Walls

June 1, 2018
A sturdy historical tour of walls and their builders--and their discontents as well.Build bridges, not walls. It's a slogan, writes Frye (Ancient and Middle Eastern History/Eastern Connecticut State Univ.), "designed to give military historians fits." Bridges, after all, have military purposes: to get across moats and earthworks and to ford rivers into enemy territory. Walls, on the other hand, make peace--history offers plenty of examples, he writes, to show that "the sense of security created by walls freed more and more males from the requirement of serving as warriors." Indeed, by Frye's account, walls are hallmarks of civilization, if ones that are easily thwarted. One of his examples is the Tres Long Mur, a defensive structure built more than 4,000 years ago, stretching across the Syrian desert and shielding some of the world's oldest towns from marauders from the steppes beyond. There are mysteries associated with the ruins, just as there are with the Great Wall of China, another of Frye's examples--and one that proves, readily, that where walls go up, people find ways to get around and over them. The author's pointed case study of Hadrian's Wall shows that it may not have been a defensive success, but that does not mean it didn't have a defensive purpose, as some scholars have recently argued. As he writes, wittily, "there is little to be gained from rationalizing an irrational past." Another defensive failure is the Maginot Line, which became more symbolic than practical in an age of modern tanks; on the reverse side are spectacular successes, such as the great walls of Constantinople, which shielded the city from siege by as many as 200,000 soldiers of the caliphate, "one of the greatest turning points in history." Walls have many purposes, he concludes, and it is rather ironic that the matter of walls is often as divisive as a wall itself.A provocative, well-written, and--with walls rising everywhere on the planet--timely study.

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July 2, 2018
Frye, a teacher of ancient and medieval history, offers an accessible history of walls and wall builders. Starting at the 4,000-year-old Great Wall of Shulgi, in Sumer, Frye—writing in a breezy and often humorous style (he calls Hadrian “the old drama queen”)—skips across history to ancient Greek walls, Hadrian’s Wall in England, the border walls of China, France’s Maginot Line, the Berlin Wall, and the proliferating walls in 21st-century Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Early societies, Frye writes, built walls as a security measure against the barbarism of raiding tribes from the Eurasian steppe (here described in needlessly graphic detail). He notes that the walls constructed by the Chinese Empire paradoxically fostered early globalization by imparting to travelers and merchants the safety that made the Silk Road possible, but also encouraged isolation that left an opening for Western empires to conquer the rest of the world. And he considers the psychological impact of 21st-century walls on both migrants and refugees and the wall-builders trying to turn them away. Readers will find Frye’s rumination—on the reasons walls exist and will continue to exist, what they can and cannot do, and their contribution to the growth of civilization—informative, relevant, and thought-provoking. Agent: Peter Steinberg, Foundry Literary + Media.

July 1, 2018

No human invention has had a greater effect on civilization than defensive walls, states Frye (history, Eastern Connecticut State Univ.). The safety they afforded those who lived within them allowed the flourishing of what we think of as civilized culture--but with the result that such cultures began to lose their martial skills and readiness for conflict, relying on specially trained armies and mercenaries for protection and pouring a staggering amount of money, effort, and lives their construction and repair. Following a rough chronology, Frye illustrates how advancing conflicts and technologies shifted walls from occasional to necessary to essentially symbolic, with the structures of Europe, the Near and Middle East, and Asia receiving the most attention: walled Athens vs. unwalled Sparta; Hadrian's Wall in England; the various Long Walls and Great Wall in China; Constantinople's walls and their destruction by cannon. A single-chapter hop touching on barriers in the Americas and concluding chapters on the Maginot Line, the Berlin Wall, and the various borders of today complete the volume. VERDICT Though occasionally guilty of stretching facts to enhance his points, Frye on the whole delivers a lively popular history of an oft-overlooked element in the development of human society.--Kathleen McCallister, Tulane Univ., New Orleans

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