5 comments about Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family, Fatherland and Vichy France (Vintage).

1. Fascinating as a history of anti-Semitism in France. The author, however, is off-putting in the first section of the book. So much time and space is evoted to the family background in Australia, and the detail is so involved, that there is a temptation to put the book down and forget about it. But skip through this intial section and it becomes more and more revealing and exciling and gruesome as we learn of this wretched bunch of French fascists fighting among themselves to rid their country of a tiny minority on whom they blame all their social ills. Stanly B. Dickes



2. This is very scholarly book but never boring. It is a fascinating look at an evil man. I was sad to come to the end of it, I enjoyed it so much.



3. After reading 400+ pages I don't feel that I truly know the full extent of Louis Darquier as an individual. I have no doubt that this book was expertly researched but it left me feeling that I understood Vichy, Louis Darquier, collaboration, etc. on the surface but without the insight I would expect from a book of this length. The exploration of French anti-Semitism and Catholicism before the war is the only aspect of the book that comes across as truly 3 dimensional. I learned a lot from this book but it leaves me looking for other sources that will take me deeper into these people, institutions and times.



4. Shortly after France surrendered to Germany in 1940, Louis Darquier, a captured French officer, was released from a prison camp. The Germans thought that Darquier, a professional anti-Semite, would be useful to them in occupied France.
   
   In the 1930s, Darquier had made a reputation in France as a participant in an anti-government riot, as a right wing, nationalistic politician and journalist, and as "Hitler's parrot" for crying "Bravo, Fritz!" after Kristallnacht when Hitler unleashed Nazi terror against Germany's Jews.
   
   In Vichy France, German's puppet state, Darquier was eventually elevated to the position of Commissioner of Jewish Affairs, a position in which he could put his anti-Semitic rhetoric into effect.
   
   Several strands run through Carmen Callil's very interesting book. The main strand traces Louis Darquier's life before and after the point where "he could be paid by the Vichy state as well as the Germans to rid France of its Jews" while also getting his long dreamt of "public recognition, power, honor and acclaim."
   
   In the period before Vichy, Darquier had adopted himself to a French political landscape saturated in anti-Semitism. Callil is very good at describing the far right, anti-Semitic political milieu in 1930s France. It was a time when right wing groups were "like squabbling soldiers ignoring the enemy and turning upon each other in the trenches, they argued and disagreed and fought each other with words and fists and with their little newspapers." Initially aligning himself with royalist and French fascist Charles Maurras, Darquier eventually found his own place on the anti-Semitic right that detested the government of the Jewish and socialist Prime Minister Léon Blum.
   
   It is Callil's assertion that Generals Pétain and Weygand, who were called to lead France in the war against Hitler, shared this hatred and surrendered to the Germans because they "viewed a good portion of (their) countrymen and women as unworthy of defense." The new national revolution that Pétain intended to make under the auspices of the Germans gave Darquier and his ilk their moment.
   
   Although Darquier held power of life or death over French Jews, he seems to have wanted his position more to preen and to enjoy himself than to exercise those powers. Callil writes that the Germans always underestimated the extent of Darquier's allergy to work and notes that he was one of the few people who gained weight during the war. As depicted, Darquier was a loudmouth, a bully, a liar and a ranting anti-Semite. He was also extremely lazy and inefficient at his job as well as greedy. When he actually was in his office and not at a bar, Darquier would sign arrest warrants for Jews, though not for Jews who could pay him a nice sum. It was men like Rene Bousquet, Vichy's Secretary-General for the Police, who really did the dirty work for the Nazis in occupied France.
   
   As said before, the main strand of the book is Louis Darquier and his nastiness. Callil also tells the story of Louis' marriage to an Australian, Myrtle, an alcoholic who had a life-long loyalty to Louis. More important to Callil is the story of their daughter Anne whom Louis and Myrtle abandoned in Britain and who grew up to be Callil's psychiatrist and friend. Anne's unhappy life and early death inspired Callil to write this book, but the best part of the book is about Louis who survived his wife and daughter to die in Spain in 1980.
   
