03.03.15
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FULL FORCE AND EFFECT—-JACK RYAN RETURNS

President Jack Ryan is back  in Mark Greaney’s  new novel Tom Clancy Full Force and Effect.  Greaney hits his stride in his second book in the Clancy legacy following Tom Clancy’s death in October, 2013. His first was Tom Clancy Support and Defend. ( Search  here at Gordon’s Good Reads.)

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Tom Clancy fans, myself included, will not be disappointed as familiar characters return in the page turning action to which readers have become accustomed in Greaney’s writing.  Few, if any, wasted paragraphs.

The timely plot is of course North Korea. The new Supreme Leader Choi-Ji-hoon is more malevolent and even less stable than his deceased father. Driven to build a nuclear ICBM delivery system, Choi-Ji-hoon drives his subservient ghouls into a fiendish plot to source the   cash to fund the project, through the discovery of valuable heavy metals in the mountains of the north.

Profiteers join with America’s natural enemies in an unholy alliance with the North Koreans to carry out the complicated task of mining, marketing and converting into cash this new exploitable resource.

Enter ” The Campus” and  POTUS in an alliance to stop the madness. Mark Greaney’s research and storytelling  approach cable news reality!  Tom Clancy fans will enjoy every page, satisfied that there will be still more of this great series.

Enjoy!

 

02.02.15
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MORE MADNESS OF HENRY VIII

In her new book, The Kings Curse, Philippa Gregory adds multiple chapters to the madness of the Tudor Court of King Henry VIII.  If you enjoyed her best-selling novel The Other Boleyn  Girl, you will be very much at home with The Kings Curse. The story comes through the voice of a new narrator, Margaret Pole of the Yorks, part of the Plantagenets, and considered a rival to the Tudor Throne.

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All of the great characters of the period are interwoven throughout the book.  The demise of Katherine of Aragon, the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, Mary Boleyn, Cromwell, Cardinal Wolsey and of course Henry VIII himself. Throughout the novel the crafty and devious Margaret Pole masks her disdain for the Tudors in an effort of save the lives of her sons and Henry and Katherine’s only living child,  Mary, the legitimate heir.  It is indeed the King’s curse, that he has no  legitimate son to continue the Tudor Dynasty.

Gregory’s research and attention to detail is impeccable and her literary style is fast paced. There is never a long wait at the starting line.

Other novels of this era you may enjoy are Katherine by Anya Seton and the entire C.J. Sansom series set during this period.  You can search these titles and The Other Boleyn Girl here at gordonsgoodreads.com

 

01.27.15
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BLIZZARDS FOR REAL

I am researching a book about life in a small Massachusetts Town and the current hysteria over the ” Blizzard of 2015″ caused me to want to share this passage from the 1700s near Boylston, Massachusetts.

” During the early 1700s New England winters were extremely severe with front arriving in October and heavy snowfall on the ground until early April. George Wright in his history of Boylston tells of storms that kept settlers in their homes for days before being able to dig out through the huge snowdrifts. Quoting from a letter written by Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather to a friend in England, Wright wrote in his paper Historical Phenomens from the Papers of George L. Wright: “On the twenty-third and twenty-fourth 1717 occurred the greatest snowstorm known in the history of New England. Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather in a letter to a friend in England has preserved a full account of this storm. In this letter Dr. Mather said there had been a heavy body of snow covering the ground through the winter. A terrific snowstorm came on the twentieth of February, which was so violent that all communication was stopped and people for some hours could not cross from one side of a street to the other.“

On the twenty-fourth day of the month came another storm, which buried the memory of the former. This storm came on a Sunday and no religious assemblies were held throughout the country. Indians there nearly 100 years old, affirmed that their fathers had never told them of any stories that equaled it. Vast numbers of a cattle, sheep, and swine perished; some of them were found standing at the bottom of snowdrifts weeks after the storm. One farmer who lost above 1100 sheep found two of them still alive twenty-eight days after the storm at the bottom of a snow bank sixteen feet high having sustained themselves by eating the wool of their dead companions. Hogs were found alive after twenty-seven days burial, hens after seven days, and turkeys after twenty-five days, in positions where they were utterly unable to obtain any food. Great damage was done to the orchards; the snow freezing to a crust as high as the branches broke and split them, and the cattle walking upon the crust greatly damaged them by browsing. Houses were completely covered with snow, not even the tops of chimneys being seen.” (Boylston Historical Society: Historical Phenomena from the Papers of George L. Wright, Transcribed by Amy Gilgis.

Perspective!

01.17.15
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SHORT NIGHTS OF THE SHADOW CATCHER

Author Timothy Egan in his book Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher  crafts a splendid and enjoyable biography of  world-renowned  American Indian anthropologist, photographer  and chronicler  Edward Curtis.

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Egan captures the epic story of Curtis’s extraordinary creation of the 20-volume The North American Indian, an incomparable photographic and narrative now considered a work of art, documenting the complex and tragic story of the vanishing Native Americans. Egan writes in extensive detail of the thirty years during which Curtis became a slave to the completion of the work, capturing the personal sacrifices and near death adventures necessary for the narrative to be “preciously”  Edward Curtis. “This was a place like no other he had seen through three decades of portrait foraging, ”  writes Egan.  ” Think of it,”  Curtis wrote in his diary, ” At last, and for the first time in all my thirty years work with the natives, I have found a place where no  missionary has worked.”

Edward Curtis

Edward Curtis

At the Little Big Horn  battlefield and only after extensively interviewing Sioux who were present  that day, Edward Curtis uncovers a very different story of what actually happened at Custer’s Last Stand. ” Let them fight, there will be plenty of fighting left for us to do.”  George Armstrong Custer as told to Curtis by Crow Scout White Man Runs Him overlooking the  battlefield where General Marcus’s troops were slaughtered.

The reader will meet those who inspired Curtis to pursue his dream including Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, J.P. Morgan, George Bird Grinnell , Chief Joseph and Geronimo. Egan’s portrait of Curtis is explicit in that it would be impossible to find another American who sacrificed  to the extent of Edward  Curtis to pursue the documentation and preservation of the vanishing way of life of the first Americans.

More than a biography, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher shares with the reader Curtis’s depth of knowledge and understanding of the widely different cultures, rituals, and beliefs of the various American Indian tribes.  It is also a wonderfully crafted story of how the creative work of those who possess incomparable talent and vision are often  lost in their own time only to attain rightful acclaim by future generations.

Before The Storm--Apache 1906--Edward Curtis

Before The Storm–Apache 1906–Edward Curtis

I commend Short Nights Of The Shadow Catcher to all who have interest in poignant literature surrounding our first Americans.

Other books I have posted on gordonsgoodreads by Timothy Egan include The Worst Hard Time and The Big Burn.  Utilize the search tab found here.

11.11.14
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ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE-WORTHY OF NYT BEST SELLER STATUS

Anthony Doerr’s novel All The Light We Cannot See is worthy of its New York Times Best Seller status.  This wonderfully written book , like The Book Thief, tells a story unfolding during World War II, primarily through the eyes of children.

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Set in France and Germany, a blind girl raised by her locksmith father is brought into the middle of a search for a fabulous  jewel. The jewel is removed from the museum where her father works to keep it from the occupying Germans. Meanwhile a young German boy growing up in an orphanage with his sister is co-opted by Hitler Youth because of his demonstrated skills in working with radio receivers.

Lives intersect during the search for the missing jewel and for the location of a hidden French Resistance radio transmitter, located where else but in the attic of the young girls uncle’s home in Brittany where she has fled from the German occupation of Paris.

Doerr’s organization of the novel is pleasing to the reader.  The chapter construction  splendidly carries the story line filled with suspense, intrigue,  the realities of war and wonderfully portrays the love between a father and daughter. The book moves very quickly but the reader never feels pushed or rushed.

I highly recommend All The Light We Cannot See, a very good read  for teenagers and adults. I would predict that it will be among the best novels of  2014.  Anthony Doerr  is the author of the story collections Memory Wall and The Shell Collector and the memoir Four Seasons In Rome.  

11.06.14
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AN ARMY AT DAWN-NORTH AFRICA-DRESS REHEARSAL FOR EUROPEAN INVASION

Rick Atkinson’s  first volume of his World War II Trilogy An Army At Dawn is an extraordinarily candid appraisal of the performance of the U.S. Military during its initial foray into the Second World War in North Africa.

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This excellent historical work portrays the North Africa Campaign of 1942-1943 as a painful dress rehearsal for a green U.S. Command and Army, embarking on its first and often catastrophic combat missions since the First World War.  ” A great sorting out was underway: the competent from the incompetent, the courageous from the fearful, the lucky from the unlucky.”   Atkinson spares no one in his  harsh analysis of both the American and British forces and their leadership.  The takeaway is that if the Allies had invaded across the channel in 1942 as originally envisioned, D-Day would have been a disaster only rivaled by Dunkirk.  A move up the boot of Italy or into southern France according to Atkinson’s read would have also been doomed from the outset.

The North Africa Campaign learning curve was critical to the final Allied victory in Europe. ” Eisenhower had been naive, sycophantic,  unsure of his judgement, insufficiently vigorous and more a titular than actual commander.” Atkinson is blunt in his appraisal that North Africa taught the American Infantryman the necessity of  ” ruthless killer instinct”  in battle.”  ” A soldier is not effective until he has learned to hate. When he lives for one thing, to kill the enemy, he becomes of value. ”  The collaboration in the North Africa Campaign with the British under Montgomery  foretold difficulties to come in the invasion of Europe.

Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, Rommel, all portrayed  by historian Atkinson at their very worst and very best. The book is scholarly in its approach and yet very readable, filled with humanity, heroism,  and battlefield reality. After months of failure with enormous and often needless casualties,  American forces finally morphed into fighting form and marched through the Kasserine Pass and on to the sea at Tunis.

An Army at Dawn was written in 2002. The remaining volumes in Atkinson’s trilogy are The Day of Battle, the war in  Sicily and Italy ( 2007 ),  from 1943-1944 and The Guns at Last Light, (2012),  the war in Western Europe, 1944-1945. Atkinson also authored The Long Grey Line and Crusade.

10.27.14
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SAVAGELY BEAUTIFUL….NO! SAVAGELY BRUTAL YES! THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH

The dust cover of Richard Flanagan’s new novel The NARROW ROAD to the  DEEP NORTH, describes the book as a ” Savagely beautiful novel.”  I think not, but who am I to disagree with the rave reviews from the New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post, The Sunday Times ( London) and a long list of other prestigious  publications.

imgresThe novel wraps itself around the story of prisoners in a World War II Japanese POW Camp being brutalized in forced slave labor  to construct  the infamous Thai-Burma Death Railway.  Flanagan’s protagonist is an Australian physician , whose assignment is to make every effort to keep the prisoners alive only so that they can be returned to depravity cutting an impossible railroad bed through the Burmese jungle.

Readers who absorbed the brutality in the Japanese POW camps in the non-fiction books Unbroken  by Laura Hillenbrand or Fly Boys by James Bradley  I think will have had quite enough, without slogging through the excessive deprivation and savagery in Flanagan’s novel.  Surely, there is a parallel story here, an adulterous love affair between the protagonist and his uncle’s wife  frustrated by his supposed devotion to his wife despite a lifetime of promiscuity.  For me, this narrative did not connect or remotely rise above the books excessively redundant brutality.

Sorry, but if there is redeeming virtue in The NARROW ROAD to the DEEP NORTH, I seem to have missed the sign posts.

Richard Flanagan also wrote five additionaL highly acclaimed novels, Death of  River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Gould’s Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist and Wanting.  I have not read any of his aforementioned books.

 

 

10.03.14
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TRAVERSE RICHARD RUSSO’S “BRIDGE OF SIGHS “

Richard Russo’s 2007 novel Bridge of Sighs, published six years after his Pulitzer Prize winning Empire Falls, captures the rhythms of small town life in Russo’s own inimitable style. In Bridge of Sighs Russo transports the reader to upstate New York where he delivers many of life’s complexities and social issues through a wide cast of characters whose lives are interconnected through intricate webs of relationships.

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The menu of contemporary issues is complete: Racism, mental illness, bullying, teenage sex, tyrannical fathers, loyalty without love, love without loyalty, divorce, reconciliation, industrial pollution, Cancer, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters.

From this churning pot of small town contradictions emerges in Venice , a world renown artist, made famous by placing on canvas  mental images of the provincial place of his boyhood. A local legend says that lovers will be granted eternal love and bliss if they kiss on a gondolagat sunset under Venice’s Bridge of Sighs. Will unrequited love appear?  Without question a good read from a great American novelist.

Also by Richard Russo: Mohawk, The Risk Pool, Nobody’s Fool, Straight Man, The Whore’s Child

09.17.14
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THE GUNS OF AUGUST- AN ANNIVERSARY READ BY A BRILLIANT HISTORIAN

August, 2014 marked the 100th Anniversary of the First World War , the perfect stimulus to read or reread Barbara Tuchman’s  The Guns of August.

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While the French high command argued over whether to eliminate the crimson of their soldiers trousers, the Germans had already converted to olive-green and were building a mighty force and a thirty-six day offensive plan to bring France to a quick and tidy surrender and to regain German losses to both Russia and France from the war of 1870.  Barbara Tuchman in her Pulitzer Prize winning The Guns of August uncovers in great detail the misguided decisions and confusion among the French, German and British military and civilian leadership that led to the disastrous four years of carnage following the August 1914 outbreak of the First World War.

Tuchman’s meticulous research focuses upon the incredible errors made by all parties to the war by their failing to comprehend that warfare in the 20th Century had changed forever. Looking back on the  war’s 100th anniversary, the reader will be astonished to learn of the self-serving decisions and the indecisiveness  of politicians, generals, czars, prime ministers and presidents costing millions of lives on the battlefields of Belgium, France, Germany and Prussia . ” You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees, the Kaiser told departing troops in early August 1914.”

Tuchman leaves no stone unturned in the chronological detail leading up to the outbreak of the war. and its raging first month of battle. The Guns of August carries the reader through the German invasion of Belgium to the standoff on the outskirts of Paris and the Marne as the German Army, by only inches,  missed its opportunity to complete their 36 day plan for certain victory over France.

The French Army by mid-August had been in retreat since defeat at the Battle of the Frontiers on the Belgium border.  The Germans  army brutally pushed through Belgium, slaughtering civilians in their wake and then moved almost at will  into Northern France capturing not only territory but the rich natural resources that would help fuel its stamina through what would become four years of trench warfare. Meanwhile the British remained reluctant and confused in their commitment to both Belgium and France.  So much for French ” Élan” as their armies retreated in a desperate attempt to regroup before Paris fell.

Then occurred what German General Kluck termed a ” French miracle. ” Just four days before the Germans completed their 36 day schedule for decisive victory, the Battle of the Marne ended  with Germany in a startling reversal at the hands of a re-grouped French Army.  Said  Kluck, ” That men who have retreated for ten days , sleeping on the ground and half dead with fatigue, should be able to take up their rifles and attack when the bugle sounds is a thing upon which we never counted. It was a possibility not studied in our war academy.”

The Guns of August sets the stage for  what became The Western Front,  four years ( 1914-1918) of the most horrendous fighting in the history of the modern world.  Casualties at one point reached 50,000 per day.

Tuchman’s narrative style allows for assimilation of a trove of information and detail of an event the enormity of which forever changed the world.  Tuchman retains a rightful honored place among the great historians of her time. The Guns of August was published in 1962. She won a second Pulitzer in 1971  for ‘Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45.  Also by Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower, a look at the quarter century leading up to World War I, the clash between Olympian luxury of the wealthy and the uprising of the underclass. Additionally, The Zimmermann Telegram, the story of the German promises made to Mexico  to entice them to enter the First World War.  Her last book  The First Salute,  published in 1988, sets the American Revolution in international perspective and was on the New York Times best-seller list for 17 weeks.

Barbara Tuchman died in 1989 at age 77 after suffering a stroke at her home in Cos Cob, Connecticut. The cabin in which she wrote her prized works remains on a rocky rise overlooking the meadows of the family property.

09.08.14
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David McCullough- Thirty Seven Years Later- A NYT Best Seller !

Yes, hundreds of other kindred spirits did the same as me!  On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Panama Canal we were reminded of  David McCullough’s  The Path Between The Seas  and rushed out to purchase this acclaimed historical work.  As a testament to its relevance,  the book again appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List on Sunday, September 7th, 2014,  37 years after its original publication in 1977!

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The epic story of the building of the Panama Canal, started by the French, completed by the Americans, could not have been better told than through a David McCullough narrative.  The Path Between The Seas details every nuance of this unprecedented enterprise in world history.

Despite the enormity of the subject, McCullough’s story telling never gets bogged down in detail but rather enlightens  and educates the reader into understanding the complexities of the entire undertaking.  Meet the fascinating Frenchman Ferdinand deLesseps, the promoter of the Suez Canal, whose failure at Panama, ensured the ultimate completion by America of an enterprise the scale of which had never before been attempted by mankind. It literally required a revolution to reorganize the geography and power structure of the world.

McCullough masterfully tells the story of the canal. The politics, money, ego’s, intrigue and with great insight to the racial issues surrounding 45,000 West Indian black men and women whose manual labor made the building of the canal possible. The development of  the engineering skills and construction knowledge previously unknown and untested became miracles in their application.  ” We are facing a proposition greater than was ever undertaken in engineering history. ”

Combined with the enormity of the engineering and logistical challenge was the understanding the once the American’s bought out the failed French effort, the first priority would be ridding the Canal Zone of Yellow Fever and Malaria which had heretofore devastated the work force. The resulting benefit to medical research, while at the same time overcoming skeptical pedestrian medical views , would benefit populations worldwide for decades.  No single construction effort in American History had exacted a comparable  price in human lives and dollars and yet the scientific, social and economic rewards would ultimately dwarf the investment costs.

Just as in Truman, John Adams and Mornings on Horseback,  McCullough combines his skills as historian with those of a storyteller resulting in a thrilling journey during an American  era when anything seemed possible.