Ten World War II Books

Well, ten-ish. Obviously there are hundreds (and hundreds) of WW2 books out there. Mention one and people will mention ten more. As it should be. That's how I ended up with the collection I have, from checking out things I read in interviews or bibliographies. Here's a mix of fiction and nonfiction that I recommend on the topic, in chronological order of publication. 

All non-book-cover-pics from The Atlas of World War Two, Unexplained Mysteries of World War Two, Their War, 1943: The Turning of the Tide, US Naval Institute Calendar 1993,  family archives, and Victory Through Air Power. Here we go.

~

(1947)

I highly recommend James Michener both as an author of engaging reading and as a one-man crash course in any topic he covered. Despite being doggedly of the same political party, his is a different approach to the currently-ascendant Zinn/1619-Project approach re: the ideals and lived reality of these United States. More's the pity for us, but he'll come back around, I'm sure. 

For the moment, is this book better known by musical theater patrons than military history/ war fiction readers? It might be the case. But that just means it can be rediscovered en masses again someday. When that happens, people will find a rather shocking evocation of the war in the South Pacific: the logistics, the personalities, the racism(s), the geography, the jungle, the hardships, the natives, the foreigners *, the hardware, the weather, everything. The non-combat anecdotes, such as island-hopping for booze or the coda with the gravediggers of Guadalcanal, balance the combat sections perfectly. ** 

* I refer here to the Americans. The depictions of the indigenous are colorful but not without the author's biases, something he later wrote on at some length (and with his usual insight).

** If you ever read it, you might want to pick up Michener's Voice of Asia, too, as a sort of immediate-sequel. Not as successful an integration of fiction and nonfiction, but a fascinating look at the war's immediate aftermath throughout Polynesia. 

Even more interesting than this, arguably, are the chapters in Michener's autobiography of his WW2 service. The first chapter concerning the mutiny on the boat and the forged passes should be a movie all on its own. Both books, actually, contain some info I've never seen anywhere else (such as the things NY landlords did during the war, or the added threat of rape from some American servicemen that nurses in the Pacific endured.

~

(1948)

Although Italy was allied with Germany in World War II, the Italian viewpoint on the war often differed sharply from that of the Germans. Malaparte was an eyewitness to the campaigns in Finland, the Ukraine, and Leningrad, and has left behind a moving account of many small incidents in the day-to-day conduct of the war.

D-Day sucks up a lot of air in the room when it comes to most WW2 talk in the West. And the Holocaust. Understandably on both counts, sure, but even beyond D-Day there's often only a handful of events, battles, or personalities that comprise the totality of most people's conception of the conflict. Books like The Volga Rises in Europe broadened my own mind of idea of how (and where) the war was conducted. 

I used to have a huge WW2 wall map that had along the bottom all the flags of the countries that fought in it, and visitors were always surprised to see the blue-and-white swastika for Finland down among the enemy combatants. Yep: they were Hitler's allies, shoring up the northern border of Fortress Europa. They were also not interested in Hitler's aims or Naziism at all; just a means to an end, i.e. reclaiming the territory the Soviets stole from them . (Like 100% of the territories the Soviets invaded in the years prior, during, and after WW2, no one ever made them give it back.) A bit squirrely, all of this, but WW2 forced some strange bedfellows all around.

Everything in this book is interesting reading, from the political dimensions/ between-the-lines stuff, to the logistics of the invasion of the Ukraine. Babi Yar is not mentioned or alluded to, but knowing it is happening gives these sections of people cheerfully laying telegraph and other wire and camp followers and dust and countryside a chilling aspect to be sure. Mazaparte was expelled from the Ukraine before too long for writing the articles included here, regardless. An unfortunate apologist for communism until his death in 1957, he had a varied and interesting life and wrote a few more books that I'd like to read someday.

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(1952)

Overshadowed by the (excellent) film, here's a gem, not just for the pleasure of well-crafted sentences, dramatic action, or wonderful characterization but for the levels of irony and thematic complexity. The blurb on the back of my copy reads: "Hitherto there has been just one unforgettable picture of a British colonel by a French novelist - Colonel Bramble. He is now joined by Pierre Boulle's Colonel Nicholson." I have not read the Maurois * short story, so can't comment there, but definitely will attest to the iconic status of Boulle's creation. (Also: "A fine ironic novel that is yet another French tribute to British eccentricity.")

