Cover Image: Walls

Walls

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Member Reviews

It is hard to fathom, but walls are the first sign of civilization. Wall builders are declaring to the world, “Everything inside this is our people and the rest of the world may not enter unless we say so.” Maybe not insightful to you, but I found it consciousness expanding and just the first insight in this fascinating and cleverly-written book.

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What a fascinating read! Walls by David Frye examines defensive enclosures of the ancient world, those same walls helped civilizations survive or control their citizens no matter whether they were in Greece or lower Mississippi, China or the Berlin Wall. The author poses great theories, arguments and examinations of the reasons and uses of the walls while always returning to the same point, their importance to the people who were contained inside. Well worth the read.
Full Disclosure: I was allowed to read a copy of this book for free as a member of NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review. The opinions I have expressed are my own and I was not influenced to give a positive review.

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In Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick, David Frye takes an interestingly oblique look at history through the impact of, well, walls, dividing up the world into two population segments: those who live behind them (for protection) and those who live outside of them (the cause of needing protection). At times he perhaps takes a little license in terms of overstating or simplifying, but it is all mostly fascinating, informative, and engaging.

Wall construction goes back to nearly the earliest of post-nomadic days, connected to the rise of agriculture and then of cities as populations were able to support themselves in one place for the first time. Walls rose step by step with civilization and in fact Frye makes the case that they helped create and form said civilization. First and most obviously by protecting the city inhabitants from the “barbarians outside the gates.” But less obviously he points to how walls allowed for greater security, which allowed for less need to have every person (usually men) able to function as a warrior, which allowed them to therefore specialize in skills beyond fighting so they could become smiths, poets, bakers, etc. Fortified cities became fortified regions became fortified empires and grand civilizations. And then even more nuanced is the way the walls “softened” those who hid behind them, forcing the inhabitants to hire “real” fighters from outside their walls (often from amidst those damn barbarians), leading to a cycle of empires rising and falling: as they rise they need security so they build walls, then they lose fighting skills so have to outsource soldiers, then those soldiers turn on them, the empire falls, rinse and repeat.

Frye takes us through a host of such cities/empires, including China (one can’t very well have a book about walls and not include the Great Wall, now can one?), Greece, Ancient near east, Eurasia, Rome, Byzantium, Great Britain, Russia, Mesoamerica. Frye moves not just in space but time as well, bringing us walls from four thousand years ago to the Maginot Line (Frye uses a loose definition of “wall” in places) in World War II to the Berlin Wall to contemporary times. While “build that wall” has clearly entered our vocabulary lately, making a book about walls and their impact quite timely, readers may be surprised at just how much wall-building has been done around the world the last ten or twenty years. It’s truly shocking and Frye does an excellent job covering this modern day return to wall building efficiently and effectively.

It’s a return because with the advent of heavy-duty cannon, walls lost their ability to protect, a transition made vividly clear in Frye’s chapter on the Turks’ siege and eventual conquering of Constantinople.

The impact of walls construction and failures on world history, on which regions rose and fell in power, on the psychology of an entire people as well as the psychology of smaller groups is nicely conveyed throughout in often insightful and always engaging fashion (Frye is a smooth stylist and paces the book smartly). My only issue with the book is that his insights are so often so sharp, and so often so intriguing, that I wish he had broadened his definition or his focus even more with regard to modern day walls. We move through the massive construction around the world so fast that I would have liked to slow down a little to more deeply consider the causes and potential impact. As well, I would have liked to have seen him look at smaller-scale walls, the ones we see more and more of in modern-day life around “high interest targets” such as airports, chemical plants, the White House, etc. Or prison walls, in a time period when controversy wages over the inequality of the current justice system and how we “wall off” our poor and our minorities--the “barbarians at the gates of our homes (to be fair, he does deal briefly with gated communities). And even metaphorical walls—the bubbles we can put up thanks to modern technology and social media. Granted, that would have made for a much longer book, but Frye proved himself to be a good enough writer that I would have happily followed him for another one or two hundred pages on the topic.

That said, asking for more is hardly a major criticism, so it should come as no surprise that I highly recommend walls for a different but important take on history and society.

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The subject of walls is all the rage nowadays. With the balkanization and increased nationalism of the world…there is no more apt physical representation of it than an actual wall. But the idea isn’t new. Walls have been around since the early days of civilization, in fact an argument made in this book is that walls are very much responsible for civilization as we know it. Frye’s perspective on the matter is fairy binary and best represented in the Athens/Sparta duality…those who built walls, enjoys a relatively safe environment where sciences and arts would emerge and thrive, those who didn’t build walls relying instead on their sheer muscles for safety were uncivilized barbarians. So it’s the basic brain and brawn dichotomy. Some may dismiss it as an oversimplification. But Frye really puts forth a compelling argument and empirical evidence to support it. The walled in civilized society got soft and weak over time, making it easily conquerable. But the wallless brutes and the subsequent conquerors weren’t really leading enviable lives either, their lives essentially lacking any pleasure outside of rape, pillaging and murder. So who would you have been back in the day…a civilized arts appreciating science knowledgeable Athenian enjoying all the modern comforts of the time or a dirty brutal savage Spartan, toughened from childhood by the life of personal abnegation into something like a dirty malnourished possibly naked fighting machine? Soft as it might make you, life behind the walls sounds infinitely more enjoyable, doesn’t it. Of course, the walls didn’t always work as intended and even when they did work they required enormous effort to build and maintain, resulting in crazy high death tolls, but most of the time despite all the possible negatives it was still the best bet under the circumstances, much like democracy. And so it went on for centuries, empires came and went with their walls. And this book gives a terrific overview of all that straight down to the present day, wherein the rapidly increased migration and refugee crisis of the recent years resulted in modern wall building around the world, particularly Europe and Middle East. And now, of course, there’s a very real or at least much talked about (which seems to add up to the same thing these days) possibility of a wall between US and Mexico. Frye presents some very interesting statistics testifying to the effectiveness of walls protecting the country from the designated undesirables…in Europe it seems to just resituate the matter to the next country over, sort like passing the bucket, but on a grander scheme of things. It certainly puts things in a perspective and offers readers much food for thought in mulling over the situation. But aside from that, this book is such a terrific work of historical nonfiction. I love the concept of taking a subject and revolving the world around it and Frye’s done a really awesome job. The man is erudite, clever, knowledgeable on the subject and also surprisingly (since such books often tend to go for the neutral tone) opinionated and darkly humorous, it makes his narrative style all the more compelling and made this book all the more pleasure to read. It took a while to get through and in retrospect it might be best to dip into this one instead of plowing through most of it in one day to the sheer amount of information with which the mind is bombarded. But Frye is never pedantic and always entertaining, so it reads very well and easy as far as nonfiction goes. I finished it and felt accomplished and instantly smarter, like an instant brain boost. Which is just awesome. I know Tim Marshall also has a book about Walls coming out and sadly Netgalley didn’t have a Kindle friendly version of it, but now I’m thinking what more do I need to know about the walls. Then again in a while, it might be a great way to revisit the subject from another terrific intelligent author, but for now I consider myself adequately educated on the subject thanks to David Frye and this great book. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

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Walls is a book that did not give me what I was expecting. The author clearly states in the beginning that this was not going to be strictly a history of walls but more of a history of civilization as related to the security of protective walls. He desperately tries to add pithy commentary to make this a more interesting and readable book. I just was not enthralled with the style nor the ideas presented. I did take the subtle correlation of walls throughout the ages with the current argument for a southern wall that would separate the civilized north from the uncivilized hordes to the south.

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Frye has first hand experience as an archaeologist, which lends this book, especially his section on the collapse of the Roman frontier, special poignancy. This would be an idea companion for an undergrad World History course, as he surveys the ways in which wall construction changes societies (it is always dangerous to think the walls will protect you, and neglect your military to focus on settled pursuits, but within reason, organizing your peasantry for corvee labor on wall maintenance can be useful), and how walls and defenses that connect areas (the Chinese silk road--both ancient and modern), or divert your enemy elsewhere (for a long time, Roman walls) work well as policy, but walls which expect to create a safe bubble almost always fail spectacularly. Frye has a real gift for explaining things in sufficient context, and for choosing lively and vivid illustrating stories.

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I really enjoyed and learned from this fascinating and global and surprisingly amusing history of the physical walls we humans have built over the millenia, right up to the present time. First there were nomads and barbarians to keep out, lest they rape and pillage repeatedly, as they were wont to do. (The Mongols get a long treatment, deservedly. ) Then there were ideological walls between political systems. And now we build them worldwide to keep out folks we don't want. They may not rape and pillage anymore, but they do often drain the social services or increase threats of terrorism in some countries. I had no idea of all the walls that have gone up along borders all around the world! Clinton, the Bushes, Obama, and Trump were actually late to the wall-building party, with the American border wall, though they've ALL built and maintained it.

The book ends with a nice twist of the knife: how does fear continue to motivate us? Even those who oppose a border wall with Mexico or tighter immigration usually don't have a problem with gated communities or fortress mentalities on a more micro level.

Thank you to the publisher for the chance to review this wonderful book.

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Frye clearly states at the beginning that "Walls" isn't meant to be a comprehensive history, but rather a limited take. However, even with such acknowledgements, his takes and broad stances will occasionally give pause those decently familiarized with world history. For instance, I found his stance on the Silk Road being birthed out of imperial China using fortifications to connect it to the oasis cities of Central Asia to be a bit of a major oversimplification, to say the least. Later on, his claim that European settlers' use of Native American tribes as allies in wars against other tribes was a "critical" reason of rapid demographic decline is a claim that has admittedly never crossed my eyes before (and it's not one that I know what to make of).

However, there's no denying that Frye's focus on walls is definitely an interestingly fresh take. No matter how much you agree with him or not, his work at the very least will get you thinking about the history of civilization in a way that hasn't ever crossed your mind before.

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