Tag: historical

Travels of Marco Polo

gr4c5Leave a comment

Polo, Marco. Travels of Marco Polo. Edited by Morris Rossabi. Sterling Signature, 2012.

Reason read: Marco Polo died in the month of January. Read in his memory.

Travels of the World or The Description of the World as it is known in Europe, details Marco Polo’s 1271 journey from Venice to China and back again. through Jerusalem, Armenia, the Gobi Desert, around the Sumatran coast and India and the Black Sea and through Constantinople. The sad thing is that Polo’s original work did not survive time. His exact words are lost forever. These days, more than one hundred versions of Travels of Marco Polo exist. Each version altered the details of the original and like a game of telephone, it is hard to tell what is true to Polo’s narrative and what has been embellished or exaggerated beyond recognition. The details are fuzzy and key figures and geography are confused. Nevertheless, the world owes a debt of gratitude towards fellow prisoner Rusticello da Pisa for collaborating with Polo to document the traveler’s exploits in the first place. There is no debating its influence. It is rumored that Christopher Columbus and Samuel Taylor Coleridge both were inspired by the travels of Marco Polo.
If you are going to pick up any version of Travels of Marco Polo, make sure you consider the version translated by Henry Yule (1971) and revised by Henri Cordier (1903) with the Morris Rossabi introduction and afterword. The maps by Karl Ryavec and Tim Collins are beautiful. You just have to get passed the “you must know” refrain that is common throughout the text.

As an aside: the more things change, the more they stay the same. In 1271 Marco Polo was given “Golden Tablets of Authority” which secured passage through a king’s dominions – a passport of sorts.

Favorite line, “But why should I make a long story out of it?” (p 245).

Author fact: Marco Polo was a mere seventeen years old when his father and uncle decided to take him on their next adventure.

Book trivia: Travels of Marco Polo is also known as Description of the World.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “China: the Middle Kingdom” (p 60). Interestingly enough, Pearl indexes the British version while I read the American version.

System of the World

gr4c5Leave a comment

Stephenson, Neal. System of the World: Vol III of the Baroque Cycle. HarperCollins, 2004.

Reason read: to finish the series started in honor of Stephenson’s birth month in October.

The System of the World can be called a historical novel. It is epistolary in nature, satirical, and a roman flueve all in one. Before we dig into the plot, a little book trivia. Stephenson was nice enough to remind us of the story thus far (from Quicksilver and The Confusion).
Back to the plot: We begin with Book Six: Solomon’s Gold. Daniel Waterhouse, founder of the institute we know today as MIT, has been sent back to London to resolve a feud between Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton. The two brainiacs are squabbling over the invention of calculus. To utter anything about calculus, much less pinpoint who invented it, is to commit a grand faux pas of epic proportions. Jack Shaftoe is back as Jack the Coiner. Historically, the Whigs and Tories are about to face off. The irreconcilable dispute between science and religion rages (very reminiscent of “Inherit the Wind” by Lawrence and Lee). There are moments of sly humor that you might miss if you are not careful. My favorite: one of Mr. Threader’s spiels is the equivalent of the legal fine print on a contract.

Line I liked, “Daniel felt something very strange was happening to his face: he was smiling” (p 165).

Author fact: not to stereotype bald heads and beards but pictures of Stephenson on the internet make me think he would make a great bad guy in an action film.

Book trivia: System of the World bears the same title as a book of Isaac Newton’s. Another piece of trivia: System of the World won a Locus Award.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Neal Stephenson: Too Good To Miss” (p 214).

Empire Express

gr4c5Leave a comment

Bain, David Howard. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. Penguin, 2000.

Reason read: November is Train Month.

Bain used an extraordinary list of sources for his epic history of the birth of the transcontinental railroad. Everything from autobiographies, essays, letters, biographies, trial transcripts, historical pamphlets, pioneer atlases, private papers, railroad reports, manuscripts, government documents, and periodicals…just to name a few sources. Not quite doorstop heft, Empire Express is an impressive true life, detail-dense, historical adventure, just shy of 800 pages. It covers thirty years of savvy entrepreneurship and brilliant engineering. He describes how Robert Mills proposed something resembling a steam train in 1819 while Asa Whitney was a firm believer in the 2,400 mile railway. The end of the Civil War brought a hunger to connect the East with the wild western plains. The Rocky Mountains proved to be a formidable obstacle so military topographical engineers sent out expeditions to solve the problem. These were the days of gold rush frenzies. By 1842 imaginations fused with innovation and the iron rails began to span the country. Bain included details of a buffalo hunt gone awry and white men wanting to witness a fight between “the hostiles” as if it is was a farcical Broadway musical. [Sometimes history is just ridiculous.] There was even a first hand description of a scalping. [As an aside, who in their right mind would tan a scalp and then put it on display in the public library in the children’s section?]

