Although some people viewed John Brown as a madman, his daring 1859 raid on the U.S. military arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va., helped galvanize anti-slavery sentiment in the North.

In Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War, Tony Horwitz has written an engrossing account of Brown’s life and singular devotion to the abolition cause. With hindsight, Horwitz suggests that Harpers Ferry seems like “an al-Qaeda prequel,” with a homegrown fundamentalist consumed by hatred of the U.S. government, launching a suicidal attack on a symbol of American power.

From his days as a youth, Brown abhorred slavery. At age 12 he witnessed the beating of a slave boy with iron shovels, and later helped escaping slaves travel North on the Underground Railroad. He cited the Bible in claiming to be on a divine mission to abolish slavery.

In the 1850s Brown traveled through Northern states and Canada seeking volunteer fighters and financial backing. Potential recruits often were perplexed about Brown’s goals, in part because he seems to have changed his mind frequently about exactly what he hoped to accomplish by capturing a government arsenal.

Did Brown intend to arm slaves with thousands of guns taken from the arsenal? The specifics were never entirely clear. Before the Harpers Ferry raid, Brown convened his supporters, who drafted a constitution and declared that they wanted to form a slave-free nation.

Setting out in the middle of the night, Brown’s ragtag group of 19 fighters attacked and easily captured the lightly guarded arsenal, where 100,000 guns were stored. But within 30 hours government troops took back the arsenal, leaving most insurgents dead, dying or wounded. Brown and a few of his comrades were tried, convicted and hanged.

The attack on Harpers Ferry divided the abolition movement. Many who opposed slavery also opposed resorting to violence to end it.

During Brown’s trial, some suggested that he plead not guilty by reason of insanity, but he flatly rejected such a defense. To the end he was willing to die in the cause of abolition, while asking why it was a crime to try to free slaves.

Among Brown’s prominent supporters was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who suggested that Brown was “the new saint awaiting his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross.”

Horwitz places Brown’s crusade in the context of the nation’s deep division over slavery. “Harpers Ferry,” he writes, “helped propel [Abraham] Lincoln into the White House, where he would ultimately fulfill Brown’s mission. … Harpers Ferry wasn’t simply a prelude to secession and civil war. In many respects, it was a dress rehearsal.”

Lincoln was a late convert to abolition. A native of slave state Kentucky, he initially thought that slavery would fade away and that former slaves would be resettled in Africa. But three years after Harpers Ferry, with the nation mired in the Civil War inferno, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the South.

Midnight Rising includes 70 pages of notes, a bibliography and an index, as well as portraits and maps, making this an essential work for school and public libraries.

The author deserves credit for writing an even-handed account of a complex man. It would have been easy to dismiss Brown as a crackpot, but Horwitz eschewed that approach and instead sought to get inside Brown’s mind and heart to learn as much as possible about what drove him to embark on a passionate, yet foolhardy, mission that had little chance of success.

Horwitz scoured letters, journals, speeches and books to better understand Brown and the culture that shaped him.

The result is a meticulous tour of an important slice of American history, with Horwitz weaving together vignettes of frontier hardship, the cruelties of slavery, the savagery of battle, the armory takeover, and the trials and executions of Brown and his soldiers.

Midnight Rising is historical non-fiction at its best, coming alive in the hands of a superb storyteller.

Bill Williams is a freelance writer in West Hartford, Conn., and a former editorial writer for The Hartford Courant. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War, by Tony Horwitz; Henry Holt, 365 pp., $29

Among my friends is a woman who moved here from Boston. Twenty-five years later, she still makes a point of putting Long Beach in her prayers. Our route to lunch often takes us along Alamitos Bay, where snow-capped peaks of purple mountains are a backdrop for the recreational waterway and its iconic red swim buoys.

Before anyone picks up a fish taco, my friend thanks God for the food and “this beautiful place we live.”

Almost daily, I drive along the coast, scanning the purple-blue of an ocean that conveys a power more vast than the green-blue waters I grew up with.

The Pacific confers a sense of limitlessness, of potential, of beauty, that pours into my consciousness. Often this mingles with the awareness that I’m just a 45-minute drive from the city’s art, drama, and hustle. That this is my world now seems surreal. There are moments when it suddenly dawns on me that I’m not just a tourist.

“I f-ing LIVE here!” I’ve said it to myself in the car a number of times, as if saying it out loud cements the reality.

California was a lot like that hot guy I thought I’d never get. My kid had kept me wed to South Florida. So when she left for college and I could split, I was certain to stake claim in the new territory when the opportunity presented itself.

I was eager to go the DMV and forfeit my Florida license so I could establish myself as a California girl, even though it meant (as it often does with hot guys) that I’d have to pay for the privilege (hello, state tax). Plus, the move came with an actual hot guy – a remarkably charming man who sold me on the idea that I had inspired him to get clean and sober after our brief fling on Catalina Island during a 2009 Christmas vacation.

Understanding nothing about addiction, I believed his pitch that we could build a new life together; he offered to support me while I pursued my studies in yoga and creativity and wrote a book about what I learned. Just months after we met, we co-signed a lease on a place in Studio City.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” I said to my friends and family as I resigned my job, sloughed off the least important of my possessions and 86’ed the home-field advantage. “If things work out, I get the guy. If they don’t, I live in California. Win-win.”

Naïveté factored heavily in my courage. I had no idea that the next year would bring me to my knees – what some call reaching bottom – as life as I knew it was stripped away. I’d given much up in exchange for my new goals, including the loss of most of my possessions, which were destroyed by a bargain mover’s leaky truck during its two-month cross-country odyssey.

What I didn’t know is that I’d give up even more.

My studies in the yoga studio were teaching me to detach from everything I’d considered “me.” They were also teaching me a kinder, gentler way.

“Ahimsa,” my teachers continually reminded me – the foundation of yoga philosophy: Non-harming.

This wasn’t a reminder not to harm others. What they meant is that I should not push myself so aggressively that I injure myself (which I did), I should not talk meanly to myself (which I did), and I should not subject myself to abuse, neither my own or others’ (which I did). The concept that I should not drive myself under the lash of my will power was as foreign to me as Sanskrit.

While I was at the yoga studio, discovering and changing the habits that constituted self-abuse, my boyfriend was sliding back into his old habits. I tried to solve the problem, I tried to control his behavior, I tried everything I could think of – even swearing off booze myself as a self-righteous example. When nothing worked, I joined him at the bar. The relationship became an increasingly destructive force in my life.

Once I was aware of the toxic in intoxication, ahimsa meant I’d move again – an hour south to the other end of the county – this time on my own, with no job and no prospects. I was no longer full of bravado and flippancy. I was exhausted, scared, adrift, and lost.

My boyfriend had shown me the progressive disease of alcoholism in its full-blown state. Now, my old favorite Florida pastimes of barhopping and partying just seemed like a dance with death. Without the validation of jobs or a relationship (also my two favorite justifiable distractions), I’d hit bottom emotionally. I was nothing short of desperate. In a moment of clarity, I realized I had to give up drinking. For good.

Friends and family were concerned, but I refused all offers of help that meant a return to Florida. I would not crawl back home defeated. I’d rather die on the streets of L.A. (obviously, with my sense of drama still intact).

I couldn’t see it at the time, but somehow as things were falling apart, they were coming together.

Once my life was completely empty, I could fill it up with new – and better – stuff. I traded nightclubs for yoga studios, self-medication for meditation, and the scene for the sea. (I’ll tell you sometime about my new sailing habit). I spent months applying for all sorts of jobs. Writing, event planning, teaching and PR gigs – you name it! – if I had experience, I applied for it. I put in the effort, opened my life to possibilities and let go of the outcome.

I was surprised when the first job offer I got was unsolicited. When the ArtsPaper editor asked me to write this column, I tried to talk him out of it. My life in L.A.? I had no good news yet to report. Plus, writing for the same paper I had written for in 2008? It didn’t seem like progress. But I had no other offer. And a hometown ally who believes in me and respects my work: that is no small thing.

So I accepted the task with gratitude.

Then, I had a couple of anxiety attacks. I was pretty sure I’d lost my edge. I had no idea what my writing would sound like now that I had let go of the biting sarcasm. And writing a letter home made me ache with homesickness that I was afraid would pull me back since I had so little to keep me here. If facing fear is the measure, taking the assignment was a bigger leap of faith than moving across the country.

It’s funny how saying “yes” to that request seemed to make more yeses follow. Three months later, I am now also teaching as an adjunct professor at two colleges. I have begun to make a network of friends here who love and support each other.

I’m not the first to be caught in L.A.’s seductive pull and risk it all in the process. I suppose whether its deemed “blind faith” or “irrational behavior” depends a whole lot on how things turn out. I’ve also found it depends on one’s view. And this is where it comes home – my new home – for me. Often the view depends on gratitude, rather than the other way around.

Can I get an “Amen”? The fish tacos are getting cold.

Marya Summers is a veteran South Florida arts and culture writer now living in Southern California. She can be reached at www.maryasummers.com.

Two adjacent exhibits, now on view at The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach until Jan. 15, demonstrate why illustration should be given due consideration within the context of the history of art in America.

Yet also, as the complement to the journalism of their day, the works on view provide a visual thumbprint for our nation’s ideology during different times in our not-too-distant history, as well as demonstrate how rapidly this collective mindset has changed.

The Art of Illustration: Original Works of Howard Chandler Christy and J.C. Leyendecker and Andy Warhol: The Bazaar Years 1951-1964 are two shows that have been made possible by the Hearst Corp. Publisher William Randolph Hearst believed that illustration was an important tool for successful journalism. He hired the most talented illustrators. He invested in color printing technology as soon as it became available and he fully understood the power of imagery to elicit the reader’s imagination.

Illustrator Howard Chandler Christy was born in Ohio in 1873 and was actually a descendant of Capt. Myles Standish. He moved to New York when he was in his early twenties so that he could study at the Art Students League under the tutelage of the American Impressionist painter William Merritt Chase.

By 1895, he’d embarked on a career as a magazine illustrator, even doing many of the drawings of Theodore Roosevelt and the “the Rough Riders” during the Spanish-American War. By 1910 he was working primarily for Hearst, and mostly for Cosmopolitan, where he stayed until 1921.

Christy’s work shows the romanticism of the age in which he lived, which glorified the horrors of war by proffering heroes. Most of his work in this exhibit centers on soldiers. They are sturdy idealized figures. Christy is also known for creating the “Christy Girl,” illustrations of beautiful women that are also emblematic of their time, and often compared to the “Gibson Girl.” In works such as American Colonial Woman Watching Over a Wounded Man (Note: the titles used here are descriptions, as these works are untitled), we see one such beautiful woman depicted as an angelic caretaker.

Christy’s works were done in the early 1900s, yet their subject matter is the decade prior. Leyendecker’s work is mostly from the 1940s, a mere 30 years later, but we see a significant shift in how the American attitude towards war has changed. Men are still heroic, but romanticism has been replaced by a pragmatic optimism — one that acknowledges the sacrifices of war, as shown in Leyendecker’s Memorial Day.

Joseph Christian Leyendecker, who went by “J.C.”, was actually born in Germany but emigrated to the U.S. when he was eight. He returned to Europe to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, but then shortly after moved to New York and almost immediately became a successful illustrator. It’s very easy to see how his work influenced another great illustrator.

“Leyendecker influenced Norman Rockwell, who adored him,” said Nancy Mato, executive vice president and curator. Indeed Rockwell spoke in his autobiography about how he studied Leyendecker’s technique. But while Leyendecker also did many covers for The Saturday Evening Post, the ones on view here are from Hearst’s publication, The American Weekly.

Everyone knows who Andy Warhol is, but many people don’t know that this iconic leader of the Pop Art movement was first a successful illustrator. Between 1951 and 1964 he created hundreds of illustrations for Hearst’s Harper’s Bazaar. Warhol began working as an illustrator shortly after he arrived in New York in 1949 after graduating from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh.

A delightful selection of the works Warhol created are on view here and even the most die-hard Warhol fan may not have seen some of them. The opportunity to see them shouldn’t be missed. Mato admits to accepting the works, sight unseen, as soon as Hearst called to offer them to Four Arts.

“I was excited when I heard. I didn’t know what they looked like, but I knew this would work with our audience. I was so delighted when they arrived,” she said.

Rightfully so, as these works reveal a side of Warhol that few would associate with the bizarre, angst-ridden, white-haired weirdo portrayed in films such as Basquiat and The Doors. This Warhol has a notable sense of humor as well as a sense of whimsy, aptly demonstrated in an illustration that accompanies a narrative called “Making Less of Oneself,” which extols the virtues of self-control, and throughout all of the works displayed, which are colorful and lighthearted.

If Christy’s work demonstrates bold romanticism, and Leyendecker’s work pragmatic optimism, then Warhol’s work heralds the origins of our nation’s obsessive consumerism and preoccupation with image, particularly the image of wealth, beauty and affluence. Here, the focus is not war, but fashion. As such, the images have no great depth, but they’re remarkably fun and are sure to bring a smile to anyone’s face. What you’ll see are shoes, purses, lipstick cases – all the accoutrements of fashion.
However, exactly what makes these two exhibits so impactful is that they’re presented simultaneously. While each could successfully stand on its own, shown together they present the viewer with the visual story of how Americans have viewed themselves over an almost 100-year period of time.

The progression from military boots and bayonets to purses and perfume certainly provides ample material for the contemplation of a profound shift in our national identity, and values, over the past century.

Jenifer Mangione Vogt is a marketing communications professional and resident of Boca Raton. Visit her blog at http://www.fineartnotebook.com.

The Art of Illustration: Original Works of Howard Chandler Christy and J.C. Leyendecker, and Andy Warhol: The Bazaar Years 1951-1964, are on view at The Society of the Four Arts until Jan. 15. Hours for this exhibition are Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $5. For more information call 561-655-7226, or visit www.fourarts.org.

It isn’t every pianist who’s going to encore with a Keith Jarrett improv from the early 1980s, but Orion Weiss has the kind of omnivorous approach to music that makes such things possible, and enjoyable to boot.

In his recital appearance Wednesday afternoon at the Duncan Theatre’s Stage West, the 30-year-old pianist from suburban Cleveland gave his appreciative audience not just Jarrett, but a near-world premiere by a young American composer as well as rare Martinů and Liszt. He showed himself to be an enthusiastic, committed player, with strong fingers and technique, and a musical personality that was comfortable with all kinds of repertoire, though perhaps more effective in up-tempo muscularity then brooding introspection.

Weiss’ program, which opened the Duncan’s series, consisted primarily of a series of toccatas, a smart, interesting approach that allowed him to choose refreshingly offbeat material. The Toccata in C minor (BWV 911) of J.S. Bach, while well-known to pianists, is almost never heard in the concert hall these days, and Weiss did a nervy thing in opening with it.

This was a somewhat uneven performance of the Bach, with plenty of good digital work in the spinning rapid notes that run through this piece, but in the big fugal sections his touch was a little less sure, not in notes (aside from a stray gap while sounding the theme), but in communicative power. Tempos were good, and the piece was well-paced, but the fugal playing was somewhat dry; the individual voices didn’t have enough emphasis to fully make their case.

The Liszt Toccata (S. 197a), a very brief, strange work from 1879, is a blur in C major, and Weiss played it winningly, using it an intro to the new piece, Michael Brown’s Constellations and Toccata, written for Weiss and with a title that plays on the night-sky significance of his given name. Brown writes with strength and force, opening the first section of the piece with granitic, clusterish chords amid a sparse, space-filled narrative, then moving to a toccata that starts in the lower registers.

It’s a jumpy, explosive bit of writing that ends in an exhausted whisper, and Weiss gave it total engagement. This is a pianist who knows how to create drama at the keyboard and command attention, and his immersion in the music helped him give a persuasive performance of this intriguing new piece.

The Schumann Toccata (Op. 7), another blurry piece in C major, closed the Schumann group that came next, and Weiss gave it an expansive, athletic reading that made the composer’s remarkably forward-looking writing reach out and grab the listener by the collar. His control of the music was excellent here, with a beautifully executed series of right-hand octaves in the middle that sang out over a well-managed background.

He preceded the Toccata with five sections of Schumann’s Bunte Blätter collection (Op. 99), in which the one rapid piece was the most interesting, because Weiss played it with superb finger control and a nice snap in the bass figures. But the other four short pieces, all of them down-tempo, had the same kind of surface-only poetry that made them attractive only, and not moving. One wants Weiss to lean into the music a little more, to make it speak.

One of the Blätter is the source of the theme that Johannes Brahms chose for his set of Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann (Op. 9), a searching, inventive work that should figure more prominently on concert programs. Weiss opened his second half with a good, solid interpretation of the piece, with fleet arpeggios in the sixth variation and gratifying attention to rhythmic variety, such as in the second variation. Some more color, shade a more precise conception of each variation would have been welcome here, so that the audience could appreciate Brahms’ transformations more clearly.

The recital proper ended with the Fantasie et Toccata (H. 281) of Bohuslav Martinů, written in 1940 as the composer was fleeing the Nazis and looking for passage to the United States. It is a vigorous, quirky showpiece, with a wide-ranging, glittering fantasy and a restless toccata section that sounds like a logical outgrowth of the fantasy rather than a piece with a separate character.

The work plays well to Weiss’ strengths of rhythmic vitality and clean passagework, and he infused it with ingratiating wit and sparkle, even though the piece is more along the line of tirelessly serious rather than lighthearted.

Weiss’ encore, he said, was “like a toccata,” and then played an untitled improvisation from jazzman Keith Jarrett’s 1984 solo concert in Tokyo. This fun little back-and-forth chordal shimmy over a quasi-habanera bass has a lot in common with the relentlessness of the Martinů and the dazzle of the Schumann, and it fit the rest of the recital beautifully. Weiss was particularly good here in the exuberant way he played the driving, ecstatic lines Jarrett constructed for the right hand. – Greg Stepanich

***

Not every fit of pique leads to good results, but the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is the exception that proved a jewel.

Back in 1945, with the war over, Sir Thomas Beecham returned to England from four years in the States to claim his right as president of Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra to conduct it. Its conductor, Sir John Barbirolli, would have none of it, holding a grudge against Beecham for something he said about Barbirolli’s stint at the New York Philharmonic.

Not to be bested, Beecham approached the Royal Philharmonic Society of London, which gave out awards to composers, and offered to build an orchestra for them. It played its first concert in 1946, and today is led by the Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit.

On Wednesday night, the RPO played the first of two concerts at the Kravis Center as part of the venue’s Regional Arts series. Eighty-two strong, they played to an exacting standard rarely heard in most concert halls. But then one has to remember that London has nearly a dozen such professional orchestras of this caliber competing for audience in its six large venues.

Accompanying them on their American tour was conductor and solo violinist Pinchas Zukerman. Although this intelligent group of players could have gone conductor-less, Zukerman had a rare old time leading and playing the Violin Concerto No. 1 (in G minor, Op. 26) of Max Bruch.

Appropriating a “Mr. Cool” approach, Zukerman spun around and around, playing, then conducting, with his unwieldy bow. It took some getting used to seeing his front, and then his back. But there was much synergy between soloist and orchestra despite the distraction.

Zukerman’s playing was superb in the beginning; he produced some lovely tonal quality, though it sometimes veered close to schmaltz. Toward the end, however, the faster passages tended to be delivered with difficulty. If he lost his way a little, the proper emphasis returned in the final chords.

Now it was time for the orchestra to shine in the Symphony No. 4 (in E minor, Op. 98) of Brahms. They played vigorously and with enviable refinement. The first and second violins bowed together with military precision and produced a tone quality of such depth and sweetness I wondered if they’d keep it up. They did. As each section got to grips with Brahms’ brilliant counterpoint, answering one another, back and forth, one had to marvel at the quality of their playing.

The second movement has a lovely opening with horns and winds riding tunefully over plucked strings. Accentuating the melody, the winds finish it off. The strings pick up their bows and begin to play, violas and cellos are given a lush, elegiac, drawn-out song, like a walk in a summer garden. It is indeed a glorious moment for the cellos, and they rose to the occasion superbly.

The third movement opened with a thrilling attack, then rolled along quickly and merrily, brilliantly played. It was over in a flash, and then it was on to the difficult finale, Brahms’ nod to the musical past. Using the passacaglia form of variation, it opens with horns and over timpani drumbeats. While the orchestral sound was magnificent, Zukerman’s tempo was much too slow.

A certain degree of ad libitum is understandable, but the flute solo was almost mawkish in its interpretation of the main theme, as the flutist dragged it along and spun it out. Thank goodness the lively ending was near to hand: It dispelled the memory of the flute player’s self-indulgence and the orchestra received a standing ovation and many well-deserved bravos from the large house. -- Rex Hearn

Arielle Hoffman always knew that she wanted to be an actress. After all, theater is the family business.

The 17-year-old daughter of South Florida fixtures Laura Turnbull and Avi Hoffman grew up thinking the odd hours, feast-or-famine, histrionic life of stage performers was normal. “I didn’t know that this was unusual or weird,” she shrugs. “I just had no idea that people had regular jobs.”

This weekend, the Hoffman family’s elder daughter, a high school senior, has a rite of passage. She will make her professional stage debut at Palm Beach Dramaworks, playing opposite her mother in Paul Zindel’s Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.

Appropriately, they play mother and daughter, but that is where the similarity ends. Turnbull plays embittered, alcoholic divorcee Beatrice Hunsdorfer, who takes her disappointments with life out on her daughters, Ruth and Tillie. Hoffman plays introverted Tillie, who reacts to the verbal and emotional abuse by crawling into her protective shell.

In real life, the two actresses have a great relationship. “Characters like her have so many issues and have so much underlying who-knows-what. It’s just more challenging, to play someone that I truly am not like,” says Turnbull. “Because she’s just such a horrible human being, (she) is more fun to play than the people who are nice, the Donna Reed, everything-is-wonderful types. For me, it’s a challenge to not be the kind of mom I am. I love my kids. I am so proud of them.”

For vivacious, gregarious Hoffman, it is a relief to play characters unlike themselves. “I think it would be really hard if it were closer to how it was in real life. If, in reality, we had a relationship that wasn’t good, if we didn’t get along. She calls me ‘ugly’ several times in the play. If that’s how I knew she felt in real life, I couldn’t do it night after night.”

First produced in 1964, but revived infrequently, Gamma Rays is exactly the sort of play Palm Beach Dramaworks relishes. Turnbull has never seen it performed but has been aware of the script since her high school days.

“As kids, we knew some of the monologues and we’d do them in auditions,’ she recalls. “The last time I read it I was younger and I didn’t have kids, so I see it now from a whole different perspective. Looking at it now as an actor, I couldn’t wait to get my teeth into it, to mine everything that’s there.”

Hoffman was unfamiliar with the play, but she seems undaunted by it. Asked what she feels is the biggest challenge for her, she mentions the other demands on her time. “There is the challenge of working this into my life as a high school student,” she replies. “This is what I want to spend my time doing, but unfortunately I have college applications and homework that I have to get done.”

Gamma Rays is a textbook dysfunctional family play, but with an eventual upbeat message. “That although life deals you what it deals you, and everyone handles certain situations in their own way, there is the possibility of coming out from underneath it all,” says Turnbull. “That hope can remain somewhere out there. Not for my character necessarily, not for my other daughter necessarily, but for Tillie.”

“I think the meaning is pretty easily described by the metaphor, that the plants closest to the radiation die,” adds Hoffman. “And the ones on the outside that got the littlest radiation had the most beautiful mutation and grew to be tall and gorgeous. Tillie is the positive mutation. Although she is in the same situation as her mom and her sister, she is coming out of it because of how she thinks about the world. She will be OK.”

THE EFFECT OF GAMMA RAYS ON MAN-IN-THE-MOON MARIGOLDS, Palm Beach Dramaworks at the Don & Ann Brown Theatre, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach. Opening today and running through Sunday, Jan. 29. Tickets: $55. Call: (561) 514-4042.