| Title | Author | Publisher/ Year |
What's it about? | Why read it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| An Hour Before Daylight Memories of a Rural Boyhood |
Jimmy Carter | Simon & Schuster 2001 |
Just as the sub-title says. Jimmy Carter growing up on a rural farm in the 1920's and 30's. | In one sense, his childhood is not remarkable at all, and the book could be taken as a nostalgia trip as he accurately portrays the times and place. But he is brutally honest about himself, his family, and those around him as he engages in farmwork, school, sports, hunting and fishing, and most of all the relationships he has, with whites and blacks. |
| Shakespeare The World as Stage |
Bill Bryson | HarperLuxe 2007 |
Yet another survey of Shakespeare's life and work. | Although it's not weighty in several senses (240 easy to read pages), it does have a bright and unique viewpoint. |
| And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since From the Streets of Harlem to the Halls of Congress |
Charles B. Rangel with Leon Wynter | Thomas Dunne Books 2007 |
Long-serving Democratic heavyweight from Harlem recounts his life story. | Fascinating family background details, frank opinions, and insight into the doings of a professional politician inside and outside Congress. No holds barred, especially when it comes to his own personal failings. All cast in a different light since his recent ethics violations. |
| Barack Obama The Story |
David Maraniss | Simon & Schuster 2012 |
Very-detailed, exhaustively researched exposition of his family backgrounds, and life up to his acceptance into Harvard Law School | What comes across is Obama's cool, detached, "observer" personality and the forces that shaped that. But more interesting are the strange parallels and very odd, tragic characters in the two widely separate family backgrounds he shares. Their lives are the most riveting parts of the book. |
| "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" Further Adventures of a Curious Character |
Richard P. Feynman as told to Ralph Leighton | W. W. Norton and Company 1988 |
More first-person sketches from the life of the Nobel prize winning physicist. Both his personal and professional lives are covered in plain and plain-spoken language, nothing held back. | Everything is funny, or bizarre, or poignant; nothing is colourless. The title has special relevance to the account of how he won and subsequently lost his wife. A large part of the book is also devoted to his famous participation in the inquiry of the Challenger shuttle disaster. |
| Thirty Years in a Red House A Memoir of Childhood and Youth in Communist China |
Zhu Xiao Di | University of Massachusetts Press 1998 |
What it was like to grow up during the Cultural Revolution and the long, uneven emergence from those hardships and setbacks. | There are two parallel strands: the personal experiences of the author and his family, and what's happening in the country in general. Both illuminate and illustrate each other. The author's exceptional command of English (and how he came by that is just one of the book's many interesting tales) ensures that his thoughts and feelings - in retrospect and at the time the events happened - are expressed with precision and honesty. |
| The Russian Album |
Michael Ignatieff | Penguin 2006 |
A recounting of the previous few generations of his family, who attained prominence in Russian military and state affairs. | You see a family rise to the heights at the zenith of the Russian empire, and then fall to the depths during the revolution and civil war, and finally scrabble to try to make some sense out of their changed circumstances. A very personal history of people swept up in forces far greater than themselves. The book originally appeared in 1987; this edition includes a very interesting afterword wherein the author manages to visit the remote Ukrainian village that had become the family seat and finds most things have changed, and some things not at all. |
| Survival a refugee life |
Fred Bruemmer | Key Porter Books 2005 |
The well-known author of many books on Canada's Arctic tells his personal life story, from his idyllic childhood as a Baltic German in Latvia, through nightmarish imprisonment in Soviet factory camps, to his work in a northern Ontario gold mine. | So many varied events happened to him in his first twenty years as he and his family were swept up in the consequences of the Second World War and aftermath. The events depicted are at once interesting and revolting. His descriptions of the individual and cultural devastion he witnessed transform this period from one of historical themes to personal impacts. |
| Life Could Be Verse reflections on love, loss, and what really matters |
Kirk Douglas | Health Communications, Inc. 2014 |
Kirk Douglas recounts key points of his life with anecdotes, thoughts, and his own poetry. | Like his full-scale autobiography, "The Ragman's Son", this is an honest self-appraisal of his personal failings and successes - but with the perspective of age, more reflective and contented. It's a small book in size and length, with many pictures, on high quality paper that makes it pleasant to handle and read. The layout is top-notch. Well worth the short time required, for Kirk Douglas fans, or those just interested in the highs and lows of one person's tumultuous life. |
| Unbroken A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption |
Laura Hillenbrand | Random House 2014 |
Louis Zamperini was an emerging track star (participated in 1936 Berlin Olympics) when WW2 intervened. He joined the Army Air Force, and ended up in a Japanese POW camp where he was mercilessly persecuted by the "Bird". | Laura Hillenbrand is a great story-teller, and Zamperini's story is remarkable enough, including pre- and post-World War II, to make an engrossing subject. |
| Lester B. Pearson |
Andrew Cohen | Penguin Canada 2008 |
A brief, readable look at the life and career of Mike Pearson. | Reminds us of what we owe Pearson - the Canada he made in 5 short years is the way we like to think of Canada to this day. Although Cohen does not spare criticism of Pearson's many failings, what remains is the essential good feeling of the man for his friends and associates, and his optimism towards his country. |
| Slide Rule The Autobiography of an Engineer |
Nevil Shute | Vintage 2009 |
Originally published 1954. Nevil Shute was a writer of best-seller novels ("On the Beach", etc.) from the 1930's to 50's. But for twenty years this was an evening pursuit, as his daytime job was as an aeronautical engineer. This book deals almost entirely with his working life, which he was equally - if not more - passionate about. | An engineering autobiography sounds like it would be dull, but it is far from it for two reasons. First, he writes so clearly and easily that the honesty of his thoughts on many subjects comes through. And secondly, Nevil Shute was involved as a principal in two very interesting multi-year projects: the development from scratch of the R100 airship (which crossed the Atlantic to Montreal in 1930 as part of its proof of concept) and the setting up of the Airspeed airplane manufacturing company. There are many very interesting anecdotes, and also lengthy dissertations on the reasons for the fate of his competitors' R101 airship, how to obtain risk capital, and the inevitable conflict between founders of a start-up and the professional managers who come in later. Many relevant lessons for today. |
| Trafalgar's Lost Hero Admiral Lord Collingwood and the Defeat of Napoleon |
Max Adams | John Wiley & Sons 2005 |
The life and naval career of Cuthbert Collingwood, a close friend of Nelson, and destined to play second fiddle to him despite his own accomplishments at Trafalgar (where he led the attack and then consolidated the victory) and after where he led the Mediterranean fleet, kept Napoleon's fleet bottled up in harbour for the most part, and frustrated Napoleon's designs through artful diplomacy with the region's kings, queens, and emperors. | Collingwood was an opposite to Nelson in almost every way (he did not seek personal glory and had little personal charm) but did match him in seamanship, tactics, and devotion to his country and service. Because so many of his letters and documents have survived, the book is well sprinkled with Collingwood's own thoughts on high policy and mundane matters. He was hard on his captains, but sympathetic to the ordinary seaman and lower ranks. He spent interminable time away from his beloved family and cabbages, but received some solace by being accompanied at sea for many years by his dog Bounce. |
| The Jew Who Defeated Hitler Henry Morgenthau Jr., FDR, and how we won the war |
Peter Moreira | Prometheus Books 2014 |
Henry Morgenthau Jr. was US Treasury Secretary for 12 years, including most of the depression and the Second World War. You would think this would guarantee him a prominent place in the histories of the time, but he has receded into obscurity. This book attempts to refurbish his reputation on several counts: his overseeing of the huge increase in aircraft production, his vigorous championing of the Lend-Lease aid to Britain, his key role in the Bretton Woods negotiations that saw the founding of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, his sponsorship of the War Refugee Board, and, most importantly, the financing of America's war expenditures. | It's the latter that makes the author's case for the title. And when you look at the figures, the vast amounts of money that needed to be raised, it's not perhaps too much of an exaggeration. We get lots of details on tax plans and bond drives, fights about compulsory savings (Morgenthau was against and won that battle) and strained relations with State and War department officials who were not as single-minded as he was about preparing for, and prosecuting, the war. This tripped him up in the end when he overreached with the Morgenthau Plan to deindustrialize post-war Germany so they could never prosecute a war again. An interesting read, with a few errors in chronology concerning events in WW II. |
| Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine & Robert Baldwin |
John Ralston Saul | Penguin Canada 2010 |
Like "Lester B. Pearson" above, another in the "Extraordinary Canadian" series, this one by series editor John Ralston Saul. Tells the story of two reluctant politicians from the "two solitudes" who forged common ground that shaped the future direction of Canada, both in a political reform sense and more importantly in a philosophical underpinning sense. | LaFontaine and Baldwin are little known today. Where are the monuments, what great edifices or works are named for them? And yet they changed the whole future direction of Canada by their unlikely joining in the Reform movement of the 1840's. In the midst of rebellion, riots, and murders, they practiced moderation and restraint, and brought a new, home-grown way of approaching our inherent contradictions. Their personal lives were filled with tragedy;their political lives had triumphs and failures. But their legacy, underappreciated, endures. |
| The Speechwriter A Brief Education in Politics |
Barton Swaim | Simon & Schuster 2015 |
Barton Swaim is a PhD employed in a library sticking labels on books when he decides he can do a better job of preparing speeches for the local governor than what he sees on TV. Then begins an all-consuming, frustrating ride that eventually tanks when the governor, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, comes a cropper in scandal. | Besides the political insider information to be gleaned, and the unflattering portrait painted of a wonky and weird Mark Sanford, we are given a detailed look inside a communications operation. Turns out the minutiae, like writing personalized thank-you notes to any and all supporters, are incredibly important. For a would-be staffer, the lesson to be learnt is to give credit to your boss when it's due, but never your trust, for (successful) politicians by necessity are vain-glorious and are above, or oblivious to, the rules that govern us lesser folk. |
| MR. CSI How a Vegas dreamer made a killing in Hollywood, one body at a time |
Anthony E. Zuiker | HarperCollins 2011 |
Tony Zuiker, the creator of the TV CSI series and spin-offs, writes an intertwined story about his struggle to become a success as a Hollywood writer, and his search to come to grips with the non-relationship he had with his father. | I've never watched a complete episode of any of the CSI series. If you are a fan, then you will want to read about the genesis of the series and meet the personalities who helped shape it, on and off the screen. But you don't have to be a fan in order to enjoy the tale of the struggling author and his unlikely route to TV scriptwriter. His father flits in and out of the story like a ghost, which is fitting given the shocking opening to the book. |
| Born A Crime |
Trevor Noah | Penguin Random House 2016 |
Trevor Noah, the host of The Daily Show, recounts his South African upbringing. | He has a unique background, even for South Africa, and he tells his story of being the eternal outsider with passion and insight. Highly recommended. |
| Anything For A Laugh Memoirs |
Eric Nicol | Harbour Publishing 1998 |
Eric Nicol wrote a humour column for the Vancouver Province for many decades. Here he recounts his life story: growing up in Vancouver as an only child to eccentric parents, his brief wartime service in the RCAF, even briefer attempts to get a doctorate at the Sorbonne in what he thought was his first love - French literature - and his subsequent immersion in the humour business writing his daily column, plays, and books. | His autobiography is like one extended column, told with flippancy, off-the-cuff remarks, and often a brutal, cringe-inducing, self-appraisal. The title is both a summation of his life and the price he pays for the path he has chosen. |
| The Investigator Fifty Years of Uncovering the Truth |
Terry Lenzner | Blue Rider Press 2013 |
Terry Lenzner was a key player in many of the most important events on the American scene in the latter half of the 1900's: the civil rights movement, Watergate, the Unabomber investigation, the Clinton impeachment and several others. His role was to investigate and pursue the facts wherever they led until a case could be made - or dropped. | There is a lot of detailed background to major events from the perspective of one who was on the inside. One has to admire his approach - the relentless pursuit of truth for its own sake, a commodity that he decries as being increasingly devalued and irrelevant in today's hyper-partisan environment. |
| Blue On Blue An Insider's Story of Good Cops Catching Bad Cops |
Charles Campisi with Gordon Dillow | Scribner 2017 |
Charles Campisi was head of the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau for an extended period of time. He relates his career as an NYPD cop with focus on his time at the IAB. | Lots of anecdotes from his long service, in depth coverage of many IAB operations, and discussion of methods used. All told in conversational style. A must read if you want to know what police work is really like. |
| Knowing Mandela A Personal Portrait |
John Carlin | Harper Perennial 2013 |
John Carlin was a journalist who covered Mandela from the time of his release until after he had left the presidency. He met with him many times, and brings the historical backdrop to bear on the perceptions he gained from those encounters. | The central question he asks himself is: Which was controlling Mandela's actions - the demands of his public role, or his fundamental character? His answer comes through both an analysis of the large events of the time, and a series of revealing anecdotes, that also explain the nature of his appeal to such diverse groups of people. |
| The Outsider |
Frederick Forsythe | Putnam 2015 |
Interesting anecdotes from the life of the British author of shadowy spy/underworld thrillers. | He has led a very interesting life which seems to have been characterized by amazing strokes of luck, both personally and professionally. All told in a very engaging manner. |
| The Real Doctor Will See You Now A Physician's First Year |
Matt McCarthy | Crown Publishers 2015 |
McCarthy relates his experiences as a first year intern at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. | You get it all, the highs and lows of learning how to diagnose illnesses and care for patients, all under the stress of 30 hour shifts. It's a personal journey filled with self-doubt and ironic twists on the slogan "Amazing things are happening here". |
| 12 Years A Slave |
Solomon Northup | Center Point Large Print 2014 |
Originally published in 1853 shortly after his rescue, this book gives Solomon Northup's account of his abduction from the North and passage into slavery in Louisiana. | Although he is very careful to note throughout that this was just a personal experience, and that slave-owners came in various guises, it is plain there is nothing redemptive about the practice or the time he spent within it. Good descriptions of what life was like inside of slavery, and outside for the master. Also perceptive analyses of its rationale and continuation. The speech may be antique, but the thoughts and ideas, good and bad, do not seem to have aged at all. |
| By Chance Alone A remarkable true story of courage and survival at Auschwitz |
Max Eisen | HarperCollins 2016 |
Max Eisen is young boy growing up in a small town in Slovakia during the 1930's. His family is swallowed up in the Holocaust. He is the only one to survive. Although chance pays a large part in his survival, he also could not have made it through without his own determination. | He gives excellent portraits of his family, town, schooling, and all the colours of daily living in a by-gone era. He gives the same detail of life in the several camps, the prisoners, the SS, the kapos, the casual brutality and the organized killing. He also gives accounts of his post-war life attempting to come to terms with what happened to him, his family, and the larger Jewish community, and his search for a place in the world around him that all too quickly returned to a normality he could not be a part of. |
| Speak You Also A Survivor's Reckoning |
Paul Steinberg | Metropolitan Books 2000 |
A reckoning is what it is, an Auschwitz camp survivor trying to come to terms with why he had the good luck to continually pass through incidents that killed so many of his fellows. | But it's more than just a "Why me?" He has an unusual background and an atypical camp experience (which I guess is self-evident in that he survived). A slim volume, largely taken up by his reflections on his captors, his own transformation, and the lasting impacts. |
| Gone to Ground One woman's extraordinary account of survival in the heart of Nazi Germany |
Marie Jalowicz Simon | The Clerkenwell Press 2016 |
Marie Jalowicz grew up as the only child of Jewish parents in Berlin prior to the Second World War. Unlike others when the round-up began, she evaded capture by constantly relocating among a precarious group of distant acquaintances and referrals. Finally, she adopted a friend's identity and achieved a measure of stability. But always there was the threat of discovery and betrayal. | Her account is extremely detailed and filled with dozens of striking individuals, always carefully depicted. Besides the drama of her personal story, you are immersed in what it was like to live day by day in the gritty, grindingly poor parts of Berlin during the war. |
| Mary Seacole Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands |
Mary Seacole | Ulverscroft 2015 |
This is a reprint of Mary Seacole's own book from 1857. She was born in Jamaica in the early 1800's, and seems to have been a bit of a serial entrepreneur. She was involved in hotels/eating establishments in Panama, mining ventures in Colombia (both then New Granada), and travelled extensively thoughout the Caribbean. Being in rough, frontier settlements, she acquired practical medical skills, dealing with gunshot wounds, cholera, dysentery. She previously had learned from military surgeons in Jamaica. This served her well when she determined to go to Crimea during the war with Russia. There she established a reputation for hospitality and compassion when she took a break from her hostelling duties to administer to the sick and injured, often under fire. | An interesting look at facets of life in the 1800's rarely documented elsewhere, and from an uncommon viewpoint, as she gradually reveals her own self-portrait. |
| Ty Cobb A Terrible Beauty |
Charles Leerhsen | Simon & Schuster 2015 |
What can possibly be said about Ty Cobb, baseball's biggest star before Babe Ruth, that hasn't already been written? Well, apparently a lot, when real research is done instead of relying on the exaggerated, embellished, and just plain made-up fiction of previously released "biographies". | What emerges is the portrait of a man much more complicated than the popular stereotypes. Passionate, driven, hyper-sensitive to any slight real or imagined. Full of good intentions, generous to friends and strangers, able to shrug off rough handling when he perceived it to be within his rules, but unable to control himself if those same self-made rules of conduct were breached. His personality was the reason for his success (he still holds numerous records unlikely to be broken), and the cause of endless and needless turmoil in his personal and professional life. The author presents us with a balanced, credible portrayal of his background, his boyhood, career, and post-baseball life. He debunked with hard evidence many of the myths too lazily and superficially attached to Ty Cobb. |
| Laurier The First Canadian |
Joseph Schull | Macmillan 1965 |
A lengthy (600 pp), but readable, biography of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Canadian Prime Minister for 15 years at the turn of the 1900's. | Not a scholarly work, although it examines all the personalities and issues of the period. Read it more for the way Schull can put himself into Laurier's skin and see the times as he saw them. This gives us insight into Laurier's hopes, and also his many flaws. Despite Laurier's final failure to convince others of his vision, his limited successes did pave the way for the future Canada, and perhaps even justify the slightly hyperbolic subtitle of "The First Canadian". |
| My Paper Chase True Stories of Vanished Times |
Harold Evans | Little, Brown and Company 2009 |
Harold Evans recounts his very long career in British newspapers (Sunday Times), American magazines (Condé Nast Traveler), and book publishing (Random House). | And those are just a small sampling of the ventures, large and small, he was associated with. One gets the impression, although he never says it of himself, that he was always going full out, working his main job, writing books on the side, and generating ideas and projects continuously. There are large sections on unravelling the Philby affair, compensation for thalidomide victims, the "troubles" in Northern Ireland, but also many details about what it was like to be a junior reporter, a "sub" on the copy desk, an editor, and dealing with owners, politicians, authors, and union leaders. Unlike many autobiographies where the author's early life is dismissed in a few pages, a satisfyingly large amount of the book concerns his childhood, working class family, the circumstances of growing up in Manchester in the 1930's, and the struggle to escape his predestined fate. |
| Spies' Wives Stories of CIA Families Abroad |
Karen L. Chiao and Mariellen B. O'Brien | Donald S. Ellis 2001 |
Vignettes of life as the wife of a CIA member. Most just a page or two, a few longer ones; and organized into topics covering food, servants, animals, children, working on contract, etc. | Although it sounds mundane, the experiences are definitely out of the ordinary. And even if the circumstances now appear to belong to another age, they are still interesting and revealing of life under cover. |
| Leonard My Fifty-year Friendship with a Remarkable Man |
William Shatner with David Fisher | Thomas Dunne Books 2016 |
William Shatner recounts the ups and downs of his relationship with Leonard Nimoy. | A very honest recounting (as far as one can tell when you have only one side). Shatner spares nothing, including his own very large mistakes that caused unnecessary pain and friction. An unusual friendship, two very different personalities finding common ground in their shared experiences. |
| A Full Life Reflections at Ninety |
Jimmy Carter | Thorndike Press 2015 |
Jimmy Carter summarizes his life. He has authored previous books dealing with one aspect or another of his life. Here, he covers his whole life with anecdotes, opinions, and reasons for his actions. | There's nothing fancy here and a lot of it is a very matter of fact retelling. But suddenly you come across a very blunt appraisal, or self-appraisal that leaves you with the impression that this is no apology or papering over of failures, just the recounting of the life of a man who may have some regrets but is satisfied that he gave the best he could. The wealth of his accomplishments, personal and public, is staggering. |
| Sleeper Agent The atomic spy in America who got away |
Ann Hagedorn | Simon & Schuster 2021 |
George Koval was born in the US in 1913 to Russian immigrant parents from whom he learned to be a committed communist. In 1932 the father took the whole family to the USSR, and George gained a chemistry degree in Moscow. His technical knowledge and American upbringing brought him to the attention of the GRU, Russian military intelligence. He was sent back to the States, where he followed a path that took him to the heart of the atomic bomb project at Oak Ridge and Dayton. His reports back to Russia advanced their atomic bomb project considerably. With the revelation of atomic bomb spying in the immediate post-war, Koval fled back to the USSR in 1948, but his own involvement was not uncovered until 6 years later, and even then not publicized for a further 50 years. | Personal details are not too accessible, but the author has done the best to paint a picture of Koval's character and motives. A lot of the book concerns the surrounding environments of the times (eg anti-semitism) and the atomic bomb project. Nevertheless, many documents have been uncovered and they show the network Koval operated in, the friendships he formed, and his activities. A point raised, but not explored to any depth, is the lack of background checks done that would have revealed his previous American radicalism and the hole left by his 8 years in the Soviet Union. |
| A River in Darkness One man's escape from North Korea |
Masaji Ishikawa | AmazonCrossing 2017 |
The author was born in Japan to a Korean father and Japanese mother. When he was 13, in 1960, his father decided to move his family to North Korea (even though he was from the South), and start a new life that he thought would be better than the discrimination he faced in Japan. It was not to be. Everything was far worse and his family paid the toll in starvation and discrimination of a different sort. After 36 years, the author made an improbable escape, and returned to a Japan that now was just as foreign to him. | This book is a tale of unremitting sadness. Everyone makes poor choices (where choices are even possible) and everyone suffers. Family members are beaten, starve, face unrelenting despair, and die. The final choice he makes, abandoning his family in North Korea, leaves him with guilt and bitterness. |
| It's Not About The Gun Lessons from my global career as a female FBI agent |
Kathy Stearman | Pegasus Books 2021 |
From unlikely beginnings in a hardscrabble area of Kentucky, to being in charge of FBI offices in India and China, the story of one woman's striving to achieve a life of meaningful service. | You get the complete inside, exactly what it takes and feels like, account of her childhood with a domineering father, and then her grappling with the often toxic atmosphere as a woman in the FBI. Often profane, sometimes funny and sometimes disgusting and tragic, nothing (except confidential info) is left out in the course of her determined rise to increasingly responsible positions. Besides all the external events and office goings-on, there's a good deal of self-reflection and contemplation of relationships. |
| Thanks, Obama My Hopey, Changey White House Years |
David Litt | Harper Collins 2017 |
David Litt's journey from "Obamabot" to Obama speechwriter. | An incredibly funny book, in both written style and oddball situations related (eg watching helplessly as Obama's hair was almost set on fire, to mention just one). Not exactly an inside look at the workings of the White House, since he was based in the close-by office building, but still there are plenty of interactions with Obama and other administration figures. In all, an engrossing (and funny - worth repeating) recounting of his part in the process of creating press releases, jokes, monologues, and finally important speeches on topics such as race, crime, and even infrastructure. With a fitting coda about the usefulness of public service. |
| A Bookshop in Berlin The Rediscovered Memoir of One Woman's Harrowing Escape from the Nazis |
Françoise Frenkel | Atri Books 2019 |
Frenkel flees Berlin and her beloved French bookshop days before the war starts, and then suffers through three years of hiding in France before making it to Switzerland on her third attempt. | Originally published in 1945 (and fittingly rediscovered in a bookstall in 2010 - Frenkel had haunted book vendors looking for rare and forgotten treasures before opening her own bookshop in Berlin in the 1920's), this brief, poignant, but unsentimental memoir makes us an eyewitness to the everyday persecution of people of Jewish ancestry during the Second World War. There are large events to be sure, such as Kristallnacht and imprisonment, but it is the more commonplace fears - obtaining food without ration cards, living in places where searches can and do come at any hour, not knowing who can be trusted - that combine to create a feeling of immense pressure. And yet there are moments where the beauty of her surroundings in the south of France forces itself upon her and sustains her spirit. The fortuitous reissuance of her memoir reminds us that there are so many undocumented, and likewise seemingly unremarkable, sadnesses swept up on the tidal wave of war. |
| Against The Wind |
Geoffrey Household | Little, Brown and Company 1958 |
The autobiography of English author Geoffrey Household, divided into three tidy sections: Traveller, Soldier, Craftsman. The first concerns his peripatetic business career as bank clerk in Romania in the 1920's, banana salesman in Spain in the 1930's, and printer ink salesman in Europe and South America pre-war. The second his semi-clandestine intelligence work in Romania and the Middle East during the Second World War. And the third his career as an author of short stories and novels, largely set in foreign lands and with unconventional characters. | As he himself says in closing: "... for there is no significance in what I have done, none of the famous among those who I have met and little to commend my thoughts but their expression. Yet the pattern of my life, without any forced selection of incidents, fitted the convention of the picaresque..." And those are the keys - his expression of language and the "geniality" with which he looks back on his personal adventures. It is perhaps worth mentioning that his first success, "Rogue Male" was made into a film in 1941 with Walter Pidgeon under the title "Man Hunt", remade in 1976 with Peter O'Toole, and is being redone in 2023 with Benedict Cumberbatch. |
| In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson |
Betty Bao Lord | Harper and Row 2019 |
Originally published in 1984, this is a semi-autobiographical account of the year 1947 in the author's life when she left China as a young girl with her mother to join her father in the United states. We begin with her comfortable and comforting life in Chungking, and then follow her travails and successes as she is uprooted and adapts to school and life in Brooklyn, New York. | It's a gentle book, combined with a penetrating perspective on two cultures. Sometimes the child's recollection seems to be replaced by the adult's voice, but never in a way that breaks the spell of the created atmosphere. |
| All The Powers Of The Earth 1856-1860 |
Sidney Blumenthal | Simon & Schuster 2019 |
A detailed account of Lincoln's political life in the four years ending with his election in 1860. Thoroughly (in more than 600 pages) covers his beginnings in the Republican party, losing senate race with arch-nemesis Stephen Douglas in 1858, and successful stealth campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860. | Very detailed, the author has obviously done a great deal of research, there is quoted and analyzed correspondence with all sorts of figures, great and small. There is also a lot of material on the political scene, the actors, and associated events, such as John Brown's raids - perhaps more than necessary to establish Lincoln's reactions and motives. The book also suffers from mangled sentences and other editing and proof-reading lapses. Still, the book is well worth it for the sake of getting immersed in the era and seeing how the people acted and things operated - not so different from today as far as extremism, vindictiveness, altruism, dirty tricks, and maneuvering for political advantage. |
| West Winging It |
Pat Cunnane | Gallery Books 2018 |
The author lands an internship, then a job a media monitor at the White House. From there, with his knack for writing, he gradually gains more responsibility until he ends up penning minor releases and travelling on Air Force with Obama, but still as a relatively junior cog in the press office. | He writes in a very funny style, recounting all the incidents that happen to him (many embarrassing) and what he saw around him. He obviously was very committed to Obama's presidency, intellectually and emotionally. |
| The Red Baron |
Wayne Vansant | Zenith Press 2014 |
Graphic format bio of the German World War I flying ace. With a few useful appendices (also graphic) containing short sketches of Allied air forces and aces. | We get to know as much as we can about the enigmatic Manfred von Richthofen (he sure liked to hunt - maybe that was part of the reason for his aerial success). Lots of interesting detail. Concluding with a balanced look at the controversy over Richthofen's death. All presented with well thought-out illustrations by the author. |
| Title | Author | Publisher/ Year |
What's it about? | Why read it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dead Run The Murder of a Lawman and the Greatest Manhunt of the Modern American West |
Dan Schultz | St. Martin's Press 2013 |
Three men in a stolen water tanker kill a policeman in Colorado in 1998, then seemingly disappear into the surrounding canyons. Determining what happened to them, and understanding the motive behind their actions, would take a decade and still raise further unanswered questions. | Mr. Schultz asks all of these questions and constructs some plausible, and not so plausible, answers. It involves the militia movement, anti-government feeling, and conspiracies on both sides, real or imagined. Regardless, the book casts light on a land, a way of life and a people that still have consequences in the news today. |
| In Those Days Arctic Crime and Punishment |
Ken Harper | Inhabit Media 2015 |
Short accounts of various crimes committed in the Canadian Arctic, from 1576 to the 1960's. | Each tale is interesting, bizarre, and ultimately sad. All told in a matter-of-fact style with little embellishment. |
| The Innocent Killer A True Story of a Wrongful Conviction and its Astonishing Aftermath |
Michael Griesbach | ABA Publishing 2014 |
A man spends 18 years in jail before being exonerated. An investigation seems to imply that the police and prosecution were aware of his innocence at the time, and had their own reasons for wanting to see a conviction. Then the tale takes an even more bizarre and horrible turn. | The book is written by a prosecutor from the same district, so he became intimately and personally involved. He does not mince words or hesitate to point the finger of blame for all the lives that were shattered by a very imperfect justice system. |
| The Bureau And The Mole The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hansen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History |
David A. Vise | Wheeler Publishing 2002 |
Hansen spied for the Soviets (and later Russia) while a counter-intelligence agent at the FBI. He turned over the most secret and critical documents imaginable and was responsible for the execution of many agents. | It's an ugly book about an ugly character. The scale of the treason is unsurpassed. The book paints a personal background that points to the dysfunctional psychologically-based motivation. One can only hope that improved screening and ongoing testing procedures have removed at least this sort of threat to security. |
| Doing Justice A prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law |
Preet Bharara | Alfred A. Knopf 2019 |
Preet Bharara was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and was involved, or supervised, some of the most significant cases of the last 10 years. In this book, he tells some of those, but also many lesser know ones as well, in order to illustrate his philosophy about how prosecutions should be done. And the book is organized into the four phases of the prosecutorial progression: inquiry, accusation, judgement, and punishment. | Well-written, with a definite point of view. Many pertinent and interesting examples, but his advice and explanations are just as enjoyable to read and ponder over. |
| Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920's The era that gave birth to Charlie Chan, Philo Vance, the Continental Op, Ellery Queen, & gangster-killers |
Leslie S. Klinger (editor) | Pegasus Books 2018 |
This massive volume (in weight and bulk) contains five complete novels first published in the 1920's: The House Without a Key, The Benson Murder Case, The Roman Hat Mystery, Red harvest, and Little Caesar. Three are puzzle-type whodunits, two are more of a sociological exposé of corrupt towns and the criminals who flourished there. | The stories probably vary in appeal because of their differing genres and styles. (I admit I could not get into the Ellery Queen story.) But they also can be universally interesting for revealing to a modern readership what life was like for at least certain sections of 1920's society, as represented by the elites of New York and Hawaii and the seamy undersides of Chicago and "Personville". The characters of the puzzle books are a little on the wooden side, as required by the necessity to parade suspects before us, while those of the exposés are more fully realized, perhaps because of the sparing language used. A great feature of this collection are the extensive notes and accompanying illustrations that explain period references. Obviously a lot of patient and loving research was done to produce this book. |
| The Empty Hours Three 87th Precinct Mysteries |
Ed McBain | Thorndike Press 2005 |
Ed McBain (real name Evan Hunter, born S.A. Lombino) churned out dozens of novels, screenplays, and other works. This title contains three: The Empty Hours, "J", and Storm. Each focuses on a case handled by a member of the 87th Precinct of the fictional city of Isola. | These short novels are not so much whodunits as whydunits. The clues relate to motive, and the books are concerned with the process followed by the investigating officers. But this is not to say the books are a dry accounting of steps followed. The detectives are individuals with their own personalities, and the people they run into are all types. Not great works of literature, but well done quick reads. |
| Ghost of the Innocent Man A True Story of Trial and Redemption |
Benjamin Rachlin | Little, Brown and Company 2017 |
Willie J. Grimes is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and spends more than two decades in prison professing his innocence and trying to get help proving it. | Reveals how little it takes to get found guilty and how much it takes to get proven innocent. It took a whole sequence of fortunate events to secure Grimes's vindication, and the story is told well. Despite the fact that he kept to himself during his prison time, we get a good hard look at what it's like to be there. |
| The Defense Lawyer Colombo. The Subway Shooter. Gotti. |
James Patterson and Benjamin Wallace | Little, Brown and Company 2021 |
