2 comments about Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of the Troubadours.

1. Eleanor of Aquitaine has been noted for her political achievements - yet here the focus is on her spiritual influence, nature and side, which considers her as a figure restoring a feminine face to medieval religious life, representing female power and leadership. Collections strong in medieval studies, both at the high school and college level, will find this a different kind of biographical coverage which examines the spiritual representation of Eleanor of Aquitaine.



2. Jean Markale, a controversial French author retired to Celtic Brittany, has a long background in writing about ancient, iconic feminine qualities. Markale's earlier titles suggest how we can expect him to approach Eleanor of Aquitaine. He has written: 'Women of the Celts' (1987), 'The Great Goddess: Reverence of the Divine Feminine from the Paleolithic to the Present' (1999), and 'Cathedral of the Black Madonna: The Druids and the Mysteries of Chartres' (2004).
   
   Regarding those mysteries of Chartres with its labyrinth and Black Madonna, the drive to build Chartres Cathedral was encouraged by the queen, Blanche of Castile (who donated windows). Blanche was a grand-daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine whom the old queen selected and escorted north across the Pyrenees to marry the heir to France. Markale knows the royal family line through many centuries, and one suspects that he had been closing in on Eleanor as a subject for years before he started this book.
   
   In her time Eleanor of Aquitaine embodied, and knew that she embodied, iconic feminine qualities (the 'feminine ideal'?) that Markale treats in 'Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of the Troubadours'. Modern society celebrated these qualities in, say, Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana. And Eleanor? Another author has Eleanor ascribing her reputation to a "radiant hauteur." Markale knows that Eleanor's reception in her own society was built upon her persona amplified by a troubadour press corps. Here, with her coterie of troubadours, comes the twelfth century's "great goddess" and "reverence of the divine feminine." Markale may be controversial, but he is entertaining and he captures the drift of Eleanor's times.
   
   Robert Fripp,
   Author, Power of a Woman. Memoirs of a turbulent life: Eleanor of Aquitaine
   
   P.S.: Why did Markale's English-language publisher grab an image of a woman clad in the fashions of the early 1500s to adorn the cover of this book? The cover does nothing for the author's credibility.

4 comments about The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings A Five-Generation History of the Ultimate Irish-Catholic Family.

1. ...the author began to write about the latter-day Kennedys: old Ted Kennedy, his nephews, his nieces. Then, it seems all the careful research and non-biased authorship went out the window. I can only suppose, maybe because Ted is still alive and could have played hardball with the materials granted to the author, the author decides to give him a pass. How can you write a book about the Kennedy family and not discuss Chappaquidick's ramifications?
   
   But until that point, the book is excellent; plenty of actual letters from Rose, Joe, young Joe, Kathleen, Jack et al., are quoted (letters which reveal so much more of their feelings and their characters, rather than just an author stating an opinion about them -- this is great). The trauma that Jacqueline Kennedy endured after the assassination is finally explored in detail. Really, this part of the book is stunning, particularly in regard to what the Kennedys' faith meant to them (particularly Rose) and how it was practiced -- UNTIL the chapters regarding Teddy and the latter-day Kennedys. Then, I get the distinct feeling that the author is indicating it's OK that most of the latter-day members of the family have become the new "pick & choose" Catholics of today -- the type of so-called believers that want to manipulate and practice this faith THEIR way, not their Church's, way. In other words, if a Catholic belief doesn't suit their life choice, they know to make a slick excuse about the choices they make or the political positions they assume. For instance, Ted becomes pro-choice since about 1972 (but never before) --ironically, just when women really started speaking out and became a political force on this issue, and just about the time of Roe v. Wade. Was it really a belief in women's rights that changed him, or was it just a convenient time to sway the way the political wind was blowing?
   
   I can't quarrel with the quality of the writing, or the research, so this book deserves 3 solid stars. Maybe some of my disappointment in the book is with the current Kennedy family itself (and, in respect to the book, the author's failure to point out how the family has lost its way). It is disappointing, seeing the younger generation's campaigns, marriages and even some lives going bust, due to drugs, embarrassing scandals & so forth; seeing how the Catholic values have been degraded, when compared to the stringent yet strong inner core that Rose Kennedy, Eunice, and I think even JFK (despite all his affairs), had.
   
   Most of the younger generation (and Ted, too) seem to lack this core of strength and determination to achieve things not just for their own good but for the good of others, which I believe, for the most part, came from their Catholic faith. The author does a great job showing what the old faith as practiced by the Kennedys meant to them and how it informed the older generation's lives, but fails to point out that its loss and/or its current application as a sort of "only at my convenience" religion has left its mark on the current generation.



2. Professor Maier has documented a side of the Kennedys that many readers are quite unfamiliar with: their ongoing commitment to their religious heritage. As Maier writes, Americans are more comfortable with Kennedy's as power operators and libertines. The essential Catholic nature of these men and women, however, either bores us or makes us uncomfortable. Some liberals don't appreciate the Kennedys as Catholics because they dislike Catholicism itself. Many conservatives deny that the Kennedy's are Catholic because, for such critics, morality means sexual prudery. Maier is able to strike the proper balance in portraying Joseph, Sr., John F. Kennedy and Edward as committed, believing albeit flawed Catholics. Robert is correctly drawn as the most conventionally devout of the Kennedy males. This should not be a revelation to readers, but in a sense, it is. And the author makes one more very important and routinely ignored point: It is very significant that Americans have been unwilling to nominate (let alone elect) a Roman Catholic to the Presidency since John F. Kennedy, over 40 years ago. This work ranks as one of the best, most carefully-documented and readable of the hundreds of books published about this family.



3. While this is an excellent history of the Kennedy family, tracing its roots like few histories have done, this book is far more. The author neither shows a bias to adore this large, well-known clan nor does he show a disdain for them. He simply tells the story as it is and leaves the reader to his own conclusions.