   In one scene in Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg makes a little girl wearing a red coat stand out in the midst of a crowd fleeing and hiding from the Nazis. In same way, Callil focuses on one man in the tumult of the thirties and in Vichy's "renewal of France." The background of Darquier's life is French, despite the shifts in scene to Australia, Britain and Spain. Darquier is there when France goes to war in 1914, disintegrates politically in the 1930s, and collapses in 1940. Of the war years, Callil writes:
   
   "In one sense the years 1940 to 1944, for the French people, had little to do with the world war raging outside their occupied territory, but much to do with what the French did to the French, and how they ended the long civil war which had begun with the revolution in 1789."
   
   Watching Darquier thrive in those awful years is to come closer to understanding how France came to that ending.



5. Carmen Callil, the Australian author of Bad Faith and founder of Virago Press, began to see a psychiatrist in 1960 after a failed suicide attempt. She was referred to Dr. Anne Darquier in part because Dr. Darquier was part Australian, although born and raised in London. After a decade of three times a week sessions, Callil went to her appointment one day and the doctor was not in. Anne Darquier de Pellepoix (Calill saw her full name on her funeral program) had indeed committed suicide herself.
   
   Needless to say, when Callil saw this name while watching a television documentary about Vichy, France (Marcel Ophuls' The Sorrow and the Pity: The Story of a French Town in the Occupation) and knew this surname to be connected to an official of the Vichy government, she was intrigued. When this man was shown in the film "respectfully" greeting Rienhard Heydrich, the Nazi head of France's Reich Central Security Office, Callil knew there was a story to tell.
   
   Similar to Adolf Hitler, Louis Darquier was not the smartest or most motivated kid. While his bothers excelled in school and business, Louis spent a lot of time drinking, carousing, playing around, and then getting angry because his work wasn't getting done and his grades were bad or he wasn't making any money. As Callil shows, he married his Australian actress wife while she was still married to another man, and proceeded to physically and psychologically abuse her while they both stayed drunk most of the time and begged money from family. Like Hitler, who blamed the downfall of the German economy on the Jews, Louis Darquier blamed his own economic downfall on Jews who happened to do better business than he did.
   
   Men like Darquier bloomed during the occupation of France, collaborating within the Vichy government and drinking in as much power, wealth, and alcohol as humanly possible. Suddenly, stupidity was actually the rule of the day, and men like Darquier had the means to exact revenge on anyone they felt had wronged them in the past, especially if they happened to be Jewish.
   
   While Callil's research is impeccable and she approaches her subject with fervor, I could not share her excitement. Darquier is yet another stupid idiot who floated to the top of the heap when idiots ruled the world. Witness his treatment of his daughter Anne, raised by a nanny far away from home and never seen by her parents, who assumed that sending a teeny bit of money and asking for a photo once in a while constituted care. He apparently didn't even believe that Jews were being sent to die; he just wanted them out of his backyard and enjoyed the power conferred on him by the Nazis. It is even worse that he outlived his wife and daughter, moving to Spain where he died in 1980, denying the holocaust all the way.

2 comments about Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom.

1. Robert C. Williams' "Horace Greeley" is an engaging and very readable historical narrative that is as much about the times and tribulations of mid-nineteenth century America as it is about its underappreciated subject, Horace Greeley. This book will appeal to anyone interested in pre-Civil War America. The decades culminating in the Civil War were extremely turbulent as the nation searched its soul for a consensus on the vaguely- defined "freedoms" promised by our Founding Fathers. Greeley was in the thick of this volatile political and moral debate, earnestly seeking ways to avoid the coming "irrepressible conflict."
   
   Horace Greeley was a kind of 19th century "zelig," an opinion-leader who played an influential role in virtually every political and social movement of the mid-1800s. But Greeley was more than a bit player to the leading actors of his day. He was a bold and innovative journalist who molded the modern newspaper. While considered one of the founders of the Republican Party and a political kingmaker, he ran for president against Grant in 1872 in perhaps one of the most unusual and fascinating presidential elections in American history.
   
   The author deserves high praise for debunking many myths surrounding Greeley's alleged eccentricities, stereotypes that often originated from the distortions of his mudslinging rivals. The author's dispassionate analysis, rooted in a deep understanding of the political and social crosscurrents of the era, succeeds in putting Greeley's seemingly contradictory stances and actions in an understandable context.
   
   This is a very accessible and enjoyable read, betraying none of the dry or plodding style of some specialized history. The author's depth of knowledge and scrupulous research is evident on every page.



2. A fine life of a fascinating and, it seems, often infuriating man. It has fitted in with many of the good American history books I have been enjoying of late.It is well worth any reader's attention- though I find the author at times at little too determined to drive his points home- one gets them the first time!

5 comments about Hiding in Plain Sight: The Incredible True Story of a German-Jewish Teenager's Struggle to Survive in Nazi-Occupied Poland.

1. Magnificent attenton to detail and an almost photographic like narrative characterise this Un-run of the mill Holocaust memoir. The author Betty is a modest teenager who is bold while being matter of fact and subtle- and she is able to convey with great nuance what is felt like to navigate the Nazi oocupied Poland during the height of the madness as a teenager .This lengthy memoir, a tale of youthful triumph against such huge odds, is satisfying and keeps the reader on the edge of one's seat.



2. While attending a Bat Mitzvah of a relative, I was fortunate to meet and talk with Betty Lauer, the author of "Hiding in Plain Sight". I told her that I enjoyed the book immensely but found it hard to believe that she could experience so many crises. She said"Believe me: it is true" I said that it must have been very difficult for her to change her faith. She said that was very easy because both of our faiths belive in one God. She is a very upbeat woman.



3. Written in a straight-forward style with at least surface artlessness, I found this an engrossing account of a teenage Jewish girl's struggle to survive in Poland after the Nazis took over. While it does not have the overpowering aura of authenticity that is inherent in Victor Klemperer's I Will Bear Witness (Volume I read by me on 11 June 1999 and Volume II on 7 Apr 2000), I was caught up by this account and though one knew she survived (else the book would not exist) one had to remind oneself of that as she went from situation to situation. I think it necessary for one to remind oneself repeatedly of the inhuman behavior of so many people during the Hitler years, lest one take civil liberty for granted. She does meet people who are human but also there are many who behaved in a way which they surely have regretted ever since--I hope.



4. This book is the choice of two reading groups and many individuals anticipating the visit by author Betty Lauer to our area. It is a vivid and gripping account of events in Poland and Germany of World War II from inside the feelings and emotions of an intelligent, courageous, and sensitive Jewish teenager. It is captivating reading and a major contribution to the documentation of the Holocast. Suitable for all ages.
   
   An obstacle was the small print and very tight binding that made it difficult to keep the book open.



5. Ms. Lauer gives us her almost-incredible account of survival in WWII Poland as a "submarine"; someone sought by the Nazi occupation as a Jewess (zydowka or Judin), yet who could manage by dying her hair blonde, acting confident, finding "female" occupations such as housework and babysitting, to survive in plain sight on the streets of WArsaw, Berlin, and small Polish towns. Rooms to rent were very hard to come by, but most Poles lost their pensions with the Nazi invasion, so many either had to start working or take in boarders. The native population was as frightened of arrest as these GErman Jewish refugees; if nothing else, aiding and abetting in the hiding of Jews or other undesirables could result in a concentration camp or death. Such a signal as having no fur collar on a winter coat indicated one's Jewishness: Jews were not allowed to own furs, had to turn them in; so obtaining a fur collar became another battle for assimilation/passing. In such and many other examples, the reader gradually realizes that Jews could often "hide in plain sight" by aping gentile behavior and clothing, going to Church, etc.
   
   What amazed this reader, after having lived for years in Europe (1980's), is the quite obvious fact that many who hired her or rented her and her mother rooms were aware from the start that they were Jews on the run. Sometimes it would simply erupt at the very end as they were vacating rooms or were let go from a job. Therefore, what you can conclude, most Europeans could recognize these Jewish "submarines" but for many reasons, perhaps from Christian principles or common decency, or hatred of the Occupation, they would not cooperate with the Nazis and turn them in.
   
