Books read January through December 1961
| Author | Cooper, James Fenimore |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1821 |
| Number of Pages | 448 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American Revolution |
| When Read | January 1961 |
The fictional story of a spy working for the American revolution.
This was not the first Cooper novel that I read. I may have picked it up at the library because of the title, the Revolutionary War subject, or the fact that it was the earliest of Cooper's books on the shelf. I was certainly conscious by then, from H.H. Kirst if from no one else, that books were published in series and might best be read that way.
I think books like this were part of a Great Illustrated Classics series, or something like that, but I am unable to verify that today. The titles I see listed on the Internet don't match my recollection of them.
| Author | Cooper, James Fenimore |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1826 |
| Number of Pages | 368 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American frontier; French and Indian War |
| When Read | January 1961 |
Nathaniel ("Natty") Bumppo, now well grown up and known to his Indian friends as "Hawkeye" is recruited with his Indian friends Chingachgook and his son Uncas to scout for a British column sent to assist a fort under siege by the French and Indians, and to guard the two daughters of the fort's commander. There are battles with Huron Indians, and a love story of one of the daughters and Uncas, the last of the Mohicans. Uncas and the girl both die.
My memories of this book were long ago replaced by the various Hollywood films, mainly by the one made in 1992.
| Author | Brinkley, William |
|---|---|
| Publication | Random House |
| Copyright Date | 1956 |
| Number of Pages | 373 |
| Genres | Fiction; Comedy |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | February 1961 |
Best-selling comedy about a group of advertising men drafted into the navy during World War II. There's no fighting against the Japanese, but lots of infighting in the service itself. It was made into a successful Hollywood movie.
I was much interested in World War II in my teens, as I am now, and also interested in sea stories. This book wasn't really about either of those things, at least not in the way that I was interested. I don't remember if I liked it but I bet I did. It would have given me a different, less heroic but not uninteresting take on the nature of war, or at least on the nature of Americans at war.
| Author | Kirst, Hans Helmut |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Kee, Robert |
| Publication | Boston: Little, Brown, 1957 |
| Copyright Date | 1955 |
| Number of Pages | 310 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | February 1961 |
This was the original last volume of the series, going through the end of the war and the immediate aftermath. Later, in 1964, Kirst wrote another book about Asch in peacetime.
Too many years have passed for me to remember any more than that I liked the books enough to read all three.
| Author | Romain, Jules |
|---|---|
| Original Language | French |
| Translators | Hopkins, Gerard |
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1938 |
| Number of Pages | xxii + 500 |
| Extras | maps |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War I |
| When Read | March 1961 |
A novel of the battle of Verdun in 1916 on the Western Front. It follows many characters over the course of the months long battle.
I seem to remember finding this book in the Pimlico branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, my main library at the time. It was a big book with many characters, a complex organization, and sophisticated observations by an author who taught philosophy and wrote complicated books on the nature of society and of literature. It was an ambitious read for a 14 year old boy who looked for war adventure stories. I remember finding it difficult to follow and fully understand but I wasn't yet old enough to realize why.
I have read histories of the war since then, even fairly recently, and I know something about this battle. The German commanders had planned it as an attack on a French position that had to be defended for both strategic and morale reasons, but was in a position that would cause the French to suffer many more casualties than the Germans. It was planned as a battle of attrition to bring France to its knees. As it turned out, both sides suffered unimaginable losses, 337,000 Germans and 377,000 French were killed or wounded and nothing whatever was achieved except a general slaughter of young men.
Whenever I've read about this battle in the histories of the war I've thought about going back to re-read Romains' novel. I've never done it and I am pretty sure I never will. I can read novels of World War II and see them as uplifting, of decent people making heroic sacrifices to defeat an evil menace to the world. These were things that I appreciated as a young teen and still appreciate now. World War I wasn't like that, or at least I don't believe that it was. I still sympathize mostly with the British and French, and later the Americans. I still see the Germans and Austro-Hungarians as the aggressors and more responsible for the war though the Russian and later the Italian and Turkish governments shared significant responsibility too. All in all, I believe that it was a pointless human tragedy on an unprecedented scale.
| Author | Linna, Vaino |
|---|---|
| Publication | 1957 |
| Copyright Date | 1954 |
| Number of Pages | 310 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II; Finland |
| When Read | March 1961 |
When the Germans invaded the USSR in 1941 Finland also declared war and invaded Karelia, the province that had been taken from Finland by the Soviets in the "Winter War" of 1939-40. The Finns called this the "Continuation War". Linna, then a 21 year old draftee, fought in that war and later wrote this book about it.
The book, written by a man I now know to have been orphaned at age seven, educated for only six years, and working in a lumber mill before being drafted, became a best seller in Finland and was translated into many languages. I don't remember anything of it but I know it appealed to me at the time.
At the age of 14, going on 15, I was very interested in history and was aware of the fact that two great totalitarian governments fought against each other in WWII and that not all people allied with the Germans were Nazi criminals.
I see that an Amazon reviewer who read both the early English translation and the original Finnish claims that there were significant omissions and some mistranslations in the English, but that there is a better translation available today.
| Author | Siegel, Benjamin |
|---|---|
| Publication | Harcourt, Brace, 1959 |
| Copyright Date | 1959 |
| Number of Pages | 311 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Roman Empire; Jews; Palestine |
| When Read | April 1961 |
During the reign of Hadrian, "Bias", a young Greek slave physician who has been branded on his forehead is made to have sex with his mistress. The master, Gallus, sees them and attempts to kill Bias but fails. In the ensuing struggle the mistress aims a sword at Bias who wriggles away and she cuts her husband, killing him. Bias runs away. He winds up among Jews, gradually becomes one, flees from a Roman "Searcher" who is pursuing him, and eventually winds up with the forces of Simon Bar Kochba and is present at the first big battle of Bar Kochba's revolt.
I could not find any review or synopsis of this book on Amazon or anywhere else on the Internet, nor could I remember a thing about it. However I found a complete copy of the entire book in the Internet Archive, called it up, skimmed it, and wrote the above abstract.
I am sure that this book appealed to me on multiple levels. I was interested in Roman history (and still am.) I could sympathize and even identify with a slave fighting against oppression (and still can.) I appreciated the intellectuality of the young physician. I still thought of myself as a Jew (and in some sense still do.)
I don't know if the book was written especially for young readers. My guess is that they constituted a significant audience for it but that many adults also read it. It would certainly have been shelved in the adult fiction section of the library.
| Author | Opatoshu, Joseph |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Yiddish |
| Translators | Spiegel, Moshe |
| Publication | 1952 |
| Copyright Date | 1952 |
| Number of Pages | 307 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Roman Empire; Palestine |
| When Read | April 1961 |
A novel of Rabbi Akiva ben Joseph, also known as Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Akiba.
The rabbi played a role in The Sword and the Promise, which I read just before this book. Obviously, I was following the historical theme of the previous read. As with the previous book, I now remember nothing about it. However I did find a synopsis on Amazon.
Both this and Siegel's book, and many others written in the 1950's must have been stimulated by the horror of the Holocaust and the greatly strengthened Zionist movement and foundation of the State of Israel. In those days my parents were members of the Reform synagogue, the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation and I attended Sunday school there right up to my "confirmation" not long after this time in 1961. My parents always had ambivalent feelings about Zionism. They supported the creation of the Jewish state as a place of refuge for oppressed Jews worldwide. However they considered themselves first and foremost to be Americans and resisted the notion of Judaism as nationality much less as race. They explained all of that to me and it had a strong effect, but at the same time I was attracted to Zionism and the heroism of the Jews fighting for their existence in the Middle East. I read this and Siegel's book and also read Leon Uris and other Jewish writers and was much affected.
| Author | Bocca, Geoffrey |
|---|---|
| Publication | J. Messner, 1958 |
| Number of Pages | 256 |
| Extras | photos, illustrations |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biography |
| Keywords | Winston Churchill |
| When Read | May 1961 |
Bocca was a writer of popular biographies, in this case of the still living former Prime Minister. With the "over 150" illustrations in 256 pages, it wouldn't have been a very deep book.
