1 comments about Garbo: The Spy who Saved D-Day.

1. Disappointing. I kept wanting to like this book, but it never engaged my interest. This is the Jack Webb version of the story, "Just the facts, M'am." This is strictly documentary reporting by his MI5 case officer, not storytelling. There's no drama, suspense or intrigue. Remember the Giants-Dodgers playoff game where Bobby Thompson hit his home run? This is like reading the boxscore in the newspaper, instead of hearing the sportscaster call the play on the radio. I hope somewhere there is a better Garbo book. He's an amazing, heroic man whose story deserves to be told with all the cleverness, imagination and dramatic flair that was no doubt his.

5 comments about Nelson: The New Letters.

1. First, a disclaimer. I have never been nor do I now claim to be a Nelson scholar. 18th-19th century naval history is not one of my primary interests so I am not well-read in that topic. So my comments must be taken in the context of an inability to compare with other great works on Nelson's life.
   
   With that said, I still suspect this incredible volume is perhaps the monumental work on Nelson that gives us an inside view of his life and character. Through an extensive collection of letters, organized into the six distinct periods of Nelson's life, the author takes us into Nelson's thoughts and accomplishments. Nelson was inspiring to many and his letters can still inspire us today. The extent of his correspondence is staggering to say the least.
   
   Along with the very large collection of correspondence are interspersed illustrations of people, letters, and places in the story. Also included are several very fine maps for clarrifying locations and battle chronology. A fantastic biographical history of an incredible individual who shaped the destiny of an empire from his writing desk nearly as much as from the decks of the empire's warships.



2. This is the sort of book that only comes around once in a lifetime. It is a wonderful compilation of some of the 1,000+ unpublished letters that have been unearthed by the Nelson letters project. They have been very cleverly arranged so that Nelson tells his own story in his own words.
   
   And what words! I had no idea that Nelson was so good with the pen - almost like a novelist or a poet. None of the other books I have read about him have given me such a powerful insight into the workings of his mind.
   
   Another joy of the book are the excellent short essays that introduce each section of letters, written by the editor, Colin White. He is of course our leading Nelson scholar, and it shows. His essays and footnotes are superb and realy help to highlight just how important the new material is.
   
   Some excellent illustrations, some good helpful plans and some generous appendices, including a most useful set of potted biographies of some of the key characters. No glossary however which is a pity.
   
   There have been so many books about Nelosn this last year, but this one stands still out. I suspect that it is the one that will last and become a classic that will still be studied 100 years from now.



3. That phrase from The Naval Review says it all - this is a wonderful book, with new insights on almost every page. It really is remarkable that so much material has remained unpublished until Colin White dug it out and the story of how this treasure trove of new material was unearthed by patient, meticulous scholarship is almost as fascinating as the new letters themselves. Nelson emerges from this new material in a more rounded, and much more fascinating guise - so much of the new stuff is from private letters and, in them, he reveals much more of himself than in the more formal, official dispatches and letters on which all previous biographers have had to rely. The book also examines areas that all the previous biographies have missed, or touched on only briefly - for example, Nelson's remarkable Intelligence network in the Mediterranean in 1803/5. Above all, as most of the professional reviews have highlighted, this book demonstrates what a wonderful writer Nelson was. Colin White's short but finely crafted commentaries that introduce each section, help us to understand the ways in which the new material challenges (or supports) the traditional narrative. All future biographies will draw extensively on this book. What a superb tribute to Nelson in this his bicentenary year!



4. Let me start by laying out what this book is: it is a printing of a sizable fraction of 1,300 newly discovered pieces of correspondence from Horatio Nelson and reprinting of a few pieces that had previously been published in highly edited fashion, organized partially by timeframe and partially by topic. The letters are printed in fairly original form (although in type rather than script) with minimal modification to enhance the readability without changing the sense of the content.
   
   I normally do not find tomes of letters and memos to be of great interest in themselves, nor am I a Nelson scholar who will devour everything and anything on the subject. As such, I found the book fairly dry reading. However, Colin White has done a great service by printing this correspondence to help make the material more readily available for historical research, as well as providing a reasonable categorization of the pieces. He also provides a nice bit of commentary to introduce each topic, helping the reader with some context with which to view the letters. It would appear that these letters do shed some new light on lesser known areas of the life of Nelson, but I would not look for any earth shattering revelations. There are a couple of nice appendices including a nice timeline and the ships he commanded.
   