* Although I just won an auction of André Maurois books so that will change soon. Huzzah!

"Clipton cursed the Colonel but was forced to yield, (sending) back to work a crowd of limping crimples, walking wounded, and malaria cases still shaking with fever but capable of dragging themselves along. They did not complain. The Colonel had the sort of faith which moves mountains, builds pyramids, cathedrals or even bridges, and makes dying men go to work with a smile on their lips. (...) With this fresh impetus the bridge was soon finished. All that remained now was what the Colonel called the trimmings, which would give the construction that "finished" look in which the practiced eye can at once recognize, in no matter what part of the world, the craftmanship of the European and the Anglo-Saxon sense of perfection."

Boulle's specific experiences before and during the war color most of the detail of Kwai. I'm making my way through all of Boulle's stuff. A great companion read to this is his My Own River Kwai, about his experiences (and capture) during WW2. I wanted to include it on this list because it gives such a fun and detailed account of a theater of the war (Indochina under the joint Vichy French/Japanese occupation) often neglected. But I thought including two Boulles would be too much, and Bridge deserves the honor more. 

~

(1955)

The story of Convoy FR77 to Murmansk – a voyage that pushes men to the limits of human endurance, crippled by enemy attack and the bitter cold of the Arctic.

I've got stacks of paperbacks that are falling apart that I nevertheless cannot throw out. Mostly I use them as side-stacked shelf ballast; they break up my eyelines agreeably. 

A lot of these are Alistair MacLeans. Many are in rough shape. I liked this one (and South by Java Head, which I also could've included here but see above remarks for My Own River Kwai) enough to buy a better copy. 

"Heavy gray clouds, formless and menacing, blotted out the sky from horizon to horizon. They were snow clouds, and please God, the snow would soon fall: that could save them now, that and that alone.

"But the snow did not come - not then. Once more there came instead only the Stukas."

Everything about the Murmansk run - from rendezvous in the middle of the North Atlantic/ lower Arctic to sailing it to loading it to unloading it to flying out and back to bomb it - sounds like it was hell on Earth. The misery of this one is etched forever on my brain. I can remember whole scenes in vivid detail, but one in particular, of the Captain visiting the doomed men below-decks, zombie-eyed, half-submerged in ice water that they must keep from freezing by moving in slow, agonized circles or vital equipment will be destroyed, doomed to die in their frozen tomb, stands out. 

Someone needs to make it into a movie, but it'd be too disappointing to see an inferior realization. I can picture the movie poster, though, of a frigate with its landing deck snarled up like the peeled cover of a sardine can with Arctic spray and gloom and the Luftwaffe approaching. 

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(1960)

Here’s the story of the USS Wahoo, the most successful submarine in the WW2 Pacific Fleet, told in the rhythm and vernacular of the submarine service of the era. Brutal work; there’s always brutality to spare in WW2 reading, but there's something extra brutal about the sub service in any war. The Battle of the Atlantic gets a lot of the attention, but the most successful American patrols were in the Pacific. Success measured, here, in tonnage sank. The Wahoo sent twenty one ships, sixty thousand tons and untold lives to the bottom of the ocean. It was due to the efforts of ships like the Wahoo (captained by the amazingly named Mush Morton) and the USS Tang (captained by her ontetime first mate of the Wahoo Dick O’Kane) that Japan was largely unable to resupply its armies.

Sterling was the sub’s yeoman, so he was privy to most of the intel going to and from the Wahoo, and he had contact with everyone on the ship, regardless of rank. In one of those random strokes of luck that haunt survivors for the rest of their lives, he transferred off the Wahoo as it was refueling at Midway. The officers and crew threw him a going away party and all agreed to meet up in the year 2000. The sub never returned (it was later found by the Russians, still largely intact from where it was bombed). He died in 2002.

