Someone, probably on a different board, mentioned Edgar Rice Burroughs. I read "Tarzan of the Apes" when I was about 12, so I thought it was about time I read it again. Fascinating!
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
I read very little fiction, so when I do I try to make sure its worth it. I have just read Hemmingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and it most certainly was. Sadly, in a moment of madness, I picked up Michael White's Soul Catcher and it wasn't. When I want to let my head go, I will read Tom Sharp. If you have never read the anarchic fiction that this lunatic South African manages to conjour up, then do so.
In terms of history that I have enjoyed and which I would recommend to others, Max Hastings' Armageddon and Nemesis are superb histories of the culminating WWII campaigns against Germany and Japan respectively. Rick Atkinson's An Army at Dawn was brilliant and I have just picked up a copy of his The Day of Battle. These two volumes deal with the Allied campaigns in North Africa and Italy respectively and are easily on a par with Carlo D'Este's previously unrivalled works. If you want Stalingrad and Berlin in all their brutal glory you can't do any better than turn to the works of Anthony Beevor. Defeat into Victory is Field Marshall Bill Slim's account of the XIV Army's war in Burma - it is required reading at Sandhurst and rightly so. Although it was a pretty meaningless campaign in the greater scheme of things, you will learn more about leadership in adversity from this book than just about any other.
There are some very good Great War histories out there - anything by Gary Sheffield is worthy of a read. His book Forgotten Victory has pretty well overturned British misconceptions about the performance of her generals. Alistair Horne's The Price of Glory, covers the Verdun campaign and is simply breathtaking - but the same can be said for just about averything he has written.
In terms of Irish history, my favourite book is a biography of Michael Collins by Frank O'Connor - called simply The Big Fellow.
I just finished Day of Battle: excellent. I've also read Slim's "Defeat into Victory" I can't recommend it enough.
Favorite scene: It's the ghastly retreat from Burma, Japanese are closing in, chaos, air raids, Slim stumbles into some enemy fire. He ducks behind a bush. One of his Indian troopers laughs at him. "You don't know what to do!" And I didn't, Slim admits to himself.
Another good account of the Far East is George MacDonald Fraser's "Quartered Safe Out Here."
The non-Civil War book I'm reading is Bill Lane's _Jacked Up: The Inside Story of How Jack Welch Talked GE into Becoming the World's Greatest Company_
Here's how Fortune Magazine described it:
"With Jack Welch now settled into the role of smiling television pundit, management guru, and happily married author of gently titled books like _Winning,_ it's esy to forget his reputation as a corporate tough guy. A new biography by Bill Lane, Welch's speechwriter at General Electric for 20 years, serves as a refreshing reminder. Written as an insider's tale, _Jacked Up_ captures the terrifying office politics at GE in the '80s and '90s, when Welch could regularly be heard screaming at employees through his soundproof office doors. ("We've got to get rid of this f-----g idiot!")
"Lane fills in some details on why Welch ushered out Gary Wendt, the former head of GE Cpital. Wendt's division hauled in 40% of GE's profits, but according to Lane, Welch hated Wendt's behavior at meetings, which included ****ing loudly whenever he grew impatient, turning his back on presenters to read the _Wall Street Journal,_ and chewing up entire Styrofoam cups, only to spit them out in sticky heaps onto the table.
"For his part, Wendt says Lane 'was rarely in the presence of anyone of importance' and shouldn't be trusted; Welch, meanwhile, hasn't seen the book but ssumes it's entertaining. 'Bill's a great storyteller,' he told FORTUNE, 'so I'm sure he captured as many things as he could.' "
Will have to get that one, Cash. Been a long-time fan of Welch, a management superstar. When I was in the business, GE was becoming a joke. Welch stopped that foolishness and turned it around -- seemingly overnight.
Dammit! Another book!
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Even here on the arid plains of southern Idaho, we have reading groups, and I join them to stretch my boundaries beyond my usual military nonfiction fare. This month we read "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion and "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd. Next month, "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro and "Montana Creek" by Ivan Doig. I would not have picked these up on my own!! I recommend the first three to anyone wanting to broaden horizons. I have not read the last one -- yet!
the LA Times says it is
"an extremely readable account of the role that a bitterly partisan and alternately scurrilous and fawning press played in our founding era. Burns' vigorous narrative is rich in genuinely engaging anecdote and in all those names - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine - that never fail to stir us."
So far that has proven to be true.
__________________ "Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
My Father's Secret War by Lucinda Franks. A pulitzer journalist, Franks father never told her what he did during WW II. When asked, he'd always changed the subject or reply elusively. She applied her skills acquired as an investigator and through friends of her father, begin to put together a sketch of some of his ideas. Franks then broaches the subject by talking casually with her father as if she had command of the topic. This would cause him to correct her and divluge some insights. She learned that her father was a naval ordnance officer who was detached to OSS. One mission involved smuggling ball bearings out of Sweden to England. In another, he was dressed as an SS officer (he studied German before the war & he knew it fluently) and infilitrated a Gestapo headquarters in France to break into their files. He also killed two people - one a German and another an American spy who was giving Allied secrets to the Communists.
It's a fascinating read but there are a few mistakes. For instance, when a man half his age made an anti semitic remark that enrages him, he takes the man down with one swift blow and then almost kills him with one thumb on the carotid. From what I understand, the carotid runs on both sides of the neck and to cut the blood flow would require one thumb on each artery. If he was using one thumb, it would have to be on the trachea. There's another mistake about an incident involving Roosevelt, but I'll leave that for you to find. Both these mistakes are understandable as Franks is a journalist and not a police officer or martial artist. I'll have to check, but one of her sources may also be suspect and hence her comment about the Roosevelt incident.
Just finished Small Favor, the latest in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. All of the books are a fun read a a good diversion.
I am also part way through Atkinson's Army at Dawn.
That in addition to my Civil War reading General Lee's Army by Joseph Glatthaar.
Plus too much time spent reading posts on Civil War Talk.
It's no wonder I never get anything done.
__________________ "There must be more historians of the Civil War than there were generals figthing in it... Of the two groups, the historians are the more belligerent." David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (1961)
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