BillP's Book\Miniature\Wargame Blog

I finished three more books over Christmas to end 2009 with a total of 94 books for the year. Not too bad, although a bit short of the “100” I was shooting for.

First was Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcom Gladwell. One of my grad-school professors, Chris Lemely turned me on to Gladwell’s Tipping Point, so when I saw this one, I put it on my Amazon wish list and my wife, Karen, was good enough to get it for me for Christmas.

In this thin little volume Gladwell makes a compelling case that hardwork and intelligence are necessary, but not sufficient, to ensure success. Gladwell believes that “talent” and “intelligence” are commonly over-rated as a criterion for success because while most endeavors do require a certain level of intelligence or talent, additional intelligence and/or talent beyond that minimum required level, don’t seem to contribute to increased success, or increased chances of success. As far as hardwork, researchers working in fields as diverse as computer science, music and athletics are all concurrently finding that it takes humans roughly 10,000 hours of practice (given possession of the threshold level of intelligence or talent) to become “expertise” in their field. Few, if any, people achieve expertise without the 10,000 hours (it seems that even Mozart needed the 10,000 hours, he just started early!). Conversely, few people who put in the 10,000 hours are unable to achieve expertise.

The crux of Gladwell’s thesis is that whether or not an individual has access to the resources enabling them to put in that 10,000 hours of practice is the crucial factor in whether or not that individual will become successful. Further he shows that in many cases access to those resources is largely random. He gives several examples as diverse as Jewish M&A lawyers in the 1960s, Canadian Major Junior A hockey players and Bill Gates to show how success is heavily influenced by accidents of situation. An outstanding book, that I think almost everyone would benefit from reading.

Next up was The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-1000 by Chris Wickham. In this book, Wickham gives a very detailed analysis of Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire, until the beginnings of the medieval period. Wickham’s seems to have a couple of central theses, first is that the fall of the Roman Empire, wasn’t so much an event as a process that spun out over several hundred years. Secondarily he believes that the influence of the Catholic Church (in the Papacy) has been consistently overstated during this period. While common belief is that the Church was responsible for transmitting and preserving what remained of Rome through the “Dark Ages” that really wasn’t how it happened because local control of the Church for much of the period really minimized Papal (and hence the institutional Church’s) influence. Wickham makes a very convincing and detailed case for his theses. I for one am convinced. This is an excellent book, but I’m afraid it is fairly hard going. Part of the difficulty is that the material presented is extremely dense. There is a lot of information in this book folks. The other part is that Wickham isn’t the most compelling or talented writer in the world. He’s not bad, he just doesn’t have the gift of making illuminating the opaque. One Amazon reviewer described this book as “Somewhat like a diamond wrapped inside a Gordian knot” and I think that’s a pretty good description.

Lastly, was Winds of War by Herman Wouk. This is a melodramatic 1970’s novel about the very beginnings of WWII seen though the eyes of the family of US Navy Commander Victor “Pug” Henry and his family, both immediate and extended as they scrap through the last 6 months of peace and the first couple of years of WWII until the US becomes involved.

Henry is a US Navy Commander, USNA class of 1915 and a “battleship man”. His wife Rhoda is a bit of a contradiction in that she is both a temperamental heiress and a long-suffering Navy wife. They have three kids, a son Warren, also a USNA grad who is, when the book opens, attending flight school at Pensacola, a daughter Madeline who is a college student and another son, Byron, who is a bit of a “n’er do well” bumming around Europe after graduating college.

In March of 1939, Henry is appointed US Naval Attaché to Berlin, and the books starts with his sailing to Hamburg to take up his post. This first book (there was a sequel War and Remembrance) follows the adventures of Henry’s family up until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. During the course of the novel the family interacts with all sorts of historical personages, including Churchill, Hitler, FDR, and Stalin. They are, of course,  involved in many historical situations, with Pug flying on a bombing mission over Berlin as an observer, and being present at the Atlantic Conference. While Byron is caught in wartime Warsaw. The growing pressure on Europe’s Jewish population is illustrated when Byron falls in love with the niece of a Jewish American professor who has retired to Italy. I don’t want to give away too much of the story, so I won’t say anymore than that.

The book is pretty well written, and does a fairly good job at showing the “zeitgeist” of the transition from peace to war in Europe as well as giving the reader a good view of the isolationist sentiment in the US. All in all, I would recommend it, especially for people who haven’t much background in WWII. I read it first back in the late 70s, when I was in High School, and it was one of the books that really brought home to me the human cost of war. I was a bit surprised at how well it has held up, nearly 30 years later.

94 for the year!

Thanks for reading this year, and keep an eye out in early Janurary, when I start over on the quest for 100 books!

I knocked off three more books during a recent Caribbean cruise. First was Rhino Ranch by Larry McMurtry. This is the fifth and final volume in the life story of Duane Moore. The story started in The Last Picture Show, continued in Texasville, Duane’s Depressed and When the Light Goes and finally, wraps up in this book.

This is very much of  a piece with the prior books. In fact, if you haven’t read them, I doubt this will make very much sense at all. Previous readers of this blog may remember that I was not too happy with the previous volume; When the Light Goes. This book redeems that one to some extent and is a good, but not great, ending to a good but not great, series of books. I’ll miss getting together with Duane, his dysfunctional family and the rest of the denizens of the Dairy Queen down there in Thalia, TX.

The second book finished was War Like the Thunderbolt: The Battle and Burning of Atlanta by Russell S. Bonds. I have been looking for a good book on the battles in and around Atlanta for several years now. Long-time readers may recall my dissatisfaction with Wortman’s The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta. This book is everything that I hoped to find in that one.

The book starts with a very brief synopsis of the campaign from Resaca to Kennesaw Mountain. Then the detailed narrative begins with the battle of Kennesaw Mountain, and continues with Sherman’s penetration of the Chattahoochee Line and Sherman’s occupation of the siege lines about 1.5 miles from Downtown Atlanta. The siege lines are discussed in some detail, as are the strategies and plans of the Generals.

The writing is lucid, concise and well anchored in a sufficient number of maps that, in many cases, overlay the current road net on the historical one to orient the reader. In short, this is exactly the book I was looking for, and I highly recommend it to anyone with any interest in the Civil War operations around Atlanta.

Lastly, there was The Exploits of Baron de Marbot by Jean Baptiste Antoine Marcellin de Marbot. I first came across this fellow in Sir Max Hasting’s book, Warriors, which contained a brief profile of him. Reading that profile compelled me to find a copy of this book.

These are the memoirs of one of Napoleon’s Hussars who was present at virtually all of the great battles of the period; Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau, Friedland, Spain, Aspern-Essling, Wagram, Russia (he was not at Borodino or Moscow), the retreat back from Russia, Leipzig, right up to and including Waterloo in 1815 (suffering 14 wounds in the process!).

de Marbot started as a young cadet in 1799, rose through the officer ranks to Colonel, ultimately commanding the cavalry screen trying to hold Blucher’s Corps off of Napoleon’s right flank at Waterloo.  He served as aide de camp to many of the fabled Marshals, including Augereau, Bessieres, Massena, Lannes, Oudinot, and St. Cyr.

These memoirs are absolutely amazing. They are lucid and well written. They tell fascinating stories. It is if the old fellow were sitting in front of you telling war stories. I used Christopher Summerville’s excellent abridgment and translation. The original book was written in French and published in three volumes. Summerville has done a great job of picking out the important and interesting bit and summarizing the rest, while, (apparently, I don’t read French!) maintaining the flavor and tone of the original.

I cannot recommend it highly enough if you have any interest at all in the period. In fact, this might be best book I’ve read this year.

91 for the year

Knocked off another couple of books in the past few days. First was

Racing Odysseus: A College President Becomes a Freshman Again by Roger H. Martin. This is sort of a “mid-life crisis” sort of book. Martin was the president of a small Virginia college when he was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma and given 6 months to live. Having beaten the odds and surviving to see his cancer in remission, he decided to take a sabbatical from his school and enter St. John’s College in Annapolic MD as a freshman.

St. John’s has a very unusual academic program which is based on having all of its students read “The Great Books”. Essentially, all the disciplines of a liberal arts education are taught to students by having them read and discuss, in small groups, a Canon of roughly 100 books. Even science and math are taught in this way. Math is covered by having students read and discuss works such as Euclid’s Geometry and Newton’s Principia Mathematica. Science is taught by reading and discussing Lavoisier’s Elements of Chemistry and Darwin’s Origin of the Species.

The faculty’s role is tutorial and collaborative rather than strictly instructive. They moderate the discussions rather than lecture. Interestingly, everyone on the faculty, teaches more or less every subject, with English PHD’s leading discussions on Physics and vice-versa.

St. John’s athletic program is also unique in that they don’t select teams, even for intercollegiate competitions. Basically, everyone who goes out for a sport makes the team. And Students are strongly encouraged to take up sports that aren’t familiar with.

Martin, obtained permission to “audit” the first semester of 2006 as a Freshman and decided to take up crew. The book is an enormously interesting description of Martin’s experiences, his initial trouble fitting in with his classmates and his trials and tribulations as a totally inexperienced 61 year old cancer survivor going out for rowing. In fact, the title comes from the juxtaposition of Martin reading Homer’s Odyssey for school while showing up every morning at 6:00 am for rowing practice.

The book was insightful, well written and extremely engaging. I read it in one sitting. One of the things I really enjoyed about the book was Martin’s complete honesty and self-effacement. It is a rare memoir that doesn’t attempt to gloss over the writer, or make him look better than he is. This is one of them.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, in fact, I wish it were longer. The school is fascinating. Highly recommended!

Next up was the mind candy. The Traffickers by W.E.B. Griffith and his son, William E. Butterworth IV. Griffith writes a slew of formulaic series including THE CORPS (WWII Marines), THE BROTHERHOOD OF WAR (WWII and Post Army), MEN AT WAR (WWII OSS), BADGE OF HONOR (Philly Police more or less now) and a bunch of others I haven’t read. All of them are decent mind candy type reads, that are long on action and drinking (mostly Famous Grouse scotch) and basically one set of archetypal characters simply ported from series to series by changing their names. They ain’t great literature by any means, but they are a nice way to escape boredom and studying for exams for a couple of hours.

The Traffickers is the latest installment in Griffith’s Badge of Honor series, featuring Detective Sgt.  Matt Payne, the Wyatt Earp of the Mainline. This time Payne, assorted characters from the other books and a newly introduced Texas Ranger, tangle with Mexican traffickers of humans and drugs in modern day Philly.

The book is totally formulaic and entirely consistent tone wise with the previous novels in this (and all other) series. If you’re in the market for a couple of hours of escapism, these are okay, but don’t expect, great writing, great literature, or any special insight into, pretty much anything.

88 for the year.

We’re getting into the end of the semester so my reading for pleasure has really slowed down. It doesn’t look like I’m going to get anything like 100 books done this year, but I guess 90-odd isn’t too bad. Anyway, I’ve finished two more books lately.

First is The H. L. Hunley: The Secret Hope of the Confederacy by Tom Chaffin. Chaffin is a History Professor at UT-Knoxville and seems to specialize in Confederate Naval stuff. This book was a bit of a disappointment. I went into it expecting to get both a detailed account of the Hunley’s history and a fairly detailed analysis of the recent archaeology project which excavated the recently discovered wreck. The book did an excellent job on the first part. I feel like I now know pretty much everything there is to know about the Hunley and its operations.

It was in the second part that I feel a bit let down. There is only a cursory account of findings of the excavation, and very little detail about how they were carried out. On the other hand I may be being too demanding. It could be that, aside from technical details about the construction and operation of the submarine, the excavation really hasn’t revealed all that much. It certainly hasn’t uncovered the cause of the vessel’s loss.

So, at the end of the day, this is probably the best available work on the H. L. Hunley, but it really doesn’t answer all the questions.

Second was Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. This book is a bit of an eye-opener and I would strong suggest that anyone interested in nutrition and its affects on chronic disease and long term health read it.

Taubes basically challenges the conventional wisdom that obesity and coronary artery disease are caused by consumption of dietary fats. Moreover, his challenges aren’t based on new research, but on aggregation and analysis of hundreds of studies going back more than six decades. Frankly, I’m not well enough grounded in either biology or chemistry to personally verify his assertions, but he made a very compelling case and the book is certainly compelling reading. Highly recommended!

86 for the year.