This Week at the Library: 11 Aug – 18 Aug

Posted on August 18, 2010 by smellincoffee

This week:

  • Heroes of History by Will Durant is a brief summary of western history, though one introduced with chapters on India, China, and Egypt. Durant’s heroes are philosophers, theologians, poets, and an occasional political figure. 
  • West and East is second in Harry Turtledove’s The War that Came Early series, a planned six-part set that has World War 2 begin in 1938 at the Munich conference. Although the characters are interesting so far, the war remains unremarkable.
  • Don’t Know Much About Geography is a book of geographical trivia written for casual readers. Though enjoyable to read, it is more scattered than focused.

Pick of the Week: Heroes of History, Will Durant. I will be investigating his Story of Civilization series.

Quotation of the Week:
Durant’s ending paragraphs for Heroes of History  resonated most with me, but I found the below passage amusing the first time I read it.

Siberian mosquitoes were numerous, savage, and large. A Japanese joke said one of them had landed at an airstrip, and groundcrew men pumped a hundred liters of gasoline into it before they realized what it was. Fujita thought it was a joke.

p. 98, West and East.

Potentials for Next Week:

  • Finishing Working IX to V, which is all manner of casual, but fun so far.
  • Gods of Night by David Mack, the first book in the long-anticipated Destiny trilogy, finally arrived in the mail. 
  • Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies, a collection of short stories. I’ll miss ol’ Horny. 
  • Alexandria, Lindsey Davis. 
  • Sharpe’s Eagle, Bernard Cornwell. First in a series of books about a rifleman in England’s army during the Napoleonic wars. I’m thinking about trying the series because I’m about to finish the Hornblower books and yet don’t want to be finished with them. This is…somewhat similar. Of course, there are always the Aubrey-Maturin books by Patrick O’Brien…
  • The Lost World, Michael Crichton. When I arrived at the library to pick up West and East, this was also waiting on me. Turns out when I reported the library’s copy lost, they ordered another copy and reserved it for me. 

And yet, in spite of the list above me, there’s this little voice in my head telling me to start Will Durant’s series of books. I don’t think it appreciates the fiction binge.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged | 3 Comments

Don’t Know Much About Geography

Posted on August 17, 2010 by smellincoffee

Don’t Know Much about Geography: Everything You Need to Know about the World But Never Learned
© 1992 Kenneth C. Davis
384 pages

I’ve taken several geography courses as part of my university education, a tribute perhaps to Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel — which made me regard geography as an essential part of understanding human history and behavior. The subject remains of interest to me, so Don’t Know Much about Geography seemed fair game. Written for a lay audience and replete with joking references,  it tends more toward light trivia than a thorough introduction, even one written for newcomers to the subject like myself. Davis organizes the book topically, although the first two chapters have unclear general subjects. The latter four focus on oceans, political history, meteorology, and astronomy. Each section of the book consists of a general statement or question — “What is a butte?”, “Where is the world’s most populous city?”, and “Major Historical Earthquake Disasters” are three examples.  He makes frequent uses of timelines and bullet lists, as well as direct quotations from historic documents like Lewis and Clark’s account of their expedition or Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle. Davis writes primarily for American readers: the first of his appendices includes information on the names and nicknames of the American states.

Don’t Know Much about Geography is a casual read brimming with interesting trivia, though it may be too casual for serious students. Someone claiming to be Robert Adler (author of Science Firsts, which I read two years back) has taken issue with the book’s scientific trivia. Regardless of his identity, the page quotes he identifies and their issues appear to be valid, indicating more thorough factchecking might’ve been in order. The book, published in 1992, is also dated, which may mitigate its use for some readers. It’s also amusing to read of the booming Japanese economy on the cusp of the “Lost Decade”. The date also causes a slight inconsistency in the matter of Yugoslavia: it began disintegrating in 1991, and at times Davis refers to it as still in existence and at times as a defunct state.