The life and legal career of Barry Slotnick, who led the defence on many famous trials of 1970s, 80s, and 90s in New York | We get a good behind the scenes look at how a lawyer prepares a case and searches for an unexpected angle or theme that can be emphasized to the defendant's advantage throughout the trial in what otherwise appears to be a hopeless case. And there is a good deal of personal detail too that explains what motivates Slotnick. But this is far from a turgid read. The chapters are short and blunt and move the book along rapidly. Perhaps a little bit downplayed in the notoriety and action of the cases is the fact that Slotnick help establish some important legal precedents. |
| Title | Author | Publisher/ Year |
What's it about? | Why read it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Keeping Up with the Germans A History of Anglo-German Encounters |
Philip Oltermann | Faber and Faber 2012 |
An eclectic look at how these two peoples have blundered and fumbled together over the past several hundred years. From food to philosophy, sports to politics, and especially comedy, the question is asked: are there any points of intersection where a glimmer of mutual comprehension might appear? | A smattering of the chapter titles gives the best indication of the author's light-hearted but still meaty approach: "Theodor Adorno Doesn't Do the Jitterbug with A.J. Ayer"; "Freddie Frinton Teaches the Germans to Laugh"; "Astrid Proll Wishes She Wasn't on Joe Strummer's T-shirt". We also get the author's own personal run-ins with the divide when his family abruptly relocates from Germany to England during his teenage years. His experiences illuminate the themes he has chosen. |
| Lost Province Adventures in a Moldovan Family |
Stephen Henighan | Prospect Books 2002 |
Canadian grad student learns Romanian on his own, then travels to Moldova shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union to teach English. He immerses himself in the life of the family that boards him, and quickly learns that Moldova is not only divided physically but psychologically as a result of Russian colonization. | Besides filling in our vacuum of knowledge about Moldova, we get thoughtful observations and opinions about the everyday people he encounters. Also interesting is the epilogue wherein he returns 7 years later and is both surprised by the amount of superficial change that has taken place, and resigned by the depressing sameness of the hardships in daily life and the unresolved cultural divide. |
| The Fifty-Year Mission The next 25 years, from The Next Generation to J.J. Abrams |
Mark A. Altman & Edward Gross | Thomas Dunne Books 2016 |
Interviews with the writers, actors, producers, set designers, etc. involved in the making of Star Trek television series and cinematic movies. | Everything you could possible want to know, ideal for the Star Trek fan. Very candid interviews. |
| Title | Author | Publisher/ Year |
What's it about? | Why read it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Suicide Run Five Tales of the Marine Corps |
William Styron | Random House 2009 |
Just what it says, but more on the periphery, not blood and guts fighting. A baleful eye cast on the social aspects of Marine life through the author's own personal lens. | Worth it for the character insights, and the inner mental workings and analysis. But can be a bit turgid in places. |
| Century Trilogy Fall of Giants, Winter of the World, (Edge of Eternity) |
Ken Follett | Dutton 2010, 2012, 2014 |
History of the 20th. century through a cast of characters, large and small, but close to big events. | Good, long read. |
| Ollantay A Drama from the Time of the Incas |
Clements Robert Markham, translator | Ediciones El Lector 2012 |
Ollantay is an Incan general of low birth who secretly marries the Inca's daughter and suffers the consequences of this transgression. This play was one of the original Inca dramas that managed to survive and was written down in various editions. | The play spans ten years of conflict and serenity, treachery and friendship, ugliness and beauty. It is somewhat akin to a Shakespeare history, even down to the comic relief character. This particular publication is spoiled by the awful and numerous formatting and spelling errors. Somehow, the drama still shines through. |
| The Last of the Just |
André Schwarz-Bart | Bantam Books 1961 |
The Levy family contains one Lamed-Vov, or Just Man, each generation from the massacre at York in 1185 down to "The Last of the Just", Ernie Levy at the Holocaust. | An extraordinarily powerful book. |
| Error in Diagnosis |
Mason Lucas, M.D. | Berkley 2015 |
Pregnant women all over the United States are falling into comas. Is it bio-terrorism, a new sort of virus, or what? Our hero gets off to a slow and cautious start, then becomes increasingly involved as he has a personal stake. | A quick, interesting read with lots of medical grounding. But an absurd and not well-researched Canadian connection that can only make one sputter at the repeated howlers. |
| The Stars Are Dark |
Peter Cheyney | Collins 1946 (1943 original) |
Plucky British espionage service matches wits and courage with German agents. | Vivid portraits of gritty places and the people who move through them in wartime London and Morocco of 1942. Moves at a measured pace with much conversation concerning actions and motives of the ordinary people forced by circumstance to carry out extraordinary acts, all as part of doing their bit for Britain. Maybe one of the most surprising things to a modern reader is the apparent cigarette fetish every character without exception has. No one can talk, eat, ride, watch, or think without handling matches, packets, cases, stubs, lighters. It's a question of whether the Germans or their own incessant smoking will finish them off first. |
| The Physician |
Noah Gordon | Barcelona 2012 (1985 original) |
Rob Cole in 11th. century Britain has a healer's intuition and knack. He embarks on a perilous journey to Persia in order to study at the feet of the master of the age, Ibn Sina, and become a true physician. | An engaging, long story. Cole is not a perfect hero; he has many not so praiseworthy characteristics. And the historical background, although painstakingly portrayed, does not always ring true, with many improbable events. However, the medical minutiae is fascinating, and in spite of his faults we can't help but pull for Rob in his quest. |
| End of Track |
F. Van Wyck Mason | Purnell and Sons 1946 |
This is a Western set during the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. Robert Burton is returning from Mexico to marry his betrothed who is at the railhead, the "End of Track"; but things don't turn out as he expected. There's a full complement of ambushes, narrow escapes, and baddies everywhere he turns. | Ignoring the requisite Western elements, there's a surprising amount of interesting historical detail concerning the landscape, dress, and railroad building. This is no whitewashed West. Plenty of despair and gritty reality. People are portrayed with all their warts and social failings. Fate reaches out and deals harsh ends to good and bad alike. When they win, it's not an untarnished victory. |
| The Cobra |
Frederick Forsyth | Signet 2011 |
The Avenger and the Cobra join forces to stop the cocaine trade. | Read it for the usual Forsyth suspense tale, with the detailed research, the build-up, the aviation connection, and the ending. While the plot happenings don't always ring true on the plausibility scale, it's always interesting to see what he comes up with. Is there also perhaps a bit of wishful thinking, or an instructive lesson, going on here? |
| Friday's Child |
Georgette Heyer | The Book Club 1946 |
Hot-headed Anthony Sheringham has just had his proposal of marriage rejected and resolves to marry the next woman he meets, when he chances on his childhood friend Hero Wantage who is morosely contemplating a dreary future as a governess. The inevitable happens and they remove to Georgian London where they are married. The book explores their slowly evolving relationship with she worshipping him as the title suggests, but he too self-centered to notice or care. | This is a smartly dashed off comedy of manners. Most of the craft in the book, and interest, is in the dialogue exchanged between a bevy of characters, from criminals to lords, but always amusing. And because Georgette Heyer was the acknowledged period expert, the story is laced with convincing detail. |
| In The Wet |
Nevil Shute | Permabooks 1957 |
Originally published in 1953, this is a curious tale with two characters, a broken down Australian drover of the present and an Australian pilot of several decades in the future, connected in a paranormal way by an ex-patriate English priest. | The interaction between priest and drover in the Australian outback of 1953 are interesting and the setting seems authentic in its many details. This is the "In The Wet" part. The 1970's characters and story take up the large middle of the book and are far less successful - dull, goody-two-shoes people combined with a dragged out plot in which virtually nothing happens. The book was apparently his vehicle for a warning about the path post-war Britain was on, and a plumping for his solution of giving the "better people" more control. |
| Clockers |
Richard Price | Bloomsbury 2009 (1992) |
Strike supervises a drug crew in the projects of Dempsey, New Jersey. Rocco Klein is a homicide detective obsessed with discovering why Strike's brother, Victor, is taking the rap for a murder that Rocco is convinced Strike committed. | The story alternates chapters between Strike and Rocco. We get to know them intimately, their thoughts and the details of their lives as they engage in a torturous dance. A well-drawn cast of supporting characters, and gritty portraits of the city and the overwhelming despair that hangs over it. |
| Under Enemy Colors |
S. Thomas Russell | G. P. Putnam's Sons 2007 |
Charles Hayden is British First Lieutenant who is forced into accepting a posting to the 32 gun frigate HMS Themis under the captaincy of the tyrannical but cowardly Josiah Hart during the war with revolutionary France. Where does the greatest danger lie - with the French, his captain, or even his own mutinous crew? | Besides the pure action and adventure, one can appreciate the effort the author has put in to give authentic ship-handling details and dialogue of the era. However, could have stood a little editing to remove repetition and speed things up. |
| The Outsider |
Stephen King | Thorndike Press 2018 |
Idyllic small town setting, brutal murder, citizen-of-the-year type as only suspect with incontrovertible evidence. Only there's an airtight alibi and the shift begins from crime to supernatural. | King's ability to portray the seamy side of people and places is once again on display. There is the usual ragtag band of happy warriors for the good side. And yet, although the book is long (and a bit too repetitious) it somehow seems lacking in getting to grips with the evil-doer. The opportunity is present but not really taken advantage of. Still a good, spooky read. |
| The Last Hurrah |
Edwin O'Connor | University of Chicago Press 2016 |
Originally published in 1956, relates the final campaign of longtime Irish-American politician Frank Skeffington as he strives to be re-elected mayor of an unnamed Eastern port city. | This is a thinly disguised love letter, or more exactly a eulogy, to what was then (in the 1950's) a quickly disappearing way of conducting politics, with ward bosses, hands-on campaigning, and a whole cast of hangers-on, newspaper and industrial magnates, and eccentric characters. Everyone is writ large. Scenes extend over dozens of pages as each detail of a situation is recorded, whether it be a rally, a radio talk, a wake. But we don't see much of the seamy side, more a focus on the over-powering charm and smarts of Skeffington as he navigates his way, manipulating each group or individual with wit and threat. But there is a portent of the future, with the challenge by a non-entity backed by money and power, conducting a stay-at-home TV campaign. There are a few draw-backs to the book: stilted exposition, the jarring switches between internal viewpoints, and thousands of semi-colons and colons. But on the whole, a valuable record of how things used to be, when the personal touch was everything. |
| Nicholas Nickleby |
Charles Dickens | Collector's Library 2004 (original 1839) |
A young, impoverished gentleman, with a virtuous sister and a foolish mother, tries to make an honest living in Victorian England, but soon finds himself and his family subject to the schemes of a rapacious uncle, a sadistic schoolmaster, and a lecherous swindler. With many twists and turns, sorrows and joys, all comes right in the end and everyone gets exactly what they deserve, except for the obligatory unfortunate, sacrificed to make the whole seem more real. | If you want to immerse yourself in a very long tale, then this is absorbing enough. Much social injustice to arouse indignation, rich detail of the times and places, many comic scenes and memorable characters. On the negative side, the story wanders through many superfluous side channels, and the ending has dull pages of implausible explanatory reveals, as if Dickens was in a hurry to finish up and couldn't be bothered writing the actual events. Nicholas and his sister are too good to be true. |
| Death In A White Tie |
Ngaio Marsh | Harper 2009 (original 1938) |
London, debutantes, balls, the season, dowagers, lords, fools, and blackguards - all the setting for blackmail and murder which must be unravelled by Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard. | Has the conventional trappings of a cast of suspicious characters each with their own motive, a complicated crime scene complete with diagram, and a final showdown where the suspects are gathered in one place and serially questioned. The best feature of the book is the individual scenes, often without the protagonist, where each character speaks in a very distinct, believable voice. |
| Raiders of the Nile A Novel of the Ancient World |
Steven Saylor | Minotaur Books 2014 |
Gordianus is a young Roman living in Ptolemaic Egypt of 88 BC. While celebrating his birthday, his beautiful slave Bethesda is abducted. Trying to locate her and get her back leads him on to a gang of bandits deep in the Nile Delta and entangles him in plots whose purpose he can only guess at. | The whole book is full of interesting detail which is fortunate since things move at a slow pace. A single action can require several pages of exposition of the hero's thought processes before it occurs. The book also suffers from an ending where too many characters tell us (unnecessarily) what they were doing and thinking to contribute to the conclusion. Still, a very inventive book with a varied cast of characters worth meeting. |
| 11/22/63 |
Steven King | Scribner 2011 |
Jake Epping is a high school teacher who gets sucked deeper and deeper into trying to right the terrible title event of the past, but the past seems to have a way of fighting back. | Stephen King is a master of creation of the seamy side of life and the unsavoury - or just down-on-their-luck - people who inhabit it. This time, the unpleasantness is set in a faithfully recreated late 1950's / early 60's that reflects on every page the amount of research that has gone into it. The atmosphere is palpable and scenes are played out in full, whether gruesome or, more rarely, with affection. If it can sometimes appear to be a bit unseemly to change the actions and words of real people for whom the event was so personally tragic, it is always done with consummate skill and purpose. |
| The Disappearing Floor |
Franklin W. Dixon | Grosset & Dunlap 1992 |
No. 19 of the Hardy Boys series, originally published in 1940. Frank and Joe are in pursuit of jewel thieves who have taken over an old mansion of the outskirts of Bayport. | Read it if you like action, action, and more action, and aren't concerned with improbable coincidences and the appearance of "suddenly" on every second page. Frank and Joe are up against several different sets of bad guys, and are in a constant whirl of location changes, phone calls, and life-threatening assaults, all tolerated with knowing chuckles from their absentee detective parent. Chet Morton comes in for his usual fat-shaming. |
| Nancy |
Olivia Jaimes | Andrews McMeel Publishing 2019 |
This is a collection of the re-launched "Nancy" comic strip. Nancy is with the times, is addicted to her cell phone and video games, and participates in robotics. The old characters are still there - Aunt Fritzi and Sluggo - but there are plenty of new ones as well. | The jokes are gentle and often clever. There is the meta perspective as well, that "Nancy" was known for: the characters are often aware they are in a comic strip, and the cartoonist intercedes at times too. If there is a criticism, it is that all the characters seem to speak in a slight variation of the cartoonist's voice, and in the case of the kids, far beyond their years, especially in their vocabulary. This diminishes a bit some of Nancy's charm, namely that she personifies a child who, while still being self-centered, can also be unexpectedly wise and perceptive. |
| Encore Mafalda |
Joaquín S. Lavado (Quino) | Éditions Glénat 2010 |
French language version of the Argentinian comic strip character. Mafalda is a young girl (5 or 6 in this collection) who has strong opinions about school, her friends and family, the world in general, and especially soup. | Mafalda bears a strong resemblance to "Nancy", at least in looks, but with substantially more edge to her. Some of the panels deal with typical childhood thoughts and feelings. Others are thinly disguised expressions of the cartoonist's outlook on events of the time (1960's/70's). All told humorously and with a unique perspective. |
| Title | Author | Publisher/ Year |
What's it about? | Why read it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How the World Was A California Childhood |
Emmanuel Guibert | :01 First Second 2010 |
A nostalgic but bluntly honest look back at one boy's childhood spent in California in the 1930's told in graphic format. | Gives a picture far different from the California of today. Alan Cope's reminiscences are a mixture of the everyday and the surprising. Honest assessments of himself and the people in his life. Guibert's drawings are a major asset to the book, enhancing the plain words with imagination. |
| L'arabe du futur 3 Une jeunesse au Moyen-Orient (1985-1987) |
Riad Sattouf | Allary Éditions 2016 |
The third volume of Riad's graphic format recounting of his childhood. His school life, relationships with parents, siblings, relatives, and other kids in both Syria, for the most part, and France. | It swings from humour to casual brutality, and always with his keen observations on the people and places around him. A different perspective on what is normal. |
| L'arabe du futur 4 Une jeunesse au Moyen-Orient (1987-1992) |
Riad Sattouf | Allary Éditions 2018 |
Volume 4 - things get progressively darker: his self-esteem diminishes, his parents' relationship crumbles, his dealings with peers in Syria and France turn ugly. And yet there are still a few bright spots. | The ordinary is portrayed with care, and the extraordinary with passion. Given the climactic tun of events, volume 5 will be a must read. |
| Clemenceau |
Dély, Garrigues, Carloni, Regnault | Glénat | fayard 2017 |
Part of the "Ils ont fait l'histoire" series. A graphic novel biography of Georges Clemenceau, most remembered as the redoutable leader of France during the First World War. | But the book spends only a few pages on his wartime doings, and instead gives us a measured portrait of his entire life, from his youth in the Vendée region, to his career in municipal politics in Paris, his journalistic forays, and his participation in the national issues of the day as senator and minister. Never afraid to take an unpopular stand (and suffering defeat several times as a result), resisting the extremes of left and right, he embodied good sense and determination. An interesting, if necessarily superficial, look into a large political life. |
| They Called Us Enemy |
George Takei, Eisinger, Scott, Becker | Top Shelf Productions 2019 |
"Mr. Sulu" of Star Trek fame tells the story of his family's internment during WWII. | Done in graphic format. An interesting look at internment life through the eyes of a young boy. Only a few incidents are dealt with at length (understandable due to his young age at the time); the rest is supplemented with general research on the times, places, and personalities. Assumptions are made about the motivations of his parents, but, even if accepted, still leave their decisions sometimes puzzling. We also get a look at how the experience affected Takei after the war, both in his career and more directly with the settlement and remembrance. |
| Taxi! stories from the back seat |
Aimée de Jongh | Conundrum International 2019 |
Four interspersed taxi rides in Los Angeles, Paris, Washington, and Jakarta done in graphic format. | Revealing portraits of the drivers, the cities, and the author. |
| Lost in Taiwan |
Mark Crilley | Little, Brown and Company 2023 |
Graphic novel of young American getting literally lost in Taiwan city and, as he has to deal with his situation, discovering there's more to himself than he thought. | Good story, natural dialogue, interestingly detailed scenes of city and rural life. |
| Clockwork Game |
Jane Irwin | Fiery Studios 2013 |
A graphic novel type book detailing the history of the chess-playing automaton exhibited in Europe and America from 1769 to mid 1800's. It was in the form of a box with a seated Turkish mechanical man moving the pieces in response to a human opponent from the audience. | A fascinating story. It amazed its onlookers, and the secret was kept for a remarkably long time. It passed through several hands, making for a colourful history. Some small liberties are taken with actual events, but a tremendous amount of research was done to make the portrayal as authentic as possible. A tragic ending. |
| Suspended in Language Niels Bohr's life, discoveries, and the century he shaped |
Jim Ottaviani and Leland Purvis | General Tektronics Labs 2009 |
Niels Bohr's life in graphic format. | Not as well known as Einstein, but his influence was huge, both on science and scientists. A useful and accessible introduction to the core ideas of quantum mechanics is painlessly embedded. The attempts to convince a skeptical Einstein (who could substitute as a champion of our own reluctance to accept these counter-intuitive ideas) are particularly interesting. Warning: there are equations! But the whole is presented in comic book style, all 300 pages of it, including endnotes. Perhaps a bit spoiled by numerous diversions and asides that derail the themes. We are left uncertain whether the story is being presented according to time, or topic. But perhaps that is intentional - and fitting. |
| Two Generals |
Scott Chantler | McClelland&Stewart 2010 |
It's a deceptive title since the book is actually about two lieutenants in the Highland Light Infantry of Canada, who referred to themselves in that tongue-in-cheek way. The principal figure is Law Chantler, the author's grandfather; the other - Jack Chrysler. They join up soon after the start of WWII, and the book follows them through training and the Normandy landing up to the battle of Brunon, July 8, 1944. The HLI suffered close to 50% casualties, but took the town opening the way to Caen. | This is a graphic novel, done in a stark style, but obviously loving detail. There are the horrors of war but also a contemplative musing on life and friendship. |
| We Hereby Refuse Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration |
Frank Abe, Tamiko Nimura | Wing Luke Museum/Chin Music Press 2021 |
In graphic novel format, tracks the experiences of three people (and their families) as a result of the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. And their experiences were quite different, reflecting their differing circumstances and reactions. | The stories are all compelling. One had previously tried to enlist, was rejected, and ultimately ended up serving a lengthy prison sentence when he refused to register for the draft while his rights were terminated under internment. A second had her government job terminated for absence from work while being forcibly interned, appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, and eventually won her case, ending the exclusion orders. And the third ended up in the high security camp reserved for those labelled disloyal, was coerced by fellow inmates to renounce his citizenship, and spent more than a decade resisting deportation and trying to get it back. Lives shattered, communities broken, for something that was unnecessary and unlawful and incredibly stupid, but, oh, so easy to believe it was the right thing to do. |
| The Fatal Bullet A True Account of the Assassination, Lingering Pain, Death, and Burial of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States; Also Including the Inglorious Life and Career of the Despised Assassin Guiteau |
Rick Geary | NBM 1999 |
Tracks the two paths of president and assassin from birth and upbringing, through careers and life experiences, up to their fateful meeting, and beyond to their deaths. | Their stories have eerie similarities, and yet these two people make different choices that take them far apart in terms of success and personality. Garfield is so little known, and yet his background and how he came to the presidency, was quite different from the usual post-war politician so that it gave much hope of success for his presidency. That was snuffed out by Guiteau, who perhaps can best be described as an embittered and delusional crackpot. |
| Title | Author | Publisher/ Year |
What's it about? | Why read it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Those Angry Days Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight over World War II, 1939-1941 |
Lynne Olson | Random House 2011 |
Interventionists and isolationists battle it out in the newspapers, movies and radio to win the hearts and minds of the American public. | The divisions of the time, and the passions that they engendered, are strikingly similar to current-day America. It seems only the names, and the issues du jour, have changed. |
| Disaster Canada |
Janet Looker | Lynx Images 2000 |
Canadian Disasters involving ships, fire, mines, storms, disease, planes, bridges, etc. | The loss of life in little-known older disasters is perhaps the most surprising aspect. Very well illustrated. |
| Dreadnought Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War |
Robert K. Massie | Ballantine Books 1991 |
A survey of British-German relations from Queen Victoria's accession to the start of World War I, with an emphasis on the naval rivalry as the principal cause of friction. | Each principal actor - royal, statesman, or naval chief - is introduced with interesting personal sketches that set the context for their decisions. One gradually gets the impression of an impending collision that some were blind to, some foresaw, and some even welcomed, but without anyone being able to prevent it. |
| Hitlerland American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power |
Andrew Nagorski | Simon & Schuster 2012 |
A well-researched, yet still popular, history of America's close contact with Hitler and Germany, from just after the First World War to the German declaration of war on the U.S in 1941, told through the personal histories of the American diplomats, journalists, students, military men, and cultural icons who were there. | By focussing on one nation's experiences of Hitler's rise to power, we get a concentrated set of emotions and a distilled pool of information that affords a different perspective on what it was like to be there, and how Hitler's rise to power could have happened. And America's involvement was not on the periphery. Inter-war Germany had a fascination with American culture; contacts were close and friendly. There are many compelling personages and anecdotes, from the American woman who saved Hitler's life at the time of the beerhall putsch, to the American officer on exchange who war-gamed the invasion of Czechoslovakia with his German academy mates. |
| The Magnificent Century |
Thomas B. Costain | Popular Library 1964 |
Part of Costain's series on the Plantaganet dynasty of England, this one focuses on the reign of Henry III, the vacillating, spendthrift, quarrelsome son of King John. His reign was long (56 years) but marked by civil war and many misadventures. | All the personalities and conflicts of the age are brought to life, and though there is much dramatic extrapolation from the historical records, he has you convinced it is not an unreasonable use of the popular historian's licence. He has quite a lot to say about (and praise for) Simon de Montfort's efforts to limit the arbitrary rule of the king and bring the commoner into some measure of power-sharing. |
| One Summer: America, 1927 |
Bill Bryson | Random House 2013 |
A look back at the momentous happenings of 1927: Lindbergh flies the Atlantic, Ruth swats 60 home runs, The Jazz Singer revolutionizes Hollywood, Henry Ford ends production of the Model T, Farnsworth demonstrates television, bankers meet in a secret conclave that unwittingly guarantees economic collapse, and many more. | It could have descended into a banal or lurid recitation of events. But there is a base of research combined with a layer of analysis and a soupcon of fresh opinion that makes for an engaging reading. There is much background material to provide context, and the many personalities involved are raised from the page with short sketches. |
| Ask Not The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America |
Thurston Clarke | Henry Holt and Company 2004 |
Blow by blow (or rather word by word) account of Kennedy's famous inaugural address. The author parses almost each phrase, and traces their origins in previous speeches, books, and Kennedy's life events and outlook. He also recounts the movements and doings of a cast of surrounding characters, family and political, in the months between election day and inauguration day. | The speech seems to have lost its lustre over the decades, but you get a sense for how much of a departure from the norm it was at the time. Kennedy blazed the trail for how to use the media to his advantage, and every detail of his presentation was meticulously planned for effect in advance. We also get a warts and all portrayal of his failings and of those around him, which rescues the book from becoming a hagiography. |
| Where Were You America Remembers the JFK Assassination |
Gus Russo | Lyons Press 2013 |
Interviews with several categories of people about their involvement or reaction to that day in Dallas: newspeople, witnesses, authorities, celebrities. | Some interviews are enlightening (eg the shoe salesman who was responsible for Oswald being apprehended is able to tell his story without it being filtered); some are worth very little (most of the celebrities - Tom Hanks being a notable exception for his clarity of ideas and expression). |
| Living in Nazi Germany |
Elaine Halleck, editor | Greenhaven Press 2004 |
Short selections by various authors loosely arranged under the categories of victims, rulers, propaganda, and culture. | The individual accounts are interesting, particularly those from the (former) children's viewpoints. The appeal of Hitler comes through, another reminder that no society is immune; it just takes the right set of conditions. |
| Japan 1941 Countdown to Infamy |
Eri Hotta | Alfred A. Knopf 2013 |
An examination of the Japanese decision to go to war against America, Britain, and the Netherlands in 1941, focussing on the top Japanese government leaders and their discussions, but also setting the wider social context and including sidelights such as the Sorge spyring, and the peregrinations of "Soldier U". | There is a satisfying amount of detail about what was said among the Japanese leaders at each of the many conferences they held, enough for the reader to form their own opinion about the basis for the decision. Was it based on delusion, ignorance, high-stakes gambling, or was it the only option left to them? Structural problems in the highest government institutions contributed both to the decision being made by a cloistered group where the military had inordinate preponderance, and to the fuzziness about just who had the ultimate responsibility for the making and consequences of the decision. It's nice too that the author doesn't mince words and indicts the repeated failures of many parties to act, from emperor to generals and admirals to cabinet members. |
| In the kingdom of Ice The grand and terrible polar voyage of the USS Jeannette |
Hampton Sides | Random House 2014 |
In 1879, the USS Jeannette endeavoured to reach the North Pole through the Bering Strait, relying on a warm current to convey them through the ice-pack to a rumoured circumpolar sea. Instead, they became ice-bound for almost 2 years, and over half the crew perished in a desperate attempt to reach civilization in Siberia. | This little-known saga of daring, adventure, hardship, and loss is told in an engaging manner, helped by the fact that all the journals and records of the expedition were retrieved, and many personal letters were uncovered in the course of research. The personalities involved are painted in fascinating detail, including the ultra-organized captain George De Long, his ingenious engineer George Melville, and the eccentric publisher of the New York Herald Gordon Bennett, amongst many others. |
| American Crisis George Washington and the Dangerous Two Years After Yorktown, 1781-1783 |
William M. Fowler Jr. | Walker Publishing Company 2011 |
After Yorktown, the fighting essentially stopped while the British struggled to come to terms with the realization that a military victory was no longer possible. The Continental Army still required to remain in being to force them to the bargaining table, but it was wracked with dissension over lack of pay and supplies, and Congress's inability to furnish them. Washington had to walk a delicate balance between respecting the civilian authority and yet not appearing to abandon his men. | There are many insights into the personalities and issues involved. In particular, we see how Washington had a clear vision of what each sector's responsibilities were, and how it would be setting a dangerous precedent were he to step outside (or even take advantage of) his military role - as many urged him to do - in trying to resolve the interminable wrangling that threatened the gains and purposes of the revolution. |
| The Roar of the Lion The Untold Story of Churchill's World War II Speeches |
Richard Toye | Oxford University Press 2013 |
Covers Churchill's main speeches to Parliament, over the BBC, and abroad. Gives the context to each speech, the process of how it was composed, how it was received by his audience, and critical reaction. | A very readable book with lots of detail. By no means a panegyric; there were many duds among Churchill's productions, not just from the standpoint of delivery but also content that was decidedly off the mark. (It was surprising to see the extent to which ordinary people's reactions were carefully surveyed and analyzed back then.) But what one is left with is a sense of wonder at how he managed to so often find the exact right words that resonated with the momentous events then taking place. |
| The Residence Inside The Private World Of The White house |
Kate Andersen Brower | HarperCollins 2015 |
Thematic approach to the serving staff of the White House. The topics of race, children, loyalty, silence, and others are discussed through the recollections of the domestic staff: butlers, cooks, maids, plumbers, electricians. | Nothing earth-shaking, but lots of little surprises that make for an interesting read. The personal stories of the staff are absorbing. You also get to see how the presidential family viewed the people who served them, and that shines a different, more human light on their characters. |
| Les 100 visages de la Révolution Portraits et biographies des principaux acteurs |
Max Gallo | XO Éditions 2009 |
An alphabetical listing of 100 people, from peasants to kings, who played a role in the French Revolution. The vast majority are accompanied with a portrait, and each has a paragraph or two. | A very attractive book, with interesting portraits on backgrounds of red, with a cast that reveals the tumult of the age. It's amazing how many were lawyers, who met a sudden judicial end at the hands of other lawyers. But it was also a time when the unlikeliest people could gain centre stage for a brief moment, before their turn was cut short. |
| The Voyage of the Armada The Spanish Story |
David Howarth | The Lyons Press 1981 |
Tells the story of the Spanish Armada from the Spanish perspective - the historical impetus, the construction, the leadership, the battles fought, and its fate. | Makes convincing arguments that correct several misimpressions. The Armada was in fact ably led and bravely fought; the English ships were not so very less in number or size; and they did not inflict substantial damage on the Spanish fleet. Rather the source of the Armada's failure was the ambiguous command structure, where all operational decisions had to be cleared through King Philip sequestered in the Escorial in Madrid. The lack of an onsite supreme commander of combined operations was fatal. It didn't help that the supplied cannon shot was so shoddy that it disintegrated upon firing. |
| The Soviet Ambassador The Making of the Radical behind Perestroika |
Christopher Shulgan | McClelland & Stewart 2008 |
Aleksandr Yakovlev was the Soviet ambassador to Canada from 1973 to 1983. He had already developed a reputation in party circles for being a maverick, and this posting was intended to freeze him out of any further influence. Instead it had the opposite effect. Yakovlev further developed his ideas after exposure to Canadian institutions and officials, and infected an already predisposed Mikhail Gorbachev when he made his Canadian visit. | We are given an inside look into the workings of the Politburo and upper Communist party circles. Far from its exterior monolithic appearance, factions continually jockey for position, and alliances are made and unmade. Yakovlev's rural/soldier background is interestingly presented, as are the ways he circumvented External Affairs as ambassador in his successful attempt to go directly to the power sources in the Canadian government. The book suffers from needless repetition, and skewed commentary on the Canadian political scene during the Trudeau era. |
| Canada's Little War Fighting for the British Empire in Southern Africa 1899-1902 |
Carman Miller | James Lorimer and Company 2003 |
Examines Canada's participation in the Boer War - the controversy over whether to get involved, the decision, the recruitment of the several contingents, the soldiers' experiences in South Africa, the public reaction, and the legacy. | What seems obscure now, and of little importance, was a very big deal at the time. Many saw it as Canada's entrance on the stage of world affairs and an assertion of its growing importance and autonomy. Everything about it was exaggerated, from the exploits to the celebrations - and riots. And if it was later overshadowed by Canada's experiences in Word War I, there were many lessons to be drawn from the Boer War that pointed to what would happen in the near future. The book is enriched by the many photographs of the personages and memorabilia - but somewhat diminished by the author's peculiar and irritating penchant for expressing everything in threes. |
| The Fall of New France How the French lost a North American empire 1754-63 |
Ronald J. Dale | James Lorimer and Company 2004 |
A small but complete book of the struggle between England and France in North America, with emphasis on the final conflict. | Covers all the major campaigns, the strategic and tactical situations, the personalities, and course of the battles. But this is not merely a recitation of political and military events. We see how the war affected the civilian population, and the devastating results it had for the native nations. It also served to motivate and facilitate the rush to revolution 10 years later. Many thoughtfully chosen illustrations from the time. (And who knew there was a second Battle of the Plains of Abraham, bloodier than the first, which the French won, but to little avail?) |
| Bactria The History of a Forgotten Empire |
H. G. Rawlinson | Asian Educational Services 2002 |
First published in 1912, this is a slim book containing a survey of everything known (which isn't much) about the easternmost Greek kingdom established in the territory conquered by Alexander the Great. Much has to be inferred from the coins found. Authors of antiquity such as Strabo supply tantalizing details which must be carefully assessed. | The Greeks left behind by Alexander in newly established fortresses and border towns made something greater of his possessions than Alexander himself. They prospered and expanded their holdings to places Alexander never could reach. As late as 150 BC, the Bactrian Greeks were very much in charge of Afghanistan and the Punjab, and under Menander even extending into the heart of India in one last flowering of their civilization. Although their influence was large at the time, there were too few to leave a lasting impact and they became absorbed in India at large. |
| The Savage Shore Extraordinary stories of survival and tragedy from the early voyages of discovery |
Graham Seal | Yale University Press 2015 |
Painstakingly documented history of Australia's emergence onto the map, from the the first musings of antiquity about a counter-balancing Southern landmass through Indonesian trading contacts to Dutch, French, and British voyages. | Perhaps the most surprising thing to me was the extent and frequency of the Dutch contacts - intentional and disastrously accidental - and their failure to exploit their centuries advantage on European rivals. Also noteworthy are the detailed accounts of the shipwrecked sailors, merchants, and passengers and their usually tragic fates. Not least, the reaction of the Aboriginal inhabitants to these interlopers - natural hostility to the invaders and complete indifference to the supposedly irrestible trade goods. |
| 1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed |
Eric H. Cline | Princeton University Press 2014 |
In 1177 B.C., Ramses III defeated the second invasion of the Sea Peoples. But it left Egypt severely weakened, and the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean in ruins and disarray. This brought an end to the first real international order among the Near Eastern empires known as the late Bronze Age. Eric Cline examines the situation leading up to the general collapse and examines reasons for it. | This is a book based on archeological and written evidence, from excavations and readings of diplomatic and commercial records from buried archives. But it is extremely readable, with much common sense. The conclusions are tenuous, but well-reasoned. Perhaps suffers from too many reformulations of the same ideas and caveats. The textual extracts from the archives are fascinating and unexpectedly very down-to-earth, even the communications between kings. |
| In The Enemy's House The secret saga of the FBI agent and the code breaker who caught the Russian spies |
Howard Blum | Thorndike Press 2018 |
Spies for the Russians stole the atom bomb plans during the course of World War 2. The discovery of their espionage was the result of luck, persistence, "black bag" operations, brilliance, and the strange alliance of a bluff FBI agent with a reclusive linguist/code breaker. | There is an extensive body of materials on all the players involved, both Russian and American, from memoirs to declassified documents, including original cables. The author has used these materials well to give us convincing portraits of the spies, handlers, agents, and code-breakers, as well as provided concrete examples of messages and decodings. All done with a light touch, even though the subject and end results are oppressive and disturbing. |
| Bending Toward Justice The Birmingham church bombing that changed the course of civil rights |
Doug Jones | All Points Books 2019 |
Doug Jones tells the story of the awful 1963 outrage that took the lives of 4 black girls and impacted countless others, including his own - for he watched the first prosecution over a decade later as a law student, then led the second round of prosecutions more than two decades after that. | This is a comprehensive recounting of the events through 40 years: the victims, the investigations, the perpetrators, the trials, and the consequences. All told from his shifting perspective, beginning with his own detached childhood growing up in the outskirts of Birmingham, continuing with his all-consuming involvement as the chief prosecutor, and ending with his senatorial campaign. |
| Beardmore The Viking Hoax That Rewrote History |
Douglas Hunter | McGill-Queen's University Press 2018 |
Viking relics came to light of day in Northern Ontario in the 1930's and then occupied a prominent place in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto for decades. But were they real? And how did they get there? Most important of all, how did the museum with its duty of being a "temple of truth", and the scholarly community at large, react to such an improbable discovery? | This is a tour de force of research with much new information and analysis. And perhaps even more, since it is largely a "story of stories", it is a skillful organization and telling of many intertwined threads of people, actions, and relationships. But not least, it also shines a deserved light of recognition on the man who, almost alone, assumed for years the responsibility to dig to the bottom of the affair despite being ignored, belittled, and actively conspired against by those who bowed to reputation and power and in the process sacrificing their supposed impartial commitment to the furtherance of knowledge. Highly recommended. |
| First Principles What America's founders learned from the Greeks and Romans and how that shaped our country |
Thomas E. Ricks | HarperCollins 2020 |
Examines the influence of ancient history and writings on America of the 1700's in general, and in particular focuses on the impact it made on the first 4 presidents - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. | And the impact was huge, especially the ancient concept of "virtue" on the relatively non-bookish Washington. Many interesting (but thankfully brief) excerpts from their and other's writings. Also given coverage is the perhaps lesser known influence of the many educators from Scotland active in America at that time, spreading the ideas of the Scottish enlightenment. The final chapters explain the rapid decline of classical learning in the decades following independence. The book is largely free of "lessons" for our times, until an epilogue which, if earnest, seems more than a bit out of place. |
| Triangle The Fire that Changed America |
David Von Drehle | Atlantic Monthly Press 2003 |
In 1911 the Triangle Waist Company in New York went up in flames and 140 people died, mostly young immigrant Jewish and Italian factory workers. Fires escapes collapsed, doors were locked, the victims jumped to their death or were suffocated in heaps of bodies. Would any change result? Would anyone be held accountable? | The book examines not only the circumstances surrounding the fire itself, but also the times and lives of the victims, the authorities, the political fallout. And through the efforts of the author, not only has a copy of the trial transcript has come to light after many decades, but he has also researched and compiled the first authoritative list of the victims with their names. |
| Declassified 50 Top Secret Documents that Changed History |
Thomas B. Allen | National Geographic 2008 |
The documents range in time from secret letters sent by the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots to a pre-9/11 briefing. Each document is discussed in a few pages, with background, discovery, and impact on the course of events. | It's nice to have reproductions of parts of the documents being discussed. And it's interesting to note that almost all are encoded, even the oldest ones. Sad for their senders, once intercepted they were deciphered. Gauging the impact of the revelations - timely or belated - is an exercise in authorial speculation, and perhaps sometimes overstated. |
| Lucky How Joe Biden barely won the presidency |
Jonathan Allen & Amie Parnes | Crown 2021 |
The 2020 presidential campaign is told from pre-primary maneuvering to election day. The emphasis is on the doings of the eventual winner, but his primary and election opponents' campaigns are also detailed and analyzed. | Obviously a quick job, but still thorough with a great many insider interviews informing the narrative. We get a lot of candid (if non-attributable) opinions from those directly involved. Could have perhaps done with tighter editing as almost every assessment gets restated in slightly different words over and over again. |
| The West Wing And Beyond What I saw inside the presidency |
Pete Souza | Voracious / Little, Brown and Company 2022 |
Behind the scenes photos of the Obama presidency by the official White House photographer. | When the camera is pointed away from the president, you get a different perspective, literally, on the White House and presidential travel. The large format book allows crisp pictures from all sorts of odd angles. With accompanying text. |
| Title | Author | Publisher/ Year |
What's it about? | Why read it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Tale of Monstrous Extravagance Imagining Multilingualism |
Tomson Highway | The University of Alberta Press 2015 |
An argument in favour of speaking more than one language, coming as a talk delivered in the Henry Kreisel Memorial Lecture Series by Canadian Cree author, composer, playwright Tomson Highway, himself being acquainted/conversant in Cree, Dene, Latin, French, English and others. | It's a short book, but time enough to make the case that each language is not a one-for-one replacement of each other's terms, but rather encompasses a different underlying world view. (One supporting argument is the contrast between the assumptions brought into our thinking by gender-based languages and animate/inanimate-based languages.) A lot of humour and diverting sidetrips accompany the thesis. |
| The Riddle Of The Labyrinth The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code |
Margalit Fox | CCCO An imprint of Harper Collins 2013 |
The story of the decipherment of Linear B in three acts, each with a different character in the leading role: the digger, Arthur Evans; the detective Alice Kober; and the architect, Michael Ventris. | What could be more exciting (well to some people) than the solving of the mystery of the writing of an unknown language depicted on tablets unearthed from the palace on Crete that was the source of the legend of the slaying of the Minotaur in the Labyrinth? The book has a satisfying amount of detail about the nuts and bolts (or rather the signs and syllables) of the solution. What makes it especially valuable and interesting is the bringing to the forefront of the decades-long effort by the little-known American language scholar Alice Kober, whose pain-staking contributions provided the essential key to the later unlocking of the mystery. |
| The Kingdom of Speech |
Tom Wolfe | Little, Brown and Company 2016 |
Tom Wolfe dissects, or rather vivisects, Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky in pursuit of the answer to the questions: what is language, and how did it arise? Then happily provides his own answer. | This is a very annoying, self-indulgent book. The attacks are vicious and largely irrelevant, wandering off on whatever takes his fancy. Moreover, the style is grating and tries to be cute but fails. As to the ideas presented, yes, a lot of what he attacks does deserve demolishing. But similarly, what he presents in its stead is flimsy, not supported, and based on his own prejudices. Nevertheless, the book makes you think, and perhaps come to your own conclusions. |
| The Writing of the Gods The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone |
Edward Dolnick | Scribner 2021 |
After the Rosetta Stone was unearthed by French soldiers in 1799 during Napoleon's ill-fted invasion of Egypt, scholars at last had something other than fanciful speculation with which to attack the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Two figures led the way, the English all-round genius Thomas Young, and the French Egypt-obsessed Jean-Francois Champollion. Which approach would pay off - the pure reason of Young or the detailed knowledge and persistence of Champollion? | This is a well-researched book with many facts and details surrounding the race to decipher hieroglyphs. There is also a great deal of background presented, which is welcome when it pertains to the subject at hand, but less so when it follows extraneous paths that, although interesting in themselves, in no way justifies their distracting inclusion. Perhaps the best feature of the book are the many thoroughly explored steps required to unlock the multiple grammatical levels of hieroglphs (sound, rebus, determinative, etc.) complete with detailed, actual examples. Perhaps the second best feature is the author's ability to relate these features to more familiar languages so that the reader gets an appreciation of the mental leaps required by Young and Champollion to cast off the prevailing mountains of humbuggery surrounding hieroglyphs and see what was really there. An achievement for the ages. |
| An Illustrated Dictionary of Flora and Fauna Southern East Cree |
Dr. Kevin Brousseau | Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute 2022 |
Just what the title says, a dictionary of living things in the Southern East Cree language (James Bay and eastwards in Quebec). It consists of extensive prefatory notes about the project to compile the dictionary, bibliography, orthography, etc. followed by three main sections: (1) a Cree-English dictionary indexed by syllabics and with cultural explanations, (2) 82 coloured plates of plants and animals that can be found in the cultural area, and (3) a shorter English-Cree dictionary. | A wonderful reference book that is obviously the result of a great deal of research and collaborative effort. |
| Title | Author | Publisher/ Year |
What's it about? | Why read it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Age of Shakespeare |
Frank Kermode | Modern Library 2004 |
A survey of Shakespeare's plays and life and the times that shaped them. | We get an eclectic but focussed look at Shakespeare's plays and how they relate to the politics and society of the stages (literally: The Globe, Blackfriars, etc.) of his career. The author usually devotes 3 or 4 pages to each play, and highlights a couple of themes. But he also mentions some lesser-known aspects and makes connections to events of the day. A light but engrossing read. |
| Printer's Error Irreverent stories from book history |
J. P. Romney and Rebecca Romney | Harper Collins 2017 |
Each chapter focuses on a person who has changed our relationship with printed books: how we read them, buy them, view them. We have Gutenberg - what evidence is there that he did indeed produce the first printed book? Shakespeare - the physical and commercial aspects of the printing of his plays. Benjamin Franklin - how he maneuvered to take over printing contracts from entrenched businessmen and then franchised his operations. And many others. | Although most of the stories are familiar in outline, nevertheless little-known details are presented in interesting fashion. Sometimes the attempt to be entertaining detracts from the story and is unnecessary. |
| Title | Author | Publisher/ Year |
What's it about? | Why read it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Karl Popper Historicism and Its Poverty |
Frederic Raphael | Routledge 1999 |
A slim volume - 59 pages - summarizing (and critiquing in a friendly way) the works and views of Karl Popper. | I have no idea of Popper's relevance or standing today, but I found his basic ideas attractive: an open society, reliance on scientific method, progress through a succession of small steps rather than some universal cure-all ideology. Adding to the enjoyment is Raphael's pithy, jargon-free, and thoughtful commentary. |
| Title | Author | Publisher/ Year |
What's it about? | Why read it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The First Space Race Launching the World's First Satellites |
Matt Bille, Erika Lishok | Texas A&M University 2004 |
Describes the American and Soviet satellite programs in the 1940's and 50's. | Most histories of this sort are popular science; this gives technical details for those who want more in-depth knowledge. Also reveals in detail the somewhat unexpected role reversal in the publicity-awareness of the scientists contrasted with the scientific agendas of the politicians and bureaucrats who seemed oblivious to the "race" part of the space race. |
| George Klein The Great Inventor |
Richard I. Bourgeois-Doyle | National Research Council of Canada 2004 |
The career of one of Canada's great unknown inventors, from his roots as a watchmaker's son to his involvement with the Canadarm. | Great information on the development and perfection of airplane floats and skis, the Canadian wartime reactor program, a practical electric wheelchair, and many more. At the same time, we get a parallel history of the National Research Council. Klein's forte was with mechanical gearing systems. The book is spoiled by needless repetition and an incredible number of typos. |
| Johannes Kepler and the New Astronomy |
James R. Voelkel | Oxford University Press 1999 |
Short bio of the life and works of the discover of the 3 laws of planetary motion. | Shows how Kepler was religously motivated to demonstrate God's perfection in the cosmos, and at the same time was impacted by the Protestant-Catholic conflicts of the 30 Years War and the witch trial of his mother. His achievement is the more remarkable because it was almost entirely deduced from Tycho Brahe's observations, without the theoretical explanations later to come from Newton. |
| Atlas of Astronomical Discoveries |
Govert Schilling | Springer 2011 |
A chronological unveiling of important discoveries in astronomy, from Galileo's use of the telescope to see mountians on the Moon in 1609 to the discovery of potentially habitable exoplanets in 2007. Each discovery in presented in double page format with background and significance of one page and illustrations (usually photgraphs) on the facong page. | A beautiful book with a satisfying amount of detail as to how the discoveries were actually made and how they kept on upsetting our pre-conceived notions. Marred by numerous absurd date errors that are clearly due to careless transcribing and which should have been caught in proof-reading. |
| The Quantum Story A History in 40 Moments |
Jim Baggott | Oxford University Press 2011 |
Tells the development of the main ideas underlying quantum theory. Scientific personalities, competing ideas, sudden insights, false steps, lucid explanations, footnoted details - it's all there, even a very high-level treatment of the most relevant mathematical underpinnings. | This book would satisfy the most-demanding curious layman, and even some scientists looking for context in which to set other more rigouous treatments. However, I found the first three sections (of seven) that discussed the beginnings of quantum theory up to the mid-30's to be the most interesting. Subsequent decades were heavy-going and got more and more esoteric so that I could not finish. Still very much recommended. |
| Do No Harm Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery |
Henry Marsh | Thomas Dunne Books 2014 |
Case by case recounting of the life of a British brain surgeon. | The people he treats, their circumstances, the exacting surgery he performs - all are novel and fascinating. But what makes it a truly great read are the emotional responses of all parties and his ability to express them precisely and without any dissimulation. His dissection of his own reactions and feelings is frank, revealing, and not always to his own credit. |
| Gravity's Engines How bubble-blowing back holes rule galaxies, stars, and life in the cosmos |
Caleb Scharf | Scientific American 2012 |
An in depth look at back holes, from the first ideas that there might be such objects in the 18th. century through the latest efforts to detect gravity waves emanating from their merger. | Each revelation is given an historical context so you understand where the advance came from. And every concept is given an appropriate everyday analogy that makes it easy to get your mind around. The concepts may be beyond our experience and bizarre, but the language used to explain them is familiar. I had no idea so much is known about black holes, or that they have such far-reaching consequences for the way galaxies form and the conditions that made life possible on earth. You can't get a bigger picture of the universe, and our place in it, than this. |
| The Making of Modern Medicine Turning Points in the Treatment of Disease |
Michael Bliss | University of Toronto Press 2011 |
Personal reflections on the emergence of scientific medicine 1880-1922 through three short vignettes covering the Montreal smallpox epidemic of 1885, the establishment of John Hopkins medical school and hospital, and the discovery of insulin. | The individual stories are interesting and based on the author's previously published works, so this is a sort of summing up of the transformation of medicine from a previous focus on diagnosis and care to the hope of actively finding effective treatments through the medium of scientific research. The common thread is the contest between a fatalistic acceptance of disease, and the effort to cure and prolong life, with a conclusion that despite the failings of the former, the latter is not an ultimately achievable goal and therefore lacks lasting comfort. |
| Hidden Figures The American dream and the untold story of the black women mathematicians who helped win the space race |
Margot Lee Shetterly | HarperCollins 2016 |
The Langley Aeronautical Laboratory recruited women to carry out calculations for engineers. One group of these women starting during WWII were black graduates in science and maths. They were kept segregated in their own workspace for a decade or more, until some began to be seconded into the engineering groups. Eventually a few actually took on engineering degrees and duties. This book documents the general story and probes deeper into the backgrounds and working lives of a few prominent members of the "West Computers". | Well worth reading to get a sense of the times, and the obstacles these women faced. The story is told thoroughly put perhaps with a tad too much rephrasing of the same thoughts. |
| The Art of Medicine Healing and the limits of technology |
Dr. Herbert Ho Ping Kong with Michael Posner | ECW Press 2014 |
Has technology and evidence-based medicine replaced a doctor's one-on-one relationship with his patient? This book makes the case for a bigger role for the doctor's art, with a focus on really seeing, listening, and touching. | Many interesting cases presented in Dr. HPK's words and those of his patients. Interspersed are commentaries from a variety of specialists and generalists on the title topic. We also get biographical glimpses into HPK's earliest days and education in Jamaica and Britain, and his career in Montreal and Toronto. |
| How Doctors Think |
Jerome Groopman, M.D. | Houghton Mifflin 2007 |
An excellent, easily readbale, and informative exposition of doctors' thought processes, and what can go right and wrong as they make diagnoses and administer treatments. | Dr. Groopman writes comprehensibly and comprehensively. There are many supporting instances and patient cases. Not scholarly in presentation, but the content is well-thought and backed by extensive notes and references. Valuable for doctor and patient alike. |
| In Pursuit of the Unknown 17 Equations That Changed the World |
Ian Stewart | Basic Books 2012 |
A chapter on each of 17 equations, from Pythagoras to the price of financial derivatives. | He derives each equation as far as possible in a general interest book, gives the historical context, explains the importance of each, and explores the often surprising applications and consequences. |
| The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments |
George Johnson | Alfred A. Knopf 2008 |
From Galileo to Millikan, 10 experiments that not only changed our comprehension of the world, but were beautiful in their conception and simplicity. | A small book, but enough background on the problem and enough detail on the actual experiment. With useful drawings and not technical. |
| The Book That Changed America How Darwin's Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation |
Randall Fuller | Viking 2017 |
The Origin of Species crossed the Atlantic quite quickly and found its most receptive home among the transcendentalists of Concord, Massachusetts. This book examines how their thoughts were transformed by it, and how they promoted its ideas among the scientific and philosophical circles in New England and beyond. | We get interesting and detailed sketches of various gatherings, public and personal, where the book was discussed in the year 1860. Emerson, Thoreau, the Alcott family, and many others are all portrayed and examined closely. Also Asa Gray the Harvard botanist who became the principal defender, and yet still had doubts about the ultimate implications of the theory. All of this taking place in the lead up to the Civil War, John Brown, and the abolition movement, which became inextricably linked to Darwin's concept about single origins and the struggle for suvival. If the book has any failing, it would be the tendency to wander too far afield and see every event as a struggle in which the participants were somehow influenced by the prevailing thoughts on the Origin. |
| The Greatest Story Ever Told - So Far Why are we here? |
Lawrence Krauss | Atria Books 2017 |
A flip-side, in a way, to his earlier book "A Universe From Nothing", this one examines the efforts to understand the particles at the base of everything. The author uses the centuries-long exploration of the phenomenon of light as the route to unlock the mysteries of the atomic and sub-atomic world. And then goes beyond. | The book's material is presented historically, from the earliest attempts to investigate light, to the latest developments in super-symmetry. Its best feature is the ability to transport you to any particular moment so that you can see what the current state of knowledge was, and what challenges the scientists of the time faced. This becomes particularly important when covering the developments of the most recent decades, where he presents an array of competing theories and experiments. However, this also results in particle-name fatigue. The book would have been easier to follow with a dramatis personae of the cast of particles and a comprehensive relationship diagram. But it is worth pursuing to the end for the startling implications of the still yet-to-be-verified theories. |
| How To Clone A Mammoth The science of de-extinction |
Beth Shapiro | Princeton University Press 2015 |
Outlines in step-by-step fashion, the process - and challenges - of bringing back into the world animals that are no longer here. | We are quickly removed of any illusion that this is imminent or that the end result will be exact replicas of bygone species such as mammoths or passenger pigeons. Still, given the accelerating advances in gene mapping and editing, a sort of de-extinction is likely to be possible at some point, even if it is only of specific traits, and not a completely recovered species. But this is not a consolation prize for there will be lasting environmental changes as a result. As the author sums up the motivation of herself and many other scientists involved in de-extinction research: "In my mind, it is this ecological resurrection, and not species resurrection that is the real value of de-extinction. We should think of de-extinction not in terms of which life form we will bring back, but what ecological interactions we would like to see restored." |
| The Toaster Project or a heroic attempt to build a simple electric appliance from scratch |
Thomas Thwaites | Princeton Architectural Press 2011 |
As a master's design project, Thomas Thwaites attempts to build a toaster, sourcing the materials from nature. We follow him on his journeys to various mines and other locations, and watch as he attempts to process the materials into various toaster components. | This is a very interesting, but uneven, book. Lots of good thoughts and actions detailed, but many pursuits are ended abruptly with little if any details about how he then refined the materials and manufactured the parts. Same unevenness applies to the photographs - some are very good and well laid out, others are poor quality and do not add anything to the story. Concludes with perceptive environmental comments, but they seem tacked on and not integrated. On the whole, a book that reads as a preliminary to something greater. |
| Brilliant Blunders From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe |
Mario Livio | Simon and Schuster 2013 |
The book looks at five scientists (Darwin, Kepler, Pauling, Hoyle, and Einstein). A chapter is devoted to their crowning achievement, and then another to their subsequent huge mistake. | Besides making the obvious point that even geniuses can commit the most unreasonable errors, the author gives detailed analyses of why they made these errors and what it means for the progress of science and how people in general can be led astray by the emotional side of their beings and other psychological failings. Along the way, we get gentle but comprehensive introductions to many of the most significant theories of the last two centuries. So the book is valuable on two fronts. But there is also an unusual added bonus that demonstrates the care the author has taken with his subject and material. The author has gone back and through a careful hands-on examination of actual, neglected documents, decisively settled several questions about who knew what when. (Did Darwin know about Mendel's discoveries? Did someone purposefully excise portions of Lemaitre's work to give Hubbell sole credit for the expanding universe? Did Einstein really call the introduction of the cosmological constant his "greatest blunder"?). Taking us on these mystery solving quests makes the book even more pleasurable to read. |
| Finding Zero A Mathematician's Odyssey to Uncover the Origins of Numbers |
Amir D. Aczel | palgrace macmillan 2015 |
One man's effort to find the earliest artifact with a positional zero. From his earliest childhood conversations on board his father's Mediterranean cruise ship, the author had been fascinated with numbers and their origins. When he finally becomes aware of a reference to a Cambodian stele that predates even the first-known Indian use of zero, he is determined to search for it, even though it may no longer exist following the havoc and destruction of the Pol Pot era. | The quest appears hopeless with few facts to go on and takes many twists and turns throughout Asia. His search is interspersed with details of his life and asides on simple number theory and speculation on the relationship between Eastern religions and the origins of numbers and in particular zero as perhaps arising from philosophical rather than practical considerations. Somewhat fittingly, the journey ends full circle. |
| Never Panic Early An Apollo 13 Astronaut's Journey |
Fred Haise with Bill Moore | Smithsonian Books 2022 |
Fred Haise was one of the 3 astronauts on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission that grabbed the world's attention in 1970. This is his story of what happened, but that is just part of a lifelong career in jets, spacecraft, and the aerospace industry. | From unlikely beginnings on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, this is one man's pursuit of a goal through relentless training and self-improvement. That he never got to set foot on the moon does not diminish his many other accomplishments from jet pilot to shuttle test pilot. This is a book for someone looking for details in the space program, what the training and testing consisted of, step by small step. |
| The Simpsons And Their Mathematical Secrets |
Simon Singh | Bloomsbury 2013 |
Many of the writers of "The Simpsons" animated TV series have mathematical backgrounds (including PhDs), and they have inserted quite a bit of mathematics into many episodes, some of it quite advanced. This book brings it into the foreground and examines the topics introduced. | Simon Singh has made this all very palatable and fun. There are interviews with the writers, excursions into the math behind the on-screen references, illustrations from the show, a series of mathematical jokes in test form, and a large bonus section on the related "Futurama" show. |
| Title | Author | Publisher/ Year |
What's it about? | Why read it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iron Man Demon in a Bottle |
Michelinie, Layton, Romita Jr. | Marvel Worldwide 2010 |
Iron man battles Hammer in an effort to regain control of his powers and more importantly clear his name. | Many worthwhile extras: We get to see the origin of Iron Man. We see him battle his personal demons and come to terms with what being a hero means. An explanation of the controversy over Jarvis's resignation letter. And many little interpolations of the artist and author into notes and labels that are fun to uncover. |
| Star Trek The Children of Kings |
David Stern | Pocket Books 2010 |
Christopher Pike, Spock, and Philip Boyce must decide who is the enemy and who is the friend as they strive to avert all-out war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. | A rare glimpse into the pre-Kirk Enterprise and its crew, particularly Captain Pike and Doctor Boyce. We get to see Spock interact with a different cast of characters. The Orions occupy a central role and much background information about their culture and history is given. |
| The Gods Themselves |
Isaac Asimov | Gollancz 2013 |
The world in the near future uses the Electron Pump in tandem with a para-universe to generate an endless supply of energy. But could such a blessing come with no catch? | As the introduction reveals, Asimov does science, aliens, and sex as he never had before. Winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards in the early 1970's. And yet, it somehow feels incomplete, as if he intended more, but decided to end it abruptly. |
| Redshirts |
John Scalzi | Tor 2012 |
A riff on the Star Trek meme of the ill-fated redshirted crew members. Only here it is the "Universal Union", and the expendables gradually become aware of their expendable status and decide to take action. | Smart, funny dialogue, and the story evolves into asking larger questions concerning fate, fiction, and reality. |
| The Man in the High Castle |
Philip K. Dick | Mariner Books 2011 |
An alternate history (or is it?) that follows the stories of Japanese, Germans, and Americans in present-day (the book was published in 1962) San Francisco and Colorado following a very different outcome to World War 2. | The actual story inches slowly forward; the narrative threads seem at first far removed from each other; and painstaking attention is paid to what seem to be irrelevant and mundane activities. How this all necessarily comes together is what makes the book worth reading. Also to admire and enjoy are the styles of the characters' extended internal dialogues, and how they evolve according to the developing theme. |
| Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? |
Philip K. Dick | The Library of America 2007 |
Originally published in 1962, this is the basis of the Bladerunner film. An SFPD bounty-hunter must "retire" six rogue androids in a near future where the world has been recently devasted by a nuclear war. | The book examines what it means to be human, what is intelligence, what is empathy, and do any of these concepts have value. Consequently we are left wondering, as does the bounty-hunter, who are the good guys, or even if there are any. The plot moves along at a good clip, with several unexpected twists, but does not trick the reader. However, neither is there a conventional resolution. |
| Worldwar: In the Balance |
Harry Turtledove | Del Rey Books 1994 |
In the middle of World War II, a reptilian-like race arrives on Earth in a mission to add Tosev 3 to their empire. They had anticipated that humans would be a push-over; however things don't go quite so smoothly for them as it seems humans have progressed more rapidly than expected since their scouting probe last sent intelligence to their home planet. | The story is conveyed in about a dozen threads with a large cast of humans and aliens. Of course, these threads sometimes intertwine in interesting ways. Lots of period detail, and real-life characters necessarily start to diverge from their historical roles. The first in a series. |
| The Cyberiad |
Stanislaw Lem | The Seabury Press 1974 |
Polish science fiction of the 1960s. A series of short stories with the common presence of two "constructors" who compete to outdo each other in their robotic creations. Whether at home or on farway planets, they have bizarre and humourous adventures. | This is far from typical science fiction. It is at once absurd, laughable, frustrating, and thought-provoking. A bit of a mystery, with clues sparingly dropped, then no mystery at all. Thousands of made-up words and portmanteaus. When you realize that the original is in Polish, the translation of puns, poetry, terms, and dialogue is a complete tour de force. Beneath it all, there is a goldmine of serious questions being discussed but in an entirely enjoyable way. |
| Differently Morphous |
Yahtzee Croshaw | Dark Horse Books 2019 |
The Ministry of Occultism has operated in secret since Elizabethan times, keeping Britain safe from malevolent influences seeping in from the Ethereal Realm. But now that is about to change as they struggle to keep the lid on very odd refugees seeking asylum. | It's a smart, funny book. Things move at a quick pace, and the status quo is not sacrosanct as events have a satisfying, lasting effect. Sometimes, however, the clever metaphors are a bit too clever, and no opportunity is missed to make a joke, when perhaps it should have been. Still, an interesting riff on all sorts of popular culture themes. |
| Will Save The Galaxy For Food |
Yahtzee Croshaw | Dark Horse Books 2017 |
The Golden Age of space piloting has been terminated by the invention of Quantunneling. Our nameless hero (part of a continuing joke) is scraping by with tourist jaunts when he is ensnared in a scheme to impersonate the greatest space pilot of them all for a rich kid's holiday. Things quickly spiral out of control, and we are led into the "Black", a lawless region of space pirates and cuddly monsters. | Sounds absurd, which it is, and juvenile, which it isn't. Plenty of sharp turns and unexpected outcomes. All complemented with smart dialogue and well-crafted writing. Suffers, like his later work, from an over-abundance of too creative similes. A few would have been plenty. |
| Will Destroy The Galaxy For Cash |
Yahtzee Croshaw | Dark Horse Books 2020 |
Second in the series recounting the adventures of our space pilot of uncertain nomenclature. This time he is resigned to giving up the space piloting profession, and looking for a way out, when he is unexpectedly recruited to carry out a heist, ostensibly for a good cause. Naturally, things go badly awry and our space hero is in danger of becoming a space villain. | Comes with the same plot twists, smart dialogue and over-abundance of similes as the first volume. Leaves with a cliff-hanger that heralds a third volume in a meta, self-mocking sort of way. |
| One-Punch Man, Volume 1 |
One, Art by Yusuke Murata | Shonen Jump Manga |
A young student is a loser, trains to become strong, but then finds no satisfaction in defeating evil and monsters. | Introspective and reluctant hero, wacky and bizarre monsters. |
| The Two Georges A novel of alternate America, 1996 |
A Tom Doherty Associates Book | Richard Dreyfuss and Harry Turtledove |
What if the American Revolution never happened? What if George Washington and George III reached an accommodation? With North America still contentedly in the British Empire, would this have - if not frozen things in time - at least resulted in a different rate of progress? And would there be those who still yearned for independence? | These big questions are acted out on both a small scale, with a wealth of revealing detail (that is fun to pick up on), and on a large scale as the main drivers of the plot of the novel, in which "The Two Georges" has an entirely real existence. How the authors co-operated to produce such a seamless narrative is a mystery in itself. The characters are well-drawn, and there is a welcome amount of humour, if mostly sarcastic and sardonic. Not to mention a few sly self-references about the dubious reputation of the whole genre. |
| Project Hail Mary |
Random House 2021 |
Andy Weir |
The sun is dimming and former-researcher now junior-high-science-teacher Ryland Grace may have the key to solving the threat to humanity. The last hope involves humanity's first ever trip to a distant solar system. | This book is one gigantic nerd-fest: astro-physics, relativity, exo-biology, engineering. There is a story arc, with characters and conflict. But these just provide a backdrop for the sequential presentation of one road-block after another in the course of the mission, together with the exposition of the related science and the ad hoc worked-up response. In order to truly enjoy, you have to forget about the horror of your last attempted plumbing fix-up, and pretend that our hero always has the necessary materials to hand and is a whiz at almost everything. |
| Tales of Pirx the Pilot |
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1979 |
Stanislaw Lem |
We follow aspiring space pilot Pirx from training school to first assignments to seasoned professional. | Pirx is not a brilliant paragon of the astronaut archetype; in fact he often stumbles his way through the challenges he meets. But he is blessed with good sense, and that seems to be a more useful attribute than book learning or smarts. The tales are not as bizarre as those in The Cyberiad, as the author has striven for a more realistic imagination of space operations. But there is still enough quirkiness and a slightly askew viewpoint that makes for engaging reading. |
| StarTrek 50 Artists 50 Years |
Titan Books 2016 |
various artists |
50 artists were invited to contribute an original work on any aspect of the Star Trek universe. Besides full page, large format reproductions, we get question-and-answer mini interviews with each one on their work - its concept, style, and personal significance. | A vast array of styles, something for everyone, from cartoony to hyper-realism. Most themes are concentrated on TOS (The Original Series), but a few take a welcome look farther afield. Real afficionados may have no trouble seeing the embedded meanings, but thankfully for the rest of us the secrets are usually revealed in the mini interviews. |
| Title | Author | Publisher/ Year |
What's it about? | Why read it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Politics of Glory How Baseball's Hall of Fame Really Works |
Bill James | Macmillan Publishing Company 1994 |
Bill James casts his analytical eye on the qualifications for election to Cooperstown. What is a Hall of Famer? Is the election process fair and reasonable? Can we compare players of different positions and eras? | This is a very readable book, almost in a conversational style. And the data and arguments it contains are, if not always compelling, at least thought-provoking. It's great to revisit stars of the past and examine their records in depth. |
| Stole This From A Hockey Card a philosophy of Hockey, Doug Harvey, Identity & Booze |
Chris Robinson | Nightwood Editions 2005 |
We get parallel streams of the author's and Doug Harvey's life. Distant and abusive parents, isolation, anger, escape through hockey and ultimately alcohol. The parallels are seldom exact, but they do reveal parts of both their psyches. | A hard book to read, as it reads more like a confession using Harvey as a similarly dysfunctional backdrop. The comparisons often seem a little forced, and even the author at the end seems to crumble under the lack of evidence for Harvey's darker, resentful side. Both reach a sort of peace. |
| Title | Author | Publisher/ Year |
What's it about? | Why read it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Southern Gates of Arabia A Journey in the Hadramaut |
Freya Stark | Century Publishing Company 1982 |
Originally published in 1936. Intrepid British lady visits the seldom-seen by Western eyes towns and countryside of South Yemen, more particularly the wadis of the Hadramaut. | Read it for her interactions with the local people, from bedouin to sultan; her thoughtful portraits of the land and settlements; her historical backgrounds. |
| I Have Seen Two Englands His last glimpse of pre-war England and his first impressions of England at war |
H. V. Morton | Methuen London 1989 |
Originally published in 1942. Inveterate traveller and keen observer, H. V. Morton takes a journey through the English countryside in the summer of 1939. He follows up with a tour of mostly military establishments in October, the month after war was declared. | This is a re-issue of the 1942 book, and it is greatly enhanced in the first part with beautiful contemporary (1989) colour photographs of the sites he visited (still looking much unspoilt), and in the second by wartime black and white photos of the people preparing for war. A contrasting and rewarding package. Morton can tell an engaging story without descending into sentimental prose. |
| Title | Author | Publisher/ Year |
What's it about? | Why read it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wolfram The Boy Who Went to War |
Giles Milton | Sceptre Books 2011 |
Follows the service of a young German soldier in the Second World War in Russia, Normandy, and as a POW in the United States. | The family is unconvential, and Wolfram himself is immersed in the world of mediaeval religious carvings before being sucked into the maelstrom of war. Good portrayal of what the German civilian homefront was like as well and a detailed account of the mass bombing of the hometown. |
| Blood, Tears & Folly In the Darkest Hour of the Second World War |
Len Deighton | Jonathan Cape 1993 |
Second World War, 1940-1. Covers all major actions, with political and technological background pieces. | An eclectic portrait, with many contrarian opinions and snippets of diaries and documents not often seen in such a survey work. A broad brush picture composed of pointillist details. A fresh perspective to well-hashed topics and very readable. |
| SEAL Team Six Memoirs of an elite Navy Seal sniper |
Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin | Thorndike Press 2011 |
Account of career in 80s and 90s from SAR tech to SEAL to the elite Team Six. | What it takes to endure the training, and how that training played out in Somalia during the "Blackhawk Down" incident. Also revealing depiction of a very tough childhood, and post-military career as a chiropractor. |
| Damn Few Making the Modern SEAL Warrior |
Rorke Denver and Ellis Henican | Hyperion 2013 |
California kid studies fine arts and then applies to the SEALs. Makes it and after operational service becomes head of SEAL training and stars in "Act of Valor". | The SEALs from a leader's perspective. Very honest insights to the training regimen and command issues. Hard to see how those aspects could be written about any better, professionally and personally. |
| Lost in Shangri-La |
Mitchell Zuckoff | Harper Collins 2011 |
"A true story of survival, adventure, and the most incredible rescue mission of World War II." | US transport plane crashes in a little-known valley high in the mountains of New Guinea just before war's end. There are 3 survivors, two badly burned, one of which is a WAC (Women's Army Corps).The valley is populated with 100,000 stone age farmers in a constant state of warfare. There is no way out. Repeat, this is a true story. |
| With Wings Like Eagles A History of the Battle of Britain |
Michael Korda | Harper Collins 2009 |
A readable summary of those months in 1940 when the Luftwaffe struggled with the RAF for air supremacy as a pre-condition to the invasion of Great Britain. | Perhaps its best point is not how near-run the actual fighting was (although the descriptions of the air battles are all there), but rather how improbable it was that the British had an adequate air defence system at all, given the opposition and hide-bound thinking about the "bomber will always get through". Dowding's foresight and drive in connection with the establishment of radar, monoplane fighters, and the centralized system of intelligence, command and control comes in for great praise. |
| The War of the World History's Age of Hatred |
Niall Ferguson | Allen Lane an imprint of Penguin Books 2006 |
An iconoclastic examination of the period spanning the two world wars. | Surveys of the wars have been done to death, but this is different. Not so much a military history, but an analysis of the social forces at work. Was the First World War an inevitable clash of empires as it has been long portrayed? What aspect did race and ethnicity play? Always a quest for why things happened in the way they did, and not so much what. While the conclusions are not always equally well-founded, they are thought-provoking. |
| The Trident The Forging and Reforging of a Navy SEAL Leader |
Jason Redman with John R. Bruning | HarperCollins 2013 |
One SEAL's personal account of his service. | The complete honesty of the thoughts, a story of personal growth simultaneous with personal challenge. |
| Navy SEALs A History of the Early Years |
Kevin Dockery | A Berkley Book 2001 |
SEALs before they were SEALs - their origins in the Underwater Demolition Team frogmen of World War II and how the teams came to be formed. | Lots of interesting historical information. But the main takeaway is the universal team spirit voiced by all the members, engendered by the rigorous self-selection process. |
| Navy SEALs A History Part II: The Vietnam Years |
Kevin Dockery from interviews by Bud Brutsman | A Berkley Book 2002 |
As above, interviews with interspersed context. | Their own perspectives, without a filter attached. |
| Gamp VC The wartime story of maverick submarine commander Anthony Miers |
Brian Izzard | Haynes Publishing 2009 |
Actually more than just the story of Miers's Second World War submarine career - a full biography, with much family background, and also extensive coverage of his pre- and post-war service. | Not only did Miers win the Victoria Cross, he was forecast to by those who knew him. This gives some insight into the force of his personality and the effect he had on other people throughout his life. There was no fence-sitting when it came to "Crap" Miers, and the reader is allowed to make their own assessment through the detailed recounting of incidents and the unvarnished opinions of those who knew him |
| The Red Circle My Life in the Navy Seal Sniper Corps and How I Trained America's Deadliest Marksman |
Brandon Webb with John David Mann | St. Martin's Press 2012 |
More than just about SEAL snipers, it's Brandon Webb's recounting of his peripatetic youth and struggle to join the SEALS. He also gives an unvarnished account of his Afghanistan operational tour. | Read it for the detail he gives about the SEAL training, and his personal forthrightness and observations. |
| The Beauty and the Sorrow An Intimate History of the First World War |
Peter Englund | Alfred A. Knopf 2011 |
Follows the wartime lives of about twenty ordinary people, civilians and soldiers, on all sides and fronts. It uses excerpts from their personal diaries and letters, but the greater part is summation and commentary on their circumstances, and setting their experiences in a wider context. | The cross-section of people is broad, and what they saw, heard, felt gives one that rare experience after reading a book of thinking "I could have lived then and not felt out of place". One criticism: the selection of people is weighted a little too heavily on the Allied side. |
| When We Walked Above The Clouds A Memoir of Vietnam |
H. Lee Barnes | University of Nebraska Press 2011 |
After a troubled childhood, Barnes puts his college education on hold by joining the military to earn money, then finds he has a talent and a desire to do the best he can. He volunteers for Vietnam as a member of the Special Forces, and serves a tour in an isolated Montagnard area. | He attempts to come to grips with the deaths of four of his teammates and 50 support strikers early in his tour. Along the way, he takes us on operations through the mountainous terrain, and assesses the landscape, the climate, the people, and, most of all, the failings and attributes of his teammates and himself. |
| Sea of Thunder Four Commanders and the last great naval campaign 1941-1945 |
Evan Thomas | Thorndike Press 2006 |
The Battle of Leyte Gulf, October, 1944, and the lead-up to it, hung on the careers and decisions of 4 commanders. | A good explanation of the two great mysteries of the battle: why it was possible for Halsey to decide to chase the Japanese decoy carriers, and for Kurita to do an about-face when he was on the verge of destroying an American fleet. |
| Viper Pilot A Memoir of Air Combat |
Dan Hampton | William Morrow 2012 |
Covers flight training, overseas service, and the two Iraq wars. | The author was a member of the "Wild Weasels", a USAF unit whose purpose is to attract and destroy ground-based anti-aircraft installations, a very hazardous occupation to say the least. He provides extremely detailed accounts of half a dozen missions. If you want to know how to avoid a SAM, or cluster bomb a ground target, this is it. His opinions on other subjects are less valuable. |
| My Stripes Were Earned in Hell A French resistance fighter's memoir of survival in a Nazi prison camp |
Jean-Pierre Renouard | Rowman and Littlefield 2012 |
Lurid title belies the calm descriptions of the horrors the author and others underwent in several camps, ending up with Bergen-Belsen. | This short book (122 pages) is a series of short sketches of incidents and people, all told matter-of-factly, and often with unexpected conclusions. His own reactions are honestly stated, and not always flattering to himself. But who can say how they would react in such places until they are actually there? |
| A Higher Call |
Adam Makos with Larry Alexander | Berkley Caliber 2012 |
A German fighter in WW2 does not shoot down a crippled American bomber, but instead escorts it through flak batteries and out to sea. Why? | The book explores the backgrounds of the German ace, and to a lesser extent the American pilot and crew, to attempt to answer the question, but never really comes to grips with Franz Stigler's motivation. On this score the book is unsatisfying, but it is redeemed by the detailed descriptions of fighter and bomber operations (including the Me 262 jet), and Franz's personal story, pre- and post-war included. |
| 1776 |
David McCullough | Simon and Schuster 2005 |
George Washington and the Continental Army oppose William Howe and the British in 1776 from Boston to New York to Trenton. | A very readable description of the campaign, concentrating on the American side, and focussing on Washington as commander and the decisions he made - and didn't make. The book is not a paean, as the Americans come in for sharp criticism and the successes of the British receive their merit. But it is a celebration of American "spirit and perseverance". |
| Battleground The Greatest Tank Duels in History |
Steven J. Zaloga, Editor | Osprey Publishing 2011 |
An analysis of five tank engagements and the opposing machines. | A surprisingly readable examination without sparing the technical details. The conflicts cover Kursk, Normandy, Korea, the Golan Heights, and Desert Storm. The strategic situation is lightly touched on; then we plunge into the various tank models' origins, specifications, and crew training. Finally, the operational details and outcome. Lessons are learned, especially it's not always the "best" tank (defined in terms of armour thickness, gunnery, and mobility) that wins. Other factors can enter such as training, leadership, and numbers. |
| WN62 A German Soldier's Memories of the Defense of Omaha Beach Normandy, June 6, 1944 |
Hein Severloh | H.E.K. Creativ Verlag 2011 |
Not just "A German Soldier", but perhaps the most famous, or infamous, German soldier of D-Day. Hein Severloh with his machine gun personally killed and wounded upwards of several thousand Americans attempting to land on Omaha beach. His dominating presence was almost accidental, but it turned out to be decisive in crippling the landing on Omaha for a substantial period. | This first-person recounting gives his farming background, military experiences prior to D-Day, and then an extremely detailed account of that day. We see how his pivotal role gradually comes to light post-war, and how he deals with this recognition throughout the rest of his life. It is obvious that he has a large personality, is very out-going, and not afraid to speak his mind. But despite this being a tell-all unbaring of his actions and feelings, several obvious questions that jump to mind while reading his story are only lightly touched on, or not mentioned at all. |
| Where The Hell Have You Been? Monty, Italy and One Man's Incredible Escape |
Tom Carver | Short Books 2009 |
Tom Carver is the son of Richard Carver, step-son of Bernard Montgomery, victor of El Alamein in 1942. There are two interwoven threads to this story. Firstly, Dick Carver's capture in North Africa, his time as a POW in Italy, and his trek south to rejoin Monty after the Italian Armistice. And secondly, Tom Carver's coming to terms with his father's reticence not just to discuss his wartime experiences, but also his withdrawn and remote attitude to his own family and others. Uniting and resolving both these themes are the close, but long-ruptured, connections with the Italian family that sheltered Carver at his most critical time of need. | As we are taken along on Tom Carver's voyage of discovery, the answers he is looking for are slowly revealed in one incident after another. On the way, we also get very personal glimpses into Montgomery's divisive character and what drove him. |
| Long Way Back To The River Kwai Memories of World War II |
Loet Velmans | Arcade Publishing 2003 |
Loet Velmans escaped from Holland as it was being invaded by Nazi Germany, only to be subsequently made a prisoner of war when the Japanese overran the Dutch East Indies. He ended up toiling on the Burma-Thailand railroad in company with tens of thousands of other Allied soldiers and civilians. He witnessed, and suffered, horrors, all of which are carefully detailed without mincing words. | He authentically recreates his attitudes of the time - his naivete, his youthful optimism, suspicion of authority, and his ability to mix with all types. Throughout, he puzzles at the origins of the cruelty inflicted by the Japanese, a question he unexpectedly has to deal with post-war when he finds himself engaged in commercial relations with Japan and its business leaders over several decades. |
| Masters of the Battlefield Great Commanders from the Classical Age to the Napoleonic Era |
Paul K. Davis | Oxford University Press 2013 |
15 military leaders are examined with brief sketches of their lives, the geopolitical environment they lived in, the weapons and tactics of the period, their opponents, a few selected battles, and lastly a summation of the particular qualities that contributed to their "mastery of the battlefield". | A good introduction to each career, and perhaps an appreciation of what makes a good general. There are many minor assets that can assist a leader (such as the ability to motivate ones troops and the example of personal courage). But it seems the two necessarily essential qualities are the ability to immediately size up the tactical situation coupled with a corresponding decisiveness of action. |
| Sun Tzu at Gettysburg Ancient Military Wisdom in the Modern World |
Bevin Alexander | W.W. Norton & Company 2011 |
An examination of 10 battles and campaigns through the perspective of the 2000 year old maxims of the Chinese military writer Sun Tzu. They include Saratoga, Waterloo, the Marne, Inchon, and of course the titular Gettysburg. Those who employed Sun Tzu's principles, and those who flouted them, come in for analysis. | It's a different way of looking at these famous battles. And in that sense, it's almost as if the outcome is pre-ordained. Many commanders come in for harsh criticism, particularly Lee, who in addition to Gettysburg is also blamed for failure to take advantage of strategic opportunities in 1862. Sometimes the judgements appear to come too easily and ignore wider issues. But certainly the point is well made and holds even today: those who ignore Sun Tzu's basic truths do so at their peril. |
| A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich The Extraordinary Story of Fritz Kolbe, America's Most Important Spy in World War II |
Lucas Delattre | Atlantic Monthly Press 2005 |
Fritz Kolbe was an employee of the German Foreign Ministry from 1925-45. In 1943, he began turning over cable traffic to Allen Dulles of the OSS in Bern, Switzerland. Some of the traffic was militarily very significant (location of V2 rocket factories and other strategic industrial plants, Japanese order of battle throughout the Far East, identification of German agents and operations). More of the traffic gave an insight into German diplomatic efforts with Axis partners and important neutrals (state of relations with Hungary and Rumania, tungsten shipments from Spain, efforts to induce Turkey not to join the Allies). | It was an incredible coup for the Allies, and they mistrusted their good fortune for an excessive time. Kolbe also wrote valuable assessments of German morale and key players. At one point, he asked Dulles to have other Allied agents in Berlin contact him, not realizing that he was the only one they had. Despite the long passage of time since the events, the book is very detailed as to the trips made, the risks assumed, the debriefings, the nature of the information passed, and perhaps most interestingly the motives and personality of Fritz Kolbe. Given the quality of the information that landed in the laps of the Allies, the fact that he and his deeds are so little known, in comparison with other WW II spies such as Richard Sorge and Cicero, is surprising. |
| The Tunnel King |
Barbara Hehner | HarperTrophyCanada 2004 |
Wally Floody was a Canadian Spitfire pilot who was shot down over France and ended up in the POW camp Stalag-Luft III. Utilizing his pre-war mining experience, he became one of the primary people helping to plan and build several escape tunnels, including the one featured in the movie "The Great Escape". Fortunately for him, he was removed from the camp before the breakout, as the Germans subsequently shot 50 of the 76 escapers. | It's a short but interesting book, with pictures, illustrations, and map. Floody's pre- and post-war experiences are also related. He was technical adviser on the film. |
| The Unforgiving Minute A Soldier's Education |
Craig M. Mullaney | The Penguin Press 2009 |
Craig Mullaney goes to West Point, gains a Rhodes Scholarship, completes Ranger training, and leads a platoon in Afghanistan. | He's a good story-teller with a lot of interesting detail and anecdotes. Everything is extensively analyzed, especially his personal reactions to the challenges and responsibilities he faces. An intense guy, but with a sense of humour. |
| Hunter Killer Inside America's Unmanned Air War |
Lt. Col. T. Mark McCurley with Kevin Maurer | Dutton 2015 |
USAF pilot volunteers for the the Predator program - an unpopular career move - becomes an expert and achieves his twin goals of participating in combat and commanding a squadron. | It really is "inside" the Predator program. Missions are covered in great detail. All aspects are covered: ground operations and maintenance, takeoffs and handover, piloting, surveillance, targeting, shooting, and the after effects. But this is related not in textbook style, rather as personal experience. Many strikes that made headlines are told by one who was there. |
| LRRP Team Leader It's a hell of a war that expects a man to lead his team into the jaws of death every day - and bring them back alive. |
John Burford | Ivy Books 1994 |
John Burford served with the long-range reconnaissance patrol company of the 101st Airborne in Vietnam in 1968. His book covers his training, missions, and repatriation. | In contrast to the lurid sub-title, this is a very matter-of-fact presentation. Goes into great detail about weapons, topography, the enemy, and his teammates and other subjects. Chapter 11 is especially good; it explains his every action on one mission, the micro-deployments of his men, and what the results were of each. One quibble: the device he has used to structure his book as a whole (questions and extended answers during a family visit) may have occurred in some form, but as presented here is not realistic and detracts from the material. |
| Between Silk and Cyanide A Codemaker's War 1941-1945 |
Leo Marks | The Free Press 1998 |
Leo Marks oversaw the production of codes for the British SOE (Special Operations Executive) during the Second World War. He created codes, briefed agents, and navigated the bureaucratic politics of the group charged by Churchill with "setting Europe ablaze". | This is probably the most enjoyable book I've read on codes and cryptography. For one thing, we don't normally get the story from the codemaker's side. For another, Marks is a master story-teller with a humourous turn of phrase, and apparently photographic recall. The detail is amazing. In addition we meet many famous agents of the time who have appeared in other accounts - such as "The White Rabbit" and Violet Szabo - but never before seen in this light. 600 never dull pages. |
| We Flew We Fell We Lived Stories from RCAF Prisoners of War and Evaders |
Philip LaGrandeur | Vanwell Punblishing 2006 |
The personal stories of RCAF flight crew who bailed out over occupied Europe and Germany during World War II. Focussed mainly on prison camp life, but also details of training, operations, escapes, end of war marches, and life after the war. Some were evaders, became associated with the maquis, and after capture ended up in concentraion camps rather than the regular POW system. | Read it for the personal stories. The background information is welcome, but a bit repetitious and could have used a good editor. The many illustrations help to put us there, as far as that is possible. |
| The Great Leader And The Fighter Pilot The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and the Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom |
Blaine Harden | Viking 2015 |
Alternating biographies of Kim Il Sung, the founder of the Kim dynasty, and No Kum Sok, a MiG pilot in the North Korean armed forces who defected shortly after the Korean war ended. | No's background and experiences are very interesting. The quoting of cables between Mao, Stalin, and Kim during the lead-up to the Korean War reveals the machinations and vacillating stances of the communist dictators before the go-ahead was given. Attention is also given to the little-known carpet bombing of North Korean cities, which provided fodder for Kim's anti-American propaganda for decades to come. |
| Danger Close My epic journey as a combat helicopter pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan |
Amber Smith | Atria Books 2016 |
Amber Smith was one of three daughters of a military family who all joined the armed forces as pilots. She details her experience from training to deployment and return Stateside. | We get very specific insight into the qualifications required to become an accomplished combat helicopter pilot and survive the training. She portrays the dynamics of the two man crew, the two helicopter attack unit, and the troop as a whole. Permeating throughout are the special challenges she faced as a rare female combat pilot in a heretofore strictly man's world. |
| A History of War in 100 Battles |
Richard Overy | Oxford University Press 2014 |
Gives brief accounts of land, sea, and air battles spanning history and place. | Battle survey books are common. This one aims a little higher than normal by grouping them thematically (leadership, deception, etc.) with introductory essays. The battle themselves are described in 2-4 pages and serve to draw out a particular point related to the theme. |
| The Castaway's War One Man's Battle Against Imperial Japan |
Stephen Harding | Da Capo Press 2016 |
The story of Hugh Barr Miller, who, after his destroyer was sunk in the Solomon Islands in 1943, recovered from his wounds sufficiently to carry out a one-man campaign against the Japanese forces occupying Arundel Island. | His actions were extraordinary, well beyond what was necessary to simply survive in an exceedingly dangerous situation. So much so that it appeared in several magazine accounts, a TV show, and almost a movie with John Wayne. This is a very well-researched book, with notes on even the most obscure points. |
| The Operator Firing the shots that killed Osama Bin Laden and my years as a SEAL team warrior |
Robert O'Neill | Scribner 2017 |
90% of the book relates his childhood, SEAL training, and deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only the final pages tell the story of the bin Laden mission - which is fitting since it is emphasized over and over by superiors and the team that this mission did not differ very much from what they had done many times before; it just had a bigger audience and larger ramifications. | You get an excellent idea of what it takes to be a SEAL (you can't make a SEAL, you have to unlock those qualities you already have within you to be one). And you get a very good picture of the missions, the team members, and behind the scenes details, all written in an easy, but reflective, style. |
| I Am Soldier War stories, from the ancient world to the 20th century |
editor Robert O'Neill | Osprey publishing 2009 |
40-50 short (3-4 pages each) bios of participants in warfare, from boy soldiers to generals, covering ancient to modern times. Many are based on the soldiers' own journals or writings; others on historical accounts; and a very few on a composite made-up figure. | Just interesting accounts of personal experiences of war. No over-arching theme or revelations. |
| Morrison The long-lost memoir of Canada's artillery commander in the Great War |
Major-General Sir Edward Morrison, edited by Susan Raby-Dunne | Heritage House 2017 |
Morrison's memoir provides an intimate, detailed, and unvarnished look at Canada's participation in WWI, with especial, but not exclusive, emphasis on the problems and accomplishments associated with the artillery branch. Each battle is covered from preparations to action to aftermath. He is always fiercely proud of the Canadian soldier's fighting abilities, and of the Canadian Corps' tactical independence and unity. | Before, it was easy to think of the artillery as some amorphous blob of slaughtering power. Through Morrison, we can see its limitations, but also how a smart plan can greatly reduce casualties in an assault (well, for the attacker at least). And incidentally discover through the brief biographical footnotes that the picture of generals sitting in safe headquarters far behind the lines was not exactly correct, as a great many were killed during the war. Morrison himself details several narrow escapes during his reconnoitring of front-line positions. If I could make one criticism, it is that his picture of the ever gung-ho private soldier is perhaps painted a little too rosily, as seen from his lofty rank. |
| An Army at Dawn The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 |
Rick Atkinson | Henry Holt and Company 2002 |
The first book in a three volume look at the U.S. involvement in the war against Germany in WW2. This one is concerned with Operation Torch, the landings in North Africa in Fall 1942, and the subsequent campaign ending in may 1943 in Tunisia. | The focus is on ground operations, primarily American. As the title suggests, the U.S. army is in its beginnings, trying to translate a civilian army into an effective fighting force. Many mistakes of command and tactics are made costing lives. Distrust and arrogance between the English and Americans leads to many botched attacks. The author has the disadvantage of writing long after most surviving participants are long dead, but manages to give a real sense of place and conditions through letters, diaries, and having spent a lot of time walking the ground. He is not stinting in his criticism, but still recognizes where growth has taken place. |
| Legend |
Eric Blehm | Crown Publishers 2015 |
The life of Roy Benevidez, U.S. medal of honour winner in Vietnam. | His life story is unusual and compelling; his actions in combat are indeed "legend" to the point of straining credulity that any one man could have perfomed them. The author has provided a well-researched wealth of detail surrounding the incident and the people involved. The fact that it took place in Cambodia, where no U.S. forces were supposed to be, adds to the uniqueness of the entire narrative, and indeed shaped the responses by both sides. A close-up look at a man, Special Forces, and one insertion attempt gone wrong. |
| The Escape Artists A band of daredevil pilots and the greatest prison break of the Great War |
Neal Bascomb | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2018 |
A retelling of the breakout of a large group of British POWs from a German camp in the last months of World War I. They were most of them already the perpetrators of many escape attempts, and Holzminden was where they were sent to be held under stricter measures and under the thumb of a ruthless camp commandant. Nevertheless, over the period of many months they managed to construct a long, very narrow tunnel from which they emerged in July 1918 and scattered to attempt to reach the Dutch border. | The author concentrates on 4 or 5 main escapers, giving their backgrounds and war experiences up to and beyond the point of initial capture. He manages to make each man unique as a result of the massive research done, including unpublished memoirs and letters. There might be a little too much general war history, but perhaps necessary given its remoteness in time now. What's remarkable is the direct connection between the people and techniques dreamt up by the prisoners of the First World War, and the more well-known escapes of the Second. Nothing new there, including even glider attempts. He rounds out his portraits of the atmosphere of the camps with sprinkled extracts from the writings and poetry of one of the prisoners. An engaging read overall. |
| Stuka Pilot |
Hans Ulrich Rudel | Ballantine Books 1958 |
Rudel was the most decorated Stuka pilot of WWII. This is his autobiography from childhood to surrender in 1945. His record on the Russian Front was unsurpassed, with an incredible number of tanks destroyed, and other targets such as a battleship. The fact he survived the war is even more remarkable as he was shot down or forced to crash-land a dozen times or more, including a long escape on foot from behind enemy lines. | A valuable look into the details of the air war on the Eastern front. While Rudel's skill and airmanship were second to none (after a very rocky start), less appealing are: his devotion to the Nazi cause; his superior, contemptuous opinions; and his self-serving after-the-fact justification for the whole war effort. In sum, the book is a revealing glimpse into the techniques of a flying ace and the mind of a committed fanatic. |
| A Hundred Miles as the Crow Flies |
Ralph Churches | The Estate of R.F. Churches 2017 |
It is remarkable that dramatic and untold stories of WWII are still surfacing. This book tells the story of a mass escape of POWs (about 100) in 1944 from Austria, and their trek through German-held but partisan-contested Yugoslavia to eventual air evacuation to Italy. The Australian author was the prime instigator and leader. | This book was originally intended as a memoir for the author's family. And unfortunately it shows all the deficiencies that come with that - a complete lack of editing, needless repetition, convoluted sentence structure (sometimes no structure at all), and littered with spelling and grammatical errors. Which is a shame because the author is obviously well educated, but it is as if the family transcribed a recording with no checking whatsoever. All this can be forgiven because the story itself and the author's role are so unique and praiseworthy that the book is rewarding reading. We especially learn a lot about the partisans in Slovenia, and what kind of leadership and initiative it takes to keep a hundred very independent-minded individuals working to the same goal. |
| Pearl Harbor From Infamy to Greatness |
Craig Nelson | Thorndike Press 2016 |
A very detailed account of the lead up, battle, and aftermath of the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. | The voluminous details show that a lot of research has gone into the book. Many verbatim quotes of both the highly placed decision makers and the people who carried it out or suffered the consequences. A balanced, but light-handed, analysis of the strategic and tactical thinking on both sides. The personal accounts of enlisted military, civilians, children make it seem fresh and real. Two small criticisms. In trying to give a measure of the impact of the attack, it was perhaps not necessary to include a lengthy summary of the remainder of the Pacific war. And this large print edition must have been cheaply prepared as it does not include any index (which would of course had to have been repaginated from the original). |
| Sea Stories My Life in Special Operations |
Admiral William H. McRaven | Grand Central Publishing 2019 |
McRaven rose from ROTC Naval officer to 4 star admiral in command of all U.S. special forces. This book is his very personal perspective on the events that shaped his early life and career. | We do not get a continuous retelling; the book is episodic, each chapter giving a very detailed account of some milestone event. There is a lot of recreated dialogue and action, but it all rings true. If you want deep background on the Captain Phillips rescue, the capture of Saddam Hussein, or the killing of Osama bin Laden, this is where you will find a minute-by-minute retelling by one who was intimately involved. We also get stories that affected him personally, such as his boat and parachute accidents that led to long recoveries from serious injuries. McRaven can tell a good story, as already evidenced by his famous "Make your bed" commencement speech. |
| The Great War As I Saw It |
Frederick George Scott | Arcturus Publishing 2021 |
Scott was a Quebec Anglican minister in his 50's when he joined the First Canadian Division and sailed to Europe in 1914 to provide spiritual services to Canadian troops in the First World War. He remained on duty until wounded in September, 1918. This book gives a very detailed account of his activities - where he was, what he did, what he saw. | He didn't have a rifle, but he was not one to be deflected from his purposes, even by generals. He was in the trenches, got shelled and shot at, had people die standing next to him several times. So this is not a view of the war from headquarters safely behind the lines. He is an acute observer of others, and also knows that he was a bit of a figure of mockery and fun from the troops' perspective, being a bit pompous and gung-ho. But they seem to have had a genuine affection for him as he shared their hardships and performed religious services - to Canadian and German alike. There are many humorous anecdotes but also sad recountings (including the death of one of his sons), and a few of his poems. This book is a reprint from the 1920's and stands up well. |
| Lucky 666 The Impossible Mission |
Bob Drury and Tom Clavin | Thorndike Press 2017 |
Tells the story of a photo reconnaissance mission in a B-17 bomber to Bougainville Island in the South Pacific in June 1943. Doesn't sound like much, but it resulted in two Medals of Honor and seven Distinguished Service Crosses. | The book is a tour de force of research. There is an amazing amount of background material on (1) the lives of the crew members, focussing on the captain, Jay Zeamer Jr., and bombardier, Joe Sarnoski, (2) on the aircraft, equipment, and forces organization, (3) operations launched from New Guinea airfields, and (4) the general war situation at each stage leading up to the mission. But the research does not get in the way of a good story. None of this is dry, all presented in human terms, especially Zeamer's struggles with authority and himself. |
| Geniuses At War Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the dawn of the digital age |
David A. Price | Alfred A. Knopf 2021 |
The story of the breaking of the German Enigma codes, and Alan Turing's role in it, is well-known. But an even larger and more improbable advance at Bletchley Park was the creation of the world's first electronic digital computer by telephone engineer Tommy Flowers and it use in reading the German Tunny traffic, which allowed the Allies access to German strategic thinking and tactical moves, especially surrounding D-Day. | The participants were sworn to secrecy that lasted for decades, and their machines and designs were destroyed as security measures immediately after the war. The author has done a very good job in avoiding serving up a superficial overview. The level of detail on how things actually worked is very good, whether talking about Colossus or code-breaking techniques or the backgrounds of the personalities involved. |
| Secret Fleets Fremantle's World War II submarine base |
Lynne Cairns | Western Australian Museum 2011 |
After Pearl Harbour and the loss of the Philippines, American submarines found a new home in the Western Australian port of Fremantle. From there, they launched devastating attacks upon Japanese navy and merchant shipping in the southwestern Pacific. Later, they were joined by Dutch and British submarines. The book details their missions month by month, but spends the majority of its pages examining the changes to Fremantle, socially and economically. | The research is thorough. The details are impressive. |