Books read January through December 2007
| Author | Smith, Martin Cruz |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 2005 |
| Copyright Date | 2004 |
| Number of Pages | 336 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | Russia |
| When Read | January 2007 |
Arkady Renko investigates the apparent suicide of wealthy capitalist Pasha Ivanov and discovers that Ivanov had been poisoned with radioactivity, killing himself because he knew how he would otherwise die. R's boss, corrupt, political, and unconcerned with justice, finally sends R to "the Zone" at Chernobyl, partly just to get rid of him. But the threads of the mystery gradually come together in the Zone and R eventually learns the truth.
As always in Smith's books, the characters are tough but compromised. They exist in a crazy-making society in which simple honesty is punished and going along to get along is always the order of the day. But Renko is at cross grain to that. He is, as one character says of him, a monomaniac. It is as if focusing on this one murder and solving it, even amidst the vastly greater murder that is Chernobyl, provides a central core of meaning and stability that R is compelled to pursue.
Some special mention should be made of the subsidiary characters, a small boy in an orphanage who will not speak but whom R visits, two hockey playing killer cops in the Zone, a burned out detective, an American Jewish manipulator/gangster/religious person and his geriatric bodyguard, a woman doctor who falls for R but hates him too, a scientist/killer who is at the center of it all.
Smith is one of the handful of mystery writers operating a higher level.
Mystery writers have different approaches to building the central character. Like many other characters, Smith's Renko is smart and tough but, more than most, he's involved in confusing (to Renko as much as to the reader) personal relationships. The "small boy" above, Zhenya, is obsessed with chess. Renko doesn't remember how he became involved with the care of this boy but he takes him out of the orphanage on outings in which the boy says little or nothing but must play chess - at which he beats Renko every time. The boy will get older and appear in later novels where he proves himself an able, master level, but probably not championship level, player. Somehow Renko must care for this boy. It's always hard to tell how much the boy cares for Renko. This is a relationship that Smith makes his readers care about, though we readers, too, aren't sure exactly what to do with it.
One frustrating feature of Renko as a detective is that he possesses a gun but doesn't often carry it or, if he does, it has no bullets. This is frustrating in two ways. First, we want to scream at Renko, "Go home and get your gun before you go there." And secondly, we want to scream at Smith, "Why have you made Renko so calm when he's about to face armed killers and is unarmed himself?"
I like Smith's work both for its quirky, idiosyncratic nature, and for its focus on a part of the world that is mostly opaque to us in the West. The nuclear accident at Chernobyl held the world's attention for many months, but I don't know any other writer who looked at it from all of the complicated viewpoints of different people on the ground as did Smith.
According to the Wikipedia, the author's birth name is Martin Smith. He added "Cruz", his paternal grandmother's name when his agent asked him to differentiate his name from other writers named "Martin Smith". The Library of Congress cataloging lists him as "Smith, Martin Cruz", not "Cruz-Smith, Martin".
| Author | Ryan, Cornelius |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Pocket Books, 1967 |
| Copyright Date | 1966 |
| Number of Pages | 561 |
| Extras | photos, maps, bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | January 2007 |
The second of Ryan's three great World War II histories, this one details the events of the last month of the war in the battle for Berlin. As in his other books, R conducted extensive research and interviewed or collected information from somewhere near 1,000 people, military and civilian, German Russian, American, British, and various other nationalities. He can present grand strategy from the point of view of top German and Allied generals, and personal stories from a milkman, a hidden Jew, an Allied spy, a Hitler youth, or a Russian private.
Everything is meticulously researched and documented. If Ryan says something happened or didn't happen, it almost always means that he personally read the primary source documents or interviewed the eyewitnesses.
The stories of the Germans are, perhaps, the most interesting. Nazi bigwigs put on a confident front to deceive the people while preparing their own cowardly escapes. Wehrmacht officers and men fought bravely against hopeless odds, even though they knew that their country was being destroyed by the cowards and knaves in the Nazi Party. Local Berliners thanked the Jew who came out of hiding to intercede for them with the Russians, only to turn on him when the Russians were temporarily driven back.
In spite of British urging, Eisenhower refused to sacrifice thousands of American soldiers to take Berlin. It was not a significant military target. Stalin however recklessly threw his men into the battle, convinced that Ike lied about not going to Berlin and determined to get there first.
Another very fine history from Ryan.
I've read other books and seen films about this time and this battle. I couldn't disentangle the images and ideas I got, each from the other. I guess the strongest images come from the German film Downfall, but I also recall mental images of German troops of the Ninth Army, southeast of Berlin, pounded into mincemeat by superior Russian forces but still holding on as an army. The Germans, and the rest of us too for that matter, are capable of enormous courage and enormous depravity.
| Author | Fleming, Ian |
|---|---|
| Publication | Blackstone Audiobooks, 2000 |
| Copyright Date | 1953 |
| Number of Pages | 188 |
| Genres | Fiction; Thriller |
| Keywords | James Bond |
| When Read | January 2007 |
In this first James Bond story Bond is ordered to go to the Casino in Royale France to play baccarat against Le Chiffre, a labor leader and secret communist Russian agent. Le Chiffre has invested money given him by his Russian paymasters in a whorehouse but the new laws in France destroyed the business and most of the money is gone. Le Chiffre hopes to win it back at the Casino before the Russians find out and send SMERSH assassins to kill him.
Bond keeps his cool and wins at cards but is drawn into a dangerous chase in an attempt to save a young woman agent who has apparently been kidnapped. He is trapped, caught, and tortured by Le Chiffre to get the money. Tied to a chair, his testicles are battered with a tennis racket. But he is finally saved by a SMERSH agent who executes Le Chiffre but has no orders to kill bond and so leaves him alive.
Bond slowly recuperates and eventually goes off with the girl. He even falls in love with her and violates his principle of not becoming emotionally involved with a woman. But she turns out to have worked for Le Chiffre also and is killed by an agent. Bond is glad she is dead
This is not the smooth, happy go lucky, ladies man of the movies. Bond is a sufferer, a man on a mission, a man who is suave and sophisticated but not entirely comfortable with women.
The writing is surprisingly good for a first novel by a man who was not a professional writer. The book is interesting as well as reasonably exciting but, again unlike the movies, there are no fist or gunfights.
The culture of the period seems strikingly different from today. It gave me a new and fresh view of what has become an American film icon.
As of this writing, there are no other Ian Fleming or James Bond books in my book cards or notes. I did read some in college. Mr. Shapiro, the English Department teaching assistant in English 101 in 1964 at the University of Pittsburgh, a teacher I liked very much, assigned On His Majesty's Secret Service to our class. After we read it and all enjoyed it he proceeded to pick it apart and show us what a poorly written and manipulative book it was.
Mr. Shapiro was a young man then. He had high standards. His critique was completely convincing and gave me a more critical attitude to literature. But now I'm an old man. I am, at least in some ways, more tolerant than I was then. I'm willing to give some credit to an author who manages to amuse thousands, or in this case, millions of readers. High literature it ain't. Faults it has. I can still see them as Mr. Shapiro taught me to see them. But I'll cut the author some slack.
| Author | Furst, Alan |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 304 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| When Read | January 2007 |
Italian emigre writer Carlo Weisz works as a foreign correspondent for Reuters and writes for an Italian anti-fascist paper Liberazione. When the editor is murdered by OVRA, the fascist secret police, W becomes the editor.
It is early in 1939. W covers the end of the Spanish Civil War. His articles attract the attention of the British secret service who recruit him, first to help write a biography of Colonel Ferrara, an Italian anti-fascist fighter in Spain, and then to expand the distribution of Liberazione, a frighteningly dangerous and probably foolish endeavor. He agrees, but only on condition that they save his girlfriend, a married 40 year old German woman who is being watched and will soon be arrested in Berlin.
This is very like F's other books. Intellectuals who understand the issues and the terrible risks are nevertheless compelled to do what little they can to fight the dark tide gathering in Europe. They are ineffectual. They are manipulated by allied governments whose loyalty is only to their national interest, not to the anti-fascist cause. They are close to despair but they drive themselves on in their struggle.
I believe F writes these stories compulsively, perhaps to probe the darkest period of modern history, perhaps to honor the relatively small groups of men and women who fought as best they could. I find these books attract and repel me at the same time, but I don't seem to want to leave them alone.
The part that repels me is, of course, the darkness, the futility, the risk, the likelihood of failure. The part that attracts me is the intelligence, courage, and honor of the characters.
What good could an anti-fascist newspaper do in Italy in 1939? What chance did anyone have to resist the fascist police and torturers? If a person managed to get a copy and read it without being arrested, what could he do to make anything better?
It's hard to imagine that I could have the courage to do what the Carlo Weisz character does. However I certainly understand that some people did have such courage, and they are to be greatly respected and admired for it.
| Author | Lethem, Jonathan |
|---|---|
| Publication | Tor Books, 1994 |
| Number of Pages | 262 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery; Fantasy; Comedy |
| When Read | January 2007 |
Private detective Conrad Metcalf works out of a seedy office in a future L.A. that's partly constructed out of 1930's and 40's L.A. and partly an exotic fantasy in which evolved animals, a sweet submissive domestic sheep, a tired and beaten down but stand-up ape private eye, and especially a gun-toting gangster kangaroo, play significant roles in the story.
Metcalf is hired to clear a man of murder. His pay is inadequate, his client is a loser, and the cops (the "Office") are pissed off and rough. But in the best tradition of American tough guy private eyes, Metcalf won't leave it alone. He faces up to cops, gangsters, a drug addicted woman, a "baby head" aged six going on forty, and every classic situation. Eventually he solves the crime. But unlike the tradition, nothing especially good comes of it and Metcalf is sent back to the freezer in suspended animation for his loss of karma - still friendless, jobless, and in trouble with the law.
This is Lethem's first book. Because of its remarkable comedy I wouldn't at first have imagined that Gun and Fortress of Solitude could be by the same author. But on deeper examination I can see the common theme of a totally dysfunctional society heading down hill into a deeper and deeper morass.
The writing sparkles. There are some passages that left me dazed with delight. Lethem is some kind of great writer.
| Author | Raven, Peter H. |
|---|---|
| Author | Evert, Ray F. |
| Author | Eichhorn, Susan E. |
| Publication | W.H. Freeman and Company, 1999 |
| Number of Pages | 944 |
| Extras | illustrations, photos, glossary, bibliography, index, etc. |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Science; Biology |
| Keywords | Botany |
| When Read | January 2007 |
This is an introduction to botany for college students with little or no previous preparation in biology. The first third of the book covers basic topics in cell structure and function, energetics, genetics, and evolution. The examples given are from the plant world but the material applies largely to animals as well. The explanations are very good. They're as good as Campbell's and, while not as thorough as in Molecular Biology of the Cell, they are very clear at the level of detail that they reach.
The rest of the book consists of an evolutionarily oriented description of increasingly sophisticated orders of organisms from prokaryotes and viruses to angiosperms, a basic exposition of plant physiology, and a discussion of ecology.
I am still in need of some introductory level chemistry which I am studying now, but I expect that I will need no more "100 level" biology material. I still feel that my reading has not been extensive or deep, and my retention is still less. But I'm working on it.
Retention is still a problem. I've returned to cell biology and learned a lot but I'm not able to give more than a rough outline of plant structures. I don't remember all of the different orders of plants, from primitive to evolutionarily advanced and, of course, I am totally unable to walk through the woods and say what I am looking at.
Or maybe I know more than I think I know. It's very hard to say. Perhaps I am a lot more conscious of what I have forgotten than what I have retained. That sounds like a paradox but I think anyone who has worked hard at a subject knows what I'm talking about.
| Author | Wolfson, Richard |
|---|---|
| Publication | The Teaching Company, 1997 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Science |
| Keywords | Energy |
| When Read | February 2007 |
W is a professor of physics with considerable experience in power plant science, nuclear energy, solar energy, etc. He is an opponent of global warming but never gets hysterical about it. He expects the impact to be large but not catastrophic. Water levels will not rise more than a foot or two. Coastlines will not be inundated everywhere, though they will be in low lying areas. There will not be a runaway chain reaction that turns the earth into another Venus.
W argues that known oil reserves will run out in 100 years, or 200 if we discover as much again. Coal will run out in 500 or 1,000 years. Most of the carbon sequestered in the earth over a period of 300 million years will be released into the air in less than 1,000. It's a pretty extraordinary event that will raise temperatures by 1 - 5 degrees Celsius, with effects concentrated in the northern and southern latitudes (i.e., not the tropics) and complex consequences such as a change in the reflectivity of the earth's surface.
Tide energy, geothermal energy, and some others will be of no help except in special localities. Geothermal will actually run out in many areas. The power of wind is far greater but may only be able to support about one half of energy requirements. W likes solar the best.
There's much good stuff here about conductance, heat dissipation, energy of sunlight, and many other topics.
It's psychologically very difficult for me to watch the slow motion train wreck that is occurring around the world. Overpopulation, destruction of the environment, global warming, the digging up and frittering away of fossil fuels and minerals, monoculture farming and the consequent evolution of pests of all sorts, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and on and on seem to be quite unstoppable. Warnings are unheeded. Fossil fuel will continue to be burned until it's gone. Minerals will be dug up until they're gone. Pesticides, antibiotics, fertilizers, and genetic engineering will be recklessly applied until they don't work any more. A crash is coming but none of the forces that are contributing to it can be stopped.
There will be a great deal of suffering on an unprecedented scale but, I suspect, humanity will eventually adapt. The climate will be damaged, half or more of all species of life will be extinguished, the standard of living will be depressed, but humanity will eventually adapt. We'll just have to deal with it.
I recently finished Ian Mortimer's Millennium: From Religion to Revolution: How Civilization Has Changed Over a Thousand Years. Mortimer's final chapter is very pessimistic about the next thousand years, largely because of unrestrained population growth combined with unrestrained consumption and destruction of non-renewable resources. One thing he points out is that the coming Malthusian destruction of human populations will not fall randomly across the earth. The poor will die off. The middle classes that remain will be pushed into lower standards of living. The wealthy will do just fine. Democracy will decline. Religion will increase. It's as if we've climbed up to the top of the roller coaster and soon we'll be on the downhill ride.
| Author | Wheeler, Richard |
|---|---|
| Publication | Blackstone Audiobooks, 2000 |
| Copyright Date | 1989 |
| Number of Pages | 255 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | American Civil War |
| When Read | February 2007 |
W has assembled a large number of eyewitness accounts of the last two months of the Civil War at and around Petersburg and Richmond. Some are accounts by journalists, others are from letters, diaries, and memoirs, some written decades later.
Despite the great variety of sources, W did a superb job of editing and organizing to provide a surprisingly coherent account that required very little supplementary narration by the author.
More than in most wars perhaps, the men of each side understood and sympathized with each other. There is a wonderful account by a general of a guard corporal lying to a Union picket to conceal an attack, then calling out to warn him just as the attack started. There are accounts of gallantry on both sides, and also villainy, stupidity, and confusion. There is a very moving account of former slaves cheering Lincoln when he arrived in Richmond, of southern ladies defending their homes and families as best they could, of Union soldiers behaving generously to their defeated enemy and Confederates fighting bravely to the end, or surrendering pragmatically, understanding that the cause was lost and their new duty was to themselves and their families. In one scene a Southern woman damns her husband for abandoning her but a Rebel officer convinces her that he is a good and brave man.
All in all, very interesting. It gives a human dimension to the conflict that most histories are not able to achieve. And it gives us an authentic, contemporary voice to hear it in.
If I'm remembering correctly, the moving account referenced above was of Lincoln stepping off a boat in Richmond with a small guard and walking towards the center of the town. There was no mistaking the very tall man in the black suit and top hat. One of the slaves on the street recognized him and said, "It's father Abraham". The others gathered around Lincoln. I picture them as quiet and humble in his presence, and thankful to him for their freedom. The battle for freedom and equality is not over even today, but Lincoln played a central role in the process and, like those slaves, I also thank him.
| Author | Sheckley, Robert |
|---|---|
| Publication | Ace Books, 1978 |
| Copyright Date | 1958 |
| Number of Pages | 279 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | February 2007 |
Yacht designer Tom Blaine is driving down a highway in 1958 when he has a sudden fatal accident and wakes up in a hospital room at the Rex Corporation in the year 2110. He had been plucked from his death in the past as part of what appears to be a publicity campaign by the company for their power systems.
The strange future that B awakens into features a life after death procedure that can be purchased from Rex Corp, and also a mind transfer feature allowing a wealthy client to move into another person's body when his own wears out. Various bizarre consequences of these capabilities include body snatchers, suicides who pay people to hunt them down, and new definitions of what is or is not a murder.
Blaine only slowly learns the ropes of this strange new world. But eventually he comes to understand that he wasn't saved from death, he was actually murdered in 1958 by the Rex people so they could save him. And they want to kill him now for various reasons. He runs, falls in love, learns more, runs more, thinks he has escaped, and is finally tracked down and killed - beginning his new life in the "hereafter".
This was originally serialized as "Time Killers" in Galaxy Magazine. It has the sort of bold exuberance of 50's SF mass market writing, but also has Sheckley's personal inventiveness and dark comedy.
Sheckley was a favorite author of mine in the 1970's when I was working at Pratt Library. He had a great imagination and a high sense of comedy. This is one of his earlier works, to be followed by some great ones.
This was Sheckley's first published novel.
| Author | Leonard, Elmore |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded books, 2003 |
| Copyright Date | 2002 |
| Number of Pages | 240 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery; Short stories |
| When Read | March 2007 |
Nine stories are brought together, some new, some not. "Sparks", "Hanging Out at the Buena Vista", "Chickasaw Charlie Hoke", "When the Women Come Out to Dance", "Fire in the Hole", "Karen Makes Out", "Hurrah for Captain Early", "The Tonto Woman", "Tenkiller". They are a mix of contemporary and old west stories, all with L's wonderful trademark characters.
"When the Women ..." has an exotic dancer married to a philandering Pakistani doctor. She gets her Colombian maid to hire a couple of Colombian hit men, but finds the price much higher than she expected. In "Tonto Women" a Mexican cattle rustler faces down a wealthy rancher who treats his wife badly because of scars put on her by Indian kidnappers. I also liked the baseball pitcher who pitches himself as a casino greeter ("Chickasaw Charlie Hoke" and the ex-rodeo rider/movie actor who deals effectively with the white trash hooligans who took control of his farm while he was off in Hollywood.
L's heroes are resourceful and tough, but very human. They fall in love, they treat their opponents with understanding.
| Author | Christie, Agatha |
|---|---|
| Publication | Audio Partners Publishing, 1994 |
| Copyright Date | 1957 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | March 2007 |
Elspeth McGillicuddy is riding in a train when she looks out the window into the window of another train on a parallel track and witnesses what appears to be a murder. She informs all the authorities but when no body turns up and no one is reported missing, they dismiss the story as a product of the overly active imagination of an elderly woman. However Miss Jane Marple knows that her friend Elspeth is sound and solid and resolves to investigate the case.
After narrowing down the locale to the Crackenthorpe country home, now surrounded by encroaching suburbs, Miss M. sends the brilliant, highly educated domestic housekeeper (!) Lucy Eyelesbarrow to work at the house.
The body is discovered, more murder occurs, the skeletons in the Crackenthorpe closet all come out as the sons, son-in-law, and daughter of the old crackpot miser squabble with each other and, at last, Miss M stages the final scene with all suspects present where the real murderer and the real motives are revealed.
A.C. turned this kind of story out reliably. The characters are not very real but are often amusing and the story has lots of plot twists and turns. Murder is quite civilized in A.C.'s hands.
As I read the notes on this story I remember all of the parts described. Then I read that "the real murderer and the real motives are revealed." I cannot recall a thing about who and what they were. I have to wonder, if I had written them down, would the notes jog my memory and bring back a memory, hopefully not a false one, of the ending of the book?
There's probably a lot of stuff rusting away in the old brain cells that could be brought out and polished up with a little reminding.
| Author | Hunter, Stephen |
|---|---|
| Publication | Random House, 1994 |
| Number of Pages | 436 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | April 2007 |
Convict Lamar Pye is sold to a huge black man who is about to rape him. Against all odds he kills the would be rapist and then, to save himself from being killed in revenge, he busts out of the Oklahoma State Pen with his huge but child like cousin Odell, and the intelligent, artistic, but cowardly Richard Peed.
Highway Patrol Sergeant Bud Pewtie, a middle aged veteran cop who is sleeping with his young partner's wife, blunders into the Pyes and is shot and his partner is killed. After recovering, he goes on a personal mission to find Lamar while juggling wife and mistress, lying to each, and remaining estranged from the two sons that he loves but doesn't know how to approach.
Lamar is a very convincingly conceived outlaw. Wronged as a child, loving only his retarded cousin Odell, fascinated by Richard's drawings of lions, quick and able in any kind of emergency and ready to kill anyone - he is a match for the cops, pulling off a couple of big crimes before Pewtie finds him and kills Odell in a shootout. Then it's very personal between the two men.
H displays his usual deep fascination with guns and gunfights. he does that well - with great knowledge. He also produces two interesting characters in Pye and Pewtie, with the good guy seriously flawed, though not evil, like the bad one.
A good read.
| Author | Turow, Scott |
|---|---|
| Publication | Books on Tape, 2005 |
| Number of Pages | 496 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | April 2007 |
After his father's death, journalist Stewart Dubinsky discovers an autobiographical manuscript that his father had created while awaiting trial at an army court martial for his actions during WWII. The father, David Dubin, had been a lawyer assigned by the army to track down and interrogate OSS agent Robert Martin. But Dubin is first pulled into a behind the lines combat operation, then lied to and abandoned by Martin, a man who compulsively sought danger and destruction and equally compulsively resisted order and discipline.
Dubin parachutes into Bastogne to find Martin and is drafted into becoming an infantry officer in terrible combat ordeals.
The story shifts back and forth from Dubinsky's (he reverted to his grandfather's name in rebellion against his father) pursuit of the story and Dubin's manuscript. Through each one we learn more about Dubin's harrowing wartime experience and about the exotic story of Martin and the equally exotic Gita Lodz, pursued by both Dubin and Martin.
This is a change from T's usual Kindle County lawyer stories although Dubin is, in fact, a lawyer from Kindle County. It apparently contains some material from T's own father who was a doctor at Bastogne. It is, in part, a tribute to the men of that time.
As always with Turow, the characters are complex and interesting and the story full of ambiguity. There was too much made of the device of Dubin's court martial, and too much exoticism. But I liked it.
| Author | Moses, Sam |
|---|---|
| Publication | Tanto Media, 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 352 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | April 2007 |
This is a two part story. The first few chapters tell of the background of Fred Larsen, a Norwegian American merchant mariner of very high competence, and his protege, Lonnie Dales. The main part then tells the story of Operation Pedestal, a desperate attempt by the Royal Navy to resupply Malta in the summer of 1942.
Seventeen merchant ships were escorted by a huge force of battleship, carriers, cruisers and destroyers, all the heavy units of which turned back to avoid excessive risk in the last, critical phase of the operation. The merchant ships carried aviation gas, diesel fuel, bombs, and ammunition. Each was like a floating bomb. The most important of them was the Ohio, the finest, most modern, one-of-a-kind (her sister ship had been sunk by a U-boat earlier) tanker. She had been explicitly requested by Churchill from Roosevelt, who consented in spite of the suicidal nature of the mission.
Four ships survived the attacks by bombers, submarines and torpedo boats to bring their cargoes into Malta. Ohio, with Larsen and Dales aboard after their own ship had sunk, was among them, only sinking after the cargo was unloaded.
It was a story of great heroism on both sides. Measured by losses, it was a tactical victory for the Axis, but a strategic defeat. The fuel deliveries enabled an RAF buildup on Malta that sealed the Mediterranean supply route to Rommel.
I suspect that M focused on Larsen and Dales merely to add personal scale human interest to his story. They were heroes, but no mores so than many others. Still, I find books like this to be irresistibly attractive. Brave, free men fight the Nazis and win against great odds. What's not to like?
Looking back on this from five years later, one of the parts of the book that comes to mind was M's extended discussion of the significant advances in shipbuilding represented by the Ohio and her sister ship. They were triumphs of American technology, even recognized by Churchill - admittedly a man who was cognizant about shipbuilding and technology. Huge efforts in ship building, experimentation, and building went into them. They were the pride of the merchant fleet. When I learned that both ships were sunk by the Nazis I was upset.
