No comments about RAF Bomber Stories: Dramatic First-Hand Accounts of British and Commonwealth Airmen in WW 2.

5 comments about Churchill: Visionary. Statesman. Historian..

1. This is another of the "short" Churchill books that have become popular over the last several years and are less than full blown biographies but more than just private musings of the author. This author has an engaging style and if you've read any of his previous books on this subject it should come as no surprise that this book is for the most part a positive portrayal. The book covers the several themes stated in the title with a varying degree, (in this reader's opinion), of success. The high points include insight into Churchill's role, (and motivation), as an historian, his role with Stalin and the division of post WWII Europe and the evolution of Churchill's relationship with Eisenhower, (maybe the best chapter in the book). Considering all that has been written on Churchill this reader found some "new" perspectives and food for thought in the above. On the downside, several of the other chapters - the rehashing of Gallipoli, Churchill's "wilderness" years do not provide much detail or insight and the last chapter - a journal entry written contemporaneously describing Churchill's funeral - was little more than filler to this reader. This disparity in the writing is unfortunately one of the salient points I took away from the book. That being said, (written), this book would not be the place to start with Churchill but it is a more than an adequate supplement.



2. I read this book here in Brazil, last year.It's cheap, concise and easy to understand.There's failures in this book?Yes.
   At first, this book is biased.John Lukacs is a Churchill's fan.
   To exemple, Mr. Churchill was a deeply eugenist.This book never talks about this.Another exemple is that in 1899, Winston Churchill spoke against Islam something like this:"How dreadfull are the curses which mohammedanism slays on its votaries...No stronger retrograde force exists in the world..."
   The core of this book is to show Churchill after 1930.Even this, it fails sometimes.In chapter 4, Lukacs claims that Eisenhower was wrong about than USSR, and Churchill was right.In fact both were right.The american politics for Cold War, was basically the same, for every american president, since Truman,in 1945, to George Bush in 1991.
   Churchill also was among the men who created Iraq.Churchill also put the last Iran's Xah in power.All of these Churchill's mistakes aren't in this book.
   This is a fan's book, not an unbiased book.



3. What we have is a series of essays written about Churchill by a man who is both a highly regarded historian and a fan.
   
   The last essay, I found quite moving where he discusses his time at Churchill funeral.
   
   Yet the quality of these essays is not brilliant. In some ways they are repetitive with the same facts repeated again in another essay. Also the writer is also prone to exaggeration eg that the Germans could in June or July 1940 successfully invaded Britain.
   
   I have read much on Churchill and found this book disappointing maybe as from a historian of the quality of John Lukacs, I expected more.



4. This was my first book by Lukacs and I am not a historical scholar. I picked it up to learn more about Churchill, and where this admirable leader was coming from. If you are looking for a primer or a thorough biography of W.S., this is not the book for you. However, if you are already familiar with his background, ancestry, and accomplishments in detail, this book serves as a kind of postmortem love letter.
   
   It is certainly well-written--Lukacs is a talented writer who knows how to turn a phrase, as he exhibits in his diary entries describing Churchill's funeral. However, for all of W.S.'s greatness, Lukacs seems a doggedly loyal to the man and utterly resistant to any criticism. There is also noticeable resentment toward Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and other American officials, as the author apotheosizes Churchill above any and all other leaders during the most critical time in 20th century history. Regardless of the veracity of his position, I would recommend reading up on other perspectives to temper Lukacs' ode to Churchill's infallibility.
   
   Overall, this is a brief and awe-inspiring read: a worthy eulogy for a worthy man that sometimes sparkles in prose, sometimes fizzles in excessive reverence.



5. John Lukas clearly states at the beginning of his short book that his collection of essays is neither a biography nor a scholarly study of Winston Spencer Churchill (pg. xiii). Therefore, potential readers of Lukas' book who do not know anything about the key milestones in the life and career of Churchill should not start here. These readers can read books such as "Churchill a Life", "Churchill a Study in Greatness", "Clementine Churchill The Biography of a Marriage", "Winston and Clementine The Personal Letters of the Churchills" or "The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill" to fill in the most glaring gaps in their knowledge of Churchill for that purpose.

   Lukas writes to the attention of an audience who has an unquenchable thirst to know more and more about an individual who remains a source of inspiration to many men and women who stand in the way of barbarity and illiberalism around the world.

   Although Lukas is generally sympathetic to Churchill, he is not blind to his major shortcomings: impetuosity, impatience, stubbornness and fancifulness (pg. 4, 154). Furthermore, Lukas reminds his audience in his essay "His Failures. His Critics" that Churchill had accumulated errors and mistakes that Churchill critics and detractors were attributing to his flawed character (pg. 129). For example, Churchill's futile fight against granting Dominion status to India from 1929 to 1935 was perhaps compatible with his imperialist credentials but certainly a clear blemish on his record. As a very experienced politician and knowledgeable historian at that time, Churchill should have known much better (pg. 14-15, 24, 135-136). Therefore, Lukas' collection of essays should not be construed as a shameful hagiography.

   Furthermore, Lukas reminds his audience in "Churchill's historianship" and "Churchill the visionary" that Churchill was generally cognizant of the lessons that he could draw from past events to articulate his often-visionary policies while reflecting on and shaping history on his turn (pg. 1-18, 47). Churchill was not only a spectator, but also a key actor and play writer of human comedy (pg. 102).

   Lukas also explores the ups and downs that Churchill had in his relationships with other history shapers such as Charles De Gaulle, Dwight Eisenhower, Adolf Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin (pg. 19-20). Lukas convincingly explains that Churchill was facing an unpalatable choice between a Europe entirely ruled by Nazi Germany or half of Europe dominated by the Communists in case of allied victory (pg. 11, 27-28, 35). Churchill rightly first gave top priority to successfully fighting Hitler to death before trying in vain to stop Stalin in 1944-1945. Unlike some unimaginative people, Churchill understood right at the birth of the Soviet Union that the Bolsheviks should be stopped immediately before they grew into a gathering threat to the world. War-weary, the victors of WWI, unfortunately, gave only half-hearty support to the White Russians in their desperate fight against the Soviets (pg. 23). Once again, long-term pains were the reward for short-term gains.

   Some (American) readers will not be very pleased while reading Lukas' unflattering portrait of Eisenhower and the men around him in "Churchill and Eisenhower." As mentioned above, Churchill was definitely right to try to thwart in 1944-1945 the apparently irresistible advance of the Soviets in Central and Eastern Europe. Churchill clearly understood that geography and territory mattered, not ideology (pg. 42). For that reason, the British army met the Russians east of the entry to the Danish peninsula at the request of Churchill in 1945 (pg. 45). Unfortunately, the American leadership did not want to hear anything about it at that time (pg. 35-40, 46). Some European regions such as former East Germany and the Czech Republic should have been eventually spared the murderous and inefficient rule of the former Soviet Union (pg. 43). The Greeks should continue to be very thankful to Churchill for saving them from a communist tyranny (pg. 41, 48).

   In his famous, visionary Iron Curtain speech in 1946, Churchill expressed his concern with the murderous, inefficient embrace of Communism in the European regions under Stalin's control. American reception of this historic speech was at best lukewarm (pg. 47). Churchill knew better and was predicting at the end of 1952 that time was not on the side of Communism (pg. 48, 79).

   After the death of Stalin in 1953, Churchill, Prime Minister again, could not convince his friend Eisenhower, who in the meantime became President of the U.S.A., of finding some kind of accommodation with the new Soviet leadership (pg. 70, 73-74). Subsequent events proved that Eisenhower was right when he saw no difference after Stalin was gone (pg. 71, 77). Contrary to what Lukas thinks, Eisenhower should not be described as a leader without any vision under the nefarious influence of men such as John Foster Dulles (pg. 79-80). Many western leaders shared Eisenhower's views on this subject (pg. 81-82). The former Soviet Union was not yet in sufficient decline in the early 1950s to negotiate in a position of force with it as world leaders such as President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher understood very well in the 1980s.

No comments about Two Early Tudor Lives: The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey by George Cavendish; The Life of Sir Thomas More by William Roper.

No comments about Edward III (English Monarchs).

4 comments about Thomas Andrews, Shipbuilder.

1. This is a short read...too short for the kind of man Thomas Andrews was. I won't elaborate on the facts of the book but one of the things that came up a couple of times is, "If he had lived...if he would have saved himself". As you read about this wonderful human being, you will probably come up with the same conclusion - under the circumstances, he could not have lived. He would have been miserable had he been knocked out & saved. He could not have stood knowing that one woman or child had died because he was on a lifeboat & they were not. He went to the end trying to ensure that as many lives were saved as possible. Thomas Andrews was a remarkable man and I highly recommend this book to all Titanic enthusiasts.



2. Alittle hard to follow. For anyone interested in a book about Thomas Andrews or the Titanic I recommend the book "I Built The Titanic".



3. I was disappointed with this book since it is written in a style that is extremely difficult to read. There are too many commas and semi-colons to provide any kind of continuity. I own over 20 Titanic books, most purchased before the movie, and this is one of the worst.



4. This book was originally written in 1912, right after the Titanic sank, so it is invaluable when you consider that this is the way people thought of Thomas Andrews in the year of his death. I only wish it was longer!

5 comments about All Will Be Well: A Memoir.

1. This is the kind of book that ligers on in the memory long after the reader has finished the final page. It's a very vivid portrait of a deeply devoted sons love for his mother only for her to die and for authors life to be dominated by a bullying insensitive rural policeman father in a tiny hamlet with no crime to tackle. This truly is a wonderful book that is enriching and life affirming.



2. I am only a few years younger than John McGahern and my maternal grandparents grew up in County Leitrim prior to coming to the US in the early 1890's. McGahern chose to focus on his early years for most of this book because, in many ways, it is an ode to his mother. The author's Mom was an educated woman who taught in the local schools, but sadly, she died from cancer when the author was 9 years of age. From then on, he and his 4 younger siblings were raised by several "hired girls" and his father, who was a Sargeant in the Garda (the Irish Republic national police).
   McGahern, who died around the time this book was published, was an excellent writer who captures what life in County Leitrim was like as he was growing up in the late 30's and 40'. He describes how he rode his little bicycle for miles at a very young age in order to spend the weekend with his father where he was stationed. We are also told how his demanding father had him cutting turf from the bog from an early age and that his father seldom, if ever, uttered a work of praise or encouragement to him or his siblings.
   Later in the book, we learn that some of McGahern's writings were banned in his native country. It is to his credit, that McGahern never engages in tirades against his tyrannical father or the Catholic Church in Ireland. However, from this book and his writings in general, it is clear that he stood up to both his father and the Church.



3. John McGahern's memoir summarises the leitmotifs of his fictional works, where recurring themes of abused children, put-upon wives, and dominating, "old-school" husbands are echoed here. Indeed, one can trace the genesis of the themes of his novels from the people, places, and circumstances that provide the unity of his prose in "All Will Be Well".
   And the kind of man and writer into which McGahern matured is elegantly presented in this quote (p. 87):
   "I am sure it is from those days that I take the belief that the best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything".



4. I have read all of McGahern's work, and sadly this is the last such exactingly prepared book that I presume will appear under his name. Any reader of The Dark, The Leavetaking, or By the Lake (aka That They May Face the Rising Sun) will find much here to document how McG hacked out from his own servitude much of the raw material for his justly praised prose constructions. Most deeply rooted in the straitened years of the 40s and 50s excavated here are seeds of what blossomed into his first novel The Barracks and his later success Amongst Women. The tone, shared with his fiction, often is shadowed more than sunny. This does make for a challenging read in parts, notably as the book goes on and McG battles with his father after the death (halfway through the book, when the author was nine) of his beloved mother.
   
   The grimness of great stretches of this memoir makes it sobering for any naive reader expecting a rural idyll romanticized. I would have edited more of the micro-detail that McG presents, as not all of it is germane to his larger arc, although he labors long in providing the meticulous array of details and spare dialogue to pace his vignettes. McG is known for his concerted rewritings and revisions of his work before publication. Perhaps his early death, soon after this memoir appeared, may account for the hastier (only by comparison with his other works, spaced out often over decades rather than years) appearance of "All Will be Well." Intriguing to find that the British version that appeared first is titled only "Memoir;" terse contrast with the more poetic and much more fitting "That They May Face the Rising Sun" title abroad of his final novel that for Americans was redubbed the less evocative if also enigmatic "By the Lake."
   
   The lack of breaks in the autobiography deepens the feeling of unrelenting struggle engaged in by the narrator. You feel more trapped in the telling of his difficult coming of age. Beauty and sorrow tumble one after the other. You never know which will appear next as you read--he recreates the surprises and terrors of anyone's life, no matter, as he says, how softly led. "I am sure it is from these days that I take the belief that the best of life is lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything." (87)
   
   But the book is lopsided. Presumably intentionally, for perhaps McGahern anticipated a sequel? However, as half the book takes place only up to his ninth year, the remaining couple of decades rush by with alarming brevity. The author does not have intimations of being such until he's late in his teens, and this occurs first on p. 217 of a 290 pp. account.
   
   Necessarily and deliberately, McG's young adulthood and the start of his career is compressed into much less space. I would have preferred much more attention to his maturation as a writer than the extreme emphasis paid his early formation. I understand the polarity of his parental positions and how they marked irreperably McG's own soul, but if more follow-through had been given to how he wrested himself free of the restraints of his family and his nation would have made for a more memorable, and also less suddenly fast-forwarded, depiction of himself. (This portrait of the artist as a young man conveys shades of Stephen Dedalus at the end of Portrait; like Stephen, McG too returns, however, to Ireland after overseas self-exile has not fully freed the artistic imagination from its first inspiration.) Yet, McGahern knows that he cannot stand apart smugly from his inherited legacy, in its joys and its sorrows, and he comes to accept this if not find comfort in it later in his telling.
   
   Despite its uneven pace, this story will endure as an self-penned and as always in such books, a prematurely engraved epitaph. McGahern's courage in standing up for himself against the powers of Church, School, and State makes for engrossing if often reticently told autobiography. Refusing the comforts of faith as he grows, he nonetheless is fair-minded and balanced in crediting the good that the Church instilled in him during very dark years. Never concealing the sins, but noticing too the comforts, he looks at himself with as much detachment as he does others, no easy feat, considering what we now know would have been his last couple of years (dying at seventy of cancer)as he wrote this memoir.
   
   He hides as much as he exposes, the privilege of any teller of one's own tale. This is recommended for those already familiar with his fiction, as his early publications find only bare mention here, but a grounding in his harsh and bracing, and later more nuanced and forgiving, tales is necessary if you wish to savor all the textures here evident, poignantly, in the last two pages. He spent a decade on By the Lake, and his craft is never hurried or unmeditated. As with his last novel, the conclusion to "All Will Be Well" ends this intense narrative elegantly and powerfully.



5. This story, so beautifully told, of McGahern's family is like a microcosm of Ireland in the 1940s and 50s: the rough indifference of his callous father alongside the selfless warmth of his mother. So it was in Ireland during that time: an era marked on the one hand by the cruel exclusion of those who did not buckle to the rigid demands of society, in contrast to much altruism and a shared sense of decency.
   How McGahern didn't emerge a bitter man from his childhood (the latter part of which was dominated by his father) is beyond me. But it seems that he chose to build on the strengths inherited from his mother and to disregard the rest.
   He writes beautifully. His descriptions of the rituals of country life, the ordinary events and day-to-day struggles, are conveyed in a way that manages to be both simple and sublime. About his mother he writes with honesty and heartbreaking grace. It is a book to keep and reread.

No comments about Eden: The Life and Times of Anthony Eden, First Earl of Avon, 1897-1977.

1 comments about Last Curtsey: The End of the Debutantes.

1. This book skims the surface nicely, gently in much the way the debs themselves approached conversation. Little controversy. The author's personal memories and her follow up on the debs many years later are very nice reading. However, the book for me was spoiled by an ridiculous attempt to paint Princess Diana as the true last deb--barf! The rest of the book is well worth it, just skip the final mawkish, cloying and totally illogical final chapter.

No comments about The Letters of Virginia Woolf : Vol. 6.

1 comments about Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter.

1. I had read the classic Guerrilla Days in Ireland, by Tom Barry, before I read this book. Reading that book before this one is HIGHLY recommended, it's invaluable.
   
   This book is very well researched and relatively easy to read for a serious biography. In particular, the chapters on the Kilmichael Ambush and the Drumminway(sp?) killings refute several arguments and outright falsehoods in Peter Hart's recent books. The idea that there was no false surrender and Hart's arguments promoting this view are completely and decisively picked apart in a long, interesting chapter. Also, the idea that Protestants in southern Ireland were targeted because of their religion during the Revolutionary period is shown to be lacking any real evidence. In fact, Miss Ryan shows how hart would take quotes out of context or pick one part of a sentence from a report without adding the rest of the sentence or passage that would hurt his argument. Anway, I found those chapters of great interest to me as I had read Harts book on the IRA campaign in Cork.
   
   This book also showed Barry's role in the Civil War in detail, which I had not been able to find before. It describes the last days of the Republican resistance to the Free Staters.
   
   Throughout his life, Barry never lost his fire, his deep republican beliefs or his refusal to compromise. When his former nemesis General Percival wrote to him wanting to meet and talk about their campaign Anglo Irish War, he wrote back that if he came to Ireland "You escaped once, but I will make sure you won't leave with your life this time." Percival and his unit were notorious for their use of torture on suspected IRA men They also killed many unarmed IRA men and suspected sympathizers. Barry held Percival personally responsible.
   
   I found this book to be enjoyable, but I would be hesitant to recommend it to a casual reader of Irish history. But if have read Hart's accusations and want to learn the truth or if you want to learn what Barry did in the 59 years from the end of the Anglo-Irish war until his death, check it out. But, like I said, reading Barry's classic memoir of his role as a brilliant guerilla leader against the British is a must for any reader of Irish history, military history, or struggles for freedom through history.