Started out with the Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson. Well written account of WWII from the American perspective, but have a dictionary nearby. His vocabulary is unbelievable.
The Trilogy begins with ‘The Army At Dawn’ and covers the initial battles in North Africa. The army was young, the generals old school, and they made mistake after mistake after mistake. They learned and began culling leadership to respond to the challenges. One tidbit. Tanks in the initial battles were inadvertently loaded with training ordinance. Meant only to mark where the rounds landed. One tank gunner said it was like flinging hardened loaves of bread at the German tanks.
The next book is the ‘The Day Of Battle’ covering the war in Sicily and Italy. Eisenhower is balancing building up his forces while at the same time urged to do SOMETHING. Simultaneously balancing political battles with real battles the book follows a cast of real life characters and tragic battles that no fiction writer could make up. Acronyms like FUBAR and SNAFU were born. As were SUSFU, TARFU, FUMTU, JANFU, and FUAFUP. Despite all the mishaps, the guys learned and excelled.
The last book is the ‘The Guns At Last Light’, recalling the final push into central Europe. By this time the military had reached maturation and the industrial / logistical support of the US was hitting on all cylinders. One of the authors techniques was to draw from the formal record of what was said and done during strategy sessions and battles, then draw from the personal diaries and letters home which contained more personal thoughts about those same events. The combination of sources paints a more colorful picture.
After reading these three books it will be impossible to stay seated when the national anthem plays. Eisenhower, Patton, Roosevelt (not the one you were thinking of), Churchill, Stalin, and scores of accounts from soldiers journals and letters home are woven into a compelling set of books.
The trilogy led me to ‘Savage Continent’, covering the events immediately after WWII. A cursory view of history shows jubilation on VE day, the sailor kissing the gal in New York, and wham; the Marshall Plan rebuilds Europe. It wasn’t that simple and the cessation of formal hostilities gave rise to reprisals and retribution on a massive scale. There was essentially a lawless time in most of the occupied countries right after the war that has not been well documented and this book pulls that together. Unfortunately, especially compared the trilogy, it isn’t very well written.
Staying on the WWII theme, read ‘Unbroken. A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption’. It’s by Laura Hillenbrand, who also wrote ‘Seabiscuit’. It’s the story of a rather wild kid with no real direction who learned to run and surprisingly, at a young age, competed in the ’36 Olympics in Berlin. He had his sights set on the next Olympics, but war intervened and he was captured and held by the Japanese for the duration of the war. Enduring nearly unspeakable (and almost unreadable) torture, the book follows his journey. An inspirational read.
Also read ‘The Devil In The White City’. Interesting true story of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. It follows the challenges the architects faced bringing the fair to completion as well as a serial murderer lurking in their midst. It’s fascinating. The fair’s financial success was realized only when a steel engineer got to build his giant attraction. The fair saw the unveiling of Shredded Wheat, Cracker Jack, and may have decided the future of our power grid – AC and DC power were competing head to head. And that engineer? George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. His Wheel was designed to offer an attraction that would compete with the previous great attraction at the last World’s Fair – the Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris.
‘The Boys In The Boat’ may be my favorite read of the summer. It covers an incredible group of young men, nearly all from small towns in Washington state and how they came together to form one of the greatest crews rowing has ever known. They went on to win gold in the eight in the 1936 Olympics. Riveting. Only wish Dad was around to discuss the book. He would have loved it and both Mom and Dad met some of the team later in life.
The funniest book, and oddly one of the most inspirational, was ‘Born To Run’. Absolutely fascinating look into the world of ultra marathon runners. The basic theme of the book is that Homo sapiens was not the smartest nor the strongest species competing for survival, but they were built to run. Not fast, but our structure allows us to run long distances and that was a key evolutionary advantage allowing us to effectively compete in the food chain. According to evidence presented in the book, that advantage is seriously undermined by the padded shoe. I suspect Dad would have taken exception to some of the books conclusions.
The next two books are related. I listened to ‘Ike’s Bluff’ on CD on some of the longer drives I took. The fifties were a fascinating time. Following WWII, scientists were making tremendous gains, moving from Fission to Fusion. Atomic Bomb to the much more powerful Hydrogen bomb. Eisenhower had to deal with this increase in power while at the same time trying to contain ‘bush fire conflicts’ which could develop to nuclear holocaust. While imperfect, you really get the impression that Eisenhower was the right man at the right time. Unfortunately the CIA was running amok and you gain an appreciation why some of the rest of the world views the US with suspicion that continues to this day (Snowden’s revelations – or better put the NSA acts he brought light to – do nothing to diminish those suspicions).
The book I’m still reading is ‘The Fifties’ which is a nice companion read to ‘Ike’s Bluff’. The fifties were an incredibly dynamic time when things seemed so ‘right’ on the surface (leave it to Beaver, the Lucy Show, Father knows best), but were seething behind the scenes (read Ike’s Bluff). Written by David Halberstam, the book covers the major shifts between WWII and the sixties. The influence of advertising, Civil Rights, the Feminist movement, the suburbs, the sexual revolution – all percolated during the fifties – with the cold war increasingly threatening global annihilation. Great read.
One more. In preparation for our Bourbon tour I read Chuck Cowdery’s ‘Bourbon,Straight; the Uncut and Unfiltered Story of American Whiskey. After reading it you get an appreciation for what is the only truly American spirit. American as it’s corn based. Scotch and Vodka had been distilled for years in Europe, but being corn based, Bourbon originated in America. The book really helped as we toured Kentucky distilleries.
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