I also recall M's discussion of some of the Italian torpedo boat captains, whom he regarded as very heroic. The Italian forces in World War II have been treated with contempt by many historians, and perhaps even by their own German allies during the war. Certainly Mussolini and his sycophants deserved contempt. Certainly, some of the ordinary Italian servicemen, more than their German counterparts, recognized the absurdity and destructiveness of their participation in the war. I believe that is much to their credit. But they had their heroes too.
| Author | Crawford, F. Marion, 1854-1909 |
|---|---|
| Publication | Gutenberg |
| Copyright Date | 1887 |
| Number of Pages | 244 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Italy |
| When Read | April 2007 |
Giovanni Saracinesca, apparent sole heir to the great houses and estates of the Saracinesca family, lives in Rome in 1865 or 6 where he has fallen in love with the beautiful young Duchess Corona D'Astrardente, who is married to a rich, aging dandy who truly loves her but is far too old for a young beauty. G's father, the old prince Saracinesca, has been trying to marry G to Donna Tulia Mayer, a widowed and wealthy cousin, but a woman of no interest to G. Meanwhile, Del Ferice, a clever, scheming spy, aims at Donna Tulia and attempts to get Giovanni out of the way.
The story works on several levels. It is a love story, a story of personal ambition and conflict, a novel of manners, and something of a novel of politics, examining the conflict in the 1860's between the reactionary forces of the church and the coming revolution in Italy. Written 20 years after the events, when the revolution was fully established and institutionalized and all the opportunists of the revolutionary parties firmly in power, it displays some longing for the old values of the old society, as represented by the father and son and the strong and passionate Astrardente.
The book is just an introduction to the main story which appears in the two sequellae, which I have not and may not read. It ends with the marriage of Giovanni and Corona and the flight of the venal Del Ferici, made possible by the magnanimity and contempt of Giovanni, who won't condescend to kill him or turn him in. The book is psychologically complex and interesting - very different from standard fare.
There is a fascinating article about Crawford in the Wikipedia. He was born in Italy to American parents and was raised in Italy and Boston, also living in England, Germany and India. He studied Sanskrit. His parents, concerned about how he might make a living, asked George Henschel, the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, to listen to him sing, but Henschel told them their son would never be able to sing in perfect tune. His uncle then suggested he take up writing.
I would love to know how many other readers have read anything by Crawford. He was popular in his day. Checking the Gutenberg site, which now reports the number of downloads of titles, I see that Saracinesca has been downloaded 16 times. His most popular work, Lock and Key has 274 downloads. It's not a lot. My own download was over five years ago and before and after that there have only been 16. But I'm glad that at least some readers are keeping him alive.
| Author | Woodward, Bob |
|---|---|
| Publication | Simon and Schuster, 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 560 |
| Extras | photos, sources, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Gulf War |
| When Read | June 2007 |
The third volume of W's Bush at War series comes down more harshly on Bush and the administration than the previous two. The book is very much a study of the mid and upper level bureaucrats of State, Defense, and the White House as the attempt to cope with problems that had been very poorly foreseen or planned for. Everyone accepted on faith that there were weapons of mass destruction to be found. No one clearly thought out how to search for them or asked the experts who did know. Decisions made in Washington by Cheney or Rumsfeld were imposed in the field without a lot of tolerance for push back. Young people with strong Republican Party connections but weak experience were given important roles. Ideology overruled objective observation and common sense.
The picture of Bush that emerges is of a man who genuinely wants to do the right thing but is unable to entertain any ideas that stray too far from his own preconceived notions. He hosts meetings in which people who know better dare not insist on bad news. They believe that it cannot be heard and it will only cause them to be excluded in the future. Bush thus coerces from his people the views that he wants to hear. In the end, argues Woodward, Bush is responsible for propagating false information to the American people. He rejects the truth, to the point where he becomes responsible for lies.
Was Bush evil? Was he corrupt? I'd still answer No and I don't think Woodward would disagree. Bush was incompetent. He lacked the brains and the skills to do his job. That by itself is pretty damning but the problem went still further. He apparently had enough hubris to believe that he was right and that countervailing opinions were not worth listening to. Colin Powell thought that Bush was listening to him only to find, later, that nothing he said to Bush stuck between the man's ears.
As always, Woodward was remarkably thorough and objective. When I read his books I am always amazed that so many people spoke so openly to him. He may have been more openly critical of the administration in this volume. I remember wondering if that was so and, if so, was it because he didn't expect to be able to write any more books about the Bush administration and so could be more free to report its errors of judgment.
| Author | Quinn, Peter |
|---|---|
| Publication | Blackstone Audiobooks, 2005 |
| Number of Pages | 448 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | June 2007 |
This is an odd novel with two stories (or more if you follow minor threads) in parallel and only tenuously connected. One story is a traditional 1940's style private eye novel of ex-New York City cop Fintan Dunne, forced out of the NYPD by a corrupt captain because he wouldn't play ball. Now (in 1938) he works as a P.I. on divorce cases. In true American P.I. tradition he tries to refuse a murder defense case thrust upon him by a beautiful woman in trouble but finally digs into it, puts up with a beating from the police captain, uses his war hero record and connections with "Wild Bill" William Donovan to call off the dogs, and solves the crime - which turns out to be an ugly case of a Nazi doctor in New York performing eugenics experiments on hapless retarded people.
The other story is of Wilhelm Canaris, the German chief of naval intelligence who secretly despised Hitler and the Nazis but had to put up with them. The relationship to New York is only that Canaris discovers a thread leading from Himmler to the doctor in New York and passes it to an English journalist/spy, who gets some info to Dunne to help catch the S.O.B.
The writing is okay and the plot holds together in spite of the strains of such disparate stories and the conformance to tradition at all costs. The theme - the evils of racism and eugenics - is more impressive than one would expect.
This is not among my favorite novels, but the author has promise.
| Author | Akunin, Boris |
|---|---|
| Translators | Brownfield, Andrew |
| Publication | Books on Tape, 2004 |
| Copyright Date | 1998 |
| Number of Pages | 240 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Russia |
| When Read | June 2007 |
Inspector Gustave "Papa" Gauche boards the luxury liner Leviathan on her maiden voyage from London to India in hopes of finding the killer of ten people at a fashionable home of an English Indian antiquities collector in Paris. He narrows the search to about ten first class passengers - a seeming lunatic Englishman, an Italian doctor and his wife, an English woman entering middle age who is longing for love, the pregnant wife of a Swiss banker, a Japanese army officer, and Erast Fandorin, now a young Russian diplomat on his way to Japan.
We know Fandorin to be okay and way ahead of Gauche in analyzing characters and events. The others move in and out of the narrative spotlight, each showing suspicious actions or personality traits. Gauche accuses one and then another but it is Fandorin in the end who unravels the mystery of why the killings took place and who did them.
It turns out that a number of the passengers are not who they appear to be, and a ship's officer is also involved. Gauche himself gets greedy and is killed for it by the real killer - the pregnant lady who has twisted all around her fingers and lied to everyone.
Fandorin plays an interesing and central role but is far from the exclusive center of attention. A's books are not merely well written mysteries. They have character, intelligence, and interesting plots. I like them.
| Author | Berenson, Alex |
|---|---|
| Publication | Books on Tape, 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 481 |
| Genres | Fiction; Thriller |
| When Read | June 2007 |
CIA agent John Wells has gone undercover as a member of al-Quaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has become a Muslim, has made friends with Mujaheddin, and has passed every test of loyalty to al-Quaeda. They don't totally trust him but he's their only man who can truly pass as an American. They send him to the U.S. to work for Omar Khadny, the AQ chief in the U.S. who is working with a grad student in Canada on a bubonic plague infection.
Wells is mistrusted by the CIA. He's been out of contact for years and some think he has "turned". Only his handler, Jenifer Exley, who has fallen in love with him, believes him.
There are a number of gunfight action scenes leading to the destruction of Khadny and the whole network and the getting together of the lovers.
B is a writer for the New York Times. This is his first novel. To my mind, the plot and action are not credible, the depiction of the CIA leadership as a cover-your-ass bureaucracy is too pat, and the main character has problems.
What I found most interesting was B's presentation of the terrorists and the techniques whereby men are persuaded and managed to commit suicide attacks. Knowing nothing at all about such things I found B's account at least plausible.
| Author | Griffin, W.E.B. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1994 |
| Copyright Date | 1986 |
| Number of Pages | 235 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | June 2007 |
Corporal Kenneth J. "Killer" McCoy is a very smart young man in the 4th Marines in China in 1941. he works for Captain Edward Banning, a divisional intelligence officer who uses the young corporal's linguistic skill and sharp intelligence to gather information on the Japanese. McCoy earns the name "Killer" for killing two men after having been set upon by four Italian marines. He also later kills 20 Chines bandits with a Tommy gun when they attack a truck convoy on behalf of Japanese intelligence.
There are a number of adventures with the military and with women. McCoy is sent to officer's training school and befriends "Pick" Pickering, a wealthy young man who is also joining the Corps. He is in the Philippines briefly during the Japanese attack, then returns to the States.
G's books are unusual. They are war stories but with hardly any action - perhaps two pages of combat. However they contain meticulously accurate details of the military life from guns to uniforms to protocol and etiquette.
G seems fascinated with the world of the very rich - personified in Pick Pickering and Ernestine "Ernie" Sage, the childhood friend of Pick who falls in love with McCoy and pursues him in disregard of conventional morality. There are some scenes of working class heaven in this fascination, as perhaps working class soldiers might desire in reading these books.
G is very readable and, if not compelling, then at least interesting.
My comments on this series go downhill after this book. It's not that this book was better than the others, it's that I had hoped that the deficiencies in this first volume of the series would be remedied in subsequent volumes. They weren't. Instead they were expanded.
Still, he isn't a bad writer. It's just that the stories are adolescent and the view of the war that G presents is far from the reality.
| Author | Mayr, Ernst |
|---|---|
| Publication | Basic Books, 2001 |
| Number of Pages | 318 |
| Extras | FAQ, illustrations, glossary, bibliography, index |
| Extras | Foreword by Jared Diamond |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biology |
| Keywords | Evolution |
| When Read | July 2007 |
The dean of evolutionary biology wrote, at age 97 (and not his last book!) about how to understand the concepts of evolution. His main themes are population thinking rather than "type" thinking, gradual change as the only way that evolution can proceed, and the mechanisms driving evolution.
The chapter on the evidence for evolution was helpful to me. M doesn't bother to argue against creationism, believing that that's already been done, and doesn't give detailed evidence, which is also available elsewhere. What he does is explain the categories - fossils, morphology, geographic diversity, ontogenesis, molecular biology - helping one to organize one's thinking about the subject.
The book has some of the character of an outline. A large number of topics are touched in a highly organized fashion, all at about the same level of detail.
Books like this are interesting, not only for what they teach us, but also for the perspective they present from a very original and educated mind. There are better books on evolution both for the general reader and the specialist, but this is still an interesting one.
For some time now I have imagined myself standing in front of a high school class and explaining the theory of evolution or, even more fun, debating a creationist. In this fantasy I present the evidence under multiple categories: the fossil record, morphology, geographic distribution of species, embryology (ontogenesis), and molecular biology. But I had forgotten that I was introduced to this exact approach by Mayr. Maybe I thought of it before I read the book. Maybe I didn't. There's no way to find out unless I happen to run across it in my diary from before July, 2007.
It's possible that I'm just very smart. More likely, Mayr educated me and I'm too dumb to remember that I got the ideas from him.
| Author | Thomas, Michel |
|---|---|
| Publication | McGraw Hill |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Language |
| When Read | July 2007 |
Marcia and I each worked through these two CDs while driving to work and back.
"Michel Thomas" is not a native speaker, either of English or Spanish. He was in fact a Polish linguist and World War II hero who escaped from three concentration camps and helped bring Nazis to justice after the war. Settling in Los Angeles after the war, he became a language teacher for celebrities and movie stars - having great success with his direct, no book, teaching technique.
The CDs take two students through a series of steps, building ever more complex sentences with a small vocabulary taught by Thomas himself. He is said to have taught a group of 6th form British school children French in one week. Clearly a successful self-promoter, he was nevertheless effective.
I liked the CDs, They filled in a big hole that was missing in my study from books. I am continuing using the Pimsleur Spanish II series.
| Author | Griffin, W.E.B. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1994 |
| Copyright Date | 1987 |
| Number of Pages | 356 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | July 2007 |
In this continuation of Semper Fi Killer McCoy is recruited by some top brass in the Marine Corps to act as a spy - not against the Japanese, but against Evans Carlson, an unconventional officer with connections to President Roosevelt who wants to develop an elite guerrilla battalion that the officers fear will lead to destruction of the corps and the creation instead of a tiny commando force in its place. McCoy is attracted to Carlson's style in which officers must lead their men through the dirt and hardship of training and fight alongside them. However the final scene of combat was brief, somewhat detached, and quite anti-climactic (and it was a balls up affair in which the Raiders made many mistakes.)
There is an adolescent quality to this book. The two main characters are superheroes. They live in luxurious quarters. They sleep with extraordinary prostitutes whose madam refuses payment. They have rich and well connected girlfriends who defy all social conventions to give their men sex, love and support. McCoy speaks four languages and Pick can fly an airplane with no training. It's all the adolescent soldier's wet dream and Griffin not only caters to it, but appears to believe in it. Perhaps it is that belief that rescues this book from being a simple writer's hack for money.
The book is well written. It's an easy read. It can be engaging. I reviewed it on amazon.com and am surprised and a little puzzled by the reviewers who said this was the best book they ever read. But I guess I shouldn't be too surprised or puzzled. There are a lot of adolescents out there.
| Author | Lipstadt, Deborah |
|---|---|
| Publication | Harper Collins, 2005 |
| Number of Pages | 346 |
| Extras | notes, index |
| Extras | Introduction by Anthony Lewis |
| Extras | Afterword by Alan Dershowitz |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Antisemitism; Holocaust |
| When Read | July 2007 |
L's day in court turned out to be far more than a day. L is a practicing Jew and a historian with deep intellectual and emotional connections to the Jewish community of both the present and the past. In 1993 she wrote Denying the Holocaust and named David Irving as one of the deniers, not dreaming that she was saying anything that anyone would dispute. However the book succeeded in shedding a strong light on Irving that hurt him in publishing and academic circles. So he sued for libel in an attempt to intimidate her, her publisher, and all other publishers, from daring to attack him.
It was a difficult technical case, tried under British law that requires the defendant (Lipstadt) to prove she did not libel rather than vice versa. Fortunately, L got help from her employer, Emory University, her publisher, Penguin, and various wealthy Jews and Jewish organizations. She was also aided by very serious and knowledgeable historians who invested many man years of effort on her behalf and on behalf of the truth.
The trial ended with a complete vindication for L. The judge found that Irving had knowingly and willfully falsified history in book after book and done so out of racist, antisemitic motives.
The truth will not, of itself, defeat the lie. People will not perceive the truth. It is necessary to fight for it over and over. My hat is off to L and her fine supporters for their excellent fight.
I reviewed this on amazon.com.
As of this writing, five of nine people found my review "helpful". On a topic like this, there will be Nazis and other antisemites weighing in and voting against any review that looks like it is pro-Jewish or anti-Nazi.
One of the antisemites, T. Holzel, wrote his own review of the book. I challenged what he said in a comment on his review and a long interchange followed in which I posted about seven or eight messages replying to his replies to me. These comment replies went back and forth. Although I accused him of being an antisemite in one of the comments I pulled back from that and decided to be as civil as possible. He also made some attempts in that direction, but I found his arguments for Irving and against Lipstadt and "Jewish zealots" to be specious at best. I worked pretty hard on my replies to him and think I did a pretty good job, however I had no impact on him. I continued mainly in the hopes that there would be other readers.
There were other readers. One, Ha Jin, made a number of strong and well reasoned contributions on my side of the debate. However there were the usual small number of approval marks on the replies, with about the same number approving of Holzel's as of mine or Ha's, and the same number disapproving. The one other person who jumped in to write a comment attacked Lipstadt and defended Irving and Holzel.
I think that most people in the United States, as too in Germany before the war, are indifferent on the question of antisemitism. I believe that the percentage of Americans who oppose it is much greater now than it was in Germany in those days, and also much greater than it was in the U.S. in those days. But there is still significant antisemitism. Most of it is of the non-virulent variety. Some of it is virulent. But most Americans go there own way, never thinking about the issues.
Is it possible that the commentator on our controversy over this named "Ha Jin", is the same as the author of Waiting and A Free Life? I tried to go back and find him but couldn't find Holzel's review. I don't know if I missed it or if it's gone from the database. Maybe someone objected to it, though there are other objectionable reviews besides his.
| Author | Roth, Henry |
|---|---|
| Publication | Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991 |
| Copyright Date | 1934 |
| Number of Pages | 462 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | July 2007 |
This is a Proust-like story of a small child who clings to his adoring Mama but, unlike Proust's child, he lives in a Yiddish slum in Brooklyn in the early 1900's and is terrified of his violent tempered father.
Little David Schearl is a bit of a mess. He is terrified of everything. He tells lies all the time. He goes to Hebrew school with a bitter old rabbi who beats the children. He befriends an older Catholic boy who uses him to try to get at and seduce his female cousin.
There are two threads running through the story. One is the hidden source of difficulty between David's father and mother. Why is he so angry? Why is he resentful of David? At the end we learn that he may or may not be David's real father, but everything is done from the child's point of view and we get no accurate resolution of the issue - if indeed there could be one.
The other thread is Roth's fairly remarkable use of language. It's written as it sounded in the Brooklyn Yiddish/English dialect of the street. It's hard to follow, often tedious, but always impressively done.
This is one of those books I admire without liking. I do not like being trapped in the consciousness of a terrified and immature child who cannot resolve his crisis but only live through it, day by day. It is wearing and exasperating. But it is an impressive piece of writing.
One other problem for me that I should have mentioned, and might have if I were not restricted by the size of the book card, was my distaste for David's cowardice and dishonesty. Perhaps it is a consequence of circumstances of his life. Even if it's not, even if it's a consequence of his personality and immaturity, I can accept it as a realistic account and I can even sympathize with the child, but it is unpleasant to read. No doubt that was Roth's intent. No doubt he wrote the book honestly and courageously himself. No doubt he penetrated deeply into the story and found the essential truth. It is what makes this a great book. But it also makes it hard to read without a feeling of oppression.
| Author | Cather, Willa |
|---|---|
| Publication | Gutenberg |
| Copyright Date | 1922 |
| Number of Pages | 284 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | August 2007 |
Claude Wheeler is the middle son of a prosperous Nebraska farm family living in some isolation with his father, mother, younger brother, and old housekeeper Mahailey. His older brother owns a store in town. Claude is sent to a Bible college in Lincoln where he is smothered by narrow minded religion and longs for the open intellectual life of the university, but it is not available to him. He is recalled to work the farm where he lives much as a draft horse might. Working, eating and sleeping are his entire life. Hoping for more he marries a pretty childhood playmate, but the marriage is a failure. The girl is a superb housekeeper but is obsessed with religion and wants nothing to do with sex. She abandons him to take care of her sick sister in China and he doesn't miss her.
Still longing for meaning in his life - to do something worthwhile and to believe in something, he joins the army to fight in France. His eyes are opened there to people with education and culture. He believes he has found a purpose. He leads his men in a bitter defense of a small salient and is killed in a German attack.
It has been a long time since I've read Cather. She was a wonderful writer with an extraordinary mix of straight-forward simplicity and very deep understanding of people and culture. We feel very deeply for Claude. We see how the free and prosperous Midwest culture is actually stifling him. He is understood very deeply and sympathetically.
In the period after the First World War and before the Great Depression Willa Cather, Booth Tarkington, and Sinclair Lewis examined the dreary and parochial life in the American Midwest. Cather showed us what life was like on the farm and Tarkington and Lewis showed us the towns and cities. They changed the way the people of those times saw themselves and, for me anyway, created a view of America's past that is what I think about when I think of those times.
| Author | Crichton, Michael |
|---|---|
| Publication | Harper Collins, 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 431 |
| Extras | notes, bibliography |
| Genres | Fiction; Thriller; Short stories |
| Keywords | Genetics |
| When Read | August 2007 |
This is a typical Crichton novel, dominated by his theme that bioengineering is with us now and that it is being misappropriated. The characters are all limited and presented to make points about the theme. Most are pretty disgusting people, the only heroes being a pair of mothers, one who defends her son against a bounty hunter working for a biogen company that claims to own her son's genes, and another who defends a young humanzee - a chimp with human genes. The chimp himself, a talking orang, and an intelligent parrot, are the real heroes of the stories.
C develops the absurd consequences of modern intellectual property law in biology. Genes are "owned" by corporations. People whose tissues are used to develop drugs are then denied the drugs because they can't afford them. Tissues collected by a scientist are seized by his university when he changes jobs.
The interweaving stories are a little preposterous and the characters completely outrageous. It is almost a cartoon. But C's points are well taken.
Fortunately, although private enterprise biology is harmful, its absurdities make it vulnerable to attack. I think that in the long run it's likely to be defeated. But who knows?
I believe that all of the absurd outcomes of private enterprise biology that Crichton describes are based on actual fact. I know for a fact that there have been people whose tissues were used to develop drugs, but patents on the genes of those people were expropriated by the companies and the patients themselves were unable to afford the drugs that might save them.
| Author | Powaski, Ronald E. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 2006 |
| Copyright Date | 2003 |
| Number of Pages | 388 |
| Extras | photos, maps, notes, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | September 2007 |
Powaski begins at the "Phony War" or "Sitzkrieg" and carries the story through the German breakthrough and up to the evacuation at Dunkirk and the fall of France.
From a military point of view, the real players were the German generals - Manstein, Guderian, Rommel, Dietrich and many lower ranking officers who seized the initiative, kept in touch with the offensive, often leading from the front, and pushed their advantages hard and steadily, in spite of exhaustion, in a style similar to that of Patton later on in the war.
Maurice Gamelin, the overall French commander, spent the entire battle in his headquarters, completely out of touch. When asked why he didn't have radio communications he asked, "What would I have done with a radio transmitter?" A number of his key subordinates were equally befuddled and there was no coordination of infantry, artillery, air and armor. The Germans out-thought, out-maneuvered, and therefore out-fought them at every point/
The Brits were better organized and less demoralized but the agreed upon strategy of advancing into Belgium was a complete failure and just played into the Germans' hands.
For all of the German success, it appears that the professional soldiers in the Wehrmacht achieved victory in spite of Hitler's leadership, not because of it. Hitler was, by turns, ready to risk all, then ready to stop everyone, oscillating between mania and fear.
This was an interesting book.
I've read more about the battle of France since reading this book. One source, I can't remember what it was, was kinder to Gamelin than Powaski. It argued that French morale was not as bad as has been depicted after the battle. First line French troops were claimed to have fought well, just as well as the Germans. However the troops in the Ardennes, an area thought to be safe from German attack, were older reservists and draftees with less training and spirit, and they were spread more thinly.
So some sources have the French army riddled with anti-war sentiment, low morale, belief that this was another war like the last one that would do no good for the French people, and defeatism. Powaski seemed to be of that school, and he is certainly not alone. He gave a lot of evidence for his view. Other sources hold that the French army was pretty good.
French material preparation was also good. By May of 1940, there were as many or more tanks in the French army as the German, and they were better quality tanks. By many measures, the French army was very good and should have been expected to give a better account of itself. It was the British who were least prepared to field an army. Most of their resources were in the Royal Navy and the RAF.
Were the Allied generals terrible? Or were they just behind the times? Their plan of allowing the Germans into the south while attacking further north looked good on paper, but only on paper. It required a Belgian buy-in to the plan that didn't come until too late, and it assumed that the forces further south would hold - which they didn't. When the plan failed it left the British army and an important piece of the French army isolated, threatened and, although they were not destroyed, they were thrown out of the fight.
In retrospect we might imagine that the French would have done far better to mass their forces in the north central part of the country instead of in the far north. Then they could have stood between the Germans and the heart of France instead of being pushed up into the English Channel. However if they had done that and lost then all of us armchair generals would have said that they should have concentrated in the north, kept contact with the UK, and driven behind the German advance to cut it off and destroy it.
Playing at war, second guessing the generals, and looking backward with hindsight, is all easy. Defeating the Wehrmacht was damned hard. They were a formidable enemy, the best in the world in 1940.
| Author | Mankell, Henning |
|---|---|
| Translators | Thompson, Laurie |
| Publication | Vintage Books, 2001 |
| Copyright Date | 1992 |
| Number of Pages | 326 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | September 2007 |
Inspector Kurt Wallander in the small Swedish town of Ystad is called in to investigate two dead bodies on a rubber raft. W understands very little about the case until short, middle-aged, chain smoking, detective Major Liepa arrives from Riga with more insight into the case that apparently originated in Latvia.
When Liepa goes back to Riga and is murdered there, the Latvian authorities request W's help in the investigation. W goes to Riga and is introduced to two police colonels, one or both of whom may be trying to solve Liepa's murder, or may have actually murdered him. The case is further complicated by W's falling in love with Liepa's widow Baiba, who is a member of an underground anti-Soviet, pro-nationalist, pro-democracy movement, just at the time of the beginning of the Soviet breakup.
W is a witness to a police murder of dissidents. He goes underground himself in a city where he knows hardly anyone and does not speak a word of the language. He becomes involved in a search for Major Liepa's hidden files which different factions in the police also want, either to suppress or use against their enemies, but W cannot tell which is which.
The story seems improbable - though I really wouldn't know since the period and place are very foreign to me, as to W. But W is a sympathetic character, the writing is intelligent and effective, and the story moves along. Other Amazon reviewers rated this as a lesser Wallander book from Mankell.
| Author | Godwin, Tom |
|---|---|
| Publication | Gnome Press |
| Copyright Date | 1958 |
| Number of Pages | 124 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | September 2007 |
This book, published in paperback with a modern art cover for 40 cents, is just what I was reading at age 12 or so when it came out. It took me back to my childhood.
A spaceship heading for an earth like planet is captured by "Gerns", a Nazi like race of martinets who are at war with the earth. The Gerns (GERmaNs?) separate out 4,000 colonists who are of no use to them and dump them on a hostile planet with 1.5 times earth gravity, extreme weather, and dangerous beasts - "prowlers" and "unicorns". They are left there so that other humans on the ship who will become Gern slaves will believe that they must cooperate to enable their families and friends to live. But in fact the Gerns expect them all to die. They suffer terrible deprivation until the handful of survivors and their hardier and hardier descendants master the skills and evolve the physical strength to survive.
After great privations, the humans lure Gerns back to the planet, kill most of them, and take their ship. Using their enhanced physical strength to maneuver the ship at higher speeds than the Gerns can, they defeat other Gerns and win back the freedom of humanity.
It's very much a 1950's adolescent, "hard" SF story. The outcomes are not credible, the action is stark and simplistic, the bad guys are cartoons, and the good ones too. But if you suspend your critical faculties and get into the spirit of a 12-14 year old reader, it's a compelling read.
See my diary entry for Sept. 20, 2007, and my amazon.com review.
| Author | Francis, Dick |
|---|---|
| Publication | Books on Tape, 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 384 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | October 2007 |
Private investigator and ex-jockey Sid Halley is hired to investigate Internet gambling but, when a jockey friend of his is murdered, he is drawn into that investigation - which eventually turns into a double murder as the trainer employing the jockey is also murdered. There appears to be a strong gambling connection but Sid can't figure out who the gamblers are or why they have become so violent.
As he gets closer to discovering more, his girlfriend is attacked in an attempt to warn him off. First she is beaten, then shot and almost killed.
The usual technical detail is here - horse racing, Internet gambling, DNA analysis (Sid's girlfriend is a microbiologist) and some medicine. F is careful to present the DNA and medical stuff from Sid's point of view, enabling him to handle the subject reasonably in spite of strictly limited understanding.
In the end, Sid teams up with a sleazy racing reporter for The Pump to lay a trap for the killers, and he discovers the surprising facts of who did it and why.
It used to be said that F's wife did all the writing, but she died and this book is as good as any of his. It has the technical interest, the straight up main character, and the general sympathy for people, as well as the who done it plot twists that make all of his books enjoyable reading.
| Author | Higgins, Jack |
|---|---|
| Author | Patterson, Harry |
| Publication | Phoenix Audio, 2005 |
| Copyright Date | 1979 |
| Number of Pages | 254 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| When Read | October 2007 |
A young German American Jewish night club singer goes to Berlin in 1940 to persuade her uncle to abandon his night club and flee to America. The uncle refuses. It turns out that he's a communist spy. He gives her information about a Nazi plan to kidnap the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Portugal and turn them into German puppets.
With the help of an important Nazi assigned to get the Duke, the girl escapes the Gestapo and runs to Paris, then Lisbon, where she teams up with an American night club owner to foil the evil plot.
It's all thin, derivative, hackneyed, and trite. Perhaps Higgins is losing his touch (he would have been 76 in 2005.) Perhaps he's just going through the motions.
I reviewed this for Amazon.com, giving it 2 of 5 stars. The other reviewers all liked the book.
According to the Wikipedia, this book was published under Higgins actual name, Harry Patterson, in 1979. My speculation that, at age 76, H was just going through the motions, was wrong. He was around 40 when he wrote this. The accuracy of the Wikipedia date is confirmed by the Library of Congress. The audio edition that I listened to was copyright 2005 and used the better known "Jack Higgins" as the name of the author.
Interestingly, it also said that Patterson/Higgins, born in 1929, joined the British Army in occupation duty in Germany and his IQ was tested, coming up as 147. I wouldn't have guessed that from this book.
| Author | Ricks, Thomas E. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Penguin Press, 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 482 |
| Extras | photos |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Gulf War; Iraq |
| When Read | October 2007 |
The Washington Post Pentagon correspondent, with a deep knowledge of the American military and many contacts within it, critiques the decision to go to war, the planning for the war, the complete misunderstanding and lack of interest in its aftermath, and the near criminal incompetence in carrying it out.
Ricks pulls no punches. He shows how intelligence was not just misinterpreted but was systematically slanted to get the results that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld had already concluded. He describes Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, and Rumsfeld as impervious to argument. By casting Hussein as Hitler, they made all further argument pointless. What could possibly be worse than Hitler? What aftermath could possibly be worse? Planning for that aftermath was unnecessary. Things simply had to be better than they were under Hussein. And so no planning was done. What chances there were for victory were lost in a clumsy occupation highlighted by random brutality, of which Abu Ghraib was just one instance.
Ricks names names. Some of those names, like General Odierno, have since been promoted to even higher responsibility. R is no peacenik and no Hussein sympathizer. He's an honest guy who sees the miasma of incompetence, deception and self-deception that characterize this fiasco of a war.
I was driving down Liberty Road listening to National Public Radio. They were interviewing Thomas Ricks. I was very impressed with him. As I happened to drive by the Randallstown Library I stopped in, found the book, and took it home to read. I don't think that has happened to me in that way before or since.
| Author | Weintraub, Stanley |
|---|---|
| Publication | Free Press, 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 224 |
| Extras | photos, maps |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II; Battle of the Bulge |
| When Read | November 2007 |
W recounts the battle primarily from the point of view of the participants. The grand strategy is explained but not emphasized and there are no technical details of complex orders, unit maneuvers, counts of men, tanks, trucks, planes, or tons of supplies, or of weapons descriptions or comparisons. Mostly it is about what Joe, Jack and Fritz did and saw on various days of the battle. There's also considerable discussion of the moods of the armies and of the commanders on the eve of the battle - which I found enlightening.
Perhaps to connect the story to familiar figures and add human interest, W includes quite a lot about Ernest Hemingway and Marlene Dietrich. Hemingway actually grabbed a Tommy gun and shot some Germans who had broken into the lines where he was a correspondent, saving the American commander's life.
W is kind to Patton, less kind to Ike, not at all kind to Monty.
This is not great war history. It's simple, popular, and mostly on the surface. But it was of some interest and was quick to read.
My book card and chronological card index disagree about whether this book was completed in October or November. That's the first error of index/card synchronization of any kind that I've encountered in the 200 or so cards I have converted so far.
| Author | Rushdie, Salman |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 2005 |
| Number of Pages | 416 |
| Genres | Fiction; Fantasy |
| Keywords | Kashmir |
| When Read | November 2007 |
This is a complex story of Kashmir and of the world.
A young tightrope walker known as Shalimar the Clown loves and marries Boonyi Kaul, beautiful daughter of the chief cook of the neighboring village. But it all leads to love, betrayal, ambition, adultery, murder, and the complex interweaving of personal emotion and world politics, personal violence and international violence.
Boonyi is taken with the idea of seducing Max Ophuls, American ambassador to India, and using him as a gateway to a larger world. Ophuls is a French-Jewish-American former World War II resistance fighter, millionaire, intellectual, seducer, and philanderer. O's life story is told as are the life stories of Shalimar (O's driver), Boonyi, and India Ophuls, daughter of Max and Boonyi.
Shalimar is embittered by Boonyi's betrayal. He resolves to murder Max and Boonyi and their daughter India. He becomes a Muslim terrorist and participates in the destruction of Kashmir by the terrorists and Pakistanis on one side, and the equally brutal Indian army on the other.
Some hold that this is one of the weakest of Rusdie's novels. If so, he must be among the world's greatest writers. He handles millionaires, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, cooks, clowns, mullahs - everyone one can imagine, interweaving places, times and cultures seamlessly. I thought that this was a truly brilliant book. I feel that I now also have at least a glimmer of understanding of the reduction of idyllic Kashmir to a wasteland of death and destruction.
I classified this book in the genre of fantasy as well as fiction. There are some passages containing what can only be called supernatural events - especially at the end when Shalimar walks a tightrope out of prison into thin air. There is also an ambiguous scene at the very end when Shalimar comes to kill India and the two prepare with almost superhuman sensory powers to kill each other. We don't know who actually kills whom but, in my view, it was India who survives. Perhaps that's just who I wanted to survive.
| Author | Balzac, Honore de |
|---|---|
| Translators | Wormeley, Katherine Prescott |
| Publication | Gutenberg |
| Copyright Date | 1833 |
| Number of Pages | 146 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | November 2007 |
Provincial miser M. Grandet tends his wine and other businesses in Saumur in France, where he accumulates millions through business acumen, sharp practice, taking advantage of everyone, and spending nothing. He keeps his repressed and humbled wife and his sweet ingenuous daughter along with a humble work-horse of a servant in an old house with one candle at night for light and with all food carefully measured out by the master. There too he entertains the local gentry who come to socialize and play cards in hopes of marrying the miser's daughter to one of their sons.
Then the miser's young nephew Charles, spoiled son of a bankrupt suicide brother, arrives from Paris. The naive Eugenie falls in love with this glittering fop who, in the pain of loss of father and fortune, and never having met such a sweet young woman, returns her affection. He goes off to the West Indies, forgetting all about her, but she pines for him in Saumur. When old Grandet is gone and Eugenie inherits all, she hears of him and is prepared to marry him until she learns the truth.
This was B's first "hit", and it is a magnificent one. The characters are wonderfully drawn. The town, the life, the virtues and vices of people absorbed in stultifying private life, are all handled with amazing insight and depicted in beautiful yet economical prose.
It is a morality story, or perhaps a story of amorality, but completely free of sanctimony.
I loved it.
| Author | Hunter, Stephen |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Dell Publishing, 1996 |
| Copyright Date | 1980 |
| Number of Pages | 292 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | November 2007 |
SS officer Repp, a master sniper who killed hundreds or thousands on the eastern front, trains for a last mission at the end of the war with a new device, a man portable night sight attached to his assault rifle. American Major Leets deduces the existence of Repp and learns more about him from Shmuel, the escaped Jew who tells the story of 20 Jews shot at night for target practice.
Leets, his British commanding officer, and his tennis playing sergeant, track Repp to a monastery in Switzerland where they learn his mission and confront him in a final shootout.
The story if full of end of the war events, including a long trip by Repp towards the border, killing friend and foe who might in any way compromise his mission. We see him shooting SS fanatics who think he's a deserter and a woman who loves him and shelters him but now knows too much.
The nature of the final mission is a surprise. It turns out to be the murder of a rich little Jewish boy for the SS to grab his fortune, not the assassination of Ike or Churchill. Surprisingly, it makes more sense than what we expected.
As in his other books, Hunter is very gun conscious. He is fascinated by guns and gunfighters, but in an uncommonly (for this fascination) intelligent way.
I guess he's not the only one who is interested in this stuff.
This appears to have been Hunter's first published novel.
| Author | Peters, Ellis |
|---|---|
| Publication | Warner Books, 1994 |
| Number of Pages | 225 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | Cadfael |
| When Read | November 2007 |
"The Twentieth [and last - AHM] Chronicle of Brother Cadfael of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul of Shrewsbury."
C learns that his son, Olivier de Bretagne, who still doesn't know that C is his father, was among a group of knights captured when a castle loyal to the empress Maude was betrayed to King Stephen. But the young man never appears on any list of prisoners. C leaves the abbey at Shrewsbury and rides with his friend the sheriff to Coventry, where a great conference will be held to try to reconcile the warring factions.
There is a murder in Coventry and C's young friend Yves Hugonin, brother-in-law of Olivier, is accused. C must now try to defend the boy (who first appeared in an earlier novel) as well as find his son.
This is the first Brother Cafael novel I read that has an actual battle of the civil war in it. It is also the first where C leaves the vicinity of Shrewsbury and risks expulsion and perhaps excommunication to pursue this private family matter.
This was Ellis Peter's (Edith Pargetter's) last Cadfael novel. She died shortly after. I liked it as much as all of the those that went before. It is a fine legacy that she left us.
I'm reading another Cadfael right now and will probably read more, maybe all of them, before I join Edith Pargetter. I'd also like to read her The Heaven Tree, which has gotten extraordinary reviews on Amazon and also by Bob Kline. Perhaps I'll find it soon.
| Author | Sabatini, Rafael |
|---|---|
| Publication | Gutenberg |
| Copyright Date | 1921 |
| Number of Pages | 140 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| When Read | December 2007 |
Sir Crispin Galliard, a rake hell professional soldier, known alike for fearless fighting and for hard drinking and carousing, is in the employ of King Charles against Cromwell in the English Civil War. He saves Charles' life and that of an 18 year old boy whom he has befriended but must flee a lost battle. The boy brings him to Castle Marleigh where he is to marry the beautiful Cynthia Ashford who has no interest in him but whose father is pushing the marriage.
It soonj transpires that Crispin Galliard is really Roland Marleigh, attacked and left for dead 18 years before, his wife killed before his eyes, by the Ashford brothers who seized Castle Marleigh, killed Roland's father, and now live in Galliard's rightful place.
Galliard plots his revenge but is stymied by the boy, Kenneth, who eventually turns out to be Galliard's own son. G is torn apart by conflicting emotions, revenge against the Ashfords, growing love for the pure and beautiful Cynthia, obligation to Kenneth.
Of course it all comes right in the end.
Sabatini's swashbuckling stories of this period are always fast moving and entertaining, but with enough emotional complexity among the stereotyped characters to keep it all from becoming trivial. Sabatini, Weyman, Shellabarger, Costain, all wrote historical romances that were popular at one time and were staples of my youth. I still get some youthful enjoyment from these books.
| Author | Le Carre, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | Books on Tape, 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 352 |
| Genres | Fiction; Thriller |
| When Read | December 2007 |
Bruno Salvador "Salvo" is the 29 year old child of an Irish Catholic missionary priest and a Congolese woman. Raised in a Catholic Mission in the Congo, Salvo now lives in London where he is married to a white woman star reporter and is himself a star translator, speaking English, French, Swahili, and all the Eastern Congolese languages of his youth.
He is recruited by British intelligence to act as a translator and electronic eavesdropper at a meeting of a mining consortium and a group of Kivu warlords. Anxious to please and believing in the worth of his mission, he slowly awakens to the true nature of the meeting - a grab for Congolese mineral wealth with a little war to make it all happen.
Still naive, Salvo goes to a famous British Lord who is backing the meeting only to learn that the lord is in on the plot. Then he turns to his African nurse girlfriend (his wife has left him for one of her high powered business associates) who, especially naive, places her faith in an African leader who turns out to be as corrupt as all of the others.
This is one of those typical Le Carre masterworks in which the naive little man learns the truth about real life. He fights against injustice and, in a gradual closing in of evil, is crushed in a sequence that is hard for the reader to bear. But some of the truth does come out and some bad guys suffer too.
The character of Salvo is a new one for Le Carre in his color and background, but he is still a man that L understands. L's own linguistic abilities make him a good conceiver of the translator's consciousness. I don't enjoy these books, but I am enlightened and moved by them.