   For those more interested in a biography of Nelson, I would suggest For God and Glory: Lord Nelson and His Way of War by Joel Hayward.



5. I buy all books on Horatio Lord Nelson, and especially enjoy those based on, or containing, Nelson's own letters and other documents. I was thus excited to learn that Colin White, our greatest living Nelson authority, had compiled a new book of unpublished Nelson sources. Yet, without wishing to diminish Mr White's fantastic effort in finding and compiling these letters, they don't change our interpretation of many (or perhaps any) of the key events in Nelson's life. They do SUPPORT the correctness, however, of analyses advanced in many recent books, including Joel Hayward's, Brian Lavery's, John Sugden's and, naturally, Mr White's own beautiful books. This volume is a fine looking book too, with an attractive cover and excellent plates. I hope readers won't think me unkind for not recommending five stars, which I usually give to Mr White's books. But four stars still indicates that this is a very worthy book.

No comments about The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe.

No comments about The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings.

No comments about Dan Paddy Andy: The Matchmaker.

No comments about Changing Conceptions of National Biography: The Oxford DNB in Historical Perspective.

No comments about Pursuit Through Darkened Skies: An Ace Night-Fighter Crew in World War II (Airlife Classics).

No comments about Jack's World: Farming on the Sheep's Head Peninsula, 1920-2003.

2 comments about The Robertsons, the Sutherlands, and the Making of Texas.

1. I really enjoyed reading this book. It also helped me to understand why the first reviewer is so negative in his evaluation. Obviously, as Anne Sutherland so clearly tells us, Texas history is contentious. I think the first reviewer has some kind of bone to pick, actually he is mostly picking nits which have nothing to do with the book. Is he actually trying to say that there were never any Scots in Texas? Does he dispute that the Robertsons and the Sutherlands were descendants of Scottish immigrants? This could be really confusing. If they weren't Scottish, what were they? French, Spanish, German? Oh, perhaps they were Dutch. Yup, he must think the white folk who went to Texas were Dutch (Dallas should be renamed "New New Amsterdam").
   
   Anyway, the point is moot, because this book does not pretend to be the most accurate re-statement of Texas history. Sutherland makes that clear in the beginning. The story is not about facts, or factoids. Rather, the story is about the stories. And I learned more about Texas, Texans, and the history of the short-lived Republic from this book than I ever learned from any other medium.
   
   Seeing the history of Texas through the eyes of two different families, who migrated before the space was firmly a part of the United States, tells us a lot, not only about Texas, but about the American frontier.
   
   The book is about Texas families, Texan identities, and Texas history. I was fascinated by the detailed family histories. Perhaps more of us have some of this in our attics, and we should look for it. I realized that America is Texas writ large (or vice versa). That may be why so many of America's major movies focused on this time in American history, and used Texas as a backdrop.
   
   It is easy to watch Walker, Texas Ranger. You might wonder how much of it truly happened. Sutherland's book points out that what happened is elusive, but we can learn something from listening to the stories of those who think their ancestors were there. The truth is in the interpretations.
   
   I recommend this book to anyone who likes to read a well-written story. Of course, when it attains its rightful place in the literature, young Texans might ultimately have to read it whether they like it or not. With a few more illustrations, it might replace the "comic book". I have no doubt it will go down in history.



2. Our author, who left the state as a teenager, and who has not lived in Texas for 40 years, here explores at length the construction of Texas identity.
   
   There are three main sources of her investigation of Texan identity formation; the first being a comic book alleged to have been read by every school child in the State back in the day; the second being her memories of her own childhood; and the third being stories and letters of two families in her paternal lineage which are taken to be either typical and illustrative, on the one hand, or foundational, on the other hand, whichever is of more utility at any given moment.
   
   Here is the explicit raison d'être for the work: The book is "an ethnographic record, something that, as far as I know, has not been attempted in mainstream Texas history." Wow. Never. Before. Attempted. I guess her strategic qualifier makes the claim--as far as she knows--true.
   
   Thus begins an outpouring of less-than-accurate scholarship and Texican exaggeranda interspersed at unpredictable moments with episodes of mawkish sentimentality and indulgent illustrative doggerel best (though with difficulty) forgotten.
   
   For instance: The reference to family reunions she attended for many years at "Uvalde State Park" lead us to hope that the family reunions were more real than Uvalde State Park, which does not actually exist.
   
   The strange drive-by explanation, on page 7, of why Texas is now a Republican state (liberal scheming that backfired) is, well, absurd.
   
   After briefly mentioning Santa Anna's sending troops under his brother-in-law, General Cos, into Texas: "Santa Anna may thus be the originator of the well-known Texas tradition of turning to one's relatives for help in a political crisis." Oh, man. Give me a break. Is this just a misplaced wise-crack? Hopefully.
   
   Sutherland mentions that the Good Neighbor Commission, an obscure agency headed at one time by her father, was established by FDR. No it wasn't, not really. Though initially funded through of the federal government, the Good Neighbor Commission was established by Texas governor Coke Stevenson, who first appointed its commissioners in 1943. She could have looked that up.
   
   Later in the book Generals Ben and Henry McCulloch were not, at the time of the Civil War, "from Gonzales", but from Seguin, having lived on a farm outside Seguin since 1844.
   
   The Robertson family story about McCulloch arriving at the Robertson place closely pursued by Union soldiers is very possibly true in essence but wrong in detail, given that Gen. McCulloch--whose command of the Northern sub-district of Texas (where he had been relegated due to his unique combination of incompetence, arrogance, and insubordination, which could make him Secretary of Defense in a different era) had been distinguished mainly by harsh treatment of the numerous deserters who hid out in that district--was accompanied as he returned home by an armed escort of 27 men, because of serious threats on his life by the deserters, or more likely civilians, angered by his behavior. Union soldiers had nothing to do with it. Nor did McCulloch flee to Mexico, as claimed.
   
   But these factual lapses are trivial. On the other hand, some of the larger cultural claims perhaps deserve more scrutiny.
   
   The Robertsons are said to be "Tennessee Scots" and the Sutherlands are also said to be, somehow, Scottish. "Both groups retained a strong Scots character that is still evident today." Well, there was never much direct immigration into the South from Scotland, and if there is any important cultural Scottish influence it is necessarily remote, much of it prior to 1800, and for the most part circuitous, via the Ulster Plantation.
   
   Almost all of the highland emigration to America was in the 19th century, during the worst phase of the clearances, and it was to Nova Scotia, not Texas. Much earlier enclosures and lowland clearances had been one source of the lowland Scot emigration to Northern Ireland. But Highland Clan forebears, though much in demand as ancestors by Southern would-be gentry, (thanks to the baleful influence of Sir Walter Scott on the Southern psyche--see Mark Twain for more on this) were for the most part imaginary. It bears repeating that this is no impediment to Sutherland's project. Origin myths, as any anthropologist knows, are necessary and useful. If Sutherland displayed less credulity WRT her just-so stories, and treated it all as what these people thought, not as what really happened, then all would be well. But her quest to mobilize a personal Texan meaning structure of her own, leads her to conflate a study of the origins of her myths with a sometimes moist-eyed celebration of their reality.
   
   Some stylistc quibbles: The continual early references to "the Lone Star State" annoy needlessly; perhaps saying "Texas" would do.
   
   A kind of pseudo-Homeric epithet gets worked overtime here. Hardly a noun can get put on the page without adjectival crutches: "Deeply rewarding family ties," inform the entire book, and "fierce loyalty" seems to be the wine-dark sea in which this book sinks, not swims.
   
   Families are "tight-knit"--part of the emerging identity, it seems. (Known instances of Sutherland familial disharmony in no way militate against the usefulness of the epithet.)
   
   So, does this book have an excuse for being published? Yes, if we leave out the theoretical framework and the reason offered by the author for the book's existence. Major portions of the work, consisting in obscure details of the lives of obscure early settlers, were actually fascinating, and I give Sutherland credit for summarizing the context of those lives and most importantly, letting these people speak for themselves at some length.
   
   A closing coda which bizarrely combines a trope of George Bush getting teary-eyed leaving Texas to assume leadership of the Republican Reich, Tanya Tucker's preferring Texas to heaven in her song Texas When I Die, and the smell of bacon sizzling in the air like Texas identity (Sutherland's image, and an unforgettable one), nearly put tears in my eyes as well.

No comments about Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies.