Washington's Crossing

Just another book about the revolutionary war? Not really. Top gun historian David Hackett Fischer won the Pulitzer Prize for Washington’s Crossing. There must have been something special about it. There was.
Professor Fischer follows General Washington as he led the crossing of the iced Delaware River during Christmas 1776. On the surface, it seemed insane to cross to the other side to face an alleged much superior force of professional enemy soldiers. However, the author shows that the overwhelming odds were in reality not quite so insurmountable. During much of the year, the American rag tag army developed a new form of hit and run fighting. It was suited to the Americans capabilities and resources. It also lacked rigidity of the British troops and their Hessian mercenaries. Some myths that Professor Fischer debunks include the Hessians were not drunk, but bone weary from constant assault from guerillas and the weapon differential between the two forces was not even close to the legends
Thanks to modern computing and research methods, we know more about the past than ever before. This allows the best historians to present fresh insights in long ago events.
More importantly Washington's Crossing is a nonfiction book that reads like fiction. It represents the best of modern American history writing. Original, insightful, well researched , and best of all, so well written as to be what is called in the book trade, a page turner. Really!

The King's Speech

The King’s Speech is a wonderful, heartwarming movie. Yes, I know some might be less than sympathetic to the notion that the King of Great Britain and Emperor of India and points in all directions, would have a serious problem with a speech impediment such as stammering. I mean, how tough can it be if your King, and have a beautiful Queen and two darling daughters? Well, think about it. We’re all human, king or not.

Really, if you’re an embarrassment to your parents and yourself, even a patient and super supportive wife might not be enough.
The Duke of York never expects to become King until his brother decides to marry a twice divorced American, who has had previous "experience" in China and the job falls in his lap. Then, there is Hitler looming on the horizon. And all previous attempts to "cure" his affliction have failed. That is, until his wife makes an appointment for him to seek help from a specialist, who doesn’t even have proper credentials. The plot is set..... and the movie is actually great. It’s a rare thing these days to see a real "adult" movie. That’s adult in the best sense of the word. Characterizations that ring true to the circumstances. Relationships that exist, change and develop in plausible ways. No gratuitous sex or violence. Leaving the theater and saying "that was a great movie." I liked it.

A Christmas Surprise

We had gathered in the living room in Colorado to open family Christmas presents. The grandkids were all excited as children are wont to do on Christmas Eve. Santa would be coming later that night but that was another story. Gramma took a chair and parents and children gather round the tree. Grandpa remained comfortably seated on the carpeted stairway.

A rotation plan saw each child and adult take their turn opening a package. In the hubbub, no one but grandpa noted the large plastic ball that came rolling down the stairs and hit him in the back.

Engrossed in all the excitement, I absentmindedly picked it up and tossed it back up the steps to the landing. Some minutes later I was struck again. Now completely puzzled, I picked it up, when the stern teacher voice of Mrs T inquired as to why I was playing with a ball. "It keeps rolling down the steps on its own," I replied in my best dumbfounded manner. Whereupon, oldest grandchild shouted, "it’s because our HAMSTER is in it and wants to come downstairs." Sure enough, looking closely at it, for the first time, a small furry creature was inside. Setting the ball on the floor, off it went towards the Christmas tree.

Apparently the Hamster had been removed from his cage, put him inside the ball, and gets his daily exercise that way. Amazing!

Unbroken

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand is the best, most fascinating, narrative biographical history, I’ve read in a long time. It belongs to the "survivor" story category and while true, it’s as such stories often are, almost unbelievable.
While largely confined to her home, due to chronic fatigue syndrome, the author researches the life story of Louis Zamperini. This is mostly done by telephone.

Zamperini is a child with, what today would be identified, as a serious psychological problem. Today, in school, that would require medication. In my day, it would have been identified as "ants in his pants," later evolving into juvenile delinquency. Growing up poor, in California, he is somewhat rescued by a compassionate older brother and a growing interest in track. He sets all kind of running records in high school and at U.S.C. Goes on to participate in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Is caught up in WWII as a bombardier, shot down in the Pacific, endures a 2000 mile odyssey on a life raft before being captured, imprisoned and tortured relentlessly by the Japanese. And that's only half of it.
Hillenbrand is really good at this sort of thing, as she proved in her best selling horse story Seabiscuit. I must add the characterization of Zamperini lacks a whole lot of depth. The psychological part that is. Then, a few details are definitely questionable. So it’s not perfect. Still this is, as I said, the most fascinating story I’ve read in a long time. I highly recommend it.