I don’t particularly regret having read it, as it provided me with information I did not know, but I will continue to look for a better general introduction to the field written for a larger audience. It’s a fun book, but limited. Although I doubt I will be able to take any more geography courses,  it is a field that will remain of interest to me.

Posted in history, Reviews, science | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

West and East

Posted on August 17, 2010 by smellincoffee

The War that Came Early: West and East
© 2010 Harry Turtledove
436 pages

In 1938, the Munich Peace Conference ended in a general European war. Britain and France, outraged by Hitler’s transparent attempts to manipulate them, pledged to defend Czechoslovakia — resulting in a war that came early, with all sides largely unprepared. The conflict between Britain, France, and Germany widens into a two-front war for Hitler after Russia, discomfited by the Germano-Polish entente that emerged following their sacking of Czechoslovakia, invades his western neighbors. Imperial Japan seizes the opportunity to expand its puppet-state in Manchuria into Siberia.  So ended The War that Came Early: Hitler’s War.

That last plot development ensured that I would read the second book in this series, West and East, for it had the potential to radically change the story of the war. While Turtledove’s eventual story may read quite differently from our own history books, West and East isn’t the book that does it. Though outfitted with interesting, mostly sympathetic characters and not being bogged down in too much trivia, West and East isn’t much of an “alternate” history novel. True,  Europe’s situation is different —  France, though partially occupied, has not fallen — but  Germany expanding then falling back against a two-front war isn’t much of a change. The most promising twist — a Russo-Japanese war — never amounted to much in this novel. The Japanese viewpoint character spends his chapters swatting mosquitoes, avoiding being hit by Russian bombers and mortars, complaining about the weather, and thinking patriotic thoughts about the Japanese race and empire. If Russia and Japan’s armies did something other than throw things at one another, it’s not apparent here. I was hoping for a wider altercation, but Japan is apparently too busy consolidating its rule in China, where a resistance movement has begun a terrorist campaign against Dai Nippon’s occupational forces.

It’s a…fair read. I looked forward to hearing from some of the characters, especially the American communist fighting in the Internationals and a Czech soldier embedded inside France’s army, who uses an anti-tank rifle to duel with German snipers. The fate of Peggy Druce, an American stranded in Berlin after the war began, was also of interest. Other viewpoint characters include English, Welsh, French, German, and Russian military officials and a Jewish family in Germany. Though  the characters’ stories interested me, I’d hoped to see more overall plot development. This is the second of a planned six-book series, though, so it’s not altogether surprising development is so slow. Hopefully the events here will be the germ for more interesting developments later on. I’m especially interested on the Russo-Japanese war’s impact on Japan’s Pacific ambitions, and whether or not Germany will rally to continue to be the villain through the remaining four books. I’m sure Turtledove can pad out a long retreat through four books, but mixing things up — having an early German defeat followed by an immediate cold-war-turned-hot featuring Russia and Japan as twin evils, for instance — would be an improvement over a so-far predictable recounting of historical events with a slight twist. I’ll read the third when it comes out, but I’ll only finish the series if the divergence widens.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Teaser Tuesday (17 August)

Posted on August 16, 2010 by smellincoffee

Teaser Tuesday again, hos– waitaminute, who’d he say he was? 

“Sind Sie Frau Druce?” A man’s voice.

“Yes, I’m Peggy Druce. And who the devil are you?”

“Adolf Hitler here,” the voice answered. 

p. 170, The War that Came Early: West and East.  Harry Turtledove. 