   She does comment that the gentile women would not bother her on the street or in public streetcars, but that the men, ages 18-60, were to be avoided. They would hit on her, call her "zydowka", and try to turn her into the police - and she would run. This kind of detail brings to light that not just Jew-hatred was at play, but some kind of sexual tension was added to the turmoil. One might guess that the gentile women would want her taken away, but apparently it was the gentile men disturbed at her bottle-blonde freedom and assimilation. Why? Worth speculating about!
   
   The book is so full of details, of names, job descriptions, food and clothing and weather, that one can only wonder that Ms. Lauer could even remember so much. A photographic memory at the least! Those interested in WWII occupied countries, in Jew hatred by gender, in the harshness of Polish life, in the minutiae of survival, will find this book fascinating. I personally enjoyed even hearing what they wore, how they found food, how they cooked it, how they found medical help, how information through letters was smuggled, how cyanide tablets were sewn into seams, new shoes made of old ski boots, etc. etc.
   
   She admits that one great advantage simply lay in her not having been circumcised, as her men were: her pants could not be pulled down and her parts examined. Only Jewish men were circumcised in Europe then.
   
   A book full of tension, a trip down memory lane: old-fashioned Poland. She was only a teenager, and her heart often yearned just for friendship with another girl, but her coreligionists' extreme undesirability made even that comfort almost impossible, for she could not risk excess talk. She would give herself and her mother away. A great story! There must have been many more, but who writes these long-ago details down so well?

1 comments about The Cross Under the Acacia Tree: The Story of David and Eunice Simonson's Epic Mission in Africa.

1. People who seem extraordinary really started off just like the rest of us, but a passion gripped them and pushed them to greatness. Were this fiction you would consider it a good African adventure read. But true it is. Klobuchar weaves the unvarnished story of a missionary family drawn to work among the Maasai in East Africa. To paraphrase the author at one point, not all of this book represents saints in action. Dave and Eunie Simonson are simply people with a passion to serve -- a passion that sometimes gets them into trouble, but one that always serves the extraordinary people to whom they minister. Happily, while the book ended, the ministry of the Simonsons endures. I have to keep purchasing this book, as my copy always seems to disappear to friends or family who enjoy the reassurance that much is really right in a world that produces Simonsons and the missionary families who minister to us all.

5 comments about The Rise And Fall Of The Dillinger Gang.

1. Several books have been written about John Dillinger and his cohorts along with the recently published book entitled The Vendetta by Alston Purvis. Each of the books cover the same cast of characters and incidents such as the shootout at the Little Bohemia lodge in northern Wisconsin. Jeffery King's book does provide a great deal of information on the gang's members, but not anything different than what can already be found in numerous other books on this subject. King states that the Purvis family was "deeply upset" that Hoover ignored Melvin's death. However, in Alston Purvis's book "The Vendetta", in a telegram to Hoover after Melvin's death, his wife stated, "We are honored that you ignored Melvin's death. Your jealously hurt him very much..." I did find numerous spelling errors, the same word repeated in a sentence, word omissions, and incorrect words placed in sentences especially, but certainly not limited to, the chapter on Little Bohemia. In summary, while I found the book to be interesting, it doesn't have any information to speak of that can't be found in numerous other similar volumes. It also is in serious need of a proofreader.



2. This is not a book of rehashed material, as one recent reviewer complained. Little of the biographical material on John Dillinger is new--after all, millions of words were written in his own time, and the biographies continue to flow in--but there is a goldmine of new information on all the major members of the two Dillinger Gangs. As Bill Helmer comments on the back cover, "Dillinger didn't do it alone," and King's goal in this book was to cover the criminal backgrounds of John's accomplices, something no one has done before. And he succeeds remarkably well. The previously undocumented criminal careers of Harry Pierpont, Charles Makley, John Hamilton, Russell Clark, Tommy Carroll, Homer Van Meter, and Eddie Green are covered in great detail, and it makes for fascinating reading. Most of these men committed far more crimes, and over a wider geographic area, than the celebrated gang members, Dillinger and "Baby Face" Nelson. Pierpont, Carroll, or Makley alone would each be deserving case studies themselves for book length biographies. This book is destined to become a true crime classic at least for its in-depth study of the gang members. That much said, there are flaws, which cause me to dock a star: [1] Some obsolete legends from previous Dillinger biographers--notably Toland and Nash--are accepted uncritically; [2] Nelson's three-fingered getaway driver on the Grand Haven bank robbery is not likely to have been William "Three-Fingered Jack" White, whom King definitely identifies him to be. FBI files on the Grand Haven job mention White as a possible suspect but tend to rule him out and no certain identification was ever made; [3] King obviously missed the recent expanded paperback edition of the Girardin-Helmer work "Dillinger: The Untold Story". Otherwise he would know that the fake guns used in the Pierpont-Makley death house break were carved from soapstone, not soap as previously reported. But these are minor quibbles and no historical work of any kind has ever been without errors. This book is a good read and there are plenty of leads here for future researchers to pursue.



