2 comments about Fires of the Dragon.

1. Kaplan's book skillfully balances biographical reconstruction with that of the historical and political currents that shaped the lives of the individuals he looks at. Among other things, this is as suspenseful a page turner as any of Eric Ambler's or John Le Carre's best works of fiction. It is also superbly paced and has very few of the redundancies that so often haunt books of this genre.
   
   Kaplan does a superb job at mingling the lives of the principal characters - Henry Liu, the Chiang family back in Taipei, and a wide-ranging cast which includes Taiwanese, Mainland and American spies, government officials, and the criminal underworld - with the laden events of the Nationalists' "loss" of China to the Communists in 1949 and their exile to neighboring Taiwan. The author's portrayal of Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek and his son, Ching-kuo, and of the repressive security apparatus they relied upon to sustain their power over the island, is thorough and altogether informative. The regime's aggressive intelligence activities overseas, which included influencing foreign governments (namely that in Washington), stealing weapons technology, spying on the Chinese diaspora and dissident groups, and - the backbone of the book - a direct role in the assassination of Henry Liu, a journalist who played all three countries' intelligence services to his advantage, are brought to light with a commendable attention to detail. Buttressing the events so deftly described by Kaplan are the shifting grounds of politics of the period, as Washington switches its recognition from the Republic of China on Taiwan to that of the People's Republic of China. There, too, Kaplan excels at providing just the right amount of information to understand the history of the Washington-Beijing-Taipei triumvirate. Above all, his book demonstrates how the interplay of history and politics can affect the lives of those who choose to be participating citizens, as Henry Liu certainly was.
   
   Even though the book wraps up around 1992, at which point both Chiang father and son had left the scene and been replaced by the reformist Lee Teng-hui, Kaplan's book still manages to retain its immediacy. More than fifty years after Mao's military victory on the Mainland, the Taiwan Strait issue remains unresolved. Not far behind that lingering diplomatic tension lurk old reflexes that, given the right circumstances, could undoubtedly give rise to reprehensible behavior of the kind that is so vividly exposed in this book. Taiwan's transformation, in so little time, from a state ruled by fear into an overwhelmingly vibrant democracy is nothing less than miraculous. Fires of the Dragon provides all the information one needs to fully realize why such a result indeed is the stuff of miracles.



2. This is the thoroughly documented story of the 1984 murder of Henry Liu at his Daly City, CA, home, by the Taiwan intelligence service. The book contains impressive documentation of KMT intelligence operations in the USA, especially in California. For those interested in San Francisco's Chinatown, the book has lots of information about the long struggle between the pro-KMT and pro-PRC partisans. The KMT had all the advantages, including basic criminal immuninity thanks to the cooperation of the FBI. They blew it though, when they overreached by murdering the journalist Henry Liu for his pro China views. The PRC, rightly, is ascendent now.

No comments about Ignatius Sancho: African Man of Letters.

5 comments about Looking for Trouble: One Woman, Six Wars and a Revolution.

1. This could have been a very important book. Cockburn's personal courage and her commitment to exposing the truth landed her in many political hotbeds worldwide. She was never afraid to go the additional step or to ask the right question, and her reports helped change history by revealing the seamier side of U.S. foreign policy in the 1980s and 1990s.
   
   However, Cockburn's chapters are formulaic: she gets an assignment, lands in the country, braves various insults and injuries, meets the famous revolutionary or dictator, and completes her prize-winning documentary. Her writing is curiously bloodless. Often the book reads more like a travelogue than like a journalistic memoir. Cockburn has had a path-breaking career (about which I had known relatively little) but this book does not leave the reader wanting to know more about her.



2. The narrator is one of the strongest female characters I've read in a long time---intelligent, well-read, daring, tactful, witty, and with good taste in everything. Her adventures through the most dangerous political areas put a new spin on what you hear in the newspaper, from rather ridiculous dictator families to the horrible living conditions of villages in countries that have declared martial law. It's a fast read.



3. Well-written, fast-paced account of a smart, savvy female journalist's rise to power in the male-dominated media area of combat coverage & "sensitive" foreign issues. It offers inside stories on a number of the world's political hot spots (and some of the US's nastiest foreign policy decisions). The book is structured engagingly too. The first chapter covers one of the author's more recent assignments -- and a journalistic pinnacle, as the Taliban story Leslie produces is co-anchored by Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer; the latter, not Walters, went with her to Afghanistan. The subsequent chapters chronicle her some of her career's hairiest moments from its start two decades ago. Leslie's vivid descriptions of what she sees, as well as the acerbic comments she drily inserts, make her seem personally likable and as though she'd be an extremely entertaining dinner guest (though possessed of an excellent political BS detector). More on her family would have been nice, but this book is focused primarily on her work and how she does it; snapshots rather than the full-length autobiography with full-fleshed auxiliary characters. Still, riveting and hard to put down.



4. I have not been so enthralled with a journalist's memoirs since the first half of Theodore H. White's "In Search of History." This book was fascinating from cover to cover. When I told my wife about it she would open up the book at random and read for several pages, totally engrossed. She almost read the entire book through this sporadic grazing.

   My enthusiasm for "Out of Control" is so complete that I am biased to the point of not being able to find anything wrong with it. I think readers who opine that there is not enough detail are missing the point. This is a personal snapshot of one person's 20-year professional life, not a treatise on the dozen-odd events that she has covered, each of which would require a couple of books to adequately detail. I also think the reader who complains about name dropping also misses the point. This does injustice to Ms. Cockburn's immense talent for using wit, a biting writing style, and a well-earned license for subjectivity to tell a fascinating story.




5. What makes this book great are the stories and characters Cockburn meets up with, not Cockburn herself or her writing. There's no doubt that she's covered a broad array of international incidents. But while the stories themselves are interesting, Cockburn sweeps through them too quickly, leaving you asking, "What just happened?" She also does some name-dropping, which grates on the nerves because most of them aren't relevant to her stories. At one point in the book she manages to point out that she had Mick Jagger at her dinner table before going on an assignment. A good read for some recent international history. But don't expect too much.

No comments about Hemingway's Italy: New Perspectives.

2 comments about The Invincible Duff Green: Whig of the West.

1. The Invincible Duff Green: Whig Of The West by W. Stephen Belko (Assistant Professor of History and Historic Preservation at the University of West Florida) presents the remarkable life and times of Duff Green, famed entrepreneur, land speculator, lawyer, militia officer, newspaper editor, and politician who was influential in the early to mid 1800's. Showcasing the outstanding contributions of Green's various careers within the historical era and political context of Jacksonian democracy, The Invincible Duff Green offers an expansive and knowledgeable biographical analysis of his accomplishments and influential role in the rising acceptance of "Manifest Destiny" and the American development of a nation that would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Canada to Mexico. The Invincible Duff Green is very strongly recommended reading as the life story of a man who helped to shape what America was to become.



2. The Invincible Duff Green offers two unique perspectives on Jacksonian era politics. First, the book examines Duff Green's transition from being Jacksonian Democracy's most ardent supporter, to becoming its most hated enemy. Though many others followed the same course, Green's powerful position as newspaper editor, not to mention his reckless manner, made him especially dangerous to the Jackson party. Belko's analysis of the transition exhaustively examines each of the forces driving Green's decisions.
   
   The study also offers an amazing peripheral overview of the Jacksonian era that is often neglected in concentrated political biographies. Green's involvement as an editor, party leader, land speculator, businessman, and diplomat, as well as, his constant struggles to uphold Jeffersonian principles in a changing social and economic environment, brands him as the exemplary Jacksonian, and later as a Jacksonian apostate.
   
   
   This book is a MUST READ for serious students of Jacksonian America, but Belko's riveting prose will keep even the casual history buff interested.

5 comments about It's News to Me: The Making and Unmaking of an Editor.

1. Should be mandatory reading for all editors and wannabe editors. Lots of name-dropping fluff, but plenty of newsroom insider tips and tricks.



2. Mr Kosner details his rise to become an editor at several journalist institutions. The best part of this book is how he describes the non-glorifying and very anti-climatic process of being fired. it is never easy ona person and this author described that perfectly. The ending of this book which lists several traits that should define a person are an extra bonus with this book. It was smart to include in this book.



3. The name of Edward Kosner will doubtless fail to ring a bell in the minds of most Americans. This is because Kosner was a journalistic insider in the Eastern Establishment who preferred to work behind the scenes and also did not write much in the line of columns or any other work that bore his name.
   
   Edward Kosner held top editorial positions at such institutions as Esquire, New York, Newsweek and the New York Daily News. Kosner was in an excellent position to witness the ongoing decline of newspapers and newsmagazines as well as the rise of the Internet as a news source. Among other things, Kosner predicts that newspapers will increasingly become marginalized as a mass medium and come to have only a limited audience in what he calls the "educated elite."
   
   Kosner's book is rich in insight into the state of journalism today and about the practitioners of modern journalism. This is a most important book and as such is warmly recommended.



4. I enjoyed the sections on the youth and family of the author as well as those chapters following his career. The book is extremely well written. I bought it as a gift for my journalist son and decided to read it first and was pleasantly surprised that I liked it so much.



5. By a person few-- outside U.S. publishing circles-- will know. The book is best when describing the high politics within major (mostly New York-based) magazines and papers. Sections on the author's youth and family will be of little real interest to most.
   
   While Mr. Kosner's ego is certainly large (dropping famous names is rampant), he does have the redeeming feature of not overstating the cosmic value of editors and reporters. They are there to get information out-- packaged in a way the public will buy it.

No comments about Sob Sister Journalism: (Contributions to the Study of Mass Media and Communications).

2 comments about Whistling Girl.

1. I was excited about reading this book because I thought I would gain more insight into Hollywood and television in general, especially after reading the rave review that TV Guide writer Michael Logan gave it. Unfortunately, juicy details are sparse regarding Ann's experiences at Knots Landing, Search for Tomorrow, Days of Our Lives, Falcon Crest, etc. In fact, not only are details sparse, she's inaccurate as well! For example, Ann describes working on Knots Landing in season two, but she actually worked on season three. When describing how she got the job at Falcon Crest, she is totally wrong about why her predecessors were fired (they weren't fired b/c they were gay, they were fired because the audience hated the storylines they created and ratings went down). Her description of a confrontation with Search for Tomorrow leading lady Mary Stuart takes all of a few sentences, and instead of elaborating how she came up with certain plots on these shows, she condenses her tenure at each show into just a few paragraphs. As a memoir, it's an okay read, but if you're looking for Hollywood tidbits (like I was, based on Michael Logan's review), this out of print book isn't worth looking for.



2. This is the fascinating story of the life and times of the co-creator of MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN covering almost three-quarters of a century. Ann Marcus writes about her life with wit, humor, and pithy observations of everything from growing up in a Sinclair Lewis-type small town to graduating from college in the middle of WW II, working as the first female copy "boy" on the NY Daily News, covering the homefront for LIFE Magazine, marriage, motherhood, and a successful career in tv for almost forty years It's a page turner as she copes with illness (cancer), male chauvinism, leaky faucets, ageism, network "suits" etc. etc. etc. She takes you behind the scenes on the soaps she headwrote and introduces you to the wacky and wonderful creative people with whom she worked. It is a terrific read. A total blast!

5 comments about I'll Be Damned If I'll Die in Oakland: A Sort of Travel Memoir.

1. He establishes early on that he doesn't hate Oakland and it proves a touchstone for him in many ways. Al has a way of writing a sentence with such vivid description that it makes you feel like you are part of the story. As a long-time fan I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book, and I laughed out loud many times, just as I often laugh at his bi-weekly columns in the LA-by god-Times.
   
   Don't expect it to be a formal, Fodor-guide-type travel memoir. It's as much fun for the reader as many of those trips must have been for the Martinez family. Read it for the style and the interesting characters you'll meet along the way. You won't be disappointed.



2. Don't buy this book... It contains delusional ramblings and resentments that insult the memory of the one who made Al Martinez a success.



3. This is the most unconventional, surprising, funny, and revealing travel(?) book I've ever put my hands on -- an account of the author's personal encounters with the world's historic, oft-chronicled and visited places-- yes, and people -- with a perspective that no one but Martinez has dared introduce. Instead of Steinbeck's, "Travels with Charlie," this is Martinez' "Travels with Cinelli," his patient and forgiving wife, his children,and ultimately his grandchildren. Be prepared to stay up late to read this one, because it's hard to put aside. My wife kept ME up late when she was reading it because women will sympathize with and relate to "Cinelli" just as much as men will appreciate Martinez.



4. What a delight! Al Martinez writes with an intimacy and clarity that allows the reader to share very personally in his adventures and misadventures. He combines a wry wit with a talent for painting word pictures that convey the sights and sounds of his travels. And not just his travels to foreign countries, but in a few touching vignettes, he invites the reader into scenes from his personal life journey. I fell in love with his intrepid wife, Cinelli, just from the marvelous conversations he records, where she zeroes in on him time after time with just the right words. What a sharp lady! "I'll Be Damned If I'll die in Oakland" is a memorable memoir. I thorougly enjoyed it, and I highly recommend it to the discriminating reader who savors language and words put to good use.



5. A good travel writer should be perceptive enough to look beyond stereotypes. By maligning his birth city in his title, Mr. Martinez demonstrates his narrow mindedness.
   Like its neighbor across the bay, San Francisco, Oakland has sad and ugly neighborhoods, but it also has great beauty, including a lake with a bird sanctuary, "Necklace of Lights", and romantic gondola rides in the center of the city. The residential neighborhoods of Rockridge, Montclair, Crocker Highlands, Lakeside, Jack London Square and Claremont and the thriving shopping districts adjoining them make Oakland a highly desireable place to live. I could say more, but the point is to review the book.
   Gertrude Stein's famously misinterpreted "There is no there there" was said when she revisited the site of her family home, which had been razed.
   I would have more respect for Mr. Martinez as a travel writer if he were capable of intellectual and emotional growth amd expanding his limited view of the world.

No comments about Pacific Microphone (Texas a&M University Military History Series, Vol 8).