Author fact: Bain is from my home away from home state of New Jersey.

Book trivia: the series of black and white photographs in Empire Express are as beautiful as they are awe inspiring.

Setlist: “Waiting for the Wagon”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Riding the Rails: Railroad History” (p 200). Also included in More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Beckoning Road” (p 19). I would argue that this book does not belong in this section at all.

Confusion

gr4c5Leave a comment

Stephenson, Neal. The Confusion. Harper Perennial, 2005.

Read read: to continue the series started in October in honor of Stephenson’s birth month.

The Baroque series continues. I suppose we should be grateful that Stephenson did not want to confuse us too much with two tales running back to back. The decision to synchronize Juncto and Bonanza keeps the reader firmly planted in the correct timeframe. The year is 1689 and Jack Shaftoe is longing for escape from a slave ship. The King of the Vagabonds a.k.a. Half-Cocked Jack always has a plan that does not disappoint. Full of adventure (and misadventure), Jack’s scheming will take him around the world to places like Egypt, India, Japan, Algiers, and Mexico. Meanwhile in Europe, the Countess de la Zeur (Eliza) is desperately trying to get back her stolen fortune. Newton and Liebniz are up to their usual tricks.
All in all, The Confusion is an age old-tale of being lured into a trap for love and money. When will we ever learn?

Quote to quote, “The plan does not allow for finding gold where we expected silver” (p 357).

Author fact: there are a few interviews with Stephenson out there in which he explains the writing process for the Baroque series.

Book trivia: True to form, The Confusion has plenty of sex, violence and humor to entertain even the most jaded reader.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter obvious called “Neal Stephenson: Too Good To Miss” (p 214).

Pity of War

gr4c5Leave a comment

Ferguson, Niall. The Pity of War: Explaining World War I. Perseus Books, 1999.

Reason read: Armistice Day is November 11th. We have been observing the day since 1918.

Ferguson thinks World War I is not given the respect it deserves. The Civil War and World War II are more widely written about than World War I. His book, The Pity of War, sets out to explain the war in detail by answering ten questions about the war:
1. Why didn’t the Germans win the war?
2. What kept the men fighting through terrible conditions?
3. What made the men finally stop fighting?
4. Who really won the peace?
5. Was World War I inevitable?
6. Why did Germany start the war?
7. Why did Britain get involved?
8. Did the war keep going due to well placed propaganda?
9. Was the war popular on the home front?
10. Why didn’t the British Empire defeat the Central Powers?
In truth, I felt that there was a sort of pissing contest going on about the different wars: which one lost the most men, which country financed which war more, how bloody was each battle…needless to say, they were all pretty horrible.
The table of International Alignments from 1815 to 1917 was pretty helpful. It is hard to believe that in the beginning there was Anglo-German cooperation surrounding finance. Ferguson describes the moments leading up to war minute by minute. Britain went to war at 11pm on August 14th, 1914. Can we learn from history? Few soldiers knew why they were fighting. they blames their involvement solely on the assassination of the Archduke and his wife. Here are other influences, the brilliant marketing of the Parlimentary Recruiting Committee: speeches, letters, posters, leaflets, surging military bands, and news articles. Psychological pressures of wives wanting brave husbands, the peer pressure of friends, the economy, national pride, ignorance of war, and sheer impulse to “try it.” Ferguson goes on to examine why soldiers stayed in the war even though it was sheer hell. He questions the positive effects of war and the adittance that some soldiers actually enjoyed the fight.
Ferguson’s Pity of War is chock full of detailed statistics like food consumption and the fact that Hitler did not approve of holiday cease-fire truces, such as Christmas Day.

Does an arms race accelerate the likelihood of war?
As an aside, Ferguson made me laugh with his tongue-in-cheek comment about George Bernard Shaw being “cranky.”
As another aside, I believe every man made decision is exactly that, man made. War. Peace. Debt. Excess. Behind it all is a person or a group of people. We have the power to change every wrong decision. When we say something is caught up in red tape, we are not talking about a machine denying us. We are talking about people denying people. If something is complicated it is because people, human beings, want it that way.

Author fact: Ferguson’s grandfather served in the Second Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders. That explains his passion for World War I.

Book trivia: Pity of War contains black and white photographs of WWI images. Some of the photos are from the private collections of soldiers.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “World War I Nonfiction” (p 251).

Yiddish Policemen’s Union

gr4c5Leave a comment

Chabon, Michael. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Narrated by Peter Riegert. Audible Productions, 2016.

Reason read: November is Imagination month. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union takes us to an alternate history which is quite imaginative.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union takes place in an alternate history when the Germans do not surrender the Second Great War for another four years past reality and President Kennedy is not assassinated from the grassy knoll. In this alternate history Kennedy ends up marrying Marilyn Monroe (of course he does). Sitka, Alaska is the site of a federally mandated safe refugee location for European Jews. The area was created at the height of World War II and sixty years later, the safe haven still exists. Only, now Alaska wants their territory back. The plot is great, but the characters of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union are what makes the novel hum. Chabon’s characters exude personality. To name a few: Meyer Landsman, the main protagonist, was a character I loved. This flawed policeman whose life is a mess cannot let go of one particular cold case, the murder of a drug addled chess prodigy and supposed messiah. Landsman is supervised by his ex-wife, Bina and she has ordered the force to abandon all cold cases now that the safe haven for refugees is being dismantled. Berko Shemets, his partner is half Jewish, half Tlingit and all intimidation.

As an aside, listen to the audio version narrated by Peter Riegert. Additionally, there is an interview with Michael Chabon that is not to be missed.

Author fact: Michael Chabon is also a screenwriter.

Book trivia: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union won a Hugo Award in 2008 and a Locus Award that same year.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Travel to Imaginary Places” (p 236).

Quicksilver

gr4c5Leave a comment

Stephenson, Neal. Quicksilver. Perennial, 2003.

Reason read: Neal Stephenson celebrates a birthday in October. Read in his honor.

The timeframe is 1660 – 1688 and Europe is transforming itself into a culture of scientific thinkers. Alchemy and imagination. Burgeoning financial complexities and modernized social developments abound. [Side note: the experiments on dogs was really hard to read. And I’m not a dog person.] Quicksilver follows real-life historical figures in real-life events. The glint in a crow’s eye. The cough of a cholera-infected child. Fine grains of dirt that cling to a man’s boots as he strides across a courtyard. The tremble of a drop of water as it rolls down a soot-covered windowpane. The hair of a rat as it scurries under a table. The details of Quicksilver are even finer than this; an overabundance of details. I hope you stub your toes on the sly humor that pops up in between the verbose narrative.
Additional facts about Quicksilver: it is exactly one third of the Baroque Cycle, Stephenson’s trilogy. Quicksilver in and of itself is in three separate parts. The second section follows the adventures of Jack Shaftoe. The third involves a slave who ties the characters of the first two sections together. As an aside, Eliza’s story had me scratching my head. I felt that Stephenson had more to say about her than he was letting on. The writing of Cryptonomicon and the reading about Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz inspired Stephenson to write Quicksilver.

Author fact: Stephenson wrote Quicksilver, all 930 plus pages of it, by longhand.

Book trivia: This might be a no-brainer for some, but read Peter Ackroyd’s London: the Biography before Quicksilver. Certain historical events and characters will come into sharper focus when you meet up with them in Quicksilver. For example, I enjoyed reading about the fictional account of the Great Fire of 1666 from Ackroyd’s storytelling perspective.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Neal Stephenson: Too Good To Miss” (p 214).

Common to This Country

gr4c5Leave a comment

Munger, Susan H. Common to This Country: Botanical Discoveries of Lewis and Clark. Illustrations by Charlotte Staub Thomas. Artisan, 2003.

Reason read: August is Friendship month. Read in honor of Lewis and Clark’s relationship.

Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, an exploring match made in heaven. Lewis’s specialty was botany and Clark was an expert at creating topography maps. Together, they spent two and a half years traveling the country from the Louisiana Purchase to the Pacific Ocean in search of a waterway passage. Along the way, they were tasked with collecting, preserving and recording thousands of artifacts for President Thomas Jefferson. With the help of Sacagawea and varying native tribes, the members of the Corps of Discovery made their way over hundred of miles of prairies, mountains, cataloging and describing every rock, bird, animal, flora and fauna along the way.
Munger had a diplomatic way of describing conflict with certain Native American tribes. She called their relationship “edgy.”
In addition to sharing parts of Lewis and Clark’s journals and interesting facts about each plant, Munger shares if the particular plant can be purchased in a garden center.

Here are the flowers Munger highlighted in Common to This Country:

  • Osage Orange – supposedly this plant is still growing on the University of Virginia campus. It is said to be the direct descendant of the cutting sent by Lewis.
  • Calliopsis – used as a dye or tea. I want to see if I can grow this in my garden.
  • Bur Oak – fire, drought, and pollution resistant.
  • Narrow Leaf Coneflower – used to “cure” the bite of a mad dog or rattlesnake.
  • Lewis’s Prairie Flax – each bloom only lasts one day
  • Prickly Pear – probably my favorite from the southwest.
  • Western Serviceberry
  • Snowberry – planted on the banks to hold soil in place and prevent erosion.
  • Angelica – used for respiratory ailments and as a sweetener.
  • Camas – used the root to make bread.
  • Bearberry
  • Oregon Grape Holly
  • Lewis’s Syringa – used to make needles or combs.
  • Glacier Lily – the bulb, leaves, flowers and seed pods are all edible.
  • Ragged Robin – beautiful and uniquely shaped flowers.
  • Silky Lupine – probably my favorite of the bunch highlighted since they remind me of the lupine we have at home.
  • Old Man’s Whiskers – a unique looking flower that resembles an old or wisps of smoke.
  • Shrubby Penstemon – related to the Indian Paintbrush.
  • Monkeyflower – it needs a “cool situation” in order to thrive.
  • Bearberry Honeysuckle – not edible
  • Gumbo Evening Primrose
  • Bear Grass – a very beautiful plant that can lapse for ten years between blooms.
  • Ponderosa Pine – Indians ate the inner bark, seeds and rosin.
  • Bitterroot – the state flower of Montana.
  • Wood Lily – the official flower in the emblem for the Province of Saskatchewan.

As an aside, I was thrilled to learn of the pen pal relationship of Bartram and Collinson. while they never met, the exchanged letters for thirty-five years. I find that remarkable.

Book trivia: the map to plot Lewis & Clark’s journey is stunning. Common to This Country was dedicated to “The Tennis Group” whoever they are.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Lewis and Clark: Adventurers Extraordinaire” (p 136).

Colony

gr4c5Leave a comment

Tayman, John. The Colony: the Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai. Scribner, 2006

Reason read: Hawaii became a state in August. Read to celebrate the history.

It does not seem possible that our government could rule that having leprosy would be a criminal offence. In 1866, that same government also believed these assumptions: that exile was the best means of controlling leprosy, that anyone in exile was an extreme contagion and finally, that everyone suffering from a leprosy diagnosis was never, ever, going to get better: to have leprosy was to have a death sentence. [As an aside, I guess if you can have a high ranking official tell you that drinking bleach can cure Covid-19 in 2020, we could have a government with such backward beliefs about Hansen’s disease in 1866.] The language of government criminality goes even further by calling a person with an unconfirmed case of leprosy a suspect and using bounty hunters to round up these “suspects.” Even a temporary release from the confines of the colony was called “parole.” This what fear can do. People were so frightened of the disease that they made hasty decisions to exile people too quickly without setting up proper accommodations. Seven years after the colony was first started, it still lacked running water, proper housing, and basic medical supplies.
The leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai started on January 8th, 1866 with a dozen individuals all thought to be suffering from what was then known as leprosy. With each chapter, the colony grows in numbers until the cures and treatment of science start to win and numbers dwindle.
Tayman was careful to stress that in addition to the illnesses, Molokai was an inhospitable place in and of itself. Landing on the island’s rocky shore was a extreme danger, crops constantly failed due to water shortages and poor soil conditions. Living quarters were made out of any material people could find and were unsanitary. Mankind’s presence didn’t make life any easier. White man’s diseases: smallpox, syphilis, gonorrhea, and influenza all plagued the islands of Hawaii throughout history. Morale within the leper community was fraught with turmoil and confusion. Besides being in pain from debilitating diseases and missing their families, patients brought their grudges and prejudices to Molokai. If all that was not bad enough, political ambitions led certain officials to wildly exaggerate the success of the experiments in the fight to cure leprosy.
My only disappointment in The Colony is actually a complaint about Tayman. Makia Malo and Olivia Breitha changed their minds about being included in The Colony. They asked to be left out of the book and Tayman not only left in their stories, he also included photographs of them. If he wasn’t going to respect their wishes, at the very least, he could have changed their names and removed the photographs from the finished publication. Having said all that, I could not help but be inspired by Olivia and Makia’s spirits. Their courage and grace astounded me.

The Colony left me thinking about the psychology of cordoning off the undesirables, the dangerous. Our country has a history of sending people somewhere else, out of the public eye. The Japanese during the war; Jews in Europe, American Indians, Molokai. What we do not understand or trust, we banish.

As an aside, there is a 1999 documentary about Father Damien and his work on Molokai and Mark Twain based his Connecticut Yankee on William Ragsdale. There is also a documentary called “Olivia & Tim: Very Much Alive” which I want to see.

Playlist: “The Star-Spangled Banner”, “Home Sweet Home” (probably not the Motley Crue version), and “My Little Grass Shack in Kealakekna”.

Author fact: while Tayman wrote more books, I am only reading The Colony for the Challenge.

Book trivia: This might be a first for me, but the notes in The Colony included photographs that Tayman mentions in the text. No photographs are in the actual text. For the purists – Tayman didn’t change a single name in The Colony.
As an aside, the cover photograph by Todd Gipstein is stunning.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the very simple chapter called “Hawaii” (p 93). However, the book is misplaced. Pearl included it in fiction because of Father Damien mentioned in another book.

What Just Happened

gr4c5Leave a comment

Gleick, James. What Just Happened?: a Chronicle from the Information Frontier. Pantheon Books, 2002.

Reason read: Gleick celebrates a birthday in August. Read in his honor.

Gleick needs a time machine. He wants his reader to put him or herself back in the 1990s as much as possible when reading What Just Happened. We need to remember the internet as it was just starting out. Portable phones. Pagers. ATMs. The essays cover bugs in Microsoft (essays written in August 1992 and again in June of 1997), the transformation of cellphone communication, the question of caller ID and ethics, the Y2K Crisis (for which Gleick apologizes for reporting impending doom four years prior), the idea of anonymous spending is only possible with cash (Think about it. No other form of money is without identifiers of some sort.), humorous password creations – all with a snarky tone that is just delightful.
Gleick’s opinion of internet pornography and its future is laughable. My favorite section was when Gleick unpacked an alert sent by MSN, pointing out vague language, half truths, cloudy communication, deliberate mis-directions, down playing failures, all with skillful ambiguity and clever concealment of the truth. Humor aside, Gleick makes you think about how far we have come.

Quotes to quote, “We have to learn the odd skill of speaking freely to someone who won’t hear us until later” (p 38). I wish I could teach my mother that skill. She will talk and talk on someone’s answering machine until she is cut off.

Author fact: At the time of publication, Gleick lived in the Hudson Valley. I wonder if Natalie Merchant was a neighbor?

Book trivia: What Just Happened isn’t Gleick’s only book. I am reading Chaos and Faster for the Challenge.

Playlist: “Stop in the Name of Love”, Supremes, Dolly Parton, Nat King Cole, “Naughty Angeline”, Crash Test Dummies, T-Bone Walker, Jim Fyhrie, 10,000 Maniacs (!), “Hail to the Chief”, Beastie Boys, Adiemus, Frank Sinatra, Harvey Danger, Dave Matthews Band, the Beatles, Scott Joplin, Mozart, and Madonna.

Nancy said: Pearl said What Just Happened is one of Gleick’s more accessible books. I agree 100%.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Books (for the Interested But Apprehensive Layperson)” (p 211).

Dead Man’s Walk

gr4c5Leave a comment

McMurtry, Larry. Dead Man’s Walk. Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Reason read: McMurtry celebrates a birthday in June. Read in his honor.

As a prequel to Lonesome Dove, this is the reader’s first introduction to Call and Gus and their budding friendship. Together they join an expedition from Texas to New Mexico. They, along with 200 other men, cross a landscape fraught with danger at every turn. Apache and Comanche natives that could steal a captain’s horse or thirty without a sound; slit your throat without disturbing a single sleeping comrade. Mexican armies trying to defend “their land” from the Texans. Hunger and thirst at every mile. There are so many ways to die: falling over a cliff, drowning in a river, bleeding to death as a result of a scalping or throat cutting, arrow or lance through the heart, hanging, burning, whipping, suicide, starvation, freezing, exhaustion, thirst, firing squad, crushed by a horse, snake bite, spider bite, suicide, being run down by a buffalo, or gored by a bear. Things turn from bad to worse when the Rangers are captured and forced into a dead man’s walk across the desert in leg irons. Be forewarned – only a few will survive.
Please keep in mind, Dead Man’s Walk was published in 1995 and takes place years before one needed to be politically correct. In the spirit of authenticity of the era, one will have to endure racism and sexism on multiple levels. In contrast, McMurtry several times acknowledges native ownership of the land Call and Gus travel.
The opening line of Dead Man’s Walk reminded me of a line from Josh Ritter’s song “Myrna Loy” for she had a wolf pup at her heels and a snow white rabbit huddled in her arms. It wasn’t a 200lb prostitute carrying a snapping turtle by the tail…but close.

Book trivia: Dead Man’s Walk is a prequel to Lonesome Dove. Someone mentioned that if you read Lonesome Dove before Dead Man’s Walk you figure out who survives in Dead Man’s Walk.

Author fact: I am reading seven books by McMurtry.

Setlist: “Barbara Allen”, “Buffalo Gals”, and Verdi’s Nabucco.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Western Fiction” (p 240).

War and Remembrance

gr4c5Leave a comment

Wouk, Herman. War and Remembrance: Vol. 1. Little, Brown and Company, 1978.

Reason read: to continue the series started in honor of Memorial Day in May.

War and Remembrance: Vol 1 covers the Americans at war from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and even though it picks up where Winds of War left off, Wouk assures his reader that War and Remembrance can be read independently of Winds of War. I disagree to a certain degree. In Winds of War we have gotten to know the Henry family very well. You can’t help but get tangled in their lives. There is something about this passionate family! We have followed their adventures in love and war. Torrid affairs and wild ambitions have led each family member through various trials and tribulations. We rejoin Victor as he struggles to understand his feelings for the young and beautiful Pamela while traveling across the globe from the Soviet Union to Manila and Hawaii. His time on the Northampton set my teeth on edge. Natalie and Byron still haven’t rendezvoused on American soil. Natalie is still trapped in Italy with the young son Byron has never seen. Warren and Janice have welcomed a baby into their family, too, but Warren is always away, piloting top secret missions. Rhoda can’t decide between an absent husband and a totally different man, one more than willing to be there in the flesh. Like Winds of War, Wouk will take his reader to intimate places most are unlikely to go, like the belly of a thin-skinned submarine.
Military politics can be a fine line to balance upon. It can have career-ending ramifications to reject a vice admiral’s invitation to tea, for example. Wouk recreates military conversations that are fraught with tension and innuendo. His characters vibrate with drama. War and Remembrance is every bit as exciting as Winds of War.

Confessional: by now you know that I sometimes get hung up on the details. Here is one: Warren and Byron are sitting on the lawn, drinking beer straight from cans. Dad comes out and Warren produces a “frosty glass” for him. To create a “frosty glass” one has to chill the glass, most likely in a freezer. Why would they have such a glass out on the lawn while they are drinking straight from the can?
Second confessional: I knew something was going to happen when Warren’s mission does not go as rehearsed; when they alter the plan from what they practiced. That sense of foreboding was pungent.

Line I liked, “This isn’t the war we trained for, but its sure as hell the war we’ve got” (p 45).

Author fact: Wouk lived to be 103 years old.

Book trivia: War and Remembrance was dedicated to Abraham Isaac Wouk who didn’t make it to his sixth birthday.

Playlist: Bing Crosby, “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, “Boogie Woogie Washer Woman”, “Der Fuchrer’s Face”, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”, “Hut-Sut Song”, “Lili Marlene”, “Reactionary Rag”, “Rozhunkes mit Mandlen”, “Three O’Clock in the Morning”, “Yah Ribon”

Nancy said: Pearl called War and Remembrance good fiction.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “World War II Fiction” (p 252).

Winds of War

gr4c5Leave a comment

Wouk, Herman. Winds of War. Simon & Schuster, 1974.

Reason read: Memorial Day is in May. Read to remember those no longer with us.
Confessional: I read most of this as an ebook. I made a lot of notes and highlighted many passages, but had to return it before I could transfer the information here.

The year is 1939 and Germany busily bullies the world into a clash that would later become the infamous World War II. The advances of Hitler into Poland and eventually England, France, and the Soviet Union indicate a man hellbent on world domination; all the while citing the “Jewish problem” as his justification and motivation. Wouk will take you on a panoramic journey through the intimate details of war. You will have a front row seat in the war room; be a voyeur in the bedroom; sit elbow to elbow in the libraries of world leaders as they speak in hushed tones about counterattacks. With a book this size (Winds of War is over one thousand pages long in paperback format), I wanted to make sure I kept track of all of the different characters. I wasn’t sure who was going to be worth remembering, real or imaginary. At the center is Berlin attaché Victor Henry (“Pug”), his glamorous but bored wife, Rhoda, and their three adult children. Winds of War begins when the parents are relocated with Germany on assignment. The three children, Byron, Warren, and Madeline are scattered across the globe. Pug desperately wants to captain a battleship but being relegated to serve as Naval attaché in Berlin has afforded him the opportunity to see the war fold out firsthand. As he gains the unusual trust of President Roosevelt he travels the world, gaining insight on future enemy tactics. Indeed, many real political powerhouses make an appearance in Winds of War.
A note about Winston Churchill: It is interesting to see how time blunts the sharp edges of an unfavorable reputation.
It is also interesting to see the varying opinions about the start of the war. Byron and his girl, Natalie, didn’t take it seriously until they were strafed in Poland and Natalie began to have troubles getting her Polish uncle out of Italy. Byron’s mother only had superficial societal concerns when Pug couldn’t accompany her to the opera. I mentioned she was the epitome of the bored housewife, didn’t I? She becomes even more cliché as the story progresses.
Separating fact from fiction: Did Hitler really have a remarkable smile?

Wouk certainly loved his women characters. As an aside, have you ever noticed that a woman’s breasts can be described with abandon (dressed or undressed), but barely (pun intended) anyone writes about the size of a man’s privates? Wouk is no different in the way he romanticizes the female body. Here are the breasts of Wouk: creamy breasts, pretty bosom, ample bosom,

Quotes to quote, “So they stood together, watching the Luftwaffe start its effort to bomb London to its knees. It was the seventh of September” (p 422).

Author fact: Wouk won a Pulitzer for The Caine Mutiny.

Book trivia: Winds of War has been made into a mini series starring Ali MacGraw and Robert Mitchum. Of course I haven’t seen it. Confessional: I confuse Ali MacGraw with Ali Sheedy.

Playlist: “The Star Spangled Banner”, Chopin, “Star Dust”, Liszt, “Deutschland Uber Alles”, “Three O’clock in the Morning”, “Horst Wessel Lied”, “Bell Bottom Trousers”, “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”, “Auld Lang Syne”, “This Can’t Be Love”, Bach, Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart, “There Will Always Be an England”, and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”.

Nancy said: Pearl called Winds of War good fiction.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “World War II Fiction” (p 252).

Giants in the Earth

gr4c5Leave a comment

Rolvaag, O.E. Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie. Translated by Lincoln Colcord. Harper & Brothers, 1927.

Reason read: a celebration of spring and Minnesota became a state in May.

Volume One of Giants in the Earth was published in Norway in 1924. The second volume was published a year later. Vern Lewis Parrington (editor) wrote an introduction. Rolvaag wrote the foreword. Forty-six pages later we begin the story…Per Hansa is moving his family from Minnesota to the the Great Plains of the Dakota Territory in the hopes of putting down roots.
A lot of comments have been made about Beret and her mental illness. Her uncontrolled fear of the Midwest was justified. She was in a strange land without the comfort of true community. There was an underlying fear of Indians – fear and fascination in equal measure. I am reminded of the 10,000 Maniacs’ song, “Gold Rush Brides” written by Natalie Merchant. The lines, “The land was free and the prices was right”, and “Who were the homestead wives? Who were the gold rush brides? Does anybody know?…Accounts of madness, childbirth, loneliness, and grief” are particularly poignant. When Beret uncovers an evil secret wrongdoing her husband committed she starts to question their entire relationship. She fears that evil everywhere and her husband seems oblivious to her growing concerns. No one in the community notices her distress until it is beyond breaking. They even make fun of her nonsense. Were they distracted by opportunity? Were they preoccupied with adversities such as the strain of long, harsh winters and plagues of locusts in the summers? Did they want to slough off their old world identities identities in the new world by choosing new names? The question becomes how does one honor traditions of Norway while forging a new existence in America?

Quote to quote, “But it was easier to warm his body than thaw his soul” (p 277).

Author fact: Rolvaag was born in 1876 on the island of Donna almost in the Arctic Circle.

Book trivia: The title comes from a Bible quote.

Nancy said: Pearl said Giants of the Earth is one of the earliest sagas written about the immigrant experience (More Book Lust p 123).

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Immigrant Experience” (p 123).

Living to Tell the Tale

gr4c5Leave a comment

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Living to Tell the Tale. Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

Reason read: Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in March. Read in his honor.

If you like Gabriel Garcia Marquez as a writer, you are going to love his autobiography. What a different world Gabriel Garcia Marquez lived in. From an early age he was exposed to unheard of violence. Imagine! It was common for men (and women) to swagger around with a revolver in their waistbands. The headless horseman still rides through my dreams. Marquez writes with such honesty and clarity it is if you are standing beside him when he is so poor he cannot pay for a copy of his first published story. He needs to ask a reader if he is done with his copy. Time and time again Marquez pulls back the curtain on some of his childhood secrets. Imagine the embarrassment he felt in boarding school knowing he would talk in his sleep.
Living to Tell the Tale is not only a first installment of a man’s autobiography, but it is also a peek into the mind of a budding writer; tales about Marquez’s mother and how she was his first character and her life, his first plot; the starting of a cultural weekly to combine sports with literature. Crawl inside the mind of this extraordinary writer’s mind and you will find a man who cared deeply for perfection. Example: the difference between Madrilenian and Caribbean dialects can alter the text’s meaning considerably. Marquez had copies of such an incorrect edit destroyed.
Living to Tell the Tale only takes the reader up to Marquez’s life in the 1950s when he proposes to his wife, but there are glimpses into his future such as in 1962 when In Evil Hour won a novel competition and he celebrated the birth of his second son.

Questions I wanted to ask – did Marquez grow up to be sexist because, in his culture, women were not allowed in offices and workshops? Or because he learned about sex in an unconventional way (according to him)?

One of the most beautiful phrases in Living to Tell the Tale was when Marquez was building a character in one of his novels. He used a lover from his past saying, “I rescued her from my memory…” (p 234). Here is another phrase I loved, “…I took off the strait jacket of my shyness” (p 337).

Author fact: Marquez was misdiagnosed as having pneumonia when it was actually lymphatic cancer. He later died of pneumonia.

Book trivia: Living to Tell the Tale was supposed to be the first in a three-volume set. the rest of the story never got published.

Setlist: “After the Ball is Over”, “Anapola”, Angel Maria Camacho y Cano, Bach, “Hard Days Night” by the Beatles, Beethoven, Bela Bartok’s “The Autumn of the Patriarch”, Brahms, Carlos Gardel’s “Cuesta abajo”, Chopin, Corelli, Daniel Santos, “El cisne”, Haydn, Joaquin Vega, Maurico Anaias, Migelito Valdes, Mozart, Preludes of Debussy, Schoenberg, Sonora Matancera, Tona lea Negra, Vivaldi, and “When the Ball is Over”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Hail, Columbia!” (p 90).