After doing pretty well in January, my reading kind of tapered off and I’ve been incredibly lax about maintaining the blog. I think a large chunk of my leisure time has been reallocated from reading to wargaming. In the past five months I’ve 3Dprinted about a dozen tanks, eight or ten buildings, and assorted ships of various eras and scales. I’ve also painted about 350 6mm Napoleonic miniatures, a couple of hundred 15mm WWII miniatures, and other various bits & bobs. At any rate, thanks for your patience as I catch up, and hope to get the reading back on track.
Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report by The Crew Survival Working Group of NASA is an exhaustive analysis of the prospects for the survival of the crew of STS-107 including a moment-to-moment timeline of events. Literally EVERY piece of physical evidence and telemetry data is analyzed to explain what happened and to develop recommendations to make future manned space flight safer. I came away with a far better understanding of how the crew flew the space shuttle and a newly enhanced respect for the NASA engineers and flight controllers who supported them. Potential readers will be glad to hear that the authors of the report are very careful to avoid ANY lurid, gratuitous, details that might make them uncomfortable. Hard-core space fans will want to read this. By the way, since its US government document, it’s available for download here: https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/298870main_SP-2008-565.pdf
Hirohito’s War by Francis Pike was a great account of WWII through the eyes of the Japanese National Command Authority. The book covers what they were thinking, how they reasoned themselves into starting the war, and how the information they had available, and their cultural mindset drove their decisions during the war. The book had a fair number of elementary, but ultimately meaningless errors, that while jarring didn’t affect the quality of the analysis. I suppose the errors were caused by the author being primarily a journalist/scholar of Japan rather than a MilHist guy. I recommend the book very highly for the almost unique insight in the “other side of the hill”.
Glory for Me by MacKinlay Kantor was the source material for the movie Best Years of Our Lives and its only the second time in my life I’ve found the movie better than the book (the other time was Jaws). The movie was outstanding, but the book is actually a 276 page poem in Blank Verse, has a very disjointed narrative and often flits between characters with no notice to the reader. When Robert Sherwood adapted the poem into a screenplay he improved it immeasurably. I’m glad I read the work, because it helped me understand a bit more about one of my favorite films, but at the end of the day I can’t really recommend it.
The Great Movies II by Roger Ebert is the second installment of movies Ebert thinks are great. It follows the same scheme as the first; an introduction describing the movie, some interesting facts about the production, and what to watch for in the film to understand why its “great” I’m a big movie buff so I really enjoyed the book. If you like movies, you probably will too.
Spare by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex is a very sad look at the life of a very confused and unhappy young man. Harry seems to have deep seated psychological issues resulting from both the loss of his mother and his status as the backup heir to the throne. Trying to deal with these issues within the context of the notoriously undemonstrative Royal Family had to have made it massively harder. I had two final takeaways on this book, first I hope Harry gets whatever help he needs to find peace, and second, I think he will come to regret having published this book for all the world to see.
The Ghost and Mrs Muir by R.A. Dick was a delightful little semi-comedic novel about the life of a staid young widow who moves into a house haunted by the ghost of an 19th century sea captain. The book was the basis for both a film and a TV series of the same name. Readers who are familiar with the movie or TV show should know that the book is quite a bit more serious than either of those spending much more time on the widow growing old and dealing with her sometimes rather problematic children. It was still a delightful little read.
Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb by James M. Scott was a horrific but fascinating look at the USAAF firebombing raids on Japan in the Spring and Summer of 1945. This book tells the story from both the US and Japanese perspectives and is much richer because of it. This is really the first time I’ve read of things from the point of view of the ordinary Japanese who were caught up in the raids and I must say, the book is unsparing in its description of both the effects and the aftermath of the firestorms. I can’t imagine living through such a thing. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about the War in the Pacific.
James Bond: The Authorised Biography by John Pearson was a cute little fake biography of everyone’s favorite British spy. The premise of the novel is that James Bond was an actual British agent who caused so much trouble for Soviet operations that their counterintelligence department (SMERSH) put a contract out to have him assassinated. MI6 having heard about the contract and eager to protect their agent, decides to have Ian Fleming write a book describing Bond’s exploits thinly disguised. The idea is SMERSH, seeing the book, will believe that Bond is purely fictitious since MI6 would NEVER publicize an actual agent and cancel the contract to avoid looking ridiculous for trying to kill a person who doesn’t exist. According to the biography the plan succeeded, the Soviets cancelled the contract, and Bond went on to a long and fruitful career documented by Fleming. I really enjoyed the book and I recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the James Bond novels (with are fundamentally different than the films).
James Longstreet and the American Civil War: The Confederate General Who Fought the Next War by Harold M. Knudsen was a problematic book that is attempting to rehabilitate the Confederate general Lost Causers “love to hate”. Knudson is a retired US Army Artillery officer and it shows to both his advantage and disadvantage in this book. Because he is a combat experienced officer he does bring a welcome perspective and understanding to ACW warfare, but he’s so hung up on the minutiae of modern military doctrine, operations, and terminology that he sometimes spends inordinate amounts of time letting them drive him to the wrong conclusions. One example is his examination of Longstreet’s motivation for suggesting that he be allowed to take his Corps West to help stave off Grant’s Vicksburg campaign. Conventional historical wisdom is that Longstreet’s desire for an “independent” command, out from under Lee’s thumb, contributed to Longstreet advancing his plan. Knudsen takes great exception to this idea and dismisses it because in current US Army terminology and doctrine there is no such thing as an independent command since every unit commander is subordinate to another unit commander until one gets to the Theater Commander who is subordinate to NCA. In Knudsen’s mind, if there’s no such thing as an “independent command” then Longstreet wanting one couldn’t possibly have been a factor in his suggestion. This of course totally disregards the fact that what were de facto “independent commands” during the ACW and that contemporaneous evidence suggests that Longstreet desired one. Later during the chapters on Gettysburg, Knudsen demonstrates his lack of understanding of ACW logistics by claiming that since Lee captured 3,000 head of cattle before the battle of Gettysburg he was “incorrect” to cite logistical concerns as a reason for attacking Meade on 2 July. It is a whole series of errors and misunderstandings like this that downgrade the book for me despite my agreement with it’s basic thesis; that Longstreet was one of the premier tactical and operational commanders of the ACW and was almost unique in his understanding of how technology had the changed warfare of his day. I can’t recommend it.
I also made my way through all 21 of Patrick O’Brian’s epic Aubrey Maturin series: Master and Commander, Post Captain, HMS Surprise, The Mauritius Command, Desolation Island, The Fortune of War, The Surgeon’s Mate, The Ionian Mission, Treason’s Harbour, The Far Side of the World, The Reverse of the Medal, The Letter of Marque, The Thirteen-Gun Salute, The Nutmeg of Consolation, The Truelove, The Wine-Dark Sea, The Commodore, The Yellow Admiral, The Hundred Days, Blue at the Mizzen, and 21-The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey. This was my fourth voyage with Jack & Stephen, and I enjoyed it immensely. My advice to potential readers is start from the beginning and before starting find yourself a glossary of 18th/19th century naval terminology such as A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion to the Complete Seafaring Tales of Patrick O’Brian by Dean King and John B. Hattendorf.
38 for the year.
BillP's Book\Miniature\Wargame Blog 