Books!

[ok doser]

some recent reads - if you have any familiarity with them, chime in


last night:

Based on two decades of reporting, NBC’s chief foreign correspondent’s riveting story of the Middle East revolutions, the Arab Spring, war, and terrorism seen up-close—sometimes dangerously so. When he was just twenty-three, a recent graduate of Stanford University, Richard Engel set off to Cairo with $2,000 and dreams of being a reporter. Shortly thereafter he was working freelance for Arab news sources and got a call that a busload of Italian tourists were massacred at a Cairo museum. This is his first view of the carnage these years would pile on. Over two decades Engel has been under fire, blown out of hotel beds, taken hostage. He has watched Mubarak and Morsi in Egypt arrested and condemned, reported from Jerusalem, been through the Lebanese war, covered the whole shooting match in Iraq, interviewed Libyan rebels who toppled Gaddafi, reported from Syria as Al-Qaeda stepped in, was kidnapped in the Syrian crosscurrents of fighting. He goes into Afghanistan with the Taliban and to Iraq with ISIS. In the page-turning And Then All Hell Broke Loose, he shares his adventure tale. Engel takes chances, though not reckless ones, keeps a level head and a sense of humor, as well as a grasp of history in the making. Reporting as NBC’s Chief-Foreign Correspondent, he reveals his unparalleled access to the major figures, the gritty soldiers, and the helpless victims in the Middle East during this watershed time. We can experience the unforgettable suffering and despair of the local populations. Engel’s vivid description is intimate and personal. Importantly, it is a succinct and authoritative account of the ever-changing currents in that dangerous land.

a truly frightening look at what ISIS is and how impossible it is going to be to stop - the scariest factoid that grabbed me last night was that, in capturing Mosul, they got $150 million from the banks, in untraceable funds

a quick read as well - flows well - highly recommended :thumb:

 

[ok doser]

struggling through:

In SPQR, an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome "with passion and without technical jargon" and demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean" (Wall Street Journal). Hailed by critics as animating "the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life" (Economist) in a way that makes "your hair stand on end" (Christian Science Monitor) and spanning nearly a thousand years of history, this "highly informative, highly readable" (Dallas Morning News) work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries. With its nuanced attention to class, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, SPQR will to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.

definitely worth the read, but she needs to reign in the "impossible to know much about early rome" caveats

 

[ok doser]

highly recommend - planning to get this for my library:

Once vast swathes of the globe were coloured imperial red and Britannia ruled not just the waves, but the prairies of America, the plains of Asia, the jungles of Africa and the deserts of Arabia. Just how did a small, rainy island in the North Atlantic achieve all this? And why did the empire on which the sun literally never set finally decline and fall? Niall Ferguson's acclaimed Empire brilliantly unfolds the imperial story in all its splendours and its miseries, showing how a gang of buccaneers and gold-diggers planted the seed of the biggest empire in all history - and set the world on the road to modernity. "The most brilliant British historian of his generation...Ferguson examines the roles of "pirates, planters, missionaries, mandarins, bankers and bankrupts" in the creation of history's largest empire...he writes with splendid panache...and a seemingly effortless, debonair wit." (Andrew Roberts). "Dazzling...wonderfully readable." (New York Review of Books). "A remarkably readable precise of the whole British imperial story - triumphs, deceits, decencies, kindnesses, cruelties and all." (Jan Morris). "Empire is a pleasure to read and brims with insights and intelligence." (Sunday Times).

