of the Pyrenees. In spite of overwhelming numbers and motivation, the Muslims failed to conquer all of Spain, and isolated pockets of Christians remained to harry them. The Christian kings and princes in northern Spain were rarely unified, but neither were the Moors, as the Muslims were known in Spain. Various Moorish factions made up the occupying population: Arabs in Andalusia and Aragon to the east; Berbers from just across the Straits in the mountainous country and high plains of central Spain, territory most like their homeland; Syrians in the south in the region that came to be called Granada. There an exiled heir of the Ummayad dynasty established a caliphate in Cordova to rival the recently established Abbasid dynasty in Baghdad. Over the succeeding centuries the two populations absorbed some of each other’s cultures and military methods, with activity waxing or waning depending on such actions as the Crusades or a jihad launched by the militant Almoravids or Almohads in North Africa.
Rhodes
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

The Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John (also known as the Knights Hospitalers) were organized during the First Crusade and operated a hospital in Jerusalem. These were Christian knights dedicated to spreading and protecting their faith. When the forces of lslam recaptured the city, the Knights withdrew to the port city of Acre. When Muslim forces captured that city after a six-week siege in 1291, a handful of Hospitalers escaped and returned to Italy to rebuild their forces. When, in 1307, the French King Philip IV arrested all members of another military order, the Knights Templar, in an attempt to weaken the military power of the Catholic Church, the Knights Hospitalers fled to avoid the same fate. The Knights of St. John chose the island of Thodes as their headquarters. Since their expulsion from the Holy Land they had concentrated on enhancing their naval as well as military power and owning an island so near their hated Muslim enemy would allow them to harass Muslim shipping and trade in the eastern Mediterranean. The Knights captured the island, and Pope Clement V confirmed their possession of it in 1309. For the next two centuries the Knights were a continuous thorn in the side of Muslim merchant and naval fleets.
Pavia
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

France’s King Louis XII was intent on expanding his country’s borders into the Italian peninsula, but he met with only mixed success. When his son Francis I came to the throne in 1515, he followed in his father’s footsteps. Although a war with England had just been concluded, Francis immediately allied himself to England’s Henry VIII and the city-state of Venice, arraying themselves against Spain, Milan, Florence, Switzerland, the Papal States, and the Holy Roman Empire. Francis’ capture of Milan in September 1515 was sufficient to break the alliance against him and he ended the war in possession of most of northern Italy. Five years later he was at war with Charles I of Spain, soon to assume the position of Holy Roman Emperor Charles Vas well. Francis’ invasion through the Pyrenees in 1521 sparked renewed fighting in Italy as well, but Francis was defeated at Milan and marched back home in 1523. In the spring of 524 the forces of the Holy Roman Empire and its allies recaptured northern Italy, then invaded Provence in southern France. A short siege of Marseilles ended when Francis marched a new army down the Thone River Valley, and imperial troops under Spanish General Charles de Lannoy withdrew across the Alps. French troops marched through the Argentiere Pass in October 1524. Lannoy, finding Milan in the grip of a plague, retreated farther south toward Lodi. Francis had no qualms about capturing the ailing city and left a force of 4,000 infantry and 600 men-at-arms as a garrison.
Famagusta
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

When the crusaders lost Acre to the Muslims in 1291, the forward port for European trade became Famagusta, on the western end of Cyprus. Between 1300 and 1370 the city prospered and became internationally known for its opulence. That changed in 1372, when Genoa captured the city in a surprise attack. They looted and pillaged the city in a style that would do credit to the worst of the barbarians, and slaughtered a huge segment of the population. Genoese control lasted until 1464, during which time the city’s depths matched its previous heights. Occasional attempts by Cypriot kings to recapture the city failed. In 1489 the Cypriot Queen Catarina Cornaro (of the Norman Lusignan family) ceded the island to Venice in return for a hand-some pension. Famagusta at that point became a Venetian possession, and they attempted to restore the city’s defenses if not its fabulous placed there exploded with such force that 1,000 Turks were killed. The tower was so completely destroyed there was nothing for either army to occupy. Through the rest of the month the Turks pounded the wall and arsenal tower with their artillery while exploding the occasional mine. Each breach was assaulted, but defenders behind a second defensive line built of sandbags held the attackers at bay. It was brave, but hopeless. The Turks received regular reinforcement and resupply while the defenders began starving. On 1 August they sent envoys to Lala Mustapha to discuss surrender terms.
La Rochelle
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