3. Reviewed by Paige Lovitt for Reader Views (8/06)
   
   "The Rise and Fall of the Dillinger Gang" is really interesting. Author, Jeffrey S. King, extensively researched the background of the Dillinger gang. He offers pictures, references, quotes from people and letters and the personal history of each person in the gang.
   
   Dillinger himself was either seen as "Public Enemy Number One" or he was viewed as a modern day Robin Hood. The later comparison was actually really sad because while he wasn't robbing from the poor, he was responsible for the beatings and or deaths of several people, including many law enforcement officers. This gang robbed stores, theaters, banks, and raided police stations to help some of the members escape including Dillinger himself.
   
   Dillinger's criminal career started early. He was locked up from 1924 to 1933. He got out and continued his crime sprees. Some of his family members felt that he continued his life of crime because his first prison sentence was unfairly too long. His numerous attempts at escaping prison continued to add to his sentence. His family should have looked at why he was locked up in the first place. He was truly a career criminal and did not seem to want any other life.
   
   From his prison release in May of 1933 to when he was gunned down on July 22, 1934, Dillinger's gang was responsible for killing about 16 people and robbing 20 banks. Eleven of these people were law enforcement officers.
   
   Other members in the gang's lives are also reviewed in this book. This includes: George "Baby Face" Nelson (Lester Gillis), Harry Eugene "Eddie" Green, Homer Van Meter, Harry Pierpont, Charley Makley, Russell Lee Clark, John Hamilton, and Thomas Carroll. You will learn everything about their upbringings, their relationships, and their demises.
   
   Included in some of the photos are pictures of several of gang members after they were killed. This includes Dillinger's photo. It is unsettling to see these pictures, but what I feel was more unsettling are the smiling faces of several of the people posing in the background photos around the bodies. Because of his notoriety, Dillinger had 15,000 people view his body at the morgue.
   
   I highly recommend this book to history or biography buffs. In addition to learning about the career criminal lives of these men, you get a really good feel for what society was like at the time. You also learn about how the FBI got start and J. Edgar Hoover's role at the time.



4. If you just want the facts about the Dillinger Gang then this is the book for you. The books flows smoothly and is easy to read, individual chapters are allocated to each gang member which details their family life, upbringing and their drift into a life of crime. Many of them lost one or both parents very early in life, maybe this pushed them over the edge to crime l do not know, but low paying, mundane jobs were not an option for the Dillinger gang.
   
   Van Meter, Nelson and Pierpont were vicious, nasty creatures who seemed born for the prison yard, although evidence is presented that Pierpont was never the same after he was beaned on the head by a baseball bat, it is claimed he suffered from periods of insanity. Makely seems to have been a enough nice fellow he just enjoyed robberies along with the money and lifestyle it bought. Makely reflecting in the book said that a life dedicated to honesty would lead to the poverty he saw in his father's lifestyle which to him was a waste of a life!
   
   Many bizarre moments of the criminals lives are in the book, a milk bottle is thrown at the Dillinger gang while exiting from one of their robberies and Van Meter escaping from the police by jumping on an untended wagon pulled by horses and whipping the horses into a gallop as he and the wagon tore down the street to a successful escape! Nelson, sitting in a hotel room enjoying the rantings and ravings of Van Meter (no love lost between these two) who was distraught at the look of his face after plastic surgery.
   
   Overall a good introduction to the Dillinger gang with a lot of details on the type of tension filled lives they lead.



5. A bland but well documented chronicle of John Dillinger's criminal associates. The author provides everything you might possibly care to know about the supporting players in the Dillinger saga. Mr. King spent twenty-five years as a reference librarian for the U.S. Census Bureau, and perhaps that's part of my problem with this narrative. Although I am sure many might disagree, there were times I felt I were reading a tersely worded, formal report as opposed to a well-written compilation of the events which took place during the gang's "reign of terror." The research in and of itself had to be an exhaustive undertaking, and for that Mr. King should be commended for a job well done. Similar in some respects to Myron J Quimby's "The Devil's Emissaries," published some years ago.

1 comments about Pack My Bag: A Self-Portrait.

1. A paraphrase of this memoir would give the sense that 'Henry Green' was a typical British writer of the 1930s: a superposh old Etonian who precociously published his first novel at Oxford, and was driven by class guilt to work as a foundryman. Or, in his words, 'as was said in those days I had a complex and in the end it drove me to go to work in a factory with my wet podgy hands'. The prose style is what makes this book an absolute one-off - chatty, cleverly idiomatic, bathetic, loveable and self-effacing. 'Pack my Bag' isn't a book you'd read for the plot (unless you're interested in the faux-hardships of wealthy, hypersensitive schoolboys?), but its account of the Great War is full of compelling anecdotes (like the shellshocked soldier who stayed at the country estate of Green's parents - 'no longer human when he came to us'). If you like these subtle-ish modernist writers like Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth Bowen you might fall for Green, as sophisticated a stylist as any of the big modernist names (Woolf, Lawrence etc), but with an intimacy and sweetness that you don't necessarily associate with experimental writing. And he's funny, too. No wonder the people who love Henry Green really, really love Henry Green.

2 comments about This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (Civil Rights and the Struggle for Black Equality in the Twentieth Century).

1. A well writen documentary of an inspirational woman. This book gives life to significant events taking place in the fight for civil rights. In particular, reading about her Freedom Ride on a bus through the American South gave chilling reality to the ordeal. Fannie Lou Hamer is a pivotal figure in American history.



2. Mills' biography is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on the civil rights movement. The well-documented work explores the life of Ms. Hamer, an important figure in the '60s Deep-South struggles whose name may be unfamiliar to some.

   Fannie Lou Hamer was a poorly educated woman who, like most of her contemporaries growing up in pre-Depression Mississippi and beyond, endured virtual apartheid for a good portion of her life. Voting rights were essentially unknown to African-Americans in the state, which was controlled for decades by opponents of civil rights locally and through the state's federal representatives, most notably James O. Eastland, a senator who consistently stalled civil rights legislation through his control of the Judiciary Committee.

   Ms. Hamer was among the first African-Americans to challenge Mississippi's voting registration practices, which were designed to bar blacks from voting. For her troubles, she was arrested, detained in a small-town jail and beaten so severely that she sustained injuries that eventually shortened her life.

   Mills paints a vivid picture of Ms. Hamer's indomitable spirit, which was symbolized by her powerful singing voice, frequently employed to boost the courage of her local comrades and of the black and white workers who came to Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964 in an attempt to challenge the white supremacists who ran the state.

   Nowhere does her spirit come through more clearly than in Mills' account of the 1964 challenge Hamer and others leveled at the Democratic delegation sent to the presidential convention in Atlantic City. The challengers persuasively claimed that they represented thousands of disenfranchised African-Americans who had been denied their right to participate in the political process. The Democratic presidential candidate, Lyndon Johnson, and his running mate, Hubert Humphrey, Mills recounts, dragged their feet on addressing the challengers' claims, only belatedly offering a weak compromise that Hamer and some others fiercely opposed.

   "I question America," Hamer memorably said during hearings on her group's challenge of the white-only delegation. Mills is careful to explore the arguments and motivations of those within Hamer's delegation who argued in favor of accepting the compromise, but it is clear that her heart lies with Hamer's courageous stand.

   In the end, the 1964 challenge failed, but in 1968 another challenge succeeded and Hamer was seated, along with others, at that year's presidential convention. The victory, which deserves special mention in American history, was tempered and largely forgotten due to the street violence for which the 1968 convention is now largely remembered.