Mark Twain "Improved?"

From Paul Carrier at The Walrus Said
"I suppose it was just a matter of time. Alan Gribben, a professor at Auburn University at Montgomery, has edited new editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that take out the nasty words. “Slave” is used in place of “nigger” and “Indian” is substituted for “Injun.”
Sacrilege (noun): gross irreverence toward a hallowed person, place, or thing.
Gribben argues that more Americans, including high-school students, will read Twain’s classics if offensive language is removed from them. Maybe he’s right. But if readers can’t cope with the language that Twain used then they should avoid his books instead of turning to sanitized versions compiled by someone who has the audacity to presume he can improve upon one of the greatest of all American writers."
As The New York Times said in a recent editorial:
"We are horrified, and we think most readers, textual purists or not, will be horrified too. The trouble isn’t merely adulterating Twain’s text. It’s also adulterating social, economic and linguistic history. Substituting the word “slave” makes it sound as though all the offense lies in the “n-word” and has nothing to do with the institution of slavery. Worse, it suggests that understanding the truth of the past corrupts modern readers, when, in fact, this new edition is busy corrupting the past."
When “Huckleberry Finn” was published, Mark Twain appended a note on his effort to reproduce “painstakingly” the dialects in the book, including several backwoods dialects and “the Missouri negro dialect.” What makes “Huckleberry Finn” so important in American literature isn’t just the story, it’s the richness, the detail, the unprecedented accuracy of its spoken language. There is no way to “clean up” Twain without doing irreparable harm to the truth of his work.
In its editorial, The Los Angeles Times acknowledged that Huckleberry Finn is right up there on the list of most-banned books in American schools, but the newspaper argued that “intelligent and sensitive discussion with students would be a better response” than altering Twain’s prose. The editorial continued:
"Twain's masterwork is a moving reflection of attitudes in the pre-Civil War South (and of its author's postwar sensibilities, which were ahead of their time with regard to race but behind our own). It's the struggle of a white youth, Huck, to reconcile his recognition of the humanity and equality of an escaped slave with the views of a society that considers him little better than an animal and uses epithets to describe him. The language, then, is very much part of the story and the history. Trying to protect students from the full ugliness of racism by softening that language does a disservice to them, and it's all too easy to imagine the crimes against literature that would result if this kind of thing caught on. We hope nobody gives Gribben a copy of Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice," because the Bard's attitude toward Shylock the Jew was distastefully Elizabethan."

The Man Who....

No, not George, even though he is the hero of this book!

The man who did everything but stand on his head (Newt Gingrich) to get Bill Clinton impeached for messing around with a "aide" is now a successful writer of historical fiction. Of course, Newt, the disgraced former Speaker of the House of Representatives, was busy playing the same game as Bubba about the same time. Along with his co partner William R Forstchen, a college Professor of History, he recently wrote To Try Men’s Souls and against my better judgment I just finished reading it.
It might have had something to do with the fact that my free book supplier had sent me an email telling me that she had the new book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand on hand and ready for me to pick up. Knowing that I love historical fiction, she tossed in a couple of Gingrich potboilers for good measure. Now not wishing to seem ungrateful by refusing the later books, on the grounds that the author was a jerk as well as a hypocrite, I gracefully accepted all three. So here goes.
If you can skip the long and gratuitously propagandist, not too subtle introduction, it’s not too bad. The book seems basically accurate in its depiction of the desperate lunge across the Delaware to attack the Hessians at Trenton. The characters, actual and imagined, like Washington, seems to speak their lines in an appropriate manner. The waning chances of a revolutionary army, defeated and without supplies clearly come through. Some of the scenes wander off into other venues but don’t seriously hamper the story.
Now, if only a tiny, but determined group of present dayTea tax hating patriots, can overcome the slackers, disloyalists, Congressional criminals, alien fascist communists and those who have forgotten the true ideals of Freedom, Liberty and elite democracy, while ignoring the existence of slavery.....things will turn out just fine. Oh wait a minute those were the not too subtle innuendos of the Introduction. As I said, except for that, the story was not too bad. I’d give it a C+.