The Huguenots (French Protestants) had existed in France since the 1520s, but had had an uneasy relationship with predominantly Catholic France. Between 1562 and 1597 eight religious wars were fought between the two factions, the Catholics primarily being represented by the monarchy. That changed when Henry of Navarre became King Henry IV, founder of the Bourbon dynasty. Although raised a Protestant, he accepted Catholicism in order to be more acceptable to his people; however, in 1598 he issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted religious freedom throughout the country. All was well until Henry was assassinated and his son Louis XIII came to the throne. In the years since Henry’s accession the Huguenots had been granted prominent positions in the royal court and were given greater local autonomy than were Catholic regions. Strong in their faith and in their independent attitudes, the Huguenots ultimately drew the envy and the wrath of French Catholics. Under the influence of his prime minister, Cardinal Richelieu, Louis came to the conclusion that he could never be the absolute monarch he intended to be unless the Huguenots lost their political privileges. The main Huguenot leaders were Duke Henri de Rohan and his younger brother Soubise. It was Soubise who first acted in defiance of King Louis’s new policy. In January 1625 he raised a small force in the province of Poitou and temporarily occupied the island of The, just off the Huguenot port city of La Rochelle. He then stole ten ships and captured the nearby island of Oleron, defeating the royal garrison there. His brother Henri began raising troops in the strongly Protestant southeastern province of Languedoc. Richelieu rightly feared that with many nobles supporting the Huguenots, England and possibly the Netherlands would come to their aid, if not for religious reasons then for political ones.
Maastricht
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

The Netherlands in the seventeenth century were a disjointed group of provinces. The northern area was known as the United Provinces and was controlled by the Dutch, whereas the southern provinces (modern Belgium) were under the control of the Spanish Habsburg monarchy, which had ruled all the Netherlands prior to the successful Dutch rebellion in the sixteenth century. It was the southern provinces that first attracted French interest when King Louis XIV decided to establish a more secure northern border at the expense of the Spanish, perennial French rivals. Louis believed that the Scheidt River should serve as a natural northern boundary for France, and in 1667 he set about to make it so. Louis developed an extremely tenuous legal claim to that territory by way of his marriage to Princess Maria Theresa, who was the daughter of Spain’s Philip IV by his first marriage. Although Charles II came to the Spanish throne, he was the son of Philip’s second marriage; Louis claimed that Maria Theresa’s inheritance should outrank that of the progeny of Philip’s second marriage and that the Netherlands were hers. It was an incredibly weak claim, but almost no one was in a position to challenge it. Louis had created one of the largest European armies ever, numbering some 120,000 men, and he entered the Spanish Netherlands on 24 May 1667. He enjoyed early success against the unprepared Spanish. By October Louis’ Marshal Henri Turenne captured a vast number of towns and forts and controlled the entire region. Having accomplished such easy victories in the north, Louis then turned eastward in 1668 to occupy the Habsburg province of Franche-Comte, on the Swiss frontier.
Londonderry
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

After the death of Oliver Cromwell and the short, unhappy rule of his son, King Charles II assumed the English throne in 1660. The restoration of the monarchy to the house of Stuart after the English Civil War brought a Catholic back to the throne of the predominantly Protestant nation. Although his reign was relatively uneventful, the accession of his son, Charles, duke of York, to the throne as James II in 1685 was a cause of some disquiet. James was intensely Catholic and began a campaign to increase the authority of the Church throughout the nation. When James fathered a son in 1688, the prospect of a continued Catholic dynasty was more than many Protestants could face. Parliament invited King William of Orange in the Netherlands to assume the throne. When he arrived the English army put up no resistance; James fled for France. In Ireland, the most powerful leader was the earl of Tyrconnel, named lord deputy of Ireland during James’ reign. Since 1685 he had been purging the Irish military of Protestants, which resulted in their replacement by Catholics of irregular military qualiry.
Lille
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Failure to break into the city combined with Eugene’s proximity convinced some of la Feuillade’s subordinates to advise abandoning the siege and turning their 60,000 men against the reliefforce. The French commander refused and continued his artillery bombardment. As he did so, Eugene’s forces arrived and occupied the Mount of Capuchins. From there, he looked down on the flank of The French entrenchments, with their guns pointing at the city. On the morning of 7 September, Eugene ordered his Prussian cavalry to strike the weakest point of the French lines, their right flank northwest of the city. Both Eugene and Victor Amadeus fought with their troops and were instrumental in rallying them against French counterattacks. Once inside the trench lines, the Savoyards turned French artillery on their former owners, forcing them to break. On the far lefi: flank, la Feuillade was able to withdraw his men in a more orderly fashion, until von Daun led a sally out of Turin that broke the French spirit and turned their retreat into a rout.
Arcot
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Eighteenth-century India was an active place. The Moghul Empire was falling apart as the breach was there any sign of French/Indian success, but when the commander of the assault force was killed his men fell back; the other breach was not seriously attacked. After but an hour’s fighting, Raza Sahib’s men broke off the attack. After some fire was exchanged, a truce was called to bury the dead. As Clive had but four dead and two wounded, his men spent the truce gathering up the dead attackers’ weapons. Early the next morning Clive learned that Raza’s army had fled Arcot, abandoning most of their artillery. The relief force from Madras arrived later that day. Clive’s force had achieved an amazing feat in the face of the numeric odds against them, but in India numbers were not always the telling factor. The death of the assault commander in the final charge broke his force’s spirit. Whatever the combination of circumstances that brought about Clive’s victory, the siege of Arcot marked a sea change in the British experience in India. “It may have been luck, it may have been bungling on the part of the enemy, but it created the legend of English courage and invincibility which was to carry English arms in India from one success to another” (Bence-Jones, Clive, p. 48). Many in southern India, including some of the attacking soldiers, joined the army of the East India Company. When the British began to seriously recruit and train the men from the armies and provinces they conquered, they ended up with a top-notch army of sepoys leavened with a sprinkling of British Army units assigned to India. France lost status, and the dip in her fortunes in India was made worse by French losses a few years later in the Seven Years War.
Gibraltar
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Gibraltar (an anglicized adaptation of Jebel Tariq, named for the Muslim conquetor of Spain) has been the site of at least fourteen sieges since the Muslims built a fort atop the Rock, also known as Ape’s Hill. It was the occupation of the site by Great Britain in 1704, however, that established that island nation as a major player in the Mediterranean Sea and a major thorn in Spain’s side (or bottom, as the case may be). A mere three days’ siege brought the British possession of the peninsula during the War of the Spanish Succession, and they beat back two later attempts to dislodge them in 1705 and 1726. In the late 1770s the British were deeply involved in trying to suppress the rebellion in their North American colonies. After the Americans’ victory over British forces at Saratoga in October 1777, the French decided to throw their lot in with the revolutionaries in February 1778. Spain followed suit the following year, and the Dutch declared war on Britain in 1780. While all three countries provided supplies for the Americans, Spain was most interested in regaining Gibraltar. With the British focused on North America and having to watch the French and Dutch as well, the Spanish government hoped that British resources would be stretched too thinly to stop them from regaining the peninsula.
Yorktown
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

After the American victory at Saratoga in the autumn of 1777, the fledgling United States was finally recognized by France, followed soon thereafter by Spain and the Netherlands. This recognition, and the alliance that came with it, gave the American rebels the material resources necessary to match the moral resources displayed by such leaders as George Washington. In the summer of 1778, Washington’s forces reoccupied Philadelphia after British forces under General William Howe were ordered back to New York City. Howe’s removal from command soon thereafter brought his subordinate, General Henry Clinton, into power. Clinton had to this point shown no indication that he would aggressively pursue the war against the Americans. Instead, he spent most of his time fortifying New York City against the attack he was convinced Washington was going to launch. Thus, for the two years following the rebels’ reoccupation of Philadelphia, the war remained rather low-key. In the summer of 1780 Clinton attempted to conspire with disaffected American General Benedict Arnold to acquire the major American fort at West Point on the Hudson River. That effort failed and Clinton spent his time improving his defenses. In the meantime, Washington spent his time trying to improve the caliber of the Continental Army, equip it with the supplies arriving from Europe, and begin planning with the French forces arriving under the command of the Comte de Rochambeau.
Delhi
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

In the summer of 1757, the young and aggressive Robert Clive defeated a major Moghul force at Plassey, near Calcutta, and in doing so made Great Britain the primary power in India. A century later that power received its most dangerous challenge, not from foreign aggression but from the men the British had trained to serve in the Indian Army. The century of British rule had been a mixed blessing to the Indian population. While no foreign domination is popular with the indigenous people, the British did bring security to the person on the street and a much fairer administration than had existed under the declining Moghul dynasty. British power was exercised through “John Company,” the British East India Company, which, with its own “private” army, had grown into the largest trading company in the world. It had originally operated with a security force raised locally but trained and commanded by British troops and, since the company was financed in large part through the British government, over time British units were stationed in India as well.
Vicksburg
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Soon after the army of the Confederate States of America opened the American Civil War on 12 April 1861 by firing on the Union-held Fort Sumter in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, President Abraham Lincoln called for volunteers to suppress the rebellion. They failed to do so, being soundly defeated in the opening battle at Manassas Junction, Virginia, three months later. While Major General troops occupying Vicksburg took possession of 172 cannon and more than 60,000 muskets and rifles, many of high quality. The battle cost the attackers more than 4,900 casualties, most of them lost in the opening assaults in May. Aside from the human cost, the Confederacy lost much more dearly. The fall of Vicksburg, coupled with the Confederate surrender of the besieged Port Hudson downriver in Louisiana, brought the length of the river into Union hands. Supplies and manpower available in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas were now unobtainable. As the Confederacy had been able to gain some materiel through Texas by way of Mexico, the last avenue of outside aid disappeared. Fighting continued in those three western states through the remainder of the war, but it became little more than a sideshow.
Manila
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

In the late nineteenth century the United States was beginning to take on the duty of spreading the blessings of civilization and the American way to “lesser” peoples around the world. This, according to a famous poem that British poet Rudyard Kipling addressed to the United States, was the “white man’s burden,” which the British had been exercising in India, Asia, and Africa for decades. One of Americas first opportunities to aid “our little brown brothers” was in Cuba, an island the United States had long coveted
Peking
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Throughout the nineteenth century the ruling Manchu dynasty in China grew progressively weaker. This coincided with European colonial efforts in the Far East, and resulted in first British then other European powers forcing concessions from the Chinese government. Not only were trade treaties forced on the Chinese, but port cities were virtually assigned to each power as they carved out economic spheres of influence in various parts of China. Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and Japan all had territory in which they held exclusive trade rights. While the Chinese did profit from this trade, there were serious negative side effects. The traditionally xenophobic Chinese believed that their culture, as the oldest in the world, was therefore the best. Having foreigners dictate policy, profit on their own terms, and introduce alien ideas all offended Chinese sensibilities. By the 1890s many Chinese could no longer stand being treated as inferiors in their own country and began organizing themselves to do something about it.
Kut-Al-Amara
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Kur was the longest unrelieved siege of any British force in history, and its loss brought about a major change in British military and political arenas in mid-World War I. Britain sent Indian Expeditionary Force D into the Persian Gulf in November 1914 just after the Ottoman Empire had entered the war on the side of the Central Powers. Ostensibly the force was to protect British oil interests in the region, but in actuality Force D’s mission was to overawe any potential Muslim uprising that might spread to India. The invading British and Indian troops of the 6th Indian Division occupied Basra after minimal shelling, then proceeded slowly up the Shatt-al-Arab to capture Kurna, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers merge. A brief but intense fight south of Kurna at Shaiba cleared any Turkish troops out of the immediate Gulf region and brought innumerable protestations of loyalty from Arab tribes in the neighboThood.
Malta
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Franco ordered that only limited numbers of troops enter the city. Previously, when his forces had captured the southern city of Malaga, there had been widespread pillage; he wanted to avoid a repetition. The victory was complete, however. As Hugh Thomas wrote, “the fall of Bilbao marked the end of Basque independence. The conquerors made every effort to extinguish Basque separatist feeling. All schoolmasters were dismissed unless they could prove their political negativism. The Basque tongue was officially forbidden” (Thomas, Spanish Civil Wttr, pp. 447-448). Although the Anarchist faction among the defenders favored destroying the university and the church of St. Nicolas, Minister of the Interior Leizaola forbade it. The town itself was badly damaged, of course, from the heavy bombardment, but the mines and factories were untouched by either attacker or retreating defender. Both resources proved invaluable to the Nationalist war effort.
Leningrad
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany and its allies, commenced on 22 June 1941 and would, according to the Nazi Fuhrer Adolf Hider, “shake the world.” Leningrad was a major objective of the original Barbarossa order to the senior officers and staff of the German army Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH). Field Marshal Ritter von Leeb’s Army Group North had been given the task of destroying the enemy forces fighting in the Baltic theater by occupying the Baltic ports, Leningrad, and Kronstadt. The Russian fleet would be deprived of its bases. As the invasion of the Soviet Union progressed, the bulk of the Wehrmacht was pulled to the south in pursuit of the mass of the surviving Russian forces under Marshal Budenny. Despite being listed as a major objective in the Barbarossa order, Leningrad was not of the same priority as Moscow or points south. As a result, OKH had kept Army Group North relatively weak and planned to reinforce it after the capture of Moscow. In August 1941, as the Army Group approached Leningrad, the broken terrain made up of forests, lakes, streams, and rivers slowed its advance and lessened the effectiveness of its armored formations. The land now began to favor the defense. The advantage that the Panzers enjoyed on the wide-open plains of Poland and along the frontiers of the Soviet Union was gradually disappearing as the Army Group approached Leningrad. Conventional infantry and pioneers (engineers) now became more important.
Quemoy (Kinmen)
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

The rivalry between the communist and Nationalist forces in China resulted in a civil war that raged throughout the 1930s until the Japanese invaded China in 1937. At that point, communist leader Mao Tse-tung and Nation-terparts. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff began planning nuclear strikes against mainland cities, primarily Shanghai and Canton. The strength of the American response gave Beijing pause, and on 6 September. Chinese Premier Chou en-Lai proposed ambassadorial-level talks. A month later the Communists declared a one-week halt to the bombardment in order to begin peace talks, if American ships would stop escorting the resupply ships. He also announced that the Communists would refrain from artillery or air attacks on Quemoy or on supply vessels on even-numbered days.
The Sixth Invention: Getting High
Authors: Smith W Stephen , Chipman Michael
Published: November 2023

The Sixth Invention, Getting High, is a synthesis of all of the previous exercises and a further refinement of the skills acquired. It assumes a high level of clean phonation, free-flowing air, tonal balance, spontaneity, and flexibility. Technically, it involves a lengthy scale that begins in the lowest part of the voice and modulates as it moves upward and then returns to the low voice. Philosophically, Getting High involves stretching and reaching for our fullest potential, pushing beyond what is comfortable and easy. On one level, Getting High refers to the euphoria of transcending limitations, enhancing abilities, and broadening horizons. On another level, this invention is about extending our vocal range—literally getting high.
La Voce Is You
Authors: Smith W Stephen , Chipman Michael
Published: November 2023

In the previous chapter I discussed the challenges involved in getting a career started, such as auditioning and choosing repertoire. In this chapter, I explore additional challenges singers face, including taking responsibility for their own careers and lives, professional etiquette and expectations, how to be a good colleague, how and when to say no, and dealing with conductors, directors, and colleagues. As in every other chapter of this book, the most important consideration in living life as a singer is always to be true to yourself.
How to Be Successful
Authors: Smith W Stephen , Chipman Michael
Published: November 2023

The typical definition of success is the attainment of fame and/or wealth. I believe true success is finding our own unique path and staying on it. We might become rich and famous while following that path, but fame and wealth are really only byproducts of true success, if we achieve them at all. Just as we continually examine and refine our singing, our own personal definition of success must be constantly reexamined and refined.
Out of the Vinyl Deeps (Record Rarities)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

All music lovers become record lovers and many record lovers become collectors. Records approximate Malraux’s museum without walls, offering an inexpensive way to pursue not only masterworks and favorites, but also oddities that fill the side galleries where dilettantes rarely venture. Before the late 1930s, old records were relegated to bargain labels; there was little call for the technocracy to cede a part of its holdings to nostalgia—even movie studios assumed that yesterday’s productions had no future. Now there is a respectable market that buys only old, supporting an endless stream of reissues. Yet the vaults remain jampacked, timed to burst open on that increasingly distant day when the vintage stuff goes public domain (as it already has in Europe), a day, sadly, that Congress is determined to forestall as long as “special interest” lobbies grease its wheels. In the interim, record companies go about their business with the cryptic motives that have long made them so beloved of music lovers— numerous jazz masterpieces remain unavailable, while relative obscurities bob to the surface. Fortunately, some of those obscurities really do deserve a second chance. They may not be masterpieces, but they’re at least as good as and more revealing than the bottom-drawer output of many socially condoned savants.
Hipper Than Thou (Bob Dorough)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

I was having a high old time listening to Bob Dorough’s new record, Too Much Coffee Man (Blue Note), which may be his best, when my assistant Elora walked in and exclaimed with a slight interrogatory, “Schoolhouse Rock!?” She had never heard of Dorough, but she recognized the voice. I had never heard of Schoolhouse Rock, so she brought in her four-disc Rhino set and played her favorites, including a masterpiece, “My Hero, Zero,” noting “You will not find anyone of my generation who does not know the words to ‘Electricity Electricity’ and ‘Conjunction Junction.’” She proved the point with a recitation augmented by a description of the animation that accompanied the songs when the short instructive cartoons appeared on television. Dorough was music director for the series and wrote most of the songs. “I learned the multiplication tables from him,” Elora marveled. “We had great TV then.” Well, every generation thinks it had great TV. But it occurred to me that many people over the past 50 years have heard Bob Dorough without knowing it. He has cast a pretty long zigzag shadow since he left Cherry Hill, Arkansas, got a degree in composition at North Texas State, moved to New York to be part of the jazz scene, and served two years as music director for—no kidding—Sugar Ray Robinson. In the ‘60s, for example, he pulled strings for Spanky & Our Gang and Chad Mitchell, pie, a draft card notice, a social security card, Webster’s definitions of love, and my three particular favorites—a laundry ticket (“Not Responsible for Shrink”), air passenger instructions (“Should the Need Arise”), and an upholstery label (“Do Not Remove This Tag”). At no time does he even hint that any of this is funny.
Saved by the Classics: Bell Two (Bell Atlantic 2000)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Okay, so Michael Dorf is not the Flo Ziegfeld of jazz, not yet. Forgive the pre-festival enthusiasm, but the pain of festivals past, like the pain of pregnancy, has no shelf life. Last year at this time I was vowing to be in another country this year at this time, but then I looked at the schedule—Ornette! Max and Cecil! the Art Ensemble!—and capitulated to a heedless optimism. Where else would you want to be and how could anything go wrong? Such a simple concept: You exchange a ticket for a specific seat, the lights go down at a prearranged time, great musicians emerge to play great music. But that’s not exactly the way the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival works. In its second year and with tentacles in D.C., Boston, and Philadelphia, the heir to the long-running Knitting Factory What Is Jazz? Festival and a fleeting season of Texaco sponsorship wants to be at once inclusive, legit, and Bohemian.* So the great music that was played cost more than the price of a ticket. Consider the following triptych of big events. All were imperfect. But unlike many of the lesser shows, at least they weren’t predictable.
Saturnal Sorcery (Sun Ra)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

Early one morning, listening to Sun Ra’s recently restored Pathways to Unknown Worlds, I became preoccupied with the grainy glissandi that bassist Ronnie Boykins was bowing, rifflike, against a cluttered rhythm and pointillistic wind-playing. Then the phone rang and I hit pause; the music stopped, but Boykins kept at it. What Saturnal sorcery was this? Turned out it wasn’t Boykins at all, but a carpenter on the roof laboring with some kind of drill. In fact, a lot of effects that I had been admiring came from him and other workmen who fused so beautifully with Sun Ra’s Arkestra that I had to turn the volume up to sort out who was doing what. A Cageian moment, and long live indeterminacy. Nearly two minutes into “Cosmo-Media,” the fourth track on the same album, Sun Ra uses his Moog to sound more like a drill than the drill. Long live serendipity, too. The 1986 Coney Island concert by Sun Ra and John Cage failed utterly, musically and even symbolically, because Ra, a conservative in this regard, thought art was the process of making something out of nothing, and Cage, a composer turned philosopher turned confidence man, could no longer think of anything worthwhile to fill the silence he had so famously introduced into the concert arena. Ra, often characterized as a trickster for his extraterrestrial, occultist, costumed, showbusiness blarney, which he believed in no less sincerely than did Cage in the musical uses of the I Ching, never permitted himself to be seduced by the sound of silence. His notion of chance extended to record sessions that declined to distinguish between performance and rehearsal and audio engineering that embraced feedback, footsteps, a ringing phone, a pneumatic drill.
All the Things He Was (Carnegie Hall Jazz Band)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

While visiting Hollywood in 1946, a few months after Jerome Kern’s passing, Dizzy Gillespie collaborated with arranger Johnny Richards on a Kern memorial album. They recorded four of his most famous songs— “Who?” “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Why Do I Love You?” “All the Things You Are”—in a novel setting of more than a dozen strings plus woodwinds, French horn, harp, and a state-of-the-art rhythm section (Al Haig, Ray Brown, and Roy Haynes), nearly three years before Charlie Parker’s first aborted attempt to record with strings. Gillespie was in superb form, playing with exhilarating finesse on “The Way You Look Tonight.” Yet those records were largely lost to history. One 78 was issued by Paramount and promptly withdrawn because of complaints from the Kern estate that Gillespie’s approach was insufficiently respectful. The remaining tracks were buried until all four turned up on an underground label 30 years later. Kern’s estate had no legal standing, only powers of suasion, and as a result Kern has often been presumed to be anti jazz.
The Neglected King of Song (Bing Crosby)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

For the last decade, whenever I mentioned to anyone that I was working on a life of Bing Crosby, the usual response was, “Why?” I can’t say I was surprised. For 30 years, between 1927 and 1956, Crosby was a looming presence in America’s cultural landscape. At the peak of his career, in the 1930s and 1940s, he was thought by many to be the most famous American alive. For much of that period, he was undoubtedly the most beloved. The cycle of “Road” pictures with Bob Hope established Crosby as an accomplished comic actor. Yet by the 1960s, the ocean began to roll over Der Bingle, and though he continued to sell millions of records—chiefly holiday songs—he had morphed into a grand old man while retaining little of the bite of his contemporary, Louis Armstrong, or his offspring, Frank Sinatra. When he made his unexpected return to the stage in 1976, at New York’s Uris Theater (his first live appearance before a paying audience in more than 40 years), I attended a rehearsal as well as the show, and spoke with him briefly. My review (included in Riding on a Blue Note) was appreciative but skeptical. I found him at once irresistible and detached, a fascinating vestige from another age.
Memorophiliac (Vijay Iyer)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

The long fingers of pianist Vijay Iyer, who appeared with his quartet in the Jazz Gallery series, “Pianobility,” look like tarantula legs as they scamper across the keys, arched high and slightly bent at the knuckles. In liner notes and promotional materials, he has aligned himself with the percussive school of jazz piano—Ellington, Hines, Monk, Powell, Taylor, Nichols, Weston, Tyner, and the rest—and you can hear the influences at work, but he doesn’t sound like any of them. His touch is firm and dramatic, in accord with his penchant for vamps (put Ibrahim on the list) and architectonic structures and ringing overtones (Jamal, too); yet its very deliberation suggests more of a pressing than a striking of the keys (also Pullen and Walton). In an era of homages, Iyer is no slouch: His notes to his first CD, the nicely titled Memorophilia, include his pantheon of more than 80 musicians “and many others, of course.” Still, his sound is his own and you would recognize it in a blindfold test. That alone is impressive, particularly for an academic—degrees from Yale and Berkeley and a dissertation, “Microstructures of Feel, Macrostructures of Sound: Embodied Cognition in West African and AfricanAmerican Musics.” (Academics have to write like that; it’s a law.) Iyer is full of words and himself: His music, he says in the notes to Architextures, is about “what I have learned as a member of the post-colonial, multicultural South Asian diaspora, as a person of color peering in critically from the margins of American mainstream culture, and as a human being with a body, a mind, memories, emotions, and spiritual aspirations.” That may be true, but, happily, his music lacks any whiff of homework. Like his touch, it is spry and darting—very smart and without a need to show off or push a point. South Asian tropes are handily reconciled. Programmatic titles aside, his music is all music.
Surviving the Marketplace (Sonny Stitt / Bobby Hackett)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

All artists who have to work for a living are coaxed into adjusting the aspirations of their talent to the fashions of the marketplace. Recent compilations on Mosaic, the mail-order company in Stamford, Connecticut, indicate how two freelancers handled this dilemma. Although only nine years separate Bobby Hackett from Sonny Stitt, that’s a generational leap in jazz—it’s the difference between coming of age with Armstrong’s big bang and to maturity in an era of Dixieland and swing, and coming of age with swing’s big bands and to maturity with bebop and r&b. Yet from the purview of a new century, the symmetries overwhelm the distinctions. The Complete Capitol Bobby Hackett Solo Sessions and The Complete Roost Sonny Stitt Studio Sessions capture both men at personal peaks while muddling through compromised or indifferent settings. Mosaic, it should be noted, does not edit best-of sets. If the constituent albums were available separately (they aren’t at present), one or two from each box might satisfy most listeners. On display here are warts-and-all biographical portraits of two pros making their way.
Personality (Houston Person)
Authors: Giddins Gary
Published: November 2023

One might argue, though not too strenuously, that three central tribes of tenor saxophonists emerged just after the war: those who played Lester Young hard, those who played him soft, and those who played Illinois Jacquet. All merged their primary influences with bebop’s phrasing and shivered their timbres with leanings toward any number of other tenor saxophonists. Some even played Young hard and soft, or Young and Jacquet, who was himself obviously influenced by Young. Still, a distinction can be made, and part of it has to do with the fact that Young’s disciples (and those of Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster) grounded jazz’s serious evolution, attracting serious listeners, serious critiquing, and serious pedagogy. Jacquet’s brood, including the Lester-inspired Gene Ammons, leads to that presumably middlebrow school of tenors who often affix themselves to organ trios, name tunes after soul food, put semi-naked women on album covers, tour chiefly in black ‘hoods, and like—really like—dancers. They attract listeners who clap in time, critics or at least annotators who fetishize simplicity and are really DJs anyway, and no pedagogues at all.