Posted in General | Tagged | 22 Comments

Heroes of History

Posted on August 15, 2010 by smellincoffee

Heroes of History: A Brief History of Civilization from Ancient Times to the Dawn of the Modern Age
© 2001 Will Durant
348 pages

Will Durant is an author I’ve heard of but not yet read from, and this slim volume intended to summarize his large series on world history seemed a good way to introduce myself to his work.  Durant made it clear in his introduction that his purpose in writing history is to celebrate civilization, which he thinks of as “social order promoting cultural creation”, vital to domesticating more savage instincts and making life beautiful. Although initially concerned that this would be a book recounting “great kings”, Durant’s heroes are poets and saints; philosophers and theologians. He lavishes love on political figures and states then and again, but allows the text of poems like Shelley’s “Ozymandias” to use valuable page space. He sees civilization as forever veering toward decadence or puritanism, and holds high those individuals who strive to hold their lives in balance — and higher still those who help others right their own paths. Durant is a man plainly in love with human history, which heightens my interest in reading more of him.

After the introductory chapter (“What is Civilization?”), Durant picks up the thread of human stories with Confucius, and from there moves through India and Egypt to Greece: the rest of the book is devoted toward western civilization, with great emphasis on Greece, Rome, Christianity, the Renaissance, and the Reformation. Durant died before completing his work; his last chapter is titled “Shakespeare and Bacon”. At 347 pages, this is a slender volume, and those well-read in western history may find nothing new of interest, although the book may serve to fill in gaps in the readers’ education. The ideal reader for this work would someone with a casual interest in western history, who only need a guiding hand to start exploring it in full.  Durant’s authorial voice is forever tender toward his subjects and friendly to his readers, although some may not appreciate his areas of emphasis. For my own part he conflated Epicureanism and more ‘decadent’ hedonism, and the praise he lavishes on the pre-Constantine church was a bit too intimate for my liking. Still, he honors hardened skeptics who call for people to let go of superstition with the same zeal he favors charitable figures who rooted their approach to helping others in a religious tradition.

I imagine this would be a fair read for someone interested in history, but yet not introduced to it. The detail he gives to Greece, Rome, and the Renaissance may be particularly helpful to those with gaps.Though his summaries are quick, they’re by no means shallow: Durant spends considerable time on the culture and living conditions of the people who give rise to his ‘heroes’.  I recently finished a Renaissance and Reformation class, and Durant’s three chapters are detailed enough to increase my own appreciation of the period. Below is one of the first passages that grabbed me.

“I will not subscribe to the depressing conclusion of Voltaire and Gibbon that history is ‘the record of crimes and follies of mankind’. Of course, it is partly that, and contains a hundred million tragedies — but it also the saving sanity of the average family, the labor and love of men and women bearing the stream of life over a thousand obstacles. It is the wisdom and courage of statesmen like Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, the latter dying exhausted but fulfilled; it is the indiscouragable effort of scientists and philosophers to understand the world that envelops them; it is the patience and skill of artists and poets giving lasting form to transient beauty, or an illuminating clarity to subtle influence; it is the vision of prophets and saints challenging us to nobility.

On this turbulent and sullied river, hidden amid absurdity and suffering, there is a veritable City of God, in which the creative spirits of the past, by the miracles of memory and tradition, still live and work, carve and build and sing. Plato is there, playing philosophy with Socrates; Shakespeare is there, bringing new treasures every day; Keats is still listening to his nightingale, and Shelley is borne on the west wind; Nietzsche is there, raving and revealing; Christ is there, calling to us to come and share his bread. These and a thousand more, and the gifts they gave, are the Incredible Legacy of the race, the golden strain in the web of history.

We need not close our eyes to the evils that challenge us — we should work undiscouragingly to lessen them — but we may take strength from the achievements of the past; the splendor of our inheritance. Let us, varying Shakespeare’s unhappy king, sit down and tell brave stories of noble women and great men.” 

– page twenty, concluding “What is Civilization”.

Posted in history, Reviews | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Booking through Thursday: Evolution

Posted on August 13, 2010 by smellincoffee

Booking through Thursday asks: Have your reading choices changed over the years? Or pretty much stayed the same? (And yes, from childhood to adulthood we usually read different things, but some people stick to basically the same kind of book their entire lives, so…)


My childhood reading consisted mostly of short fiction intended for children, books on animals, and collections of ghost stories. I liked trying to figure out what people might be experiencing other than shades of the deceased.   As I grew older I tended to read only from large series: Goosebumps in elementary school, Animorphs in middle school, and California Diaries during high school. I also read the occasional Star Trek novel (with increasing frequency after DS9 ended on TV and began again as a book series) and discovered John Grisham at some point, beginning with The Firm.

