Books read January through December 2011
| Author | Styron, William |
|---|---|
| Editor | West, James L. W. |
| Publication | New York: Random House Audio, 2009 |
| Copyright Date | 1953 - 1995 |
| Number of Pages | 208 |
| Genres | Fiction; Short stories |
| Keywords | Military |
| When Read | January 2011 |
The five stories are: "Blankenship" (1953), "Marriott, the Marine" (1971), "The suicide run", (1974), "My father's house" (1988), "Elobey, Annobobon, and Corisco" (1995).
The first four of the stories pertain to a young man, the narrator, who was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps and shipped out to the Pacific with his unit near the end of World War II. By luck, his unit was held in reserve during the last of the big island campaigns at Okinawa, moving in only after the fighting was over to begin training and preparations for the invasion of Japan itself. Having been spared the the deadly fighting so far, the men were convinced that they would be up first for the invasion, they would be the men to storm the beaches in the face of fanatic resistance by the entire population of Japan. His chances of survival seem very small and the dropping of the bomb was an incredibly lucky event that saved him.
In subsequent stories, the young man is called back for duty in Korea, training in the tropical flat lands of the Carolinas and the South for what they know will be fighting in wintry mountains. But this and all of the other stories are not stories of fighting. There is no actual warfare or contact with an enemy. The stories are stories of Marines.
There is a cultured Marine colonel, a man who speaks French and has read serious literature. He seems like a sensitive intellectual, and he is, but he turns out to be, at his core, a professional Marine. The refinement and intellectuality take second place to his business of discipline and fighting.
There are horny young men who take the "suicide run", driving their car at breakneck speed to reach a train station from which they can get to New York to meet their girlfriends and have sex before having to race back, half asleep to get back to the barracks in time. There is the young man living in the home of his father and stepmother, good people who care about him but don't fully understand him. He pursues the nubile young Christian girl next door while he and his stepmother try to be nice to each other and to tolerate each other's opposite politics about race in Virginia, but fail.
In one story the young officer is assigned to a room with a rather astonishing hillbilly, a young boy who plays awful country music on his record player, eats candy, practices knife fighting and is an instructor at it because his eyesight isn't good enough to aim a rifle. He brings in his Daddy to stay in the room for a time. The old man coughs and wheezes and the narrator is sure he's dying of something, but the hillbillies refuse to go to the hospital. The man does indeed collapse in a pool of blood and is finally hospitalized with the last stages of terminal lung cancer. When it is all over, the narrator discovers that the weird sick old man is actually a famous medal of honor winner.
Finally there is a story of a fuck-up Marine. He is a man of extraordinary ability as a soldier, but an equally extraordinary aversion to discipline. He winds up in a military prison with a guard who is himself a man of great ability as a soldier but who is determined to maintain discipline and to fulfill his obligations to contain and imprison these men.
The stories are not what I expected. They are stories about Styron's own experience, his cognitive dissonance upon coming into a situation where his intellectualizing and reading of are of no use or interest to anyone and yet these hard men have great courage and commitment. They are men who cannot be dismissed. They are men who cannot do what he can do, but can do what he and most other men cannot. And it's not just an ability they have but something larger than that, something to do with their characters.
Like many books that I have read, I admired this book more than liked it. To a significant extent, it seems to me that the book was an attempt by Styron to come to grips with this complex experience. It was a book written for himself perhaps more than for other readers. But then maybe that's true of many books by great writers.
| Author | Grisham, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | Westminster, MD: Books on Tape, 2008 |
| Number of Pages | 496 |
| Genres | Fiction; Politics |
| Keywords | Law |
| When Read | January 2011 |
The novel opens as a trial in a Mississippi court goes to the jury. A big chemical company has been accused of knowingly polluting the water at their plant in Carey County, now known throughout the state as Cancer County due to the large number of cancer deaths and illnesses apparently caused by the polluted water. The jury comes in with an award of 41 million dollars to the plaintiff. All hell breaks loose as lawyers descend on the town to get in on future lawsuits.
The small law firm that handled the lawsuit is essentially bankrupt. They have managed so far by the husband and wife principals selling their cars and their house and taking out bank loans from an increasingly nervous banker. The verdict looks like a heaven sent reward for their efforts, an opportunity to win many new clients, and a chance to convince the bank that they should continue floating the loan while waiting for the payment to come through in a couple of years. But the money is very far from being in their hands. They must first succeed in winning against the inevitable appeal.
The rest of the book, the real meat of the story, is about the efforts by the chemical company president and majority stock holder and his helpers to attempt to subvert the Mississippi Supreme Court and, essentially, rig the court for a favorable verdict in the appeal. The technique used is to pick a relatively fair minded judge on the Supreme Court who is up for election and replace her with a strict conservative who will automatically rule favorably for any corporation facing any lawsuit. There are already four such justices out of the nine on the court. They only need one more. They select Ron Fisk, a conservative Christian family man in his early forties who is a church member, coach of his son's little league team, straight arrow, handsome, well spoken person who can be manipulated and then relied upon once he is on the court.
To elect him they use a high powered, highly paid, professional team of advertisers, videographers, speech writers, and other campaign consultants. The seed money comes from the chemical millionaire via multiple cut outs that hide the source of the money, but they also raise tons of money from conservatives, Christians and business groups who are happy to support Ron Fisk and who are easily overcome with the false propaganda generated by the campaign to smear his opponent as a person who frees criminals, supports homosexual marriage and favors gun control - all patently false accusations that nevertheless strike home in the minds of the ignoramuses who dominate the Mississippi electorate.
At the last minute, after Fisk wins election and is the decisive vote to defeat one lawsuit after another reaching the court, Fisk's son is hit by a baseball pitch and malpractice by his doctor causes what could have been a recoverable injury to turn into a tragedy. Fisk re-evaluates his stance. For the first time in his life, he begins to understand the point of view of the plaintiffs. He is outraged by what happened to his son. But it is too late. He has made his bed. He has committed himself. It would be a negation of every promise he made and every speech he gave as well as all of the commitments to those who got him elected by dirty money and dirty politics. He votes to uphold a relatively smaller award to a nursing home victim but throws the cancer victims to the wolves and denies the appeal, doing so in a way that makes a retrial impossible.
This is a depressing, infuriating book. It was hard to listen to the CDs and also hard to stop listening to them. The chemical company president is a pure asshole. He already has more money than anyone needs and is only amassing more as a way to keep score in his vanity competition with other billionaires. He spends the money on gifts demanded by the trophy wife whom he really doesn't love, and on conspicuous consumption intended to show how rich he is. For this, he is willing and eager to kill people who have never harmed him and have in fact often worked in his plant by dumping chemicals in order to make a few million extra bucks for him over and above what could be made by responsible operation of his plant. All of the people helping him are no better. They are professional assholes, people who make their livings hurting other people and laughing about their superiority over the fools who vote for their candidate.
The story would be less infuriating if it didn't ring so true. What Grisham depicts is actually happening in states all over the U.S. "Conservative" political groups have discovered that rigging state supreme court elections is a good way to reap millions from companies that need protection from the law and from angry citizens. Companies have discovered that it's cheaper to rig the elections than to follow the laws. Why bother to spend millions on occupational health and safety, product safety, environmental concerns, etc., when one can spend fewer millions to get away with illegal acts.
Grisham paints a very bleak picture about the future of America and he backs it up with a very convincing, very realistic, and very accurate story.
I read recently that Newt Gingrich, who is now running for President, was instrumental in a recent effort to place three "conservatives" on the Iowa Supreme Court.
John Dean, in his Conservatives Without Conscience, names Gingrich as one of the "social dominators", a man with no conscience and no agenda other than his own self-promotion. It's easy to agree with him. Gingrich is very smart and very well read, but what does he really care about? Is his concern for the future of the country anything other than the same kind of self-deception that preachers have when they imagine themselves doing the Lord's work, knowing in their hearts that whatever they want is also desired by the Lord?
| Author | McCullough, David G. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005 |
| Number of Pages | 386 |
| Extras | plates, illustrations, maps, bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | American Revolution |
| When Read | January 2011 |
McCullough provides a relatively straight history of the Revolutionary War during the year 1776. He begins with the appearance of King George in a trip through London to Parliament to present his call for strong measures to end the revolt in America and the groundswell of popular support together with support from many members of Parliament, including historian and MP Edward Gibbon, though there were also those who foresaw the coming disaster.
The story proper begins in Boston after the battle of Bunker Hill. The Pyrrhic victory of the redcoats left the rebel army intact and still invested around the city. Bold moves by Washington and his best lieutenants like Nathaniel Greene brought the guns of Fort Ticonderoga to Boston and, in the middle of the night, allowed daring rebels to occupy the heights above the city with the guns, making the British position untenable and forcing the British evacuation of Boston.
Then it was the Americans' turn to underestimate the power of the enemy. Washington took his forces to defend New York City but failed to appreciate the tremendous power of the Royal Navy to move forces around American positions at will, to isolate American positions, and to bombard positions with overwhelming firepower. One wrong move followed another as the British outmaneuvered the Americans with ease and took New York with very few casualties.
Following the loss of the city, Washington retreated through New Jersey and across the river into Pennsylvania. The American cause reached a low point as thousands of Americans bowed to what appeared to be inevitable and signed loyalty oaths to the King. But in the midst of winter, with all appearing to be lost, with the British and Hessians encamped for the winter and believing all to be safe and secure, Washington made his bold moves at Trenton and then Princeton, winning spectacular victories and keeping the Revolution alive and intact.
M's appreciation of Washington is a main theme of the book. He considers GW to have been steadfast, resourceful, 100% committed, able to recognize talented men and, despite lack of experience and some serious indecision and mistakes, able to make bold and decisive moves at many critical times. His personal bravery was also a factor in leading his men to victory.
This is a simple, popular history. It is well documented but does not go into any depth about the background of the war. There is nothing about causes, nothing about personalities other than Washington and a few of his commanders, nothing about the economic or historical background of the war. Still, it is fast reading and engaging history. It has the feel of scholarship and objectivity in spite of the brevity and popular character of the treatment.
I enjoyed reading it.
| Author | Connelly, Michael |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Hachette Audio, 2009 |
| Number of Pages | 480 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Mystery |
| When Read | January 2011 |
Detective Harry Bosch investigates the murder of an elderly Chinese man who owns a liquor store in L.A. The man was killed at about the same time as the visit of a Triad extortion collector. Working with a Chinese American detective and translator, whom Bosch doesn't fully trust, they investigate the Triad, close in on the guy, arrest him, and try to make him talk. But he's tough and won't say a word.
Then Bosch receives word that his 13 year old daughter, living with her mother in Hong Kong, has been kidnapped. If he wants to see her again, he better leave the Triad guy alone. Bosch goes berserk. Acting hastily and therefore (in my opinion) stupidly, he rushes to Hong Kong, he procures a gun, he races around the city wildly. With the help of his ex-wife and her Chinese lover, he actually finds a hotel room where the girl had been held, but by his clumsy actions he manages to get his ex-wife killed. In a series of bull-headed and not so intelligent moves, he finally tracks down his daughter, kills the kidnappers, and gets her away to America.
Finally, the events start to make more sense. The Triad did not kill the old liquor store owner. It was the man's own son who arranged the killing. The girl had not even been kidnapped by the Triad. She had arranged the whole thing herself to force her Dad to come and take her to America, got in way over her head, and was sold to the Triad in a murder for organ transplant scheme. Bosch solves all the riddles and he and the girl each try to find a way to live with each other and with their separate guilt over the death of the ex-wife.
This is a weak novel. It's hard to sympathize with an experienced detective who is totally ruled by his emotions and instincts, throwing all rationality to the wind. Perhaps the best scene is the appearance by Mickey Haller from The Lincoln Lawyer in a brilliant representation of Bosch against an attempt by the Hong Kong police to extradite him back to HK to stand trial for the many killings he did.
I liked a number of Connelly's books and was hoping for more from this one.
| Author | Dorr, Robert F. |
|---|---|
| Author | Jones, Thomas D. |
| Publication | Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press, 2008 |
| Number of Pages | 336 |
| Extras | photos, maps, bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Aviation; World War II |
| When Read | January 2011 |
This is the story of the 365th Fighter Group, a formation of P-47 Thunderbolts that flew over Normandy on D-Day and went on to fly from airfields in France in close air support missions for the advancing American army.
It was a very dangerous war for these men. They faced great quantities of ever more sophisticated anti-aircraft fire together with sorties, occasionally in considerable strength, from the Luftwaffe. Their missions were to attack Wehrmacht forces holding up the American advance or attacking it in the Bulge, and to pulverize the transport and communications lines used by the Germans to bring reinforcements and supplies to their side of the line.
As is often the case in war, many of the pilots became deeply involved in the mission and the experience, fighting very aggressively and going after "kills" with considerable disregard for their own lives. They typically maintained their aggressiveness even when faced with superior forces on the ground or in they air. They were extremely effective.
This is the kind of book written by people who were themselves fighting men and who write out of a sense of love and respect for their forebears. It's a straightforward account with no pretensions to grand history or creative writing, but it's honest and appreciative of its subject. It is everything I expect from a book like this.
| Author | Junger, Sebastian |
|---|---|
| Publication | BBC Audiobooks America, 2010 |
| Number of Pages | 320 |
| Extras | Conversation with the author |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Military; Afghanistan |
| When Read | January 2011 |
Junger, a reporter for a number of news and feature outlets in the U.S., spent many months in Afghanistan over a five year period. A good part of his time was spent "embedded" with an American Army platoon in the Korengal Valley, the scene of the most intense and prolonged fighting of the war. The valley is right on the Taliban supply route from Pakistan into Afghanistan. There were extended periods in which firefights occurred every single day.
The most surprising thing that Junger learned, to me anyway, was that a fair number of soldiers came to love the combat. They thrived on the adrenalin high. They got bored if there was too long a period with no combat. They wanted to fire their high powered weapons. They wanted to trade fire with the enemy and win. They didn't really even mind being fired upon.
The soldiers developed a bond of love and trust among themselves that was stronger for them than any bond they had ever felt for any other people. Many of them were absolutely willing to die for each other. They would never hang back. The thought of losing a buddy because they had failed him was intolerable to them and they despised those men who were too selfish or too incompetent to hold up their end of the fight. When the fighting was finally over for them and they went back to rear areas or left the Army, they were very much at sea.
Junger explained all this with a combination of first hand reporting from the front line and evidence of research studies of soldiers dating back to WWII, Korea and Vietnam. He didn't aim just to observe and report the phenomenon but also to understand it.
Ultimately, the Korengal was not held. Despite their best attempts, the Army could neither win the support of the local people nor defeat them in combat. They could kill any number of Taliban and allied fighters, but they couldn't pacify the valley. The generals finally decided either that they could not win or that it was not worth the fight. They got out.
Junger had a videographer with him on his journeys and shot many hours of footage. It was made into the documentary film "Restrepo", which I have since watched. It was named after the platoon medic, a man whom everyone loved. He was killed in combat and a small advanced outpost was built in the most dangerous part of the valley and given his name.
I came away from this book with, on the one hand, a much deeper appreciation of the tremendous power of the American Army. But on the other hand I also came away with a greater appreciation of the difficulty, and perhaps the futility, of the task in Afghanistan.
I liked the book and also liked the film. It was, of course, impossible to put everything into the film that is in the book. There is no possibility of having the camera rolling and aimed just right at just the instant when a bullet hits. But it was an impressive film nevertheless. It took great courage and great sacrifices for Junger and his video man to make this book and film.
The video man was Tim Hetherington, a British born videographer and film producer/director who apparently left a life of some privilege to pursue a path of interest in the suffering people of the world. He was killed on April 20, 2011 in Libya while covering the insurgency against Muammar Ghaddafi's government.
| Author | Cussler, Clive |
|---|---|
| Author | Cussler, Dirk |
| Publication | Penguin Audio, 2008 |
| Number of Pages | 593 |
| Genres | Fiction; Thriller |
| When Read | February 2011 |
The story begins with an Arctic expedition by the ships Erebus and Terror to find the northwest passage in the 1840's, but everything goes wrong. The ships are locked in the ice. Many crew members appear to go crazy for unexplained reasons. Food runs out. The sailors abandon ship and attempt to cross the ice to land but they fail and the expedition is never heard from again. This sets the stage for a modern day adventure with our usual Cussler heroes.
There are two Dirk Pitts in this book. Dirk Senior works in his job in Washington and later goes into the Arctic, while his children, Dirk Junior and Summer Pitt, work in the inland waters around Victoria in British Columbia.
At the opening of the modern day portion of the book a fishing vessel in the Sound is enveloped by a mysterious gas that kills the entire crew. Dirk Junior finds the boat and brings it back, but the police are unable to figure out what happened. Dirk, Summer, and Summer's friend Trevor, figure out that it's got something to do with a new terminal established by rich Canadian businessman Mitchell Goyette that is supposed to sequester carbon dioxide. But he's not sequestering the gas, he's releasing it right into the air.
While that's going on, a scientist in Maryland discovers a new way to clean the environment using the rare element ruthenium as a catalyst. Unfortunately there are no reliable supplies of the element. Goyette and Pitt Sr. learn independently that the 1840's Franklin Expedition encountered a supply of something that looks very much like ruthenium. Goyette sends an experienced killer to lead an expedition to find and steal the source while Pitt leads a smaller expedition to find the truth about the ruthenium and to find out what happened to the crew of an Arctic research station that was in the area, an American ship that was seized by Canadian authorities, and an American navy team that tried to rescue them.
There's lots of action including underwater adventures, battles with muskets against submachine guns, improbable rescues, and even a scene in which an old codger in an RV named Clive Cussler drives up to Pitt's overturned car just in time to save him from death. There's also lots of foolish politics in Canada, and machinations by Goyette that almost lead to war between Canada and the U.S.
In the end, of course, the good guys prevail. The prisoners are rescued. The impending war is averted. Goyette and the corrupt Canadian politicians in his pay are exposed and Goyette himself is murdered by Trevor by using carbon dioxide gas as a form of poetic justice.
There's no denying that the book is wild and silly. The plot is absurd. The characters are fleshed out just enough to play their roles for good or evil. Some of the events are much more than improbable, and the brewing war between the US and Canada is outrageous.
Nevertheless, if you take the book in the spirit of fun in which it was written, it's a fun read. It's not meant to be taken seriously, just to be enjoyed as a high adventure romp through the Arctic. If I were evaluating it on it's merits I'd give it two of five stars for literary quality and four of five for doing exactly what it sets out to do.
| Author | Dean, John W. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Prince Frederick, MD: Penguin Audio, 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 256 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Politics |
| Keywords | Authoritarianism |
| When Read | February 2011 |
President Nixon's lawyer, John Dean, turned against Nixon and his band of burglars and felons, testifying about the truth of the Watergate events. He later wrote (with the help of ghostwriter Taylor Branch) Blind Ambition (1979), his account of the events of those years. He was criticized by many Republicans and he essentially left politics, becoming a private lawyer for many years. However, when Bush Junior achieved the White House Dean seems to have been motivated to write again. A spate of books appeared on political subjects, all critical of Bush and the new right.
Dean comes across in this book as an intellectual, a man concerned with the history of the United States and the conservative political movement, and with the ideologies, often in deep conflict with each other, that call themselves "conservative". He identifies many different strains of conservatism, some of which are concerned to conserve one thing, some another, and some that aren't trying to conserve anything and are not conservative at all by any criterion Dean can find. They are simply right wing authoritarian.
There's a lot of psychology in this book. Dean, quoting other political writers and psychologists, focuses on two personality types which he think dominate the modern conservative movement and the Republican Party. The most common of these is the "right wing authoritarian". These are people that want authority figures in their lives. They want clear and rigid rules. They evaluate statements not on the basis of evidence but in terms of their conformance to the pronouncements of their favorite authorities. They have no trouble holding contradictory beliefs because they don't evaluate the rationality of those beliefs. If the favorite authorities endorse them, that's good enough for the authoritarians to endorse them too. They tend to be religious, sexist, perhaps racist, and to define themselves in large part by what they are against.
Paradoxically, according to Dean, many right wing authoritarians are nice people. They bear no ill will to others. Even their sexism is not so much anti-female as anti-feminist. They think the traditional divisions between men and women must be the right ones.
The other kind of right wing person is the social dominator. These are sociopaths. They have no conscience. They are amoral. They would like to do harm to their perceived enemies, to take revenge upon them, to demonstrate their personal superiority. They see liberals and Democrats as enemies. They see their own right wing authoritarian followers not as friends but as suckers, people who can be manipulated into doing what the social dominator wants. Examples of social dominators in Dean's opinion are Dick Cheney, Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and Pat Robertson. He discusses the personal biography of each man to some extent. He focuses especially on Pat Robertson, the preacher and founder of the 700 club and the Christian Coalition, and one time candidate for President. He sees Robertson as the quintessential sociopath, a man with no conscience and not even the slightest understanding of, or concern for, the difference between right and wrong. He's a man who will say anything to get what he wants - which is power over others. Although he is a preacher and invokes God all the time in his speech, religion has no hold over him. Like others in his position, he is a man who can close his eyes, pray for forgiveness, and know that he has immediately received it and doesn't have to do anything else. It is "cheap grace" as the liberal theologians like to say.
Dean also has choice words for Cheney, Buchanan, and others. However he sees Bush Jr. as a right wing authoritarian, but not a social dominator. Bush is a disaster not because he aspires to all power for himself, but because he is a man of limited intellect who follows the lead of Cheney and others who know how to manipulate him.
Dean also goes into specific things that the Bush White House has done, from spying on Americans to lying to start a war. He also catalogs the crimes of the Republican leadership in Congress - most especially in the House of Representatives. Tactics were used, according to Dean, that are illegal and dangerous. The goal of the Republicans was to get what they wanted with no concern for the means employed. They present a real danger to American democracy.
I found Dean more interesting than I expected. He stayed away from any clear exposition of his own politics or any endorsement of any politicians. I couldn't tell what he really wants. I was particularly irritated by the fact that he seems to have no problems with the way American capitalists manipulate the system in order to gain money for themselves at the expense of everyone else. He seems not to be able to generalize from the kinds of dominance and authoritarianism in government to the same evils in private life.
But leaving that aside, I found it interesting to view right wing politics through the lens of psychopathology. I don't buy the whole package. I believe that there is simple greed and economic determinism operating behind the whole thing and distorting it. But I find myself persuaded by Dean that there are personality types that are attracted to modern conservatism. While they don't make up all conservatives by any means, they may indeed make up the most important segments of the most dangerous, right wing elements.
| Author | Goldsworthy, Adrian Keith |
|---|---|
| Publication | New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009 |
| Number of Pages | 531 |
| Extras | photos, illustrations, maps, bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Roman Empire |
| When Read | February 2011 |
Goldsworthy's history opens at the end of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the last emperor in the golden age of the Empire stretching from Nerva in 96 AD to the death of Marcus in 180. After the death of Marcus, his incapable son Commodus inherited the throne and ruled badly until his assassination in 192. After that, the empire descended into over a century of almost continuous civil wars, with one military warlord after another battling for supremacy, often after assassinations of the previous emperor. With only a couple of exceptions, (mainly Septimius Severus) the emperors ruled for very short periods and then died violent deaths.
A period of some stability followed, beginning with Diocletian who ruled from 284 to 305. Then began a period of multiple emperors, one each in East and West or up to four of them. Sometimes conflicts were restricted to a single region, sometimes they occurred between regions. All during this time, as well as the time before, emperors saw their real enemies as other Romans, not as the barbarians who, at worst, presented temporary and containable threats to their rule. The defense of the empire had long ceased to be a defense of the people or territory of Rome and had devolved into defense of the emperor himself.
The armies shrank. Money was not available to pay them. In any case, they presented a threat to the emperor. No one knows how big the armies were at any period but educated guesses are that, at the height of the empire there were 30 legions totaling 150,000 men, and an equal number of auxiliaries. Later, the numbers fell steadily. It became cheaper to hire barbarian mercenaries when needed than to keep standing Roman armies, and hiring the mercenaries had the added benefit of putting them on the Roman side instead of being raiders.
Things stabilized in the fourth century. Administrative and military geographical units were made smaller in order to hamper the rise of powerful generals. Bureaucracy grew enormously. The cycle of civil wars with change of emperor in periods of a few months to a few years abated - partly as a result of the force of Diocletian's personality, partly with the following rule of Constantine. Gradually however, the empire grew weaker and weaker. The government of Rome, once focused on the destiny of Rome, came to be focused only on the destiny of the emperor himself. It was certainly that way in the civil wars of the third century and continued to be that way in the following years. Many Roman emperors had never actually seen Rome itself and were sometimes shocked to see it - although it was much reduced from what it had been in the first century.
Eventually, in the west, the local Roman armies in small provinces stopped caring about or responding to barbarian incursions into neighboring provinces. Commanders hoarded their meager forces to defend their own personal interests or the interests of higher authorities with whom they had made loyalty arrangements. Barbarian invaders had their way. Often they were invited in to defend against Roman threats to Roman officials, or against other barbarians. The "barbarians" of the later periods were far less distinguishable from Romans than their predecessors. They often fought with the superior weapons and armor manufactured in Roman arms factories and provided to them as payment for services or as tribute. As Roman army standards declined, barbarian standards rose and the forces were more equal than ever before. Many barbarian commanders had served with Roman armies and knew all that Roman military experience had to teach them. As the empire hired or co-opted barbarians, the barbarian generals became the Roman generals and "Roman" armies were often purely barbarian.
The decline of the empire in the west was gradual. Garrisons shrank. Roman construction and large scale economic organization shrank. The archaeological record shows a decline of the building of large buildings, theaters, roads and baths. Money became scarce. Trade declined. A patchwork of Roman and barbarian fiefdoms grew in the Roman territories, especially in Gaul but soon in Spain as well. The garrison was permanently withdrawn from Britain - leaving to support a candidate of one of the civil wars and then never to return. Significant barbarian kings claimed kingship over territories in the west. They did not consider themselves to be emperors or consider the empire to be the object of their interest. Their focus was more local and shorter term than that. When the last emperor, Romulus Augustus, was deposed by Odoacer in 476, the barbarian general didn't bother to execute him, nor did he proclaim himself emperor. Hazy notions of empire remained for some time, but for long generations the people had already forgotten what the real empire was and meant.
This is a conventional political history. It cites the name of every single emperor from Marcus Aurelius to Romulus Augustus, saying at least a few words about his origin and fate. There is not as much about the economy or the way of life, either of Romans or barbarians, as one would wish to get a real understanding of the period. Still, it is well done and is extensively supported with footnotes and comments about sources and the probabilities of various stories actually being true.
This is a decent sized book and, as usually happens, I have been unable to keep everything in my head that I read. The abstract produced above is my recollection, now five or six weeks after finishing the book. It may not be accurate. Some of the conclusions may be my own inventions that would make Goldsworthy cringe. But that's the way general reading like mine is. A student who focuses on a subject and reads extensively and intensively builds up a solid understanding. A dilettante reads hundreds of books on all different topics and mashes them together in his head. Alas, I'm a dilletante.
It's impossible to predict the future of our human civilization but it is possible to study the great human civilizations of the past. By any measure, the Roman civilization, Republic and Empire, was one of the greatest of them. I find it fascinating. I would like to know more about the essence of the civilization and also more about its transitions and interfaces. We know that Roman intellectuals and members of the ruling classes were deeply conscious of the transition from Republic to Empire. What did the common people think? What was the impact on their lives? What did people think during the great transition from the various polytheisms to Christianity? What did people think during the demise of the empire? I think we know that there were towns in Italy that retained Roman law and tradition at least into the sixth century and perhaps longer. How did they sustain it? What did they know of their past? What great literature, art, and music existed that has now been lost and what impact did it have on those who had access to it?
I imagine that people who were imbued with Roman culture, people who spoke, read, and wrote Latin, retained their Roman outlook to the end of their lives. I imagine that their children and grandchildren, growing up under illiterate barbarian rulers, knowing little of their now dead parents and grandparents, did not so much reject Roman culture as just never absorbed it. It was a great loss.
This was not the last book about Rome that I read and I expect to read more as time goes by and while I am still able.
| Author | Harris, Robert |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Simon and Schuster Audio, 2010 |
| Number of Pages | 400 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Rome; Cicero |
| When Read | February 2011 |
Resuming the story of Imperium, Harris gives us Cicero on the eve of his consulship, through to the end of his office, his battles with Julius Caesar and the various men in Caesar's camp, and his exile from Rome. As before, the story is told by Marcus Tullius Tiro, Cicero's slave and secretary.
Cicero battles against a number of conspiracies that he sees as endangering the Republic. The first is that of Catiline, who conspires with a number of others to support a rising of the plebeians against the Senate, supported by Gauls who will, if Cataline's plan comes to fruition, save Rome from the wealthy senators by sacking it. Although there is no clear evidence linking him to the plot, Cicero knows that Julius Caesar and Crassus are providing brains and money to support it and plan to come to the fore after the government is overthrown. Cicero mobilizes some ex-army officer Senators, catches the conspirators red-handed, brings them to trial and, in a move that he hates but sees no alternative to, executes them. This will haunt him later as he is accused of being a murderer.
Harris' Cicero is a master of politics and of opportunity. He is a man of honor, a Republican, a conscientious executor of his civic responsibilities. But he is at the same time a pragmatist, a man who will make deals that sacrifice one principle in support of another, and a man who attempts to aggrandize both his reputation and his income. Always there are trade-offs to consider. Always there are situations where all alternatives are unattractive. Always there are temptations and sometimes he gives in to them. He is not a saint. He is sometimes a sinner. But in the end there is a residue of honor that he holds dear. Hounded by an old friend turned enemy, he rejects Caesar's offer of protection and chooses instead the path of exile.
As before, Harris has produced a fascinating and complex account of the people and the times. Caesar comes across as complicated, formidable, a man who holds no grudges against his opponents but can crush them ruthlessly when they stand in his way. At one point he rises to defend himself in the Senate, ordering his accuser not only to apologize, but to do so on his knees. With part of the Senate behind Caesar, and the rest shocked and intimidated by Caesar's boldness and his veiled threat of force, the accuser has no choice but to submit. We see the Roman democracy crumbling in the most convincing fashion. Crassus and Pompey are also portrayed with great insight into their combinations of strength and vanity. And of course Cicero too is portrayed with considerable insight into both great strength and wisdom, and foolish vanity.
Where Caesar or Pompey are formidable because of their military connections, where Crassus is formidable because of his wealth, Cicero is formidable because of his great intelligence and his deep understanding of the people and institutions of Rome.
I like these books very much. As with any good historical novel, I have no way to know how historically accurate they are (bad historical novels can be perceived to be bad on their surfaces.) But they have the feel of authenticity. They are satisfying and convincing. The people seem very real. The history feels real.
I also very much like the character of Tiro. He is a wonderful narrator and provides a fine touch of honesty and humility in the face of these powerful historical characters. In Tiro, Harris has produced the right man to tell all of us ordinary mortals that which Cicero himself could never relate. He is a marvelous creation.
Harris is expected to produce a third novel covering Cicero in exile. I am eager to read it.
The third volume, Dictator, was published in 2016. I can get it and hope to read it.
| Author | Shute, Nevil |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Morrow, 1960 |
| Number of Pages | 311 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | February 2011 |
Keith Stewart, a modest Englishman, has a workshop in the basement of his home where he builds all sorts of marvelous little devices which he writes up in his column in "The Miniature Mechanic". He earns a very small income for the column and spends most of it on tools and materials. His wife Katie works as a sales clerk in a shop and they rent the upstairs in their house to another family, enabling them to get by.
Keith's sister lives in a different world. She married a Navy Captain from an upper class family. The Captain was laid off from the Navy at the end of the war and now they do other things. They also have a ten year old daughter, Janice. Seeing few opportunities for themselves in England they decide to move to Vancouver in Canada. They outfit their small sailboat and prepare for a voyage to Tahiti on vacation and then to Canada to find a place to live. They leave Janice with Keith and Katie, trusting the two of them more than they trust the Captain's wealthy but distant parents. Before they go, the Captain asks Keith to seal a metal box and cement it into the keel of the boat - which he knows how to do and does.
The Captain brings his little sailboat into the South Seas but runs into a monstrous storm. He is a fine seaman. He is resourceful and courageous. He knows exactly what is happening to them and knows exactly what he must do for any hope of survival. But his resources run out and he, his wife, and his little boat all come to grief on a remote coral reef in the Pacific. His little daughter is now an orphan living with her Uncle Keith and Aunt Katie.
Months later, Keith finally learns the truth from the Captain's solicitor, who tells him that the family is missing and presumed dead, that the wreckage of their boat has been discovered, that the family left 25,000 pounds in trust for their daughter, but that no one can find the money. It appears that he converted the entire sum into precious jewels, but the jewels are nowhere to be found.
Of course Keith knows where they are. He sealed them into the keel himself. Now he determines that he will go to the South Seas, find the jewels, erect a stone for his sister and her husband, and return to England where the money will be used for the benefit of little Janice. He begins a quest that will take him outside England for the first time in his life.
At every step of his journey he encounters men who have read his column in Miniature Mechanic and think the world of him. A pilot gets him a lift from England to Hawaii on a cargo plane. There he is introduced to Jack Donnelly, an odd, limited man who can barely read and write but had extraordinary knowledge of the sea and agrees to take Keith on to Tahiti - which Keith signs on to do in spite of advice from everyone that Donnelly is a little crazy and completely unable to sail 2,000 miles to Tahiti and find it. However, by the time he gets there, Sol Hirzhorn, a rich American admirer of Keith's column, hears of his plight and engages help from a yachtsman owner of a company that hopes to sell a big order to Hirzhorn's lumber company.
By pluck, intelligence, and the help of his new friends, Keith finds the wreck of the sailboat. He brings home the engine, with the jewels hidden inside. He stops at Hirzhorn's house in Washington state and helps Hirzhorn by analyzing the new machinery proposal and spotting a problem - no one has calculated the large amount of heat that will be generated by the machinery and the inadequate system for cooling it. Hirzhorn wangles a $17,000 commission for Keith for his help.
In the end, Keith claims that he found the jewels in a suitcase at his house that he had overlooked. He puts them into a trust fund. He uses the annual interest, plus the interest on his $17,000, to enable Katie to leave her job and become a full time mother to Janice. Keith goes back into his basement to continue to do what he knows and loves best.
This is a beautiful book. Its people, mostly humble and unassuming, are the salt of the earth. This is true for Katie and Jack Donnelly, for many of the people who help them, and especially for Keith himself, a man who, without knowing it and without trying, has earned the love and respect of countless admirers.
Shute was himself an aeronautical engineer. He was a man who understood engines, physics, science and technology of all sorts. He encountered men like Keith during his career and learned that the measure of a man is not the money that he has or the house he lives in or the colleges he attended or degrees he acquired. A man is measured by what he does, by how well he thinks, by his willingness to help people, by his courage, by his determination to do the right thing. By all of those measures, Keith rated very, very high.
The story is exciting and, to use a trite phrase, heart warming. We care about Keith Stewart. We admire him. We are convinced that he merits the good luck that has found him in his hour of need.
Keith is not the only fine fellow in this book. There are no bad people. The Captain and Keith's sister are of a different type and a different class from Keith and Katie, but they are fine people nonetheless. The story of their loss in the storm feels like a tragedy. Jack Donnelly, a sort of lovable bumbler and idiot savant is also a man we come to respect. So too is the yacht captain sent out to rescue Keith, the airmen who helped him, and Sol Hirzhorn and his granddaughter.
I love all of Shute's books. I haven't read a bad one. But this might just be my favorite.
| Author | Dick, Philip K. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Collier Books, 1989 |
| Copyright Date | 1957 |
| Number of Pages | 255 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | March 2011 |
[From my 1996 reading...]
Jack Hamilton, chief electronics man in a defense plant, is fired because his wife Marsha is suspected of communist sympathies in a guilt by association frame-up. Then he, Marsha, the security chief who accused her, a black physics student, a paranoid woman, a fat vapid woman and her son, and a retired general, are all injured when a platform collapses on them on a tour of a new bevatron.
For a few minutes of real time, but many days of subjective time, the group of eight people inhabit each others' consciousnesses. First they are in the weird religious cult world of the old general, then a sexless drippingly sweet absurd world of the fat lady, then a paranoid world of the career woman, and finally a Marxist world of class struggle, not of Marsha, but of MacFyffe, the security chief, who it turns out is a real communist saboteur.
[Still from my 1996 reading.]
Dick is a brilliant, neurotic writer who strikes me as the kind of man who never struggles for new ideas but instead must struggle to hold his wellspring of ideas in check to keep from overwhelming the reader. And yet in spite of the exotic landscapes of the novel there is a clear lucidity to the writing that makes it easy to read and to follow.
Andy Harbert suggested I read Dick. I'm glad I did and I plan to read more.
I had this book with me on my Palm on our recent Caribbean cruise. I started reading it a few days into the cruise. After a short time I was pretty sure I had read it before but I didn't have my book cards with me and couldn't check. In any case, while it was all familiar, I had no real memory of how it continued and so decided to go ahead and read it again.
My abstract and comments from 1996 seem right on target, so I reproduced them. I don't know if I would have done as well starting fresh. I'll just add a few notes here.
The book was written just after the end of the McCarthy era. Clearly, Dick was responding to its anti-communist hysteria and describing some of the well-springs of irrationality, one might say insanity, in the US that helped McCarthyism thrive. His characterizations are intentionally outrageous. He is not aiming to study the irrational aspects of society but to parody them by taking them to their logical extremes. The parodies might be silly in the hands of a lesser writer. They were certainly over the top. But Dick brings it off with a brilliant mixture of both attacking the insanity and working with it and in it. The insane aren't really even condemned. They're merely disarmed. It is as if to say that the insanity is inevitable. We can't abolish it. But we must overcome it.
I have read a number of Dick's books since this one in 1996. They're all pretty fine.
| Author | Halpern, Sue |
|---|---|
| Publication | Tantor Audio, 2008 |
| Number of Pages | 288 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Popular science; Medicine |
| Keywords | Alzheimer's Disease; Aging |
| When Read | March 2011 |
Halpern is a very good writer with what appears to be no scientific or medical background, but with an intense and obsessive concern with Alzheimer's Disease and other problems of age related dementia and memory loss. She visited a significant number of research centers and clinics, speaking with many experts in the field, to find out what the latest research tells us about the nature of these losses and possible preventatives and cures.
Despite the optimistic subtitle, there doesn't seem to be any "good news", at least in the short term, about AD and other memory problems. We have learned a lot about the disease in general and a lot about what treatments don't work. However finding treatments that do work is still some way off. For the last twenty years researchers routinely answered the question, "When will have have workable treatments for AD?" with the answer, "In about five years." Many are still saying that but their credibility isn't very high.
Of all the preventatives that were examined, the one that seems to have the best outcome is cardio-vascular exercise. Estrogen, ibuprofen, vitamin E, and other foods and supplements that have shown promise in some studies have not stood out in others. Halpern does say good things about blueberries and there is some evidence for them helping, but not enough work has yet been done with them. We don't have as much evidence for their efficacy as for exercise.
Halpern visited all kinds of places. Some were clinics that catered to people like her, what other writers have called "the worried well". She got brain scans, memory tests, cognitive function tests, blood tests, and genetic tests. With each test she worked hard to pass, suffered intense anxiety during the test and after, and hung on all of the doctors words, searching for scraps of re-assurance that she was okay, she would not develop AD, her brain function was at or above normal. When she came out above normal in some areas but below normal in another, she worried about that and took great consolation from the doctor who told her that "normal" doesn't mean that a person achieves or exceeds the average score in every single area. But of course she worried anyway.
Many of the scientists were out to make money on Alzheimer's Disease and age related memory loss. They were keen to secure patents, often for what Halpern described as "obvious" ideas. One, for example, managed to write a patent application and actually secure a patent (IIRC), for drinking two cups of green tea and then exercising for an hour. The guy is obviously dreaming of getting a penny every time someone drinks tea or steps on a treadmill. Another, a Nobel prizewinner, came up with a left-handed optical isomer of a well known amphetamine and led a biotech startup aiming to cash in. She later tried to contact him only to find that his company had disappeared and no one knew what became of it. "Cashing in on the obvious" seems to have a generous component of cashing in on gullible investors as much as on the gullible patent clerks and the gullible general public.
I have the same obsession that Halpern has. If she revealed the source of her anxieties, I don't remember it (a bad sign, I know.) Perhaps she has a parent with AD. Perhaps she was a caregiver at one time. Those of us who have been in contact with the disease are badly frightened of it and, if it has been in our families and is believed to be heritable, we are especially anxious. I certain am.
Many of the people Halpern visited were truly advanced scientists. Unable to really understand what they were doing, she attempted to get them to explain their work in layman's terms. She didn't do badly, but I'm sorry that she didn't have a better scientific preparation. Her explanations of complex biochemistry were completely inadequate. I don't fault her for that. She didn't oversimplify out of lack of effort to understand. She just didn't know enough. It's not something you can pick up in a few days, or even in a year. However her dilemma well illustrates the general problem of basic versus treatment oriented research. The general public doesn't care about the cause of AD, or cancer, or why their car or TV set doesn't work. They just want it fixed. Her real interest was not misfolded polypeptides. She wanted to know whether she was going to suffer from dementia and, if so, what could she personally do to prevent it. She well understood that that is also what her readers want to know and that's what she attempted to discover and write about.
If I weren't personally obsessed with this topic, as she is, I probably wouldn't have read this book. But I am and I did. I found it unsatisfying, but I didn't expect to be satisfied. We're more than five years away from any satisfaction.
I listened to a lecture at NIH recently (via videocast) by Dr. Rudi Tanzi, a leading researcher studying the genetics of Alzheimer's. The lecture was brilliant. I was able to follow it but a great deal of it was still essentially new to me - especially the techniques his lab was using in its research. Tanzi described two new approaches to treatment. If I remember correctly one released the metals, mainly copper and zinc, bound in amyloid plaques. The theory was that the withdrawal of these metals, vital as enzyme cofactors, was a contributing factor in the disease, and that restoring them would reduce damage. The other drug, IIRC, treated the excessive tau proteins in neurofibrillary tangles. But he was not optimistic. We still don't know enough. We are now discovering new aspects of the disease that are looking very difficult to treat.
Tanzi didn't say how long it would take. My sense is that we can't expect any significant modification of the disease process in less than ten years, and it could be twenty or more.
| Author | Browning, Christopher R. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Penguin Books, 2001 |
| Copyright Date | 1991 |
| Number of Pages | viii + 271 |
| Extras | maps, photos, statistics, bibliographic, notes, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II; Holocaust |
| When Read | March 2011 |
Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the Ordnungs Polizei or Order Police was a quasi-military police unit organized in Hamburg in the 1930's, mostly of men who were a little older than military age. Many apparently joined in hopes of staying out of the coming war. However, when Germany conquered Poland and then continued the war, reserves like this battalion were mobilized in order to provide occupation forces that would not take soldiers from combat units. The police unit was soon drawn into the Holocaust. Like other "Orpo" units it was ordered to enforce the ghettoization of Jews. Before long the orders came through to shoot them.
The first "action" was at Jozefow. About 1,600 Jews were rounded up and marched into the forest. Batches were taken further in with one guard assigned to one prisoner. The Jews were ordered to lie face down on the ground, then each one was shot in the neck, all at the same time. The neck shot was devised by the battalion doctor who determined that it would be quick and "humane", while preventing blood, brains and bones from being splattered all over the shooters. He instructed the men to place their bayonets against the aiming point in the neck in order to guarantee an accurate shot and then, all together, pull the triggers.
Many men were sick. Some refused the initial assignment. Some refused after the first killing, or after several killings. Some pulled the gun away at the last minute and fired into the ground. The battalion commander, Major Trapp, was himself disturbed by what the unit was ordered to do and protected the men who didn't want to do it. But the orders were still carried out. As massacre followed massacre and "Jew hunts" were organized to find escapees in the woods, the men of the unit became more and more inured to the task. Some began to take pleasure in the killing, tormenting the Jews before shooting them.
In the period 1962-72, the Office of the State Prosecutor in Hamburg investigated these crimes and produced a very unusual body of interviews covering more men and in more depth than any other criminal Holocaust investigation. Upon discovering it, Browning concentrated on reading and understanding it to produce this book about the unit. He discusses what was done and why. Why did some men refuse and others not refuse? (Answer: Some of them, especially the older men and family men, were better equipped psychologically to sympathize with the Jews and see the horror of what was being done.) How did they evade the killing duty? What excuses did they give? (Answer: they claimed to be too "weak" to carry out the killings. To criticize the morality would have required an unacceptable confrontation both with authority and with their own comrades who constituted the entire circle of their social relationships in Poland.) How were the men brought to the point where this kind of killing was acceptable? (Answer: It was a complex of psycho-social factors including springing the task upon them quickly before they could think much about it, training them with propaganda to believe that Jews were subhuman enemies of the German people, instilling respect and submission to authority - a long standing part of German culture that was heavily re-infused in the Nazi era, browbeating "weaklings" and "cowards", giving them lots of alcohol, bringing in drunken "Hiwi" Baltic police thugs to do some of the killing, backing off shootings to instead put people on trains to the death camps (a psychologically easier task even though the men knew they were sending the Jews to their deaths), and de-humanizing the police with so much brutal experience that what they were doing became routine.)
In the final chapter, Browning defends his research very ably against the claims of Daniel Goldhagen who, in his book Hitler's Willing Executioners, insisted that Browning and others were wrong and that the real cause of the killings was deep, underlying German anti-semitism that Hitler had only to bring to the surface and unleash. Browning recounts much useful social science research to show how people can be brought to do atrocious things and how, while the Jews suffered on a larger scale than anyone else, equally atrocious massacres were carried out against the mentally ill in Germany, against Russian prisoners, and against some non-Jewish civilian populations. And the atrocities were not only committed by Germans, but also by Baltic, Romanian, Ukrainian, Croatian, and other fascist soldiers and police. There are even examples of American soldiers machine gunning helpless Japanese in the water, or helpless civilians in the Vietnam war, in which we have at least one account of a helicopter door gunner who refused an order to kill civilians, refused a second time, finally did it under duress, threw up, but eventually learned to "enjoy" the killings. Examples from Rwanda and Bosnia are also relevant.
This seems to me to be an important book. It makes sense of something that I had not been able to understand. It shows that "ordinary men" are indeed capable of being converted into killers. Resistance, both to the crimes and to the brutalization, is much more difficult than we like to imagine. It is a cautionary story that needs to be explained to everyone.
This is an important topic for me. I've never understood why ordinary Germans supported the Nazi party and participated in the Holocaust. The best answer I have seen to the first question came from Peter Fritsche's book Life and Death in the Third Reich (see also my Amazon.com review of it.) This book comes as close as any I have read to answering the second question.
There are no gigantic surprises here. There is no "Aha!" insight. What happened was pretty mundane. Ordinary men, subjected to considerable pressure and exposed to brutal conditions, became brutal men. A man can learn to catch fish and eat them. He can learn to kill cows and pigs. He can learn to push other men around. So too he can learn to kill other human beings. It can become no more difficult for him than catching fish or killing insects.
The brutalization of Orpo Battalion 101 was more sudden than the progression I described above. The transition from civilized man to killer was more compressed. It happened very quickly, but that quickness was itself one of the conditions that made it work. The men were given no chance to think. They had already been trained to follow orders. They already knew that arguing with authority was pointless and dangerous. They had already been conditioned into a routine conformance with the discipline of the organization. They had already been conditioned to think of Jews as less worthy than other human beings. Then, in a single morning, they are brought into a situation where they are each assigned a Jew and ordered to kill him or her. To their left and their right are other men whom they know well, each with his own gun and his own Jew. The specific steps have been preordained. Each step is a small one. The Jews are all made to lie face down on the ground. The shooters step forward. It is just a few steps. The bayonet is placed at the back of the neck to aim the rifle. It is a simple procedure. The right index finger pulls back on the trigger. It is another simple procedure.
A few of the men slip their weapon to the side and fire into the dirt. The sergeants yell at them and order them to continue. If necessary, the sergeant shoots the Jew himself. A few of the men are elated with the thrill of killing. Most are in shock. But now they have done it. They are killers. Their inner conflicts boil inside but there isn't much they can do. A few refuse to do it again. A few find ways to slip away. No one resists beyond that. No one raises his voice against his sergeants and his officers and says "No, this is wrong! We must not do this." No one raises his rifle against his own comrades to defend a Jew.
Would I have done differently? I like to think that I would have, but I have been raised with advantages that these men didn't have. I have known about the Holocaust since childhood. I have been raised to see it as the greatest evil of our time. I have thought about it interminably. In my mind, I have put myself in the position of the Jew time and time again.
What if the situation were reversed? What if there were Orpo policemen lined up on the ground and I were in a line of Jews with guns pointed at their necks? Would I pull the trigger? I might move my gun to the side and shoot into the dirt. I might even raise my voice against the killings. I almost definitely would not raise my rifle against my fellow Jews. And I just might shoot the man lying on the ground. I cannot honestly say exactly what I would do. And if I can't say now what I would do, then I too am vulnerable to pressure.
Departing from the book cards has freed me to write extensive notes that would otherwise have appeared in my diary. Anyone wanting to know my response to a book has to look in both places.
| Author | Hemingway, Ernest |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Scribner, 1986 |
| Number of Pages | 247 |
| Extras | Preface by Charles Scribner |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | March 2011 |
Young writer David Bourne travels around the Midi with his young wife Catherine. He is an ex-fighter pilot from the war, now working on a set of short stories about his African childhood after having successfully published two novels.
Several months into the marriage, Catherine begins to surprise David. She cuts her hair short and says she is a boy. She want to have sex with her as David and him as Catherine. She wants him to have his hair cut exactly like hers and for both of them to dye their hair blond. Then she finds another young beauty, Marita, whom she detaches from another woman and brings into their marriage against David's will. She sleeps with Marita. Then she insists that David sleep with her too, she says it's so she won't feel guilty. But Catherine is descending deeper and deeper into neurosis, building up a head of steam of love, hate, jealousy, fear, and guilt. In a final spasm of self and other destruction, she burns David's manuscript while he is out.
David goes along with all of the madness. The madder it gets, the more he withdraws into his writing, believing that he is working out his essential problems in the stories. The key story is about his finding a huge elephant in his childhood, telling his father, and going on a hunt with him and a native tracker to find and kill the elephant - something that he soon wishes they would not do but there's nothing he can do to stop it. The story is painful and difficult for him. He wants it to end differently but he knows it cannot. He has to simply tell it as it is, knowing that it is important and valuable as it is, without any manipulation on his part. And so it seems for his real life with Catherine and Marita.
The book was never finished. Despite having worked on it from 1946 until his death in 1961, Hemingway never published it. His wife Mary brought it into a publisher in 1986, 25 years after his suicide. It is said that 80 or more pages were not included in the published version.
At first I was put off by this book. David seemed totally passive. Something alarming was happening with his new wife but he kept looking the other way, or maybe looking the right way but choosing not to react, allowing the madness to develop without trying to stem it. Perhaps there was no way to stem it. Perhaps it took too long to understand where it was heading. Perhaps the final hurt inflicted by Catherine upon him was something he didn't see coming since her neurosis seemed more self-destructive than harmful to others.
But as I read the book I became more absorbed in it. I began to identify with the African story. I began to see in it the combination of an explanation of David's past, his intense desire to work out what happened, and his need to see things objectively without interfering. He wrote what he saw. He did not try to change it because he despaired of being able to change anything, and because the naked truth drew him on. It was a difficult book with a difficult subject and difficult characters but, repressed as David was, it had much depth of feeling.
I read some of the reviews on Amazon.com. One by Professor Arthur Waldhorn from Library Journal was critical in a nasty way that taught us nothing about what was in the book. Another by J. Hill was deeply appreciative. I wrote a comment thanking him for it.
| Author | Keilson, Hans |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Searls, Damion |
| Publication | New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010 |
| Copyright Date | 1947 |
| Number of Pages | 135 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | World War II; Holocaust; Holland |
| When Read | March 2011 |
Wim and Marie live a comfortable middle class life in a Dutch town sometime during World War II. He works in the office of a nearby factory and she is a housewife. When a friend comes to them and asks them to take in a Jew in hiding from the Nazis they agree. Nico arrives with a single suitcase full of clothes and a briefcase and is installed in the upstairs bedroom. He lives there for a year, doing his best not to be a hindrance to his hosts while they do their best to treat him as a welcome guest. Then he contracts pneumonia and ultimately dies of it.
Wim and the local doctor carry the body out on a moonless night. They leave Nico under a bench in a nearby park. The next day they realize that Nico was wearing Wim's pajamas, which had a laundry tag and a monogram that could identify Wim. The two must themselves go into hiding, living in an upstairs room in an old lady's house. They spend several days in hiding, coming to a greater understanding of Nico's life and predicament, feeling themselves trapped, anxious, and under siege. Then they are informed that the policeman who found the body was one of the "good" ones. He figured everything out, cut out the tag and monogram and burned them. Wim and Marie are safe. They return home and resume their settled lives.
The story moves back and forth in time. It opens with the doctor's visit after Nico's death, then alternates between the story of Nico's life with Wim and Marie, and their effort after his death to dispose of the body and protect themselves. It is told by a narrator mostly describing Wim and Marie's individual points of view. There is no action. The plot is revealed in the first couple of pages. The book is all about character and the attempt to live as civilized and caring people.
Still alive at age 100 when this book was published, the author is a psychologist, born in Berlin in 1909 but joining the Dutch resistance movement during the war. He writes with first person experience of these people and these events.
It is unlike all other Holocaust stories that I have read. There are no men with guns, whips and clubs, no vicious dogs, no trains, no shootings. There are no informers, no anti-semites, no heartless people concerned only with their own lives, no brutal thugs who get pleasure from hurting innocents and stealing their possessions. It's all a civilized and understandable life, a life that all of us can understand and find our place in. As such, it gives us a truly different Holocaust story and it makes me appreciate the way that ordinary decency can contribute to a better life for all of us.
Marcia read this book before me, liked it, and recommended it to me. I liked it too.
| Author | McNab, Chris |
|---|---|
| Publication | London: Osprey, 2001 |
| Number of Pages | 98 |
| Extras | photos, diagrams, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Military; Technical |
| When Read | March 2011 |
This is a history of the Avtomat Kalashnikov, the AK-47 and its many successors and derivatives. It begins with some of the developments in the USSR and Germany that led up to its invention, and covers a little of Mikhail Kalashnikov's service prior to his injury in a tank in 1943 and his relegation to rear area duties where he began working intensively on firearms.
The rifle was adopted in 1947 and has gone on, with it's derivatives, to become the most used weapon in the world. The original AK-47 was supplanted by the more easily manufactured AKM, to be supplanted in 1974 by the AK-74, which fired a 5.45 x 39 mm cartridge instead of the m43 7.62 x 39 mm cartridge of its predecessors. The new cartridge gave a flatter trajectory, extended range, greatly reduced recoil (due both to smaller charges and to a muzzle brake) and therefore significantly improved controllability, and deadlier terminal ballistics due to the hydrostatic shock of the higher velocity bullets, and the tumbling in the body induced by the hollow deformable tip. All of these weapons are reliable, capable of operating in harsh conditions, easy to disassemble and clean and easy to learn both to shoot and to maintain. Copies have been made by many countries including all of the old Warsaw Pact countries, China, North Korea, Yugoslavia, Finland, Israel, South Africa, Egypt, Iraq, and perhaps others. Derivatives for squad automatic weapons, sniping, carbines, and submachine guns have been produced. It is still manufactured today in many countries and variants and has been produced for 5.56 mm NATO ammunition as well as the Soviet sizes.
This is one of the standard Osprey books with good photos, reasonably good though not overly detailed technical information, and lots of photos and diagrams. I read it in just a couple of sittings.
The book answered a lot of questions I've had about the AK-47 and its comparison to other arms. It is a very potent weapon. It has changed the course of history for many underdeveloped countries where the number of people killed by warring gangs and warlords has gone up significantly. Wounds from this weapon, as well as from the M-16, are very deadly.
We don't think about small arms much in our thinking about war, but modern assault rifles have made a significant difference in the power of infantry and have given poor and guerrilla armies greatly increased effectiveness.
| Author | Abraham, Pearl |
|---|---|
| Publication | Grand Haven, MI: Brilliance Audio, 2010 |
| Number of Pages | 272 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Islam |
| When Read | March 2011 |
Eighteen year old John Jude Parish, surfer, skateboarder, and student of spirituality and religion, wanders into a Muslim oriented Internet chat room on spirituality and begins exchanging ideas. He is stimulated by the thought of some universal spiritual quest. He reads and idolizes the 19th century explorer, Richard Burton, who learned 27 languages and became a Sufi mystic. He goes to New York to study Arabic. He meets Muslim friends. One of them convinces him to go with him to Pakistan to study Arabic there and immerse himself in a different culture. It is an appealing idea for this 18 year old in search of meaning, adventure, and fulfillment.
John is the son of Bill, a big time Washington lawyer, and Barbara, a psychotherapist and free thinker who encourages John in his experimenting with life. He is the lover of Katie, a lithe and blond surfer girl and has strong friendships with two other surfer girls, helping to train them for a championship. But in the chat room he meets Noor, a lovely waitress in New York with a reserved, Muslim, spiritual side that is the opposite of the outgoing Katie, but is also terribly attractive to him. She is one of the reasons he goes to New York. It is partly out of attraction to her that he converts to Islam and plans his trip to Pakistan.
Pakistan is not exactly what he expected. In his naive way, he absorbs everything put before him. He makes no judgments. He falls into homosexual relationships, taking the part of the female (the only part the macho Pakistanis permit), and he sees all of this as a journey of discovery and self-discovery. When he is taken to a training camp he asks few questions, accepting the advice to train his body, to learn to shoot. He feels warmly towards the young boys there and the instructor, who teaches him religion and how to shoot a rifle. Then, when he is urged to make a journey into Afghanistan on jihad, he accepts this too as a proper next step in his journey. It is exotic, different, extreme, but in spite of his non-violent nature, all of that attracts him. We last see him on the road in Pakistan with ten other young men to whom he has easily bonded, on their way to fight the Northern Alliance.
Then the World Trade Center bombing happens. From then on, the rest of the story takes place in the U.S. Barbara Parish, his mother, completely falls apart. She calls every person in government that she has ever met. She screams at her husband to do something. He does his best but there really isn't anything to be done. Nobody knows where John is, or what has happened to him. Or if they know, they won't say. People stop answering the phone when Barbara calls.
The news story breaks of the American Taliban, John Walker Lindh. He is arrested and tried for crimes against the United States. Barbara practically goes ballistic, trying to see him, trying to see his parents, trying to meet the parents of the other American boy arrested in Afghanistan. Of course she can't really meet anyone and she can't get any information.
In the last scene of the book, Barbara goes to their beach house on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. She finds John's surfboard. She takes it to the beach where she sees Katie and Sylvie. They take her out into the ocean and show her how to climb onto the board. She stands up and feels the sensations of the ocean and the wind. She feels close to John. She feels a sense of him that she had not had before.
The novel has its faults. It is slow and plodding until near the end. John's development is taken step by step, skipping nothing. But it's not unconvincing. We can see some of how the boy becomes enmeshed in these ideas. We understand when he kneels on a prayer mat in a mosque and feels the presence of hundreds of men, all saying the same prayers, all speaking in unison, all bowing in unison. He feels a oneness with humanity.
On the other hand, I'm not convinced by the actual trip into Afghanistan. Picking up a gun and deciding to shoot someone you don't know, in a conflict that you know nothing about, doesn't seem like a very spiritual thing to do. John doesn't ask enough questions. He's a smart boy. He's a thinker. He's a believer in human values. I think it might be possible for a boy like that to do such a thing, but I'm not completely won over to the idea by Abraham's account of it.
Still, this is a bold book in a number of ways. It attempts to address the appeal of Islam from the inside. It sees the Muslim intellectuals as honest intellectuals, not necessarily as dogmatics and fanatics. It treats homosexuality in an open way and from the point of view of another culture. It is a cross gender novel in its attempt by a woman to understand and write an intensely male point of view. (Perhaps John's adoption of the female sexual role is something that a woman writer could understand better than a male one?) Its ending, with John's fate unknown, is risky. It leaves the readership in a place where they don't like to be - always a risk for an author.
I won't say that I liked the book or that I disliked it. It did open my mind to some ideas that I had not entertained before. Although much of it was exotic from the point of view of my own sensibility, I found a lot of it at least plausible if not always convincing. I was not in the least attracted to the ideas of the Islamists and found many of them rather repulsive, but I think I did see more of why some people find them appealing.
| Author | Atkins, Ace |
|---|---|
| Publication | Tantor Audio, 2010 |
| Number of Pages | 448 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | April 2011 |
The story opens with a violent assault by Harvey Bailey and Vern Miller, using Tommy guns, on a car full of cops and FBI agents transporting a criminal. The criminal dies along with most of the cops but Bailey and Miller get away. Meanwhile George "Machine Gun" Kelly and another guy bust into the house of oil millionaire Charles Urschel and kidnap him for $200,000 ransom. They take him to Kelly's wife Kathryn's parents' house in rural Texas to be held prisoner by "Boss", "Potatoes" and "Ma" while Kelly works to get the dough. Bailey and Miller, figuring out that their old pal George is behind the kidnapping, show up and horn in on the deal.
The story, based on real events, is as much a comedy as a mystery. The kidnappers take the wrong road. They run out of gas. They are later involved in an armored truck robbery but it turns out that the sacks they steal are full of mail, not money. Kathryn picks up an out of work farmer to use as a go between to deliver messages and he turns out to be a lush and check forger. She borrows their 11 year old daughter to use as cover as a normal family, but the little girl later outsmarts them and steals money from them. Kathryn, a real ball-buster, hectors George all the time, curses, and bawls out all of the other gangsters. When they get the money for the kidnapping, she demands that George kill Urschel, which he pretends to do but actually lets him go. When the FBI captures her Texas family, she nags and wheedles George to turn himself in in exchange for freeing her Mama (she doesn't care about "Boss" or "Potatoes"). She cuts a deal with Frank Nitty to kill Vern Miller who is trying to collect his agreed payment for the kidnapping deal, and tries to cut a deal with the FBI to betray her husband to save her mother. After they are arrested she claims to be innocent, saying George made her do everything. George, a tough but good natured guy seems to have no problem with that. He accepts her as she is. She wants fame and fortune. He wants to get a pile of money and settle down somewhere to drink booze, have sex with his beautiful Kathryn, listen to Buck Rogers on the radio, and read the funny papers. He wouldn't mind having kids and regrets that his first wife left him with his two boys.
The other side of the story is also depicted. FBI agent Gus T. Jones leads the hunt for the kidnappers. He's old, short, and fat, but also very smart and tough. He walks into a hobo camp and pistol whips a man who stole money from Urschel's wife. He figures out where the kidnap hideout was by comparing Urschel's report of planes going overhead with airline schedules. He captures the farmer/check forger/go-between and half drowns him in a bathtub to make him talk (cops were unrestrained in those days.) He finally catches up to the Kellys and arrests them himself in a gun to gun showdown. The Kellys go to prison, he resigned and accepting, she not so.
It's a rather remarkable story in that it is, or at least hopes to be, the real thing.
Certain aspects of this book seem very good. The characters are very sharply drawn. The story is interesting. We have some sympathy for at least some of the people. But there are also significant weaknesses. Although some of the characters are strong, they're thin. Gus T. Jones is the laid back but smart and deeply experienced ex-Texas Ranger, but we really know nothing about him. He seems strongly motivated to find the Kellys, but we're not really sure why. Kathryn, perhaps the central character in the story, is foul mouthed, selfish, vain and self-defeating. We understand that, but we'd like to know more about why she is that way, and why George has no problem with it. The minor characters like Boss and Potatoes are almost cartoons.
I know it's a mistake to expect rational behavior from Machine Gun Kelly and his wife. Rational people are unlikely to do what they did. It is entirely possible that everything they did they sort of slipped into, following impulses that were hardly under tight control.
Maybe my dissatisfaction with the book doesn't have to do with any of that. Maybe it's just that I found the whole story a little repellent. There was little to sympathize with. I could like the Kellys only a little. I could like Gus T. Jones only a little. I found his torturing of his prisoner hard to take and one of the characteristics of 1930's law enforcement that I hope we have moved beyond. The little girl turned out bad. Her mother was bad. Her father was bad. Even the kidnap victim, Urschel, was problematic. It was a story without a hero. Kelly himself may have been as sympathetic a character as there was in the story.
| Author | Roth, Philip |
|---|---|
| Publication | Grand Haven, MI: Brilliance Audio, 2009 |
| Number of Pages | 160 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | April 2011 |
Aging actor Simon Axler, at age 65, finished a stint as King Lear convinced that he had done a terrible job as an actor and was finished on stage. His wife was already long gone. He now lived alone in his house an hour out of New York. When his agent came to visit with a proposition for a new part, Axler turned it down. The agent offered all sorts of encouragement. He said that A had not lost his ability, only his confidence, that the part in the play was perfect for him, and that the director of this play was exactly the man to work with him and restore his confidence, bringing out the best in him.
Axler wouldn't be moved. He was done with the theater. If anything, he was done with life, felt nothing was left for him, and had become suicidal. He checked himself into a mental hospital where they patched up his psyche to the point that he could live outside again, but he still refused to go back to work. While in the hospital he met a weak and passive woman who had found that her husband was sexually abusing her young daughter and she had become wild with anger and guilt. She was a woman who would play an indirect role later in the story when A reads in the paper that she shot her husband. Her act of violence shook him but also moved him and appealed to him.
Axler went back to his house. He was called upon by Pegeen, the 40 year old daughter of old friends from college who was now teaching English in a college an hour away. Pegeen had been a lesbian for all her adult life but, for some reason not clear to either of them, she was attracted to Axler. They became closer. They became lovers. He bought gifts for her. He called his theater friends in New York and asked them where to take her shopping for clothes and shoes and hairstyling. She was uncomfortable with it but soon got into the spirit of it and seemed to greatly enjoy her transformation into a completely different kind of woman.
Pegeen's past didn't leave her alone. Her parents were totally opposed to her relationship with a man 25 years older who would soon become a burden to her. Her ex-lover, a neurotic dean at the college who got her her job, wouldn't leave her alone. Her lover from before that had left her to get a sex change operation and become a man. She was a woman who, as we now say, had "issues". But then so did Axler.
A crisis came in the novel when Pegeen confided to Axler that she had had a few lesbian flings while she was seeing him. Instead of being angered, Axler found himself intrigued. One night when they were out at a restaurant he saw a woman drinking heavily at the bar whom he thought might interest Pegeen and the two of them picked her up and took her home. There followed a wild night of sex, totally orchestrated by Pegeen, with Axler doing as he was told.
Not long after that, even as Axler was acting out ridiculous fantasies of new love and fatherhood with Pegeen, she left him. She said that she was done. Axler broke down completely. He yelled and screamed. He called her all sorts of things. He called her mother and father and accused them of turning her against him because they were jealous of his success on the stage and hated him for their failures. Raging on, ashamed of everything he was doing but unable to stop it or control himself, he took out his shotgun, played out the suicide scene in a Chekhov play, and killed himself.
This is a story I wanted to like. Getting old himself (he was 76 in 2009) Roth has some understanding of what happens to us, our loss of confidence and the difficulties we face. But his character, Axler, can't do it at all gracefully. He makes a mess of everything, his acting, his love affair, his relationship with Pegeen's parents, his out of control rage. He goes from irrational happiness to irrational anger. He is one of those people for whom unhappiness is easily converted to anger and projected outward - a trait I have never liked but have had to deal with in others.
The book has much exotic sex in it. Pegeen brings out her bag of toys: her soft whip, her strap on dildo, her creams and lotions. She wants to use the dildo on him but he refuses with no explanation. Still, he is happy to penetrate her in the ass. The sex is a little wild but seems a little more neurotic and uncomfortable than exciting. Although everything in the novel is narrated and explained from Axler's point of view, there are some things that Axler doesn't really try to analyze and are not well worked out in the book.
The worst part of the story, from my point of view, is Axler's behavior just before Pegeen breaks up with him, when he visits a genetics specialist in New York to find out if it's okay to father a child at his age, and then again after the breakup, when he flies into a rage. I wanted to yell at him to grow up, to treat the woman he had wanted to spend the rest of his life with and father a child with, with a little respect. I wanted him to stop his irrational anger and stop the ridiculous accusations against his old friends. I wanted him to put away the shotgun. I wanted him to resolve his issues and find some meaning and dignity in his life, not blow his head off. When he finally did kill himself I felt as much relief that this was over and at least he hadn't killed anyone else, as sorrow for his loss.
Well, the book is what it is, and Axler is who he is, and Roth is who he is, and I am who I am. The book didn't satisfy me. I presume it satisfied Roth.
| Author | Tec, Nechama, 1931- |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Oxford University Press, 2009 |
| Copyright Date | 1993 |
| Number of Pages | 374 |
| Extras | map, photos, notes, biographies, index |
| Extras | Forward by Edward Zwick |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II; Holocaust |
| When Read | April 2011 |
Many of the Jews of western Poland believed themselves to be saved when the Soviets rolled in in 1939, taking over western Poland as part of the Nazi-Soviet pact. Some were pro-communist, but even many of the anti-communists saw the Russians as a shield against the known anti-semitism of the Germans. But it didn't save them. The German invasion in 1941 was so quick and successful that hardly anyone escaped to the east and the Holocaust came to eastern Poland.
Tuvia Bielski and his brothers never went into the ghettos. They stayed out, working on Polish or Byelorussian farms, living by their wits in the countryside. Their parents were rounded up and disappeared into the killings but they continued to survive on their own. But things got hotter. Jew hunts were organized. Farmers were under pressure to turn in Jews. Fewer and fewer non-Jews could be trusted. Finally, the Bielskis got together with some other Jews who were on the run and organized themselves to survive. They bought a few guns and raided a police station in hopes of getting more. They formed a Jewish partisan group that began to accumulate more and more runaway Jews.