   The main thrust of the book is the family's dealings with the Catholic church. We learn what many have suspected, that the Kennedy family paid off the churches leaders, providing them with much personal and institutional wealth, for the benefit of various Kennedy family members --- for special treatment and services.

   The book covers just about all family members who were helped by the Catholic hierarchy but, of course, it spends more time on JFK who benefited from payments made by his father on his behalf. But it goes on to the more recent affairs including marriage annulments of lesser family members.

   While this clan is of much less importance than it once was --- indeed it is of little importance --- this history and the new revelations add a good deal of knowledge for the student of politics and religion and leaves us with a distaste and distrust of both.

   Susanna K. Hutcheson
   Owner & Executive Copy Director
   Powerwriting.com LLC




4. this new kennedy's book is very great.
   there are a lot of picture and the texts are very complete.
   you can learn a lot about the kennedys.
   it's never boring.
   So read it!

5 comments about My Life and Loves (Literary Classics).

1. I read this book over 40 years ago and wanted to refresh my memory. Although it is erotic it also is a depiction of life in the 19th and early 20th centuries in England and the U.S. The author was obviously a well educated person and a bit boastful but the descriptions of life are most vivid. I saw a movie of part of the book and it starred Jack Lemmon playing the part of Frank Harris. I loved the story!!



2. This book reads like a 14 year old 's collection of sexual fantasies. The author describes his various sexual encounters in great detail (yawn) but a smart reader wil probably suspect that all the author did was masurbate excessively throughout his entire life. This book is very quaint considering the amount of pornography that can be found in movies and on the Internet today.I give this book 5 stars because I have read that to masturbate successfully one just needs a fast hand and an overactive imagination which I suspect this writer has.Not that I have any "first hand "(no pun intended ) knwledge of the subject!!!!



3. Okay, so we all agree Harris was a liar. Moving right along, it is an incredible piece of fiction, autobiography, and now history. I have heard his cowboy story quoted as fact by ethnic studies instructors, watched the plays of Wilde and pondered both of their distorted lives, wondered about his comments on the Churchills, etc. Harris, however pathological, is, for the first two or three books, a remarkable read. I doubt that many read every word. But if you want to understand something of 19th Century English literature and life, I think you need to read at least half.
   
   Ponder the change in lives if nothing else. This work was scandalous when it came out. In the age of internet porn it is now mostly a historical curiosity. In time it will dwindle to the point where it will disappear. Harris ended up in Hell if it exists at all. Probably one of his tortures would be to watch memory of his existence fade. Whatever happened to Ralph Ginzburg anyway...



4. A very minimal amount of research will tell you that 1) this is by far Mr. Harris's best known and most popular work and that 2) it is at best "highly unreliable", as one source charitably puts it.

   I happen to think there is something very suspect, or at least very curious, about being known primarily for your autobiography. If we hadn't heard of you from elsewhere, why would we want to read your autobiography in the first place? Well, in this case the answer is fairly obvious (for certain of us, that is, not me), but, on the other hand, anyone can do that, especially if he's allowed simply to manufacture the anecdotes.

   In short, you're wasting your time bothering with this boastful, swaggering, blustering imposture.




5. A racy,raunchy but immensely readable autobiography of Frank Harris.Harris is a consummate story-teller & raconteur with a vivid style.An energetic and accomplished dilletante he recounts his childhood in stuffy Victorian England groping underneath a skirt at the first available opportunity ("her bottom was like a warm marble"!) to his trip across the pond to America ,where he worked as a cowboy,clerk and lawyer among other things.He had an amazing memory and acquired a lot of erudition,seemingly effortlessly.Anecdotes of Ruskin,Randolph Churchill,Rodin among a score of others are sprinkled liberally .His refreshing honesty,contempt for humbug & hypocrisy along with boundless energy and optimism makes this a great read.It makes for a leisurely read and is best savored during the hot, long summer after dinner___ over a cigar!

5 comments about Twenty Years A-Growing.

1. I haven't yet read the book but I will submit a review when completed. However the book came highly recommended to me by many people. they found it a delightful memoir and as i just returend from the Dingle Peninsula, i wanted to read it myself.



2. This is an extraordinary book, described by the well-know author E.M. Forster as "here is the egg of a seabird - lovely, perfect and laid this very morning".

   The author, Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, is an Irish-speaking boy growing up on the Great Blasket Island (An Blascaod Mór). He describes his childhood in the twenties on this 100% Irish-speaking island in Co. Kerry. The population of the island never reached 200, and life there was very archaic - resembling the society in Europe thousands of years ago. Nowhere else in Europe did the shear joy of speaking and love of words live on as here, where thousands of pages of folklore has been collected as well. This love of the language is obvious in this vivid book, in which Muiris presents an affectionate, lively and interesting account of a way of life that no longer is.

   Despite being published 70 years ago, the book still feels fresh and manages to blend fond memories and humour in an extraordinary way. This is definitely THE book to buy for anyone interested in the Irish way of life.




3. Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O'Sullivan is one heck of a "coming of age" story. I'd never even heard of it until a friend of mine told me that he was reading it. I'm sure glad he did. This is a great book!

   I've actually read several coming of age stories recently. I didn't plan to...it just kind of occurred that way. Some of them were really good (David Copperfield by Dickens being one of them); but none of them, Copperfield included, spoke to my heart like Twenty Years A-Growing.

   Twenty Years A-Growing was translated into English from Gaelic. I personally find this astounding. They (whoever "they" might be) say a book always loses something in translation. Yet Twenty Years absolutely sings in English...the translation is so powerful that the original must truly be a thing of beauty.

   It is an autobiographical tale of growing up in the Blasket Islands off the coast of Ireland around the time of the first world war. For me at least, it was a thing of wonder to be able to enter into this world which has since moved on. It is a story told in a wonderfully simple yet almost lyrically beautiful way. Each chapter is a story in itself. The story as a whole slowly ingrains itself upon your heart and mind.

   I felt an affinity with Maurice and his friend Thomas. The adventures they find themselves in ring true even as they entertain the reader. Likewise, the character of the grandfather in particular now feels like an old friend to me. I particularly appreciated some of the wisdom he espouses to Maurice.

   I dare anyone to read this book and not be charmed by the lives of these wonderful people who lived almost a hundred years ago in a kind of societal setting that seems all at once foreign, yet somehow more sane than today's world of constant "time management" in pursuit of hollow "muchness" and "manyness."

   It does not happen often that I do not to want a book to end. I usually approach the end of a book with satisfaction. Rarely am I left wanting more. Yet that was the case with Twenty Years A-Growing. It is a truly special book.




4. Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O'Sullivan is one heck of a "coming of age" story. I'd never even heard of it until a friend of mine told me that he was reading it. I'm sure glad he did. This is a great book!

   I've actually read several coming of age stories recently. I didn't plan to...it just kind of occurred that way. Some of them were really good (David Copperfield by Dickens being one of them); but none of them, Copperfield included, spoke to my heart like Twenty Years A-Growing.

   Twenty Years A-Growing was translated into English from Gaelic. I personally find this astounding. They (whoever "they" might be) say a book always loses something in translation. Yet Twenty Years absolutely sings in English...the translation is so powerful that the original must truly be a thing of beauty.

   It is an autobiographical tale of growing up in the Blasket Islands off the coast of Ireland around the time of the first world war. For me at least, it was a thing of wonder to be able to enter into this world which has since moved on. It is a story told in a wonderfully simple yet almost lyrically beautiful way. Each chapter is a story in itself. The story as a whole slowly ingrains itself upon your heart and mind.

   I felt an affinity with Maurice and his friend Thomas. The adventures they find themselves in ring true even as they entertain the reader. Likewise, the character of the grandfather in particular now feels like an old friend to me now. I particularly appreciated some of the wisdom he espouses to Maurice.

   I dare anyone to read this book and not be charmed by the lives of these wonderful people who lived almost a hundred years ago in a kind of societal setting that seems all at once foreign, yet somehow more sane than today's world of constant "time management" in pursuit of hollow "muchness" and "manyness."

   It does not happen often that I do not to want a book to end. I usually approach the end of a book with satisfaction. Rarely am I left wanting more. Yet that was the case with Twenty Years A-Growing. It is a truly special book.




5. Twenty Years A-Growing, or Fiche Bliain ag Fás in its original Irish, is a humorous and well written book about the sometimes hard life at the great western island, An Blascaod Mór, off the cost of Ireland. It tells about the everyday of the islanders in the beginning of the century in a surprisingly modern and lively way. The language of the Island was Irish, and although the Great Blasket is now abandoned, the Irish language still lives on in the mainland parishes in this area. I strongly recommend this book to everyone interested in Ireland, its culture, the Irish language or readerswho just want a fun and good book. I myself have only read the whole of it in its Irish original, but the passes I've read in English shows a well-done translation

5 comments about The Family Silver: A Memoir of Depression and Inheritance.

1. I read this book for the reasons I think most people would read a book with this subtitle - to see if I could identify with the author and perhaps gain some new insight from her experience. As I progressed through it, I was amazed by the congruence of our experiences, but felt a rising call to let the author know her conclusions left me wondering how she could have missed the bigger picture, the common denominations that make it possible for her to connect with people who do not have her specific family history. Ms. O'Brien traces her depression to Irish history, specifically to simply being Irish and a descendant of the town the famine hit hardest. But my own family history has not a drop of Irish in it and I turned down page after page of parallels in her experience and mine. I wanted to tell her, "forget the Irish, already, and focus on the feelings, the reactions to loss and shame that make us all human." Another thread in her story is her almost worshipful attachment to her father. My relationship to my own was similar and I also never married. Yet, when a therapist gives her some insight into how it has affected her, she rejects completely the opportunity to learn something from it and trashes the therapist. So... I am glad I read her book, to find there are others who have lived a life very much in many ways like my own, but I don't feel I was hearing wisdom from the writer and that disappointed me.



2. This is a fascinating account of growing up as an Irish American in the mid 20th century told with dark Irish humor but always with love. It is one of the best accounts of the true impact of depression on the family as well as the individual. One of the best books I have read in the past year.



3. I just couldn't put this book down. This helped me understand so much about myself and my family...and how we've all been shaped by the past. O'brien's humor and warmth stay with you long after you've read the book. A must read for anyone who comes from a family.



4. O'Brien has written a "Memoir of Depression and Inheritance" and she succeeds brilliantly in all of these intentions. This book works beautifully as a memoir, evoking in three dimensions, in colour and almost with smells and sounds, the world of upper-middle class expectations and genteel failure and the anxieties of her parents, and the alternative world of Elmira, which to me has the ring of a magic land. The people - mother, father, siblings, aunts - are whole and understandable and believable and sympathetic. The whole world within which the author strives to grow up is real and immediate on the page.
   
   More than a memoir, O'Brien has the ambition of understanding inheritance. Her book links behaviour and consequence and puts forward explanations and theories of action and traces the interconnecting threads that link relative with relative and past with outcome. This does not obtrude in the narrative: her skill in writing presents these insights as natural extensionds to the momentum of the absorbing story.
   
   The inheritance that is at the centre of O'Brien's understanding is the inheritance of depression. She addresses this with subtlety - she understands, and manages to present the complexity of inheritance and upbringing, accident and fate, biochemistry and environment, individual and social history. She is also alert to the accidents of everyday life that contribute to, and often trigger depression. I love her " `occasions of depression' which the vulnerable among us need to avoid or manage carefully." (p. 159) on the analogy of the "occasions of sin" that beset the unwary Roman Catholic.
   
   The framework for a real humane psychology should be biography, and the complex threads through which a biography is realized. O'Brien's beautiful book is a contribution to this true science of psychology. The fact that it is contained in this insightful memoir and is presented in superb language probably means that it will never feature in psychology reading lists, but it should (though the first reviewer here gives us hope!).



5. I LOVED this book. Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down.
   
   I grew up in the same Boston suburb as the author, in a family spiraling in similar downward economic mobility, and I'm about the same age as the author, so many of her experiences mirrored my own. Her mirror brought me surprising clarity and compassion with regard to my parents' struggles and the impact their struggles had on my own growing up.
   
   I'm a psychologist now. When I look at this book from my professional viewpoint, as someone who treats and writes about depression, I also feel that it's a terrific resource. I will be recommending it to adults I treat for recurrent depressive episodes.
   
   The author's depressions started when she was an adolescent, and continued intermittently through much of her adult life. Watching her gain understanding and mastery over this depressive tendency gave me a deeper understanding of how I can help the depressed individuals with whom I work.
   
   BRAVO to the author, and thanks!

No comments about Kings & Queens: The Story of Britain's Monarchs From Earliest Times to Today.

3 comments about Alfred the Great: The King and His England (Phoenix Books).

1. Duckett's biography of King Alfred is an enjoyable and interesting read. We are drawn a picture of Alfred that shows how great a king he was to overcome the Danes from what little he had left. Duckett takes us from when he was a boy to his death with a fluid grace not easily found in biographers and their writings. Additionally, Duckett does well in interpreting the many stories and legends and presenting them in a way to give a real picture of Alfred, one of what really happened and one of what the stories and legends of the time thought of him. Her short commentaries of the travails that befell the Continent at the hands of the Vikings added a lot of insight and perspective as well.
   
   There did seem to be two chapters out of place. King Alfred and His Earlier Translations and Later Translations. Both, it would seem, are important to King Alfred's life since he devoted much of it to translating texts into his native tongue. But analyzing the meaning of the books as well as the lives of those author's whose books Alfred translated did nothing more than take up space and waste time. Granted, it is important and would have been a great appendix, but it didn't seem to fit into the style of biography that Duckett wrote.
   
   I, too, as Duckett mentioned at the end, would have liked to have seen some of Alfred's flaws interspersed with his attributes. But this isn't something that one can find easily, leaving us relying on what is available, notably Asser's rendition of Alfred. That being said I would definitely recommend this biography to everyone. If it weren't for the two chapters on translation I would have rated this a five star.
   
   4 stars.



2. I chose to read a book about King Arthur followed by one on Alfred the Great. Talk about putting the post Roman period into perspective!
   
   Both books are old ones, Leslie Alcock's Arthur's Britain (1971) and Eleanor Shipley Duckett's Alfred The Great The King and his England (1956). Both are superb, but of the two, Alcock's is the more thorough. Although there are doubtless things which have come to light about the time period of the two, roughly 400-900 A.D., I suspect that the general content of the history of the period is still unchanged by virtue of the lack of any substantially new information.
   
   For Arthur there is still little more than the later medieval legends that we still enjoy hearing to illuminate his character. Whether he was a Romanized Britain serving a local king in the fight against invading Angles, Saxons, Juts and others, or a king as he is described in the later chronicles, we will probably never know. Even whether he was one man or a composite is up for grabs, although Alcock makes no bones about where he stands on this issue. Arthur's significance in his own time was dictated by the needs and interests of the period; his significance in ours is his model of a true and heroic king. These two aspects have little to do with one another.
   
   What Alcock does in lieu of concrete data on Arthur the man, is to define with great clarity the character of his time. Alcock is an archaeologist and it shows, for he brings to life the information produced from habitation and defensive sites in a way that makes silent stones speak. His study of the character of pottery finds, their distribution, source and manufacture through time, suggests that the England of Arthur's time had lost much of its native industry and returned to local cottage industry. The absence of coinage suggests that a money economy had evaporated as the Roman Empire pulled out of the country to defend itself closer to home. The failure of cities suggests that they were no longer needed and that the population wasn't there to require them. The integration of economy, education, elaborate political and judicial structures could no longer be supported and it disappeared. Without the core of Roman establishment to support it, society returned to simpler forms perhaps even declining in numbers
   
   He also points out that the tale of carnage and barbarity that the history of the time portrays may not have been quite the reality of those living then, but more the convention of heroic poetry. Like many archaeologists, he questions the motives of the sources for the period. Little evidence in the form of burned and destroyed layers in settlements suggests to him that the time was as violent as it has been believed to have been. Instead, the movements of continental people into England are envisioned as having been of some long standing, beginning in the time of the Romans as a matter of defense against the same areas of military difficulty that presented William the Conqueror with problems in his time: Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. That the inhabitants of England moved back and forth between the island and the continent is surely suggested by the fact that when prospects arose for adventure and advancement in Europe during the decline of the Empire, the young men of England crossed the channel. That Vortigern was able to encourage continental people to move to England to settle and defend the land suggests that a great deal of exchange was possible. It also suggests that Vortegern felt he could trust these people and that his greatest concern for the safety of his society came from the same sources it had always come, from Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Certainly the concept of a national identity in this region was well in the future, and allegiance was more to the person and character of an individual leader than to a set nationality. Even in Alfred's time almost 300 years later, individuals tended to collect at the court of a victorious and virtuous leader.
   
   Alfred on the other hand is an historic figure about whom a fair amount of information is at hand. Professor Duckett does an excellent job of pulling together the events of his reign, making a coherent story of the defense of England against the Danes. Here we make an about face of some note. Instead of being the dreaded pagan outsiders, invaders of the island, and despoilers of British society, the Saxons are seen as the center of society, defenders of the realm, supporters of the faith against the pagan Vikings. In something like three hundred years, the Saxons have become the people of England. That there were battles between Britains and Saxons during Arthur's time is very likely. But there were battles between individual British kings as well. It was an age of struggle between leaders of various groups to see who would serve whom. It was sort of the "wild west" of Europe. By Alfred's time, these issues had largely been settled. The island had been subdivided into kingdoms, whose borders fluctuated with the abilities of the reigning monarchs vis a vis one another, but for the most part, society itself was stable. Enter the Vikings, however, and again things are up for grabs. It seems likely, although Duckett doesn't mention it, that the climate of the period had changed enough to bring about population movements. Certainly the political climate of the northern countries had changed, which she does mention, as Harold Fairhair began to reorganize them into his own large domain. This left a large body of people at lose ends and brought trouble to the shores of both the English isles and to the coasts and fluvial plains of Europe.
   
   Duckett is an historian and classicist. As such she focuses on the written history of the Angles and Saxons. It would have been enjoyable to have had more information about the material remains from the period, a la Alcock, to throw the story of Alfred into greater relief against the background of what remains. One would especially like to have known if the violence and destruction was really as wide spread as suggested and if the people living in Dane held and Saxon held lands were really as distinctive as their national identities suggest. Were they treated any differently by their masters. Did they mix more freely than indicated, etc. This type of information is likely to come from archaeology than from written records, most of which come from biased sources.
   
   Altogether two wonderful books that go a long way toward making a murky period clearer. Read them together.



3. This book is outstanding. It draw a vibrant picture of a king whose life is otherwise obscured by the mists of time. Duckett presents a picture of a man who is simultaneously legendary and very human. This book is a wonderful choice for anyone interested in medieval times or the roots of British culture. Duckett's writing style is clean and consice, free of the usual scholarly jargon. It is a must for any student of history, amature or professional.

5 comments about The Desert Generals (Cmp).

1. What follows is from the preface of Desert Generals, and it is THE reason to read this book:
   
   "The theme of this book is the struggle of individual will against circumstance. The subject matter is human characer. In these five uncommon men during the Desert Campaigns (of World War II), as in the condensed action of a tragedy, were displayed nobility, frailty, resolution, loyalty, indecison, vanity, fear, simplicity, selfishness, greatness and littleness..."
   
   "Desert Generals" delivers all of that and more..much more.
   
   And make it six generals, not five. The Desert Fox, Erwin Rommel, must be included as well. Six generals, five British, one German, a study in character, leadership, the lack of it, and meddling politicians in a time of war.
   
   Good read. Very good. It's about men, not war.



2. Barnett's "warts and all" bios of so many of the British officers involved in the African campaign stirred up the Montgomery worshippers, despite the length of the rest of the work when compared with the section on Montgomery's command. The author succeeded with the original edition because of his reliance on facts already of record; the later editions beginning in the 1980s included the revelations from the declassified Ultra program. At the end of each section Barnett has new commentary based on the new information available, but apart from one or perhaps two instances, finds even more support for his conclusions, and often enough, more reason to criticize the Montgomery deification. The original edition remains intact within the new edition, which is an excellent approach.
   
   Winston Churchill is criticized for his incoherent meddling. A great war leader like Churchill is bound to have made really monumental blunders, and did. By forcing one of his African commanders to launch an unwinnable and (at best) ill-advised to save Greece, he prolonged the war in Africa by two years. Auchinleck and Dorman-Smith produced the plan which defeated Rommel, beat Rommel, and were then relieved by Churchill. Montgomery's victory at Second el Alamein cost him more than half of his tanks and ended with Monty's failure to chase and catch Rommel before he could slip back to Europe. And the "victory" was entirely due to Hitler's failure to resupply Rommel; its timing was determined by the landing of US troops far behind Rommel, which was the cause of Rommel's retreat.
   
   Barnett's use of sources is splendid. He relies on British sources, but also uses German and Italian sources thoroughly and appropriately to illuminate the back and forth struggle in North Africa.
   
   Regarding "What If" scenarios -- Despite some claims to the contrary, the threat to Allied war efforts posed by the loss of the Middle East was real and serious. Loss of the Middle Eastern oilfields would have crippled, even eliminated, the British fleet, opening the road to a German invasion of Britain, thereby ending any possibility of a western, second front such as the one opened on D-Day. At best, it would have required even more US convoys; the few dozen miles of English Channel was a terrible logistical obstacle to the use of Allied armed forces after D-Day (although that can in large part be attributed to Montgomery).
   
   Loss of the Suez Canal would have cut the British Empire in two, leaving the Far East the exclusive domain of the Japanese. Luckily, Germany was led by a military bungler and meddler worse than any other produced in the 20th century.
   
   Omar Bradley's "A Soldier's Story" has some more truthfully negative remarks about Montgomery, and is also worth reading to find those.



3. I don't think I may have read a better account of Desert War than Barnett's Desert Generals.By all means a revisionist history ,the book traces the careers of five British Generals in North Africa: O'Connor,Cunnigham,Ritchie,Auchinleck,Montgomery.Their operations represent collective British effort in preventing Rommel's Deutsche Afrika Korps from seizing Egypt, Middle East.
   
   The book opens with brilliant campaign of Maj Gen O'Connor which began as a raid but climaxed in the Battle of Bedda Fomm resulting in the destruction Rudolpho Graziani's Italian Tenth army.Unfortunately British political establishment in London failed to exploit this victory.O'Connor's Western Desert force could have easily taken Tripolitania thus completing the conquest of Italian North African empire.Instead forces were diverted to Greece .This was a blunder of monumental proportions for which Churchill must be held accountable.
   
   The diversion prolonged North African campaign,for it helped Germans land troops in Tripolitania.Besides forces assigned to the Far East were sucked into the defence of egypt ;consequently British were unable to resist Japanese onslaught.Author also is highly critical of Churchill's direction of war in North African theatre.PMs continous prodding led to Battle Axe-premature offensive to defeat Rommel-which ended in a fiasco.Ultimately Gen Wavell was made the scapegoatand had to resign.
   
   Poor British performance continued under generals who succeded O'Connor.How can we explain heavy British defeats in Desert War?
   Author says this was due to poor,faulty armoured tactics.During Crusader offensive General Cunnigham split the armour across length and breadth of the battle field.Instead armour should have been massed enabling it to strike like a clenched fist.Cardinal failure of British was unlike Germans they failed to organise Combined Arms Teams with tank as the pivot.Mad onrush of tanks against fixed German defences without artillery support led to heavy losses.Barnett attributes this to comparmentalised,orthodox ,regimental tradition of British army.
   
   British tactical conduct of battle improved considerably under Gen Auchinleck's dynamic leadership.Author calls Auk as the man who saved Egypt.Against this it must be said when Rommel started probing Egypt's defences Afrika korps had shot its bolt.Ammunition and fuel shortages -due to failure of Axis High Command to neutralise Malta-crippled the movement of German armour.Besides Rommel had lost the services of his efficent Radio Intelligence Service commanded by Alfred Seebohm.With the result he had no idea of British plans ,intentions ,capabilities and was now boxing in the dark.
   
   On the other hand his opponent had a clear picture of Rommel's intentions thanks to Enigma decrypts.Auchinleck's calculated aggression helped British defend Egypt.Swift punches here, there unhinged Rommel throwing his battle plans into disarray.
   
   The book contains virulent criticism of Montgomery's generalship.Firstly ,author condemns Montgomery for claiming credit for repelling Rommel at Alam Halfa.Facts show the plan for repelling German assault had been devised by Auchinleck with the help of his brilliant chief of staff Eric Dorman Smith.Montgomery while becoming Commander of desert army inherited those plans and put them into effect.With the battle progressing favorably ,Montgomery ,according to the author,botched the opportunity of annhilating Rommel's Panzer Armee.He could have done so by unleashing his armour from Alam Halfa ridge which would have descended into the Africa Korps rear- at a time when it had bitten deep into British defences-severing it from its base.There would have been no El-Alamein then.
   
   Further author impugns the wisdom of fighting this set- piece battle.Auchinleck's successful defence of Egypt prompted the Allies to sent a expeditionary force to North Africa.Landings which were to be effected on Rommel's rear would have compelled him to abandon fixed defences and withdraw.British then could have launched their superior mechanised forces to cut off retreating Germans.Instead yearning for national prestige made them fight a battle which came close to disaster.
   
   Author faults Montgomery's breakthrough plan .Armour was used a battering ram.Sheer weight of metal helped Eighth Army hack,crunch their way through German defences.Despite suffering tremendous losses Montgomery knew that victory would be his.Thanks to Ultra, he knew German strength was ebbing away.If he could sustain this attrition for few more days enemy would break.This happened precisely.Despite possessing superior mobility British failed to cut off retreating Germans owing to the chaotic nature of their advance.
   
   All the above are intresting observations which have combined to demolish Montgomery myth.No doubt book raised a storm when it was first published in 1960.I feel author has displayed remarkable courage,intellectual honesty in challenging the established views which made this book military classic.



4. I recently took part in an online discussion over the merits of O'Connor and Montgomery and came to the conclusion that my knowledge was lacking on the details of their respective attributes as General Officers in the field, so when I came accross this book I thought "Just what I want".

   Once I read the introduction however, whilst assuming the details and history to be correct, what jaundiced my view was that the purpose of the book was to "prove" that Montgomery inherited his good actions from Auchinleck as opposed to 'creating' them himself. This raised the possibility of a 'slant' to the text in order to "prove" the authors contention.

   Having said that, I thoroughly 'enjoyed' the read which was most informative.




5. In this book, Barnett again demonstrates a unique ability to dissect high command. Barnett was ahead of his time with his critical analysis of Montgomery. The latest edition includes a section which details the extent to which the allies in North Africa knew in advance what Rommel's moves would be, thanks to ULTRA intercepts. With this additional information, Montgomery's cautious conduct of the campaign in North Africa comes into even greater question. Barnett also details how the British, under O'Connor, were on the verge of driving the Italians from North Africa in 1940, but instead chose to send an expeditionary force to Greece on what was basically a poltical mission masterminded by Winston Churchill. That mission, like Churchill's foray into Gallipoli during the First World War, collapsed and Axis forces were not cleared from North Africa until early 1943. This book is highly recommended for anyone who enjoyed *Hitler's Generals* or *Swordbearers*, both also by Barnett, or anyone interested in the history of the Second World War, North African theater.

5 comments about Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life (Lives of the Left).

1. This is a biography that is worth reading, also to be recommended as a mentor reading for youngsters. This book shows how a young boy from Austria, whose life was shaped by the rise and fall of the nazis, came of age in twentieth century. He is a distinguished and unapologetically Marxist historian. He vividly recalls his cambridge days and the ideas that shaped his mind. I myself always like to read his other books for the historical wisdom that lacks these days. For example, as opposed to Bernard Lewis, who thinks that US is remote and uninterested in world affairs particularly in the middle east, Eric Hobsbawm writes "Our problem is rather that the US empire does not know what it wants to do or can do with its power, or its limits. It merely insists that those who are not with it are against it. That is the problem of living at the apex of the 'American Century'." (-p.410)
   This is the wisdom that I am talking about.



2. This book is a very good autobiography. Let first me state that I don't share a lot of Hobsbawm's politics (he was a member of Britain's Communist party for more than half a century). Yet I have always found him a very engaging writer. Maybe because of his age - he was born in 1917 - he is immune to the neomarxist, postmodern cant that have afflicted much of leftist writers since the 1960s. His writing style is instead simple and to the point. He tells the story of his life - the story of his parents, his accidental birth in Egypt, growing up in Vienna as a jew, the sudden death of his father and mother in a short time during his teenage years, his life as a young man in Berlin in the early 30s, his coming to England, his years in Cambridge, joining England's Communist Party, his rejection of Zionism, his life (wasted, according to him) during World War II, a visit to the Soviet Union in the 1950s, his position after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, his later visits to Latin America - in a candid, simple and matter of fact, way. A very engaging book even if you disagree with his politics.



3. Hobsbawm's book is called Interesting Times rather than An Interesting Life, but that is just Hobsbawm being modest. After a lifetime of analyzing history from the perspective of a leftist, but generally even-handed, professor, he takes an opportunity to get a few things off his chest.
   
   He tackles the question of why he stayed a communist for so long, even after the Stalin years forced so many believers to reevaluate their views. He discusses America frankly, past (loves New York, hates the suburbs near Stanford University) and present (the reaction to September 11). He reminisces about wars, academia, and jazz.
   
   About the only question he doesn't address is when and why he changed the spelling of his last name. Unimportant perhaps, but curious. A readable, entertaining, and thoughtful memoir of an interesting man in a troubled century.



4. After a slow 150 pages in which Hobsbaum tells of his birth in 1917 in Alexandria to a Jewish father, son of an émigré cabinet-maker, and a Viennese jeweller's daughter followed by his youth in Austria and then Weimar Berlin and his stint at Cambridge, his story gains energy, if intermittently. Certainly Hobsbaum has led, after a rather tenuous period of living hand-to-mouth via the courtesy of relations and friends, a life more comfortable than that gained by many, communist or capitalist. His adherence to the Communist Party for so much of his life, from his profession in 1932 in Germany to his joining in 1936 and his allegiance throughout Stalinism and after the Hungarian revolt of 1956 motivates his four-hundred page apologia. Balancing his ideological commitment to a concomitant refusal to accept dogma results in a curious tension. How can a securely employed, well-travelled, multi-lingual, and nimbly minded individual stay loyal to a cause that rallied the poor and the intellectual while committing so many murders in its name?
   
   Hobsbaum argues well his reasoning. Surprisingly, little of his book recapitulates his scholarly mission, the fame of which derives first from his popularising of the earlier century's "primitive rebels," those who resisted capitalisation and globalisation and their own redundancy. Far too many pages provide lists of luncheons, flights, and friends. Hobsbaum warns the reader that little of his private life will emerge here, and his sons gain only a couple of sentences here and there, for example; their half-brother, apparently the result of an affair in-between his two marriages, is mentioned in half-a-sentence. Instead, as the blurb and the cover images trumpet, Hitler, Che, and the Soviet Man of Steel gain attention, and even more the milieu in which he and his internationalists roamed in between seminars and scholarship-again, little of the classroom to be found here. Hobsbaum actually gives little insight into the Great Men, but much on his mates.
   
   Idiosyncratically, the book's form skips about. Most of it tracks his own career, while latter chapters sum up his thoughts and chats in France, Italy, Spain, the Third World, and the U.S. One chapter, fascinating to me for its oblique mirroring of recent Ireland, takes on the land of his holiday home in Wales near the eccentric Clough Williams-Ellis, builder of among other wonders, the seaside resort of Portmeirion, later the site of the 1960s television series The Prisoner. In this chapter, the author carefully analyses the resurgence of Welsh separatism in that decade, to the point that it drove him to a safer and more anglicised portion of the principality in which to vacation. Hobsbaum dismisses "ethnolinguistic nationalism" and has little time for the 1960s legacy of individualism that led to the promotion of non-conformity at the expense of the social ideal for which earlier revolutionaries had struggled.
   
   Hobsbaum pinpoints the crucial difference between himself and later radicals. He is one of the last living intellectuals inspired to hoist the Red flag by the events in the year of his birth. A teenager when he cast his lot with the German communists just before Hitler's consolidation of power, Hobsbaum defends his faith in Marx. While later converts recanted once the allure of the anti-fascist crusade dimmed, Hobsbaum emphasises that he remained a believer after Khrushchev's decision to undermine the monolithic power of the CPSU in 1956-the second time that "ten days shook the world." "To put it in the simplest terms," he summarises, "the October Revolution created a world communist movement, the Twentieth Congress destroyed it." (201) Because Hobsbaum and his CP allies had been lied to, "something that had to affect the very nature of a communist's belief," the concealment of the truth about Stalin led to the instability of an presumed solid façade of political and cultural endurance, and foreshadowed the fall of the Wall.
   
   Which perhaps was a Potemkin village, but one where, Hobsbaum claims, protection against the harsh blows of capitalism and unrestrained greed did enable Soviets and those under their subjection to pursue a laudable goal of communist equality and worldwide fraternity. Hobsbaum cautiously tiptoes around the conflict of the dream with the reality.
   
   He acknowledges that communists like himself and their western parties never had to govern from a position of actual power, and therefore mitigates the decisions made by those who did rule in the name of the working class. No creed since Islam in the seventh century, he reminds us, spread so rapidly and so far across our planet.
   
   Speaking of this takeover, Hobsbaum elides complications. He compares the removal of communist ministers in western governments circa 1947 with their inclusion in non-communist administrations "in the countries under communist rule." (180) He laments the establishment of the Orwellian-monikered Cominform before continuing: `The Eastern regimes, deliberately not set up as communist, but as pluriparty "new" or "peoples' democracies" with mixed economies, were now assimilated to the "dictatorship of the proleteriat", i.e. the standard Communist Party dictatorships.' The author seems to skip over how a country can be "under communist rule" with a mixed economy and a pluriparty regime for long, before being standardised as a CP one-party dictatorship, given the logic of communist consolidation of power within a single party model. And, from my admittedly non-specialist understanding of those nations soon to be mortared into the façade of the Eastern bloc, such a pluriparty system was never seriously intended to survive, given the 1943 Tehran conference and the Cold War's surrender to the USSR of those Central and Eastern European nations as a buffer zone to defend Stalin's empire.
   
   Hobsbaum confused me with a statement about one of those buffer nations with which I have some familiarity, Hungary. Discussing an intellectual who claimed to be a victim of Soviet repression post-1956 who in fact was a Party organiser after the revolt, the author states: `Unfortunately in the course of those years, under the benevolent eye of the Kadar government, the sympathizers with the 1956 movement, that is to say the bulk of the communist intellectuals and the academics, quietly re-established their positions.' (145)
   
   Those less informed about Hungary at this time might misconstrue this passage, intended to contrast the fake refugee from the revolt with his comrades who remained, as praising the regime of Kadar, who pretended to side with the rebels only to turncoat to the Soviet invaders as they returned to crush the revolt, and to imply that the majority of those who were sympathisers with the rebellion suffered no harm under the Kadar regime. Although a communist revolt, the Hungarians sought neutrality apart from the Warsaw Pact and a mixed economy. These aims, Hobsbaum agrees, could not have been tolerated under Soviet domination, but he diminishes the struggle of those who sought a more human face for socialism by too often defending the Russian bear's slashes across the face of those who defied its imperial might, feigned as a blow for people's equality.
   
   Throughout his book, Hobsbaum distances himself from Judaism and Zionism, in the name of a greater identity with the oppressed everywhere. Yet his early identification with the position of the outsider, the alien, and the non-conformist (witness too his long championship in scholarship and avocation of an appreciation for jazz) could only have been gained by his Judaic stance, secular as it was, and his similar oppositional decision to embrace communism at fourteen. I find his lack of sympathy for Israel predictable therefore, but still would like to know what alternatives could have existed for his relatives who did not survive the camps, or those who did survive in a hostile Europe.
   
   His detachment from issues like these when they effect the individual may be attributed to his rather distanced position as that outsider, whether in Wales, in London, in Berlin, or in Alexandria (although his lectureships at the New School in New York City, at Stanford and the Getty Center, or his frequent global trips in search of like-minded companions sounded quite enjoyable to me). He claims that after his forties, whatever happened of note in his life was inside his head, and these transatlantic odysseys merely widened his intellectual horizons. Or maybe not, as he remained loyal to the Cause throughout the Cold War, despite New Labour, and now in spite of Bush. His chapters on the rest of the world outside the dons' room and the overseas seminar open up many intriguing insights, but I never felt that Hobsbaum was quite on the same level as us proles.
   
   A sample, taken from a discussion of the Party's `cultural group' protesting in 1956: `The Indo-Scandinavian intellectual Palme Dutt, one of those implausibly tall upper-class figures one occasionally meets among Bengalis, belonged through his mother to an eminent Swedish kindred-Olaf Palme, the socialist premier assassinated in 1986, was another member.' (208-9) This, like his analogy of labeled decanters in "the combination room" at Cambridge to keep dons from confusing their port and their sherry, speak of a privileged world in which Hobsbaum has earned his eminence, and one where, his communism to the contrary, he continues to thrive. It is natural for any of us to write from the position we know, so I don't mean to criticise the laurels which Hobsbaum has earned, but I do wish to point out that, as he confesses, `somewhere inside of me there is a small ghost who whispers: "One should not be at ease in a world such as ours." As the man said when I read him in my youth: "The point is to change it."' (313). However, he interprets the world marvelously--if evasively.
   [Review edited from an on-line essay for the Belfast-based journal The Blanket.]



5. Much as I admire Hobsbawm's histories of Europe and "invention of tradition", I felt, when reading this account of a long life, as if the author is evading his own personality, his own roots, seeking refuge in apostolic and childish occupations without having a real sense of humour, and setting to write his own history and diaries without a keen talent to face and practice life and times as it realy faced him in a sensitive, humam attitude: The Holocaust, of which he hardly makes a note, and with it Jewish collective fate, both in Nazi Germany and in his beloved Soviet Russia. Moreover(on page 295 in the Abacus paperback edition), he makes a rather stupid, or perhaps malicious comparison between Stalinist Russia, Vichi France and the State of Israel. He does mention the great Israeli Historian, Prof. Jacob Talmon, as the only person giving him a helping hand in hard times, but has other than that only bad language and simple, narrow thoughts about the only place on earth which has opened welcoming doors to ANY Jew escaping Nazi Europe, not only to a lucky, selected few which had landed elsewhere.
   Similar opinions are widespread in Europe today (and in academic circles in Israel too). I for one welcome any debate on Israeli policies. But In Hobsbawm's book there isn't any. Only harsh, cold, unjust remarks, which stand in harsh dissonance to his kind description of almost anything and anyone associated with left-wing English Sports or British Jazz. Pity how Brecht's poem which he likes so much ("An die Nachgeborenen")could apply to this "unfriendly" autobiography of a great historian and scholar.

1 comments about Lawrence of Arabia: Mirage of a Desert War.

1. What a precious story. After reading "A peace to end all peace" and after that, watching for the first time in my life the movie "Lawrence of Arabia", I was desperate to read a biography of this remarkable person. Undoubtedly Lawrence was quite a personality, who saw in the Arab revolt an opportunity to discharge his intellectual ammunition, and what an excellent work he did. Even Churchill admired Lawrence, and after reading this book, everything is clear to this respect...just imagine yourself travelling through the desert, with no comforts, figthing the Turks and trying to unite the Arabs for a definitive attack to Damascus --- well, that was what lawrence accomplished.
   
   Reading a book like this is highly recommended for anyone because beside learning history, you learn about personalities, cultures and war strategy. I hope I have the time to read the "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", and maybe one day, travel the cities that Lawrence once walked.