In gen-ed college, the idea of  learning finally became interesting to me. Two of my instructors were thorough-going intellectuals who delighted in introducing their students to the human experience. I think I read my first pop-history books here (Nothing Like it in the World: Building the Transcontinental Railroad, Stephen Ambrose), as well as finding other books that have remained favorites, like Jerry Flamm’s Good Life in Hard Times: San Francisco’s Twenties and Thirties.

In late 2005, my approach to reading changed rather dramatically. I left the fundamentalist sect of Christianity I’d been raised in, and religion all together at the same time:  I’d wanted to leave all throughout 2005, but stumbling across the word humanism made me bolt for freedom. Everything human-related was now gloriously fascinating. I suddenly realized what I wanted to do for a career, and started getting my stalled college career back on track. I started educating myself as best I could in the meantime, reading three to five books a week that were almost wholly nonfiction. In 2007 I started this blog, and those opening posts reflect that this nonfiction streak in my reading was still going strong. I focused on science, having discovered the world anew.

Once I entered formal university studies, the regimen was no longer necessary or possible. Classes, work, and outside research time — plus the joys and trivialities of college life, like hanging around campus with new friend — consumed most of my time. I still read before classes and during work as I could, and later on the weekends, but I shifted to lighter fare like Harry Potter. Nonfiction still remained a strong element in my reading, though, and during the summers I recommitted to it.

Since then, I’ve maintained a steady and possibly balanced diet of fiction and nonfiction, although every year has its flavor: I discovered Isaac Asimov in 2008, reading him almost every week of the summer, and in the next summer I gorged myself on religious philosophy, having become interested in Stoicism and Gandhighiri. My aim is to be well-read, being able to draw upon science, history, philosophy, sociology, and poetry in understanding the world. Along the way I want to enjoy good stories about the human experience.

Posted in General | Tagged | 2 Comments

This Week at the Library (11-8)

Posted on August 11, 2010 by smellincoffee

This Week:

  • Provenance of Shadows, a novel of Doctor McCoy split in time. While one thread of the novel follows McCoy from The City on the Edge of Forever onward to his death, in part novelizing the third season of TOS and its movies, the other thread follows McCoy as a man lost in 1930s America, forced to create a new life  in the American south amidst the Great Depression. Definitely of interest to Trek readers.
  • The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written may be more properly titled Ranting While Reading.  Essays, though readable, tend toward the disorganized and often fall apart completely when the author begins ranting about unrelated subjects that struck his fancy. The rants grew repetitive and childish quickly. 
  • Give Me Back my Legions, a short but disappointing work by Harry Turtledove detailing one of Rome’s worst losses in the field. How Rome is lured into the ambush is made obvious at the outset, and the battle itself only comprises two chapters (one of confused Romans dying, the other of happy Germans  quartering Roman corpses). The rest is characters talking back and forth and adding nothing.
  • The End of the Beginning redeemed Turtledove for me,  telling the story of Hawaii’s occupation following the successful Japanese invasion of it in December 1941. With enjoyable characters,  an interesting setting, and few of Turtledove’s weaknesses, it’s easily one of the strongest Turtledove books I’ve read.

Quotation of the Week, from Provenance of Shadows: 

“Do you know I don’t believe in Heaven?” McCoy asked.

“I’m not surprised to find out,” Lynn said, “But even if there is no heaven, doesn’t that make this life even more precious?”

Potentials for Next Week:

  • Working IX to V, Vicki Leon
  • Heroes of History, Will Durant
  • Alexandria, Lindsey Davis  (Historical fiction, novel)
  • Don’t Know Much About Geography, Kenneth Davis
  • The Good that Men Do, a sci-fi/political intrigue work about a man who hears himself declared dead.  