Mark Twain Autobiography

The new Autobiography of Mark Twain is a whopper. It weighs a ton. All 800 pages..... but in any case the subject was known for telling whoppers. And a wonderfully skewed and satirical sense of humor.
As you may know, Twain wanted his writings on his own life to be unpublished for a hundred years after his death. The team of "friends," that published this monster, took numerous pages to explain Twains complicated reasoning for his 'don't publish till death wish." Then, on top of all this, Twain did not believe a chronological life story was the way to go. Another fifty pages by the editors, were required to unravel this convoluted reasoning . Then there were the several authors whose previous biographies of Twain violated his wishes on this subject and using his voluminous notes and discarded autobiographical attempts published anyway. The editors of the current biography required much tut tuting and footnotes to show why the previous authors had screwed up. I figure about half the book is comprised of this kind of editorial gobbledegook. All of that might possibly appeal to those in depth literary experts and analysts who make a career of deciphering hieroglyphics and the like. Not for me though. I ended up skipping thru most of it.
Now as to what Twain actually wrote himself, it's as you might expect wonderfully interesting. I had to laugh out loud (lol) many times and then read it to my spouse who kept on giving me that "so what’s so funny look." There is much here in the way of little anecdotes and short sketches of people, famous and not so famous, that the author knew. Is the book worth purchasing? For the average reader, like myself, probably not. The parts that I read and really enjoyed I got from the book which was obtained at the public library. I reasons why I skipped about half of this book , I’ve already explained. I think Mark Twain might have chuckled at that.....

The Pacific

The Pacific by Hugh Ambrose was written as a companion to the HBO series of the same name. Ambrose follows five Marines to trace the character of the Pacific War. The vast and complex nature of that part of WWII makes the effort to give it depth, continuity and the personal touch to it much more difficult than the authors father faced when he described the European part of the war, by following a company of the 101st Airborne from training ground to victory. I rate this book "good" rather than excellent. The narrow scope of the narrative makes it difficult to follow the big picture....but to be fair it wasn’t supposed to do that anyway. Guadalcanal, Midway, Peleliu, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, etc. was war, which is always ugly and brutal, at it's very worst. The Japanese invariably chose death over surrender, offering no quarter. They did not accept any of the restraints of the Geneva Convention. The Marines often were forced to respond in kind. Take a look at a few pictures from the battle of Iwo Jima.... then and now.

Mount Suribachi overlooks the landing beaches. During the battle for Iwo Jima, Mt Suribachigave the defending Japanese forces a perfect vantage point from which to direct lethalartillery fire on the Marines' hastily dug positions on the beach.

Futatsune Beach, today known by visiting Marines as Invasion Beach, is where on19 February 1945, the Marines landed on D-Day of the invasion of Iwo Jima. This picturewas taken from near the top of Mt. Suribachi. Forward Observer's dream!

Marines race across the beach to experience a fraction of the experiences the Marines whofought for Iwo Jima might have had on D-Day of the Battle. The major difference betweentoday and 1945 is that today no one is shooting at them!

The guide for this trip asked the Marines to rush this dune to get an idea of what the Marineswho took Iwo Jima faced. Every step you take up, you slide down and into the dune. Youhave to work hard to get to the top. Imagine doing it with 100 lbs on your back while beingshot at and artillery raining down on you.

At this place at that time "uncommon valor was a common virtue." Admiral Nimitiz

Freedom

No, it’s not War & Peace, although not happily married Patty identifies with Natasha. The enemy is not at the city gates of Moscow, yet there is an "enemy" that lurks within. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen is a rare best seller in the old tradition of classic nineteenth century novels. It has both style and substance. I believe Freedom does compare favorably with all those classic novels of the past. The book is a family socio-cultural tale that begins slowly and then draws you deeply into the hearts and minds of four people who struggle with their own versions of freedom. This serves to not only illuminate the society we now live in but also provides numerous opportunities for self examination. What could be worth more than a book that can help a reader look more closely into their own values and ideals? Some years ago, I’d given up hope on most contemporary American novelists. This was because I felt many history and biography authors had replaced them in terms of both quality of writing and substance. In the last fifty years, with few exceptions, American novels have diverged into those which have won critical acclaim and those which made the best seller lists. Franzen, the best American novelist of the 21st century (so far), has given me some hope for the future. Of course, their still is the disgracefully degrading and overwhelming mass impact of television on our culture....but that’s a subject for another day.For another bloggers wonderfully thoughtful outlook on freedom (both the concept and the book)you might find the following link interesting.....

http://beedrunken.blogspot.com/2010/10/freedom.html