Most of the pages of mine have come unglued in the middle, so rereading it is a delicate affair. Nevertheless I’ve done so four or five times over the years. I love submarine stories, and if this one was not on here I’d include Run Silent, Run Deep or Sunk (the Japanese ss), both worthy inclusions. There’s something special about Sterling’s account, though, so here it is.

The Pacific theater is fertile ground if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor for ghost lore. The Last Battleship by Joseph J. Christiano is a great one of those. There are hundreds, like I say. I didn't want to include any WW2-adjacent works, so to speak, but while we're here.

~

(1970)

I bought this at the late great Bonnett’s Bookstore in Dayton back in the 90s but never read it until five or six years ago. Amazing stuff. A Pacific Theater counterpoint to Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, told mostly from the Japanese POV. One of these days I'll get the whole collection of the History of Naval Operations in World War II and read the whole damn thing start to finish. And if there was a comparable volume for the Imperial Navy, I'd read that too. 

The only glaring deficiency is barely a whisper of the occupation of Korea or many of the other activities in the occupied zone. Ah well. (Maybe the Kempeitai got to Toland.) The only true villain of the entire saga, it seemed to me, was one particular guy, Colonel Tsuji. Even he had a fair point about some things - Asia was undeniably under the racist dominion of the West for centuries, after all. He's a bit like the General Sherman of the Japanese side, perhaps. Not that that excuses a single atrocity he (or anyone, on either side) committed. I was flipping through the endnotes in completion-victory and was intrigued by this:

"To avoid standing trial as a war criminal, Colonel Tsuji went underground in Thailand immediately after the surrender, disguised as a Buddhist priest. He made his way secretly to Japan and in 1952 was elected to the Diet from the first district of Ishikawa Province. He was re-elected in 1956 but resigned 3 years later to run for the House of Councilors, to which he was elected. As he was taking his seat, General Kawaguchi (an old nemesis from Guadalcanal) shouted at him and accused him of lying, as well as charging him with atrocities in Singapore and the Philippines. The two eventually had a face-to-face debate before a capacity audience at Town Hall in Kanazawa. Tsuji denied the accusations but admitted he had erred in calling Kamaguchi a coward.

"In 1961 the Japanese government sent Tsuji to Southeast Asia, where he vanished in Laos. Several months later it was reported he had entered Red China. He was never found, and his mysterious disappearance has resulted in numerous sensational rumors. Mrs. Chitose Tsuji believes her husband is dead, but Shigeru Asaeda - who accompanied him on numerous diplomatic postwar trips - believes he is in a Red Chinese prison."

There were also rumors he advised the North Vietnamese. Sounds like a movie to me! 

~

(1970)

I actually haven’t read this yet. It and Canaris look very imposing on the shelf. Speaking of, somewhere along the way publishers stopped putting so many swastikas on book spines which as a WW2 collector, I appreciate. When I belonged to the Military Book Club there was a three to four months stretch where every other monthly selection was The Illustrated History of the Gestapo or the Tottenkopf. I got them all of course, but it made for some uncomfortable decor. I remember throwing a party once and turning that whole stretch of shelf terrain around lest people got the wrong idea.

This one, a memoir by "Hitler's Architect", was controversial upon release. Was he whitewashing his story? Was a Nazi Inner Party member profiting on his activities during the war? You'll have to answer these questions yourself. For my part, there are only a handful of Nazi Inner Party memoirs even available; that makes them an amazing resource. Of course no one should take any memoir as anything other than the person writing it putting a spin on their life and times. They can't be objective observers; all the more fascinating to read. 

Along those lines, I remember getting a rash of social media crap back in the day when I announced I was reading The Service by Reinhard Gehlen. I didn’t include it here not because I don't recommend it - I do -  only because it’s primarily a book about the post-WW2 years. Gehlen was one of the Nazis spirited out of Germany before the Soviets could grab him. His story, like Speer's or Werner Von Braun's or our or any country's, is not as morally cut-and-dried as perhaps we like. Like I say, all the more reason to read it.

I just realized I should also have included this book. How did I forget that? I'll just mention it for now - amazing read. There's a movie on Heydrich in Prague directed by Fritz Lang, as well - watch it. 

