BillP's Book\Miniature\Wargame Blog

Hard on the heels of “Battlefieldapalooza 2017” I’ve been on a bit of a Civil War kick in my reading lately. Since I got back from the road trip I’ve finished:

Grant by Ron Chernow was simply outstanding. Chernow writes with a very engaging and accessible style and is very even handed. The book is neither a polemic nor a hagiography and covered Grant’s flaws, especially his drinking, in a fair amount of detail. In short it is the best bio of Grant I’ve come across. As much as I liked White’s American Ulysses when I read it last year, Chernow’s book is much better. More detailed, better written, just much better. Highly recommended.

Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage by Noah Andre Trudeau may be the best one volume book about Gettysburg I’ve come across. Trudeau has just the right amount of detail, a very fluid writing style, and a great eye for finding first person accounts which describe key developments. His account of Longstreet’s attack on the second day is just thrilling. The tension he creates between The Confederates attacks and the U.S. attempts reinforce the line before it give way are compelling. And pretty much the entire book is like this. Having read the book, I almost feel as if I witnessed the events he describes. I can’t recommend this one highly enough.

The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5–6, 1864 is the first book in Gordon C. Rhea’s five volume history of the Overland campaign and it was excellent. Rhea has mastered the primary sources and gives us a very complete rundown of not only what happened, but what the generals intended to happen, and what interfered with their plans being executed. One of the things I really enjoyed was Rhea’s “port-mortem” where he discusses what went wrong and right for the two armies and whether a couple of the notorious “what-ifs” would have actually made a difference. The only criticism I have of this book was the paucity of maps. There were only 20 of them, which is far too few for a 530 page book, and the ones that were there were somewhat lacking in detail. Because I had recently visited the field and had Gottfried’s outstanding Maps of the Wilderness it wasn’t as much of an issue as it could have been. Even with the map issue, I have ordered the next volume in the series The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern, May 7–12, 1864 and I’m looking forward to starting it. Hopefully the fact that it has 30 maps in its 50 fewer pages will help.

Finally, there was Dr. Bradley Gottfried’s Maps of the Wilderness which I read more or less concurrently with Rhea’s book. Basically, I’d start the chapter of Rhea, look up the appropriate map in Gottfried, read his account, then leave the book open and glance at the map occasionally to orient myself while reading Rhea’s much more detailed account. The system worked extremely well played on the strengths of both books, and left me far better informed about the battle than I was when I walked the field. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. In fact, if you’re at all interested in the Civil War, you should have all of the atlases in your library.

114 for the year

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild is a compelling story of a sociologist from UC-Berkeley who moved down to Louisiana to figure out how right oriented voters view the world and how that vision informs their voting. The book was interesting in a sort of a horrifying way. First, all these folks are very sincere and convinced in their beliefs. They really do see the current world as a place that is actively hostile to Christians and Whites. The standard metaphor that Hochschild discovered was that these folks see themselves as standing in a vast long line moving toward the “American Dream” of economic comfort and security. In their view they are working hard, behaving responsibly, and waiting patiently, but they don’t seem to be getting any closer to realizing their dream. This stagnation is frustrating enough, but then they perceive that the government is taking other people, Blacks, Women, Immigrants, Hispanics, lazy people drawing Disability and/or Foodstamps, who are in line behind the White Christian and putting them in front of the White Christians. To add insult to injury, the WC’s see themselves as being required to pay (via excessive taxation) for those groups to jump ahead of them in line. They are outraged. And they expressed their outrage by voting for Trump.

I think Hochschild is spot on in her observations and her metaphor. I’ve heard exactly the same story and metaphor from pretty much everyone I know who voted for Trump. I would even go so far as to validate certain aspects of their metaphor. It really IS more difficult to achieve financial security today, especially for those who don’t hold bachelor’s degrees. Where they see that as the result of government policies favoring certain groups. I see it as a result of globalization (which is, in my view inevitable) and government policies that have disadvantaged the middle-class (taxation policies that encourage concentration of wealth and a declining percentage of GDP accruing to labor, rolling back of labor organization laws, etc). My problem is that, in my view, none of what these people believe conforms to reality as I perceive it, but is instead the primarily the result of certain media outlets promoting that storyline to generate outrage and ratings, and frankly I’m not sure how to address the concerns of these people in a way that they will “take on board” and internalize. One example; one of the men interviewed was employed as a compliance monitor at a chemical plant. His job was to go around the plant and monitor sensors to ensure that atmospheric levels of certain chemicals remained within certain limits. While he was going around the plant, he commonly wore a respirator to protect himself from the chemicals in the air. He describes routinely being mocked, teased, and called a “pussy” for wearing the respirator. He said it bothered him until he realized that all the men mocking him had badly eroded teeth from not wearing respirators in an environment with high levels of sulfuric acid in the air. What do you do with guys like that who vote?

Conscience of a Conservative by Jeff Flake was in interesting book by the junior Senator from Arizona. Basically it is an treatise against our current hyper-partisan system with a fair number of side-swipes against President Trump, rather than a explication or defense of Conservative principles. I enjoyed it, and since it doesn’t really try to advance Conservatism, I agree with most of it.

108 for the year.

Date Night on Union Station, Alien Night On Union Station, High Priest on Union Station, Spy Night on Union Station and Carnival on Union Station all by E.M. Foner are a series of science fiction comedy books set in a milieu of hundreds of races of aliens all more or less benevolently kept in line by the Stryx, a race of “artificial persons” who have access to far higher levels of technology than any of the other races. The Stryx, having monitored earth for several thousand years, come to the conclusion that humans are about to destroy themselves so they step in to “mentor” them into the larger universe around them. The novels revolve around the adventures of Kelly Frank a low level functionary in the EarthCent diplomatic service currently serving on Union Station, a Stryx run space station with dozens of alien races. Later novels cover her acquisition of a husband (an ex-mercenary named Joe, who now runs an intergalactic junkyard) children, and employees. The novels are quite fun, they move right along, and I’m reading them more or less continuously. They’re not great literature, but I enjoy them.

Painting Wargame Figures by Javier Gomez Valero is a remarkable book giving step by step instructions on how to paint a wide variety of wargame figures to a very high level. The book is profusely illustrated and provides paint codes for the colors he uses. Since I mostly paint 6mm figures to a very functional level, it wasn’t much use to me, but if you’re thinking about painting 28mm figures and want them to look good, you should read this.

Tips From the Cruise Addict’s Wife by Deb Graham is an interesting little book covering one woman’s opinion on who to get the most out of one’s cruise vacations. The advice given is generally useful and accurate, but heavily tinged with her opinions and preferences, which she seems to view as objective reality. If you’ve cruised before, you can safely skip this one. If you’re considering your first cruise, you can also safely skip this one and just ask me. 😊