2 comments about Trafalgar's Lost Hero: Admiral Lord Collingwood and the Defeat of Napoleon.

1. On the whole, this proves to be an pretty interesting biography on Admiral Cuthbert Lord Collingwood. Since not much is known about this man and his career, that made the book even more interesting par say.
   
   The book appears to be well written and researched. The lack of primary sources seem to hampered the author. But its pretty clear that the author covers most aspects of Collingwood's life and his naval career. What will surprised most readers appears to be Collingwood's close friendship with Horatio Lord Nelson who appears to be Collingwood's total opposite in personality. The book appears to be geared toward the novice reader although its informative for all readers. If there were any great weakness in this biography, it may be that the author appears to be over enthusiastic about his subject as if Collingwood can do no wrong.
   
   But on the whole, this biographical work does justice to Lord Collingwood and managed to bring this naval warrior from under Lord Nelson's shadow and give him a bit of little lime light of his own. While the book tries to paint Collingwood in the same likeness of one of these fictional naval heroes, the book clearly shows that Collingwood is definitely no Aubrey, Hornblower or Bolitho. I strongly recommended this book for those whose interest in Napoleonic naval history remains high.



2. Collingwood was an outstanding naval officer who contributed much to England's maritime victories during the Napoleonic wars. Unfortunately, he lived and worked along with Britain's greatest, most controversial, and most fascinating admiral, Horatio Nelson.The immense volume of literature about Nelson has overshadowed interest in the life of Collingwood. While we know an immense amount about Nelson's life and career (read Sugden's new biography of only the first part of Nelson's life), we know little about Collingwood. His childhood and early career are almost entirely undocumented, posing a challenge for a biographer. His later life shows him to be a sailor of skill, a brave and aggressive fighter, and, in all likelihood, a better diplomat than Nelson. This book is pleasantly written, a quick read, and probably tells us as much about Collingwood as can be unearthed. Collingwood was not as complex and fascinating a personality as Nelson, but he comes across as a solid officer, and a kind person. Worth reading to fill in some gaps in our knowledge of this remarkable period in naval warfare.

5 comments about Yeats's Ghosts: The Secret Life of W.B. Yeats.

1. Look, Brenda Maddox is a journalist not a scholar. She has little to say about the poems and her sources are nothing new. But she writes a lively prose with a deft eye for the human angle in describing the parade of remarkable women who passed through Yeats's later life. I don't think she's out to replace the more detailed biographies other reviewers mention so much as add color and detail to the standard portrait of the 'smiling public man.'

   The book's centerpiece is the early years of Yeats's marriage to his wife George, a cultivated woman twenty-seven years his junior who turned what looked to be a marriage of convenience into a source of great poetic inspiration. George began channeling spirits on their honeymoon which, over the next two years, revealed to Yeats an entire philosophy of history and the soul's fate after death while also dictating how an older, indifferent lover ought to treat a young new wife. Maddox leaves the question of the Script's authenticity open, pointing out on the one hand how well it suited George's purposes and on the other how sincerely she shared Yeats's occult beliefs. Halfway through the book though, after a short, out of place chapter on Yeats's mother, she leaves George behind to concentrate on the eccentricities of Yeats's later years. Yeats had a capacity for staying 'forever young' that led to some odd connections; he involved himself, especially after the Steinach operation, with a cast of dubious individuals who took him away from the unwanted responsibilities of home and family.

   I don't think Maddox is trying to pull Yeats off a pedestal--she clearly believes the poems he wrote in these years are great. She's also fair-minded in dealing with Yeats's Fascist sympathies, his late passion for eugenics and the bad rap he's gotten from feminists. But showing how much care and indulgence his work required from others, especially the women he chose to attend to his needs, reminds you that greatness is often a collaborative effort. Giving credit where credit is due for Yeats's late achievement, especially in the case of his long-suffering wife George, takes nothing away from his achievement. Just the opposite; I admired the poetry all the more knowing the personal hopes and (sometimes) blindnesses it grew out of. A fun, instructive read.




2. Maddox's focus is on the people that revolved around Yeats--his wife, lovers, relatives, and peers. She relays several intimate anecdotes concerning Yeats's troubled relationships with his parents, his obsessions with women like Maude Gonne and her daughter, Iseult, and his interaction with a long line of "mother figures" (most notably, Lady Gregory).

   Reading this book gave me the impression that Yeats wrote not just because he was inspired by Ireland and metaphysical themes; but as a need to escape his stifling environment.

   While providing many interesting details about Mrs. Yeats's "abilities" with automatic writing, Maddox goes far in portraying Georgie as more of a controlling wife than a powerful medium. This, along with Yeats's own "psychic experiences" may lead a skeptic to wonder just how sane the poet actually was.

   The section dealing with his term as a Free State Senator was good, in terms of illustrating Yeats' ongoing battle against censorship and civic divorce (in contrast with his reported stances on fascism and eugenics). Readers can revel in how Yeats, while conservative in such things as parenting, thoroghly enjoyed playing the "dirty old man" in various media--print, theater, and radio. As far as a deeper insight into Yeats as mystical poet, though, the book's treatment of the man is sketchy at best.




3. Imagine a poet who is so absorbed in his interior life and imagination that his wife resorts to speaking with the dead and the spirit world--simply to keep the man interested. That's what Barbara Maddox insists in her wonderfully inclusive biography, "Yeats's Ghosts."

   By nearly every assessment, W. B. Yeats stands as the greatest poet of the 20th Century. The ultimate symbolist, Yeats, however, remains an exceptionally difficult poet to fully appreciate--mainly because of the arcane and personal perspectives and references that litter nearly every one of his poems. Many readers, in fact, find it necessary to purchase a concordance of his work, and one publisher even offers a guide to the works of a poet who himself chose to speckle his books with countless footnotes and clarifications. Which, only naturally, are together a godsend.

   "Yeats's Ghosts," a controversial biography by the award-winning Barbara Maddox, may help readers to understand the milleux in which Yeats wrote--the current events that engendered work after work, the personal friends to and about whom many were originally composed, and the continual wash of Celtic mythology--but what's especially entertaining about the book is its unique take on one of the most contentious issues regarding Yeats.

   Yeats, after all, was a mystic--a mystic in the old Celtic Tradition--caught between scientific rationalism on the one hand and orthodox Christianity on the other. Like many Irishmen living on the cusp of the modern age, Yeats actively hoped for a renaissance of ancient Irish virtues--something along the lines of prewar Germany's obsession with getting rid of influences that had garbled and partially eradicated national and racial identities.

   A member of the famous Order of the Golden Dawn (along with the maleviolent Aleister Crowley), Yeats, according to some, indulged in the occult; others find that probability suspect, citing that it is hard to believe that a poet of such gifts would be such a pushover for what most people consider "spurious information." Whatever the case, as Maddox quickly reveals, Yeats as a personality was definitely not of this age, an age that has yet to make a compromise with the imagination as a cultural and artistic force. In fact, without an understanding of the occult nuances hidden within his poems, most readers will find themselves frustrated with another collision with the inpenetrable words of a brilliant man and seminally Irish poet.

   The book begins with Yeats's marriage on-the-rebound--at fifty-- to Georgie Hyde-Lee, an attractive bohemian he'd met through the Golden Dawn. But he's still obsessed with his almost mythical femme fatale, Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne--and infatuated with her daughter Iseult. Yeats was probably not as conducive to marriage as he wanted to be, and, according to Maddox, his new wife quickly sensed it. When she began a regimen of automatic writing to contact the spirit world, however, Yeats's interest rapidly rose, and over the course of their marriage, it may have been Georgie's flirtations with the occult that held the marriage together.

   There are, of course, other "ghosts" in Maddox's life of Yeats, his relationship to an emotionally unavailable mother amongst them, but many of Maddox's assertions are too much of a flirtation with another relatively spurious paradigm, Freudianism. Some of her readings in the yellow light of psychoanalysis are really a reach--she's really digging, really really digging--and it's necessary to remember that Yeats's poetry is not defiant of definition but out of its realm completely. Not surprisingly, Maddox's drive to find a reasonable explanation for an inner life completely enthralled with the imaginary tends to limit what she is seeking to convey--a fully understandable vision of a poet who, for all practical purposes, spurned the idea of personality, at least in its more traditional manifestations. Consequently, Maddox's pictures seem more like snapshots that tend to trivialize a man who, more than likely, will never be fully understood. Often the object of Maddox's well-written tale comes off as a deluded old fool--although anyone who has read and wondered over the majesty of his poetic works can't help but wonder if there really wasn't something to the imaginary world in which he thrilled.




4. This work performs the useful function of paying some attention to Mrs. Yeats and Yeats' domestic life, but is essentially a mediocre and sloppy piece of work, full of hasty, half-baked judgment, and occassional smarmy irreverence. Roy Foster's biography, though long, is infinitely to be preferred.



5. Brenda Maddox missed her calling in life: she should have been a writer for one of the tabloid newspapers in the grocery-store checkout lines. With an eye for whatever is unflattering or sensational she has combed the archives and written an account of the later decades of Yeats's life that lacks intelligence, dignity and any real expertise about Yeats's work. Little of what she relates will be new to scholars in the field, but then they aren't the real audience for the book, which obviously is intended to rack up sales. That the author relates Yeats's faults is acceptable; but that she exaggerates them, and fails to put them into a proper context, is not. For example, the fact that Yeats as an old man suffered from various physical infirmities is for Maddox a subject almost for derision, whereas the normal attitude would be to admire all the more the courage of his refusal to capitulate to "devouring Time" and the greatness of his accomplishments as an artist whose work improved throughout his life and who preserved his passion for perfection in the writing even of his very last poem. Little is actually said about the poetry and plays in this book and that little is almost all derivative or naive. There are also numerous errors of fact and the book has been sloppily proofread. The potential reader will be well advised to save his or her money for the responsible studies of Yeats's and his wife's lives currently being prepared by Roy Foster and Ann Saddlemyer. (Foster's splendid biography of the early years was published in 1997.)

No comments about The Cecils: Privilege and Power Behind the Throne.

No comments about Bombay to Bloomsbury: A Biography of the Strachey Family.

2 comments about Camilla: The King's Mistress: Camilla.

1. While I felt that this was an interesting read I felt the author painted an unfair portrait of Diana. She portrayed Diana as a crazy, unstable shrew and yet it was Charles refusal to end his relationship with Camilla that caused Diana to be so unhappy and angry. I don't think there are very few women on this planet that would be happy and accept the fact that their husband has a mistress for 20 years that he refuses to give up after marriage. It proved to me at least, that Diana was justified in her ending her marriage and giving up the throne. The author paints Charles and Camilla as 2 poor lovers who go through hell just to be together. I felt no sympathy for either of them. But it is an engrossing book none the less.



2. An even and informative tale about Camilla Parker-Bowles, a poor little rich girl who may someday get her prince.

   What we learn is that the upper class in the UK is alive and sick with its own moral code. Do what you want, just don't talk about it.

   I like the author's style of writing, but don't really care for Camilla.

5 comments about Blood and Fire: The Story of William and Catherine Booth and the Salvation Army.

1. The Booths were certainly a very interesting social couple during the mid to late 1800's. The things that they did to reform the church were noteworthy, but not always positive. However, the legacy of the Salvation Army deserves the respectful and compassionate overview. The author does wax political and/or socialist at times, but mostly sticks to the fascinating lives of William and Catherine Booth. Written with heart and soul, this book is a rewarding read. This couple should be remembered more often than they are in secular circles for the enormous contribution they made to British society, and the continuing service the Salvation Army renders to the poor and jobless. A beautiful book!



2. William and Catherine Booth endured this kind of humanist gossip throughout their marvellous ministry. It is highly significant that no Salvation Army personel recommend this book. The author, being unsaved, and a senior British politician, concentrates on the radical social reforms the Booths and Salvation Army championed in Victorian Britain. Hattersley, sadly, hasn't a clue about salvation. It's akin to Scott of the Antarctic, frozen to death in his blizzard-bound tent, trying to commentate on a Barbados Test Match. Not only does this author not know his subject, but he has no idea of his subject's Subject. I suspect Roy's next book may portray Christ as a zealous Jewish Zionist with Marxist leanings. It's fluff. Dentist room reading only. Now Roy's even managed to write a book about John Wesley, characterising him as a lecherous toad. Don't waste your money.
   For a far better biography of William and Catherine Booth, one written by a Christian, get Trevor Yaxley's (ISBN 0764227602). And for John Wesley, read John Pollock's biography.



3. William and Catherine Booth were both remarkable. Many past biographers of one or the other have found it difficult to concentrate on their chosen subject, as the other keeps intruding. Roy Hattersley has solved that problem. He has written about the two of them.

   The story is engrossing. William Booth, the pawnbroker's assistant, became a Methodist minister, then an itinerant evangelist, before founding the East London Mission, which eventually became The Salvation Army. Catherine, brought up by Methodist parents, met William in London in 1852, where they fell in love and soon became engaged. It was to be three more years before they were able to marry; at one time during that period they endured over 14 months of almost unbroken separation.

   They formed a dynamic partnership, each complementing the other. William was an action man, a whirlwind who swept all before him. Though he was not unintelligent, he was anti-intellectual and repeatedly ignored Catherine's frequent urgings for him to study. Catherine by contrast had a powerful mind, wrote forcefully, argued convincingly, and, in spite of her shyness, became a powerful preacher. She had strongly held views about Christians abstaining from alcohol and women being allowed to preach. It is no coincidence that The Salvation Army has always taken a strong stand against alcohol, and women have been prominent in its ministry. Two of its Generals have been women.

   One of the fascinating aspects of the Booths' story is the motley crowd of eccentrics they attracted to their flag. Many of their early soldiers were recruited literally from the streets, and then immediately put to work to win others to Christ. Some were illiterate, some had been drunks, others prostitutes. This particular volume, however, does not quite capture that diversity. Though The Salvation Army is probably most often thought of today as an organization engaged in social work, the Booths were first and foremost evangelists. To them the social work was secondary, both in terms of emphasis and chronology.

   Roy Hattersley, the author of this book, was a cabinet minister in a British Labour Government, and his political background gives the book an interesting slant, particularly when he examines The Salvation Army's social work. The book does, however, have some problems. Hattersley seems out of sympathy with the Booths' religious convictions, and tends to sound rather condescending when discussing them. He also does not understand some basic Christian terms such as "sanctification", and frequently uses them inappropriately. In addition the book has too many avoidable errors, which suggests it may have been a rushed job. But it remains both very readable and enjoyable, and is a worthy tribute to two great Christians.




4. It is highly significant that no Salvation Army personel recommend this book. The author, being unsaved and a senior British politician, concentrates on the radical social reforms the Booths and Salvation Army championed in Victorian Britain. Hattersley, sadly, hasn't a clue about salvation. I suspect Roy's next book may portray Christ as a zealous Jewish Zionist with Marxist leanings. Well written fluff. Now Roy's managed to write a book about John Wesley characterising him as a lecherous toad. Don't waste your money.

   For a far better biography of William and Catherine Booth, get Trevor Yaxley's. And for John Wesley, read John Pollock's.




5. For those of us who have grown up in the UK Roy Hattersley's wit and intellect has long been well known. For those of us who are also Salvationists the prospect of Hattersley writing about the founders of the movement we love and serve filled our minds with a sense of forboding.

   We needed not worry. Hattersley writes well, every word being closely considered, and brings what is for me the best biography I have yet read about these icons of The Salvation Army. In a "no punches pulled" account, which propels one forward with a real idea of the Booths' enthusiasm and obsession, one reads about how the movement began, survived and ultimately prospered. Unlike many in-house accounts there is no glossing over of the shortcomings of these very human beings, rather we learn how, fired by what the Booths would consider Divine Inspiration, they "pressed forward to the mark of their high calling".

   Hattersley concludes "It is not necessary to believe in instant sanctification to admire and applaud their work of social redemption." To those of us who do believe we not only admire and applaud but also see the hand of God in all that the Booths did. Hattersley notes that the Army is the only breakaway group from schismatic 19th century Methodism which survives into the twenty-first century. Many of us who believe know the reason - "Blood and Fire" gives enough evidence for every reader to reach his or her own conclusions.

3 comments about Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: Prophet of the Computer Age.

1. I have reviewed most of the books that are readily available on Ada. This book was well written and Dr. Toole is truly the recognized authority of Ada and her life. I found an earlier edition of this book through interlibrary loan and was disappointed that this edition did not offer the same illustrations and pictures. If you are interested in finding out more about Ada especially from her own letters, this is truly one of the best books out there. I would recommend reading at least one other book on Ada Lovlace in addition to this one, for balance, at times Dr. Toole may have been too kind to Ada's memory.

   Ada is a great role model for girls, her life had much turmoil and many obstacles. She fought for her right to do math (and early computer science) in a male society. This book may be a little too steep for early high school reading, a really fabulous young adult book on this subject is Ada Byron Lovelace : The Lady and the Computer (People in Focus Book) by Mary Dodson Wade.




2. Toole's book is an excellent introduction to the life and work of the mathematical visionary, Ada Byron King. Toole's treatment allows the reader access to King's luminous mind--no small achievement.

   Although it may not be appreciated by those who clearly clearly wish to argue with issues external to the text, I highly reccomend "Ada" to anyone who enjoys work which is sensitive, illuminating, and well-written.

   There will probably be a richly-deserved resurgance of interest in King's life and work after the wide release of Lynn Hershman Leeson's film "Conceiving Ada," and Toole's book will be a fine resource for all who are inspired or intrigued by this singular figure.




3. This book is not about Ada but rather the author's defense of Ada's image and place in history.

   There are gratuitous associations of Ada Lovelace to truly famous geniuses and science. For instance, this part of a letter (page 124) --

   It cannot help striking me that *this* extension of Algebra ought to lead to a *further extension* similar in nature, to the *Geometry of Three Dimensions*; & that again perhaps to a further extension in some unknown region & so ad-infinitum possibly...

   -- leads to this comparison (page 122) --

   In the next series of letters Ada hyposthesized a geometry of the "fourth dimension." Several popular books today deal with this subject: Rudy Rucker's The Fourth Dimension, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, and Philip Davis's Descartes' Dream.

   I don't see any reference in Ada's letter to time. I expect it is simple 4 dimensional geometry she is thinking of.

   There is some incredible gushing over the programming language ADA. This book was written in 1992, when it surely should have been obvious that ADA was not the be-all and end-all. Yet the author has apprently fallen hook, line, and sinker for the party line over the programming language named after her hero. Here are some examples. Note these are the author's words, not Ada Lovelace's.

   Pages 176-177: It is accordingly most fitting that the programming language ADA, developed in the early 1980s by the US Department of Defense, provides the most precise facilities for this software development (specification) task of any general-purpose software language for large-scale problems existing today.

   Add this idolatry to the author's infatuation with Ada Lovelace, and the reuslt is some far-fetched comparisons between Ada Lovelace's documentation and later computer concepts.

   Page 179: Here again, the ADA software language contains somewhat unique facilities corresponding in a sense to Ada's insight... A second unuusual ADA facility, exception handling, reflects in a ! different but related way Ada's vision of the Analytical Engines's superiority over the DIfference Engine...In a sense the ADA language exception handler operates at a level of control above the program itself, confirming Ada's foresight.

   Page 185: One can read into the following quotations the germ of perhaps the most important advance in software development in the past twenty years, an idea variously referred to (in its many forms) as *sbatraction*, *modularity*, *separation of concerns*, *information hiding*, or *object-oriented design*.

   Pages 187-188: In the first excerpt from Note D, Ada commended the use of indices, a now-basic technique for reducing complexity in the processing of regular data structures.

   Page 190: ...Then she expanded the visual image she had of weaving and symmetry to highlight the *cycle*, a conceptual building block of programs for both the Analytical Engine and later the computer.

   This exaggeration is also extended to Babbage's Analytical Engine.

   Page 173: Babbage planned to store over 1000 fifty-digit numbers.

   Page 181: It was not until the mid-1960s that the modern computer could store as many digit numbers as did the Analytical Engine.

   Quite wrong; I worked on computers from the 1950s that had more storage capacity.

   Pages 186-187 compare Babbage finding a new use for the Jacquard loom punched card to software reuse: Some predict that the 1990s will be the decade in which software reuse becomes the principal software development mechanism, and that the ADA software language, which simplifies software reuse because of its precise interface specification and generic subprogram facilities, will lead the way.

   Page 189 compares multiple Analytical Engines operating together to current parallel supercomputers, with further comments on ADA supporting this.

1 comments about Hazel: A Life of Lady Lavery, 1880-1935.

1. Ms. McCoole does a wonderful job in accurately portraying the life of Hazel Lavery. She has gone to great lengths to uncover the truth about her relationships with historical figures, one being the Irish icon Michael Collins. What many people may not realize is that Hazel was a painter herself before she met her famous husband, John Lavery. Hazel's story from the suburbs of Chicago to the face on the Irish pound note is a truly enjoyable read.

2 comments about Going Back: A Navy Airman in the Pacific War.

1. Going Back is more than just another memoir of the Pacific War. First of all, this is the story not of a flag officer or pilot but rather of an enlisted aircrewman. This alone makes it somewhat unique. Secondly, this is not simply a collection of anecdotes and "war stories." Rather, this is the poignant story of the author's journey through the war from his blue-collar neighborhood in Philadelphia to the farthest reaches of the vast Pacific and back. It also chronicles his transition from adolescence to manhood. At each stage of these dual journeys we are treated to evocative word pictures of his experiences and feelings. He has an uncommon talent for conveying the gestalt of a situation-the smells and sounds of a Liberator bomber in flight, the enervating feeling of the steaming and fetid jungle, the dark loneliness of a remote hospital ward. Going Back is a far deeper book than one would expect. This is truly a case of not judging a book by its cover. As we accompany the author on his journey, we are treated to his vivid recollections of life as an aircrewman with its adventures, dangers, hardships, and camaraderie. We are treated in even greater measure to his remarkable perception and introspection. With easy language and painful honesty, he tells us a compelling tale, one well worth the reading.



2. This book brought back poignant memories of the reader's World War II experiences which related in many incidences to those of the author. Well done.

3 comments about The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English.

1. You can't find a better study on the topic, and the author is mistress of the sources like few other living historians. The only thing left to do is to look more at the gender issues raised by the whole issue, but this book is so good and thorough there is absolutely no use criticizing it for what it is not intended to be!



2. This is a great book about a wonderful woman, who got lost in the shuffel. As there isn't very much written about Matilda, the first almost English Queen in her own right, the author deserves applause for their ability to put together such a checkered past. The thrown was stolen out from under her by her cousin Stephen, and they began the civil war that English people discribed as the time when "Christ and his saints slept." Speaking of which, if you like this book, you'll love "When Christ and His Saints Slept" by Penman.



3. I found this book fasinating. The beginning is a bit jumbled, hard to follow, but soon it launches the reader into the world of Empress Matilda. The author has done an excellent job of bringing the empress, her father and sons back to life for me espcially, she and son Henry are my ancestors. What better way to get to know them!