I became very interested in Churchill again in the late 1990's and read one of his autobiographies, multiple biographies, and his six volume history of the war. I guess my interest formed pretty early.
I would have been well aware of who Churchill was even before I read this, though this may have been the first book I've read that was specifically about him. My interest has not flagged. I finished another quite good biography/history, Winston's War, by Max Hasting in January 2020.
| Author | Stackpole, Edward J. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Bonanza Books, 1957 |
| Number of Pages | 297 |
| Extras | maps |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | American Civil War |
| When Read | May 1961 |
A history of the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862.
I was deeply interested in the Civil War, starting probably at the age of eight, and had read quite a few books, including specialist histories like this one. I've probably read 30 or 40 books about it, maybe more.
At this time I was probably still attracted by what I saw as the heroism and competence of the Southern leaders - Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and many others. I can't completely recreate the thoughts and emotions I had in those days about the war. I probably saw this particular battle, a slaughter of Union forces caused more by poor Union generalship than by outstanding Confederate generalship, as part of the finest and most successful period of Confederate arms. I think it was probably only later that I came to see the Battle of Fredericksburg as a thoroughgoing tragedy.
| Author | Hough, Richard |
|---|---|
| Publication | Viking Press |
| Copyright Date | 1958 |
| Number of Pages | 212 |
| Extras | maps, illustrations |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Russo-Japanese War; Naval |
| When Read | June 1961 |
After the surprise Japanese attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in northern China the Tsar and his naval staff, at huge expense, organized the main Russian naval fleet in the Baltic Sea to travel around Europe, around Africa, around South and Southeast Asia, up the coast of Indochina and China, and into the Straits of Tsushima, where it was promptly destroyed by the Japanese Navy.
The defeat was a fiasco. The money spent and the political capital spent with their French allies in providing coaling facilities was a huge drain on the Russian treasury. The Russian people were horrified by the cost and the casualties of the war, a war that offered no benefit to the Russian people even if it were successful. The Revolution of 1905 ensued.
This book made a strong impression on me and I remember it to this day. As I remember it, Hough included his analysis of the imperial ambitions of the Tsar and his coterie in Asia, the antagonistic ambitions of the Japanese, the rottenness at the core of the Russian navy in which arrogant and self-indulgent officers with poor naval skills led mutinous crews with inadequate food and pay in a war that all of the officers imagined would be a simple matter of superior white men beating inferior Asians. It didn't work out that way. The Japanese were far more professional, better trained, more disciplined, and more motivated. The battle, when it finally came after over a year of preparation, was completely one-sided.
The Russian defeat caused a major loss of face. It is now thought that this loss of face had something to do with Russia's desire not to lose more face by allowing Austria-Hungary to roll over Serbia in 1914, and it must also have given many Russian revolutionaries the experience that helped them in 1917.
The book is still in print and has attracted a surprising number of Amazon reviews (57 as of this date) for a book first published in 1958. There are lots of readers like me.
| Author | Mercer, Charles |
|---|---|
| Publication | Putnam |
| Copyright Date | 1960 |
| Number of Pages | 514 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American Revolution |
| When Read | June 1961 |
A novel of the American Revolution, probably written with young readers like me in mind. According to a Kirkus review found on the net, it's about a "bound" boy and girl who grow up during the war and deal with the difficulties of the period of Valley Forge and Monmouth when revolutionary fortunes were at their worst.
I'm afraid none of this has stayed with me. Perhaps the history of the previous book recorded in my little notepad from this period (The Fleet That Had to Die) made an impression where the personal story did not. I have no way to know.
| Author | Neuman, Peter |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Fitzgibbon, Constantine |
| Publication | William Sloan Associates, 1959 |
| Copyright Date | 1956 |
| Number of Pages | 312 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | July 1961 |
This book is represented as the memoir of a young man who graduates from the Hitler Jugend in 1938 and achieves his ambition of become an SS man. He undergoes a severe training regime and is assigned to a Waffen SS unit that fights on the Eastern Front. By the end of the war he has attained the rank of Captain and survives Russian captivity to publish this memoir.