Some of the Jewish partisans wanted revenge. They wanted to kill Germans. They saw the rescue of old Jews, women and children as counter productive. It gave them more mouths to feed, slowed them down, and made it necessary to hide more rather than attack the Germans. But Tuvia Bielski, the charismatic leader of the group, had other ideas. He believed their goal should not be to kill Germans but to save Jews. The Russians, British and Americans would kill Germans far more effectively than the Jewish partisans could, but only the Jewish partisans could rescue Jews. Nobody else cared.
This is the story of the Bielski Otriad (partisan detachment), the partisan group organized by Tuvia and his brothers Asael and Zus. They hid in the forest. The foraged for food. They set up larger and larger camps with many kinds of workshops. They forged relations with Russian partisan units and accepted command from the local Russian partisan general. They provided fewer fighters than many other partisan units but they did provide significant numbers of fighters and also provided clothing, shoes, medical care, leather goods, and other products from their workshops to service the surrounding partisan units. They sent men out into the forest and into the ghettos to find Jews and bring them into the camps. Tuvia maintained great flexibility and leadership both in dealing with the Russian and Communist Party organizations that held the future of the Jews in their hands, and in dealing, at least twice, with deadly force against Jews who would not submit their personal demands to the needs of the group. It's not clear that Tuvia always made the right decisions but he did better than any of the other would be leaders would have done. In the end, when the Red Army finally drove the Germans out of the area in the summer of 1944 [probably in Operation Bagration], the Bielski Otriad had accumulated and protected 1,200 Jewish survivors.
The story was pieced together by Tec, a Holocaust survivor herself who survived the war as a child living with a Polish Christian family. Her sources were mainly survivors of the Otriad living in Israel, plus a single interview with Tuvia himself, then living in New York, before he died. Her account is meticulously documented and very thorough.
Tec was very sympathetic to the Bielskis and the other members of the Otriad, but she maintained her objectivity. She speaks plainly, for example, about the role of women (she is an expert on women and the Holocaust), about the ways in which Tuvia and his brothers took their fill of the adoring young women in the camp, and about a few of the vanities and perquisites that they adopted. But she also recognizes that it was only because of Tuvia's unwavering dedication to saving every Jew that he could, even the old, the sick, the children and the helpless, that brought so many out of the path of destruction.
Tec had a reputation as a historian of the Holocaust. Because of that, Israeli survivors of the partisan band contacted her and begged her to undertake this history. She was a good choice for the job.
I watched the movie Defiance as a Netflix stream. I had some misgivings about it but it grew on me. When I saw the book in the library I borrowed and read it.
There are significant differences between the book and the movie. The Wikipedia article on Nechama Tec says that she was shocked when she saw the movie to see how many differences there were. However, after watching the movie a few times it grew on her too.
In the movie, the most dramatic scenes appear to be entirely fictional. Tuvia Bielski breaks into the home of a Belorussian policeman who killed his father and mother. He executes the policeman and kills his two grown sons when they attempt to stop him. It is a very dramatic scene and is a kind of turning point in the movie. Tuvia has the man down on his knees, begging for his life. Tuvia says, "In the name of ... Bielski and ... Bielski" (naming his father and mother), and it is clear he going to execute the bastard. That's when the boys, also policemen, jump up and reach for their guns and Tuvia shoots them, and then their father, while the wife and mother breaks down and cries for him to kill her too. It is a turning point for Tuvia because it commits him to the path of resistance. It is a turning point for the audience because, for us, we come to understand the fuller dimensions of the conflict and the violence of resistance. It is made real and tangible. It is heroic and also horrible. But it's not in the book and it didn't happen.
Other dramatic scenes of violence are also made up for the movie. Examples are: the execution of the Jew who took food from the people, saying that fighters are entitled to more food than non-fighters; Tuvia's breakdown in the swamp; the German attack with the armored car, and Asael's dramatic rescue when he and his Jewish partisans have returned from a Russian unit and attack the Germans from the rear, wiping them out.
None of these are in the book. However the book is a study of what happened, not what it felt like. It contained many reminiscences, but no dramatic scenes. We read, for example, of the breakout of the last survivors of a ghetto through a tunnel that they dug. We read that it took two hours for all of them to get out and that perhaps 50 were killed, or maybe more. We don't know. But we don't read about crawling on hands and knees through the tunnel, about the shortness of air and the heart pounding fear, about the emergence from the ground into rain and night, running in different directions while shots are fired, about the patrols rounding up and shooting escapees.
An inside story of the Bielski Otriad would be full of such dramatic and emotional scenes. Perhaps by creating some extra ones the movie makers did not so much depart from the truth as invent a parallel truth - a truth that we know must have existed even if it has been lost. The fictitious scenes in the movie are like Aristotle's dramatic events. They didn't happen but they are what would have happened if we could remove all of the unnecessary and accidental parts of an experience and leave only its inner and essential core. They give us an essence of the story that can help us to understand the truth better than a dryer but more accurate recounting of the facts.
Maybe I'm bending over backwards to endorse the movie. That can happen. I'm not above it. I get carried away in one direction and then the pendulum swings and I am carried away in the other. I guess there's no need to resolve the problem right here. I couldn't do it anyway because I'm unable to find the still and objective standpoint from which to view the story. I'm riding on the pendulum and don't know how to get off.
| Author | Tucker-Jones, Anthony |
|---|---|
| Publication | Barnsley, England: Pen and Sword, 2009 |
| Number of Pages | 190 |
| Extras | maps, photos, appendices, notes, bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II; Eastern front |
| When Read | April 2011 |
In June 1944 the Red Army launched its largest offensive to date, attacking the Wehrmacht's Army Group Centre and essentially destroying it. 670,000 Germans, about half of them from Army Group Centre, were killed, wounded or captured in June and July alone. The Germans were already on the defensive. They had already had their offensive capability curtailed at Kursk the previous year. Bagration made clear that defense was now also impossible. The war in the east was lost and there would be no chance of keeping the Russians out of Germany itself.
The losses involved every part of the German war machine. Huge numbers of men were killed. Luftwaffe units were destroyed. The Red Air Force assumed total command of the air in any place where they wanted it. Panzer forces had already been reduced to a defensive role with regular tanks being replaced with tank chassis mounting much cheaper armored anti-tank guns that were of limited use in offense. But these too, along with artillery, trucks, ammunition, railroad cars, and all other materials of war were badly depleted, leaving the Soviets superior in every field. As with the British and Americans in the west, it was only the Red Army's tiredness and outrunning of its supplies that forced them to finally halt their offensive and save the assault on Germany and Berlin for the next year.
Hitler's personal leadership of the war effort contributed enormously to Soviet success. As he had done at Stalingrad and elsewhere, he adopted a fortress policy. He demanded that his troops stay and fight no matter what the odds. He committed his few reserves piecemeal - attempting to relieve this or that surrounded fortified place, sending them into absurd attacks against overwhelming forces. He made it impossible to concentrate his forces where they needed to be because he had them spread out in their various fortress positions, allowing the Russians to concentrate against one strong point and destroy it, then move on to the next, while German forces that might have resisted sat idly in their fortresses, waiting for the Red juggernaut to come to them. Almost invariably, when Hitler finally relented and ordered a retreat, it was already too late. Surrounded Germans would attempt to break out losing, 50, 80, 90, or 95 percent of their forces in the process. All heavy weapons would be lost and only handfuls of bedraggled, disorganized, and defeated survivors would emerge from the swamps and forests.
Russian losses were high. Stalin, like Hitler, had little regard for the lives of his own people. He often pushed too hard. But he had finally learned to listen to advice from his generals - Zhukov, Vasilievsky, Rokossovsky and others. High as the Russian losses were, the Germans lost even more.
Tucker-Jones' account is dry and academic. He describes actions on this part of the front, then moves to the next, then the next, then the next, and on and on - recounting details of armies, corps and divisions on each part of the front. The big picture is sometimes lost in his attention to this detail. It's not that the detail goes down too deeply, it doesn't do that. The problem is that it's too broad. I would have liked the limited number of pages to include some more human level conception of the story as well as more and clearer high level description of the entire undertaking. He also provides too few maps and leaves out too much detail. Time and again he names villages, towns, highways, railroads, that are not on the maps and makes it impossible to understand exactly what is happening without having some separate map source.
Nevertheless, it's a useful book. We have any number of books about Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, the Falaise Gap, and the Battle of the Bulge. We have any number of books about Stalingrad. We have a much smaller but still significant number of books about Kursk. But Bagration, which resulted in more German losses than any of those battles, is poorly documented. So this book fills a gap.
One last comment I'll make here is about my admiration for the Russian general Konstantin Rokossovsky. I had known the name before. I knew that he was one of the top commanders in the Battle of Berlin. But I hadn't known any more.
I looked him up in the Wikipedia. He was a son of Polish nobility but was orphaned at age 14 and lived as a factory worker and stone mason. He fought in the Imperial army in the first world war and then went over to the Bolsheviks in 1917, leading a cavalry detachment and winning the highest honor, the Order of the Red Banner. He went on to become a leading general in the Red Army and was Zhukov's commander. But then in 1937 he was arrested as a Polish spy during the great purge and sent to prison in Siberia where he suffered beatings in which his teeth were knocked out and his ribs were broken but his spirit remained strong. He was called back in the crisis and quickly took up arms against the Germans. He was called upon by Stalin himself where, unlike most of the sycophants around the dictator, Rokossovsky stood up to Stalin and refused to abandon his recommendations on strategy in order to accept Stalin's counter ideas. Not so veiled threats were made but Rokossovsky stood firm in his belief that a two pronged assault was required on his section of the front and not the single big thrust that Stalin demanded. Stalin gave in and it is even possible that Stalin trusted him more for his refusal to bow to pressure.
| Author | Olds, Robin |
|---|---|
| Author | Olds, Christina |
| Author | Rasimus, Ed |
| Publication | Blackstone Audio, 2010 |
| Number of Pages | 432 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biography |
| Keywords | World War II; Vietnam War; Aviation; United States Air Force |
| When Read | April 2011 |
The son of a World War I fighter pilot, Robin Olds wanted nothing in his life but to be a fighter pilot. He made it to West Point and got the training he needed in time to reach England in 1944. His first combat flights were just about the time of the Normandy invasion.
Olds was a fighter pilot of the most aggressive, determined and confident type. Never really experiencing fear, it seemed that his only regrets in combat were when he failed to come to grips with the enemy, not when he got into combat with them. He flew P-38 Lightnings, shooting down his first two Bf-109s on the same morning that he blew up a bridge when he showed up over the target alone with no one else around and he couldn't actually claim the bridge because it would have been seen as in violation of orders. Later he switched to P-51 Mustangs and scored a number of additional victories, becoming an ace.
At the end of the war, the 22 year old major was reassigned to West Point to be a junior football coach. It was not for him and he managed to get himself assigned at the end of 1945 to the first jet squadron formed to fly P-80s in California. Picked by his commander to participate in aerobatics shows, the two of them did the first jet powered airshows ever done, his commander being killed in one of them in a maneuver conducted too low to the ground.
Olds missed Korea. He was stationed for a year with the RAF in England where he learned RAF flying techniques and, no doubt, made some impression of his own. When the Vietnam War started, he finally got back into action again as a Colonel and Wing leader flying F-4s out of Thailand. He was the first Wing leader in the area who actually led his pilots himself, flying many missions "off the books" in order to keep down his official flying record and prevent the Air Force from forcing him back to the U.S. He shot down four MiGs and would have done more (and perhaps secretly did) but he needed to keep from becoming an ace for the same reason that he could not rack up 100 missions. He was a master of all of the required skills, from air to air combat, to leading and inspiring young pilots, planning strategy, setting up MiG traps, protecting the F-105 "Thud" fighter bombers, and organizing his Wing and base for efficient operations. His marriage to a movie star went all to hell and he lost 35 pounds while flying combat, but this was his element. It was what he loved to do. On subsequent tours of Vietnam in a different capacity he was able, with the collusion of friends, to sneak in more air time over the North.
After Vietnam he became the Air Force Academy commandant for a few years, then an inspector general, and finally left the Air Force, in part over his unwillingness to muzzle himself when speaking about the war. He said that the way to end the war was to win it! We should stop pussyfooting around. We needed to blow the bridges to China, close the harbor at Haiphong, and knock out the industrial and electrical generation capacity of the country. He made a remark in one section about Curtis Lemay being a maniac for nuclear weapons, but his own plan for winning the war was not different from Lemay's "bomb them back to the stone age" recommendation. In retirement from the Air Force he made his living giving speeches, which he was always surprised that anyone wanted to hear.
His last chapter, apparently written just before his death, recounted his increasingly recurrent dream. He was flying at night, all alone, above an overcast, in his F-4. He slipped down into the clouds in a sea of white with just a single light ahead. Coming down he saw the end of the runway and brought his plane in at night for a perfect landing, but there was no one around. The base appeared to be completely empty, although a ladder had appeared by his cockpit. He climbed down and looked around at the dark and deserted base but then he heard sounds and followed them to the "O Club". Going inside he found all of his old friends, many long dead, who welcomed him with drinks and invited him to sing the old songs with them. He went to the piano and saw his father and said, "Dad, I became a fighter pilot." "I know Robby", said his father and greeted him kindly.
It was a beautiful image for an old man in his last days.
Robin Olds and I certainly didn't have much in common. Athlete, fighter, man of great physical ability and aggressive confidence, a man who could face very tough odds without fear, he was a man who seized life and lived it to the fullest. I am certainly not like that. And yet I loved his autobiography. Rough and tough as he was, I believe he was very much a man of feeling and a man who could see the worth in others, including people who were not at all like himself. I have no doubt that his actual accomplishments, both in the air and on the ground, were greater than he said in the book. Proud as he was, he was not given to boasting. But I can think of no reason why he would have advanced as far as he did, in spite of his rather rebellious and sometimes prankish nature, if people didn't see much in him and his achievements that he felt were not proper to speak of in his description of himself.
He and I disagreed about the Vietnam War. He probably would have seen me as one of the long haired, disreputable hippies who had no clue to what it was all about. I would probably have seen him as one of the right wing troglodytes with a rigid incapacity to see the truth in Vietnam. But, although I still think he was wrong about Vietnam, or more properly that the U.S. government was wrong about Vietnam, I have a lot more appreciation of him than I would have had then. He was fine man.
I wish that the dream at the end of his life could come true for him. I suppose in a way it did. It summed up what was valuable to him and eased his passage out of life. It was a good and graceful way to go.
| Author | Burke, James Lee |
|---|---|
| Publication | Simon and Schuster Audio, 2007 |
| Number of Pages | 528 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | New Orleans; Hurricane Katrina |
| When Read | April 2011 |
Dave Robicheaux and the rest of the New Iberia parish police department are called to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to help out the literally and figuratively swamped NOPD with emergency services. He is led to look for an old friend, the priest, Jude LeBlanc, who has disappeared. LeBlanc's killer turns out to be Bertrand Melancon, a young black man, his sociopathic brother, and two other young men who stole LeBlanc's boat to go on a crime spree. Melancon, and his three companions stumble on the house of crime lord (or maybe ex-crime lord) Sidney Kovick where they hit the jackpot in hidden money, diamonds, drugs, and a gun, tearing up the house to get it. But a shot rings out from a neighboring house killing one of the men and crippling Eddie Melancon. This builds the motivation for the rest of the story. Kovick wants his property back, the FBI wants to find the person who killed the black man, a psychopath named Ronald Bledsoe is also after the jewels and his own personal deranged agenda, Clete Purcell wants to find the person who killed his latest girlfriend (possibly Bledsoe and one of his pals), and Dave wants to get Bledsoe whom he knows to be a threat to his own daughter Alafair.
The story proceeds, drawing each character further into the difficulties and personal tragedies of the events, all set against a backdrop of the destruction and suffering in New Orleans. Insurance agent Otis Baylor is suspected of shooting the black men, or perhaps it was his daughter Thelma who was raped by the very same men. Or maybe it was his blustering, racist neighbor Tom Claggart. Or maybe it was Baylor's bitter wife. Bledsoe is working for Kovick to track down the surviving young men. Or maybe he's working for Middle Eastern terrorists. Or maybe he's working for Beau Wiggins, the wealthy businessman who seems to know more than he should.
As he does in other novels, and perhaps more so, Burke fills the story with a spiritualism and a philosophical outlook and a sense of family and friendship that are found in few other mystery writers. Clete and Dave care about each other. Dave's boss Helen is smart and right minded, doing her duty in ways that aren't necessarily in Dave's interest, but committed to him as long as that commitment does not interfere with her duty to the law.
It works out a little suddenly at the end, requiring an epilogue to wrap it all up and explain the many loose ends. But that's okay. The novel is a fine one.
I read these books differently from other mystery novels. Dave and Clete and Molly and Alafair are people whom one can identify with, which other writers also achieve. They have their own demons, again a common theme in mystery writing. However they have a spiritual side that is uncommon and interesting and involving.
I've liked all of Burke's books but I don't think I've liked any of them more than this one.
| Author | Cumming, Charles |
|---|---|
| Publication | Tantor Audio, 2007 |
| Copyright Date | 2001 |
| Number of Pages | 368 |
| Genres | Fiction; Spy |
| When Read | May 2011 |
24 year old Alec Melius graduated college and went to work for a sleazy Polish publisher in London who solicits ads for a publication that claims to be read by all the western buyers but which in fact hardly exists and has no real subscriptions. He has an opportunity to try out for a position with the British intelligence service, MI-6. He takes numerous exams of every type - intellectual, psychological, political. Throughout the process he is obsessed with making the absolute best impression in competition with others taking the exams, and has no compunctions about lying, sometimes gratuitously in ways that will get him in trouble and probably cost him a place in the agency.
Having failed to make it into the civil service job, he is recruited by an old friend or acquaintance of his parents into spying for the agency and for a British oil company. His job is to get close to two representatives of an American oil company, who are in turn CIA people who are spying on him. They are trying to get him to tell them about plans that the British oil company is making for a bid on a lease in the former USSR. Eventually, he succeeds in convincing them that he is disaffected from his company and will sell them information for money. Then he provides them with phony data.
Unfortunately for him, his co-workers at the oil company are not in on his secret. One of them detects his strange behavior, his apparent closeness to competitors, his secrecy, his making printouts at night when he thinks no one is around, his receipt of odd phone calls that he cannot explain. The man confronts him and Alec tells his controllers about his trouble. Only a few days later, the man is beaten to within an inch of his life in the old USSR and only survives because of expert medical care in Switzerland.
Alec is beside himself with worry and guilt. He makes a fatal mistake with the Americans and they discover his perfidy. The scheme is undone and the Americans withdraw the bid they were preparing for the useless oil field, leaving the British company stuck with it.
Now reeling from guilt, he confesses everything to his former girlfriend, a woman who has already rejected him but who, in his fantasy, will return to him, and about whom he has lied to everyone. But the woman is obnoxed and repulsed by his story. Later, she dies in an auto accident. Alec is dumbfounded. There is nowhere to turn. He is convinced that two people have been murdered or almost murdered because of him - one a person that he hated but had to respect, the other a woman whom he loved, in whatever inadequate way he had of loving anyone.
His situation is desperate and untenable. He goes on a trip with an old friend and prepares to tell him too what has happened.
Alec is a spy by nature because he is a compulsive liar, a man unable to control himself and unable to think objectively about right and wrong or even about his own personal goals - certainly not about his personal behavior. The spy agency thought to take advantage of this failing in him, but he failed them too. They are ultimately disgusted with him when, of course, they should be disgusted with themselves.
This is not a conventional spy thriller. There are no thrills. There are no acts of heroism. There isn't really even a dissection of the ills of the spy game and the spymasters as we would see in Le Carre. It never gets that far. It stays within the head of Alec Melius.
It was not an easy book to get through. My instincts are to be disgusted by and uninterested in people like Alec Melius. It is obvious from the first that his behavior is both wrong and self-defeating. It is clear that nothing good will happen to him. In each of the cases where he has a chance to start over, or to confess and redeem himself, he always digs himself into a deeper hole instead. So I classify this as one of those books that I didn't like very much, or perhaps I should say that I didn't enjoy reading, but which I nevertheless respect and admire. It is a successful portrait of a flawed and unsuccessful man, and a successful description of the harm that such people can do.
| Author | Levine, James, 1963- |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Random House Audio, 2009 |
| Number of Pages | 240 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | India |
| When Read | May 2011 |
A little girl named Batuk is sold by her desperate parents into prostitution in Mumbai. The story opens with her in a cage on the street where she services customers presented to her by the Madam. Against all expectations from others, she happens to be secretly literate, having been taught to read and write by a priest in a Christian charity hospital where she recovered from childhood tuberculosis. She has a small blue notebook in her cell in which she records her thoughts and writes stories about the people around her and about legends of animals and spirits that she was taught as a child.
In first person narrative, she relates her history to us. We see her life at home in the village. Her trip with her father to the city. Her introduction to the "uncles" at the house of the man who bought her. Her painful deflowering by one of the "uncles" who paid for the right to be first with this virgin child. We meet the women who serve the masters by cleaning, feeding and dressing her. We see the compound into which she is sold and "married" when the uncles are through with her, and then the street whorehouse where she works up to the age of fifteen.
One day an employee of an agent of an important millionaire discovers her and brings her to the attention of his superiors. His boss picks her up in his fancy car and takes her to a luxury hotel where she meets the millionaire, who buys or rents her, we don't know any of the business details, for the use of his college age bastard son, a nasty boy who never seems to do anything right but whom his father feels some obligation towards. Batuk is left at the hotel in the care of another female office manager sort of person who prepares her for her time with the bastard.
The bastard is exactly that. Although Batuk services him expertly and with absolute deference, and although he finds her beautiful and satisfactory in every way, he beats her anyway because he is the kind of person who asserts himself by hurting helpless people. Then he hosts a party for three of his friends, who bring a couple of other prostitutes with them as well.
At the party, one of the boys discovers Batuk's notebook and reads the entry there about the bastard's ineffective sexual performance and premature ejaculation. The boys find this to be hilarious, but the bastard is humiliated and outraged. He beats her unmercifully. Then, while the other boys hold her down, he first kicks her in the crotch as hard as he can, then takes an ornamental sword off the wall and stabs her in the vagina.
In the final scenes of the book, she slowly dies in a hospital. All four of the boys have been found dead, killed by an unknown assailant whom we readers presume to be the bastard's father, who discovered his son's disloyalty and dishonesty as well as his murderous behavior to this helpless and charming girl.
The book is knowledgeable and detailed. Levine is a doctor at the Mayo Clinic who did medical research in Mumbai and saw the "Street of Cages" where child prostitutes are sold to all who approach. It is full of extraordinary scenes. "Puneet", the young male prostitute is assaulted and almost killed by a couple of local cops. When he recovers, he is castrated to extend his childhood appeal to the customers. The brutality of the orphan's home, the behavior of the "uncles", the fondness of the madam for Batuk (founded on her monetary value and her pliancy with the customers), the tawdriness of her "nest", the numbness of the women who manage the girls - women who have suppressed their natural sympathy in order to do what they believe they must do - all of this is extraordinarily told.
The rich boys are also amazingly portrayed. It is as if Levine knew these spoiled parasites personally and understood them from the inside out. The actions in the luxury hotel are all too believable.
This was a very powerful book. It was painful to read but absorbing and revealing.
According to the Publishers Weekly review reproduced on amazon.com, the author is donating all U.S. proceeds of the book to helping exploited children.
| Author | Chekhov, Anton |
|---|---|
| Publication | Inaudio, Sound Room Publishers, 2004 |
| Genres | Fiction; Short stories |
| Keywords | Russia |
| When Read | May 2011 |
The stories are:
The Black Monk
The Kiss
A Misfortune
An Artist's Story
Not Wanted
Expensive Lessons
The Head of the Family
Mire
Anyuta
The Helpmate
The Trusseau
I won't retell all of the plots of the stories. They are very typical Chekhov, which is to say very fine stories with great insight into the human condition. It's been a long time since I read Chekhov, perhaps 20 years or more. Reading them now is like returning to an old and familiar friend.
Chekhov's subjects often live at the edge of life. They may think that they are ordinary people living ordinary lives, but find out that they are not. The intellectual who sees the black monk knows that it is an illusion and that he is going mad, but he embraces it anyway. The artillery officer who is kissed by mistake in a dark room knows that his dream of love and attachment to this unknown woman is ridiculous, but he can't rid himself of his desire. The fellow who gives his money to the enchanting Jewess knows that she is exploiting him, but he cannot help himself. The head of the family who ridicules and browbeats his young son knows that the boy is really not to blame for his father's frustrations, but he heaps on more abuse anyway.
The characters seem not to understand themselves. But as the stories progress we find that their condition is worse than that. They come to understand themselves all too well, but they still cannot control their harmful behaviors.
This is a very civilized existence. We cannot precisely say that these are "middle class" people in the American sense. Russia in the nineteenth century was not like twentieth century America and the social classes were not strictly comparable. But we can say that the characters have met their material needs. They are educated. They are free to move and act, if not exactly as they please, then within reasonable limits. We who live in a different society can nevertheless perfectly well understand them and even identify with them.
Chekhov punctures this placid existence. He shows the inner turmoils that roil beneath the surface. He brings out the frailties of the human condition.
These and the other Chekhov stories are a wonderful contribution to our literature. They will be read for a long, long time. When life on earth is gradually but dramatically changed, I hope the Chekhov stories survive to explain our psyches and our age to those that come after us.
I found no printed collection on Amazon that corresponded to this audiobook collection, so I don't know how many pages it might have been.
| Author | Ruiz Zafon, Carlos |
|---|---|
| Translators | Graves, Lucia |
| Publication | Penguin, 2005 |
| Number of Pages | 487 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Barcelona |
| When Read | May 2011 |
Young Daniel Sempere, son of a humble bookseller, grows up in Barcelona in the 1950's. His mother is dead. His father, who loves the boy deeply, brings him into his work in the shop and introduces him to the "Cemetery of Forgotten Books", an archive of old books that no one reads any more in an old building, maintained by an old caretaker. In that place he comes upon, and is given to keep, a novel by Julian Carax titled The Shadow of the Wind.
Gradually, the story in the novel consumes the boy. He becomes more and more obsessed with trying to find and understand the fate of its mysterious author. As he grows into a young man, his own biography seems to mirror what he is discovering of Carax. Like the author, Daniel too is absorbed in literature. Like him, he has fallen in love with a beautiful daughter of the upper classes, a girl who is also falling in love with him. Like Carax, he makes love to the girl, is caught by her furious family and is beaten by her brother, an erstwhile friend, and threatened by her father.
One day Daniel meets a down and out filthy scarecrow of a man on the street and helps him out. This man, known as Fermin Romero de Torres, becomes an invaluable assistant in the book shop and Daniel's great friend. We know little of his past, but we do know that he is irreverent, anti-fascist, anti-clerical, very clever, and has a terrible enemy in the sadistic and murdering police inspector Fumero. Fermin helps Julian unravel the story of Carax.
All of the elements of Gothic romance are present. There is a ruined mansion with a crypt in the cellar and a strange and terrible secret. There are beautiful young girls, betrothed to shallow and disgusting young fascists. There is the sinister Lain Coubert, the man with no face, who is determined to burn every one of Julian Carax's books. There is the old nursemaid, the faithful father, the hat maker who resents his son but really loves him, the homosexual watchmaker who is beaten by the police, the priest who remembers the story of the the three young men in his school of whom Carax was one and Fumero another.
The plot is long and complex. The tension builds as Daniel closes in on the real identity and fate of Julian Carax and Fumero closes in on Daniel and Fermin, using them at first to lead him to Julian and then becoming increasingly irritated with them directly. The resolution requires a considerable epilogue to explain it all.
The language of this book is gorgeous. Sentence after sentence makes you pause and savor it. The imagery of the city of Barcelona, with swirling fogs and street lamps, the love of books, the men and women longing for lost loves. It's really a delight.
As of today, there 770 reviews on Amazon.com. This is a popular book! I can see why.
| Author | Cain, James |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Vintage, 1989 |
| Copyright Date | 1934 |
| Number of Pages | 128 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | May 2011 |
Frank Chambers, a 24 year old drifter, gets off a truck at a roadside diner in California, intending to order a meal and somehow get out of paying for it. However the owner of the place, Nick Papadakis (aka "the Greek"), needs a man to help out with the restaurant and gas station and he learns that Nick can do the job. He tries to hire him. Nick, who wants no part of working for a living, has no intention of taking the job until he sees Cora, Nick's beautiful young wife. Instantly attracted, he decides to stay and work for Nick.
It doesn't take long for Nick and Cora to hook up. She is bored by Nick and finds him a little greasy and repulsive. She likes the restaurant and wants to stay and make it work, but she is so tired of Nick and feels a desperate need to get away from him, a need that is fueled by her affair with Frank.
She doesn't seem like a terrible, scheming person, but she can't stand her life any more and sees only one way out. She has to kill Nick and she has to get Frank to help her. He is against it at first. He rather likes Nick and Nick has been good to him. But he doesn't have any huge objections and he wants Cora. He agrees to do it.
The murder goes awry and Nick survives. The cops are suspicious, but it really does appear to be an accident. Nick thinks it's an accident and the evidence seems to point to that, so they close their investigation and leave everything alone. But Cora can't leave it alone. They plan another attempt using a car accident.
The car accident looks foolproof. Nick is killed. Frank is injured. It all looks good but a smart prosecutor bullies and tricks Frank into accusing Cora in order to save himself. Then an even smarter defense lawyer gets Cora off. The two young people are shown up as chumps as well as killers.
All looks well but the two, although they got away with the perfect crime, can't stop being who they are. Frank hates the diner and wants to go on the road. Cora wants to settle down at the diner. Frank fools around with another woman. Cora gets mad. Eventually they make up and go on a road trip together but there is an accident and Cora is killed. This one is a real accident but the old prosecutor now has his hands on Frank again and this time convicts him of murdering Cora. It is the end for him.
This book was something of a sensation when it was published. Apparently never before, at least in respectable American literature, had the narrator and protagonist of a story been a rather heartless, rather casual, immature and irresponsible killer. Never before had a heinous crime been treated so casually - or at least that's my reading of the Wikipedia article about it. The book was banned in Boston!
I read this book because James Lee Burke, author of the Dave Robicheaux and other mysteries, answered a question by an interviewer by saying that James M. Cain was one of the best American crime writers.
The book was both compelling and disturbing, compelling because of the vivid, realistic depictions of the people that really got at their essences, and disturbing because they were, after all, planning the murder of a blameless and likable man. It was one of those books that bothers you but you read it anyway and you don't soon forget it.
| Author | Atkinson, Rick |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002 |
| Number of Pages | 710 |
| Extras | maps, photos, notes, bibliography, index, excerpt |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | June 2011 |
Beginning with the loading of ships in Virginia and the introductions of Admiral Hewitt and General Patton to Franklin Roosevelt, this book recounts the story of the Allied invasion of North Africa from the first landings to the final victory in Tunis and Bizerte.
The Americans and British fielded very different armies. The British were experienced. Their soldiers fought courageously and with great discipline. Their leadership had some serious problems, but at the very top at least, it was much more experienced than the American leadership, which also had problems throughout the chain of command.
The plan was to land in Morocco and Algeria, then race along the coast to Tunisia, taking the point of land that is closest to Italy and threatening Rommel's retreat and supply line. But the planning was poor. It didn't consider that they were entering the rainy season and the land would turn to mud, the air would be cold, and the Germans would land new forces to resist. The British thrust across the coast was slowed and halted before it could approach the targets in Tunis.
Unfortunately, the Vichy French command chose to fight. About 3,000 Allied troops were killed and wounded (IIRC) but they soon prevailed. Having beaten these poorly armed and equipped French forces, the Americans imagined themselves now to be blooded, experienced veterans. They had no understanding of what they would soon face from the very experienced German armies of Rommel and Van Arnim. With the British blocked at the coast, the Americans pushed cross country, 200 miles to the south, hoping to drive a wedge between the Afrika Corps, retreating westward in front of Montgomery, and Van Arnim's forces that were building up at a rate of a thousand men each day from Italy. It was only the sarcasm of the British staff that injected some realism into the American plan to shove 20,000 men across the desert to insert them between Rommel's 70,000 and Van Arnim's 55,000. Alan Brooke, in front of Churchill and Roosevelt at Casablanca, asked Eisenhower what he thought would happen to his 20,000 men when superior German forces closed in on them from two sides. It was only then that Eisenhower saw the absurdity of his plan.
There were initial American successes. There were raids by rangers that destroyed a German airfield and that wiped out a battalion of Italians. There were some successful uses of tanks and artillery. But the air war was a mess with the Luftwaffe dominating the skies. Logistics were not as effective as they needed to be. Airfields were too far away and closer ones couldn't be supplied and/or couldn't be protected from the Luftwaffe. Planning for ammunition, gasoline and other supplies assumed World War I experience would hold in this war, which it did not. Only about seven percent of the Allied forces on the ground were actually at the front.
The Germans did much better. Almost all of their men were pushed out to the front. Their supply route across the Med was a nightmare of British warships, submarines and aircraft, but they made more effective use of everything they did get. Then they launched the offensive known in American military history as the battle of Kasserine Pass.
Rommel had been looking forward to it. He saw the Americans as fresh meat - inexperienced soldiers who wouldn't know what they were doing. He was right. General Fredenhall kept reporting positive news from the front right up until it was clear that it was actually a disaster. Communications were poor. Maneuvering was ineffective. The classic German pincers, each led by tanks, cut off and surrounded American forces, or sent them reeling in panic to get out of the German cauldron.
But the Americans learned. Ineffective commanders were replaced. Patton and Bradley came to the fore. Armored forces were beefed up and concentrated. The Air Corps learned some lessons and began to be effective. Soldiers on the ground regained some confidence and learned to stand and fight when they needed to. The Allies went over onto the offensive and the Germans, short of supplies, faced with superior numbers of tanks, artillery, and aircraft, were unable to repeat their success. They were pushed back in a bloody campaign, back to the sea.
The Americans were not yet the effective army they would become in 1944 and 45, but they were no longer the green troops from whom no one knew what to expect. The uneasy alliance of British and Americans proved itself and the supreme commander, Eisenhower, handled the disdain of the Brits and the failings in his own command with great tact and political understanding. He was not and would not become a great strategist or tactician, but he had a deep sense of responsibility and an understanding of the special role he played in making everyone work and fight together.
Atkinson is a very fine writer. He moves well and easily up and down the chain of command, discussing Roosevelt, Churchill and Eisenhower, and then moving down to privates on the line whose letters and diaries he quotes to give a good feel for the soldier's view of the war. He is objective and fair. He's not out to construct a story of heroes and scoundrels. He sees personal failings in many commanders and calls them out, but he spreads the blame around and shows that everyone made some mistakes and most (though perhaps not all) made at least a few good decisions.
The book reads well. It is a compelling book. It contains useful detail but is never dry or boring. It is an excellent example of it's kind.
| Author | Lovette, Ed |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boulder, CO: Palladin Press, 2007 |
| Number of Pages | 177 |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Self-defense |
| When Read | June 2011 |
Lovette, a former army captain, police officer, firearms trainer, CIA operative, and private security trainer, discusses the snub nosed revolver in particular, but self-defense more generally.
The key element in all self-defense is awareness of a threat as early as possible. Don't wait for the carjacker, mugger, kidnapper or crack addict to close in and attack you. Spot him before then. Notice the guy who is watching and approaching you. Notice the guy standing near your car as you go to the parking lot. If you see him in advance the defense can be as simple as walking back to the supermarket or library and waiting for him to move on.
The book is filled with case studies. These aren't incidents that Lovette himself engaged in but police reports, reports from his students, or even news stories. All of them point to seeing a threat as early as possible. As he puts it, it's much better to stay out of the "hell hole" altogether than to get in and try to fight your way out. If you recognize that you are in danger when a guy is four feet away you still have options that you don't have when he's already grappled with you. You might, for example, be able to reach your pepper spray or, if you've got any, your weapons. If he's 20 feet away, you have even more options. You might, for example, be able to go back into the store or call for help or do something else.
Simplicity is the key to survival. Fancy shooting, fancy driving, these may be possible for professionals, but for ordinary people it's not even possible to consider anything tricky. Our vision narrows. Our fears come to the fore. We can barely manage simple responses. For example, to drive out of a tight spot, we can accelerate as fast as possible straight ahead. We can throw the car in reverse and accelerate hard. We can probably swerve around another car. That's about it. Don't even think about executing a fancy tail slide turn. Even the guys who know how to do it, when push comes to shove, wind up doing an ordinary U-turn.
Lovette also recommends specific brands of equipment. He said that Fox Labs pepper spray is the one his students tell him is the best. It sounds like it might be even more effective than a gun at turning away would be attackers. He of course also has opinions about revolvers - preferring six shot to five shot for a primary carry gun, and preferring light weight guns that still weigh at least 20 ounces, so as not to make the recoil overwhelming. He currently carries a 357 magnum six shot revolver.
There is a refreshing sense of uncertainty in this book. The author doesn't pretend to offer you the revealed word of truth. Situations requiring self-defense happen suddenly and it's not possible to always know what to do. Lovette doesn't say what he would have done in any of the situations he describes. I'm guessing he doesn't know. What he does is say what actually happened.
Every once in a while I read something, not because it's a book or even a subject that I've been wanting to read, but because it just happens to strike my fancy at the moment. This was such a book.
I haven't bought a revolver but I did buy two little cans of Fox Labs pepper spray, one for Marcia and one for me. So far, I haven't used it, but I did prepare to spray an aggressive dog or two. I never actually had to push the release.
| Author | Le Carre, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Penguin Audio, 2010 |
| Number of Pages | 320 |
| Genres | Fiction; Thriller |
| When Read | June 2011 |
English professor Perry Makepeace and his barrister girlfriend Gail Perkins take a tennis vacation on a Caribbean island where they fall into the orbit of Dima, a wealthy bear of a Russian surrounded by a most exotic family. His wife Tamara dresses all in black and prays all day. His twin 14 year old sons seem like somewhat normal, if athletic and surprising boys. His beautiful 16 year old daughter does nothing but read novels all day. He also has two young girls who address him as Uncle and whose parents died shortly before in a mob killing advertised as a car crash, and various uncles and bodyguards, all of whom appear to be armed.
Dima is a ferocious tennis player though he cannot beat the athletic Perry. However he comes to trust Perry. Perry refuses to bet money on the games, even knowing that he will win. Perry is an "English gentleman", a "professor of fair play". Dima decides to confide in him. He asks Perry to contact the British Secret Service. He offers them complete details on Russian mafia money laundering, in which Dima is a central figure, in exchange for safe haven for himself and his family in England. Perry and Gail, against their better judgment but in some sympathy with the likable Dima and his at risk children, decide to help. They make a contact in England and tell their story.
The English spy leader is Hector Meredith, a man determined to bring Dima in and to expose the connection of an important British politician with the Russian mafia. He has three assistants, Luke, Yvonne and Ollie, who help debrief Perry and Gail. Luke, an inveterate womanizer who has driven off his wife thereby, is attracted to Gail and plays a significant role in the story. Yvonne is a behind the scenes wonk (as we say in the US), and Ollie is one of those guys who one relies on to be calm, cheerful, and competent.
While Hector stays in England, Luke and Ollie engage Perry and Gail and have them come to Switzerland where they are to assist in moving Dima and his family to safety. The whole family trusts Perry and Gail. Gail rescues the 16 year old from foolish pursuit of a philandering ski instructor who has promised to marry her, and helps get the children to go. Luke, in a fit of rage and frustration at his unsuccessful life, smashes one of Dima's thuggish bodyguards who are actually working for his enemies. Dima smashes the other and they escape. But all is not well. Hector is having trouble with the arrangements in England. Powerful people are opposed to his exposing the MP and his cronies. Arrangements are made for a plane to fly Dima and Luke back to England. The plane picks them up but then crashes. There are no survivors.
That is the end of the book. We presume that Perry, Gail, Tamara, and the children are okay - though we know that they are all being shadowed by the Swiss police.
Le Carre's books never end well. The powers that be are always the powers that be and those who oppose them are crushed. The wealthy and powerful will always, when push comes to shove, break the law to protect themselves. Murder is their final and irrevocable means for enforcing their rule.
Marcia also read this book but didn't like it much. I liked it but I understand her misgivings. It was foreordained that everything would turn out badly and it may have taken a streak of masochism, or at least inveterate pessimism, to persevere through it.
Le Carre was already 79 years old when he wrote this. It's not his best work, but it has all of the elements of the master. I hope he has still more in him. He's one of our truly great writers and social commentators.
| Author | Farber, Barry |
|---|---|
| Publication | Seacaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1991 |
| Number of Pages | ix + 172 |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Language learning |
| When Read | June 2011 |
Farber first began to learn languages as a schoolboy. Initially, he was entranced with Latin vocabulary, learning new words at terrific speed. But in a few days he came up against Latin grammar and was devastated. He hated it. Only later did he come to understand the importance of grammar. But he never lost his excitement over learning new words. He eventually learned quite a few languages including all of the common European languages - French, German, Italian, Spanish - but also Dutch, Russian, Norwegian ("Snagger du Norsk?"), Finnish, Hungarian, and also Chinese, Indonesian, and some others.
His book is about how an independent learner such as myself should go about learning a language. The method consists of attacking it on all fronts at once - a textbook with grammar, flash cards with vocabulary, a newspaper, tapes or CDs, and finding native speakers to talk to. Push ahead. When stumped on one front push on the others. Don't give up. Don't stop learning. Don't take a defeat in one area as permanent. Keep learning in other areas and before long you'll come back to the problem area (usually grammar) and it will make sense.
Another important part of his method is to work at the language at all hours. Are you standing in line at a supermarket? Are you waiting on hold on the phone? Have you got a few spare minutes? Take out your flash cards and learn a new word or a couple of them. When you look at something around you ask yourself what the word for it is. When you hear a sentence spoken, or just a phrase, try to translate it into your target language.
Basically, the essence of the method is work. You don't learn by devoting a short time every day and ignoring the subject for the rest of the day. You commit to it.
Apart from the method, the book is a delightful account of a man with an engaging attitude to work and life. The book was a joy to read. It was also very encouraging. It made me feel that I could do this. It was not unduly encouraging. He said it would take a year. I need to devote a year. I'm trying it.
I was fired up with enthusiasm for at least a couple of weeks before I slipped back into my intellectual slumber. But I am convinced that the author was right about how to learn, and not just about how to learn languages. I learned to program computers by immersing myself in the subject. I learned a lot of philosophy, history, literature, and biology that way - not working at them as hard as Farber did, but working at them pretty hard.
| Author | Nagorski, Andrew |
|---|---|
| Publication | Tantor Media, 2007 |
| Number of Pages | 384 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | July 2011 |
Nagorski begins with the lead up to the German invasion. Stalin made mistake after mistake. He purged the Red Army of its best officers. He ignored warnings from the British. He ignored warnings from his own spies in Berlin and Tokyo. He allowed German reconnaissance flights over Russian territory, even deep flights over military installations. He sent assurances to Hitler.
When the invasion came he became shocked, depressed, bewildered and psychologically incapacitated. When he recovered and found himself still in charge, he began to take charge but make all of the wrong decisions. He wasted valuable troops, planes, and materiel on pointless and suicidal attacks on the Germans. He refused to allow withdrawals with the result that whole armies were surrounded and captured. He sent men into combat without rifles, telling them to pick up weapons from dead soldiers. He had independent thinking and capable officers arrested and shot if they didn't follow his orders. He squandered his forces, making defeat almost inevitable.
The one thing Stalin did not do was take any responsibility for his mistakes. All of the failures were due to others, not him. Others were punished and removed from command. He remained in command and continued to issue stupid orders.
The one thing that saved him, and the Soviet Union, was that Hitler was in command on the other side. Having completely underestimated Soviet strength, he went on to issue terrible orders. The most terrible of all were his orders to treat the local population like slaves and farm animals. The initial warm welcome given to German forces by the Ukrainian, Belorussian, and other peoples soon turned to hatred. As bad as Stalin was, Hitler was worse, and he was not even a Russian.
Hitler's self-discovered military genius involved vacillation, misapprehension of complex situations, complete overestimation of the capacity of his troops, complete underestimation of the Russians, changes of plans in mid-stream and, of course, the same kind of orders that wasted his soldier's lives for no good reason. He had a fine, well led army which accomplished great things, but he hamstrung them with his "push on at all costs", "hold at all costs", "no, go to the south first", and other blundering orders. At first his generals kind of, sort of, trusted him. He appeared to have worked wonders in the past, taking Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia, Greece and even launching a surprisingly successful campaign in Africa. Compared to the first war, it appeared that Hitler had worked miracles. But they found that in arguments with him, as in Stalin's generals arguments with Stalin, it was impossible to get him to change his mind.
The battle was arguably the largest battle in history and was one of the turning points of the war. About 2.8 million men were killed, wounded or captured, over 2 million of them Russians. It petered out eventually in cold and snow, but the city had held and the Germans had been driven back. Each dictator followed up with more stupid orders, wasting more troops for no advantage. However, Stalin was now working with increasing confidence and getting more used to taking his generals' advice while Hitler was getting more frustrated with his failures and began taking even more direct, and foolish, control of the army.
The book is not a strict military history. There are few descriptions of actual combat. There is little in the way of strategy except at the broadest level. Much of what is written is about Hitler and, especially, Stalin, and about the effects of their decisions on the generals, soldiers, newspaper reporters, officials, and the general population. There is a lot about the irrational, self-destructive, and tyrannical treatment of Stalin's own people.
Nagorski's father was in the Polish Army, fighting against the Germans and later arrested by the Russians. I don't know if he was one of the officers shot at the Katyn forest, probably not I think, but I don't remember if N said what his father's fate was. But it gave N a deeper interest in the Russian side, and perhaps a sharper point of view, than most historians have. He interviewed many surviving Russians and included many fascinating stories, from the man who had to preserve Lenin's body when it was taken from Moscow, to good officers who were arrested, young soldiers who had no idea what was going on, and even NKVD officers.
But in spite of his interested position, I regard N's book as pretty objective. He even gives credit to Stalin where he felt is was due, such as his decision to stay in Moscow during the battle.
I found the book interesting and enlightening.
I did not note here that this was my second reading of the book. The first was in 2008. The earlier reading was in paper, this one on CDs. This has happened before but I think forgetting a book in only three years is a record for me. I'm losing it aren't I?
| Author | Barnes, Julian |
|---|---|
| Publication | London: AudioGO, 2009 |
| Copyright Date | 2008 |
| Number of Pages | 256 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Autobiography |
| Keywords | Mortality |
| When Read | July 2011 |
Barnes, like all of us, feels a need to come to terms with death. This book is his working out of his own ideas and feelings on the subject. A novelist, son of a French teacher and another teacher, younger brother of the philosopher and Aristotle expert Jonathan Barnes, he is a very serious intellectual.
There is no psychological or sociological research in this book. As a practicing atheist, Barnes has no particular interest in religious interpretations of death either, though he does have many reflections on the questions that might be asked if a God, of one kind or another, did exist. Mostly he just reflects on the writings of some of his favorite authors and offers us his own self-analysis.
Barnes is particularly good at looking at all sides of a question. He considers whether it is fear of death or fear of dying, or both or neither, that affects people. He considers the question of whether we carry on for our parents and whether our children will carry on for us. He considers the questions abstractly but grounds them in reality too as he considers whether he or his brother are "carrying on" for his father and mother - and concludes that they are not.
He's pretty objective, one might even say ruthless, in his self-examination and in the examination of his own family. He writes a lot about whether writing is a means of achieving immortality (it is not) or some sort of extended life (maybe it is.) He considers that the universe is finite, the life of the Sun and hence of the Earth are even more finite, that people will disappear (probably long before the Earth is burned to a crisp) and that he will therefore, of necessity, have a last reader. He begins to address that last reader and then decides that, wait a minute, the last reader is the last reader because he doesn't recommend the books to anyone else. So he tells that reader, "Fuck off and die!" After all he says, I've already fucked off and died and you're no better than I am.
It's really a wonderful book. Did it resolve any questions for me? I'm not sure that it did, but it certainly shed light on some of them. It made me feel that my own ruminations on the subject, also often centered around the same themes of family and of writing (the diary and book notes in my case) as Barnes', are not going off in the wrong direction.
I lack Barnes' wonderful erudition. I have not read Jules Renard, the writer he most admires and quotes extensively. I do not speak French, much less excellent French. I have probably read only a fraction of the books he's read and appreciated only a fraction of what he has appreciated in the books that we have both read - have I said yet that I greatly admire Julian Barnes?
There is more about the specifics of the book in my July 2011 diary entries. For now I'll only say that Julian Barnes is now on my reading list. I hope to find and read some of his novels in the future. I may even have a look at Jonathan Barnes' writings on Aristotle.
| Author | Mankell, Henning |
|---|---|
| Original Language | se |
| Translators | Murray, Steven T. |
| Publication | New York: New Press, 1997 |
| Copyright Date | 1991 |
| Number of Pages | 284 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | July 2011 |
Middle aged Swedish Detective Kurt Wallander is the chief detective in the town of Ystad. His wife has recently left him. His college age daughter wants nothing to do with him. His irascible father who lives in a rural farmhouse and makes his living by painting the same scene over and over again is developing dementia. Wallander eats too much, drinks too much, and has emotions that are only just under control.
When the story opens, two elderly farmers have been brutally tortured and murdered in a remote farm house. Nobody saw anything. The old lady survived for a few days in a semi-coma uttering the single word "foreign".
Over time, Wallander and his team piece together more and more clues. The old farmer was not the man he seemed to be. He made a lot of money during World War II, selling supplies to the Germans. He hid the money from everyone. His wife, his daughters, his neighbors, none of them knew. He had an illegitimate son who also didn't know and that he had such a son was something that Wallander had a great deal of trouble finding out and determining who the man was.
Meanwhile, the newspapers printed the story of the word "foreign" and the public suspected the "refugees" occupying the many camps in Sweden where asylum seekers of all types have flooded in. A right wing racist group threatens revenge if the police don't bring the foreigners to justice, and they kill a harmless Somali man, father of nine children, who happened to be walking outside one of the camps.
Wallander puts all of the staff to use and they all come up with more clues but the best of them is Rydberg, an old cop who observes more carefully and thinks more skeptically and thoroughly than any of the others. Later however it turns out that the laconic Rydberg is suffering from prostate cancer and may or may not survive on the force.
The crimes are eventually solved and the criminals caught, but the feeling is different from most mystery stories. One of the racists is killed in a car crash when Wallander chased him. The other is arrested but turns out to be an ex-cop. He never admits anything and the police chief wishes he didn't have to expose the fact that an ex-cop was involved to the battering of the press. But there it is. The faceless killers, the men who actually killed the old farmer and his wife, were opportunistic street criminals, not racists, not people involved in the World War II dealings, not illegitimate children of the farmer, just men who preyed on people whom they spotted withdrawing money at banks.
It was a different sort of cop and a different sort of crime from usual mystery fare. Wallander has erotic dreams of a black woman. He thrusts himself on the good looking but married district attorney and is mortified by her rejection and disgust. He cares about his wife, his daughter, his father, but doesn't know how to relate to any of them and doesn't understand why they are so disappointed with him and why they reject him. He sometimes tells lies.
Mankell doesn't sugar coat any of this. He doesn't make Wallander out to be a wonderful guy who is misunderstood. He is what he is - an obsessive cop who does good police work but is always on the edge of control.
This was apparently the first of the Wallander books. It was also made into a TV show by the BBC and I watched it before reading the book. When I was a few pages into the book and realized that this was the same as the TV show I decided to read on anyway. It turned out that the book was different and Wallander was played as a finer fellow by Kenneth Branaugh than he appears in the book.
Wallander was not an entirely sympathetic character. I wanted him to be different from what he was so that I could identify better with him. But that's not the way the book was written. Like Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins, Mankell's Kurt Wallander is a rough edged and flawed individual whom we have to take as he comes.
| Author | Francis, Dick |
|---|---|
| Author | Francis, Felix |
| Publication | New York: Penguin Audio, 2010 |
| Number of Pages | 448 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | July 2011 |
Captain Tom Forsyth wakes up in Afghanistan, a casualty of an improvised explosive device. His foot has been blown off. He is choppered out, sent to England, treated in hospital and rehab, given an artificial foot, and finally sent home to his mother's house, where he has not lived in many, many years and with whom he has not really gotten along.
His mother is, what else, a race horse trainer. But things are not right at the establishment. Horses are getting sick and losing. Money is inexplicably tight. His mother and her third husband are on edge, upset, and uncommunicative. Tom can't keep himself from needling them a little but eventually, due to some eavesdropping and snooping, he discovers that his mother is being blackmailed and forced to throw races - which she does by feeding rotten potatoes to her horses before a race.
Although she's a good horse trainer, her financial affairs are a mess. She took the advice of a con artist who got her to invest her savings, a million dollars, in a phony hedge fund scheme, and who also advised her that she could avoid income taxes by another illegal scheme, which he said was legal. Now, the con artist is dead, the million dollars is gone, but someone is blackmailing her over the back taxes and forcing her to give him 2,000 pounds a week and throw some races.
Tom figures out more and more of the scheme and is noticed by the blackmailers. They knock him out, kidnap him, tie and truss him up in an abandoned stable, and leave him to die a horrible death of dehydration in pain and in his own urine and feces. But of course Dick Francis' heroes aren't men without resources. Tom does everything he can think of and eventually escapes. Then he hides from everyone and begins to track the blackmailers and plot to bring them to justice.
The final showdown is implausible and forced. The blackmailers kidnap Tom's mother. Tom tracks them back to the same stable where he had been kept (the implausible part.) The blackmailers were stupid to do that and had Tom told the police they could easily have dealt with the situation. Tom fights them in the dark and overcomes them. The girl that he liked, married to one of the blackmailers, is killed by her husband by accident when he thought he was shooting at Tom.
The bad guys are arrested. The million dollars is retrieved in a marvelous bit of computer hacking, the back taxes and interest are paid off. The stable is on an even keel again. The mother retires and Tom takes over the running of the stable, promoting the head lad, a man with a deep commitment to horses, to be the assistant trainer.
All ends well.
I have enjoyed every one of Dick Francis' books. They're straightforward. They're formulaic. The hero is always a man who is intelligent, brave, and resourceful, but never any kind of superman. He makes mistakes. Still, he's a man we can identify with and admire.
At some point in every story, the hero is captured by the unknown bad guys and made to suffer, but manages by great effort and resourcefulness to escape. He then tracks the bad guys and has a final confrontation with them - where he turns down any opportunity for revenge. He just turns them over to the police.
It works. It's reliable. He does each one well. I admire the old man who, is now 91 years old and helped by his son (or is it he who is helping his son), is still doing great work.
| Author | Ghosh, Amitav |
|---|---|
| Publication | Grand Haven, MI: Brilliance Audio, 2009 |
| Copyright Date | 2000 |
| Number of Pages | 486 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | August 2011 |
Young teenager Rajkumar Raja steps off a boat in Mandalay in Burma in 1885. His family has all died in an epidemic. He has been taken in by the boat captain and given a job, but there is no cargo to carry from Mandalay and the captain sends him to an Indian woman he knows to work in her restaurant. Thus begins a 111 year story of intertwined families of India, Burma, and even Maylaysia, China and the U.S.
It is the year of the British conquest of Burma. The reclusive Burmese king and his Machiavellian queen cannot comprehend the power of the British and are easily defeated and taken into captivity. As they abandon the Glass Palace, the people sneak in to see and loot the place, Rajkumar with them, where he glimpses Dolly, a child servant of the queen who cares for the youngest princess. He is struck by her beauty and remembers her for years, eventually going to India to find her at the house of captivity of the king and queen.
Still a teenager, Rajkumar goes to work for Saya John, a half Chinese entrepreneur who travels to the teak camps, bringing in supplies for the wood cutters. After years in the business, Rajkumar develops a good business sense. With Saya John's help, he starts his own teak business and gradually becomes a rich man. He travels to India to pursue Dolly, now in her thirties, and takes her back as his wife to Burma.
The story gradually expands. The Collector of Ratnagiri, responsible for King Thibaw and Queen Supayalat in exile in India loses his job when the princess becomes pregnant by the family's gardener. He kills himself in a boating "accident" leaving his wife, Uma Dey a widow. She had already decided to leave him and she becomes an important character in the story - a feminist and Indian independence activist. Other important characters include the two sons of Rajkumar and Dolly, Neel and Dinu; Arjun, the brother of Neel's wife; Allison, granddaughter of Saya John and lover of Dinu, and a number of others, across three generations.
The story is rich in personal, historical, social, and family affairs. There are terrible personal tragedies - major characters killed off in the war, and historical tragedies - the British conquest of Burma, the Japanese invasions, the Indian National Army, the Burmese military dictatorship.
The story ends with the granddaughter of Rajkumar and Dolly attempting to piece together the story of the family, and finding the family's last surviving member, Dinu, still alive in Burma.
It's a beautiful story, rich in history, description and in character. It reminded me of Thackeray, Tolstoy and De Bernieres' Birds Without Wings.
Having said that however I should still say that [this kind of wordy locution would never have appeared on one of my 3x5 book cards] there are literary lapses in the book. The story of Arjun and Kishan Singh conveys a wealth of information about colonial Indian mentality, but the fate of the two men seems gratuitous. In fact, many of the characters have similar fates. The Collector, Saya John and Allison, Neel, Neel's wife, maybe even Dolly, all die in dramatic and, in some sense arbitrary, circumstances. Their fates are determined by their natures, but in real life we would not expect them, especially not all of them, to have to die as the logical conclusion of those natures. The death of Kishan Singh seemed particularly gratuitous, and those of Saya John and Allison only a little less so.
Most of the literature I read is by American or European writers but there is now a great development of literature in the rest of the world. Great literature is now coming out in some quantity from Indian and Indian expatriate writers - Rohinton Mistry, V.S. Naipaul, and Salman Rushdie come to mind. There are also many great Latin America writers of richly conceived, deeply intellectual, social, political, and philosophical novels. I'm sure that there are many others. One day there will also be literature of this sophistication coming from China. Perhaps it is already being written and will soon be published.
At some point in my history of writing book notes I found myself needing to know the names of specific characters in the books that I read and not finding those names in my notes. I started including more names in my notes, especially after I removed the note length limitations of the 3x5 cards. I may have overdone it in this case but I don't think it does any harm.
In my comment I said I thought that there were going to be great books coming from China. I think that is indeed already happening and will happen more and more in the future. China has produced much great literature, poetry, painting, drama, and perhaps music in the past. Now, perhaps since the late 19th century, but more and more now that thought control is declining, and education and the development of a national audience for literature is increasing, I am convinced that both India and China will become leaders in literature, movies, and the arts, taking their rightful place in world culture.
| Author | Burgin, R.V. |
|---|---|
| Author | Marvel, William |
| Publication | Old Saybrook, Conn.: Tantor Audio, 2010 |
| Number of Pages | 304 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History; Autobiography |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | August 2011 |
R.V. (Romus Valton) Burgin, from a small Texas farm, joined the Marine Corps and went with the 1st Marine Division, Fifth Regiment (I think, the nomenclature is not made totally clear in the book) and was sent into battle at Cape Gloucester in New Britain. After that, he fought in very tough and drawn out battles on Peleliu and Okinawa. He was a mortar man, soon becoming a complete expert at assembling, disassembling, maintaining, aiming and firing his 60 mm mortar. Eventually he rose to become the platoon sergeant in the mortar platoon.
A lot of the combat he experienced was firing mortars at the Japanese but there was at least as much firing his M-1 and his first kill was with a .45 pistol at close range.
Everything is here: rain, rot, insects, bad water, wounds, tiredness, fear, fanatical Japanese, foolish officers (and good ones too), sea-sickness, friendly fire, hunger, sunburn, malaria, whatever. After a months long battle the men, now thin, gaunt and sick, are pulled out and sent to a pacified island for rest and recuperation. Mostly they went to a place with nothing much more than the place they just left, except that there were no Japanese and the food and water were plentiful.
Along the way, Burgin was in Australia where he met and fell in love with a girl. This love sustained him during combat. He wrote to her and got letters from her and thought about marrying her and moving back to Texas after the war with her. And he did. They settled in Texas where he eventually landed a job as a letter carrier for the post office, gradually working his way up to supervisor and eventually postmaster.
Burgin was motivated to write this memoir after becoming engaged in the HBO project, The Pacific, based in part on The Old Breed, a famous memoir by Eugene B. Sledge, a man in Burgin's platoon. It is amazing to have two memoirs by two different men in the same platoon who fought the exact same battles in the exact same places, often in the same foxholes. I'll have to read "Sledgehammer's" account as well.
This is a fine account. It is history told at the ground level, by a direct participant. Burgin was an uneducated man but a man of great strength and character. I believe that the soldiers who served with him were lucky to have him as their platoon sergeant. He was steady, brave, cool under fire, and able to think as well as fight his way out of tough spots.
We're about at the end of memoirs by World War II participants. The war ended just over 66 years ago. The survivors are now in their 80's and 90's. I'm sure that many don't have the sharp memories that Burgin seems to have retained. I hope every man and woman who can still do it will write down what they experienced and that it will all be preserved forever.
I feel that I owe something to R.V. Burgin, E.B. Sledge, and the rest of the millions of Allied soldiers who risked everything to fight the Germans and the Japanese. Many of the Germans and almost all of the Japanese were brave men too. They were willing to die for their countries too. But those men were manipulated into fighting and dying for an evil cause. Ours could know then, and still know today, that the sacrifices that they made saved the world from oppression and slavery.
| Author | Filkins, Dexter |
|---|---|
| Publication | Vintage, 2009 |
| Number of Pages | 384 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| When Read | September 2011 |
New York Times reporter Filkins spent considerable time in both Afghanistan and Iraq. This account of his experiences focuses on events that he personally witnessed. It's about raids on suspected terrorist hideouts, the battle in Falujah, public meetings in Iraq, private meetings with government officials and with men associated with the rebellions.
There are jogging runs, Filkins was an inveterate jogger, through the Green Zone and beyond. He traveled all over with a driver and/or a photographer and translator. They went into Iraqi restaurants where all talk stopped when the American walked in, though in most cases it resumed. They went to public places where all the Iraqis walked off in all directions. Was it because they didn't want to be with an American? Was it because they were sending him a message? Was it because they didn't want to be seen by other Iraqis as being with an American? Or was it because they didn't want to be near a target when the bullets began to fly?
This is not a history of the war. There's nothing here about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bremer, Odiorno, Petraeus, or the other major American players, and very little about Saddam Hussein. There is no timeline and no statement about what American policy was, is, should be, or should have been. However there is a rather pessimistic view of what was happening, including accounts of American officers and soldiers who started out as nation builders and wound up as very rough occupation forces, imposing their will on a hostile populace.
I've read a number of books now about the Middle East wars. Not one has presented a positive view of the American occupations. Filkins, Thomas, and all of the others have certainly condemned Saddam Hussein and were not unhappy about his overthrow. None of them are fans of the Taliban either. But all of them seem to believe that the longer the United States forces remain in those countries, the worse our position will be among the local people.
Maybe if we get out everything will go to hell. Maybe the Taliban will take over Afghanistan. Maybe the Sunnis will be oppressed and terrorized in Iraq. But if we don't get out, we may only succeed in postponing the inevitable, at a tremendous cost in American life and treasure and in the good will of all of the peoples of the Middle East.
Filkins' book was interesting to me because of its eyewitness, on the ground experience of Iraq and Afghanistan. F. is an excellent observer, a courageous journalist, and a man capable of translating complex and ambiguous events into clear prose. The complexity and ambiguity remains. Nothing is simplified. But it is at least more visible than it was. He has made a useful contribution to the literature.
| Author | Strugatsky, Arkady and Boris |
|---|---|
| Translators | Ackerman, W. |
| Publication | Methuen Publishing, 1975 |
| Number of Pages | 224 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | September 2011 |
The story takes place on a remote planet where a team of sociologists, or historians, or whatever they are, is living amongst a local medieval society of humans. That part of the story is a given. There is no explanation of how these men go back and forth to an earth that is light years away, how real actual humans happened to be, presumably through some local evolution, on the planet, how the project got started, or even exactly what its goals are. We must grant all this to the authors and begin our story from there.
Don Rumata, a secret earth man pretending to be a nobleman, has skills in swordsmanship and fighting that are far in excess of anyone else on the planet, and buckets of gold when that is needed for his purposes. He's therefore a man greatly to be feared and treated carefully by the authorities.
Rumata is deeply distressed by what he is seeing in the land where he now lives but cannot figure out what to do about it. An evil minister in the government is creating a fascist regime, complete with gray shirted stormtroopers, an ideology of strict obedience to the government, and the active suppression, often involving torture and death, of all intellectuals - writers, doctors, scientists, teachers, anyone who might try to think for himself.
Rumata wants to lead a revolt. Although he is a man who never kills anyone in his many winning fights, he believes that maybe he should kill the minister. But will it change anything? Will whoever comes to power be different? Is the society ready for anything better? And if it's not, doesn't it have to go through whatever evolution it must go through and not be diverted by some well meaning but essentially futile and even counter productive interference?
The few other earth men in the story mostly believe that non-interference is the only possible policy. They are all willing to save individuals who are on the point of arrest, and they do so. But they are not willing to interfere directly to change the society itself. They believe that there is no end to that kind of interference and no telling where it will lead.
Rumata tries his best both to adhere to the policy and to find a way that he can improve upon it. But everything he does changes nothing. The evil minister is himself in a very precarious position. The head of the grays may seize power at any time (a story no doubt based on Hitler and Ernest Roehm, head of the Nazi brownshirts.) So he stages a preemptive coup, turning power over to an army of the church who introduce a kind of Inquisition into the land. But while the minister has saved himself from the expected overthrow, it is unlikely that he will survive long when the church consolidates its power and no longer needs him.
Rumata storms and fumes. He tries to interfere to save a few individuals. He almost gets himself killed. But he can do nothing and when the monks come to attack his house his faithful and intelligent young servant and his fine young woman are both killed, although Rumata himself is saved by his compatriots who spirit him away and send him back to earth.
The Strugatskys are the only post Stalin Soviet writers I have read who took seriously the possibility of a communist future that lives up to its promise. No doubt this was the major factor in their ability to publish at all. But they were popular in the USSR and, surprisingly perhaps, in the West as well. Their vision of the future was an honest one. It was an attempt, not to glorify the existing Soviet state but, if anything, to guide its supporters into a sophisticated appreciation of communism, not just as a classless utopia, but as a society in which people are still people and problems are still to be solved.
Their vision is fascinating to me. Their heroes are men whom I can identify with - progressive men who want to do right and who have a deeply historical view of life and society, but aren't necessarily able to solve the problems before them.
It has been many years since I read their books. I read seven before this, the first in 1977 and the last in 1988.
I have just read the seven book cards for the seven earlier novels. I liked five of them very much, one acceptably well, and one, Space Apprentice, not so well. Hard to Be a God fits among the better books. It expresses the historicity, the ambiguity of what it means to be a good man, and the difficulties in understanding that infuse the other good books. Now, twenty-three years after my last reading of the Strugatskys, I still like their work and still agree with the comments I made about them in earlier readings.
| Author | Cornwell, Bernard |
|---|---|
| Publication | Prince Frederick, MD: Recorded Books, 2010 |
| Number of Pages | 496 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American Revolution |
| When Read | September 2011 |
In 1779 a British expedition landed around 700 men at Majabigwaduce, a small town or village on Penobscot Bay in what is now Maine but was then Massachusetts. The village contained a number of Tory families who had fled from Boston. The British began building a fort to defend the place, and kept a number of small ships on hand to provide naval defense.
The Massachusetts state government reacted by raising a force of about 800 militia under the command of Solomon Lovell, and sent them to Majabigwaduce in a very large flotilla containing more and more powerful warships than the British had in the bay. Led by a small force of well trained Marines, they assaulted and captured the heights above the fort but failed to go further. Lovell refused to risk attacking the fort even though it was weak, planning instead to reduce the force by canon fire. The effort was unsuccessful and the British built up the fort higher and higher during the siege.
Eventually, Commodore Saltonstall, in command of the fleet, made another attempt to attack the British ships, but a powerful Royal Navy relief force arrived, drove them all up river, and wiped out the American fleet. The siege was abandoned and the men made their way overland back to Boston.
Cornwell presents Lovell as incompetent, timid, and with only a poor understanding of his role as a commander. Saltonstall is portrayed as competent but unwilling. In the end, he is assigned the blame for destroying his fleet instead of fighting with it in the narrow confines of the river where he might have had advantages to compensate for the smaller size of his ships. Paul Revere, the commander of the artillery, is presented as vain, disobedient, incompetent, and more concerned with his own ease and welfare than with the mission of the army, or even with the lives of the militia. Among the Americans, only General Peleg Wadsworth of the militia, Captain Welch and another officer of the Marines, and some of the captains of the smaller ships, are presented as competent and determined. The British are far superior.
In the end it's a fiasco for the American side.
This was a very pedestrian book. The characters were one dimensional. The British motivation for the expedition was not explained and the American motivation for their effort to repel the British was poorly explained. All of the characters referred to the men of the other side as bastards and the battle cry always seemed to be "kill the bastards". But we are given no reason why anyone would see anyone else as bastards. In short, on both the strategic and psychological levels, there is little motivation for anything in the story.
The CD version that I listened to did not include the appendix at the end that cited sources - though sources were read out interspersed in the text. Perhaps everything was there, or perhaps not. The novel ends abruptly with no explanation of the future of the settlement, the fort, the men, the relief expedition on its way to reinforce the Americans, or any of the characters.