 

[ok doser]

First time through this:

https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Generation-Tom-Brokaw/dp/0812975294

definite recommend :thumb:

 

[ok doser]

as is this:

Bluff Island Rescue Service: a memoir Paperback – August 31, 2010 The year before she was born, Stephanie Hubbard's father - a Madison Avenue magazine writer - bought Bluff Island, an uninhabited forty acre island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. Stephanie grew up on this island, a true believer in her father's idealized version of splendid isolation. But what began as a family adventure became a daughter's lifelong struggle to live a life worthy of her father, and ultimately to create a life worthy of herself. With a cinematic eye, Stephanie Hubbard recalls the memorable scenes that make up her life story - from the birth of her younger brother trough the birth of her son a few years ago - and the result is something transformative. https://www.amazon.com/Bluff-Island-Rescue-Service-memoir/dp/1453716807

a quirky, poignant memoir of a difficult childhood and youth and the influences of father and family

annabananahead would enjoy this book

 

[theophilus]

What up Doser?

No romance novels?

 

[ok doser]

What up Doser?

No romance novels?

nah - never have

taking a break from history for a while, can't find anything I want to sink my teeth into


read the full Jack Reacher series while I was laid up this summer

 

[Spitfire]

Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War basically blames World War 1 on Great Britain's imperial machinations, while somewhat bafflingly using the term "oddballs" to describe advocates for war in other countries at the time (I think there's a lot of evidence that this was not true at all). He also goes into some interesting discussion that I've never seen much of anywhere else of the ultimately overruled people in the UK who were sympathetic toward Germany before the beginning of the war (who argued that the German people were "highly civilized, but surrounded by hostile forces" and ought to be forgiven for a little overt militarism). You have to wonder, reading the book, if Ferguson himself would have been one of those.

In any case, I can't imagine he casts the empire's legacy in a positive light in any of his other works.

 

[Buzzword]

Second reading:

A brilliant, dramatic exploration of the cultural conditions which spawned the phenomenon of the American comic book superhero, seen through the eyes of two young Jewish boys, one a Brooklyn native, the other a recent escapee of the Prague Reichsprotektorat.

 

[Crucible]

I've been eyeing this beauty for a while now, always wanting an iconic copy of the book. It's $80 though, and I'm cheap :AMR:

 

[annabenedetti]

A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin. I was skimming through books in the book store, and this collection of short stories grabbed me from the first page. I was entranced... this woman was a wizard of wordsmithing. She ought to be better known than she is, she's a marvel. Because I had to do so much reading for school this semester, I didn't have the energy for recreational reading and this book was perfect - I read it one story at a time over several months, and now that I'm finished I'm going to start again from the beginning - one story at a time.

Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zin, founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and Director of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. I'm deep into this one and it's making a big difference in my life, in helping me learn to accept that "sometimes things must unfold in their own time" (and to be at peace about it), using the seven pillars of mindfulness which are: non-judging, patience, a beginner's mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance, and letting go.

 

[ok doser]

Stubborn for Liberty: The Dutch in New York (A New York State study) Published for the New York State American Revolution Bicentennial Commission: First Edition, 1975. "After surveying the culture of the Golden Age of the Netherlands, the author relates how enterprising Dutchmen explored the Hudson Valley, exploited its wealth in furs, and established permanent settlements of traders and farmers. For more than three centuries they have maintained a cultural tradition which is by no means extinct. But for many Americans 'the Dutch' are the imaginative characters created by Washington Irving and other authors. In recent times, research into primary sources have begun to recover the authentic Dutch tradition in American.

An interesting read, if parochial and academic. Makes me want to watch Johnny Depp's Sleepy Hollow again

 

[ok doser]

Started this one last night, along with a half dozen others :chuckle:

the author looks vaguely familiar :think:

 

[ok doser]

The Making of a Racist A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade Charles B. Dew In this powerful memoir, Charles Dew, one of America’s most respected historians of the South--and particularly its history of slavery--turns the focus on his own life, which began not in the halls of enlightenment but in a society unequivocally committed to segregation. Dew re-creates the midcentury American South of his childhood--in many respects a boy’s paradise, but one stained by Lost Cause revisionism and, worse, by the full brunt of Jim Crow. Through entertainments and "educational" books that belittled African Americans, as well as the living examples of his own family, Dew was indoctrinated in a white supremacy that, at best, was condescendingly paternalistic and, at worst, brutally intolerant. The fear that southern culture, and the "hallowed white male brotherhood," could come undone through the slightest flexibility in the color line gave the Jim Crow mindset its distinctly unyielding quality. Dew recalls his father, in most regards a decent man, becoming livid over a black tradesman daring to use the front, and not the back, door. The second half of the book shows how this former Confederate youth and descendant of Thomas Roderick Dew, one of slavery’s most passionate apologists, went on to reject his racist upbringing and become a scholar of the South and its deeply conflicted history. The centerpiece of Dew’s story is his sobering discovery of a price circular from 1860--an itemized list of humans up for sale. Contemplating this document becomes Dew’s first step in an exploration of antebellum Richmond’s slave trade that investigates the terrible--but, to its white participants, unremarkable--inhumanity inherent in the institution. Dew’s wish with this book is to show how the South of his childhood came into being, poisoning the minds even of honorable people, and to answer the question put to him by Illinois Browning Culver, the African American woman who devoted decades of her life to serving his family: "Charles, why do the grown-ups put so much hate in the children?" http://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5016

worth the effort (and it is a quick read), but the author is struggling with concepts that are best answered "because man is evil"

 

[ok doser]

The Bad-*** Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts To save precious centuries-old Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians in Timbuktu pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Ocean’s Eleven. In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that had fallen into obscurity. The Bad-*** Librarians of Timbuktu tells the incredible story of how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist and historian from the legendary city of Timbuktu, later became one of the world’s greatest and most brazen smugglers. In 2012, thousands of Al Qaeda militants from northwest Africa seized control of most of Mali, including Timbuktu. They imposed Sharia law, chopped off the hands of accused thieves, stoned to death unmarried couples, and threatened to destroy the great manuscripts. As the militants tightened their control over Timbuktu, Haidara organized a dangerous operation to sneak all 350,000 volumes out of the city to the safety of southern Mali. Over the past twenty years, journalist Joshua Hammer visited Timbuktu numerous times and is uniquely qualified to tell the story of Haidara’s heroic and ultimately successful effort to outwit Al Qaeda and preserve Mali’s—and the world’s—literary patrimony. Hammer explores the city’s manuscript heritage and offers never-before-reported details about the militants’ march into northwest Africa. But above all, The Bad-*** Librarians of Timbuktu is an inspiring account of the victory of art and literature over extremism. https://www.amazon.com/Bad-***-Librarians-Timbuktu-Precious-Manuscripts/dp/1476777403

An interesting story that would benefit from a disciplined re-write. The author struggles between writing a historical novel, an account of a single man's efforts in the modern day, an account of rabid islamic fundamentalism at work and his own role in the story, and the transitions are jarring.

 

[ok doser]

Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-45 On June 22, 1941, before dawn, German tanks and guns began firing across the Russian border. It was the beginning of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, one of the most brutal campaigns in the history of warfare. Four years later, the victorious Red Army has suffered a loss of seven million lives. Alan Clark's incisive analysis succeeds in explaining how a fighting force that in one two-month period lost two million men was nevertheless able to rally to defeat the Wehrmacht. The Barbarossa campaign included some of the greatest episodes in military history: the futile attack on Moscow in the winter of 1941-42, the siege of Stalingrad, the great Russian offensive beginning in 1944 that would lead the Red Army to the historic meeting with the Americans at the Elbe and on to victory in Berlin. https://www.amazon.com/Barbarossa-Russian-German-Conflict-Alan-Clark/dp/0688042686

Published in 1965, a detailed look at hitler's attempt to conquer russia and russia's success in conquering hitler. A challenging book, well worth the effort if you have an interest in history.

 

[ok doser]

I read the 20 Jack Reacher books this summer while I was laid up - some were better than others, but I have no interest in re-reading any and I wasn't sure I'd bother with the new one when I heard it was out.

but.....

burned through it last night (while a wild storm raged outside and kept me up) and was pleasantly surprised

if you like this type of book, you'll like this book :thumb:

 

[ok doser]

My Kind of Country (New York Classics) Paperback – June 1, 1995 by Carl Carmer This work spans 30 years and reaches from Niagara Falls to Montauk Point. It consists of folklore, character sketches, ghost stories and pieces of regional history. Special attention is given to the fate of Native Americans and the erosion of the State's natural beauty.

An interesting compilation of disparate works and my first exposure to the author. I liked it well enough to order a copy for my mother and to order his best-known work through an interlibrary loan.

 

[ok doser]

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 In the much-anticipated follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. Iron Curtain describes how, spurred by Stalin and his secret police, the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. Drawing on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time, Applebaum portrays in chilling detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. As a result the Soviet Bloc became a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in these electrifying pages. https://www.amazon.com/Iron-Curtain-Crushing-Eastern-1944-1956/dp/140009593X

A difficult work, covering a depressing era. the author uses personal experiences and quotes from interviews with survivors of the period. I include an excerpt:

If the first hint of discontent in Berlin came in the form of construction strikes, the beginning of the end of Stalinism in Poland came in the form of a large party. More precisely, it came in the form of the Fifth youth and Students’ Festival of World Peace and Friendship in the summer of 1955. Like its predecessors in Berlin, the Warsaw youth festival was designed to be a vast propaganda exercise, a meeting place for Eastern European communists and their comrades from Western Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. Also like its predecessor in Berlin, it was meant to be carefully planned and orchestrated. Advance propaganda and enthusiastic coverage brought hundreds of thousands of Polish spectators to Warsaw for the five days of the festival. They traveled from all over the country to watch the dancing, the theater, and the other attractions – a Hungarian circus, a puppet show, and an opera were all performed on the first day – as well as sporting contests and economic debates. Yet from the very first day of the events, the crowds in Warsaw were not primarily interested in politics, culture, or even sports. The real attraction was the foreigners. Strolling the streets of the Polish capital for the first time since the war were Arabs in long robes, Africans in native dress, Chinese in Mao jackets, even Italians in striped shirts and French girls in flowered skirts. Maciej Rosalak, a child at the time, remembered the shock: Gray, sad, poorly dressed people living among ruins and the rubble of streets were suddenly replaced by what seemed to be a different species. The newcomers smiled instead of listening to the static on Radio Free Europe like our parents, and they sang instead of whispering. Warsaw children ran among them and collected autographs in special notebooks. An Italian drew us a picture of his country, shaped like a boot, with Sicily and Sardinia alongside; a Chinese man left mysterious symbols; and a beautiful African wrote her exotic name and tousled our hair…

"they sang instead of whispering"


brilliant :thumb:

 

[Jerry Shugart]

This is a great book:

"The Man Who Killed Kennedy--The Case Against LBJ" by Roger Stone with Mike Colapietro.

"Lyndon Baines Johnson was a man of great ambition and enormous greed, both of which, in 1963, would threaten to destroy him. In the end, President Johnson would use power from his personal connections in Texas and from the underworld and from the government to escape an untimely end in politics and to seize even greater power. President Johnson, the thirty-sixth president of the United States, was the driving force behind a conspiracy to murder President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

In The Man Who Killed Kennedy, you will find out how and why he did it.

Political consultant, strategist, and Libertarian Roger Stone has gathered documents and used his firsthand knowledge to construct the ultimate tome to prove that LBJ was not only involved in JFK’s assassination, but was in fact the mastermind.

With 2013 being the fiftieth anniversary of JFK’s assassination, this is the perfect time for The Man Who Killed Kennedy to be available to readers. The research and information in this book is unprecedented, and as Roger Stone lived through it, he’s the perfect person to bring it to everyone’s attention.​

Great read!