There is much debate on Amazon and Wikipedia about the veracity of the account. Some readers believe that it has a great ring of truth while others point to multiple factual errors and say it is a novel, possibly not even by a German since the first edition appeared in French in 1956. When I read it around age 15 (my date_read values for books read before 1974 are formulaic guesses) I assumed it to be true. It was presented that way by the publisher and I had no reason and not enough knowledge of the war to suspect otherwise.
The book made a strong impression on me. Now, reading the many Amazon reviews, I read about scenes that seem to accord with deep memories not dredged up in 55 years, for example his training that required him to dig a hole and jump in before he was squashed by a tank that killed some other trainees.
"HistoryLover" writes the following in his Amazon review of Other Men's Graves, the title given by the UK publisher.
"Other Men's Graves is not a non-fiction memoir of an SS officer but a novel written by the prolific French writer Gaston-Claude Petitjean-Darville (1925-2004). He wrote most of his work (detective and spy fiction) under the name Claude Rank but he brought out this book (called 'SS' in France, 1958) as if written by Peter Neumann (and apparently 'translated' by Charles Darville). Subsequent US and British publishers were hoodwinked (or happy to be hoodwinked) in their English translations (The Black March/Other Men's Graves). Darville is fairly knowledgeable about his subject but lets himself down in small details, the sort of mistakes an SS soldier wouldn't have made. Also, it is ridiculously sensational!"
In my own view, it is a mistake to use the strength of one's impressions to determine the truth of any account. A good novelist can produce a stronger impression than an average man writing a true memoir. Since a fair number of technical mistakes are explained by other reviewers, and "History Lover" even claims to know the real author's name, I'll say that the weight of probability in my own mind is that this book is fiction.
I know that I looked for other books by Peter Neumann but didn't find any.
| Author | Wibberly, Leonard |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Little, Brown |
| Copyright Date | 1955 |
| Number of Pages | 279 |
| Genres | Fiction; Comedy |
| When Read | July 1961 |
The tiny Duchy of Grand Fenwick, in dire economic straits, declares war on the United States in hopes of being rehabilitated by American aid after their surrender. Unfortunately however, their men sent to New York kidnap an important nuclear scientist and actually win the war. The comedy ensues.
I read this book after seeing the Hollywood movie version starring Peter Sellers. The movie was funny and so was the book.
| Author | Sinclair, Upton |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Viking Press |
| Copyright Date | 1940 |
| Number of Pages | 740 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Lanny Budd |
| When Read | August 1961 |
First book in the Lanny Budd series. See the book note identified by 2016-08.01 for an abstract and commentary.
This was an important book in helping me to form a more sophisticated view of the world and of 20th century history. My mother introduced me to the series. It had an important role in her own intellectual development. She called me "Lanny" after the character in the book.
As of this date I'm reading the 11th volume, the one Sinclair added five years after the end of his main effort. See my book notes and diary entries from 2016 through 2018 for more.
| Author | Sinclair, Upton |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Viking Press |
| Copyright Date | 1941 |
| Number of Pages | 859 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Lanny Budd |
| When Read | August 1961 |
See the book notes identified by 2016-10.05
Read immediately after the first volume, I was very much into the story.
| Author | Weenolsen, Hebe |
|---|---|
| Publication | Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958 |
| Number of Pages | 543 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Middle Ages |
| When Read | September 1961 |
From the book flap in the Internet Archive:
"To Keep This Oath is more than an exciting story of love, war, crude science, and adventure, for this brilliantly researched novel is the stirring account of the growth of medicine in a time when barbers were almost the only surgeons. This is the story of Jesu Maria - the boy who, overcoming a horror of blood, practiced the secrets of medicine in an England where people still trusted to ancient charms for protection and the arts of healing were all but unknown."
And here's the last paragraph of the book:
"He sighed as the need for her stirred within him. He cast a long last look down the beach, all knurled and laced by the ebb tide. He smelled the salt-laden air. Then he turned and strode swiftly away in the direction of the manor house, leaving only the ciar stand dark and tall, only the night wind rustling the heather and the stars bathing their reflections in the sea."
This kind of stuff wouldn't appeal to my adult self but I read lots of it as a teenager.
| Author | Adams, Frank Davis |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Dutton |
| Copyright Date | 1959 |
| Number of Pages | 251 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery; Comedy |
| When Read | September 1961 |
I haven't found anything about this book other than the Library of Congress cataloging that classified it as "Detective and mystery stories."
Based on the title, I assume this was a comedy but I don't remember anything about it and am not motivated to do more than the usual amount of searching that I've done.
| Author | Eaton, Jeanette |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: William Morrow |
| Copyright Date | 1950 |
| Number of Pages | 253 |
| Extras | illustrations |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biography |
| When Read | October 1961 |
A popular biography of the great pacifist and leader of India's independence movement, Mohandas Gandhi
Much of what I learned about Gandhi has since been overwritten, as it were, by the great movie biography with Ben Kingsley. However one thing that I think I learned from this book and still recall is that "Mahatma" was a title, not a first name, and that his actual first name was "Mohandas".
It was an easy book but one that gave an introduction to this very important man of the 20th century.
| Author | Sinclair, Upton |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Viking Press |
| Copyright Date | 1942 |
| Number of Pages | 631 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Lanny Budd |
| When Read | October 1961 |
See the book notes identified as 2016-11.04.
I was plowing through the series. These were big books too.
Now the entire series can be bought very cheaply in ebook form or borrowed for free from the Internet Archive.
| Author | Sinclair, Upton |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Viking Press |
| Copyright Date | 1943 |
| Number of Pages | 784 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Lanny Budd |
| When Read | November 1961 |
See the book notes identified as 2017-02.05.
I don't read series books today the way I read this series then, one large volume shortly or even immediately after another. I was much taken with the books.
| Author | Mitchell, Margaret |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1936 |
| Number of Pages | 1037 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction; Romance |
| Keywords | American Civil War |
| When Read | November 1961 |
This is the best selling novel of Rhett Butler and Scarlet O'Hara.
The giant Technicolor movie (one of the very early color films) came out in 1939 and was seen around the world. It came back to theaters periodically and I think that I saw it first and was then motivated to read the book. I was much taken with the grand historical sweep of the story and what seemed to me to be the tragedy of the love affair.
| Author | Basso, Hamilton |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Doubleday |
| Copyright Date | 1959 |
| Number of Pages | 476 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American Civil War |
| When Read | December 1961 |
The first of two novels of the fictional town of Pompey's Head in South Carolina, before and during the Civil War. As with Gone With the Wind, the book is about Southern life and society, I don't think it would be called a war story.
Looking at the physical (well, virtual copy of the physical) book on the Internet Archive I see a very elegant map of Pompey's Head in 1860, made as a kind of aerial view. I've seen exactly that kind of view of Baltimore in the 19th century. They were often made by taking a photograph from a tethered balloon and then drawing streets, houses, carriages, ships, and so on to give a feel for the town that a simple street map would not have.
I seem to have done more binge reading then, if that's a reasonable characterization of reading multiple books in a row by one author or on one subject, in this case the Civil War. However I wasn't deeply into binges.
| Author | Wren, Percival Christopher (P.C.) |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1925 |
| Number of Pages | 412 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | French Foreign Legion |
| When Read | December 1961 |
A patrol of the French Foreign Legion is sent to Fort Zinderneuf to reinforce the garrison only to find that all of the defenders are actually dead men propped up at their posts at the walls. It is only later that the mystery is revealed.
There is much action and much internal dissension between the men of different nationalities in the legion.
I remember reading this book under the covers with a flashlight when my father came into my room to tell me that he too read the book at night by flashlight but that it really was time to go to bed.
I do have memories of this story but, as with so many popular books made into movies, I cannot easily disentangle the book from the black and white movie that I saw, possibly more than once, on The Late Show on TV.