People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Ms. Brooks writes an intriguing fictionalized account of one of the earliest illustrated Jewish prayer books, the Sarajevo Haggadah. She tells the history of this specific Haggadah (a Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder, telling of the Jewish deliverance from slavery in Egypt as described in the Book of Exodus), through the discoveries of Hanna, a young Australian rare book conservationist, hired by the UN to analyzes and stabilizes the Sarajevo Haggadah in the aftermath of the Bosnian War, tracing clues found during the rebinding of this Haggadah.


The clues take the story from 1996 Sarajevo and travels back in time as each clue reveals its meaning and new discoveries are made.  The journey takes the reader to Sarajevo 1938, Vienna 1894, Venice 1609, Barcelona 1492, Seville 1430, as well as stops in North Africa, Israel, the USA and Australia. 


Intertwining of Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths, Ms. Brooks writes of the both large events such as the German occupation of Yugoslavia, the Catholic Inquisition, the Expulsion of Jews from Spain (Alhambra Decree), as well as the tortured (both literal and figurative) lives of the book's characters.


People of the Book reads like a mystery novel wrapped in a telling of religious persecution throughout the ages.  A page-turner of the first degree.

Churchill becomes household name during 2nd Boer War.

Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape and the Making of Winston Churchill, by Candice Millard is an informative and entertaining read that paints a picture of a brash and cavalier young man who will miss no opportunity to gain fame and advancement, be on the battlefield with a sword and pistol, or in the press with a pen.

Hero of the Empire briefly touches on Churchill's experiences in India, the Sudan, and Cuba, giving a thumbnail sketch of young Winston before and directly after the 2nd Boer War before detailing his experiences in South Africa.  The story jumps into high gear after his unsuccessful run for the British parliament, as he travels to Cape Town, South Africa on a troop transport ship as a member of the press corps covering the Boer War.

Love him or hate him Churchill was a unabashed narcissist who saw himself from an early age as someone destined for greatness.  His actions in Natal and the Transvaal of South Africa during the war gave him the exposure back home in Great Britain to propel him into the political spotlight. 

Millard writes a fast-paced narrative will worth the reading.

Osama bin Laden gets his just rewards in Mark Owen's – No Easy Day

Matt Bissonnette, aka Mark Owen, one of 24 hand-picked men who carried out the raid on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that housed Al Qadea leader Osama bin Laden, pens his firsthand description of the event.  Known formally as Operation Neptune Spear, this account of SEAL Team Six’s assault on the compound, in coordination with the 160^th SOAR (“Night Stalkers”) helicopters, gives a step-by-step iteration of the events from boarding the transport buses in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, on their way to the air-strip and the waiting helos, to the missions conclusion, as the transports touched down in Virginia.

Autobiographical in nature, Bissonnette recalls what drove him to become an elite fighter, a Navy SEAL, from a young age, through his training, and deployments, culminating with selection to DEVGRU (SEAL Team Six).  He recounts several missions he performed in his years as a team member and the fast friendships he made with fellow SEALs.  A notable mission he recounts was the rescue of Richard Phillips, Captain of the MV Maersk Alabama, taken hostage by Somali pirates in April 2009.

No Easy Day provides detailed diagrams of the compound and timelines the events of the Navy SEAL raid to capture or kill bin Laden.  It goes into details of the killing of not only bin Laden, but also of his son, Kahlid, as well as the al Kuwaiti brothers during the raid.  The book shows that regardless of how well planned and rehearsed an action can be, things can and will go wrong, like the crash landing of the helicopter transporting half of the raiding party. 

Bissonnette downplays the individual contributions to the success of this raid leading one to believe that any section in the SEAL unit could have completed the raid successfully, that the SEALs that participated just happened to be in the right place at the right time.  A good read.  I recommend it to anyone interested in military history or current events.

Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen

Jacob Jankowski while attending his final semester of veterinary school at an Ivy League university learns of his parent’s death in a car crash.  He leaves vet school during final exams and while aimlessly wondering, hops a train and discovers he is on a special circus train occupied by the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.  Jacob parlays his veterinary expertise into a full-time position with the circus.

Jacob shares what was once a sheep pen as his sleeping quarters with a circus dwarf name Kinko (Walter) and his bob-tailed dog Queenie.  He is befriended by the circuses star performer, a beauty named Marlena, and her husband August, the shows number two man and head trainer.  Jacob falls in love with Marlena, and learns to hate and fear August for his cruelty to both humans and animals alike.

Needless to say, the story revolves around the love triangle between these three; add a toothless lion, an elephant that only understands Polish, and an orangutan, and you have a very entertaining novel.

The narrator of the story is Jacob Jankowski in later life, confined to a nursing home at age 93.  He reflects back 70-years to events in the summer of 1933. 

I lost my father last year; he was 93 and in a nursing home.  I had so much empathy for Jacob, as I imagined my father thinking, saying, and doing the things old Jacob did while denied his freedom, and in some cases his dignity in his final years.

I would recommend this book on three levles – as a historical novel, as a well told interpersonal story, and as an insight into a gentleman’s twilight years.

US Asiatic Fleet during the onset of WWII

James Bassett writes a follow up to his highly acclaimed novel IN HARMS WAY.  This offering, COMMANDER PRINCE, USN deals with a career naval officer forced to face his fears during the opening year of WWII.  The book takes the reader from the Philippines prior to the Japanese invasion through the naval battle for the Solomon Islands.

Bassett tells the story of the Asiatic Fleet as it is intermeshed with the ABDA (American-British-Dutch-Australian) Forces in their fatalistic defense of the Dutch East Indies.  The naval battle of Balikpapan, the battle of Bali at Sanur, and the fighting in the Java Sea are covered as battles predestined to defeat, yet the professional military men did their duty, as they were trained to do, while looking down the barrel of imminent death.

Memoirs of Robert E. Lee - A.J. Long

 

For the funeral of General Robert E. Lee the town of Lexington, Virginia, came to a standstill.  The students and faculty of Washington College (later Washington and Lee Univ) and the cadets of Virginia Military Institute were all present for the burial procession, as it snaked through both campuses before concluding at the Washington College Chapel where the body was entombed.   CSA artillery general and Episcopal priest W.N. Pendleton presided over the service and the internment of Lee’s body in a crypt in the floor of the Chapel.  Thus concluded the life of the able warrior.

The Memoirs of Robert E. Lee, published in 1887 by A.J. Long, Lee’s former military secretary, is a narrative of Lee’s life from birth to death, using his personal first hand observations, military records,  and anecdotes provided by others present on General Lee’s staff during the Civil War, Long pens a concise account of Lee’s life, focusing primarily on the events and battles of the Civil War where General Lee was present.

Counting his years as a West Point Cadet, Robert Edward Lee spent 40-years of his life in the military uniforms of both the United States and Confederate States of America.   An honor student at the Academy, after his graduation Lee served as a combat engineer for many years, where he worked in a broad capacity from constructing fortifications on the Atlantic coast to developing ports on the Mississippi River.  During the Spanish-American War he distinguished himself on the staff of General Winfield Scott as both an engineer and a scout, showing himself to be a rising star in the officer ranks.  After a stint as the Superintendent of West Point, where he saw his eldest son graduate first in his class, Lee transferred to the cavalry and joined the command of Col. Albert Sidney Johnston in Texas.  Here he worked at keeping the settlers and towns of Texas safe from Indian attack.  His last command in the US Army was as commander of the  First Regiment of Cavalry.  In April, 1861 Lee turned down a promotion to Major-General and resigned his US Army commission, preferring to return to his beloved Virginia stating, “My heart is broken, but I can not raise my sword against Virginia.”

Long’s account of Lee’s time as Commanding General of the Army of Northern Virginia and General-in-Chief of Confederate Forces is somewhat biased, detailing Lee's trumphs and offering justifications for Lee’s presumed missteps.  He paints his commander as a family man with high character and a deep respect for soldiers, regardless of which side of the cause they fought on.  Long describes each battle, from Lee’s first battlefield encounter with Union forces at Cheat Mountain, to his surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at the McLean house in Appomattox.  

I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in American history, for an understanding of America can not be divined without a general knowledge of the Civil War, its causes and its heroes.

Criminal profiling in 1890's

The Alienist by Caleb Carr The Alienist is a suspenseful murder mystery set in 1896 New York City while Theodore Roosevelt is serving as Police Commissioner.  Here an up and coming Criminal Psychologist (aka Alienist) leads a team made up of Roosevelt’s friends and colleagues in an attempt to identify and apprehend a serial killer preying on immigrant boy prostitutes.   In addition to the psychologist, there is a journalist (the narrator of the story), a set of brother detectives who are well ahead of their colleagues in the art of criminal science, and a young woman trying to break the “boy’s only club” of law enforcement. Lazlo Kriezler, a psychologist, and John Moore, a crime reporter, are former Harvard classmates of Roosevelt.  They are joined by Sara Howard, a police secretary with aspirations of becoming the first female detective and the Isaacson brothers. This eclectic group of novice sleuths set out to define the psyche of the serial killer, a concept which will evolve into present day criminal profiling; previously theoretical notions only, they attempt to put into practice concepts that until then were only espoused in psychology journals and papers.  Some ideas prove fruitful; others --- like taking a photograph of a corpse’s eye to see if his last vision was imprinted on it --- are shown to be unreliable. Caleb Carr writes a very descriptive story that takes the reader, layer by layer, into the workings of the mind of the serial killer.  I enjoyed the book and am eager to read Carr's next offering - The Angel of Darkness.

Author transitions from Medical History to Medical Mystery

The Anatomy of Deception

 By Lawrence Goldstone 

The tale centers on a group of young doctors attending the University of Pennsylvania Medical School under the tutelage of Dr. William Osler, a renowned pathologist and physician.  The protagonist, a Midwesterner named Ephraim Carroll, is Osler’s prize student who in first person recounts the events surrounding this mystery set in 1889 Philadelphia.

From the opening scene in the Dead House, the morgue attached to Philadelphia General Hospital where autopsies are being conducted on the unclaimed bodies of the inner city, to the salons in the grand homes of the City of Brotherly Love, to the seedy alleys of the cities waterfront, Lawrence Goldstone crafts a suspenseful tale of intrigue, keeping the reader slightly off-balance throughout this book which is peppered with historical characters from the early days of "modern medicine". Both William Osler and William Stewart Halsted, a prominent surgeon, were two of the founding doctors of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and play key roles in this novel.

Goldstone, known for writing narrative history of natural science and political science, successfully ventures into the realm of fiction with Anatomy of Deception.  He effectively blends the history of medical advancements of that era with a deft telling of a suspenseful murder mystery involving a young Philadelphia debutante.

I recommend this book and look forward to reading his latest offering The Astronomer.

The chosen few at the frozen Chosin

Pinned down by sniper fire during the day and facing mass attacks at night, the 246 Marines and Navy Corpsmen of Fox Company (2/7, 1^st Marine Div) held open a vital choke point controlling the only road from the Chosin Reservoir to the Marine base camp at Hagaru during the brutally cold December of 1950.  By defending the Toktong Pass against a vastly superior Chinese force, the men of Fox Company made it possible for the three regiments of roughly 8,000 Marines at Yadum-ni, on the west side of the reservoir, to perform a successful retrograde to Hagaru, while under heavy attack from multiple Chinese divisions. 

With the aid of artillery firing from Hagaru and close air support provided by Marine and allied aircraft, the men of Fox Company were able to hold the hill overlooking the dirt and gravel road for five-days against the Chinses 59^th Division.  Bob Drury and Tom Clavin do a masterful job of telling this small unit’s story in The Last Stand of Fox Company.

At negative 35-degrees, the weather was just as deadly as the bullets and grenades flying around the hill – aptly named Fox Hill – as the Marines suffered from frostbite and exposure.  The ground was frozen solid, making it impossible to dig-in, forcing the men to use the frozen bodies of the dead to build parapets as protection against enemy fire; weapons became inoperable as the firing pins and other moving parts froze solid; often in whiteout conditions, snow blizzards reduced visibility to just a few yards.  Yet the warriors overcame all these obstacles knowing that they alone were keeping the road and pass open to allow their fellow Marines a chance at escape.

The authors do a masterful job painting a mental picture of what the Marines endured.  Through interviewing survivors of the engagement and researching historical documents Drury and Clavin bring into perspective the numbing cold, the searing pain of bullets piercing flesh, the throbbing of frozen feet, and the mental anguish of a near hopeless situation.  They also show what makes a Marine a Marine and that the adage “uncommon valor was a common virtue” again held true for the Corps. 

I highly recommend this book as a look into the isolated hilltop defense of Toktong Pass, but must recommend you read Breakout by Martin Russ as the definitive source of the overall Chosin Campaign, of the Korean War, and the retreat to the port of Hungnam.

How the Irish Saved Civilization

The first in Thomas Cahill’s Hinges of History series, How the Irish Saved Civilization, tells the story of how Ireland was transformed from a barbarian land to a cultured society through the good works of St. Patrick during the waning years of the Roman Empire and how the Irish, now converted to Christianity, established monasteries with scriptoriums saving literature for future generations by transcribing Greek, Roman, and Latin works during the Dark Ages.

Though a short book of just over 200-pages, it was an exceedingly long read, being tedious and hard to follow at times.  It did contain some interesting information in bits and pieces - the life of St. Patrick, the evolution of peoples in what is now Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales), and how England and Scotland got their names, to list just a few.

Cahill relates the story of St. Patrick (Patricius) from his kidnapping at the age of sixteen by marauding Irish, to his life of isolation as a Shepard, his escape and journey back to Briton, and his ultimate return to Ireland as a missionary where he converted the Irish people to Christianity.

He also puts into perspective the relationship of many early peoples - Picts, Britons, Celts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Romans, Vikings, Goths – and how they effected one another.  The story of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes driving the Celtic Britons into what is now Wales and Cornwall was most interesting.  Cahill’s writing of early Irish customs was also of interest.

The author gets bogged down when he tries to describe the waning years of the Roman Empire.  His contrast and comparisons of the Roman Catholics to the monastic Christian leaders of Ireland is tiresome.