Books read January through December 2008
| Author | Nagorski, Andrew |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007 |
| Number of Pages | 365 |
| Extras | maps, photos, bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | January 2008 |
Few people realize that, in numbers of soldiers involved (7 million according to Nagorski) and casualties (2.5 million, including 2 million Soviets), this was the greatest battle of the war, or any war, though the numbers may include the whole drive to Moscow and much fighting after the German advance was stopped.
N was the Moscow Bureau Chief for Newsweek Magazine, with more knowledge of Russia and its people and language than many WWII historians. His view of the battle is political and strategic, not tactical. He says nothing at all about weapons and tactics and gives very little in the way of accounts of the fighting.
From N's perspective, a very powerful, efficient, well led German force attacked a disorganized, demoralized, and badly led Russian force which had been gutted, first by Stalin's homicidal purges and then by Stalin's cowardice in the face of mounting information about the coming attack.
Fortunately for us all, Stalin's extraordinary incompetence was matched by Hitler's. Hitler changed plans several times, causing the army to reach Moscow too late in the year. He refused to prepare for winter. He was as callous in sacrificing his men as was Stalin, for whom murder was a knee jerk reflex.
N doesn't know whether a German victory at Moscow would have ended the war. He thinks it might have. But then if the Germans had taken a more enlightened attitude, they would have won for sure.
If I remember correctly, Nagorski is the son of a Polish army officer who suffered under Russian oppression. But it did nothing to make N sympathetic to the Germans. Certainly the family must have suffered even more under them. Perhaps in part because of this family history, N is very sensitive to the crimes of both sides. In any case, in this book he makes clear that terrible crimes were committed by Stalin against the Red Army in the defense of Moscow. That they succeeded in stopping the Germans anyway was an extraordinary achievement.
| Author | Naipaul, V.S. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Blackstone Audiobooks, 2004 |
| Copyright Date | 1979 |
| Number of Pages | 288 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | January 2008 |
Salim, a young man of Indian extraction whose family has lived in Mozambique for generations, sees the dangers of the growing unrest there and buys a shop in newly independent Zaire. There he attempts to build a normal life and business. But nothing can be normal in the Congo.
While Salim is building his business, "the big man" (Mobutu) is developing his control and growing his paranoia. A university is established by him in the town and European teachers, some Mobutu sycophants, come in. Salim has a twisted and unhealthy affair with one of them. The first woman he ever slept with without paying for it.
Salim is soon caring for two young men, one an old family retainer from the coast, the other the son of his best customer - a man who becomes a university student and then an official who saves Salim from total destruction and helps him escape when the town at the bend in the river sinks into complete anarchy and jungle law.
This is a powerful novel on many levels, personal, social, political and historical. It paints a picture of utter bleakness and complete despair in Zaire and, by implication, most of black Africa. This is a continent with no future but suffering, death, and destruction.
The novel was both spell binding and disturbing. It was hard to bear but hard to stop. It is a great and terrible book.
Unlike the book on plants that I was reading in parallel with this one, I remember this one well. It made a deep impression on me. Naipaul depicted a fragile but functioning society that truly went over a cliff. I remember that the police gradually became more brutal and rapacious. They began to suck the merchants dry, to suck the people dry. Salim's young official friend gets Salim away from the police and tells him he must go quickly, before the first physical blow is struck against him. It is clear that there is a very thin line between extortion and the coming physical destruction. It is a line that the police still, but just barely, respect. Once they have crossed it, Salim is finished. Anything can and will happen to him.
Naipaul had an inside understanding of a society descending into hell. The story began on a tenuously hopeful note. People were attempting to put down roots. The merchant class was mainly Indians, Greeks, Belgians, and other foreigners, but they were building a society and the local Africans were participating too, even if not as deeply. But "the big man" had absolute power and he exercised it by raising up the forces of thuggery and destruction. It was indeed a very bleak story.
In the end, Salim escapes to England. Psychologically, I escaped with him. Seeing no possibility of continuing in Africa, and no possibility of changing anything for the better. All that could be done was to escape. It felt like a liberation.
| Author | Attenborough, David |
|---|---|
| Publication | Princeton University Press, 1995 |
| Number of Pages | 320 |
| Extras | photos, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Science; Biology; Botany |
| When Read | January 2008 |
This is a popular, profusely illustrated survey of different and exotic lifestyles of various plants around the world. There are chapters on Traveling (how seeds are dispersed), Feeding and Growing, Flowering, The Social Struggle (including fungi and struggle against other plants), Living Together (symbiosis with other plants or animals, and Surviving (adaptations to heat, cold, drought, and other stressful conditions.)
Produced as a companion book to a BBC series made the same year it is popular in nature but intelligently done.
I have been reading biology, biochemistry, genetics, cell biology, and so on. The material in a book like this complemented that. It surveys unusual examples of adaptations, making the theory more grounded in visible life than it would otherwise be. Thus, even though it is written for the popular reader, a person with a deeper interest in biology can enjoy it. I did.
Four years and four months later, I can recall hardly anything, if anything at all, from this book. However I still have a lot of cell biology and biochemistry in my head. I guess that shows something about the way I'm inclined in the study of biology.
| Author | Leinster, Murray (pseudonym of Jenkins, William Fitzgerald) |
|---|---|
| Publication | Gutenberg |
| Copyright Date | 1954 |
| Number of Pages | 204 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | January 2008 |
Jed Cochrane, a TV producer for a company that barely values his services, is sent to the moon to produce a story about a son-in-law of one of the company owners, who, to cure his neurosis, is going to be built up to the public as a great man, inventor of the Dabney Field, a mechanism for faster than light communication.
The real inventor, together with a writer, psychiatrist, secretary, and a few others are supposed to make all of this happen. But when the real inventor proves that they can also move matter faster than light Cochrane makes a bold entrepreneurial move to create a space expedition. Outfitting a moon rocket created largely for show, they setup a Dabney field and travel to several far away planets.
Interestingly, the science isn't too bad in this story but the sociology is glaringly dated. Cochrane treats the planets and all their plant and animal inhabitants as just so many free resources waiting to be grabbed, exploited, hunted, eaten, and trashed at the whim of the humans. In one scene Johnny Simms, an adult with the psychological development of a six year old, shoots a human appearing alien for fun. Cochrane and the others condemn him for his child like stupidity, but treat the murder, if such it be, as inconsequential.
L stood near the top of the professional hack writer pyramid. He churned out hundreds of short stories, novels, TV scripts, radio plays, movies, etc. He was effective, a real pro.
| Author | Mosley, Walter |
|---|---|
| Publication | Hachette Audio, 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 308 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | Fearless Jones |
| When Read | February 2008 |
After mild bookstore owner Paris Minton is attacked by the boyfriend of the white girl he has been sleeping with, he turns to his old friend Fearless Jones for help and protection. They return to the store and find the bully's body. He had been shot dead by some unknown person who might possibly have been after Paris, or his unwanted cousin Ulysses (Useless) S Grant - who brought trouble everywhere he went.
With Paris supplying the brains and Fearless providing the muscle and the charisma, the pair investigate. They encounter Useless' mother Three Hearts, his girlfriend Angel, the bail bondsman Milo, the beautiful Chinese waitress Mung, and various gangsters, gamblers, con artists, suckers, cops, and other denizens of Watts and L.A. Eventually they discover a blackmail scheme that traps white men with access to other people's money into supplying that money to a beautiful black girl (Angel) who appears to be a can't lose gambler. $80,000 has changed hands and various men have been killed to get control over it.
In the end, Paris solves all the mysteries and Fearless, true to his own inner sense of justice, returns the money to the men who were fleeced.
Mosley continues to be a complex and interesting writer with an off-beat point of view. He is at once an intellectual and a man deeply embedded in a culture in which intellectual values are irrelevant. His characters span a broad range from strong, noble and courageous (Fearless) to weak but smart and insightful (Paris, M's narrator in this story), to venal (Useless). But even the worst of them are treated with surprising sympathy.
I like these books.
| Author | Bova, Ben |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Tor Books, 2001 |
| Number of Pages | 349 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | February 2008 |
"Book 1 of the Asteroid Wars" has Dan Randolph lead a space exploration company in a future earth that has fallen over a climate change cliff. He is attracted to a plan for a new fusion powered ship to mine the asteroid belt, hoping both to save the near bankrupt company and bring vitally needed new ores to an impoverished earth. To do that he must rely on his top two pilots, Priscilla "Poncho" Lane and Amanda "Mandy", the one smart, sassy and tricky, the other beautiful and ingenuous. And he must go into partnership with the rapacious and murderous Martin Hymphries, whose real plan is to destroy Randolph and take over his company.
In the end, the fusion drive works but Randolph is killed by radiation poisoning as a result of Humphries plot to infect the ship with copper consuming nano-robots. Randolph leaves his seat on the board to Pancho and the stage is set for the next book.
Surprisingly perhaps, I have not read any Ben Bova novels before - though I did read a book in 1979 that he edited and might have read a story or two in Analog which he edited for a while.
B is a hard science SF writer. There is a short article about his life and impressive career in Wikipedia. He apparently earned a PhD at age 64 in 1996 and has written more than 100 books.
I liked this one. It was fast reading with good science, likable characters, an evil villain (Humphries), a strong plot, and some reasonably sophisticated ideas. I'll try to find the other books in this series.
| Author | Shenk, David |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Doubleday, 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 327 |
| Extras | index, notes, PGNs |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Chess |
| When Read | February 2008 |
"A History of Chess, or How 32 carved pieces on a board illuminated our understanding of war, art, science, and the human brain."
Beginning with its roots in Persia, S traces an informal cultural history of the game with small sections on Muslim and medieval play. His main emphasis however is on how the game might have influenced its players, from soldiers to politicians, philosophers, logicians, AI researchers and, perhaps especially, school children.
There are many delightful anecdotes. Ben Franklin, an avid player everywhere he went, was put in check by a French player. Ignoring the check, he made an illegal move. When the Frenchman said his king was in check, Franklin said, "Take him. He's a tyrant. I'll play on without him "en republican".
Woven through the book is a recounting of "The Immortal Game" between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzkey in London in 1851. Anderssen sacrificed his queen, two rooks, and a piece to force a checkmate. The game was a great inspiration to Shenk and many others, lending its name as the title of this book.
As a history, the book comes up short. But as a readable and absorbing introduction to the social milieu of chess, it's quite good.
I remember marveling at how it was possible for a human being to see so far ahead in a chess game as to be able to force a checkmate by a series of four major sacrifices. The "gods of chess", as they are sometimes called, aren't like the rest of us.
| Author | Price, Alfred |
|---|---|
| Publication | England: Classic Publications, 2005 |
| Number of Pages | 159 |
| Extras | index photos maps etc. |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Aviation; World War II |
| When Read | February 2008 |
Price describes the strategic air offensive against Germany starting with a few hesitant, inexperienced and unsuccessful attacks and going through the development of a major night time offensive by the RAF and the first terribly expensive attacks by the USA in daylight, unescorted, in 1943.
Throughout this period the Allies gradually accelerated their attacks while the Germans, stretched by the need to recall fighters from active fronts, struggled to keep up. Each side grew more competent month by month with new navigation and electronic counter-measures by the British alternating with improved radar, fighter controls, and guns from the Germans
It was a very fluid war composed of many individual and often unique battles, constantly changing. The bombers became more and more accurate and dangerous and the night fighters correspondingly so. By the end of this period, the Germans thought they were winning. They entered the next period with confidence and determination to defend the fatherland. They had no idea that they were about to be attacked by American long range fighter escorts who would totally transform the war.
This is a short but excellent book with a balanced examination of men, tactics, strategy and equipment. The profuse illustrations are superb. Most importantly, Price talked to many participants and read many first hand accounts. His explanations are authoritative and convincing, and he never loses sight of human factors.
| Author | Manning, Aubrey |
|---|---|
| Author | Dawkins, Marion Stamp |
| Publication | Cambridge University Press, 1992 |
| Number of Pages | 196 |
| Extras | photos, diagrams, references |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biology |
| When Read | February 2008 |
This is a survey covering the topic from physiology (nerves, hormones, maturation) through behavior. There are chapters on Development, Stimuli and Communication, Motivation and Decision Making, Evolution, Learning and Memory, and Social Organization.
The first thing I learned is that "behavior" covers all of the things animals do, including how insects court, make nests, lay eggs, etc. Insect behavior is genetically determined rather than learned, and is often, though not always, rigid and inflexible. But that doesn't mean it's simple. The nest building of wasps, the dance of honey bees, the changes in behavior of bees over the course of their life cycle, the very complex social roles of ants, etc., are all much more complicated than one might imagine when looking at what we think of as simple creatures.
Short lived creatures must have genetically determined behavior. There isn't time in a typical insect's life to learn anything, so evolution favors instinct over intelligence.
There are fascinating studies of birds, from individuals to families, to nests. There are many theories about how bird behavior is learned and what the rules of its optimization are, for example when it makes sense for birds to cooperate and when to compete.
After reading about insects, worms, invertebrates of all types, etc., the behavior of birds comes to seem very complex and of mammals much more so.
An interesting book.
| Author | Hunter, Stephen |
|---|---|
| Publication | William Morrow and Company, 1982 |
| Number of Pages | 377 |
| Genres | Fiction; Thriller |
| When Read | February 2008 |
Retired CIA agent Paul Chardy is pulled back into the service, much against his will, when he is told that Ulu Beg, a Kurdish guerrilla fighter who fought by Chardy's side, appears to have crossed the Mexican border into the US with a gun. Beg is aiming to kill Joseph Danzig, a former Secretary of State modeled on Henry Kissinger. Johanna Hull, former lover of Chardy and friend of Beg is also involved. The CIA side of the operation is supervised by young Miles Lanahan and the behind the scenes Russian director and deceiver of Beg, Colonel Speshnev, quietly orchestrating everything.
This is Hunter's second book after The Master Sniper. There is less gun technology in this one than in the first or in the later books. Like TMS, there is a Jew in a key role (Danzig), quite interestingly portrayed with a surprising understanding of Jewishness.
Chardy is the strong, silent type, a man of action not words, but a man who has experienced extreme suffering.
In the end, Beg and Speshnev are destroyed but Johanna and a young and earnest CIA agent are killed. There is no clean victory and no happy ending for Chardy.
H writes about primitive situations and themes: action, gunfights, revenge, ambition, and the corruption of powerful people. But he is a very sophisticated constructor of characters and stories. I like his books.
I believe that I met Stephen Hunter when he was working as a movie reviewer for the Baltimore Sun. I'm not certain. I never got his name. We shared a cab with a couple of other people. All of us were on a flight from BWI airport that was canceled and we shared a cab to National airport to get another flight. All I remember for sure is that the man I met was a movie reviewer for the Sun. I told him about the Japanese movie Dodes Kaden and he listened with great interest. He was in his thirties then, an outstanding movie reviewer, not yet a novelist, and with no published evidence of a deep interest in guns. He was also thin, not yet big and fat. Perhaps it was a different guy?
| Author | de Bernieres, Louis |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Pantheon Books, 2001 |
| Number of Pages | 119 |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| When Read | February 2008 |
After seeing a statue of the red dog in a small Australian town, dB felt impelled to hear all the stories about the charming creature. The dog was a mutt, belonging to everyone and no one, who spent his life hitchhiking rides in buses, cars, and trucks and visiting whatever place struck his fancy. He adopted a bus driver as his main mate for some time but, when the man was killed in a motorcycle accident, Red Dog resumed his roaming, perhaps looking for the man.
Although sociable, the dog had his own ways. He was not above stealing a meal and could fart enough to drive everyone out of a car. Finally, after a tough but varied eight year life, Red Dog was found poisoned and, when he could not be saved, was euthanized by his friends and the local vet.
This is a remarkably different book from Birds Without Wings. It is short, limited and simple. The language is perfectly simple with no grand images, no grand vocabulary, and no grand constructions. Another author without dB's reputation might not have been able to get it published. However, like BWW, there is a celebration of life in this story and a finding of values in the lives of simple people and even a dog.
I read it at first expecting some grand event to unfold and wondering when it would happen. But by the end I was quite content with its simplicity.
| Author | Price, Alfred |
|---|---|
| Publication | England: Classic Publications, 2005 |
| Number of Pages | 166-317 |
| Extras | index, photos, maps, etc. |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Aviation; World War II |
| When Read | February 2008 |
Price continues his history, starting from a point at which the Germans believed they had learned their lessons and were on the verge of delivering such decisive and convincing blows to the Allied air offensive that it would be defeated and halted.
Of course that didn't happen. Allied losses were terrible, gains were very slender, most bombs fell far from their intended targets. But, reinforced with the huge resources and industrial might, especially of the United States, the Allies continued and even accelerated their losing offensive. Then the P-51 Mustang was introduced and everything changed. The twin engine ME 110s, Ju88s, and other planes that were the backbone of the growing defense were slaughtered in the air. Fuel depots, refineries and transport mechanisms were steadily and systematically torn to shreds. Soon there was no fuel for training and the caliber of Luftwaffe pilots steadily eroded while the Americans gained every week in skill, experience, training, confidence and aggressiveness.
Bombing techniques also improved with the adoption of area bombing, pathfinders, improved radar guidance, and the ability to fly in daylight with only limited interference from the Luftwaffe.
I had previously become convinced that the air offensive was a huge waste of resources whose main achievement was the massacre of civilians, but I'm no longer sure of that.
I couldn't help but admire the courage and fierce dedication of the German pilots, some of whom were Nazi fanatics. Life is complex.
I've read a fair amount about the air war over Europe and Japan. It's very difficult to draw clear conclusions. The atom bomb finished off the Japanese, possibly because it showed how hopeless their position was. Who knows what would have happened if the war had lasted longer in Europe and it had been used in Germany first.
What if Hap Arnold's wish had come true? What if all resources had been devoted to strategic bombing and a force of 6,000 bombers had been accumulated in England? My guess is that, until the arrival of the Mustang, it would have been a total failure. The Germans would have continued to beef up the Luftwaffe. American casualty rates would have soared. But once the Mustang arrived and it was possible to fight for air superiority over the entire Reich, perhaps there would have been an air victory even if the Allies weren't at the banks of the Rhine. I'll never know, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are some scholars who really have figured it out.
I wrote: "I couldn't help but admire the courage and fierce dedication of the German pilots, some of whom were Nazi fanatics. Life is complex." The issues really are complex. Were people like Adolf Galland or Irwin Rommel criminals? They fought on behalf of a criminal state but it's hard to see them as all that different from our own Chuck Yeager or George Patton. For that matter, was Robert E. Lee a criminal? I think we should be able to give answers to these questions that take most or all of the issues into account, but they won't be simple answers and they won't provide us with simple rules that we can use to draw clear conclusions in every case.
| Author | Leonard, Elmore |
|---|---|
| Publication | Harper Audio, 2007 |
| Number of Pages | 336 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | March 2008 |
Southern charmer Honey has left her Nazi Heinrich Himmler look-alike husband Walter Schon and is living on her own in a Detroit apartment, working in a downtown department store. She is approached first by the FBI to spy on her husband and his Nazi spy friends, and then by Marshall Carl Webster (from The Hot Kid) to help him find two escaped prisoners of war.
In Leonard's usual deadpan hilarious style, the Nazis each face the end of the war (it is April 1945) in different ways. Walter plans a ridiculous attempt to kill Roosevelt. Vera considers all her options and then finally shoots her maniac killer boyfriend to save the Americans. Carl manages to keep (just) his vows to his wife, and of the two German soldiers, one of them runs off with a Jewish woman and the other of wants to be a cowboy.
The ending is forced and somewhat uncharacteristically unconvincing, but the ride along the way is classic Elmore Leonard.
The ending of this book was actually rather ridiculous. The main characters sit around in a living room with a psychotic killer with a gun but can't seem to be very exercised about him. When Vera shoots him it's as if there was never any danger all along - which I suppose there wasn't since this was a Leonard comedy mystery.
Nevertheless, I have to rate this book as a hit. When Honey walks into a room full of Nazis and says "Sieg Heil you all, I'm Honey," it really cracked me up. I loved it.
| Author | Healey, Mark |
|---|---|
| Publication | Osprey Publishing, 1994 |
| Number of Pages | 96 |
| Extras | illustrations, photos, chronology, bibliography |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Rome |
| When Read | March 2008 |
After a few short but useful pages on the events leading up to the war, Healey describes the march to the Rhone river, crossing the river, and the journey to and over the Alps. Then there are general sections on commanders of the opposing armies and the constitution of the armies.
The Roman legions were neither as uniformly outfitted and trained, nor as professional at this time as they were during the height of the Empire, nor were they led by professional generals. Hannibal destroyed some of the professionals early in the war so that by the time of Cannae the army he faced was not as well trained as some Roman armies and may not have equaled his own forces.
H's strategy never included an assault on Rome. He hoped to win enough victories to detach the Italian allies of Rome from their somewhat oppressive Roman overlords. He had considerable success but the tactics of Quintus Fabius Maximus, the "Cunctator" or "delayer", succeeded in keeping powerful Roman armies alive in the field, away from Hannibal's force, but able to intimidate the rest of Italy. Eventually, although H could win any battle, he could not win the war.
H was a remarkable general indeed. Using mercenary soldiers of many nationalities and different abilities and motivations, he nevertheless defeated every Roman force that dared to fight him in Italy. But time was against him and Rome defeated him, not in Italy, but in Spain and Africa.
This was a short but satisfying history.
| Author | Pope, Dudley |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1979 |
| Number of Pages | 397 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Naval; World War II |
| When Read | March 2008 |
Leftenant Edward Yorke is treated in a hospital for burns received in a destroyer action in the bay of Biscay in 1942. He had successfully carried out his mission as a last surviving officer on the sinking ship. When he recovers, he is assigned to a special intelligence unit attempting to find out why so many convoys are being successfully attacked from the center of convoy, even though it should be very difficult for a sub either to penetrate the escort screen or wait underwater on the convoy's unpredictable path.
He finds that all such convoys included a neutral Swedish ship. He arranges to be assigned to the next one and with the Swede, which eventually turns out to be dropping astern for some excuse, then coming back in with a sub in an undetectable position directly below. Yorke leads a party of men who pretend to be wreck survivors onto the Swedish ship. They eventually find proof and seize the ship, which turns out to be crewed by Swedish speaking Germans.
The story is somewhat forced. The love affair is somewhat trite. But Pope redeems it all with a genuine concern for his subject and for the authentic details of merchant life during the battle of the Atlantic. It was not great literature but still a good read.
| Author | Perez-Reverte, Arturo |
|---|---|
| Translators | Sayers Peden, Margaret |
| Publication | New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2005 |
| Copyright Date | 1996 |
| Number of Pages | 253 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Spain |
| When Read | March 2008 |
Diego Alatriste y Tenorio, retired soldier from the Flemish wars, lives in Madrid in the 17th century, supporting himself with odd jobs as a hired swordsman. He is approached by a police official and conducted to a secret meeting where he and an Italian swordsman are hired by a masked nobleman to intercept two strangers and steal their documents. They are not to kill anyone. But when the nobleman leaves, a dangerous priest, head of the Inquisition, gives them new instructions, demanding that the two strangers be killed.
In the event, Alatriste is touched by the courage and nobility of his targets. Instead of killing them he saves them from the Italian and soon learns that he has saved the heir to the English throne. From there, the story proceeds with Alatriste in danger from the priest's revenge and from the Italian, but also receiving some protection from his own friends and the Englishman
Much of the story is told by a boy, son of a dead comrade of Alatriste, who lives as a sort of page/servant/godson to the captain.
P is a very good writer. The story is compact and well crafted. The characters strike a near perfect note of slightly (or more than slightly) seedy romance and real courage and nobility. It is a very fine example of its type, comparing favorably with Weyman and Sabatini.
This was the first of a series of books featuring Alatriste which, currently includes at least seven novels. I've read the first three and may well read more. I started the fourth in Spanish but it was tough going for me. Perez-Reverte is a sophisticated writer with a literary style. I don't have enough of the language to work through his books for anything other than a learning exercise.
I also read and liked his The Club Dumas, which was not about Alatriste.
| Author | Kershaw, Alex |
|---|---|
| Publication | Da Capo Press, 2005 |
| Number of Pages | 344 |
| Extras | maps, photos |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II; Battle of the Bulge |
| When Read | April 2008 |
The Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon of the 394th infantry regiment, 99th Division, was dug in above the town of Lanzerath on Dec. 16, 1944 when one of the spearheads of the German Ardennes offensive struck squarely at their position. By a combination of competence, bravery, and incredibly poor German leadership, the platoon withstood a long day of frontal assaults, inflicting hundreds of casualties and retarding the whole enemy offensive for a critical period of time. They only surrendered when they were surrounded and out of ammunition. Then their extended ordeal began.
They were split up and sent to various POW camps. Some got reasonable medical attention and some did not. They suffered greatly from malnutrition, poor care, brutal treatment, and occasional Allied bombings. But in the end, most survived and made it back to the U.S. where they entered upon normal hum drum lives.
K's telling of the story is clean and straightforward, He is interested in the people more than in the battle or the accurate historical details. He follows some of the Germans as well as the Americans and seems fairly sympathetic to all.
One gets the sense from books like this of how war can involve small and personal eddies mixed in the larger stream of history.
As I recall, the platoon consisted of about 22 men with a few jeeps and trucks to carry them, and a couple of machine guns in addition to their personal arms. They weren't supposed to fight. Their job was to go as far towards the Germans as it was possible to go in order to report back if they saw anything happening. What they happened to see was the Ardennes Offensive, aimed right through their position.
I don't remember why they fought instead of running. I think they may have been in a spot where they would have had to expose themselves to heavy fire in order to run and so they decided to fight. In any case, the Germans charged up a hill to get at them and were thrown back multiple times. As I recall, no tanks or artillery were used and so the offensive was held up for a full day - a boon to the American forces behind them. In one case a scared German attempted to flee by running across the face of their defense. He ran so fast and in such terror that the Americans kept missing him and were pleased that he got away.
Conditions in the German POW camps were awful - partly because conditions in Germany were awful and partly because the Nazi camps came from a heritage of killing people. If the war had not ended when it did in April 1945, it is likely that many more Americans captured in December would have died.
| Author | Bova, Ben |
|---|---|
| Publication | Tor Books, 2002 |
| Number of Pages | 209 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | April 2008 |
Lars Fuchs and Amanda Cunningham (see The Precipice) are married and Martin Humphries attends the wedding, secretly resolving to do away with Lars and win Amanda. But the newly married couple leaves Selene (the city on the moon) and moves to the asteroid belt, where they earn a living first as prospectors and then as providers of merchandise and supplies.
Humphries decides to take over the belt. He sends killers who kill prospectors on remote asteroids and seize their claims. Big George, the former bodyguard of Dan Randolph is almost killed but is saved by Lars. The killers than burn out Fuchs' store and he and Amanda must start over. But the pressure continues. Lars takes action, leading a small ship and crew in raids on Humphries ships and bases. Finally he is captured and, in the best his friends can do for him, exiled from the colony on Ceres and condemned to wander the belt while Amanda, in an attempt to save him, has submitted to Humphries. In the end all seems lost but Lars is alive and vows revenge.
Bova does all of this very well. His villains have some depth and interest. His characters, especially Lars, evolve. His handling of a complex process of war and peace, all mixed together, works pretty well.
I'll read on.
| Author | Ellis, Joseph J. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Prince Frederick, MD: Recorded Books, 2004 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | United States |
| When Read | April 2008 |
These are 14 lectures by Prof. Ellis of Mount Holyoke College, an expert historian and author of numerous books about these people and this period. He begins with the legacy of the French and Indian War and carries the story through to the break from England, the war, confederation, constitution, slavery, Federalism, and the triumph of Jefferson in 1800.
His portraits of individuals are excellent: Franklin, Adams, Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison. There is also a wonderful lecture on the famous Declaration of independence.
Ellis struck me as just what a historian should be - deeply knowledgeable, steeped in both the facts and the feelings of the period, questioning, sympathetic, able to see what is not discussed in the record (slavery) as well as what is, and able to appreciate the multiple sides of each issue. It was a pleasure to listen to his lectures.
I have a note about the author in the diary of May 28, 2008. Ellis was reprimanded by his university for leading his students to believe that he had fought in Vietnam when he had not. Perhaps the study of history so captivated him that he was seduced into pretending to have been a part of it. Perhaps he just wanted to impress the boys and girls. It was, as I said in the diary, very odd.
| Author | Cox, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | Gutenberg, 2004 |
| Number of Pages | 138 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biography |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | April 2008 |
C enlisted in the British Army at age 20 in 1938. He was trained in various crafts, stood around a lot, and then got shipped off to the Middle East. This book, written over 60 years after his enlistment, is a memoir of those times.
C spent most of the war in Iraq, working in an equipment maintenance depot. Most of this time was spent in this isolated base in the desert with only the companionship of his fellow enlisted men. There he did his job, reflected on the life of the people around him, struggled against boredom and bureaucracy, and made occasional trips on leave to Baghdad, Tehran, Beirut, Palestine, and Cairo. No doubt all of these places were at least several times smaller and vastly different from what they are today.
C's recollection seems remarkably good. I would be very hard pressed to write a 100 page memoir of my years from 20-26, though now that I think about it, perhaps I could.
I don't know why I read this. I picked it up as a World War II memoir, and in its way it is. But I stuck with it because I was attracted to the open, honest personality of this man. Without any higher education, and presumably with no experience as a writer, he nevertheless produced an engaging and attractive memoir.
Many years ago I found and read a book The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier by Walter Jakob, a German from Westphalia. To my surprise, it was said to be the only surviving account of the Napoleonic wars by an enlisted man. There must have been more than a million men involved in those wars. I believe there are many accounts by enlisted men from the American Civil War and a great many by British and Americans from World War I and II. Why are they so scarce in Europe from Napoleonic times? I'm thinking that literacy was not widespread, and the lack of democracy and social equality led ordinary people to believe that reading (other than the Bible) and writing were not for folk of their station in life. That has changed and, I hope, will continue to change.
| Author | Sterenly, Kim |
|---|---|
| Publication | Totem Books, 2007 |
| Number of Pages | 208 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biology |
| When Read | May 2008 |
Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins were the leaders (Gould has died) of opposing schools of thought in evolutionary biology. Dawkins proclaimed a gene centric view. He sees evolution as selecting genes and sees genes as competing and cooperating with each other. Gould sees the organism as the target of selection, not the gene.
I was never sure in reading this debate to what extent Dawkins view was serious and to what extent it was rhetorical. Surely, the selection process, the pressure of competition to survive and reproduce, operates on organisms and not on genes. It is the organism that wins or loses the battle. Some genes contribute to the organism's success, some detract, some are just along for the ride. By promulgating a gene centric, reductionist view is the excellent Dawkins actually claiming otherwise? Or is he just trying to draw attention to a key underlying factor which might otherwise be neglected?
There were other points of disagreement but, again, I was never sure about the substance of them.
I think I got less from this book than the author, a professor of philosophy, intended to convey.
Having since read Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, I still incline to an organism rather than gene centric view of evolution. What exactly are genes competing with? Other genes in the same organism? The same genes in other individuals of the same organism? Different alleles? What about the same genes in completely different species?
I find Dawkins' view to be insightful. It gets us to think about a hard problem from a different point of view. But it also seems to introduce confusion.
| Author | Zola, Emile |
|---|---|
| Translators | Vizetelly, Edward |
| Publication | Gutenberg |
| Copyright Date | 1867 |
| Number of Pages | 242 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | May 2008 |
Translated, edited, and with a preface by Edward Vizetelly
This was Zola's third book, his first as a professional writer.
Therese Raquin is left by an army officer as a young child with a small town mercer, Madame Raquin, and her sickly son, Camille. Strong and imaginative, she resents being shackled to the sickly Camille but dutifully cares for him as she is raised to do by her aunt. When the two children come of age, Mme Raquin arranges a marriage between them to keep her little family together and to assure Camille of a caretaker.
At Camille's urging they all move to Paris where Camille takes a job as a clerk and the two women run a little dry goods shop. Camille then brings home a friend, a fellow clerk, a failed artist and disowned child of a peasant who entrances Therese with his lusty health and big muscles. She begins an affair with him and the two are increasingly irritated by Camille and begin to talk about doing away with him. One day they go rowing and, with Therese's tacit consent, Laurent throws Camille into the Seine, where he drowns.
For the rest of the book Laurent and Therese are tortured by visions of the dead Camille. They marry. They take care of Mme Raquin who has become completely paralyzed but is happy, believing that L and T are devoted to her and to Camille. Finally she learns the truth but is impotent to exact the revenge she craves. L and T however descend deeper and deeper into self-destruction, finally committing mutual suicide beneath the old lady's glare.
This is a powerfully written but extremely depressing book, offering Z's usual view of humanity.
I have read eight of Zola's books so far. I once planned to read all of them. They were revolutionary for their times - telling stories that nobody wrote about before and that, in some sense, no one wanted to hear. But they were sensational and contained much truth. Be that as it may, there's only so much I can take. They always impress the hell out of me but I may or may not read more.
| Author | Scott, Colonel Robert L. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Ballantine Books, 1963 |
| Copyright Date | 1943 |
| Number of Pages | 308 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History; Biography |
| Keywords | Aviation; World War II |
| When Read | May 2008 |
Wishing only to be a pilot, young Scott worked very hard to get an education and to qualify for officer training. When the war began S was one of the most experienced pilots with years of air mail flying in night and bad weather and long experience as an instructor and training commander. But at 34, he was told that he was too old to fly combat!
By hook and crook he arranged to fly a four engined bomber to India where he became a transport pilot, then got his hands on a P-40 with which he waged a one man war on the Japanese army in Burma. He slaughtered hundreds or thousands in single plane bombing and strafing runs. Impressing Claire Chennault, C brought him in as a squadron commander in the new U.S. air arm that had replaced the Flying Tigers in China. There he flew mission after mission, using Chennault's brilliant strategies to avoid Japanese strengths and then hit them by surprise where they least expected it, racking up big scores of Japanese planes with relatively small losses among their few P-40s, dangling at the end of a long and low priority supply line that could only trickle in small numbers of planes, parts, men, and fuel "over the hump" of the Himalayas in C-47s.
I gained a new appreciation in this book for the handful of Americans who fought with so much zeal, courage, intelligence and skill, and for their love of the USA. When Scott flew his P-40 he was thrilled to be in an American plane with a reliable American engine and those devastating American 50 caliber machine guns.
There was a different American spirit in those days.
See also diary entry for May 19, 2008.
| Author | Lem, Stanislaw |
|---|---|
| Publication | Internet download |
| Copyright Date | 1967 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | May 2008 |
The famous constructors, Trurl and Klapaucius, always looking around for something worthy of their talents, place an advertisement offering their services and are soon recruited to the Kingdom of Krool. There King Krool engages them to build him a creature that he can hunt. The creature must be able to withstand every unfair weapon which Krool will bring to bear. If he fails, the constructors will be put to death. If he succeeds in killing the king, the constructors will likely also be put to death.
Quickly overcoming their despair, T and K set to work. Eventually they produce an extraordinarily clever beast that withstands all the weapons and armies of the king, and then kidnaps him. He is held for ransom, requiring the payment of, and freedom for, the two heroes.
This is from Lem's great period of comic invention. The characters are from The Cyberiad, though I don't remember if this story was in that collection.
Classic Lem.
If anyone asked me who the greatest author of Science Fiction was, I would unhesitatingly say Stanislaw Lem. There are many mediocre ones, some very good ones, and a number of excellent ones. But Lem distinguished himself by his high literary technique, his comic inventiveness, and his deep ideas.
I came across the book card for this while working on conversion of cards from 1996. I had apparently written up the book card but not added it to the index of cards by date, and so missed it when converting the rest of the 2008 book cards. That's the only error of its type I've seen so far in converting more than 15 years worth of book cards.
Doing a little more digging on the Internet, the only reference to this story that I found was from The Cyberiad. It is described as a "novelette" in that larger collection. So I apparently read it twice, once in 1978 and again 30 years later after rediscovering it on the Internet.
| Author | Dumas, Alexandre fils |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 2006 |
| Copyright Date | 1848 |
| Number of Pages | 190 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | June 2008 |
The initial narrator of the story attends an auction of the effects of a famous Parisian courtesan after her death, buying a book. Then a young man, Armand Duval, approaches him to buy it from him. They become friends and Armand relates the story of his love affair with Marguerite Gautier, its romantic peaks and depths, and its ultimate end in Marguerite's self-sacrifice and death.
The story is Romantic with a capital 'R'. Although Marguerite is a prostitute, Duval is jealous, possessive, and by turns adoring and cruel. He expects her to love only him and see no other men. He sees that her extravagant lifestyle is ruinous and counter productive, but he doesn't care and is indifferent to the practical aspects of life. Instead of winning her away from her extravagance he feeds it, ruining himself and turning to gambling to meet his expenses.
In the end, more conventional morality comes into play. Duval's father, unable to reason successfully with his son, reaches out to the girl, convincing her that she is not only ruining his son but also his blameless daughter, who cannot marry because of the scandalous reputation of her older brother. Marguerite goes back to one of her rich lovers and treats Duval as if he meant nothing to her when, in fact, he means everything. Predictably, he becomes furious and does all he can to punish her, unaware of her sacrifice.
The book was wildly popular in its day. Its sympathetic view of a prostitute was risque and titillating. It was the basis for La Traviata. It is much less relevant today.
Enjoying a very comfortable lifestyle myself, one based on saving and deferred gratification, I am horrified by the idea of throwing away money in the ways depicted by so many of the nineteenth century writers. When it comes to money, I'm of the Jane Austen mindset, not the mindset of Dumas, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and others who treat money as if it were worthless. I shop at the dollar store, not the jewelry store.
My approach to love is also diametrically opposed to that in this novel. For me, love is a relationship built over years of mutual trust and concern. My passion is a comfortable, easy one, not one of alternating periods of intense passion followed by intense jealousy or, worst of all, a desire to hurt my beloved. I don't wish to shower my lovely wife with expensive gifts or to have her shower me. Neither of us wants that and neither of us would get any enjoyment from it.
When I read books like this one my own personal ideas and lifestyle get in the way of my enjoyment. Dumas, a man with considerable affinity for the Duval in this story (if Arturo Perez-Reverte's account can be trusted, see The Club Dumas) would probably have seen me as a boring person. Duval and Gautier were much more interesting to him, much more vital. They lived life on a higher plane. Their faults were real but, in some sense, honorable and lofty. Their downfall was tragic even if predictable.
Apparently, a significant portion of the reading public of that time and place agreed. That, in itself, is a fascinating story for me.
What a difference there was between Dumas and Zola. In Nana Zola also describes the life of a prostitute. All of the extravagance and disregard of the future is there in both women and in the men who adore them, but only Dumas sees nobility, romance, and care for others. Dumas might appear to be a realist but Zola is the real thing. All romance is stripped away.
| Author | Davis, Lindsey |
|---|---|
| Publication | BBC Audio Books, 2004 |
| Copyright Date | 2001 |
| Number of Pages | 304 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | Rome |
| When Read | June 2008 |
Marcus Didius Falco discovers a body under the floor of the bathhouse in his new home, but the builders are long gone from Rome. Then he finds his sister in trouble with her boyfriend, the dangerous chief spy for the emperor. Then the emperor wants him to go to Britain to oversee a late, over budget, construction project and he goes - believing that the builders who built his bathhouse have fled there, and hoping to carry his sister away from danger in Rome.
He goes with his wife Helena, her two brothers who are now his assistants, his sister, and his daughter. There he encounters the failing project and the many characters from the local king whose new place they are building, to the current and former architects, labor bosses, accountant, plumbers, masons, painters, and so on. He gradually cleans up the labor graft, theft of materials, blood feuds between workers, and so on, to get the job done.
Davis tries to showcase different aspects of Roman life in her different Falco novels. In general, the effort seems to me to achieve only limited success. One can never shake the feeling of modern sensibility under a thin cloak of historicism. But then not many of us can do what Robert Graves or Thomas Mann could do. If she is not great, she is at least enjoyable to read and there is some history here to be learned and appreciated.
| Author | Littell, Robert |
|---|---|
| Publication | Blackstone Audio, 2006 |
| Copyright Date | 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 304 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Middle East; Israel |
| When Read | July 2008 |
Palestinian terrorists led by Dr. al-Saath ambush and kidnap Rabbi Isaac Apfelbaum and his young male secretary, killing the rabbi's right wing settler bodyguards. They take the two men to a safe house in Jerusalem and release a statement demanding the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners.
The Israeli security services launch a manhunt, combing their files and putting all of their agents to work. By chance, they catch a young woman married to one of the terrorists and find the secretary's ring in her possession. By a mix of brutality, humiliation, and almost diabolical deception, they get a clue from her that gets them closer to the safe house.
Meanwhile an American journalist (whom we learn at the end is a secret Israeli agent) with public Palestinian sympathies is led to the safe house and, in turn, leads the Israelis, while an American professor/diplomat attempts to keep the American imposed peace accord on track.
At the heart of the book are the dialogs between Ishmael the doctor, and Isaac the rabbi. Each is zealous to the point of insanity yet each is highly educated and intelligent. Each is physically almost blind but is guided by an inner light. Each believes that God gave the land to his people and the others must leave. Each is committed to destroying the peace. And yet they come to understand each other very well before their inevitable deaths.
A very fine book. Much more than a terror thriller. I reviewed it on amazon.com.
My amazon review from August 25, 2008 follows. To my surprise, only six people reviewed this book. None got more than four votes. Mine got two, one of which was negative.
I expected this book to have attracted more readers and reviewers. I wonder why I got the negative vote. My experience of books dealing with Jewish themes is that they attract a certain number of antisemites who vote against anything that doesn't criticize Jews. Maybe that's what happened here. Or maybe it was a Jew who thought that I or Littell was too sympathetic to the Palestinians. Or maybe a guy clicked the wrong button by mistake. Or maybe the guy thought my review stank. Or maybe he was in a bad mood. Or maybe ...
Writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is fraught with difficulty. There is a deep history of violence and revenge and counter-violence and counter-revenge and deeply and personally felt injury and injustice. The people caught up in the conflict on both sides are at war both with each other and with themselves. They hate their enemies but they also hate the changes that the conflict has wrought in their own psyches. Some of the younger or less sophisticated warriors kill their enemies with some enthusiasm, but the older and more thoughtful ones kill with sadness and regret.
Littell's story takes place in some near future in which a new American President has essentially imposed a peace settlement on the Middle East. No one likes it but neither side is fully able to resist the pressure and the threats of withdrawal of aid from the United States. Still, emotions are high and any new violence threatens to disrupt the fragile agreement and start another vicious circle of attack and retaliation.
In this environment, two very similar religious zealots, one Muslim, one Jewish, each hope to disrupt the peace settlement. A devout, middle-aged, fundamentalist Muslim doctor with a deep personal grievance against Israel kidnaps a devout, middle-aged, fundamentalist Jewish rabbi who leads an anti-Arab settler movement. Israeli security services begin a very sophisticated hunt for the terrorist and the rabbi, while an apparently neutral American journalist tries to get the story, and an American diplomat tries to keep everyone calm and committed to the peace accord.
Part of the story is about the hunt. In my opinion, that part of the story is quite well done. Readers of police and spy thrillers should not be at all disappointed with either the action or the technical detail. But a deeper part of the story is about the politics, the religion, the psychology, and the personal tragedy of the conflict.
Littell has no illusions about good guys and bad guys. No one has clean hands. Israeli and Palestinian/Fatah security agents collaborate in the torture of a suspect. An innocent young Palestinian woman is arrested, brutalized, humiliated and betrayed while the police lie to her father, telling him that they haven't seen the girl. Innocent young Jews are killed by the terrorists. Anyone who claims that his people only do what has to be done because of the evil nature of the enemy is failing to see the true enormity of the vicious circle of violence and revenge, or the depths of inhumanity that the conflict inevitably engenders.
At the center of all this is the story of the doctor and the rabbi. Each is a true zealot. Each considers his own life to be of no account. Each believes he is an instrument of God's will. Surprisingly and rather crazily, and yet quite convincingly, each comes to understand the other and to believe that he has found a true brother in his nemesis. Each is united with the other in his determination to ensure that the peace is prevented and the war goes on.
In my view, this is a quite remarkable book that rises well above the typical thriller to give us valuable insights into one of the most important conflicts of the past and coming century. Strong partisans of one side or the other will probably hate it. I recommend it.
| Author | Thomas, Carol G. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Blackwell Publishing, 2007 |
| Number of Pages | 254 |
| Extras | maps photos bibliography index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Ancient world; Alexander the Great |
| When Read | July 2008 |
More a sociology than a biography, Thomas writes about the political, economic and social milieu that saw Alexander's rise. He makes no speculations about A's motives. He doesn't try to say what sort of man A was, what was in his mind, why he did this or that. He prefers to stick to the known facts.
The facts of Alexander's world are not perfectly known. Macedonia was known mainly through Greek writers, and mostly only during the reigns of Phillip and Alexander himself. What original sources we have are thin. Most are lost. Still, T gives us information about Macedonia, the Argead family lines, the precarious politics of living between Greeks, Persians, Illyrians and Thracians, the culture that was so heavily influenced by civilized Greece but also pressed by tribes from the north. We don't even know the languages that Phillip and Alexander spoke, or when Greek became the main language of Macedonia.
The book doesn't attempt any definitive explanation of anything. It does not even recount all of the known facts of A's life. What it does is broaden our view of Alexander. It gives us some appreciation of the rolling hills, the shepherds, the forests of Macedonia, the precarious positions of her kings, the evolving nature of the state, the culture, and the economy in the two centuries before Alexander.
It's an interesting book.
| Author | Isaacson, Walter |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 2007 |
| Number of Pages | 704 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biography |
| Keywords | Albert Einstein |
| When Read | August 2008 |
This comprehensive biography covers Einstein's entire life, giving serious treatments of his science, his politics, and all of his personal life and career. There are no easy generalizations here. Einstein did not do poorly in math in school. He was somewhat difficult to live with but certainly not abusive as either a husband or a father. Most of all, he was a man with an extraordinary mind, a man who lived a reflective life in every sense - politics, physics, music and, although he was not always as successful here, personal relations. He read Kant and Hume. His science was abstract, mathematical and philosophical. He did no physical experiments and made no observations. His conclusions were all based on "thought experiments" illuminated by mathematical theory.
Einstein has always been one of my heroes. He set a shining example for us of how a man could use his mind and also how to be a real human being. His political independence and his courage were very inspiring. He thought everything out for himself. He criticized nationalism, capitalism, and jingoism but he never fell into uncritical support for its enemies. A serious pacifist, he still endorsed the war against Nazi Germany.
Isaacson did a fine job with this biography. He studied physics and even tensor calculus in order to understand E's theories. He explained them well. His writing was readable and sophisticated, his approach balanced, his appreciation of Einstein deep and illuminating.
| Author | Fritzsche, Peter |
|---|---|
| Publication | Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008 |
| Number of Pages | 368 |
| Extras | bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| When Read | August 2008 |
This is a fascinating, even if limited, view of the relationship that some ordinary Germans had to the Nazi regime. It is based, to a significant extent, on a limited number of diaries of a few individuals, but that helps in delivering personal insights into the minds of the writers.
F's convincing hypothesis is that Nazism allowed ordinary working class Germans to feel a part of a larger, forward looking, caring community, one with a bright future promising a more egalitarian society and an economically secure future.
Germans often ignored the anti-semitism or, when exposed to enough of it, were prepared to believe that there must, after all, be some truth in the racist claims. What they focused on was the repudiation of the Versailles treaty, the rebirth of nationalism, the revival of jobs, the elimination of partisan squabbling, the end of communist demonstrations, etc. Also significant was the "Strength Through Joy" program that brought vacations to ordinary people, the promise of the Volkswagen, radios, movies, and so on.
F was absolutely no apologist for Nazism. He is te opposite of that. But he does give us some understanding of the positive attractions of the Nazis.
See also my diary and my review on amazon.com.
There are diary entries on 20080915 and 20080917. The review I wrote for amazon was popular (40 of 42 recommendations as of this date.) Here it is:
I read this book and thought I might write a review of it, but I see that Erica Bell has already written an outstanding review. If you haven't read it yet, read it now. It's right on target and is better than anything I could have written. All I'll try to do is add a few notes to what she said.
The striking thing to me about Fritzsche's book is his fairly convincing attempt to explain the appeal that Naziism had to average Germans. I had always imagined the appeal to be based on ignorance, racism, xenophobia, fear, and a desire to feel better about oneself by denigrating others, something like what I imagine to be the appeal of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States.
Surely there was that. Surely it played a significant role, especially in recruiting the brutal thugs in brown shirts who loved to find helpless people whom they could beat up and rob on the street, or loot their houses and stores, without fear of retaliation from the people or the police. But racism, ignorance and thuggery never seemed to be enough to explain the phenomenon. They explain bullies and thugs, but not the millions of ordinary people who would line the streets or fill the stadiums to look with great love and fervor upon Adolf Hitler. They didn't explain the people with joy on their faces shouting Sieg Heil!
If Fritzsche is right, and his analysis is certainly plausible to this inexpert reader, the real appeal of Naziism was that it offered ordinary Germans a chance to feel proud of themselves and their country, and to believe in their future. It may seem paradoxical that anyone would be proud of being a Nazi, but it wasn't Naziism _per se_ that they were proud of. They were proud of being Germans and, for the first time since the heady days of 1914, they felt that they belonged to a great community, a community that would take care of its own, a community in which all citizens (except Jews) could fully participate, a community with a bright future.
Like many other European societies, Germany was class ridden and deeply divided before the Nazi era. The old nobility and the newer bourgeoisie held the commanding heights of society. The ordinary people were treated as social inferiors, and especially because of the losses in the first war and the horrors of the years of inflation and then depression, were suffering economically. Millions turned to communism, or to the various small fascist parties. Almost everyone was pessimistic about the future of their country, and pessimistic about their own chances for a decent life.
The Nazis changed that. Nazi politics were not based on the nobility or the bourgeoisie. The Nazi leaders did not come from those classes. The Nazi message was, if you were of the right "race", one of inclusiveness. The Hitler Youth and the Strength Through Joy programs were aimed at ordinary people. The people's car project (Volkswagen), the attempt to make radios available to all and the growth of movies were all aimed squarely at the masses. The Nazis never fully delivered on their promises (vastly more ordinary people in the U.S. had cars and radios, went to movies, and went on vacations), but people believed that the trend was in the right direction.
These developments weren't just aimed at improvements in people's material lives. They were well structured to improve their outlook on life as well, especially by making people feel that they were part of a big movement, a movement aimed at helping them - not the rich, not the nobility, not foreign communist movements, and alas, not Jews.
If I understand Fritzsche correctly, the racism and xenophobia that the Nazis promoted were not the early appeal of the movement. The racial nastiness was a kind of subtext, always present, always insistent, always growing, but, at least in the first years, not in the first position in Nazi politics. Once the people were won over, once the opposition had been crushed, once the apparatus of news and education and propaganda had been completely subverted, then it was time for racism to come to the fore and for the full scope of Hitler's madness and megalomania to become manifest.
Fritzsche's book is hardly a complete analysis of this phenomenon. There is much that he never discusses at all and much that is treated superficially. There is, for example, no examination of the Nazi leadership, little analysis of the causes of the war, very little on economics, no explanation of how the Nazi Party operated, etc. This is not, after all, a 2,000 page book. It is a book that concentrates on just a few ideas and a few aspects of Naziism. But it opened my eyes to a new and fruitful understanding of why and how ordinary Germans became Nazis.
I recommend the book.
I know that I'm belaboring all of this but I'll add a note here that, in fact, while the condition of the ordinary people improved in some respects, there were more jobs due to full bore military production, and there were some useful social programs, conditions deteriorated in other respects. Hourly wages decreased as people were forced to work longer hours for no extra pay. Education declined. Higher education was actually cut in half between 1932 and 1938. And that's all apart from the censorship, book burning, and other assaults on intellectual freedoms.
| Author | Connelly, Michael |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Little Brown, 1998 |
| Number of Pages | 393 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | August 2008 |
Retired FBI criminal profiler Terry McCaleb is living on a boat inherited from his father, trying to take life easy and do all the things needed to stay alive after his successful heart transplant. His rare blood type had made a transplant donor almost impossible to find, but one was found and his life was saved. He can't work anymore but is thankful to be alive.
Then a woman shows up and asks for his help finding the man who killed her sister. He explains that he can't work, isn't a licensed private investigator anyway, and asks her to leave. She tells him that his heart came from her sister. He is alive because a young woman with a now motherless little boy was killed and McCaleb is alive because of it.
Using all of his prodigious skills and his contacts at the FBI and among local police and sheriffs, McC gradually makes progress in this direction and that when, in a real shock, he begins to believe that the woman was killed by a mass murderer he had formerly pursued precisely in order to save McCaleb's life.
The novel was made into a very fine movie by Clint Eastwood, playing the role of McCaleb, and directing. Eastwood tightened it up considerably with a powerful opening scene, a shocking revelation of the killer (different from the one in the book), and a cliff hanger ending. I read the book because I liked the movie so much and was thrown off by the plot changes that occurred in the movie.
Still, this was a fine mystery novel, just the kind of book we want in this genre.
Blood Work was the first movie I saw that revealed to me what a talented man Clint Eastwood is. I had seen his earlier movies in which he played various action heroes but never with the subtlety of this role or the truly compelling story and presentation that it brought to the screen. I was a little disappointed that Connelly had not done as good a job as Eastwood, but it was only by comparison. Standing alone it was still a pretty good book.
| Author | Mortenson, Greg |
|---|---|
| Author | Relin, David Oliver |
| Publication | Tantor Media, 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 349 |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| When Read | August 2008 |
Stumbling down a mountain after a failed attempt to climb K2 in north Pakistan, Mortenson stumbles into a village. He has lost his way and is on his last legs. The villagers of Korphe in Baltistan nursed M back to health and he, a trained nurse, did his best to help them. Thankful and feeling that he owed these people he resolved to build them a school. The village children were illiterate and living as their ancestors had for centuries. M wanted to help.
Unlike most people in his situation, he did not forget his vow. Returning to the U.S. he resumed his job as a nurse, trying to save money and writing to every wealthy person and celebrity he had ever heard of to raise money. Finally, Jean Hoerni, a Swiss American entrepreneur and mountain climber who had been to Pakistan, gave M $12,000 to build a school. Thus began the Central Asia Institute and an incredible process of school building, working, traveling, speaking, educating girls and boys, and transforming the lives of people in remote tribal Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Mortenson is a man of ordinary ability in many things but extraordinary ability to connect with people and to make and carry out personal commitments for the benefit of others. He learned the languages. He learned the culture. He made friends without the slightest trace of condescension derived from an American background (though his childhood was spent in an African mission, which helped prepare him for his future life.)
This is a remarkable book about a remarkable person and a remarkable series of events. See also my diary.
Mortenson's credibility has come under attack since his book became a best seller. Perhaps he is a weaker man than we would like him to be. Or perhaps he is just not equipped to deal with the celebrity and responsibility that has been thrust upon him by the success of his best selling book. Or perhaps the allegations against him have been exaggerated. It's easy to imagine that he was not prepared for his success and not fully able to handle it, but it is not clear that his intentions are less than honorable. Be that as it may, the book was very interesting and it's hard not to give the man considerable credit.
The book was a best seller. Marcia and I read it after it was proposed in our book group. As of this writing there were 2,599 reader reviews of the book on amazon.com. That's a remarkable testament, not only to the number of readers it garnered, but also to the passion it inspired in those people, most of whom should have known that there was virtually no chance that any human being would read beyond the first ten or twenty reviews to find theirs.
At the end of my original comment on this book I referred to my diary. However, searching through 2008 entries, I found nothing about it. Maybe I intended to write something and never got around to it. I'd hate to think I've lost an entry.
There is a report on the CNN website today that Greg Mortenson has settled with the Montana attorney general as a result of an investigation of irregularities in Mortenson's finances. He has agreed to repay more than one million dollars to his charitable organization. This is money that he seems to have embezzled by padding expense accounts. Mortenson also agreed not oversee financial aspects of the charity or serve as a voting member of the board. Apparently some of the organization's employees had quit because, after confronting him with questions, he had ignored them.
It's a shame. He did some good things but I guess he was a weak man in important ways.
| Author | Barker, Pat |
|---|---|
| Publication | BBC Audiobooks, 2008 |
| Copyright Date | 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 320 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War I |
| When Read | September 2008 |
Paul Tarrant, a student at the Slade art school in London, is having trouble finding himself as an artist. His professor criticizes his work. He sees others doing better. His fling at leaving his family background of lower middle or working class life with an abusive and eventually suicidal mother is producing no success.
His pursuit of women works only marginally better. He likes Elinor Brooke but she is distant and is also being pursued by Kit Neville, a boorish man but a good artist. His (Tarrant's) affair with model Teresa Halliday leads to a beating at the hands of her brutal ex-husband.
The war is declared. It is 1914. Paul and Kit separately volunteer as medical orderlies. Paul sees horrible sights. He is himself seriously wounded. His painting is affected. It is finally infused with meaning. Elinor comes to him but remains a distant person, hating and ignoring the war and caring more for art than for Paul or Kit.
I can't say that I like Barker's books. They have a non-novelistic quality to them. They violate the principles of plot with major turns in the story and no resolutions, only endings. Still, she captures the period with an authenticity that is hard to challenge, and her appreciation of the war is basic, even visceral. She sees it not as a backdrop for her play but as the real story itself, sucking up and grinding away the inconsequential stories of the individual actors. Her books are disturbing and difficult to dismiss.
Not a lot is written these days about World War I. The Second World War has long superseded it. It was a war involving many more Americans and with a much more decisive American role. It was also a war with more drama and less meat grinding attrition of the soldiers. Barker is one of very few writers still concerned with the first war. Her books would have some interest for that reason even if she weren't the good writer that she is.
| Author | Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Houghton Mifflin, 1957 |
| Number of Pages | 557 |
| Extras | index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| When Read | September 2008 |
Volume 1 of The Age of Roosevelt covers the situation of the United States after World War I, the economic boom and stock market bubble of the 1920's, and the onset of the Great Depression. S is a remarkable historian, a man who made himself deeply familiar with not only the events, but also the people and the ideas of the period.
The Republican and Democratic parties were divided along entirely different lines from today. Democrats represented not only big city working people and their often corrupt local party machines but also Southern whites with very conservative outlooks and Western farmers, often populist. The big issues of the day involved tariffs (Republicans were for them) and cheap credit and balanced budgets (Democrats). The left wing of the Democratic Party, with some support from Roosevelt, was much farther left than today, advocating public ownership of electricity and sometimes railroads, banks, and other key sectors of the economy. It was different world in many ways.
The last third of the book traced Roosevelt from childhood to Presidency. The country was in terrible shape in 1933. 1/4 of workers were unemployed. Wages had fallen, farm prices collapsed, relief systems were bankrupted, banks were failing. People were suffering severely. Hoover and the Republicans had literally nothing to offer. Roosevelt, a deeply committed man but without a strong ideology, was the country's hope.
This is first rate history, as good as it gets - as with Hobsbawm.
I was very impressed by this book. I had the feeling that Schlesinger read everything, from every source, about this period, that he was completely immersed and totally conversant about the many players in the culture, economy, government, and academia.
Clearly, S was a Democratic Party activist and believer in the progressive program. But I recall a remarkable objectivity in the book in spite of that. I don't say that he took the self-serving arguments of the millionaires very seriously. He spent little time on that. But he seemed to me to be keenly aware of Roosevelt's limitations and failings and those of others in the Roosevelt party. He was no simple hero worshiper.
I had a strong feeling on reading this book that I was getting a deep, inside story of the politics and history of that period. I have since read the second book and may read the third and possibly another book or two by Schlesinger if I live long enough and retain enough wit to do it.
| Author | Liss, Witold |
|---|---|
| Publication | Profile Publications No. 88 |
| Number of Pages | 16 |
| Extras | photos |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Aviation; World War II |
| When Read | September 2008 |
I found a newsgroup, alt.books.e-book.technical, that is filled with all sorts of scanned books including items like this little booklet profiling an important World War II aircraft, probably the most important of the Red Air Force planes. The book(let) describes the history of the design on the eve of the war through to the final variants at the end and its post war service in Eastern Europe. It's full of specifications, period photos, and the color paintings of aircraft with various camouflage schemes and markings used by modelers to design and paint their models.
There is no date or title page in the scanned image that I have, but there is a price, "two shillings".
The military buffs are far more demanding than most people would suspect and books like this pay close attention to factuality and detail.
| Author | Woodward, Bob |
|---|---|
| Author | Bernstein, Carl |
| Publication | Recorded Books, 2004 |
| Copyright Date | 1974 |
| Number of Pages | 368 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Politics |
| When Read | September 2008 |
This is W and B's record of their long campaign to discover, reveal, and document the truth about the illegal and anti-democratic and corrupt campaign waged by Richard Nixon and many of his top advisers for the presidency in 1972.
The Washington Post reporters and their editorial managers were extraordinarily dedicated people. The worked around the clock. They observed the rules of good and accurate journalism. They made every effort to get documented, attested facts. They gave the Nixon campaign advance warning of every story and always gave them an opportunity to comment and respond before publication. Initially, it appears to me that they were motivated by a desire to discover the explosive story behind the Watergate break-in. Soon they were also struggling in a journalistic competition with the New York Times, L.A. Times, and Time and Newsweek magazines. Gradually however their campaign became a quest to uncover the cesspool that was revealing itself to them and to defend their personal reputations and the reputation of their newspaper against the counter-attacks and threats made by Nixon and his cronies.
It is frustrating to know the story after the fact but still have to watch it unfold so slowly, uncertainly, but it is ultimately satisfying to see the triumph of the truth.
We are lucky to have men like Woodward and Bernstein.
It was a little odd to read this famous book so many years after its publication. I knew of it, of course, back when it was published. I read the many synopses of it in the newspapers. I cheered its publication and Nixon's comeuppance. Later I saw the movie made of it with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. When I saw it on the library shelf in the audio books section it seemed like a perfect opportunity to read this classic. Old or not, it was worth reading.
| Author | Daughan, George |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Basic Books, 2008 |
| Number of Pages | 536 |
| Extras | maps illustrations bibliography index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Naval |
| When Read | September 2008 |
D's history begins on the night of Paul Revere's ride and ends in 1815 with the American victory at New Orleans. It is a traditional and satisfying history covering events in mostly chronological order with important battles and leaders described. There is discussion of the land battles, the politics and the diplomacy where it sheds light on naval affairs.
Not content to be a pure "objective" historian, D comments on errors in both strategy and tactics as he sees them. He believes the Revolutionary navy was misconceived and poorly directed. He thinks the U.S. should have built fleets of small, cheap, row galleys for use in coastal defense and upper New York lake warfare. Building large, ocean going sloops and frigates was fruitless because they could never seriously challenge the Royal Navy, counter-productive because many of those ships were captured and used against the U.S., and a serious diversion of men, money, ship building capacity, and cannon that should have gone into row galleys. He also argued that commerce raiding by privateers was cheaper and far more effective than having the navy do it.
The Revolutionary War period was particularly interesting to me. I had no idea that so many American ships were built, that over 600 letters of marque were issued, and that American ship building and seamanship were so advanced in those early times.
| Author | Smith, Martin Cruz |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 2007 |
| Number of Pages | 352 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | Russia; Arkady Renko |
| When Read | October 2008 |
Detective Arkady Renko is ordered to investigate reported sightings of Stalin at a Moscow Metro station. It's a ridiculous assignment but fraught with political peril. AR soon learns about a pair of American political consultants working for a Russian right-wing nationalist party and candidate Nikolai Isakov, another police detective and reputed army "Black Beret" commando hero from the war in Chechnya. Isakov, a corrupt killer, also happens to be a not so ex-lover of AR's woman Eva, and hero to his 12 year old adoptive, chess master son Zhenya.
Always in trouble with his boss, always poking his nose into what everyone else thinks is not his business, always making dangerous enemies and helpless friends, Arkady keeps on compulsively trying to do the right thing - which in the end he succeeds in doing.
One surprising aspect of this novel is Smith's way over-reliance on deus ex-machina to save AR from attempted murders. I count five in the novel, including two at once. They stretch credulity beyond the breaking point. AR's nonchalant refusal to carry a gun just rubs our faces in this authorial doo-doo.
Leaving that aside, there is nevertheless a wonderful atmosphere in Smith's Renko series, and it's still going strong in this one. It's based on the wanderings of a good man in an evil world who cannot change that world but can focus on one little thread and do something about it.
I feel the pull of Renko's position myself. My world is not as evil as his but it does seem pretty helpless to change and fix itself.
| Author | Dawkins, Richard |
|---|---|
| Publication | Basic Books, 1995 |
| Number of Pages | 172 |
| Extras | bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Science; Biology |
| Keywords | Evolution |
| When Read | October 2008 |
This is a popular book on evolution. Its primary focus is not proving the truth of evolutionary theory but explaining what it means and its implications. His central theme is that what evolves is, in essence, information. A metaphorical river of information flows from the first DNA based organisms, or even well before, to today. It becomes ever more complex and sophisticated as it flows, and all of the plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, or whatever are the carriers of this information - which either propels them forward in reproductive success or leaves them beached, dead-ended, and decayed on the river banks.
D describes many inspired and fascinating experiments, and also many useful thought experiments like thinking about how many ancestors must be shared by strangers given that the logical count of ancestors expands by a factor of two for each generation - a physical impossibility if they were all different.
D is a militant atheist. He has no patience for religious views. He makes no attempt at writing ethical philosophy. He does not try to analyze, explain, rationalize, or justify our senses of right and wrong, good and bad. He's not interested in those questions. He sees the universe as value free and the events of human life as just what happens. Events have causes, not reasons.
Whatever more we might wish of Dawkins, it's hard to complain about what he does deliver. He is a master of biological science, penetrating insights and decisive arguments.
This is the first book by Dawkins that I read. It stimulated me to read more.
Dawkins is refreshingly blunt. I wrote in other notes about him that he would win more converts and teach more people if he were not so blunt. That's true, but it's not the whole story. We probably need a continuum of bluntness, from authors who coddle the religious believers and hold their hands along each baby step of the way, to authors who just tell the simple truth as they see it, with no attempt to mask their derision of ignorance and obscurantism. Dawkins fall at that end of the spectrum and, while it will be offensive to many it can be liberating to those who already believe as he does and need to see their ideas handled by an expert.
In reviewing the abstract above I'm struck by the account of the substance of evolution being information. Is that literal truth? Is it metaphor or even metaphysics? I don't remember what I thought of it at the time. Now it strikes me as a bit off. DNA is indeed a carrier of information. It does indeed evolve - the information becoming more sophisticated over time - though it can happen that a sophisticated organism dies off and its niche is filled by a simpler one. But is it wise to try to separate out the information from the physical organisms?
To some extent, the question reminds me of my favorite analogy concerning calculators and mathematics. A calculator is a device that might possibly be explained without reference to mathematics. Push this button and electrons flow here and there, etc. But math is certainly the purpose of the calculator. It is possible to imagine a life form that is very similar to ours but uses something other than DNA to carry genetic code. RNA is an obvious choice. There would be thousands of differences inside cells but some machinery of the cell could actually be identical to what it is now with no change whatsoever. So long as the proteins and other chemicals it uses are synthesized in the same form, it wouldn't matter what mechanism was used to produce them.
I'm not going to try to settle this issue here and I don't have a settled view of it. Dawkins' view is thought provoking and therefore fruitful, but I'm not sure it's the only or the best way of viewing the matter - at least not if we demand that it be a complete way.
| Author | Griffin, W.E.B. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Jove, 1990 |
| Number of Pages | 512 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | October 2008 |
Hang on to your Old Grouse scotch. Quick, park the Jaguar. The Marines are going to war.
