2 comments about Eye of the Storm.

1. Similar in some respects to Mike Curtis' 'CQB', this is an account of the author's SAS career, having joined via the parachute regiment in the 1970s. It divides up into three distinct battlefields - Oman, the Falklands the the Gulf, with the meat of the book taking place in the latter area. The first two sections are fairly run-of-the-mill, although it's interesting to compare the Falklands section with Max Hastings' 'Battle for the Falklands' and the aforementioned 'CQB', as one particular moment - in which an SAS soldier shoots down an Argentine aircraft with a Stinger - pops up in all three books, each from a slightly different perspective.
   It's the coverage of the Gulf war that's particularly interesting, though, as Ratcliffe took part in an SAS operation that's been gone over comprehensively in other books, books which he has read. Consequently, like some real-life 'Rashomon', he points out the exaggerations and untruths in 'Bravo Two Zero', 'Sabre Squadron' and others, all books which you can find elsewhere on Amazon.com. Whilst he seems slightly petulant at times (his account of leading a patrol gives the impression that he was blissfully unaware that he might come across as being, well, smug), it makes for fascinating reading...



2. I've read a few Special Forces books but this one is by far and away the best one yet. There's so much in it that one doesn't usually hear about and also I enjoyed 'Billy's' sense of humour which crops up now and again. Tremendous read.

5 comments about Mick: The Real Michael Collins.

1. Hart,we get it - you've an opinion that is contrary to history. Yet you do not put forth any evidence in support of your contrarian views.



2. This is the 92nd Anniversary of the Easter Uprising of 1916- Chocky Ar La
   
   I have spent a fair amount of my adult political life fighting for a just solution to the national question in Ireland and for justice for the Catholic minority in the North (and any Protestant workers who will listen) thus I am no stranger to the name Michael Collins. However, as Peter Hart has gone to pains to describe in his well-thought out biography Mick is a very contradictory man both in his expression of his personal aspirations for Ireland (and himself) and the political choices that he made in the important 1920-22 period just before his death. The consequences of his actions (and others, notably Eamon de Valera) are still being played out today as the struggle for that just solution to the national question continues.
   
   For those who are not familiar with Collins' biography (affectionately known as the Big Fellow) or have not seen the fairly recent commercial film about his life (starring Liam Neelson) Collins represented that next generation of leaders who survived the Easter Uprising of 1916- the event that is the real start of the modern national liberation struggle in Ireland. Mr. Hart spends some useful time detailing Mick's schooling, upbringing and the development of his administrative skills that would prove very helpful in his rise to the top of the Irish revolutionary movement. The real meat of the book, however, describes the rocky road to the top in the struggle to break Ireland from English domination.
   
   This period from about 1917 to his death in 1922 is both where his huge reputation was made but also where the limits of his capacity to lead Ireland to real independence from the British are displayed. That failure, exemplified by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, has caused no little ink to be spilled on both sides of the divide that ultimately led to the civil war that tore the republican camp apart. This is hardly the place to have a full discussion of that question but I confess that I am still baffled by Mick's decision to sign the treaty. To a great extent he, more so than de Valera, was the very Irish face of the military struggle lead by the then current version the Irish Republican Army.
   
   Despite Collins' well-informed and industrious intelligence apparatus formed in his role as `commander-in-chief' of the republican military forces I believe that he overrated the ability of the British to stay in Ireland in the immediate post World War I period. Lloyd George, not for the first time, got the better of the revolutionaries (as he did with others, witness the 1919 strikesin England and Scotland). That miscalculation, among other issues, led to the signing of the treaty widely seen as a betrayal of the republican struggle and the abandonment of the peoples in the North. While Collin's historically has had the best of it on this question though the efforts of his many biographers this thorny issue is still with us. Too much blood has been spilled to ignore it. Read on.



3. I enjoyed this book. M. Collins was shown to be an interesting man living among interesting people in interesting times. I am an interested, but not as interesting, amateur and not qualified to speak to the detailed criticisms made by some of the earlier reviewers or Publishers Weekly. All in all though, I found the subject matter fascinating, to the extent that plowing through this dense biography was a joy. I may pick up some of the other sources and try to gain another perspective some day. I was willing to tolerate a few stylistic lapses on the part of Mr. Hart (at times he was on too familiar terms with his subject, but this is a small matter). One can forgive the fact that a good understanding of the era may be necessary for a full appreciation; many readers will be able enough to overcome the gaps in their knowledge.
   
   Best for me was that the portrait of Collins and his era was nuanced and new. It also helped me to understand just how an old-fashioned revolution against a colonial power could come to be. The romanticism is thankfully kept to a minimum, and the author's opinions are stated with sobriety. I felt he truly liked his subject and found myself in agreement with his closing assessment.



4. I finally finished Mick: The Real Michael Collins by Peter Hart which I began almost exactly one year ago. My attraction to this book was my obvious admiration of Collins and the opportunity to read a new biography (there have been many before). Although I was excited, I was also wary because this book was supposed to take a not-very-flattering look at Collins' life. I found this to be true as Hart attempted to look through the praise and hero-worship that has accompanied Collins since his untimely death in 1922. Hart in several places goes too far, interjecting spite and taking the opposite position just to stir things up.
   
   I can say one good thing about the effect the book has had on me, though: if I had not been reading this book, I would never have chosen the topic I did for my final university history paper and broken new ground in the canon of Collins literature. Overall I found it to be very informative and an exciting read (this is probably due to the fact that this is the first Collins biography that I have read cover to cover and there were many things that I learned for the first time). Despite all of Hart's best efforts, I still find myself a devotee of Michael Collins, maybe even more than before, and for that reason I would recommend this book to anyone interested.



5. This account portrays Collins as cold, calculating, incompetent and a sly opportunist...without any real skills or leadership. Every aspect of his life is presented as a lie, this is revisionist histroy on the level of David Irving...

2 comments about Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth.

1. Minotaur by Joseph MacGillivray
   
   This book presents itself as a readable biography of one the great Archaeologists, Sir Arthur Evans, instead of a thoughtful biography the book is really a prolonged attack on Evans (and 19th century archaeology) by an author of dubious credentials and makes for extremely painful reading.
   
   The book is tolerable journalism when its sticks to the factual events, but it is so filled with hostility towards Evans, that the reader is quickly bogged down in a long winded and poorly researched series of ad hominen attacks and innuendo of wrong doing that the thrill of Crete and Minos is completely buried.
   
   The central claim of this bad book is that Evans created Minoan archaeology and did not discover anything. The attacks are unrelenting. The author claims variously : Evans is unscientific and concerned only with objects, stole antquities, horded valuable linear B scripts, was a repressed homosexual, took too much credit for his finds and harmed nearly all of his colleagues, was shrewd and calculating to excess in his business dealings, was a racist because his disliked Turks and personally favored European and Greek religion and culture, was a spoiled wealthly aristocrat of no ability but gifted merely by birth and social standing- who also ate very well, etc etc etc
   
   That the author has issues with Evans is an understatement and parrying all of his attacks (most of which are the authors own unsubstantiated suspicions or irelevant details) is a waste of time.
   
   Evans- the gentlemen and scholar who devoted his 90 years of life to classics, beauty in art and history, who spent his fortune to dig Knossos and who developed new theories of myth and civilization: in short a person whose name will be recalled as long as history-minded Western man is revered- is not present in this book. This book is the product of a modern academic archaeology resentful of its romantic past, that prefers digging with toothbrushes, hates coin collectors, believes antiquities dealers are evil and wishes that British, Germans and French had left everything in the ground for them to sniff about with white gloves and a microscope.
   
   
   That the author is an academic feather-weight is evident in the opening pages, where he attempts to work out his own crude thesis: Evans was not an archaeologist but a myth maker motivated by sexual demons. His analysis is so bad, reading his turns of phrase are like chewing on sand: "Archaeologists are the progenitors as well as the midwives at the birthing process we call excavation." Ugly writing quickly leads to bad analysis such as this delphic prose: " ...we must start with Evans himself, the product of his genes and his life experiences." These experiences include the alleged homosexuality of Evans which the author tries to awkwardly weave into his book perhaps hoping to increase sales, but he cannot find much and we are left with a few sentences of inane writing worthy only of a freshman trying to impress a bored teaching assistant. He writes that he suspects Evans was driven to pursue his career because of the "repressed 'beastliness' of his homosexuality..." His efforts degenerate further a few hundred pages later with innuendo about a young man Evans adopted and his association with Baden Powell and the Boy Scout movement.
   
   The author has no wit and his style wears the reader down. He makes no effort in the biography to educate the reader about the civilization of Crete and takes the excitement of the past away completely. I know of no other book on archaeology that deadens its subject matter to such a degree. The author is all over the place with his own insipid thoughts and at times contradicts his own thin analysis.
   
   For example the author continually harps on the fact that Evan's sister titled her biography of him, "Time and Chance". The author writes "Nothing could be further from what I believe about how Evans discovered Knossos..."(p.6) In his effort to bring Evans down from his perch the author continually paints Evans as simply a digger with money. At the end of his book, the author returns to this theme: "Arthur Evans did not stumble upon Knossos by some happy circumstance. He set his mind on acquiring the rights to a well-documented site.... he secured the expertise he lacked in the person of a site foreman, architects, and conservators..." (p.308) Ok this attack may work in hindsight, but on page 175 the author himself writes: "they all faced the risk that within a few hours they might have removed only a thin layer of eroded soil and exposed a solid rock outcropping scattered with worthless pot shards... Evans might learn that he had chased off the other suitors only to find the bride barren of promise and her dowry worthless. These are the risks excavators take." Which is it? Did Evans simply walk in and dig up what everyone knew was there or did chance play a role and did he finally locate the fabled city of Knossos after three and a half millenium? Clearly this writer is a moron.
   
   A good graduate student should set things right and demolish MacGillivray's shoddy research on Evans, a student of history with a sense of the classical- not one inspired while waiting to use public tennis courts in Manhattan as MacGillivray says he was. Surely some inspiration can still be found in the stones of ruined cities, a brilliant gemstone or winds of the Mediterranean.
   
   The author, in writing this extended effort to libel the dead, succeeds only in diminishing our native appreciation of history, and our myths. That is the end point of modernity.



2. Sandy MacGillivray's in depth analysis of the life and times of pioneer Cretan archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans was a pure joy to read. The author's own experiences as a professional in the field on Crete add great weight to his arguments as he finds himself coping the Evans' legacy on a daily basis. I really got the sense that the author knew Evans, both the man and the scholar, through close attention to and extensive research on the amply available primary sources. This is a wonderfully scholarly, yet very readable and highly interesting book to both the professional archaeologist and interested armchair amateur.

1 comments about Charles George Gordon.

1. This is not so much a biography as a tribute to that unusual man, General Charles Gordon. In typical Victorian style, he is praised lavishly as a fine, upstanding hero -- but his eccentricity and fanaticism come through as well. A very useful book for Gordon enthusiasts and those interested in the past and ongoing issues in the Sudan.

1 comments about Lilla's Feast: a Story of Love, War and a Passion for Food.

1. Lilla's Feast" describes a time not so very long ago that seems impossibly distant. The world-wide expansion of European colonialism in the 19th century caused thousands of people, especially British, to seek their fortunes in the colonies and the trading emporiums in the exotic East, especially India and China. Lilla, the great-grandmother of the author was one of them. She was born in Chefoo, China in 1882 and spent most of her life in China or India.
   
   Lilla never did anything of great importance, but she stands for all the Brits born and raised abroad who felt a bit foreign when they returned "home" to England on visits. During the course of her 100-year life Lilla was present during the peak of Western power and prestige in the Orient before 1900 and its rapid decline thereafter culminating in World War II in which Lilla and her family ended up in a Japanese concentration camp.
   
   We follow Lilla through marriages, births,deaths, family troubles in India and China, the hardships of Weihsien internee camp in China during World War II, and finally back to an uneasy old age in England -- the money, power, and prestige of life as a privileged Westener in China now gone. It's a good story to be read about a class of people who saw their pleasant lives and lucrative livelihoods destroyed by war and politics. We don't feel all that sorry for Lilla, nor even that fond of her, but we are interested in her experiences. Along the way we get some fascinating pictures of the life of Brits in China -- and especially the hardships of Weihsien, a concentration camp that has catalyzed a sizeable body of literature. See "The Call" by John Hersey, a novel about a missionary who is interned in Weihsien and "Shantung Compound" by Lawrence Gilkey, a sociological classic about people under the stress of imprisonment.
   
   Smallchief

2 comments about Journals and Letters: Burney, Frances (Penguin Classics).

1. Frances Burney was in her day one of the most successful novelists in England and in later years Jane Austen was to be one of her fans. I haven't read her novels but on the basis of these letters and journals I have certainly become interested.

   This book contains extracts from her letters and diaries stretching from 1768 to 1839, from childhood to old age. Her experiences in that time are very well summarised in the review above. I think that her experience as a novelist does show through in these letters which actually do read like scenes from a novel. Some are comic such as a humourous conversation between her friend George Cambridge and an Italian singer comparing the merits of their countries. Or the party attended by the Russian Prince Orlov who when showing off a valuable jewel which impresses the English ladies present, he asks them if they want anything else they "might strip him entirely". Other scenes are very dramatic such as her near drowning at Ilfracombe or her letters about the illness of King George III (in whose court she served at the time). There are also her various experiences in France and Belgium where she followed her husband who was a French aristocrat.

   Another thing which makes these letters read like a novel is her ability at characterisation. This is especially clear in the cases of her friend Dr Samuel Johnson and her employer King George III. She records conversations she had with them so that we get a very good picture of what they were like as people. Though friends with Johnson she does not hide his tendency to sometimes be an argumentative bully or his strange mannerisms.

   So overall these are a wonderful picture of what life was actually like in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Penguin edition has a comment on the back comparing this book to the diaries of Samuel Pepys and I fully agree.




2. I was drawn to read this book by falling in love with a portrait of the author. She had a serenely pleasant face that radiated calm and good sense, and suddenly I wanted to know more about her. When I discovered that her diaries and letters cut a broad swath from 1778 to 1838, I was hooked.

   Here is a woman who was an intimate of Dr Johnson, James Boswell, Joshua Reynolds, the Thrales, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the Bluestockings, George III and Queen Charlotte -- to name just a few. She was the first woman novelist who did not die in penury (like Aphra Behn and Charlotte Lennox): Her EVELINA, CECILIA, CAMILLA, and THE WANDERER are still readily available after more than 200 years. For five years, Miss Burney served as wardrobe maid for Queen Charlotte until illness forced her to resign. Her descriptions of the court of George III show the monarch at the beginnings of the madness that later debilitated him and contain some of her best prose.

   By then, the French Revolution was in full swing, and scores of French nobility made their way to safety in England. When she met General d'Arblay, adjutant to the exiled Marquis de Lafayette, it was love at first sight for this 40-year-old woman who had never been married. Despite the opposition of her father, Fanny married d'Arblay and lived happily with him until his death more than 20 years later. Sadly, she also outlived her son from this marriage.

   Fanny followed her husband to France during the Consulate and met the rising young Napoleon, Talleyrand, Louis XVIII (during Napoleon's exile at Elba), and other notables. She succeeded in raising a family near Paris despite the fact that, for a good part of that time, France was at war with England. At Waterloo, she helped by helping to create bandages for the wounded.

   This is a book to read slowly and savor the feeling of another time. Fanny outlived the 18th Century "Age of Reason" and saw the birth of Romanticism and the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria. I would like to have known her. Reading her diaries, I feel I do; and I feel even more drawn to her than before.

5 comments about Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle.

1. This is a very readable and engaging biography of Arthur Conan Doyle. While many people only think of him in association with the stories of Sherlock Holmes, in fact Conan Doyle (his compound last name) was a multi-faceted man who grew up in poverty, became a medical doctor, served on a whaling ship in the Arctic, and worked in an Army hospital during the Boer War. He began his literary career writing stories for magazines, and one of these stories concerned a detective named Sherlock Holmes. The Sherlock Holmes stories became popular, although Conan Doyle did not consider them serious literature and would come to consider the demand for this character as pulling him away from his efforts at more important works.
   
   Conan Doyle lost many close relatives during WWI. Perhaps as a result of this he developed a deep interest in spiritualism, and this interest gradually began to absorb his life as he left off literary pursuits to advocate for spiritualist research via press and podium. This advocacy led many to lose their esteem for the creator of Sherlock Holmes since they assumed that Conan Doyle and Sherlock must be one and the same in personality and temperament.
   
   I was interested to learn that Conan Doyle wrote his detective stories by determining the ending, and then working back toward it. Thus his character's "brilliant observations" and deductions were always carefully planned by knowledge of the solution before it was apparent to the reader. While Sherlock's powers of observation and deduction came to represent a paradigm of rational scientific proof, in reality they were an illusion working back from given solutions. In the same way, Conan Doyle would advocate for spiritualism by pleading for people to restrain their skepticism, and believe in order to know. Seen in this way, the contrast between his flinty-eyed detective and the real-life Conan Doyle's interest in spiritualism seems less dramatic.
   
   Overall, this book read like a novel and was a good balance between Conan Doyle's whole life story and the part of it that involved Sherlock Holmes.



2. Teller of tales is a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle, writer of the Sherlock Holmes series. I was required to read a non-fiction book and write a review for the book on amazon.com. At the time, I had just been introduced to the Sherlock Holmes series, and was currently reading my way though a collection of these novels. I was intrigued by he author's unusual writing style, and somewhat ashamed that I knew nothing about him, so I decided to read his biography.
   
   The author of this biography, Daniel Stashower, addresses a lot of controversies pertaining to Conan Doyle throughout the book, rationalizing some of Conan's more unusual decisions and actions while keeping an impartial 3rd person tone throughout the entire book. "Many critics assume that the reason for Conan's actions were this, but at the time Conan was going through this. It can be speculated that..."
   
   The book was very entertaining and thought provoking. Conan Doyle himself is an interesting character, though he is nothing like his famous book character. Besides eth actual storyline, there were many great books written during Conan Doyle's time period, but none of these books are required reading through high school. After reading this, there are many novels I want to look into, novels that I would never have heard of otherwise. Although I feel it is a shame that many kids my age never have and never will read these stories, I can't remember enjoying any book I was forced to read.
   
   Daniel Stashower has written several mystery novels of his own along with writing this biography. He is also a freelance journalist, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times and many others. However, it is easy to tell that he is a credible author when reading Teller of Tales.
   
   I can only think of one drawback to this book, and it wouldn't be fair to hold this against the book or the writer. I personally can't read more than one book at a time. Since I stopped reading my Sherlock Holmes collection to read this novel, and since the book makes many references to these stories and stories by other authors that I would like to read, the task of finishing this book has become somewhat painful.



3. Daniel Stashower's biography of Conan Doyle is well written, as one would expect from the author of the Houdini mysteries, but never profound. We are given the great man's public life without any deep examination of the inner man. The result is a rather straightforward narrative, interesting because Conan Doyle led a fascinating life, but with all the weight of a magazine profile. The complete absence of citations reinforces this impression, and there are no footnotes, although a comprehensive bibliography is included.



4. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle was a complex and honorable man. Toward the end of his life he embraced spiritualisim as he did everything else, wholeheartedly, and this led to many people dismissing him as a crackpot. However, as author Daniel Stashower pointst out, such was not the case. Conan-Doyle really believed in life after death. This belief filled the void in his life that was left when he renounced his belief in the Catholic Church. Daniel Stashower has written an even-handed fair biography of Conan-Doyle. The book is well researched and Conan-Doyle comes to life on these pages. Conan-Doyle, of course, is best known for creating Sherlock Holmes but as Stashower shows Conan-Doyle wrote many more works of fiction and non-fiction in his long career. If you want to have an idea of what made the man behind Sherlock Holmes tick then I recommend this book highly.



5. Years ago I read the biographies of Conan Doyle by John Dickson Carr and Charles Higham, and even tried to get beyond Sherlock Holmes by reading as much as I could of Conan Doyle's other fiction. Therefore I thought I knew something about Conan Doyle as a writer and as a person, but Stashower's fine book was still a revelation to me; it's not an exaggeration to say that I found new insights into Sir Arthur on nearly every page.

   Stashower has done his research, but he is also unafraid to use Conan Doyle's semiautobiographical fiction, not to mention his poetry, to provide windows into the inner Sir Arthur that Sir Arthur's own autobiography carefully conceals.

   Sir Arthur, of course, created a character that (along with Tarzan) is one of the immortal icons of adventure fiction, a character as popular today as he was when his short stories first hit the STRAND Magazine like a thunderbolt. One thing everyone knows about Conan Doyle is how deeply he resented the fame of Sherlock Holmes, but even here Stashower has some startling information to relate.

   He is particularly good on the last couple of decades of Sir Arthur's life, when his seemingly mindless advocacy of even the most infantile and transparently fradulent aspects of Spiritualism, and his output of nearly a dozen unreadable religious tracts, left almost all of his readers convinced he had lost his mind. His endorsement of the authenticity of some photographs of fairies supposedly taken by two little girls (who had actually cut the tiny figures out of very familiar magazine ads for Fairy Soap!), and his calling in a psychic detective to "solve" the not-very-mysterious disappearance of novelist Agatha Christie, were the final straws for even his most tolerant fans.

   On top of it all Sir Arthur was a terrible judge of the relative merits of his own fiction, and anyone who attempts to read his entire fictional output, as I did some years ago and as Stashower obviously has, will see how sadly he frittered away and squandered his unique gifts as a "teller of tales."

   How could a man who created one of the immortal icons of rationality be in person so gullible, irrational, foolish and unworldly? Well, Stashower does as good a job of explaining the apparent paradox as anyone will probably be able to do. Highly recommended.

5 comments about Other Clay: A Remembrance of the World War II Infantry.

1. I found this book interesting, though somewhat less than I had hoped. Still, it is a good book for anyone interested in the actions of D-Day and in particular, the 29th Divisions role in the invasion. Cawthon tells a good story but I found myself wanting to know more about certain things he talked about. Most of which I'm sure he never knew the details of, but it appears that he had probably, simply forgot most of the facts needed to flesh out the story lines.



2. "Other Clay" by Charles R. Cawthon.
   Subtitled:" A Remembrance Of The World War II Infantry".
   University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2004.
   
   This is a well written personal memoir, written the way all personal memoirs should be written: less on the preliminary training, more on the actual combat experiences. The author's emphasis is on the action in the European Theater of Operations (ETO), with a fairly brief introductory section highlighting the people involved, the training involved and the feelings involved in anticipation of the D-Day landings.
   
   Charles R. Cawthon (1912-1996) served with the 2nd Battalion, 116th Regiment, commonly known as the Stonewall Brigade of the 29th Infantry Division. Recall that the 29th Infantry Division shoulder patch was a circle made up of blue and gray, in a yang and yin arrangement, meaning the both Northern and Southern outfits in one division. Cawthon was part of the gray section; the southern group that once, years ago, had been commanded by confederate General Thomas Jackson, "Stonewall" Jackson. Cawthon's personal memoir begins with his company, "H Company", Virginia National Guard, mustering in the armory to take the oath as they entered federal service on 3 February 1941. In the next 33 pages or so, the author describes preparation for the invasion of Europe, moving quickly through an analysis of the ethnic make-up of the men in the command, to their training and their shipping overseas. The entire division went on the Queen Mary, a Cunard Line ship that was fast enough so that she could outrun German submarines. On page 22, Cawthon describes how the Queen Mary cut the cruiser, HMS Curacao in half with loss of 332 seamen, "... there was a bump and then a tremor underfoot, and a shout that we had run down one of the escorts." With this quiet and un-excited writing, the author recounts how 332 men died in oil-coated cold seas. On page 33, Charles Cawthon quietly describes how a man, in training on the beach went up to an uncovered mine, and, for some reason, tapped the top of the mine with the toe of his boot. "There was a blinding flash and a clap of sound, and he disappeared as by a magician's sleight of hand. The illusion terminated in pieces of anatomy plopping into the sand around us." This is presented in quiet, well-written prose. The landing on D-Day, 1944, the ineffectiveness of their precautions to keep weapons dry, and the casualties suffered (more than 50%by Cawthon's 2nd Battalion) are all quietly recorded in good English prose that keeps you reading and reading.
   
   This same understatement is carried throughout the book and throughout the ETO, from the battles in the hedgerows of Normandy, to Operation Cobra, to the time in October 1944 when he is wounded in the leg. Even when describing K-rations, his prose is understated, "...the soldier ate the part least offensive to his taste...For me, the sugar cubes were the most familiar tasting, and, in the belief that they yielded energy, I consumed them heavily... " He expresses concern with the replacements, whose way to war "... was hard, crowded and dull. ... to join strangers in facing death or great injury". He describes the replacements as innocent and somehow pathetic ..."I felt an ancient among children, knowing and dreading what they were to meet". (Page 81).
   
   I found this book to be well worth reading.



3. This is an interesting book. Perhaps not as good as I'd initially thought, and hoped, but good nonetheless. From what I can tell the book wasn't written till the late-80's early 90's, although it is based in part on a trio of articles written in the 70s and early 80s. I think it suffers - as a memoir - from having been written so long after the event. Notably, there is an almost complete absence of spoken word interactions, and in a way it almost seems like Cawthon is writing about someone else.
   
   I really, really liked Cawthon's modesty. Also, the changing character of the division over it's months in battle was interesting. The importance of personal relationships was brought out well, both at the peer level, and at the superior level (e.g., his good first impression with Gerhardt, which made things a little easier with this notoriously difficult man for Cawthon later). The emphasis he put on psychological casualties and the 'voluntary' nature of being a rifleman in the US Army in WWII was enlightening, and isn't something I've seen much - or any - discussion of elsewhere (although ... Bowlby and Milligan do so for the British Army, as does Mowat for the Canadian Army).
   
   OTOH, there was strangely little information about the mechanics of running an infantry unit in battle (unlike, say, Wilson or Johns). I also tired of Cawthon's repeatedly going off on little tangents then pulling up short with "but that belongs in a later part of this story" - he did that a lot with Howie, in particular.
   
   On a minor note; the maps were ok, but I think are the worse for having been borrowed from another context rather than having been drawn specifically for this one. OTOH, those official history maps really are nice, and it is profoundly unlikely anything similar would have been produced just for this book.
   
   Would I recommend this book? Well, yes, but not to all and sundry. The 29th Inf Div has been blessed with a number of very good biographers (Johns "The Clay Pigeons of St. Lô", Balkoski "Beyond the Beachhead: The 29th Division in Normandy" and "Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944", and Cawthon), and I would recommend it to anyone who's read either or both of those others, but perhaps not as a first read.
   
   I'm glad I read it, but I think it'll be a long while before I read it again, or even refer to it.



4. I gave up on this book in the third chapter. The author remembers very few details and readily admits he has to rely on his scanty notes. To fill the pages he uses his vast knowledge of the Civil War and ancient history.



5. The Yanks (as the British call us) put very little trust in government or politicians, and with good reasons. An old proverb explains that "Dumb crooks go to prison, while smart crooks go into government".
   
   U.S. politicians have a long history of selling the Yankee people out to British foreign policy. President Wilson sold out America during World War I by helping the British sleeper cell to propagate propaganda, declaring war against the Central Powers, and setting up the Committee on Public Information to "sell the war to America". After the war, the Yanks felt betrayed and said "NEVER AGAIN".
   
   Then came Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR, too, sold the Yanks out to British foreign policy. After the British sounded the alarm that the Russians were winning against Germany and all of Europe would fall to the Soviets, FDR provoked the Japanese to hit at Pearl Harbor and sat on his hands to let it happen. Afterward, the Yanks went war crazy and were sent to Europe to fight the Germans so as to stop the Soviets' westward advance. Churchill, who held both American and British citizenships, was instrumental in his work through the British fifth column to get the Yanks back to Europe (see Nicholas John Cull's "Selling War").
   
   In 1941 when Pearl Harbor was allowed by FDR to be hit, a young Charles R. Cawthon joined the 116th Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division of the United States Army. This book, then, is a memoir of a lad who was caught up in "the gambling table of governments" as Tom Paine once put it. Cawthon was sent to England to train for the D-Day invasion at Normandy, then went in with the second wave at Omaha Beach. He writes "Next I recall standing beside a small, rural hotel and the bodies of three Americans who had met final appointments there. The corporal of a live squad of the 16th Regiment deployed around the hotel told me that the dead had been there when he had arrived; he did not know their outfit". Cawthon spent most of the day trying to find his squad and is eventually reunited with his unit.
   
   It is interesting to note that he was a Yank fighting for the Union Jack: "Assuredly, that night I did not speculate on whether the shade of Old Jack might be drawn from the shadows to this battle-swept place on the coast of France". FDR's Pearl Harbor created American-powered British Empire - strange bedfellows indeed! I wonder what George Washington or Andy Jackson were thinking at the time - were they rolling in the graves?!
   
   Lady Liberty had served America well until the twentieth century when the politicans rejected her and sold us out to British empire. It is past time to return to our libertarian roots and chart the course for the future of a free America rather than a corporatist Amerika, British-style. In conclusion, the reader will finish the book probably with a heavy heart from having spent a day in time with poor Cawthon and "the dupes of the game".

5 comments about The Beatles: After the Break-Up 1970-2000 : A Day-By-Day Diary.

1. First let me say what a wonderful book this is. I bought it thinking of it as a reference, but ending up reading it cover to cover. There are many stories that run through the book, John, Paul, George, and Ringo's lives, for sure, but you can also follow the legal cases (I never knew Apple records sued Apple Computers, and got an undisclosed settlement!), the tours, the press bickering and the love fests in the press.

   I found the organization exceptional. While an index would have been nice (maybe for future editions), I didn't really need it. My favorite activity while reading this book was to follow various threads from entry to entry. So, when John wrote a letter to Melody Maker, that is noted and you are directed to the subsequent dates to find out the response, etc. I found this to be fun and engaging. All in all, a wonderful book.




2. I thought this book was a great read!. Its researched with great detail & passion from a writer who knows his stuff. I'd love to meet the writer, as I imagine that he could talk for hours about the Beatles & you wouldn't get bored!.



3. This is the best book since Lewisohn's Day By Day book of the Beatles which cover 1962-1989. It picks up where he left off and gives us the most complete picture of the Beatles after the Beatles to date. Only a few mistkaes on dates and times, which hopefully will be corrected in the next edition. Buy it ASAP!



4. From John and Paul's last photo together to John's statement of a possible Beatle reunion; this book has it all on the four muscicians who continue to influence the musical world. Keith Badman details all the relevant events of the post-Beatles' lives which is a must for any true Beatle fan!



5. If you need to know every activity each Beatle has participated in from the minute Paul announced he was leaving the group, until the present time, this is the book for you. It's a diary, plain and simple, which lists day by day appearances, meetings, concerts, interviews, record releases, etc., many of which were obscure until now. If you're looking for narrative prose about the solo Beatles, look elsewhere. This book definitely has the most detailed account of John's final day, and the other Beatles' reactions. It has a few rare photos; a must have for true Beatlemaniacs.

No comments about The Real Oliver Twist: Robert Blincoe: A life that Illuminates a Violent Age.