Future Reads:

  • I’ve decided to go ahead and read the Destiny trilogy, as reading through the A Time To… and Titan series will take too long. They should be arriving in the post this week.
  • The sequel to Hitler’s War, West and East, is finally out. Although not too much impressed with the first novel in Turtledove’s new six-part series, the ending ensured that I’ll read West and East at the very least. 
Posted in Reviews | Tagged | Leave a comment

Teaser Tuesday (10-8)

Posted on August 10, 2010 by smellincoffee

I forgot it was Tuesday. How do you forget it’s Tuesday? Now this is Tardy Teaser Tuesday. :-/ (From ShouldBeReading.)

So this is what it’s like to be dead, he thought, really trying on the idea for the first time. Funny. Doesn’t hurt quite as much as I thought it would.

The Good that Men Do, Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin

Posted in General | Tagged | 2 Comments

The End of the Beginning

Posted on August 9, 2010 by smellincoffee

The End of the Beginning
© 2005 Harry Turtledove
448 pages

The Empire of the Rising Sun has cast a dark shadow across the Pacific. On December 7th, 1941, the naval and air forces of Imperial Japan struck Pearl Harbor, disabling or destroying most of the US Pacific fleet at Pearl, and paving the way for the invasion forces that immediately followed. Unprepared for the assault, American troops were forced to abandon the island. Early in 1942, America launched an ill-considered attempt to regain the island, resulting in a disastrous naval battle that completed the Pacific Fleet’s destruction. Only one American carrier survived to limp back to drydock.  In the wake of their triumph, the Japanese have established a puppet government in the form of the newly-revived Kingdom of Hawaii. The Empire will soon learn, though,  that taking Hawaii and keeping it are different challenges altogether.

Although little remains of America’s surface fleet in the Pacific, her submarines still hunt the waters there — and Hawaii’s location at the end of a very long supply line makes the occupational forces even more vulnerable to their attacks than England in either world war. Hawaii’s soldiers, prisoners, and civilians need food and oil if they’re to maintain their newly acquired ‘shield’ against the United States, and the freighters that bring those supplies into Honolulu are ideal targets for submarines. While Japan’s occupational forces complete their subjugation of the islands and dig in in anticipation of future assaults, factories in the United States break records to produce another — and a far greater — fleet from scratch. The end result is inevitable, but exciting to see developed.

Turtledove relies on his usual structure, telling this story of Hawaii’s occupation and restoration through a diverse cast of characters from both sides of the conflict. Notable viewpoint characters include Joe Crosetti, a Hellcat pilot who’s itching for vengeance;  Army officer Fletch Armitage and his ex-wife Jane, who are both prisoners — one doomed to work to death in labor gangs, and the other forced into the role of comfort woman for the Imperials; Minoru Genda, the officer who planned Hawaii’s invasion; and the Takayashi family, including two boys who were raised American and their Japanese father, who eagerly provides whatever assistance he can to the men of his native country.  The villains here were not as sympathetic as most of Turtledove’s antagonists, almost always betrayed in the most sadistic light.  While I typically support one of Turtledove’s factions over another, I haven’t rooted for a villain’s defeat this enthusiastically since the large Timeline-191 series. The Imperials treat Hawaii as savagely as they treated China and the Philippines in reality.

The End of the Beginning is a strong book: the Armitages and Takayashi boys were especially sympathetic characters, and the Pacific theater is not one Turtledove has invested a lot of time in prior. Although the eventual outcome of the book is obvious — the cover of the novel depicts American forces attacking Japan’s forces in Pearl Harbor — the ride there was fun. He even avoided engaging in too much repetition: there were only two obvious offenders, and one of those (the emaciation of POWs) may be justified. I could’ve gone without reading abut Joe Crosetti hearing bullets rip into his plane, checking the gauges automatically, seeing that they were normal, and noting that Hellcats are built to last four times.

It doesn’t appear that Turtledove is expanding this series more, which may be wise:  given the United States’ industrial output and the scarcity of resources in Japan, the conflict can only end in defeat for the Empire; Turtledove even throws in foreshadowing to hint that the Empire’s surrender will follow a certain explosion in Hiroshima. I’d recommend this to both Turtledove fans and alternate history readers in general: it redeemed Give Me Back my Legions! for me.

———————————-
I picked this up from the library a few weeks back, not because I expressly wanted to read it but because I didn’t want to return from the library empty-handed. Purchasing and beginning to play Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault rekindled my interest given that its first level forces the player to survive the chaos of Pearl Harbor. I’d share a screenshot, but I haven’t been able to take one that gives the full scope. Here are a few, though:
– Seeing the first wave of Zeros buzz Pearl Harbor, after which point I was forced to run across the base hiding from their strafing runs.
– Using the deck guns of a PT boat to shoot (and miss by a large margin) Zeros while enroute to my post aboard the USS Arizona. (Yeah, that bodes well.)
– Sailing down battleship row, which is quite an experience given the bombers, strafing runs, and ships that are falling down around me. 
– Shooting at more planes while trying to find a ship that isn’t destroyed; the Arizona perished before my eyes.
– And aboard the West Virginia,  defending it from the second wave of fighters after jumping aboard ship, saving it from sinking, waving an axe around, saving soldiers from dying, and nearly dying myself of smoke inhalation. The ship was morbidly detailed.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Give Me Back My Legions!

Posted on August 9, 2010 by smellincoffee

Give Me Back my Legions!
© 2009 Harry Turtledove
320 pages

Give Me Back My Legions! is a piece of historical fiction by Harry Turtledove, detailing the why and how of Rome’s savage defeat at the hands of German tribesmen in the Teutoburg Forest. I read it primarily for the Roman setting. While a mildly entertaining and quick read, the book is the weakest Turtledove I’ve yet read.

Give Me Back My Legions is limited in scope, following two main characters through three years of Roman history. Both are historical and less developed than Turtledove’s usual personalities. The first, Governor Varus of Rome, has been assigned to hasten Germany’s conversion into a Roman province. He earned this difficult task not through his experience and skill as a military commander, but because Augustus intends to invest the area with a tenth of Rome’s military and wants someone trustworthy to oversee them. Varus’ foe is Arminius, a German soldier in the Roman auxiliaries secretly devoted to Rome’s defeat. A citizen of the Empire after twenty years of service, Arminius used that time to study Roman military doctrine and tactics.. He intends to use that knowledge to defeat Rome on the battlefield: while German soldiers are superior in individual combat,  they are powerless against formations of highly trained and disicplined Roman legionnaires.  Varus and Arminius meet when Arminius’ father-in-law levies charges against him. Varus decides for Arminus after establishing a rapport with the young German, resulting in a cordial friendship that Arminius uses to undermine Varus and lead him into a trap. Although Varus is warned of Arminius’ treasonous intentions by his new friend’s father-in-law, he ignores the warnings — thinking them to be based on personal animosity. Such is Turtledove’s path leading into the Teutoburg Forest.

Give Me Back my Legions has Turtledove’s usual weaknesses, but none of his typical strengths. There’s no mystery as to what will happen: the reader knows from the outset that Rome will be defeated by the Germans, and the obvious means of their demise is established early on. Dialog is atypically stilted and wooden at times, especially Arminius’. This is unfortunate given that the book is essentially two hundred and fifty pages of dialog,  leaving the rest for  the battle, its aftermath, and Augustus feeling sorry for himself. The battle starts late and is over fairly quickly — as ambushes tend to be. Give Me Back my Legions just isn’t much of a story. I don’t miss the time I spent reading it, but I can’t reccommend it either.

Posted in historical fiction, Reviews | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment