4 comments about Lost in the Victory: Reflections of American War Orphans of World War II.

1. As one who lost my father in WWII, this was a difficult book to read because it triggered a flood of emotions that had been suppressed for many years. It should be required reading for all military officers and world leaders. Those of us labeled war babies or war orphans will be forever grateful to Ann Mix for bringing us together and our stories to light.



2. Because I lost my father in WWII, Lost in the Victory, had a very personal meaning for me. I couldn't put it down once I started reading it. The personal stories of what happened to several of the orphans once the war ended brought back memories that were buried for years. A truly touching book. Thanks Ann



3. A well documented reminder of how families that lose a parent in a war are permanently affected.



4. So few members of my generation, born in the 1960's, have been introduced to the full depth of a war's reach. Often our understanding is derived generally from the broadest high school or college survey class; or worse, Hollywood. So it is quite sobering that a member of the "me" generation receives the sharpest of slaps across the face.
   As a collection of essays and interviews of American World War Two orphans, LOST IN THE VICTORY paints a broad and intense picture of a narrow and lonely subject. With each chapter, the sense of loss grows; not just the loss of a fine American to battle, but the loss of a child's identity.
   
   
   However, the range of emotions is broad. While sad and desperate at times, the book also brims with pride and faith.
   
   
   For a Memorial Day tribute, there could be no better slap of reality than LOST IN THE VICTORY.

No comments about Malcolm X And The Third American Revolution: The Writings Of George Breitman (Revolutionary Studies) (Revolutionary Studies).

No comments about Brothers' War: Civil War Letters to Their Loved Ones from the Blue and Gray.

5 comments about Conceived In Liberty: William Oates, Joshua Chamberlain, and the American Civil War.

1. Excellent in-depth study of two officers, whose actions on one day in their lives, during the fury of face-to-face combat, impacted the outcome of a war.



2. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and William Oates clashed on the extreme flank of Little Round Top at Gettysburg. The Author traces the development of these young men turned military leaders and their post-Civil War lives in an excellent portrait of perhaps prototypical Southern and Northern patriots and the mindsets they brought to battle.
   
   Neither man was trained for the military before the war, though Chamberlain was attracted to the army life. Trained for the ministry, Chamberlain became a leading professor at Bowdoin College in Maine. Oates was a neer-do-well, spending much of his late adolescence moving one step ahead of the law for a crime he committed in Alabama. Oates was able to clear himself and get home and remarkably bootstrap himself to the position of educated man, school teacher and lawyer on the rise.
   
   When the War broke out, both Chamberlain and Oates were enthusiastic champions of their regions. Oates was able to act on his military desires from the outset, while Chamberlain had to sneak into the army by pretending to take a sabbatical from a college reluctant to lose a star professor to the cause.
   
   Both serious students of war and engaged commanders, Oates and Chamberlain met on what may be the penultimate part of perhaps the War's most significant battle. Upon fierce engagement with barely 600 total men hung the fait of armies numbering almost 200,000 and a nation of millions.
   
   This book gives an excellent telling of the battle at Little Round Top. The fighting will of course be familiar to the Civil War student. What also fascinates is the well drawn in-depth dual portraits of two men who embodied the mind of warriors for their respective causes.



3. Even though Joshua Chamberlain and William Oates came from totally different backgrounds, they seem to have become more and more similar as their lives progressed. On July 2, 1863, they faced one another in one of the most crucial battles in American history. Both earned reputations as brave officers in combat during the Civil War, and both became involved with politics following the war's end. I've been a Civil War buff nearly all my life, but at first I didn't expect to enjoy another dual-biography (they usually try to cram too much info in one volume). I was pleasantly surprised by this well-written and well-researched book which should be required reading for any Civil War buff. It doesn't go overboard praising Joshua Chamberlain's war record as other biographies have done, and William Oates, one of the most overlooked Confederate officers, finally got the attention he deserved. Highly recommended.



4. Very well researched..unique because it looks at two very different (and similiar) generals. Also contains a pretty good overview of significant battles of the war.



5. The Civil War was, in some ways, our own clash of cultures that ended up with us having a stronger, and more philisophically harmonic country than we had then. After the war we no longer were "Those United States" but "These United States".

   While it took longer (and still has not taken root) for some Southern areas to accept that they have changed because of the war, this book outlines in a fascinating fashion why the American Dream was won in 1865.

   Joshua Chamberlain and William Oates are both opposing personalities. Chamberlain was a professor, Oates a laborer. Chamberlain was a respected fellow before the war. Oates was much less.. even going into hiding at one point from the law.

   What they had in common was a belief that they had gone as far as they could in their lives before the war. Chamberlain was forever going to be a professor. Oates forever a laborer.

   Both faced each other in Gettysburg. While Chamberlain was the hero of Little Top in that battle, Oates eventually had a longer and more productive politcal life than Chamberlain.

   Neither of these men won their positions by birth, wealth, or by the inner workings of a political machine. They won their positions by hard work, and the admiration of their men in battle and the people they fought for.

   While it may have been possible prior to the Civil War for these men to have done so (Abraham Lincoln is a prime example) the fact is that the Southern philosophy was beaten in 1865, and the Northern philosophy of hard work, and position by trust and admiration rather than birth, and wealth won out and both sides reaped benefits and still are from that day.

1 comments about Nixon: An Oral History of His Presidency.

1. I enjoyed reading this book because it talks about the Nixon presidency from Nixon's election to the White House in 1969 to his resignation in 1974. The people that discuss Nixon in this book are members of his cabinet, foreign diplomats and heads of state, his family, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This book also goes into detail about the Watergate incident, Nixon's life after his resignation and President Ford's attempts to heal the nation after the Watergate incident. That is what made this book interesting and exciting.

No comments about Lincoln's America: 1809-1865.

1 comments about Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories.

1. Even casual readers about the U.S. Civil War have seen the haunting images of young soldiers staring stiffly into the
   camera for posterity. About to embark into a war of unimagined horror, few of their particular stories were preserved or documented. "Faces of the Civil War" takes those personal mementos and visiting cards as a hook to pull the reader into many previously untold stories. This winning combination of powerful images, extensive archival research, and accessible journalistic writing provides a welcome addition to anyone's Civil War book collection. It also can grab and hold student's interest in this endlessly fascinating era of U.S. history.

5 comments about Hemingway: The 1930s.

1. The fourth volume in Reynolds's multi-volume biography of Hemingway. Unlike other Hemingway biographers (James Mellow, for instance) who are mostly interested in how the author incorporated his own life into his fiction, Reynolds approaches his subject in a strict chronological fashion and hardly touches upon the works at all. This volume begins in 1929 with Ernest and Pauline returning to Paris while he put the final touches on "A Farewell to Arms," and ends with Ernest beginning to write "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and taking up residence with Martha Gellhorn in Havana. Very detailed in terms of H.'s life and doings, much less so with regard to his works and art. Definitive in that respect, but not where to go to get an appreciation of Hemingway the writer and the forces behind his artistic creations.



2. This is the fourth installment in Reynolds's five part Hemingway biography. During this period Hemingway lived mostly in Key West. He wrote his first non-fiction bullfight book, Death in the Afternoon, To Have and Have Not and For Whom the Bell Tolls. He also spent a lot of time in latter part of this decade as a journalist covering the Spanish Civil War. He meets the journalist Martha Gellhorn in Key West and begins the relationship that will break up his second marriage.

   Reynolds does a good job here but it is not as good as the two previous installments. There is much less detail given here compared to those books especially with regards to Hemingway's thoughts and state of mind while writing the books of this period. The other books had a nearly page by page account of what the great man was doing and thinking while he wrote The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms. This is noticeably lacking here. The account of the writing of For Whom the Bell Tolls is especially curt. That book, which is regarded as Hemingway's masterpiece, doesn't get the attention Reynolds gave to earlier works. I read somewhere that Hemingway contacted his publisher Charles Scribner during the writing of For Whom the Bell Tolls, telling him that one of the Spanish Civil War short stories he was writing had taken off in his mind and that he already had written 40,000 words. This information is nowhere to be found here. Instead there are gossipy details of the relationship with Gellhorn and the unkind treatment Hemingway's second wife, Pauline, received at the end of their marriage.

   There is a long account of Hemingway's first African safari which I found uninteresting. Reynolds stresses his subject's need to recreate the "summer people" of his youth, the group of friends that would gather at Walloon Lake in Michigan every summer of Hemingway's boyhood. Reynolds's tries to force every single relationship to fit this "summer people" thesis even when it is less than apt. There is overlong attention given to hunting trips and less attention to the actual writing than I would have liked. Reynolds has a disturbing tendency here to introduce a new person into Hemingway's life story without much explanation of how they came to meet and what caused them to be friendly. On several occasions a new friend will enter Hemingway's life and without any explanation immediately become the center around which the narrative revolves. This is unsettling and made me page back on several occasions looking for the first appearance of this person. Overall, a poor follow up to the previous books in this series.




3. Though this is the fourth of a five book series, and the first I chose to read, I had no trouble keeping up. You could argue that Hemingway the man was more interesting than his fiction and Reynolds goes a pretty good distance to show why. Hemingway takes his first safari, catches Marlin in Key West and fights in the Spanish Civil War, and switches women before the end of the decade.

   Reynolds paints a fairly descriptive portrait of Hemingway, but also reminds us of other current events as the decade unfolds. Hemingway begins the decade mostly apolitical, but he is very critical of the New Deal Programs he sees running in his hometown of Key West Florida. In 1936 he likens President Roosevelt's plan to socialism, but his support two years later of antifascist guerrillas in the Spanish Civil War allies him with downright communists.

   It was also interesting to watch Hemingway's friendships crumble. Reynolds describes how Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Sherwood Anderson went their separate ways from Papa for various reasons, but mostly because Hemingway was an explosive character. His larger than life dominating personality coupled with his fatigue for certain personality types doomed a great deal of one-time friendships.

   What I like mostly of Reynolds work is that he likes Hemingway a great deal, and this comes through, despite Papa's many flaws.




4. Hemingway: The 1930s is the fourth installment in Mr. Reynold's series; he does not "dump you into the story midstream." Anyone with even a little knowledge of Hemingway is familiar with this series and knows that Mr. Reynolds is THE Hemingway biographer. My advice - do at least a little research before expressing an opinion.



5. This thorough and "personable" slice of Hemingway's life in the 30's is quite readable and almost literary itself. Reynolds' periodic but careful use of correspondence and journalistic fragments, interspersed with the narrative is thought-provoking and draws the reader into the time. The only problem with this book is the necessity that the reader bring a somewhat extensive background to the reading in order to thoroughly enjoy the material. If you do not know the Hemingway cast of characters, Reynolds does not go to great lengths to introduce you. Since the book, by its nature, dumps you into the "story" midstream, its failure to catch you up is somewhat frustrating at times. However, the expertise with which it is written only leaves you wanting more and seeking additional sources to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. I highly recommend it to all who are somewhat familiar with Hemingway. If you are among the uninitiated, you may wish ! to start elsewhere and keep this in mind for later.

3 comments about Gettysburg (Voices of the Civil War).

1. There are probably thousands of books written about the Civil War, and many of them cover the same territory. But Gettysburg: Voices of the Civil War by the editors of Time-Life Books, provides a new look at this monumental battle.
   
   Voices of the Civil War is filled with first hand accounts of the events leading up to and including the Battle of Gettysburg. Instead of a dry narrative, the authors provide a brief description of events. But they then turn the story over to the soldiers, civilians, families and newsmen who were eyewitnesses. They spent thousands of hours searching out letters, journals, and dairies as well as photographs and sketches. In reading these accounts, we get a more vivid picture of the battle. We can almost see the bullets flying by our heads, hear the constant roar of cannons and guns followed by the anguished cries and moaning of the injured and dying soldiers and horses. We also read about the mayhem and chaos of battle. One soldier writes "I could have walked a half or three quarters of a mile on the dead soldiers of the enemy and not have put my feet on the ground. In some places, they were lying three deep." Recalls a Virginia artillery lieutenant, "The sights and sounds that assailed us were simply indescribable" with "corpses swollen to twice their original size, some of them actually burst asunder with the pressure of foul gases and vapors." Civilians were left to deal with the carnage, and one resident reports on "piles of amputated limbs were heaped outside the open windows." Yet, despite the death and destruction, there was a determination that this battle needed to be fought for a noble cause. A New York Times reporter lamented upon finding the body of his dead son, "O, you dead, who at Gettysburg have baptized with your blood the second birth of Freedom in America."
   
   Yet, throughout the battle, there were tender scenes as well. Civilians especially, helped provide food and medical care to the soldiers of both sides. Even the soldiers could put aside regional hatred. One Confederate soldier came upon a wounded Union man. "I saw that all one side of his lower jaw was torn off. I got him to a shade and fixed him down with his oil cloth, blanket and knapsack, then brought him a canteen of water and how pitiful to see him trying to drink by pushing the mouth of the canteen through the wound in his throat."
   
   I have a selfish reason for being fascinated by Voices from The Civil War. My great-great grandfather fought in the Civil War and was wounded on the second day of fighting at Gettysburg. Having left no written record of his war experiences in diaries or letters, Voices of the Civil War is as close as I can get to understanding what he lived through.
   
   This book has three things that should be required for all Gettysburg books. First, it has an artist's rendering of the battle ground. Second, it has a chronology of the sequence of events. And finally, it includes a list of officers for both armies that includes the generals, corps, divisions and brigades. These three items makes it much easier to see the full picture while reading.
   
   So while some Gettysburg books may give you a more complete description of battles and such, no book will capture your attention, your imagination or your heart like Voices of the Civil War.



2. This is one of the books in the Time-Life Series, "Voices of the Civil War". In these books the authors/editors have taken passages out of diaries, letters to home, and personal observations of Union and Confederate Soldiers, along with photographs and pictures (of the soldiers, if a photograph is available), and given the soldier's viewpoints of the Battle. This is an insightful, moving, inspiring, and tragic account of the particular battle. In this case, the great and terrible Battle Of Gettysburg.

   From such Generals as Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, W. Scott Hancock, to low ranking officers, to the enlisted men, there are letters, diary entries, and viewpoints taken from these soldiers as they write about "Little Round Top", "The Devils Den", "Culps Hill", "Cemetary Ridge", and other locations where the battle took place around Gettysburg. The letters and viewpoints range from the patriotic, others talk about the terror of the battle, others inform about lost loved ones, and yet there are humorous tales taken from the diaries of the soldiers.

   This is such an interesting book, that once you pick it up, it is hard to put down. The other books in the "Voices of the Civil War" series are just as interesting as "Gettysburg".

   Highly recommended!




3. I like to refer to this book as a colorful, well done "coffee table" book as it features many drawings, photos and skips the details you would find in other books about the battle. This book is probably not for those looking for details or heavy explanations about a specific conflict in the battle. For one that is looking to get a basic understanding of the battle and aftermath quickly it is perfect. For those new to understanding Gettysburg this is an excellent book. Having read many books about the battle I found this book interesting in regards to the personal accounts that are found on just about every page. Time Life has made a great book and continues their quality as with other series in the past.

3 comments about An Abundant Life: The Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown.

1. Hugh B. Brown is an example of an apostle who well before his time showed what was going to happen in the future of the LDS Church. Time and time again he was proven right in decades after his death. If one wants an idea of where the Church is headed, this book is a great book to read. He was an inspiring leader in the LDS Church and I for one hope we have more like him in the future.



2. An Abundant Life is both a pleasent, nostalgic read, and a profoundly insightful book. The life of Hugh B. Brown is one of remarkable faith and dedication, not to mention sacrifice, to the Church to which he belonged. But it was the mind and spirit of the man that drew people to him, and that spirit would be welcome in today's church. The final chapter of the Memoirs, entitled "A Final Testimony" is a most beautiful statement regarding the importance of individual members using the power of their minds in discerning truth for themselves, rather than relying on the words of their leaders. Further, his was a mission of compassion, not personal agrandizement. He measured the merits of both his politics and his religion on how well they treated the poor. If all members of the church thought as he did, there indeed would be room for everyone...



3. Hugh B. Brown was a member of the First Presidency of the LDS church during the 1960's under President David O. McKay. This was an explosive time for the church and the world but President Prown was a steadying hand. His warmth and depth of thought come across well in this memoir which was assembled after his death by his grandson, Edwin D. Firmage. President Brown said, "One of the most important things in the world is freedom of the mind; from this all other freedoms spring. Such thinking is necessarily dangerous, for one cannot think right without running the risk of thinking wrong, but generally more thinking is the antidote for the evils that spring from wrong thinking." His legacy of tolerance and charity is important, and is brought to vivid life in this book.