The dawn watch : Joseph Conrad in a global world
(Book)

*Starred Review* Whitman may have rhapsodized in Passage to India over the global connections rapidly unifying the world, but a nineteenth-century, Polish-born seaman named Joseph Conrad looked at the rapidly globalizing planet through far more skeptical eyes. Jasanoff invites readers to ponder what Conrad saw as he surveyed a rapidly evolving planet. Readers watch as the young Conrad who learned to hate the Russian imperialism that denied him a homeland spends years serving on British ships that help the United Kingdom enlarge its own imperial reach. Readers will then marvel at how this intrepid sailor converts his seafaring experience with surprising mastery of a language acquired as an adult into compelling novels, such as Heart of Darkness and Nostromo, that exposed the raw self-interest (and worse) hidden behind imperialists' cant about civilization and progress. Deftly melding biographical narration, historical analysis, and literary explication, Jasanoff lets readers glimpse in Conrad's fiction the fate of vulnerable individuals who ventured too far in a world rapidly losing its boundaries. And as one who despite the cost and the danger has retraced many of Conrad's journeys, Jasanoff compellingly asserts the novelist's continuing relevance as an interpreter of our (post)modern geopolitical and cultural perplexities. Certain to attract both history buffs and those drawn to literary biography.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2017 Booklist

Harvard historian Jasanoff (Liberty's Exiles) undertakes a review of Joseph Conrad's life and work that broadens into an acute, original study of 19th-century European imperialism and an emergent globalized world. Polish-born Conrad (1857-1924) was an accomplished seaman before he turned to writing, having learned English as an adult and picked up on the craft of fiction in part from reading Charles Dickens. He became one of England's most celebrated authors and prose stylists. Jasanoff's vivid descriptions of Conrad's travels enrich this narrative. From the extraction of ivory to the impact of rubber demand, she describes the dreadful Belgian colonial trade that Conrad knew firsthand, having worked briefly on a Congo riverboat, a job that he detested and in which he encountered a "European regime of appalling greed, violence, and hypocrisy" that informed his novels. But Jasanoff's more anachronistic language, such as a description of her subject as "a dead white man" who was "alarmingly prejudiced" by contemporary standards, gives the impression that she is judging him by today's very different moral standards. Despite this, Jasanoff's skillfully written book makes a persuasive case that Conrad was "one of us: a citizen of a global world." Agent: Andrew Wylie, the Wylie Agency. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Historian Jasanoff (Coolidge Professor of History, Harvard Univ.; Liberty's Exiles) combines biography, history, and literary study in this work about writer Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) and his sources and influences. She examines how he derived the themes of four of his major works-The Secret Agent, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo-from his experiences as a sailor and a citizen of the world. These themes dominated Conrad's approach and literary imagination, permitting him to take the experiences that he lived and saw and turn them into literary gold. Recurring themes in his work, such as the futility of nationalist ideals, are based on personal events and real incidences. Progress came with discontents, setbacks, and problems. Jasanoff acknowledges other, more traditional biographies of Conrad and is especially indebted to one by Zdzislaw Najder, owing to its research on Conrad's early life. Her work is profusely illustrated with maps and photographs. VERDICT Highly recommended for all collections and for readers who have a special affection for the life and works of this great novelist. [See Prepub Alert, 5/7/17.]-Morris Hounion, New York City Coll. of Technology, Brooklyn © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

An absorbing biography melds history and literary analysis.Jasanoff (History/Harvard Univ.; Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World, 2011, etc.), who has won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and the George Washington Book Prize, asserts that the novels of Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) "meditate on how to behave in a globalizing world," where characters "confront some critical choice, only to face consequences more far-ranging than they ever imagined." Drawing on Conrad's many works of fiction, memoir, letters, and essays, Jasanoff focuses especially on his most famous novelsThe Secret Agent, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromoto reveal how he responded to a roiling age plagued by anarchy, revolution, and oppression. His characters "struggle with displacement, alienation, and despair," caused by both external and internal forces. Conrad, Jasanoff reveals, was "perpetually depressed, incorrigibly cynical, alarmingly prejudiced" against Asians and Jews, and beset by childhood experiences that inspired his "fatalistic sense of the world as a realm where, no matter how hard you tried to make your own way, you might never slip the tracks of destiny." As a teenager, he set out alone from his native Poland, then under Russian domination, determined to become a seaman; in 1878, he arrived in cosmopolitan London and began a career in the merchant marine, rising to the rank of captain over the next 20 years. Travels throughout the world fueled his imagination. During voyages to Asia, he "stowed away landscapes, characters, and plots" that inspired "half of everything Conrad ever published." In rich detail, Jasanoff skillfully contextualizes his work within "a chain of historical events" that led to profound social and political change. Heart of Darkness, for example, was "closely pegged" to King Leopold II's ruthless exploitation of the Congo. Jasanoff focuses less on Conrad's family life (his wife and sons are lightly sketched) than on the prescient "global compass" of his literary works. An insightful perspective on Conrad's life and turbulent times. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* Whitman may have rhapsodized in "Passage to India"over the global connections rapidly unifying the world, but a nineteenth-century, Polish-born seaman named Joseph Conrad looked at the rapidly globalizing planet through far more skeptical eyes. Jasanoff invites readers to ponder what Conrad saw as he surveyed a rapidly evolving planet. Readers watch as the young Conrad—who learned to hate the Russian imperialism that denied him a homeland—spends years serving on British ships that help the United Kingdom enlarge its own imperial reach. Readers will then marvel at how this intrepid sailor converts his seafaring experience—with surprising mastery of a language acquired as an adult—into compelling novels, such as Heart of Darkness and Nostromo, that exposed the raw self-interest (and worse) hidden behind imperialists' cant about civilization and progress. Deftly melding biographical narration, historical analysis, and literary explication, Jasanoff lets readers glimpse in Conrad's fiction the fate of vulnerable individuals who ventured too far in a world rapidly losing its boundaries. And as one who—despite the cost and the danger—has retraced many of Conrad's journeys, Jasanoff compellingly asserts the novelist's continuing relevance as an interpreter of our (post)modern geopolitical and cultural perplexities. Certain to attract both history buffs and those drawn to literary biography. Copyright 2017 Booklist Reviews.

Harvard historian and multiaward winner Jasanoff argues that, with his parents dead after forced relocations for his father's revolutionary activities and his own sojourns worldwide as a sailor showing him both the oppression wrought by imperialism and the swift changes wrought by technological advances, Joseph Conrad speaks to the turmoil of our day.

Historian Jasanoff (Coolidge Professor of History, Harvard Univ.; Liberty's Exiles) combines biography, history, and literary study in this work about writer Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) and his sources and influences. She examines how he derived the themes of four of his major works—The Secret Agent, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo—from his experiences as a sailor and a citizen of the world. These themes dominated Conrad's approach and literary imagination, permitting him to take the experiences that he lived and saw and turn them into literary gold. Recurring themes in his work, such as the futility of nationalist ideals, are based on personal events and real incidences. Progress came with discontents, setbacks, and problems. Jasanoff acknowledges other, more traditional biographies of Conrad and is especially indebted to one by Zdzislaw Najder, owing to its research on Conrad's early life. Her work is profusely illustrated with maps and photographs. VERDICT Highly recommended for all collections and for readers who have a special affection for the life and works of this great novelist. [See Prepub Alert, 5/7/17.]—Morris Hounion, New York City Coll. of Technology, Brooklyn

Harvard historian Jasanoff (Liberty's Exiles) undertakes a review of Joseph Conrad's life and work that broadens into an acute, original study of 19th-century European imperialism and an emergent globalized world. Polish-born Conrad (1857–1924) was an accomplished seaman before he turned to writing, having learned English as an adult and picked up on the craft of fiction in part from reading Charles Dickens. He became one of England's most celebrated authors and prose stylists. Jasanoff's vivid descriptions of Conrad's travels enrich this narrative. From the extraction of ivory to the impact of rubber demand, she describes the dreadful Belgian colonial trade that Conrad knew firsthand, having worked briefly on a Congo riverboat, a job that he detested and in which he encountered a "European regime of appalling greed, violence, and hypocrisy" that informed his novels. But Jasanoff's more anachronistic language, such as a description of her subject as "a dead white man" who was "alarmingly prejudiced" by contemporary standards, gives the impression that she is judging him by today's very different moral standards. Despite this, Jasanoff's skillfully written book makes a persuasive case that Conrad was "one of us: a citizen of a global world." Agent: Andrew Wylie, the Wylie Agency. (Nov.)