5 comments about The Man Who Warned America: The Life and Death of John O'Neill, the FBI's Embattled Counterterror Warrior.

1. The book is not news to anyone who reads any New York newspapers. It is a cut and paste job from ON's drinking buddy. Better reporting done by author Peter Lance. Of course, nothing written by me detracts from the dedication and true grit of John O'Neil.



2. John O'Neill was a problem. A bull in the china shop. He was a womanizer and he was an exceptionally poor fit at the FBI, but if we had listened to him 3000 people, including him, would not have died at the World Trade Center, the pentagon and on three airline carriers. There seems to be less and less room in America for the mavericks. This book is no white wash. It paints the man in full warts and all. But at the end of it we realize that it was this wildman who was right and all the politicians, hypocrites, sanctamonious twits and stuffed shirt beaureaucrats who drove him from the FBI,or didn't pay attention to him were wrong. The execrable Barbara Bodine who single handedly ruined his mission to Yemen comes in for special criticism. She probably still doesn't think she did anything wrong. We are becoming a silly nation. We've become obsessed with beauratic rules, political correctness on the left, phony piety on the right, and we can't get anything done anymore. Don't read this book merely as a tragedy but look it as a wake up call



3. John O'Neill grew up in Atlantic City, NJ watching the FBI on TV on Sunday nights. All he ever wanted to do was be an FBI agent and serve his country. The son of working class folks who ran a taxi cab business he dedicated himself to be the finest and fulfilled his childhood dreams. Jonh went to my high-school and lived 5 minutes from where I grew up, I never knew him but after reading this fine Murray Weiss biography I feel I know him as a brother. This book will infuriate you as John O'Neill tries to warn everyone in the government of an impending doom with Bin Laden, who he studied and profiled, much to his chagrin no one listened. How ironic that after so much frustration with the FBI bureacracy and a Clinton Administration consumed by the presidents personal travails that John O'Neill resigns to take over security operations at the World Trade Center one week before 9/11. He perished in the collapse of the towers after he was safely out. He ran back in to try to save people. This book will move you, John O'Neill's story will stay with you. Did he have his own style and personal troubles, sure, but his life is what you will remember, his dedication to his job and the fact that maybe if a few more higher ups had listened to him this tragedy could have been averted. With men like this, you'll believe our country is in good hands as far as the war with terrorism is concerned. It's upper management we should be worried about.



4. John O'Neill was the most dedicated member of the FBI who committed his life to fighting crime and, ultimately, terrorism. His efforts were discouraged by bureaucracy, ignorance, and the Clinton administration. Read firsthand in this book how he was so close to saving much anguish, sorrow and death in the United States but was stopped in his tracks by others too inept to acknowledge the vision he had for stopping the unfortunate acts of terrorism in New York and Yemen. The cruelest irony is that he died in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in charge of security after he retired from the FBI due to frustration.



5. This is an interesting book on an unusual subject. People like John O'Neill are not usually the subjects of biographies. He wasn't anywhere near prominent enough, and that usually means that someone like O'Neill winds up being a footnote in a book about someone else. Instead, O'Neill was the FBI agent in charge of International security in New York City, and spent much of the 90s as the guy in the FBI who was the most interested in and focused on capturing Osama bin Laden. Ironically, he retired in mid-2001, and took a job as head of security at the World Trade Center. He went back into the South Tower on 9/11 and was killed when it collapsed.
   
   O'Neill, according to the author, was a complex, driven man, a visionary who was one of the first US officials to decide that Osama bin Ladin was worth watching and perhaps capturing. While his FBI career was, in terms of his job performance, impeccable, he had two major weaknesses. First, he was occasionally forgetful, and violated various FBI rules and protocols. In the mid-90s, when Louis Freeh was running the FBI, any violations were punishable, and almost certainly would have a detrimental affect on a person's career. O'Neill was once caught letting a girlfriend onto an FBI secure facility, and giving her a ride in his car. On another occasion, he lost a briefcase full of classified material that shouldn't have been out of the office. Both of these incidents impacted his career and chances for promotion. Second, he had a penchant for chasing multiple women at the same time, concealing each liason from all of his other girlfriends. When he died, each of the women was surprised to find out that there were other women in his life.
   
   Much of the book is devoted to O'Neill's pursuit of bin Ladin, especially the investigation of the bombings at the African Embassies in 1998 and the Cole bombing in 2000. While O'Neill wasn't involved directly in the Embassy bombing investigations, he was in charge of the Cole bombing investigation. However, for whatever reason he ran afoul of the local US ambassador, a woman named Barbara Bodine, who started out asserting her control of the investigation and insisting that the Yemenis were offended by O'Neill, and that only she could smoothe things over. This was before O'Neill had met any of the Yemenis yet, but she insisted it was the case. By the time the investigation concluded, Bodine was so sure that withdrawing the FBI investigators was provocative that she ordered Marine guards to keep the FBI agents in the embassy, and had to be told by her superiors at the State Department to let the agents go. After she'd been transferred back to the States and 9/11 happened, the Yemenis became more helpful, and eventually began cooperating extensively with the US. Ambassador Bodine stuck to her guns, however, and even badmouthed O'Neill in an interview after his death.
   
   You have to wonder about this part of the book. Author Weiss was a friend of O'Neill's, and he clearly sides with him against Bodine. It's difficult to see how she could justify what she did (even if O'Neill was despicable, letting her opinion of him subvert this sort of FBI investigation is inexcusable). I expect that somehow she saw through his private life in some fashion. Weiss says that she had been introduced to O'Neill in New York before she became ambassador to Yemen. Perhaps she saw him at a restaurant with a woman other than the one who was escorting him the night they were introduced to each other.
   
   Regardless, this is an interesting book, even if the author, a journalist, occasionally makes a mistake around the periphery of his story. The one I noticed was the author saying that USS The Sullivans was named for some brothers killed on a "carrier" during World War II. The Sullivan brothers were killed on USS Juneau, an Atlanta-class Light Cruiser. Other reviewers have noted mistakes on the edges of the story, but they don't (in my mind, anyway) detract from the main message of his story.

No comments about Surviving Hell: A POW's Journey.

3 comments about Picture Letters From the Commander in Chief: Letters From Iwo Jima.

1. This unique book offers an amazing insight into the commander of the Iwo Jima's forces mind and experiences. It adds a great deal to both of Clint Eastwood's films! A definite "must read"!



2. The book is a compilation of Kuribayashi's letters home to his children during his military career. It's a very touching glimpse into the heart of a father from another culture who is separated from his children and is trying to have some kind of communication with them. Each letter is illustrated with Kuribayashi's own hand and each provides for the children an illustration of their father's everyday life in a foreign land, taking a stroll, riding in a car, even taking a bath.
   
   Kuribayashi encourages his children to do well and to be good to each other and to listen to their mother. His last letter from Iwo Jima is especially sad as you can tell he expects never to see his family again.



3. LTG Tadamichi Kuribayashi, an officer of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, was one of those rare individuals who seem born to become soldiers. Displaying a strong will and unorthodox tactics during the struggle for Iwo Jima in early 1945, he nevertheless was possessed of a rare humility and ingrained honor that made him a highly-respected leader to both his subordinates and enemies.
   
   "Picture Letters from the Commander in Chief" is a very short read. It is simply a collection of LTG Tadamichi Kuribayashi's letters to his family during his time abroad as a young military man and his letters from Iwo Jima island. Reading the actual letters portrayed so movingly in "Letters From Iwo Jima" serves to round out one's understanding of who Kuribayashi was as a man.
   
   There are no insights to his tactics for the Iwo Jima battle and only a small window is opened into his personal views on the Pacific War in one of his last letters from the forsaken island. The rest of them were written and sketched by him for benefit of his wife and children. As his son Taro and later, his infant daughter Takako, were very young when the letters were written oftentimes the subjects were light and focused on Kuribayashi's observations of his time in the United States or anything light-hearted he could report from the dismal island of sulfur that is Iwo Jima.
   
   The letters reveal above all a loving and doting father, who despite enormous distances from his children still cautioned them on discipline. Preparing for the Battle of Iwo Jima, which would cost him his life, he still found time to correct his Tako-chan's grammatical errors in her letters to him and apologized to his wife for not fixing the draft in their kitchen during his last leave. His occasional snipes at his wife for not writing him or for the paucity of packaged herring roe sent to him during his stay in America will elicit a smile from any married man. His love for his wife and children permeate the letters, particularly in his first letter from Iwo Jima, when he instructs his children to grow fast and take care of their mother after his death.
   
   "Picture Letters from the Commander in Chief," if read as an appendix to Kumiko Kakehashi's powerful portrayal of Iwo Jima in "So Sad to Fall in Battle," serves to further deepen an understanding of who Tadamich Kuribayashi was as a man.

3 comments about Toward the Flame: A Memoir of World War I.

1. The strength of Hervey Allen's "Toward the Flame" as a war memoir lies in its being a first-person narrative, with all the seeming immediacy and honesty that firsthand experience affords. We remember George Santayana's warning against the more academic third-person alternative: "History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there."
   
   Allen allows a "you are there" window into the daily life of WWI combat (Second Battle of the Marne) during six summer weeks in 1918. Missing is the familiar focus on stalemated trench warfare that characterized other battles. For most of the memoir, Allen is actually on the move through once-picturesque hilly regions of France, but usually in the more peaceful wake of front-line units. The end of the memoir finds him in the intense "Flame" of Fismette fighting.
   
   Allen's matter-of-fact tone owes something to the blunting effects of memory (the book was published in 1926) but perhaps also to a healthy skepticism about fighting a war largely within European nations and their colonies. Christendom was attacking itself, with the YMCA standing-in for the ineptness of the church itself, "selling gum drops and cakes when civilization hung in the balance." Allen contemptuously notes that "As a matter of fact, there was little else it could do, and that in itself was a great comment." It is to Allen's credit that he doesn't allow later research and speculation about the larger picture to infiltrate his direct experience account.
   
   There is no mention, for example, of WWI's other (and some would argue more significant) battlefield: the fight against militaristic Islam represented by the Ottoman Turks. After all, the war started in the Balkans. The lasting triumph of WWI was, for some, not the defeat of Germany and its allies, but the Crusader-like retaking of the Holy Lands. Who will forget the photograph of General Allenby victoriously entering Jerusalem?
   
   Then, too, Hervey Allen's biographical fascination with Edgar Allan Poe is partly owing to Poe's having enlisted in the US Army as a private, rising to Sergeant Major of Artillery, and later attending West Point. Poe's preoccupation with phantasmagoria resonated well with the horrific images of Allen's combat experiences late in WWI. Throughout "Toward the Flame," the reader can almost feel the pull-and-tug between the accustomed innocence of comfortable America and lurking realities otherwise neatly purged into peripheral consciousness.
   
   Poe's successful formula continues to work in media today. We see folks, youth particularly, flirting with the scary and violent--but indirectly, through no-risk admitted "fiction" such as horror movies, violent computer games, and monster-type toys. It seems healthy to see children fighting to keep from being smothered by too many well-meaning but sugar-coated animations and holiday fantasies, as well as Disney-style escapes into a peaceful-kingdom falseness, none of which correspond with "the way God made the world."
   
   Passing many German graves in his march toward the front allows Allen to reflect on larger issues otherwise denied in the overweening literalness of combat itself. He notes an epitaph on one such grave (markers in WWI and WWII were crosses, not just tablets as we find today in national cemeteries): "He was a good Christian and fell in France fighting for the Fatherland, `Heir ruht in Gott.'"
   
   Looking further, Allen cannot help but speculate on what seems to be the waning mission of European culture: "Verily, these seemed to be the same Goths and Vandals who left their graves even in Egypt; unchanged since the days of Rome, and still fighting her civilization, the woods-people against the Latins. Only the illuminating literary curiosity of a Tacitus was lacking to make the inward state of man visible by the delineation of the images of outer things."



2. Hervey Allen is at his finest in this carefully crafted memoir of his time as a soldier in France. While he is best known as author of the sweeping historical fiction Anthony Adverse, which was a best seller in the 1930s(and later a pretty mediocre movie), he proves in Towards the Flame that he is also able to communicate great depth with an economy of words. This book illuminates that far away time in which young men went off the to fight the Last Great War for reasons that now seem so trivial and also gives a wonderful sense of the French countryside from the perespective of a young soldier. I believe that this book is a hidden treasure of American literature that deserves to be rediscovered.



3. Hervey Allen's memoir is certainly one of the finest personal narratives of World War One, and perhaps the best American memoir of that war. In my opinion, it is a neglected classic. The narrative covers his unit's march from the area around Chateau Thierry in July 1918 to the Fismes/Fismette area in August. The book begins with Allen's unit on an almost bucolic road march through unspoiled French countryside, and ends with its virtual decimation in Fismette. As the title suggests, the closer Allen and his comrades get to Fismette, the more intense the action, until they are literally facing the fire of a German flamenwerfer attack. The story ends abruptly; in a preface to the second edition, Allen compares the ending to a filmstrip burning out suddenly.
   
   Allen, a novelist and poet, was a keen observer; he gives the reader a vivid picture of what it was like to be an AEF soldier in France. Particularly compelling are his descriptions of the shattered homes, farms, and buildings that his unit occupies as it moves forward, and what they tell him about the original French owners, and the Germans who, in some cases, have left the premises just minutes before.

5 comments about Napoleon: A Life.

1. Short biography of Napoleon is a good introduction to the man who nearly united and nearly wrecked Europe in stage-setting fashion 100 years before German geopolitical descendants came even closer. Johnson treats Napoleon with respect and at the same time faint distaste for his most extreme actions and amorality.
   
   In the end, while drawing pictures that show Napoleon's smallness of character and stature, Johnson never belittles or pities his charge.



2. Paul Johnson has opinions. And he can write -- lucid, crisp, precise.
   
   Johnson sees Bonaparte as a selfish opportunist who took advantage of the Revolution to seize power. Once in office power was the only language he understood.
   
   Johnson blames the ambition of Bonaparte for a host of modern ills: the birth of total warfare, the rise of angry German nationalism, secret police, government propaganda machines, etc.
   
   He also blames Napoleon for ruining France permanently as a world power. It is hard to argue with his logic on this one -- before Napoleon France is Europe's most significant power for centuries. Since Napoleon France has always been second-rate behind Russia, Germany and Britain.
   
   I am amazed at how much Johnson can pack into one paragraph. And yet its an easy read.
   
   No pictured or maps, and only 187pp.



3. Rule of Thumb: Never! Ever! Trust a Brit to write a truthful account on Napoleon. The British have always written history to favor themselves or make themselves look good! All seven coalitions against France, organized to replace the Monarchy back on the throne against France's will, were all funded by the British. As Emperor Francis said after the battle of Austerlitz: "THIS BRITISH ARE TRADERS IN HUMAN FLESH!" This says it all! The millions who died in those wars can be squarely left at the doorstep of the British. Paul Johnson is in the business as a patriotic Brit, almost expected, to hate Napoleon, and tag him with the label of Tyrant and conqueror. Why? Because Napoleon didn't allow the Royal Familes of Europe to invade France and force a Governement upon then they didn't want? These were wars to Defend France from aggressive neighbors funded by a warmongering Parliament in London. This is bad history.
   I suggest reading:
   
   Napoleon : The Man Who Shaped Europe by Ben Weider and Emile-Rene Gueguen
   or
   The Wars against Napoleon by Ben Weider
   
   Better History, and much more accurate.



4. If you want a short and well researched overview this is it. Not long on battles, strategy, etc.



5. Johnson does a good job of channeling William Pitt, but a poor job of history in this tendentious, glib, shoddy, but, thankfully ,short volume. It is one thing to shy away from hagiography, quite another to omit facts or invent them to create a historical figure that did not exist.
   
   From the very first pages, Johnson proudly displays his biases. He views the French Revolution as an unnecessary "accident", and announces, without any supporting argument save England's example, that the inequalities it addressed would have been solved peacefully in time by history. The scholarship is extremely sloppy, and Johnson continually contradicts himself and gets his facts wrong. Her are but a few examples:
   
   He says Napoleon was not an ideologue, then proclaims him the progenitor of "a new brand of ideological dictator" like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
   
   He says that Napoleon "never seems to have grasped the essence of the English constitution", yet during the young Napoleon's school years, the text on which he made the most notes was a history of the English constitution. He also tried to bring the English jury system into the Code Civil, but was blocked by the Directory.
   
   He cites a M. de Remurat as saying that Napoleon "is really ignorant, having read very little, and always hastily." A glance at the reading Napoleon did while in school, the notes he took, and the memoirs he dictated at St. Helena, with their detailed knowledge of history and past political affairs, easily give the lie to this.
   
   He writes that Napoleon "did not understand [the sea's] true strategic significance", ignoring Napoleon's continued respect--and envy--of the British Navy, a service he once tried to join. That strategic knowledge is also what prompted him to deny England's demand for the island of Lampedusa, which Bonaparte knew would give the British Navy control of the Mediterranean.
   
   Johnson says Napoleon "took no notice of air power, though it was then much discussed", yet Napoleon noticed it enough to take balloonists on his Egyptian expedition.
   
   Regarding leaving Corsica, Johnson imputes to Napoleon the following: "So he asked himself , where does the nearest source of real power lie? And the answer came immediately: France." Napoleon was a ten year-old boy when he left Corsica, being sent away to military school. He might have been thinking of glory, more likely he was missing his mother.
   
   Regarding returning to Corsica, Napoleon, Johnson writes, "took no interest in the place once he had left it." Not only did Napoleon order numerous books on Corsica while in school, but he returned to the island in 1791 on leave, then petitioned the War Office to stand for election in the Corsican National Guard. He fought his first engagements as an officer in Corsica.
   
   He states that Napoleon, "made no lifelong friends at the college or the academy"--except for Alexandre des Mazis, who wrote a memoir about Napoleon. Interestingly, Johnson doesn't cite des Mazis, but he does cite Bourrienne's memoirs--which have been totally discredited.
   
   He says Napoleon retired after Toulon and "following his principle of going direct to where power lay, he went to Paris. " Napoleon did not retire; he'd been removed from the artillery and posted to the infantry, when, severely depressed, he moved into a cheap hotel on The Left Bank.
   
   
   Johnson tries his best to link Napoleon with the twentieth century's dictators. Indeed, it's the centerpiece of his thematic argument. Of the Italian Campaign, which he calls a "looting expedition", he writes that Napoleon's "technique adumbrated the Stalinist methods used in Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War." The Old Guard was "rather like Hitler's military SS division"--except for the fact that Napoleon's army liberated Jews, instead of murdering them. He cites all the Englishmen who hated Bonaparte and the few who didn't, like Keats and Shelley, who "fell for the propaganda", like "Shaw for Stalin, Mailer for Castro, and Sartre for Mao"! Bonaparte's "monumental schemes were like those of Mussolini and Speer." Yet Johnson offers not a shred of evidence to support his point that Napoleon was the progenitor of the 20th century's great dictators.
   
   (Johnson goes on at length about Napoleon's looting, never comparing it to other empires' spoils, say, for example, those inside the British Museum, which houses the Rosetta stone, discovered by Napoleon's Egyptian Expedition. )
   
   Johnson makes other broad generalizations, again without any support in the text: "The 19th century was in general a time of peace" or "The Revolution created the modern totalitarian state". His prose borders on purple: "He blew himself into the stratosphere of power from the brazen mouth of his own guns." But for the most part, the book consists largely of unsupported calumnies against Napoleon: "He was not a patriot either" ; "The Italians themselves he despised"; "He was not moved by sentiment ; "His sensibilities were blunt. His compassion was shallow." He had "an inability to delegate", which must have been news to those living in an Empire of 40 million!
   
   To Johnson, Napoleon's wives are portrayed as sexually dissatisfied, his marshals as writhing lackeys, his relations hapless rulers, and Napoleon himself a rapist.
   
   Johnson's enmity stems from his contempt for Bonaparte's militarism. He says that Napoleon "unleashed on Europe the most destructive wars the continent had ever experienced", and, "Bonaparte , having once unsheathed his sword, found it impossible to lay it down for long."
   
   But Johnson never once mentions the contribution to that outcome by England's War Party, which refused to make peace with France after 1800. Bonaparte "emerged from a political background where a man's word meant nothing, honor was dead, and murder was routine," and "William Pitt found ... that [Napoleon's ] word could never be trusted". But nowhere does Johnson mention that it was the British--and Pitt's War Party in particular-- who broke their word in the Treaty of Amiens when they refused to leave Malta after Napoleon had left Taranto. The best Johnson can muster here is "Both Britain and France, mutually suspicious, refused to carry out the terms of the treaty."
   
   These oversights are not for lack of space: Johnson spends three pages on Napoleon's wedding arrangement to Marie-Louise, scarcely a paragraph on the Code Civil. Maybe that's what led him to conclude that cultural displays were "the most successful aspect of Bonaparte's dictatorship." As for the Code itself, "Bonaparte did not create it" and "its apparent novelty was not new."
   
   There are a few bright spots: the last 50 pages give a decent rundown of the Spanish and Russian campaigns, but they can't save this Pocket Book of the Bad, Bad Bonaparte. There are no footnotes, no bibliography, but there is one saving grace--the book is less than 200 pages.

5 comments about Jungle Ace: The Story of One of the USAAF's Great Fighter Leaders, Col. Gerald R. Johnson (The Warriors).

1. My uncle is the Stanley Johnson briefly referenced in this book, who went MIA in Nov '43 while flying as Maj Bong's wingman. Somehow I feel he would have been honored to read this book. I wish my grandparents (his folks) could have read it too. It helps me to better understand what his final months were like, and what he and the others there accomplished. Thank you, Mr Bruning.



2. I enjoy the book especially about the air war situation at Leyte Island in the Philippines during October through December 1944. However, I wish the author had given a complete casuality list of the 49th Fighter Group in terms of the following items:
   
   1) Killed in action by air combat.
   2) Killed by ground fire or by gunfire from enemy ship.
   3) Killed in flying accidents due to the conditions of the airstrip on Leyte Island or because of enemy action.
   
   4) Orignial group who start off at the Leyte airstrip in October through December 1944 and how many were left?
   
   5) How many replacements did the 49th Fighter Group recieved and how many died in action or in flying accidents due to enemy action or some other mishap during the same time period?
   
   If they tried to emphasize these battles like a meat grinder, then please give a complete casuality list; otherwise, the only time I hear of a meat grinder battle is those fought by the Germans since we have no hestitation about printing the German dead, wound, and POWs.
   
   They should have made books like this years ago. Then we would know the horrors of World War II instead of glorying it through our culture for the last 62 years.
   
   In the book Kenney Reports, Colonel Merian Cooper, who was General Kenney Chief of Staff, had worried that we were sticking our necks out if we invade Leyte. After reading Jungle Ace and some other books about how the Army had failed to secure a quick capture of the island, Col. Cooper was right. The battle of Leyte Island went on for nearly three months which was just as long as the battle for Normandy. After their defeat at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Japanese had other chances to destroy our shipping and airfields in order to bring the American invasion of the Philippines to the point of defeat if they had use their air power more efficiently.



3. Col Johnson was probably the best pilot of WWII. He was a P-38 pilot in the South Pacific and became a full Colonel and had 24 victories by the time he was 24 years old. It is a compelling true story with a tragic ending. I am very pleased this book was written because so few people have ever heard of this great leader,



4. What Bruning has done in "Jungle Ace" is remarkable: he manages figuratively to bring to full flesh-and-blood life a man who has been dead for nearly 60 years. When I finished reading this biography, I felt I knew and understood Gerry Johnson: felt the weight of the command burden he carried, the exhilaration of victory in combat, the self-doubt when losses occurred, the grinding boredom of life in the SWPA, and the never-ending homesickness. I also got a sense of what he would be like in different situations: as a friend, as a commander, as a classmate.

   This is exceedingly hard to do, but Bruning has done it: he somehow got long-ago memories jumpstarted, got people talking. While I accept that some of the quoted conversations probably did not take place word for word as presented, I feel the approach helps the book make the man more real. Charles Martin, in his bio of Tom McGuire, did the same thing, and it worked for both authors.

   Thanks, Mr. Bruning for bringing a too-little known hero to light. You can be sure that my children will read about Gerry Johnson. When will you write another aviation biography? How about Charles H. MacDonald of the 475th FG?




5. Just finished reading this book a few days ago, and I've got to say that it's one of the best WWII non-fiction books I've ever read. Not only is it easy to read and exciting, but Mr. Bruning skillfully covers some of the more technical aspects of Johnson's air combat battles.

   Good for hard-core WWII air combat nuts (like me!) as well as the average reader. Anyone with any interest in combat aircraft, WWII, or great reading material in general will love this book!

   -Scott Rudi

5 comments about Nelson: A Dream of Glory, 1758-1797.

1. There are possibly more books on the shelves of bookshops (certainly in England) about Nelson than any other English hero and because of the recent anniversary of Trafalgar many more have either been written or re-printed. How does the reader pick one out from the rest. Well my own recommendation would be to buy this particular volume,
   
   In the historical time scale, Nelson lived and died in the fairly recent past, so many of the books written about him are only regurgitated facts that have never been checked properly, or may have no foundation in factual terms. John Sugden has left no stone unturned in his quest for the truth, not only about the public persona of the man, but also gives a brilliant insight into the life of the private man. His hopes, his fears, his weaknesses and his strengths.
   
   John Sugden's writing style is both lively and stylish and does not leave the reader feeling overpowered with dull facts that he or she cannot take on board. Yes the book is a historical work, but it is written with a sensitive touch that almost makes the reader think they are reading an adventure novel. This is achieved without prostituting the historical content in any way. I enjoyed it immensely.



2. This is a very detailed biography of Nelson, the best that I have read. It really deserves a high rating.
   
   At almost 800 pages of narrative and 943 pages total, you really get your money's worth here (if money was an issue). It's thicker than your phone book if you're from Montana or the Dakotas. Heck, it's almost as thick as my Seattle phone book. And after reading it, my wrist muscles have become curiously strong.
   
   What I like about it:
   
   It is very detailed, this author really has spent the time to do the research and read the correspondences and contemporary accounts, it's no summary of already written books. That's very heroic in itself. I have a feeling that it's one of those rare books where academia is it's own reward and not just the profits, not that a biography of Nelson is going to be a bestseller (Maybe would have been in 1806).
   
   Gives a very good feel of what Nelson was like as a person and professionally. All over the book Sugden gives us his impressions of Nelson and backs it up with correspondence and notes from either him or the people he dealt with.
   
   Discussed his personal life in some detail, which is good because many other authors glossed over it, especially historical authors who had certain limits of decorum.
   
   Gives a very good background of the naval service in Nelson's day and the political situation, that in itself was worth reading the book for. In fact, I can also say that it's the best description of the Royal Navy and the political situation from the naval services point of view at that time that I've ever read - not only informative, but serves as a backdrop of how Nelson developed and why he did the things he did.
   
   When some things could not be explained, he did explain that no accounts or correspondence could be found to explain it.
   
   This is not a book for the amateur. For the serious reader, the detail is what makes the book so absorbing, I revel in the detail, keep it coming. This book is not exceptionally easy to read. Again, serious readers will not find that a hurdle. For readers looking for a lighter (and shorter book) a search through Amazon will give you a lot of hits - just look for one about 100 pages long.
   
   The minor negatives of the book
   1) Some of the minutae was too minute, however, I easily skipped over those small parts. For a book of this caliber, better to have too much (which I can always skip over) rather than to have too little.
   2) I wished that some actions were described in more detail, but perhaps there were no good accounts.
   3) I wish there were some more maps and maybe some diagrams, but this ain't a picture book.
   
   Overall, a very, very good biography. Highly, highly recommended. I look forward to part two. Meanwhile, some wrist strengtening exercises with the barbells.



3. As we know, not all history books are alike. Many are dry, while others try to make it interesting by either making stuff up or writing like Tom Clancy. Sugden does a good job of engaging the reader with interesting narrative, while clearly distinguishing facts from conjecture. You definitely get a taste for Nelson's charm, drive, as well as foibles. There is a lot of maritime terminology, but if you're interested enough to read an 800-page book about a naval hero, you can probably handle an occasional trip to the dictionary.
   So I found the book very exciting, but I have one major complaint. The author claims to aspire to make this book the new definitive Nelson biography. He tells in great detail his glories of the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, and then his great failure at Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where he lost his arm. Nelson gets really depressed, and returns to England. Then there is a conclusion of his career. Sugden observes that even though Nelson was depressed at the time, and likely to retire, no one could have imagined what glories were still ahead. The end.
   How can you have a definitive Nelson book, 800 pages long, and not include the Battle of Trafalgar? Argh! Admittedly, the vook title tells it right there, since these things happened after 1797. But if you're reading the book to learn about these things, well, you get the idea. I guess I'll have to read a different book to discover why his statue is in Trafalgar Square...
   NOTE: Rumor has it this is part one, and supposedly Sugden will be writing another book, to tell the rest of the story.



4. Its difficult for me to improve on the several excellent reviews of this work that have preceded mine. But most importantly I want to state quite categorically that this is not a boring book. Biographies by their nature are not action stories, they must discuss periods of their subjects life that are perhaps bland and slow, but without this our understanding of the person would be incomplete. Nelson was not solely defined by his actions in the great naval engagements in which he fought.
   
   Nelson was a fascinating bundle of contradictions, self serving and adulterous, disparaging of superiors he perceived as inept yet immensely loyal to able subordinates, devoted to his country, and personally courageous. He was a man who embodied the fighting spirit of the Royal Navy at the peak of its prowess and whose methods of warfare continued to influence the navy for another century.
   
   I await the second volume of this work with great expectations.



5. This is a truly awful book. Sugden writes well enough, and no doubt the book is AUTHORITATIVE, but anyone looking to be entertained should simply forget it. The author never met a detail he didn't like, but by the end of this book, the reader will have met more than he can count. Simply put, Sugden goes into such detail about so many insignificant and downright dull matters that he loses any sense of perspective and entirely fails to creat an interesting and READABLE account of a truly interesting life. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

No comments about John Washington's Civil War: A Slave Narrative.

5 comments about Love And War in the Apennines.

1. Eric Newby knows how to tell a story. This is one of the few books that I started over again immediately after finishing it the first time. The insight into the minds of these extraordinary Italian farmers who hid prisoners of war without thought to their own lives and safety is one of the great adventure reads to come out of World War II. Having passed through this countryside so many times traveling between Milan and Florence, I know first hand how rugged it is. Just to get through these mountains by train is an adventure, as there are dozens of tunnels to pass through after one leaves Bologna. Newby brings the setting to life for the reader, and we walk in his footsteps as he falls upon adverture after another. There is almost an unreal quality to this story, expecially his meeting the wonderful mountain men who live in the most remote parts of these mountains. If you want a really good read, grab a copy of this book. You will not be disappointed.



2. Newby's writing can be rather dry, but in this recounting of his escape from the Germans in WWII Italy, he strikes a fine balance between mawkish sentimentalism and tough-guy posturing. An engrossing narration about the extraordinary measures ordinary people can and will resort to, to stay alive and to do what they think is right. Encouraging, inspiring, and highly recommended.



3. During World War II, the rural citizens of northern Italy vowed to assist Allied soldiers on the run in their mountainous region. They were operating on an informed heart, on the Golden Rule, wanting to give aid to those who opposed the hated Fascists and Nazis as they would hope someone would help their own sons. And while the Allies were protected by the Geneva Convention should they be captured, the citizens were not and they were subject to less humane punishment, sometimes torture and death, if their actions were found out. But they did it anyway. It is these people, who otherwise lived a pastoral, ancient way of life, whom travel writer extraordinaire Eric Newby profiles in his memoir, LOVE AND WAR IN THE APENNINES.

   Those familiar with Newby's other books will find his signature wit, self-deprecating humor and descriptive powers at work here, but his curiosity and appreciation of other people and cultures is in highest gear. He comes to meet the peasantry of northern Italy after fleeing a prison during the chaos following the ouster of Mussolini in September 1943. He is helped by a succession of individuals and families, including the woman who would become his wife and companion in later adventures, the estimable Wanda. The book ends with his unfortunate recapture by the Germans and in an epilogue he revisits the people who took him in ten years after.

   Newby is a hugely gifted writer, his sentences are knowing and clear as a bell. He orders information rhythmically, always knows when less is more and more is more. He never bows to sentimentality, never sells anyone out. He does a remarkable job of expressing the fear and dispiritedness that politics and war heave on a people, at the same time revealing their resilience. There is much to admire in this book.




4. The Italians Newby depicts in this memoir (and also in his "A Small Place in Italy") are often funny, but never buffoonish. Newby's warm admiration for country folk is always evident, as in this passage where a retired stonemason helps remove an enormous boulder from the hideout the locals are making for him:

   "He went over it with his hands, very slowly, almost lovingly. It must have weighed half a ton. Then, when he had finished caressing it, he called for a sledgehammer and hit it deliberately but not particularly hard and it broke into two almost equal halves. It was like magic and I would not have been surprised if a toad had emerged from it and turned into a princess who had been asleep for a million years."

   Readers familiar with Newby's travel writing will find all his strengths here: his eye for detail, his warmth of character, his humor (mostly self-deprecating). They will also find a love story -- one made all the more poignant by Newby's craftsmanlike selection of few but telling scenes.




5. I've read many personal narratives about World War II and I must say this is an excellent book!!!

5 comments about Dustoff: The Memoir of an Army Aviator.

1. An outstanding account of what happened in the war zone. A must read!



2. Dustoff is rare look at a rare breed of man. Mike Novosel is a true American hero and his account of his military life make a great read. I wish our country had a few more men like Mike Novosel.



3. Mr. Novosel isn't a professional writer. Therefore, his book doesn't read like some Hollywood glamour novel. However, his book is one of the best accounts of a real soldier doing his job. After meeting Mr. Novosel, I realized that his book reads almost as if he is there recalling the experiences to you personally. I was captivated from the first page, finding it difficult to find a stopping point (okay, I'll read just one more chapter). For anyone interested in military related books, medevac crews or a great memoir, this is a must-read. Well worth a hard cover for your collection.



4. This book is about a true American Hero. Starting before World War 2, this book covers the life and career of one of the bravest men I have ever read about. This is a man who not only risked his life time and time again to selflessly save the wounded in Vietnam, but did not expect any special gratitude or treatment for it. This is a well written and engrossing tale about a man who served more than any man would be expected to, but signed up for two tours of Vietnam as a emergency evacuation pilot. Although I know it doesn't count for much, I hope Mr. Novosel reads this review to realize how much respect I have for him, and the men who served with him.



5. I picked this book up on a sale rack while waiting for a flight. After sitting down with it, I put it down for a total of maybe 5 minutes from cover to cover, and that was out of sheer necessity.

   For having led such an amazing life, the author has such an easy, flowing writing style that you get the impression he were relaying the entire account over a few beers at some smoky enlisted club. Even more striking is the level of modesty with which Novosel recalls his time, a rarity in the military as anyone who's been in knows! Thankfully missing is melodrama and hollywood, which leaves the real excitement to stand for itself.

   All in all a fantastic read. You don't meet people like this guy every day (if ever!). I can't recommend this book enough.