~

(1973)

William Craig’s unforgettable book on the nightmare of Stalingrad. The story writes itself: the city Hitler never meant to capture and that Stalin never meant to defend, the premature minting of coins commemorating German victory, the encirclement and destruction of the Sixth Army, the brutal incompetence of Russian military command vs. the determination of the grunts, the last flight out, the terror of the Russian prison camps in frozen Siberia, the tide finally turning in favor of the Allies.  

The author relays events chronologically with generous recollections from the few survivors and official accounts – Russian, German, and Italian. I hadn't read this when the movie came out, but going to see that in the theater was interesting. Everyone in the audience was a single man - that is, they were there by themselves - and when Bob Hoskins appears on screen as Krushchev, someone in the front row shouted out a bunch of Russian at the screen and then walked out. 

The film has its fans, but I thought it was crap. How do you screw up such an amazing story? I haven't seen the latest version, but the Stalingrad movie from the 80s or 90s, whenever it was, is great. Neither beats reading this book, though. While we're here, I'll recommend the Why We Fight: Battle for Russia program, as well. All of those Why We Fights are amazing. The Russian front took over my imagination in the winter of 2000; I remember watching that thing on the little TV I had back then, in the dark in my little studio apartment in North Providence (with a British and Soviet flag in the window to boot), during some raging snowstorm, hypnotized.

~

(1991)

When Warsaw falls, Maciek escapes with his aunt Tania. Together they endure the war, running, hiding, changing their names, forging documents to secure their temporary lives — as the insistent drum of the Nazi march moves ever closer to them and to their secret wartime lies.

Here's a harrowing read. I mentioned the Murmansk run as hell on Earth. Probably only WW2-era Poland rivaled it for such a distinction. Kosinsky's The Painted Bird - covering similar terrain - had a big effect on me when I read it, but Kosinsky is an unreliable narrator, in more ways than one. Not so with this memoir.

A reader on Goodreads perhaps said it best: 

"This incredibly well-written novel is not the typical - if you'll forgive calling a Holocaust survival story 'typical' - story of a survivor of WWII. The perspective is that of a Jewish boy in Poland who never sees a concentration camp, but lives a different kind of trauma in hiding his Jewish identity throughout the war. The novel addresses many complexities, but for me ultimately raised questions of "honorable" choice: is there more honor in surviving a war, and in this case escaping the worst atrocity, one way versus another? How does the unsentimental practicality inherent in a survivor's generation impact a child? What does it mean to be a survivor on the fringe of a community already on the periphery? Highly recommended - also a quick read."

~

(1991)

This history of obscure Waffen-SS units has all the elements of a war novel: ambushes, glider assaults, rescues, courage, betrayal. Included are Turkic, Hungarian, Serbian, Czech and Russian formations, as well as never-before-seen photos, diagrams, maps and first-hand accounts from diaries and survivors.

Here's another Military Book Club selection from yesteryear. It and another one I picked up at the same time (Gotterdammerung by Russ Schneider) will tell you more about the eastern front of WW2 (from the inside) than many other books. 

I've seen some criticism of this one as being almost pro-Waffen-SS. I did not find it to be that way, only that it did not go out of its way to be anti-Waffen-SS. As loathsome as the Nazis obviously and inarguably were, it's silly to think of every soldier who fought on the Axis side - especially those from captured territories - as the same degree of evil. Working for an evil side, sure, again no arguments. It's just: do we ignore every last soldier's experiences, then, because evil? Seems silly to me. Just as it's silly to think of everyone who fought on the Allied side - especially those from the stockades who were handed a rifle - as morally superior. 

Some of us just want to read about what happened and what it was like without an author's heavy hand in any direction. 'Nuff said. I enjoy reading about things left out of most narratives of WW2, such as basically everything in this volume. 

~

(1992)

This could pretty much be insert-Ambrose-here. You can't really go wrong with anything by him you pick up. You don't need me to tell you anything about this one, I assume, but if you've only ever seen the (excellent) mini-series, you should give the book a read. Especially the endnotes. 

If I have a criticism of the author, it's that he sometimes goes a bit overboard on the heroism and courage descriptors. I certainly prefer it to approaches that attempt to minimize such things, and I've no beef with it in principle. Just there are a few times where he describes otherwise neutral actions with hyperbole. Not quite at Battle Cry by Leon Uris levels, but tilting in such a direction, here and there. 

~

(2008)

With original and controversial insights brought about by meticulous research, Human Smoke re-evaluates the political turning points that led up to war and in so doing challenges some of the treasured myths we hold about how war came about and how atrocities like the Holocaust were able to happen. 

So says a blurb from the official release. I think this book is amazing, but it seems to have garnered a bit of a reputation as historical revisionism. And I don't think fairly. 

What it does is collect quotes from all sides (and some sides you wouldn't think to include in such a book as this, such as Gandhi's) to paint a broader picture of the years leading up to the war and the aims / tactics of the various powers. In so doing it complicates a black-and-white view of FDR, Churchill, Hitler, et al. But that's all it does: complicate hagiography, not revise or alter or reframe the historical record. I see that happening often enough out there, and it worries me deeply. I don't think it's happening in Human Smoke. 

One thing missing from works such as this that should be kept in mind is that while it gives an interesting picture drawn from many angles, it's not a complete panorama. (It says so right in the beginning!) Another book, for example, A Man Called Intrepid , describes actions running concurrently as any described here. More than one thing can be true at any one time and always often are. 

~

(2020)

This came out last year, but I didn't read it until 2021. The press around its release felt like part of an electioneering strategy last year, which was gross. I'm glad I waited, as it was probably much more revealing reading it in the first hundred days of the Biden administration rather than the last hundred days of Trump's. That won't be the case for everyone, though. 

Whatever the case, the story of how a deeply divided nation was transformed into a one-party dictatorship, to the sound of wild cheers and parades, tolerating things it would never have tolerated - indeed was founded not to tolerate - is urgent in any era, any country. When the Nazis were elected, they quickly set about (1) dismantling, absorbing, or ghettoizing any threats to their political hegemony (the Enabling Act), (2) establishing Reich commissars over local states and governments, (3) abolished the trade union (by merging their reason for being with itself, i.e. fascism, corporate-government), (4) legally disenfranchising German Jews as prelude to the horrors to come, (5) defunding police forces (and replacing them with its own), (6) inserting ideological watchdogs in every formally independent strata of society. 

If you know where you want to get to, have the will to pursue it, and hit the ground running, there's an awful lot you can accomplish before anyone even gets their bearings. Be careful who you sweep into power in a pique! I'm not comparing anyone to Hitler. Sincerely - these are lessons evergeeen.

~

Sometime in the future, America and its allies will again face an external threat of equal or greater menace than the Axis. Will we, of whatever political stripe, pull together to face it? May we forever use the example of World War Two to urge us together to face it. 

What I've Read So Far in 2021

Since I began the month with a What Movies I’ve Seen This Year post, let's end it in similar fashion, only this time for books. Most of these I read without an eye to blogging about them, alas, so not a lot of quotations. 

Excepting some titles that I’ll discuss under separate cover, here’s a chronological account of books read or abandoned thus far in 2021.

(1958)

An account of Thor “Kon Tiki” Heyerdahl’s expedition to Rapa Nui.

I didn’t finish this one. I was led to it from an issue of (I think?) The Jack Kirby Collector, which did a spread on possible book covers that Jack appropriated for comics covers. I liked the look of it and have always found the giant statues of Rapa Nui née Easter Island to be mysterious and intriguing. But I found the narrator kind of hard to take, truth be told. I agree with Paul Bahn that "he relied on the selective use of evidence, which resulted in a misleading conclusion". Much of his evidence has now been refuted by archeologists - Rapa Nui represents the furthest point of Polynesian colonization east-to-west, not a colonization from west to east from South America - and his methods have been criticized. (The first thing he records upon arriving at the island is his suspicion that the island's governor is someone who must be manipulated and tricked, and he congratulates himself on so immediately grasping how to deal with this native.)

There's a great (if all too brief) account in Captain Cook's second voyage of discovery of landing at Rapa Nui. These days of course there's no shortage of material (or pictures) to look at on it. Apparently the island's popularity as a tourist destination is now causing all sorts of problems. The history of the island is fascinating - and like anywhere in the world, punctuated with massacre and tragedy. Unlike just anywhere in the world, though, there's these:

Anyway, skip Aku Aku and just google it, I say.

 

(1998)

A spellbinding chronicle of one of the most unusual communities in the world, these are the stories of the Hamptons' mansions and millionaires. Both a contemporary portrait of the Hamptons and a historical narrative and filled with tales of pirate treasure, a witch-hunt, and the many beguiling eccentricities of the Hamptons today.

I was led to this one from reading Gaines’s book on the Beach Boys. Start to finish great. I had no real interest in the Hamptons prior to reading it, but this book held my interest and consumed my imagination as much as the land-fever seems to grab the rich both new and old once they sail within sight of Montauk Harbor.

Too many great anecdotes and personalities to mention. If you ever wondered why people go so crazy about the Hamptons you might not learn the answer here - there's a FOMO that only makes sense at a certain level of income, I think, beyond just the desire of anyone for a safe harbor/ nice view - but it sure is fascinating to read it all unfold. 

(1997)

The difference between what this book purports to be ("a meticulously researched, comprehensive study of the cover-up by a former Air Force investigator") and what it actually is (a poorly written and badly organized collection of random anecdotes from UFO lore) is akin to the distance between non-alcoholic beer and the real thing. Except alcoholics sometimes drink NA beer and enjoy it, and I can't imagine anyone enjoying this. 

Turns out the book I was wanting to read was this one. I’m not saying squat about straw regarding which ones are closer to the truth, here, or whether such truths are even knowable. Greenewald was one of the guys on a recent Megyn Kelly podcast, and I liked what he had to say re: the knowns and unknowns of the situation. I'm not ready to insert the Aliens-guy-meme yet, myself, but it’s fascinating stuff, right? I mean, it's recorded stuff, it ain't weather balloons, it ain't some weather phenomenon, and it ain't the Chinese or the Russians, so what are we looking at here? 

Is there a Reed Richards out there, or what? Maybe Victor Von Doom. I’m pretty sure it ain’t Elon Musk, or Donald Trump for that matter, but you’d never know it from what people post to Facebook.

(1975)

A recent college grad sets out in search of Eden with his VW bug, his girlfriend, his dog, and his ideals, and instead discovers a genetic disposition to schizophrenia. How do you cope with genuine mental illness in a commune culture that believes mental illness isn't real and schizophrenia just a rational response to an irrational society?

Here's one I never expected to circle back to - I've had it on the shelf for years and years. This year I finally read the whole thing. And it’s great! Much broader and better than I was led to believe – a really wonderful and vulnerable book covering a lot more than the summary above. It’s more about recovery and engagement with belief systems, albeit with some trimmings unique to the author’s experience.

Well worth your time.

“Knowing that you’re crazy doesn’t make the crazy things stop happening.”

 

(2007)

Also well worth your time: this collection of essays from the New Criterion music critic (and more) Jay Nordlinger. I'm a big fan of his monthly podcast Music For Awhile and have sporadically read his "Impromptus" column over the years, but this was my first book-length dive into his mind and opinions. 

I enjoyed it. The essays from the early years of the twenty-first century and on the campaign trail with George W. Bush are especially fascinating to me as I started those years as a radical liberal, gradually softening or hardening (however you look at it) into a constitutional libertarian. It took the subsequent administrations (and narrativemongering around them) to turn me into the lovable RWNJ I am today. Reading these late 90s and early 00s essays now, when my POV has more or less aligned with Mr. Nordlinger’s on a variety of points, and contrasting in my head to how they’d have been received by contemporaneous-me, was enlightening.

There’s more than politics here. The sections on the Salzburg Music Festival are great - all the music stuff is great. As are other reminders of early aughts culture and personalities you might’ve forgot. I like collecting these volumes of opinion across the decades for precisely that reason: the ideographic timeline.

(2010)

Saw this in one of my neighborhood's little free libraries and took it home. Man, if you'd told me anytime 2000-2008 this would have happened, I'd have called you a liar.

A great read that was a little humbling. Even on areas where I still disagree, I could respect his viewpoint and how he got there - not only that but that he had a viewpoint. I spent virtually all of the years of the GWB Presidency convinced he was a fascist, moron, Cheney-puppet, Rove-bot, etc. In other words I was a member of that performative in-group signal academy of Daily Show/ Colbert Report addicts. Like I say this is not to say I instantly agree with every decision of his Presidency, now; this was me engaging with the man beyond politics pretty much for the first time. 

Embarrassing to think of now, but, like Bush W. says of his own misbegotten (though considerably more gilded) youth:

"Without the experience of my first forty years, quitting drinking would not have been possible either. So much of my character, so many of my convictions, took shape during those first four decades. My journey included challenges, struggles, and failures. It is testimony to the strength of love, the power of faith, and the truth that people can change. On top of that, it was one interesting ride." 

Interesting to contrast as a memoir to King's On Writing or hell, Ace Frehley's No Regrets - three baby boomer alcoholics whose circumstances and talents generated vastly different opportunities but no shortage of rope to hang themselves with, and who each found a humble sobriety through the storm.

(2010)

Edited by Chuck Wechsler and Bob Kuhn, this is a collection of writings to appear in Sporting Life over the twentieth century. If you've ever heard any story about safaris or man-eating lions, whether they include Teddy Roosevelt or Michael Douglas or Ernest Hemingway or Meryl Streep, the original accounts are here. There isn't a skippable piece in this book. It's forty-one pieces of wow-that-was-great African adventure. 

"There is a legend that elephant dispose of their dead in secret burial grounds and that none of these has ever been discovered. In support of this, there is only the fact that the body of an elephant, unless he had been trapped or shot in his tracks, has rarely been found. What happens to the old and diseased?

Not only natives but many settlers have supported for years the legend, if it is legend, that elephants will carry their wounded and sick hundreds of miles, if necessary, to keep them out of the hands of their enemies. And it is said that elephant never forget.

These are perhaps just stories born of imagination. Ivory was once almost as precious as gold, and wherever there is treasure, men mix it with mystery. But there is mystery even about the things you see for yourself."

- Beryl Markham, West with the Night

It's weird, I have no real interest in hunting or even with safari. I appreciate that these things exist, but my armchair reading of the subject(s) is curious to me. I don't know why I find it all so fascinating. Like sailing - another topic I read a lot about - it's not really an interest or hobby or anything I'd do first, second, or third had I the means to do so. And yet I frequently find myself spellbound by accounts of safari or sail - go figure. 

I wish I had the exact quote, but the book's in the basement, alas. It's from the excerpt from one of Peter Hathaway Capstick's (Death in the Long Grass) books. It ends with some kind of animal charge,  and the author's companion - in the middle of speaking to Capstick and nonchalantly spinning the chamber of his pistol saying (paraphrased) "Africa's great," he raised the pistol, "just don't make any mistakes."

 

(1971)

A collection of short stories from the author of Bridge Over the River Kwai and Planet of the Apes. I've been a fan of Boulle's since high school when we had to read The Face of a Hero for English class. Lately I've been collecting his books - like Larry McMurtry, just one here or there, with the intention of going through them all one day in the future.

This one was... well, it was okay. It went over my head, I guess. I enjoyed the short reverie on the misery and nonetheless-nostalgia for duck hunting with the author's father ("The Duck Blind"), but some of the others perplexed me. Was something lost in translation?

Two examples: the first story ("His Last Battle") details the visit of Martin Bohrman to Adolf Hitler in South American exile. The names are teased out if more or less immediately obvious. It's a long set-up for the last line, which is Hitler reminiscing on the Jews. ("I have finally forgiven them."  It seems overwrought. Was the point just Hitler's intransigence? Why write a story about that? I wonder if there was some immediate cultural reference or political parallel for which I lack context. 

The second examples concern the last three stories, which flirt tantalizingly with their own cosmology of a "Holy Omega Computer," i.e. the holy ghost is actually some kind of celestial super-computer. It's interesting (one of the stories involves Allah, Jesus, and others dismantling every object of holy significance in Jerusalem based on new computations from the holy supercomputer, for example; another with a myriad of universes where Eve refuses to sin and instead kills the serpent) but I was left wondering if I was missing something.

He's obviously interested in layers and layers of irony. Another story ("The Plumber") amused me - the electroshock/ waterboarding interrogation of a political prisoner must wait out the fumbling old-school plumber who can only work when the light is good enough for his eyes and must deal with the ancient wiring and pipes of an old chateau the secret police are using. After he finally fixes it the prisoner is tortured and he goes home happy, where we see him eating dinner with his wife, unaware still of what his repair work allowed to happen, but bemused and exasperated at the bumbling fools who know nothing of real things like pipes and wiring but pretend at running the world. 

(1965)

A man answers a knock inside his closet and is tossed a horn. When he blows it, he enters a fantastic magical world and slowly begins to remember that he was once (see title).

I read this as part of a World of Tiers hardcover I have, which collects the first couple of books in the series. I'll read the others at some point. I enjoyed this one, but it may exhaust some readers's patience. It seems made up on the go, for one, which gives it an agreeable momentum, but also lends a sort of  D&D hack-and-slash quality to things it is. Every chapter is roll for initiative, roll for damage. So much slaughter - you can see why Gary Gygax listed it as one of his original inspirations for Dungeons and Dragons. 

There's a quality to that, it's like improv jazz or what, or improv prog rock, I guess, given the subject matter, but with the same pitfalls. And being a solo act, instead of a group improvisation gives it a different quality as well. 

It's certainly very picturesque and interesting. Isn't it all a bit like the Chronicles of Amber though? Magical nobles remembering who they are and that they all want to kill one another? Lots of similarities, even with the writing (i.e. both Zelazny and Farmer employ that somewhat curt "Several months passed." "He raised his arm, and fifteen of the enemy died" "Thousands of theirs ranks collapsed" kind of momentum) I looked it up and see Zelazny credits Farmer for the inspiration. Interesting. I'm going to be reading (and re-reading in some cases) those Amber books again sometime, so I'll keep you posted.

And finally:

(1998)

Another pick-up from the little free library - nice score! This one can be pricey used.

This is, as you can probably tell, the revised edition to a book I fondly remember from my old buddy Klum's. I'd always flip through it whenever I'd visit in the early days of our friendship, and when we ended up living together in Dayton, OH a few years after that it was one of two coffee table books we had:

We didn't have a coffee table, exactly, but they were on the carpet near the futon. Also some massive film reference guide hardcover that was indispensable (and settled many bets - most of which Klum won, he had a steel trap for who starred in what movie) in the days before imdb. 

And just as IMDB may have made that book obsolete, the internet itself lessened the essential-ness (arguably) of either of the books above. The Dickinson astronomy book was a bit dated (my version was from 1992, so lots happened after that) but the Macauley one is pretty timeless. A beautifully designed book, even if I'm not enough of a visual learner, really, to grasp the mechanical fundamentals and machine wonders illustrated and diagrammed within. 

Still! A book suitable for any home. 

Speaking of Klum  - I picked this one up as well:

(1999)

I say "speaking of Klum" because for the entire time I knew him he had this massive hardcover lying around. 

It's not very visible here, but there it is.
Pay no attention to the neohippy in the papa-san.

In the years since his death I wondered who ended up with a lot of Klum's books. I think they were donated. I ended up with most of his clothes and his DVDs and blu-rays and assorted odds and ends, but every now and again I'll remember some book I used to look at down at his place. Canaris was one of those. I intend to read it, but the damn thing is a thousand pages long. That kind of thing takes a specific occasion in my life these days - a few plane rides or a week's worth of train commutes. 

I'm happy to have it, though, and am looking forward to what I'm sure will be fascinating if intense reading. 

~

If all goes well I'll be back on NYE to let you know about the next six months of books. Until then, keep your bookmarks... dry, I guess. Excelsior.