I like historical novels, am interested in the period of the Revolutionary War, and would like to know more about this incident. But this is a poorly written novel that gave me information about the events but nothing to enjoy in a literary way. Cornwell appears to be a hack who has written 50 novels so far and made tons of money selling books and TV rights. More power to him, but he's not for me.
| Author | Egan, Jennifer |
|---|---|
| Publication | BBC Audiobooks America, 2010 |
| Number of Pages | 352 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | September 2011 |
The book opens with a first person narrative of a woman named Sasha, a kleptomaniac. She is struggling with her addiction to stealing and reminiscing about her past. It continues with new chapters, each the first person narrative of a different person. The time period of each narrative varies over perhaps 40 years. But the times are not sequential. We move from one period to the next, moving back or forth as may be.
At first we don't know how these people and times are connected, or whether they are at all. But the connection gradually emerges. All of them are connected to Sasha in one way or another. Their connections to each other vary. Some don't know each other at all. Many do.
Sasha was a sort of production assistant to Benny Salazar, a rock and roll music producer. Benny and Sasha and several other people, who also appear in the book, were in a rock and roll band in high school. Benny, the bass player, had been in love with another girl who was in love with the lead guitar, who was in love with another, and so on. No one got the person they wanted.
Not everyone in the book is connected to rock and roll. An art history professor, the brother of one of Sasha's parents, is sent to Italy to find Sasha. He mostly just wants to look at art but, improbably, he actually finds her. She steals her uncle's money but he finds her again. Everyone really wants to do the right thing but the right thing isn't always what they're motivated to do. They lead lives of frustration and yearning.
This was a very difficult book to understand. It's not for the faint of heart. The transitions in person and time are confusing. It requires perseverance to get through it and discover the connections.
It's also a book about difficult people. It's not that they aren't likable, it's that we have to watch them do self-destructive things, and things that are destructive to the people they care about. These things can be painful to watch.
Nevertheless, I consider it a good book. It's difficulties are not failings. They challenge the reader more than might be necessary, and more than many readers will tolerate. But the book hangs together and, at the end, the reader feels that he's gained some understanding.
| Author | Charteris, Leslie |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Fiction Publishing Company |
| Copyright Date | 1930 |
| Number of Pages | 162 |
| Extras | Author's Foreword |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | September 2011 |
Simon Templar is driving along a dark road with his sweetheart Patricia when a strange light from a nearby house attracts him to investigate. He stumbles upon a demonstration of a new weapon, worse even than the poison gas of the World War. It was invented by a rather mad scientist, is being demonstrated to British government officials, and is coveted by the dangerous criminal mastermind, Dr. Rayt Marius, in the employ of Crown Prince Rudolph of ____.
Marius kidnaps the mad scientist. Templar and his gang of assistants, kidnaps him back. Marius kidnaps Patricia. Simon steals her back. There is a siege. There is some shooting. Scotland Yard is involved in a role that is against the criminals but not exactly for the Saint.
It all works out in the end.
This was the second of Charteris' Saint novels. Like the first, it features a man of impeccable taste, impeccable morals, independent means, independent mind, and unmatched intelligence, physical strength and ability - in short a rather uninteresting character. However, in his foreword written many years later, the 1950's perhaps, Charteris claims that this was one of his first really popular books and one for which, although he now (then) considers a little naive, he still retains some fondness.
I read this book because Retro TV is playing old episodes of the TV show "The Saint" from the 1960's. I enjoyed that show back when I watched it in the late 60's or early 70's in our little bedroom in our apartment at 507 E. High Street in Urbana Illinois. I would sit on the bed, likely smoking a joint, Marcia beside me, watching this on our 12 inch black and white TV, perhaps playing Solitaire as I watched - frittering away my youth as, today, I fritter away my old age.
The TV show is better than the two books I read. Roger Moore played the role of Simon Templar with more grace and humanity than Charteris gave him. Perhaps the later books were better in that regard. However my curiosity is assuaged. I still might read another some day, but probably not soon. If I do read one, I should try one of the later ones.
This is the first book I read on my Pandigital Novel e-book reader. I started it on the Palm but finished on the e-book reader. That part of the experience was nice. I will be reading many more books that way.
| Author | Sorokin, Vladimir |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Gambrell, Jamey |
| Publication | New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011 |
| Copyright Date | 2006 |
| Number of Pages | 191 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | September 2011 |
In one single day in a dystopian Russia in 2026, Andrei Danilovich Komiaga gets up and goes to work. He arrives at the house of a wealthy man who has been declared an enemy of the state by "His Majesty". Komiaga and the other "oprichniki" (a term for Czarist secret police) and "streltsy" (a term for armed guards, like "musketeers") drive off the man's servants, murder him, gang rape his wife, pack off his children to an orphanage, and burn down his house. It was a job well done. The needs of God and His Majesty and Mother Russia have been served. It is time to move on to the next task.
He then attends a border tariff negotiation where he helps the oprichniki outfox the customs agents and the Chinese traders in order to steal more tariff money from the Chinese. Then he hops a plane to visit a soothsayer at the behest of Her Majesty. Upon returning, he goes to her house, gets a quick look at her breasts, which almost paralyzes him with love and veneration, and then off to the theater to see a new play which requires political interference in order to perfect. Leaving the theater, he is approached by petitioners who want him to intercede on behalf of the husband of one who has been arrested. He negotiates a price of 2,500 in gold plus an "aquarium" containing seven new, advanced, golden fish who can swim into the bloodstream in order to provide an exceptional and joint drug high for the injectors.
Next is a party at Batya's house. Batya is the beloved leader of the oprichniki. The seven right hand men (Komiaga is fourth) and seven left hand men are present, along with some younger new men who do not yet have places in the hierarchy. They have a feast. A former and now out of favor son-in-law of His Majesty shows up offering to buy favors from them but, after a bit of back and forth, they murder him in a little ritual in which the younger men throw knives into his back and the servants then carry away his body. There is a feast. There is more drug taking. There is a kind of cluster fuck in which the men line up naked in a special order in a pool and each man penetrates the anus of the man ahead. And finally, they end with a drill ritual in which the men grope in the dark with electric drills, drilling holes in their neighbor's leg until one man finally breaks and screams. He's the loser of the game. None of them like the drill game, but Batya is the beloved leader and whatever he wants happens.
Komiaga finally returns home and crawls into bed. His young servant girl comes to bed with him but is disappointed (or not, hard to tell) because he has already had sex of a sort at the party and is not interested.
What an extraordinary book this is. I can't recall anything quite like it. It is black humor of a very high order. It penetrates into the heart of rottenness in the new Russia, wildly exaggerating political and economic tendencies in a way that exposes the ridiculousness of its core values.
In one sense, I didn't like the book at all. It made me squirm. The casual murders, the portrayal of this beast as a loyal, devoted, and even reverent man was constantly jarring. The juxtaposition of Komiaga's criminality with his hail-fellow-well-met mentality was hard to bear. But in another sense I liked the book very much. I liked it's penetration. I liked its absurdity. I liked the sparkling prose. It is a remarkable book.
| Author | Liddell Hart, Basil Henry, 1895-1970 |
|---|---|
| Publication | London: Pan Books Ltd., 1972 |
| Copyright Date | 1930 |
| Number of Pages | xvii + 504 |
| Extras | bibliography, maps, general index, factors index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Military; World War I |
| When Read | September 2011 |
Liddell Hart, a historian and an officer in the British Expeditionary Force, wrote this history of the war at a time when many of the key people were still alive. It covers the entire war, starting with the immediate, efficient causes of the war, and continuing on to the armistice. It is a strictly military history with relatively little to say about the deep causes, the politics, the economics, or the technology of the war.
As well as being a detailed history it is also a bold judgment of the men who made the decisions that sent tens or hundreds of thousands of men to their deaths. LH makes no apologies for commanders who violated the principles of strategy and tactics, who didn't bother to visit the front, who weren't interested in understanding the weather and the terrain, who ignored warnings from their own intelligence officers, who ignored the pleas of their own sub-commanders in the field, and who sent men to their deaths in hopeless attacks. He calls such men little more than murderers and states his belief that they deserve to be called to account.
No side is immune from criticism, but some commanders on all sides, British, French, German, Russian, Italian, American and Turkish are singled out for credit as men who understood what they were doing and fulfilled their roles with intelligence and honor. Some of these men were punished for their good deeds, especially if they turned out to be right when their own commanders were wrong.
There is some treatment of the eastern front, the Middle East, the Balkans, and Italy, but the main focus is, as it probably should be, on the western front. LH believed that the right way to fight on the western front was to recognize it as siege warfare. The trench lines with their barbed wire defenses, machine gun nests, fall back positions, and artillery defenses, were essentially fortresses. They could not be breached with simple frontal assaults. To succeed, it was essential to use siege tactics - sudden and surprise destruction of the fortifications with artillery, mines, or especially tanks, with follow through to penetrate behind the lines with more tanks to overcome the next line of fortifications and the next, then explosive movement of reserves through the breech.
LH provided numerous examples of when and how opportunities were present and how they were squandered by inadequate preparation, attacking the wrong targets, or failure to believe in the strategy so that when the breech succeeded there were no reserves to exploit it or too little decisiveness to recognize the opportunity and seize it before the enemy recovered.
There was a lot of discussion of tanks and some of naval affairs, but relatively little about the air or submarine wars. Except for some very brief remarks, there was nothing at all about the technology - the remarkable development of the airplane during the war, the developing submarine and anti-submarine technologies, the importance of motor transport, or even the technology of tanks, which LH seems to have considered to be the stalemate breakers of the western front.
I understand that LH's account is controversial. Not all historians agree with it, which is not surprising given the strong, even strident, judgments he makes. However it has been many years since I read anything about the first world war and I'm not knowledgeable enough to make any independent judgment of my own. I can only say that I was impressed by the book and think that I learned a lot. Perhaps some of LH's opinions are wrong, but surely they are not completely so.
I was interested in LH's view of the importance of American participation in the war. It came at a critical time. After the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Germans transferred many divisions from the east. They launched a powerful, long lasting, and tactically clever offensive in March of 1918, hoping to conquer France or force an armistice before the Americans could arrive in any numbers. They pushed very far. It was the biggest success on the western front since their original assault in 1914. However LH did not believe that it came as close to victory as many subsequent historians thought. A lot of territory was captured but the French and British armies were not defeated or destroyed. The logistics needed to bring supplies across the conquered land were stretched. The German troops were exhausted by the offensive and demoralized by the wealth of food and supplies that they found behind Allied lines - which highlighted their own deep suffering and semi-starvation. By the time they were ultimately driven back, they had already reached the end of their resources and had failed in their object. Petain, unlike Foch and Haig, husbanded his forces very carefully did maximum damage for minimum loss. That and the arrival of the Americans convinced the German general staff that the war was over. They appealed to the Kaiser to seek an armistice and the people at home had had enough.
Interestingly, LH considers that many of the people who were active in overthrowing the Kaiser's empire had been firm supporters of the German war effort, even right up to March 1918, when the apparent success of the German army intoxicated them with dreams of European dominion.
The American army comes out well in LH's estimation. They lacked the experience of the British and French. They came with little equipment except their personal weapons - having been told by their Allies that what was needed now were men, fast, in the largest possible numbers. They made many mistakes that the British, French and Germans learned to avoid after 1915. But they were learning fast and arriving in numbers. It would only have been a matter of time before their presence became decisive.
I don't think much about the first world war. Most of my reading has been about the second one, which overshadowed the first both in the world scale of the fighting - especially in the Pacific, and the consequences that were at stake. The second war also engaged my interest by the participation of my Dad, my uncles, and all of the men of my Dad's generation, and by the evil perpetrated against the Jews and others by the lunatic Hitler. But the stakes were high in the first war too and the suffering was truly immense.
| Author | Mrazek, Robert J. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Tantor Audio, 2011 |
| Number of Pages | 400 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Aviation; World War II |
| When Read | October 2011 |
Mrazek, a Navy veteran, former congressman from Long Island, corporate board member, and author of both fiction and history, has written a history of a particular raid by American 8th Air Force B-17s on Stuttgart, Germany on September 6, 1943. He begins with the backgrounds of a number of the men, both officers and enlisted, then covers the day of the raid itself, then the subsequent adventures of men who were shot down but survived in hiding in France or as prisoners of the Germans. An epilogue carries forward the stories of these men up to their deaths or, in some cases, right to the time of writing.
The raid was ordered by Ira Eaker, then Major General commanding the 8th Air Force. Although he was a great believer in daylight precision bombing as the form of warfare that would win the war, he was opposed to deep penetration missions over Germany without fighter support. Earlier attempts had resulted in horrific casualties and, in spite of the steady stream of replacement aircraft and crews from the US, his unit was gradually losing ground and his men were under severe strain. However his superior, General Hap Arnold, demanded more deep penetration raids. He needed them because he needed to prove that they could be done and could cripple the Germans in order to prevent more bombers from being diverted to the Pacific and Mediterranean theaters. MacArthur had demanded and got 1,000 bombers for the Pacific. Arnold believed that this was a waste of critical aircraft and would only prolong the war. So he forced Eaker into action.
Several hundred Flying Fortresses took off from England on the largest deep penetration raid to date. A significant number of the planes turned back due to technical problems, almost certainly compounded by a real fear of this raid and a desire to stay out of it on the part of the pilots. The others crossed the Channel into German controlled airspace. Once the fighter escort turned back to avoid running out of fuel, the Luftwaffe began its attacks. They used well proven tactics of waves of fighters flying line abreast in head on attacks, shooting up aircraft and crew and breaking off only at the last moment. Attacks continued right up to Stuttgart, where the flak took over.
When they arrived over the city, the target was obscured by almost 100% cloud cover. They could not find the target. The mission commander, General Robert Travis, ordered a go around. Under fire the whole time and burning precious fuel, the planes made a wide circle, only to find the target still obscured and Travis ordering yet another go around. On the third circle the chief bombardier claimed he saw, or thought he saw, the target and let go. Everyone else followed and they were enabled to head for home.
Many did not make it. Luftwaffe ace Egon Mayer shot down several and many others were lost to fighters or to flak. German pilots at this time were dedicated almost to the point of suicidal efforts to protect their homeland. Of those bombers that survived the fighters and the flak, some were lost over France or over the Channel due to running out of fuel.
The Stuttgart raid itself only occupies about half the book. The rest follows the adventures of some of the aircrew who survived but didn't make it back to England. Some planes, damaged or low on fuel, flew on to Switzerland where the crews were interned. Others bailed out over France. One gunner was shot in the head and wounded elsewhere. Still alive when the others bailed out he told them to go without him, he was finished. The plane, with no pilot at the controls, crashed in France. Incredibly, the gunner survived and was taken to a German hospital where he was patched up. The German doctor didn't think he'd make it but he did, and also survived numerous infections and life in a POW camp until he was finally exchanged with a group of other severely wounded men who were clearly out of the war.
Other men were taken in by French civilians and passed through the French underground networks. Many made it out of France, either on fishing boats that took them to England, or by crossing the Spanish frontier. The French Maqui who guided them and the families that sheltered them were very brave and a great many eventually lost their lives because of it.
An epilogue tells the stories of life after the war for those who survived.
This was a very good book of its kind. It combined pretty good and interesting history with a very human focused and absorbing look at the experiences of the men involved.
Mrazek is careful not to make judgments about Hap Arnold or Robert Travis. Especially in the case of Travis, it is my sense that he thinks that they sacrificed men to feed their own egos. But he never says so. He lays out facts in a relatively neutral way and quotes from after action reports and from Travis' own quotations of his three Silver Star and other citations offering positive views of the man. It would be hard to accuse Mravek of making anything up or even of slanting what he wrote. But the conclusions seemed pretty clear to me.
Mrazek has written another book about the Pacific. I may read that one day if I find it.
| Author | Burke, James Lee |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002 |
| Copyright Date | 1987 |
| Number of Pages | 214 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | October 2011 |
In this first of the Dave Robicheaux novels, the detective lieutenant discovers the body of a 19 year old black prostitute floating in the swamps. He calls the local sheriff's office but is harassed for his attempts to interfere in what is clearly something that the sheriff prefers to ignore. Returning to his job with the New Orleans Police Department, he continues to stir up trouble related to the girl. He is assaulted by professional gunmen and then suffers an attempt by them on his life that kills a federal agent and injures him. He comes to believe that there is a Central American gun running operation in progress and that he stumbled into it.
Everyone is against him. The Feds blame him for the death of their agent and for messing up their investigation. The local authorities have him arrested and suspended from the police force for taking the law into his own hands. His partner, Clete Purcell, is supportive but turns out to have performed a murder for hire against one of the thugs who hurt him.
Of course it all comes right in the end for Robicheaux, who gets the girl, solves the case, kills one of the bad guys and exposes the gangster and the former general who are at the head of the illegal activities. But he has had enough of the police and quits.
This was an excellent start to the series. It concluded with some events, Purcell's alienation and Robicheaux's leaving the force, that might have been inconvenient for the rest of the series, but perhaps Burke didn't know there was going to be a series when this one was published.
There are a number of awkwardnesses in the plot, a number of escapes from trouble occur that seem pretty gratuitous. Robicheaux is presented as an awkward character, not fully in control of himself and not very good with his new girlfriend. Some of the rough edges get smoothed out in the later books. But he is the serious and philosophical character that we come to respect in the subsequent novels, and whom we find to be interesting and sympathetic. He is a man who cares about others.
This is the second book read on my Pandigital eReader. It's getting to be a habit.
| Author | Turtledove, Harry |
|---|---|
| Publication | 2011 |
| Number of Pages | 48 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | November 2011 |
In a future world conquered by the Nazis professional actor Veit Harlan plays Jakub Shlayfer, Jewish knife grinder, watch repairer, pharmacy compounder and general handyman in the reconstructed Polish village of Wawolnice. He leaves his wife Bertha (played by his real wife Kristi) in the morning and walks to his shop. He does his work. He speaks only in Yiddish and Hebrew. The rabbi comes in to converse with him and split hairs about Torah doctrine. Tourists roam the streets and photograph him and the other "Poles" and "Jews". At the end of the day he returns to his hovel, meets his wife, and the two of them leave the village and drive in their Audi back to their apartment in Lublin.
A pogrom has been scheduled. Veit/Jakub hates it but what can you do? A couple of condemned and drugged prisoners are brought in to be killed by rampaging Poles. Dressed as Jews, they are kicked and beaten to death beneath the fascinated eyes of the tourists. One of the "Poles", too deeply immersed into his part, throws a rock at Jakub's back and cracks a couple of his ribs, leaving him in severe pain for the next six weeks.
Jakub and Reb Eliezer are well into their parts. Hidden microphones planted by the secret police are everywhere and perhaps the SD are getting suspicious that these "Jews" are too Jewish. An intimidating visit from an SS Hauptsturmfuhrer follows but Jakub manages to convince him that he is just playing a role. That night, Veit and Kristi visit a restaurant on the way home and eat pork and shellfish, charging it to their credit card as obvious proof that they are not keeping kosher.
The "Jews" have a picnic. They enjoy themselves in the country. Everyone has a good time. Even here however no one knows who might be wearing a microphone. No one speaks about the fact that many of the picnickers have avoided any food that was treyf.
Going deeper into his role, something that is rewarded by his employers with extra pay, Veit has himself circumcised. Afterward, under the influence of a pill for pain, he watches an old early 20th century movie about Frankenstein on TV. He sees the artificial man created from old pieces and parts coming to life. He wonders what the actors in Wawolnice might also have brought to life.
This little story is materially unrealistic and was not meant to be anything else. Germany could never have conquered the whole world and I doubt that Nazism would have long survived the death of Hitler. But that was not the point. The emotional feeling of the story was very realistic. Jakub and Kristi and Reb Eliezer recreated much more than the physical appearance of the Jews of pre-war Poland. The story successfully brought out the fear, the hopelessness, the foolishness and the essential humanity of a vanished people and a vanished culture. It properly exposed the crimes of Nazism and made it all real again.
This is the second story I have read by Turtledove about the oppression of minorities. The other was Fort Pillow, a book that I thought about and commented on again yesterday when I converted my book card for it into XML. He is a popular writer but one who is not just writing for popular taste. He has things to say. He tells us things that we should learn if we did not know them and remember if we have forgotten them.
I liked this story very much.
| Author | Robeson, Kenneth |
|---|---|
| Publication | |
| Copyright Date | 1941 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | November 2011 |
Cowboy Ben Duck works on a Dude ranch in Montana, carrying out work duties on the ranch and shepherding Eastern tourists around the back country trails. On one particular outing he encounters a dying old man, is given a toy by the man, and begged to contact Doc Savage and "Mira". Later he is assaulted and then kidnapped and tortured by various men who want the toy, which he denies he has.
A woman hired by the kidnappers to lead Ben into the desert realizes that Ben is a good guy, and that the men who hired her are bad guys. She escapes from their camp and makes it back to New York where she tells Doc Savage what is going on. He investigates at the New York end, then pretends to be a pilot and is hired by the gang to bring some of them to Montana. His own gang of good guy specialists follow in another plane. There are fights, double crosses, bad guys figuring out what the good guys are doing, good guys figuring out what the bad guys are doing, and eventually the saving of Ben Duck, the discovery of the gold mine that all of this was about, and the arrest of all the bad guys. Doc sees to it that the gold mine goes entirely to Ben, the girl, and others, keeping nothing for himself. He and his gang live on money from some not to be spoken of source, have lots and lots of it already, and do all of their death defying tricks for the shear fun of it.
I have heard of the Doc Savage stories before but don't think I've ever read one. They're from the same era as the Shadow, the Green Arrow, Flash Gordon, and other cartoon like heroes who used (then) high technology, great intelligence, and great physical strength, to insert themselves into criminal situations, solve the crimes, and put the bad guys behind bars. The two Leslie Charteris "Saint" stories I've read, also from this general era, are along similar lines but with more English gentility and less American technical gadgetry. It is purely commercial writing, filled with absurd or at very best implausible action, molded for the adventure market and appealing to low brow taste. I presume that some of the Doc Savage stories made it to Hollywood or the radio or other media besides books, though maybe they didn't. Stories of this type sold well in books in those days.
As I read the book I was actually getting interested in Ben Duck. He wasn't badly done. He was a very sympathetic character. However, about halfway through the story, Ben faded out and Doc Savage took center stage. The story became less interesting to me. It's hard for me to get interested in a character with so much greater physical and mental strength than anyone else. The fact that the plot was about as manufactured as it's possible to be didn't help either.
I found this on an Internet site and downloaded it. I don't know who the original publisher was or how many pages it had. Based on the number of bytes, I'd guess it was a ~200 page paperback in its original form, probably selling for a dime or fifteen cents.
I can't say I got no enjoyment from reading this. There were parts I liked and the author knew how to drive an adventure story forward. However, although I got other Doc Savage stories from the same source I don't know if I'll ever read any of them. This one satisfied my curiosity.
| Author | Olsson, Tommy |
|---|---|
| Author | O'Brien, Paul |
| Publication | Collingwood, Australia: Sitepoint Pty Ltd., 2008 |
| Number of Pages | 420 |
| Extras | illustrations, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Computer science |
| Keywords | CSS |
| When Read | November 2011 |
This is a straightforward reference work attempting to provide fairly complete information about all of the syntax and semantics of Cascading Style Sheets. Starting with a general overview of the language and proceeding through chapters on selectors, layout, boxes, tables, lists, and so on. For each keyword described it explains the effects, what the specification requires, and what the browsers actually do. There is a table of browser conformance for each keyword showing compliance as "full", "partial", "buggy" or "none".
Because this was published in 2008 it is not up to date. It covers Internet Explorer through IE7, Firefox only up to 2, and the then contemporary versions of Safari and Opera.
In case after case after case, the report on IE is "none", "partial", and most common of all, "buggy". Full compliance is difficult to achieve, the specification is complex. The programming is hard. Yet one would expect more of the richest computer company in the world.
The book seemed very authoritative. It was also a pretty good reference, repeating information where it was needed under multiple sections so that, when looking up a particular CSS keyword, one would get the full information about it.
The one thing lacking was displays. It would be nice to have seen more sample displays showing the effects of a particular CSS effect.
| Author | Kaku, Michio |
|---|---|
| Publication | Random House Audio, 2011 |
| Number of Pages | 480 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Science |
| Keywords | Futurism |
| When Read | November 2011 |
Kaku is a theoretical physicist specializing in string theory, and a popular science writer and TV host. He's quite good at explaining hard concepts very simply so that the reader gets the idea, though not a full explanation, for each area covered.
In this book Kaku offers his vision of the social changes and changes in daily life to be expected in the near (2020-2030), middle (2050+), and long term (2070-2100) term futures. He covers changes in biotechnology, computer science with artificial intelligence and robotics, magnetics and superconductivity, energy, medicine, nanotechnology, and some other fields. For each area that he discusses, Kaku provides evidence from advanced projects which he has personally visited and discussed with their investigators. He also offers copious examples of ways in which the technology he describes will affect daily life.
This is really a book about technology rather than physics. He does provide some discussion of physics but it's the technology that will directly influence our lives and that is the focus of the book.
The book has both strong and weak points. From my point of view, its strengths are the broadness of Kaku's vision, the many concrete examples he provides, and the expertise that he brings to at least some of the discussion - especially in areas that he knows well such as superconductivity, energy, nanotechnology, computer science, and artificial intelligence.
However the book's weaknesses are significant. I won't criticize it too much for its failure to explain underlying science. K was trying to write a popular book and, although I would have liked to understand the science better, it may well be that he pitched it just right for a popular audience. More significant to me was K's hubris in offering grand generalizations, especially in the areas of human evolution and human society, on the basis of what I considered to be oversimplified and downright mistaken applications of simple physical principles to areas in which very much more complicated factors are at work. He frequently says things like, "from the point of view of a physicist", as if much of human and social evolution would be more understandable if only we applied the laws of physics to understanding it, and as if there were a common "physicist's point of view" on social issues for which physicists are almost certain to disagree.
Unfortunately, I'm writing up this book well after the time that I read it and I only had it in audio form, a very difficult medium for looking things up. I'm not able to produce concrete examples of K's lapses. But I recall that while listening to the book, over and over again I said to myself, "What? Where do you get that idea? How can you ignore all of the complex factors that were clearly involved in the evolution of the physical human and social systems you describe?"
| Author | Holt, Tom |
|---|---|
| Publication | Firebird Distributing, 1991 |
| Number of Pages | 218 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | November 2011 |
Malcolm Fisher, driving down a lonely back road in England, runs over a badger. Getting out of his old car to see if it has sustained any damage he is surprised to have the injured and dying badger speak to him.
It turns out that the badger is a giant in disguise. He is the current holder of the Tarnhelm and the Ring of the Nibelungen, which he has carefully preserved for a thousand years and which makes him actually the ruler of the world. But he fears Wotan, the Valkyries, the Rhine maidens, the dwarfs from the underworld, all of whom believe the ring belongs to them and have been searching for him to take it away. His badger disguise has worked well for all these years but now he's done for. Even though he was expecting someone taller, younger, more muscular, athletic, and without glasses, he recognizes that Malcolm has killed him and will now take over the world.
Malcolm, it turns out, is believed by his parents, his overachieving sister, himself, and everyone else to be pretty incompetent at everything. That's possibly true, but it turns out he has an important quality that no previous Ring bearer has ever had, he's a genuinely nice guy. Now that he owns the ring, things start to go better for everyone in the world. The weather improves, peace breaks out, political harmony reigns, food is plentiful for all. It becomes a much better world than it was.
But all of the folks who were after the badger are still around. Gradually, they figure out that Malcolm is holding the Ring, and they all come after him. But it turns out that each of these gods and demigods have issues of their own. The women attempt to seduce Malcolm with their extraordinary physical beauty but, despite all of their intentions, find themselves falling in love with him (I neglected to mention that he has assumed the form of Siegfried, the handsomest man of ancient times - though that is not really why Flosshilde the Rhine maiden and one of Wotan's daughters, the Valkyrie, have fallen in love with him.)
In the end, Wotan assembles his whole host army and heads down from Valhalla to vanquish Malcolm and get back the Ring, but Malcolm's innate goodness and simplicity are just too much for them and they are vanquished themselves.
This is a wonderful send up of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungen opera cycle. The gods and demigods take themselves a little too seriously, like Elmore Leonard's bad guys, and wind up being funny in the process. The reader wants to cheer the innate decency of Malcolm. His fumbling and bumbling are handled just right - enough to keep things light, not enough to slip over the top.
I mentioned the book to my son-in-law Jim Herndon who immediately knew what I was talking about and praised it, but also warned me that he tried the second book and it wasn't as good. He said that authors trying to publish their first book put everything they have into it and polish it after each rejection and re-reading, something that they don't do with the second one. That could be so.
At the moment, I can't remember what I meant by describing the format of the book as "epub PD". I know what "epub" means. Does "PD" mean "public domain"? Is it a particular variant of epub? Searching Google didn't help and in searching my own book notes I found that I only used this format identifier in 2011.
Oh well. Maybe it will come to me.
| Author | Stegner, Wallace Earle 1909-1993 |
|---|---|
| Publication | Ashland, OR: Blackstone Audio, 2009 |
| Copyright Date | 1971 |
| Number of Pages | 672 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | November 2011 |
Crippled historian Lyman Ward has moved into his grandparents house in California where he is writing an extended, one might say "speculative" rather than "fictionalized", biography of the two of them, Oliver Ward and Susan Burling Ward.
Susan is modeled after a real life person named Mary Hallock Foote, and her letters to her friend in New York, a woman who married the man with whom Foote was in love. It is said that about ten percent of text of Stegner's text is composed of real letters taken from those letters by Foote, originally published as A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West. Susan's friends in New York live in a highly cultured society. They travel to Europe. They read books. They have literary friends. They have money.
By contrast, Oliver is a mining engineer. He is a very quiet man. His work takes him to out of the way places like Leadville and Almaden in Idaho, where he works extremely hard and is regularly and frequently beaten out of what is owed to him by greedy mine owners, land agents, and managers who rule their workers with meanness and contempt. The great project of his life is to build a canal that will water a great arid plain in Idaho. He puts more than five years into the effort, living with Susan and their young children in a house that he and his friends built with their own hands. His work is brilliant. His rewards are negligible and every effort to establish a secure and cultured home for Susan fails as he has to start over again.
Lyman researches their story from their house, which has been left to him. In his late fifties, he is in a wheel chair, unable to walk except by great effort on crutches, and with his head and neck frozen in one position so that he must turn his chair to see anything. He is basically alone. His wife had left him for another man, who in turn left her. His son tries to get him to move to an assisted living home, but he won't go. He is determined to remain as independent as he can be and to live on in the house. His neighbor, a woman older than himself, comes in each night to cook his dinner, bathe him, drink a glass of whiskey with him, and put him to bed. The woman's twenty something daughter is engaged as Lyman's secretary - helping him to order the papers and interacting with him and questioning his efforts in ways that irritate him.
The story of Oliver and Susan and the story of Lyman evolve in parallel. The narration goes back and forth - mainly with the older Wards but very often with Lyman. We never learn why Lyman is in the wheel chair or what is wrong with him, and only learn late in the story why he is alone without his wife.
Susan tries hard to be a good wife and Oliver tries hard to be a good husband. Their characters and temperaments are very different. He is a dedicated engineer who never finished college, feels very inadequate, but studies hard and learned his job extremely well. He can build or fix anything with his hands. She is an artist. She earns as much, or perhaps more, than he does, illustrating books that are sent to her by her friends in the east and writing and illustrating books of her own using the people and places around her as the models. She is modestly successful. He is successful at his work but not at reaping the rewards of his labor. His inventions, ideas, even the land that he has claimed, are all stolen from him and he hasn't enough anger or financial ambition to really fight for them.
The story of Susan and Oliver revolves mainly around her dissatisfactions with the life that he is providing for her. She tries hard to keep her spirits up, to be a good wife, and to not blame him for her unhappiness. She tries to be a good mother. But she yearns for the settled, civilized, and cultured life in New York. Her husband's friend and devoted employee, Frank, is from that world. Frank reads literature. Frank understands New York society. And Frank is deeply in love with Susan - unable to stop himself from pressing himself upon her. She resists and resists. Then one day she is with Frank and her little daughter wanders off and disappears into the river. She is found after a search by her older brother, Ollie Junior. The next day Frank shoots himself. Oliver and Ollie never say a word about it to Susan but everything is changed. The fragile marriage and family, built up with such hard work and sacrifice on all sides, can never be the same. The two men emotionally disengage from Susan and, although the marriage continues for another 40 or more years, the love is gone.
Lyman's own story also comes to something of a crisis. He has gotten as far in the story of his grandparents as he has any interest in going. He reflects on their lives and his own and the meaning of marriage and forgiveness. In the last, extended scene of the book, Lyman has a dream of his life falling apart, of his wife returning and aiming to take over his life, of the young woman secretary taking over his life, of being helpless in the face of their assaults. He wakes up and faces his own failures. Can he be a bigger man than his much admired grandfather? Can he forgive his wife her infidelity?
This was an extraordinary book. It made a great impression on me. It was one of those books that holds the reader in each passage, showing him the emotional complexity of every character and every scene. It is a book of both great emotional depth and penetrating nuance.
Thanks to the letters of Mary Hallock Foote, Susan's Victorian sensibility is perfectly and authentically depicted. There is no doubt that this is the real thing. Stegner's layering of the story on top of those letters helps us to fully understand this period and these people of the great American West.
I couldn't help but care very much about all of these people - the ones who might be like me and the ones who were nothing like me. It was a very fine book.
| Author | Kershaw, Ian |
|---|---|
| Publication | Jerusalem, New Haven, and London: International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem, 2008 |
| Number of Pages | vi + 394 |
| Extras | notes, bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Holocaust; Nazism; Hitler |
| When Read | November 2011 |
This is a collection of 14 essays, published over several decades, on the subject matter of the title. the first four are grouped under the heading "Hitler and the Final solution".
"'Working towards the Fuhrer': Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler Dictatorship": Hitler didn't have to give specific orders to do things. He made his policy understood. Those beneath him took their own initiative in fulfilling what they believed to be his wishes. This was an arena for competition and advancement among the Nazis, as well as a working out of what some may have believed to be their duty. Hence a lot of the Holocaust atrocities didn't need to be explicitly ordered. The Einsatzgruppen and others knew what was expected of them and did it.
"Ideologue and Propagandist: Hitler in Light of His Speeches, Writings and Orders, 1925-1928:
I don't have time to go through all fourteen. I'll just summarize some of the things I've learned.
Nazism shouldn't be considered a "system" in the same sense as, say, communism. It was in many ways a cult, a personality cult centered on Hitler. It was, according to Kershaw, inconceivable without Hitler. It could not survive him and would not be able to reproduce itself after his death. Stalin was a "committee man" who did not create the Russian Revolution or its institutions - which lived on and replaced him after his death. But Hitler was a charismatic leader, a Utopian (which is an odd thing to call him but it fits in a twisted way) who pursued his vision of a united, dominant, superior race that would rule Europe, if not the world.
Kershaw did not accept the view that all Germans were guilty of the Holocaust. Most were indeed guilty of anti-semitism. Most were guilty of turning their backs on the Jews. But the reaction to Kristallnacht showed that for most Germans their feeling was "anti-semitism, okay, but not like that!" They were okay with "legal" measures against the Jews. They were not okay with illegal assaults by street thugs against clearly harmless men, women, children and old people. Because of that, the Holocaust was moved to Poland and Russian and German Jews were shipped there to be exterminated.
Was Hitler responsible for the Holocaust? Absolutely. It could not have happened without him. Did he explicitly order it? The answer to that is that he didn't need to. All he had to do was set the tone, to stir up the hatred, to make plain that he cared not at all for the lives of the Jews and considered them a pack of filthy animals whose lives were worth less than nothing. That, and the removal of any need for legality, the creation of a society in which courts and judges and trials and democratic laws had become irrelevant, was enough to make it possible for those Nazi radicals, fanatics and sycophants to "work towards the Fuhrer" and kill the Jews.
The development of the Holocaust followed a progression in which each measure against the Jews pushed the Nazis into a more difficult position from which even harsher measures were necessary. The Jews were expelled from Germany and from the German controlled territories in Poland. Where could they be put? In the ghettos. How could the people in the ghettos be fed and housed and kept warm? They couldn't. The German administrators of the territories that received Jews didn't want them. They resisted receiving them but they were overruled. They complained. "Now what are we supposed to do with these people? Don't send us any more? We can't put them anywhere." But more came. "I had to do something with them. We took measures." The answer came back, "Do what you have to do."
The original intent, to the extent that there was any concrete intent, was to win the war in Russia and dump the Jews over the border into Siberia. The outcome for the Jews would have been similar to what actually happened. To have been carried in cattle cars and dumped in northern Siberia in the winter, or even in the summer, amidst a probably hostile Siberian population, would have been death for most of them - though I should think that many more would have survived than in the actual events. But the Germans did not win the war. By the fall of 1941 Russian resistance was hardening. Opportunities to dump Jews over the border were clearly not going to be available any time very soon. The problems created by oppression of the Jews were increasing. Taken from their jobs and homes they could no longer support themselves. The "Jewish Question", manufactured by the Nazis, was now becoming a serious one. The more or less spontaneous killings performed on local initiative showed the way out. The government systematized them, turned them into policy, appointed Eichmann to begin his industrialized transportation and murder. It didn't take that long. Within a couple of years the Jews of Germany, Poland, and western Russia were dead. The machinery and mania were in full force and the Holocaust spread out to encompass all of Nazified Europe.
There are different kinds of historians. William Shirer wrote of Nazi Germany from the personal perspective of an observer, a man who was affected by Nazism and who saw it first hand. Steven Spielberg made his film as a passionate, graphic, you are there, account. Kershaw however is an academic historian. There are no pictures of beatings and shootings. There is no blood running, no screams, no children being beaten to death in front of their parents and grandparents. He is not insensitive to that reality and he never uses any language that does not condemn the Nazis as criminals, but he is not that kind of writer.
What he is is a careful and objective historian. He gets the facts. He reads the primary sources. He reads the secondary sources. He weighs the evidence. He considers the nuances. And then he provides a convincing account to explain the engines driving what happened. It is very impressive work.
| Author | Christie, N.M. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Ottawa: CEF Books, 2001 |
| Number of Pages | vi + 42 |
| Extras | photos, maps, bibliography |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | December 2011 |
This is one of those short, well illustrated military histories that are just like, and compete with, the Osprey histories. It is the story of the raid on Dieppe, on the coast of France, on August 19, 1942.
Poorly planned and poorly supported, the raid was a fiasco. The Canadians landed in the teeth of Nazi strongholds instead in places where the defenses were weak. There was no bomber support, no support from naval guns, no ability to put tanks ashore - the ones that got ashore just churned up the stony beach and bogged down, and only limited support by fighter bombers who did well but were not over the troops during the entire mission. The raid had been planned, then put off, then put on after some of the support that had been assembled had already been disbursed. When the first wave was ashore and it was clear that they were pinned down, suffering high casualties, and had no hope of taking their objectives, the commanders continued with the already failed plan and threw more men ashore instead of pulling off the men who were there. The men fought bravely but the there was a gross failure of military leadership.
After the battle there was much casting about for excuses and many attempts to pretend that the raid had been something other than what it was, a complete disaster. The story was put about that Dieppe was an indispensable practice run for the later invasion, that lives lost at Dieppe were saved multifold later at Normandy.
It was a bullshit story. The "lessons learned" could all have been described by any competent commanders well before the battle.
I like books like this. I am something of a military buff and especially so for World War II. I greatly appreciate the sacrifices of the Allied soldiers who gave their lives or their health to fight the Nazis. I'm glad that there are authors and publishers who keep their stories alive.
| Author | Pratchett, Terry |
|---|---|
| Publication | London, New York: Harper Collins, 2005 |
| Copyright Date | 1983 |
| Number of Pages | 240 |
| Genres | Fiction; Fantasy |
| When Read | December 2011 |
"IN A DISTANT AND SECONDHAND SET OF DIMENSIONS, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part..."
This is the first book in a series about Discworld, a world of magic floating through space on the back of a great turtle, himself born by four elephants. The sorta, kinda, but down and out wizard Rincewind is hired by the tourist Twoflower from far away Bes Pelargic with his magical walking trunk and who has come with pockets full of gold to see the fabled Morporkian lands of Heric Whiteblade, Hrun the Barbarian, Bravd the Hublander, and the Weasel. He is enchanted by sword fights, dragons, brawls, and all of the daily occurrences of this mean and treacherous land that terrify Rincewind.
There are various adventures. They meet dragons, Amazons, killers of various types, magicians of all types. They fall in with Hrun himself who seems able to vanquish all comers while hardly working up a sweat. The magic ebbs and flows. Rincewind is even thrown out of the entire universe and into an alternate one where he is a passenger in a jet plane confronting a hijacker before he is pulled back into the real world (i.e., Discworld".)
This is precisely the kind of book that I never imagined liking. Yet I liked it. It doesn't have any pretensions to a serious plot. The magic is only semi-constrained and is thoroughly tongue in cheek. It's all satire and fun. It's an opportunity for a very literate and prolific jokester to let his imagination run free.
It was the first book in what turned out to be a very popular series. I believe that my son-in-law Jim has read every one of Pratchett's books (there are dozens of them) and counts Pratchett as one of his favorite authors.
I read recently in the Wikipedia that Pratchett announced in 2007 that he had been diagnosed at age 59 with early onset Alzheimer's Disease. It's an unusual form that robs him of some facilities while apparently leaving his language ability intact. He has written an article about it for the Daily Mail that makes very interesting reading. He is losing some capacity now all of the time. I sincerely hope that he can keep that which is the most important to him and his millions of fans.
| Author | Harris, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | House of Stratus, 2001 |
| Copyright Date | 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 320 |
| Genres | Fiction; War |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | December 2011 |
Lieutenant-Colonel George Hockold comes out of the desert after spying on Rommel's supply port of Qaba in far western Egypt, where four ships have made it in from Italy with supplies and ammunition for the Afrika Korps. They will need those supplies to have any hope of repelling Montgomery's coming offensive at Alamein but they are desperately short of men to unload the ships or transport to carry the supplies to the front. So while the ships are still loaded in the harbor, Hockold hopes to launch an amphibious raid to sink the ships, free the British prisoners held in Qaba, and disrupt supply efforts behind Rommel's lines.
With support from Monty and the higher command, Hockold forms Number 97 Commando from whatever troops are available in the rear. Some are experienced men and some are slackers, but they are what is available. He puts them through a week of very intense training conducted by a superb officer and they set sail for Qaba in a captured Italian ship that is pretending to have escaped from the British accompanied by a miscellaneous variety of landing boats. They have two light tanks, a few guns, a little air support, but no support from the navy, which has no warships to spare.
The Germans are also working on a shoestring. They have three 47 mm guns at the harbor known to Hockold and a couple of 75's that they acquired after he left Qaba and so he didn't know about them. But they are very short of men and are relying to some extent on Italians who have had it with the war and have no interest in dying for Germany, or for Mussolini's Italy either. They are well led but short of men and with only limited defenses.
The first half of the book is all about preparation on both sides. The second half is about the battle, which the British win in a very hard contest that could easily have gone either way.
I like all of Harris' books. This one is no exception. He focuses on many individual soldiers, many of them privates or non-commissioned officers who have only a grunt's eye view of the war but who are presented with considerable sympathy and understanding.
It is a hallmark of Harris' books that he deeply appreciates the ordinary men who fought for their country and against Nazism. His writing is professional and commercial but is still a labor of some love.
| Author | Kiriakou, John |
|---|---|
| Author | Ruby, Michael |
| Publication | Tantor Audio, 2010 |
| Number of Pages | 224 |
| Extras | Foreword by Bruce Riedel |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Terrorism |
| When Read | December 2011 |
K is a Greek-American who grew up fascinated by politics. He went to George Washington University to study politics, got a BA in Middle Eastern Studies and an MA in Legislative Affairs. One of his professors recruited him to try out for the CIA. After a long period of no progress he was eventually offered a job as an analyst. He was already fluent in Greek as well as English and learned Arabic for his job, becoming fluent in that language.
When the opportunity arose, he transitioned from analysis to operations. Working first in Greece, then in Arabic countries in the Mideast, he became a counter-terrorism agent. Rising through the ranks he was eventually sent to Pakistan to pursue Al Qaeda leaders who escaped there after the U.S. attack on Afghanistan. He led the mission that captured Abu Zubaydah, possibly the highest ranking Qaeda leader ever captured alive.
K made a bad marriage. His Greek family and friends matched him up with a Greek-American girl who really had little in common with him and whose temperament was very different from his own. Given the huge numbers of hours he worked and his long periods away from home, any marriage he made would likely have been problematic, but in this case the strains of work combined with the personality differences of himself and his wife made marriage impossible. After many fights, they broke up and an acrimonious custody battle ensued for the two children. According to K's account, his wife ran away with the children, told them that their father was dead, and attempted to sic the law on him when he found the children and took one of the back - all he was able to get at the time.
Life at the CIA wasn't all that great either. He loved his work but was assigned, again as an analyst, to a boss who resented him and made his life difficult. Eventually he had enough and left the agency.
K had much to say about "enhanced interrogation techniques", which he regarded as counter productive and immoral, and about some of the bureaucratic battles inside the CIA. He believed that many of the agents, including many high ranking officials, were unsung heroes on behalf of their country. But many were just careerists climbing the ladder of ambition and stepping on anyone who might thereby enable them to climb higher. He gave examples of both types of people.
This was an interesting book. The stories of K's actions in Greece, where he approached a Middle Eastern diplomat known to be an agent for terrorists and put the man in a terrible quandary, were surprising and interesting. What is surprising about the stories is that I, quite mistakenly, imagined that CIA procedure was all neatly sewn up into approved and tested techniques that were systematically applied in the field. But life in the field was more fluid than that. Decisions were sometimes made on the spot by men who, if they were good, were willing to stretch the orders they received from higher ups in Washington whose first priority was often to cover their asses.
Pressures on these men were high. They were under pressure from bosses, from foreign allies whom they had to work with but whom the Washington bureaucrats often disdained or ignored, from wives who found their marriages to be empty of the husbands they thought they had and who had to move to locations that they didn't want to live in, and even from terrorists who hunted them. K always carried two guns in Greece, varied his travel routes, drove a partly armored car, and kept his eyes out. At one point a terrorist group that killed an important British diplomat confessed that they had tracked K with the intention of killing him but decided that he protected himself too well.
K's outlook is to the right of mine. He considered the Marxist ideology of some of the groups he opposed to be pure claptrap. He doesn't seem to have had a lot of doubt about American objectives in the world. For him, there were good guys, Americans and American allies, and bad guys, all the people who opposed them. He used the phrase "bad guys" frequently in the book. The activities he saw that he disapproved of were evidence of misguided, careerist, or stupid individuals, not products of any underlying evil in the American program abroad.
Was he right? He knows more about it than I do, but his closeness to the problems may harm as well as help his perspective, just as my distance from them both helps and harms my own perspective.