The third volume of The Corps series is just like the first two. Handsome young Marine heroes get laid by rich and beautiful widows - though sometimes only by middle class beauties.
Counterattack? Hardly.
As before there is virtually no combat in the book and the few obligatory attempts at describing combat are anemic and forced.
I read this book because I saw some promise in G's writing. He had some feel for the life of the foolish young kid from New Jersey who falls in love with the slut next door who promptly dumps him. He has some feel for military bureaucracy. He has a lot of understanding of what a professional and highly competent sergeant might look like and how he would look at the Corps and at the world. But ultimately he has no feel at all for what the war was really all about at the front.
I wrote a more extensive review for amazon.com.
As of this writing, I think that was the last book by Griffin that I've read and possibly the last I'll ever read.
| Author | Connelly, Michael |
|---|---|
| Publication | Books on Tape, 2005 |
| Number of Pages | 592 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | Legal |
| When Read | October 2008 |
Criminal defense lawyer Micky Haller defends drug dealers, bikers, and various other people at the bottom of society but he gets a "franchise" case, a wealthy real estate broker who is accused of the attempted murder of a prostitute. It looks like the gravy train has finally come in but there is one exotic feature of the case. The defendant, Louis Roulet, appears to be innocent.
Haller battles the smart but inexperienced prosecutor with all sorts of legal tricks. At the same time he juggles several other cases, two ex-wives, visits with his little daughter, relations with his friends, his bail bondsman, his private investigator and his increasing suspicion that his client is guilty after all. Haller's P.I. is researching evidence when he is murdered with H's stolen gun and H himself becomes a murder suspect. Roulet blackmails him, threatening to give the gun to the police.
Now H discovers that, not only is Roulet guilty, but he's also guilty of another murder for which H plea bargained a poor Latino kid into jail. He organizes an elaborate plot to get R off but convict him of the other murder and is himself a victim of an elaborate police operation and an attempted murder by R's mother, who is also revealed as a killer.
Connelly strikes me as one of the great mystery writers. The book is gritty and smart, the characters often on the verge of control. The treatment of law practice and police work is as good as any I've read.
I've read a number of Connelly's books since this one. Most center around the character of Harry Bosch but Haller was at the center of one and appeared in another. I find the character more interesting than Bosch.
| Author | Hobsbawm, Eric J. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Mentor Books, 1979 |
| Copyright Date | 1975 |
| Number of Pages | 393 |
| Extras | notes, photos, bibliography, maps, charts |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History; Economics |
| When Read | October 2008 |
H continues his history of what I might call social and economic (or maybe even human) development into the age of world economic unification into a more or less global economy. The capitalist class acquired the reins of power in all of the advanced countries and became a major force in others. Trade expanded. Wealth continued to grow. A larger middle class developed in Europe and America. Farms and farmers were largely integrated into the capitalist economy, no longer producing for subsistence, and no longer forming a tiny local economy of peasant and lord. The first worldwide economic crashes occurred accompanied by huge suffering and the creation of class conflict and revolutionary workers movements.
As in his earlier book, H demonstrates his encyclopedic knowledge, especially of European history in economics, culture, demographics, and politics. He integrates our understanding of subjects like railroad construction, literacy, population movement, and many other subjects into a deep, top to bottom understanding of societal trends as a single whole.
Perhaps the work is not quite as brilliant as the first one, or perhaps I am no longer as sharp as I was three years ago. But whatever - it's still a great achievement and worthy successor to The Age of Revolution.
Hobsbawm has the great gift of being able to understand very large transformations in the world while still grounding his views in significant, tangible facts. This is very difficult to achieve. Some scholars are good at digging out and explaining facts, but not so good at seeing the big picture that they are part of. Others are grand philosophers who seize on some, possibly trivial, generalization to produce a great abstraction that goes way beyond the facts (perhaps Marx did that with dialectical materialism.)
We live today in an age of great transformation. China is rising. One company in China, Foxconn, is now said to employ 1.2 million people and be producing 40% of the world's electronics. In the U.S., wages are falling, employment is falling, the social safety nets of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are being stretched thinner and thinner, and manufacturing has been leaving our shores for 40 years, possibly not to return. I read a claim that, in 1938, 60% of the world's manufacturing capacity was in the United States. Today I doubt if it's 20%, and it's falling fast. We live in changing times and not for the better, at least not for those of us in the U.S. - but this is really a better topic for the diary than the book notes.
| Author | Darwin, Charles |
|---|---|
| Publication | New American Library, 1958 |
| Copyright Date | 1872 |
| Number of Pages | 479 |
| Extras | glossary, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biology |
| Keywords | Evolution |
| When Read | October 2008 |
This was Darwin's last edition incorporating his latest thoughts and his answers to all objections raised by others and, when others did not raise them in their strongest possible way, by himself. It is a work of vast learning about nature, very deep insight, powerful logic, and the highest intellectual integrity.
Darwin is methodical. His exposition and the organization of objections and their answers nails down every aspect of evolution. He is very careful either to not go beyond well established evidence from recognized authorities, or to present convincing evidence from his own truly ingenious experiments, such as sticking seeds to a duck's foot and soaking the foot to see how long the seeds stayed on and remained viable, or soaking a large variety of seeds in seawater for up to 100 days and then testing them.
Most of the objections to evolution that I have heard were already answered fully and completely by Darwin. Clearly the "intelligent design" proponents have not bothered to read him.
The writing is clear and competent - although long, dry and overly detailed for the average modern, non-specialist reader. To me, it was a pleasure to read the thoughts of such an educated and penetrating mind. Darwin was not just a run of the mill naturalist who happened on a great idea. He was perhaps the best prepared man of his day to perceive and develop that idea.
The first entry in my diary regarding Darwin's book was in December 6, 2007. I read the book over a long, 11 month period, putting it down for long periods, then picking it up again and reading a few pages a night. It was a difficult enough book and, like all serious theoretical books, it required a lot of thinking about every few pages. It was not something to zip through and it required a lot of work and some intellectual ambition. There are a number of other diary entries for December and one more in January. Grepping for "Darwin" revealed only one entry, January 31, in 2008.
The edition I read was the sixth and final edition. I assumed when reading it that it would incorporate the most mature of Darwin's thoughts, and I have no reason to believe that isn't true. However I have read some criticism of the last edition as bending backward overly far to avoid offending the sensibilities of religious critics. It has been claimed that he was more forthright in the first edition.
Maybe that's true. I'm not going to read the earlier editions to find out. However, if it is true, I'm tempted to regard it more as a virtue than a fault of the sixth edition. I read Dawkins' The God Delusion and commented recently about in these XML book notes, and possibly also in my diary. In my view, Dawkins would have been more effective in his purpose of winning converts from religion if he had been more accommodating to their views, more appreciative of the powerful emotions and long standing beliefs that he was arguing against.
I don't accuse Darwin of that. He stood solidly and unwaveringly on the ground of science, but he did not poke his fingers in the eyes of those who had trouble keeping up with him. He was a great scientist and a great man.
| Author | Greenberg, Robert |
|---|---|
| Publication | The Teaching Company, 1998 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Music |
| When Read | October 2008 |
This is one of the great Greenberg's introductory courses, aimed at people like me who know little and have no musical training. He begins with an examination of the trends in German and in Italian music and talks about what the intellectuals and musicians of the 16th and 17th centuries were thinking about music, about words, about the relationship of music to life and to religion, etc.
Topics include fugue, cantata, opera, oratorio, passacaglia, ritornello form, and the baroque concerto. As always, Greenberg slows things down for us, cleans out our ears, pours gorgeous music into our heads, and teaches us to understand it.
Unfortunately, I'm not well equipped to remember what I learn about music and I find myself too full of different things I'm trying to learn to concentrate well on this. But even if a listener learns nothing permanent, even if he takes nothing away, the experience of listening to the music and to Greenberg is full of delight and worth doing.
As I anticipated, I have a pleasant memory of Greenberg's lectures but have retained almost nothing conscious of what he taught. I have a vague memory that he said that the baroque composers, starting in Italy, originated the idea of a single melodic line against a harmony or rhythm behind it, and that that originated from a musical circle in which one of the participants, and then others, came to believe that music should contain a pure line, not a jumble of instruments playing the same thing. But I may be completely misremembering.
I also have a vague memory of Greenberg saying, possibly in a different course of lectures or possibly in this one, that Monteverdi was the first true Baroque composer. For some reason an image struck me at the time that has stayed with me of people under a cloud halfway up a mountain. Monteverdi is the first to climb up and up until he is above the clouds and sees a vista that no one has seen before. Perhaps Greenberg used that metaphor. Perhaps he didn't but the name Monteverdi caused me to have it. Or perhaps it was neither of those things but listening to the music.
Music remains one of those things that I am tremendously attracted to both intellectually and emotionally, but for which I lack the physical talent to master. I have learned some things. I probably know a bit more about different kinds of music than the average person, though I'm probably at or below average in my ability to play or sing. I've learned some things and I could certainly learn more if I tried hard enough. But my appreciation of philosophy, science, history, and literature have all proceeded much further and faster than I ever seem to have been able to proceed in music.
Well, we can't all do all of the things we want to do. I can at least enjoy what I hear, and that's worth a great deal.
| Author | Nelson, David L. |
|---|---|
| Author | Cox, Michael M. |
| Author | Lehninger, Albert L. |
| Publication | W. H. Freeman, 2005 |
| Number of Pages | 1119 |
| Extras | diagrams, photos, glossary, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Science; Chemistry |
| Keywords | Biochemistry |
| When Read | November 2008 |
Albert Lehninger died after the second edition but Nelson and Cox kept his name in the title, perhaps to honor his primary contribution and perhaps also to make clear to all what the heritage of this textbook is.
My edition was downloaded as a PDF from the Internet. It was missing the title page and the glossary, appendix, and index at the back. There were no answers to the exercises, but it ran to 1119 numbered pages in spite of that.
The book is less rigorous and more conceptual than I expected. It is an introductory survey of the entire field rather than a nuts and bolts text for a laboratory chemist. The perspective is as much that of a biologist or a medical researcher as it is of chemist.
Sections include "Structure and Catalysis" describing the essential molecules of life - water, amino acids, proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, membranes and their functions. "Bioenergetics and Metabolism" - biosynthesis, catabolism, energy management, regulation, etc. "Information Pathways" - DNA, RNA, chromosomes, translation, regulation.
To my surprise, I had enough chemistry and cell biology to understand almost everything. The book covered most of the same material as Molecular Biology of the Cell, but at a level that was more focused on the molecules than on the cellular structures.
Reading this was another milestone in my science education though I admit that I could not solve any but a few of the problems.
I'm in the midst of a second reading of Alberts' Molecular Biology of the Cell, this time the 5th edition. Quite a few years have gone by since I started my science education with Campbell's Biology. I can't say I'm making great progress. I'm not on the way to becoming a professional scientist. But I have learned a good deal and have a much enhanced understanding of the world.
| Author | Asimov, Isaac |
|---|---|
| Author | Silverberg, Robert |
| Publication | Doubleday, 1992 |
| Number of Pages | 259 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| Keywords | Robots |
| When Read | November 2008 |
Andrew, a robot companion and caretaker for the children of the Marin household, becomes deeply attached to the family and, over the course of many years, gradually expands his intellectual, emotional and creative faculties. As the Martins grow old and die Andrew is ever more at sea. He becomes the first emancipated robot, set free, but without full human rights or acceptance by the human community. He begins a quest to become more human, assisting in robot research, carrying on his own advanced research, and financing his modifications with royalties from his inventions.
No advance satisfies him. He wants to become more human like. He is lonely, unfulfilled, unable to find peace. Largely because of him, the humans have stopped making new robots with his advanced capabilities. After a series of upgrades that make him ever more humanoid he finally demands the final upgrade that will enable him to age and die.
Asimov and Silverberg each wrote very straight, clean, conventional and rational novels. Never neurotically brilliant like, say Dick, they were nevertheless intelligent, engaging, and satisfying. This book, appearing after A's death, continued the tradition, capping it with a worthy final effort.
In both its science and its style it read like something from a little earlier era than today's. But then I am of that era too. I enjoyed the book.
I have just finished the Asimov inspired Robot City series and concluded that Asimov himself would have done a far better job than did the authors of that series. I think this book demonstrates that. I wrote above that "... it read like something from a little earlier era ..." I can think of some authors who might have done better (Chris Beckett perhaps, but there are others too), but Asimov and Silverberg at least made an attempt at answering the big questions of the significance of robotics.
| Author | Miller, David |
|---|---|
| Publication | Conway Maritime Press, 2000 |
| Number of Pages | 208 |
| Extras | photos, diagrams, charts, tables, etc. |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Naval; Submarines; World War II |
| When Read | November 2008 |
This is a techno-military book that, within the limits of its photos, diagram and table laden 208 pages, tells everything about U-boat technology - naturally at a very high level. In spite of its technology orientation there is also a very basic history of strategy and application during WWII. Photos and diagrams are first rate. There is also a listing of every single boat type and every individual boat with info about its fate during the war.
Checking on amazon.com I see that Miller wrote a very similar book for a different publisher in 2002. Perhaps it was in the nature of a second edition. In any case he seems to be very thorough and expert in his subject.
There is a certain kind of reader who loves books like these. I have some of the characteristics of such a reader. Most people find books like this to be dull and an interest in them perverse. Although I couldn't read a number of books like this in a row (or indeed any kind of very similar books in a row), I can read and enjoy them. Perhaps it is a perversity - but the older I get the less I care about justifying my quirks and perversities.
I liked the book.
| Author | Eugenides, Jeffrey |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2002 |
| Number of Pages | 529 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | November 2008 |
This extraordinary novel tells the story of Calliope Stephanides and her ancestors, written in first person narrative by Cal who was born with undescended testicles and raised as a girl until the age of 14, when the growing conflicts of her puberty were discovered by a doctor and her odyssey of sex and regeneration began.
The story opens in Turkey in 1922. Lefty Stephanides, would be gambler and rake, finds himself most attracted to Desdemona, his voluptuous sister. After the catastrophe of Greek occupation and Turkish conquest the pair arrive in the U.S. as man and wife, giving birth to Milton who, fatefully, marries his own cousin Tessie, passing two copies of the family's recessive gene for hermaphrodism on to Cal.
All of these people, Lefty, Desdemona, Milton, Tessie, Jimmy Zismo, the old doctor, Cal's brother "Chapter 11", are portrayed with unblinking eyes but considerable sympathy. The intimate thoughts and emotions of these people are so convincing, and our sympathy with them so complete, that it is positively painful to watch them struggle with themselves and deal with their unwanted but inescapable feelings.
Perhaps I'm gushing. I'll stop. I will say however that Middlesex is a remarkable book. It's a serious literary achievement.
| Author | Crais, Robert |
|---|---|
| Publication | Bantam Books, 1992 |
| Copyright Date | 1985 |
| Number of Pages | 201 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | December 2008 |
L.A. private eye Elvis Cole is hired to find Mort Lang, a rather down-at-the-heels actor's agent whom his wife hasn't seen in four days. Then Lang turns up dead and his eight year old son is missing. Cole figures out that a big Mexican drug dealer believed that Lang stole his drugs and now he's kidnapped the boy to force Ellen Lang, the boy's mother, to produce them.
The police seem curiously uninvolved. Cole suspects they've been paid off. So he and his gun crazy maniac partner Joe Pike go after the druggies and attack their mansion in a big gun battle. The cops turn out not to have been bribed but they were building a drug case that they hoped to finish and rescue the boy too. There are fights and shootings with Cole showing his macho skills in the hard boiled L.A. PI tradition with a cowboy shoot-em-up ending.
In spite of the emphasis on violence for titillation, the writing is actually quite good and the reading is a breeze. I don't think it has the depth of Michael Connelly or the humor of Elmore Leonard, but it's in the upper half of its genre
I read it on an Atlantic cruise on the Voyager of the Seas.
The Monkey's Raincoat is a pretty popular novel currently showing 706 Amazon reviews. Its raw and violent tone was compelling, making the reader feel that he was in a more intense universe than the one where he lived ordinary life. It was the kind of book that I wanted to criticize as I read it but still had trouble putting it down.
| Author | Reynolds, Dallas McCord |
|---|---|
| Publication | Gutenberg |
| Copyright Date | 1960 |
| Number of Pages | 34 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | December 2008 |
Ne'er do well alcoholic space scout Don Mathers is recruited by a couple of unscrupulous businessmen to perpetrate a scam in which he pretends to find and destroy an enemy spaceship which was, in fact, adrift with a dead crew. His supposed victory results in his award of the Medal of Honor, the highest award possible, which places him at the pinnacle of society and above the law. The businessmen then use him as a front to corner the market in key materials needed for the defense of the solar system.
After a long alcoholic binge, Mathers finally wakes up to what a disgusting thing he has done. He straightens himself out, redresses the wrong, and turns himself in. But it is necessary to maintain a facade of his heroism and he is allowed to live on in freedom.
This little novella is from the juvenile period of SF. Better stuff was beginning to appear but novellas like this still dominated SF. Its plain, simple, formulaic story telling at a level that I would have loved at around age 11 or 12.
The editors and writers of those times knew exactly what they wanted and went after it. They got it too. The writing has only one or two ideas. It's plain. It drives the story straight to its foreordained ending, but it's clear and professionally competent too.
I don't remember why I decided to add this short story to my book notes. I have done it for a few others that I thought were important in some way. In this case it might have just been nostalgia.
| Author | Dawkins, Richard |
|---|---|
| Publication | Tantor Audio, 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 464 |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Atheism |
| When Read | December 2008 |
This book, read by Dawkins himself and his wife, an actress well known from the Dr. Who series, is a militant atheist attack on all religion and all belief in God. D holds nothing back. He regards even the most liberal and progressive religion to be false and delusional, while the more backward religions, including conservative Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are downright dangerous. He wants atheists to break their silence. He wants us to stop holding back our criticisms and not to leave the field to the believers who now dominate all public and political discourse.
The book examines all of the traditional arguments, heaping contempt and scorn upon them in a way that strikes me as less effective than a gentler approach would be. But he cannot be accused of illogic. Most of his arguments have great force.
There is one new argument in the book that I had not encountered before and that stems from D's background as an evolutionary biologist.
He argues that the theory of creationism requires a God who is greater than his creation, a God who has within himself all the plans and behaviors of all created life. It therefore must presuppose without explanation an existence even greater than that which it attempts to explain. Evolution is the opposite, showing how rich complexity and purpose evolves from simpler precursors. It is therefore a theory with far more explanatory power.
A very good book.
My book card has the note: "See diary." But grepping through 2008 and 2009 doesn't reveal anything. I hope I haven't lost an entry. Perhaps I meant to write but didn't.
The issue of how sharp and insistent an author should be in writing a book about atheism is a difficult one that I confront, and write about, in every one of the books about religion that I've read. After reading a number of books and watching debates and interviews with their authors on YouTube, one of the things that seems clear is that these authors are often under attack, often facing the same invalid arguments over and over, and often dealing with people for whom the atheist looks like he wishes he could (figuratively) pound some sense into his opponent's head. Perhaps the sharp tone comes from the same feelings that lead a musician in a lounge to turn up the sound on his amplifier to try to get through to all those folks who are talking over his music and ignoring him.
| Author | Astor, Gerald |
|---|---|
| Publication | Dell Books, 1998 |
| Copyright Date | 1997 |
| Number of Pages | 545 |
| Extras | index, bibliography, "roll call of contributors" |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Military; Aviation; World War II |
| When Read | December 2008 |
The Eighth Air Force began operations from England with a tiny, poorly executed raid on the fourth of July, 1942. It was not a success. But by dogged persistence and with a gradually increasing flow of men and airplanes from the U.S., they built up a huge air armada that pummeled German factories and cities. The rate of attrition was horrifying until the P-51 Mustang arrived and finally turned the tide. American fighter pilots with excellent training and equipment swept the Luftwaffe from the sky and allowed the bombers access to every part of Germany.
This book is a well knit together compilation of stories form around 80 pilots, gunners, navigators and bombardiers who flew in the B-17's, B-24's, P-47's and P-51's over Europe. There's nothing here about technology. It is purely a story about men.
Many of these men were very intelligent and articulate. Their accounts make compelling reading. Anyone interested in the strategies and technologies of the air war should also read this book for a better understanding of the human effects as seen from the American side.
By the time this book was finished in 1997, the contributors would all be at least in their 70's and many older. I'm glad that people like Astor made the effort to record their experience before it was too late.
| Author | Pelecanos, George |
|---|---|
| Publication | Brilliance Audio, 2002 |
| Number of Pages | 350 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | December 2008 |
Private investigator Derek Strange coaches a football team for nine year old inner city kids from Washington DC, trying to use football to instill discipline, respect, and hard work in the kids. A psychopathic young thug kills one of the boys while shooting the boy's uncle for a $100 debt and Strange tries to discover the identity of the killer.
In a secondary plot, Strange's white partner Terry Quinn tries to catch a 14 year old prostitute working for the pimp Worldwide Wilson. He gets the girl but Wilson "disses" him and he later goes back to punch him out.
Strange tracks down the thug and turns him over to a big shot drug lord whose boy was the kid that was killed, then he convinces the big shot to let the police put away the thugs. Strange also deals with his own need for Chinese prostitutes and his betrayal of his secretary / lady friend and her son, whom Strange patronizes.
Pelecanos is a white writer trying to get inside the culture of black thugs and drug pushers. I'm hardly qualified to say if he succeeds. My sense is that he struck some sound notes and some wrong ones.
Considered purely as a crime novel, apart from its analysis of contemporary culture, it has mixed success. It is not one of the best I've read but far from the worst. Neither Strange nor Quinn is 100% convincing but the issues they face are interesting.
My recollection of this book is that Strange has a very satisfying and successful relationship with his secretary / girlfriend, but he is unable to keep a lid on his purely sexual desire for other women. So he messes everything up. It is the opposite of what he is trying to teach the kids on his football team. Perhaps Strange is, like the neurotic psychotherapist, trying to get control over his own out of control behavior by posing as teacher to others.
If Marcia were meeting with him in a counseling session I think she'd be pretty direct in telling him what he's doing and how he's defeating himself. Pelecanos is less direct. He takes the role of neutral observer just reporting the facts. Maybe. It's hard to say. His Quinn character is more under control but he too does more than he should.
In books like this the author is attempting to achieve more than just a straight mystery story. He's trying to be a writer of character and possibly even of ideas. I don't think P fully succeeds but he doesn't fully fail either.
I'm making very slow progress in converting my old book cards. This is the first converted record for 2008, working backwards in time.