Annal:1993 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History

New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery

Anthony Grafton, April Shelford, Nancy Siraisi

• 1993 LATimes–History winner
• Score: 10.43

On encountering what he called “the Indies,” the Jesuit Jose de Acosta wrote, “Having read what poets and philosophers write of the Torrid Zone, I persuaded myself that when I came to the Equator, I would not be able to endure the violent heat, but it turned out otherwise… What could I do then but laugh at Aristotle’s Meteorology and his philosophy?” Acosta’s experience echoes that of his fellow travelers to the New World, and it is this experience, with its profound effect on Western culture, that Anthony Grafton charts.

Describing an era of exploration that went far beyond geographic bounds, this book shows how the evidence of the New World shook the foundations of the old, upsetting the authority of the ancient texts that had guided Europeans so far afield. The intellectual shift mapped out here, a movement from book learning to empirical knowledge, did not take place easily or quickly, and Grafton presents it in all its drama and complexity. What he recounts is in effect a war of ideas fought, sometimes unwittingly by mariners, scientists, publishers, scholars, and…

Rising in the West: The True Story of an "Okie" family in Search of the American Dream

Dan Morgan

• 1993 LATimes–History finalist
• Score: 6.43

 

The Immobile Empire

Alain Peyrefitte, Jon Rothschild

• 1993 LATimes–History finalist
• Score: 6.43

From Alain Peyrefitte, a historical tour de force: The Immobile Empire recaptures the extraordinary experience of two worlds in collision. Peyrefitte describes in fascinating detail the story of the failed attempt by the British during the 1790s to open the Chinese Empire to Western trade.

Led by Lord George Macartney, whose previous diplomatic career had involved successful stints in India and the Caribbean, the enormous British expedition of nearly seven hundred men included diplomats, doctors, scholars, painters, musicians, soldiers, and young members of the British aristocracy. Macartney’s refusal to perform the traditional kowtow before the Chinese Emperor was the first signal that the two empires would fail to see eye to eye. The British, fueled by the ideas of Adam Smith, had built an empire on the principle of mutually advantageous trade among nations. But, as Peyrefitte notes dryly, “Confucius never read Adam Smith.” The British wanted tea, porcelain, and silk, but had little to offer the Chinese in return, except one shameful commodity—Indian opium. “Everyone…

Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992

Jane Hamilton-Merritt

• 1993 LATimes–History finalist
• Score: 6.43

Jane Hamilton-Merritt, Nobel-nominated scholar and photojournalist, has followed the plight of the Hmong and the war in Indochina since the 1960s. The staunchest of allies, the Hmong sided with the Americans against the North Vietnamese and were foot soldiers in the brutal secret war for Laos. Since the war, abandoned by their American allies, the Hmong have been subjected to a campaign of genocide by the North Vietnamese, including the use of chemical weapons. Tragic Mountains moves from the big picture of international diplomacy and power politics to the small villages and heroic engagements in the Lao jungle. It is a story of courage, brutality, heroism, betrayal, resilience, and hope.

The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity

James C. Cobb

• 1993 LATimes–History finalist
• Score: 6.43

“Cotton obsessed, Negro obsessed,” Rupert Vance called it in 1935. “Nowhere but in the Mississippi Delta,” he said, “are antebellum conditions so nearly preserved.” This crescent of bottomlands between Memphis and Vicksburg, lined by the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers, remains in some ways what it was in 1860: a land of rich soil, wealthy planters, and desperate poverty—the blackest and poorest counties in all the South. And yet it is a cultural treasure house as well—the home of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Charley Pride, Walker Percy, Elizabeth Spencer, and Shelby Foote.

Painting a fascinating portrait of the development and survival of the Mississippi Delta, a society and economy that is often seen as the most extreme in all the South, James C. Cobb offers a comprehensive history of the Delta, from its first white settlement in the 1820s to the present. Exploring the rich black culture of the Delta, Cobb explains how it survived and evolved in the midst of poverty and oppression, beginning with the first settlers in the overgrown, disease-ridden Delta before the Civil War…