   Mills also does a fine job of relating Ms. Hamer's attention to the plight of the poor and her attempts to build political power for the impoverished. One gets a strong sense of the sacrifice that Hamer made to live a life committed to political struggle.

   It is only when Mills attempts to summarize the major events of the civil rights movement that the book's strength flags. I found the first couple of chapters negligible because I'm familiar with the big events of the movement and frankly they've been done better elsewhere.

   When she turns her attention to Ms. Hamer, however, Mills delivers a story worth telling in strong prose that reveals her admiration for her subject without sacrificing her critical judgment.

2 comments about Historia Viva (Living History).

1. De Hillary solo tenía las ideas preconcebidas que habilmente la prensa ha dejado filtrar; una mujer inteligente, pero fría y calculadora. Con esta autobiografía he podido comprobar que ella es mucho más que eso, es incluso una persona que ha realizado en su vida lo que varias. A pesar de ser una persona eminentemente política, es en el buen sentido de la palabra, el de trabajar para los demás, de tener metas y lograr cambios. Me enorgullece pertener a su mismo género.



2. Aunque ella ha perdido la elecccion de 2008 todavia es buena historia de su vida, especialmente 1992 - 2000 con su esposo, el presidente Bill Clinton.

5 comments about War As I Knew It (Bantam War Book).

1. Patton was fine man. he cursed like hell, and roared with delight when his children did the same. I love the guy.
   
   Last chapters are the best.



2. The brilliant military leader and strategist General George S. Patton, Jr., presents his World War 2 autobiography with "War As I Knew It". First published in 1947, this remarkable 425-page book has often been republished (including this review's 1995 paperback).
   
   This extraordinary study recalls the Allies' efforts from its Morocco landing (1942) to victory in Germany (1945) from the Major General's eyewitness 3rd American Army command. General Patton's gives considerable advice through many memorable epigrams:
   
   * "If I do my full duty, the rest will take care of itself."
   * "...the fatalistic teaching of Mohammed and the utter degradation of women is the out standing cause for the arrested development of the Arab."
   * "One look is worth a hundred reports."
   * "...throughout history, wars had been lost by not crossing rivers..."
   * "It is useless to capture an easy place that you can't move from."
   * "...one does not plan and then try to make circumstances fit those plans. One tries to make plans fit the circumstances."
   * "...when the American Army had once put its hand to the plow, it should not let go."
   * "...as long as you attack them they cannot find the time to plan how to attack you."
   * "...every time I had been bitterly disappointed, it worked out for the best."
   
   Patton reveled in attack and "killing Germans". He was determined for Allied victory by mean of his command. He fought battles, argued strategy with fellow generals, toured corpse ridden shell falling battlefields, and pressed his army to victory. He disliked British General Montgomery, had immense respect for Eisenhower, and had profound sympathy for all fallen Allied soldiers. This book presents war-winning strategy.
   
   This book is recommended for all students World War 2 and those interested in the life of General Patton.



3. Unfortunately, Patton doesn't describe the battle planning to the degree I had hoped. Too much high level discussions of this Battalion and that Regiment. But some good insight into his relationship with Monty and Ike.



4. George S. Patton, Jr. died December 21, 1945 in Heidelberg Germany of injuries sustained in an automobile accident on December 9th of that year, a day before his scheduled return to America. His writings included a "full diary from June, 1942, until Dec. 5, 1945" and the manuscript of the book "War As I Knew It". The book was first published in 1947. "The text [of the published book] ... is ... precisely as it came from the General's swift pen with the single elimination of a criticism of one officer who, if he erred, most splendidly atoned." (xiv: Introduction by Douglas Southall Freeman)
   
   The text lacks any detail of actual battles, other than broad movements at the level of Corps and Division. It is very much a rough overview, as the title suggests, of Patton's experience as a General in WWII. Its value derives from Patton having written it, more than for what is written within it. It is not the great book (we may imagine) he would have written later had he lived.



5. Patton' memoir of his role in WWII. Written shortly before his death in Dec 1945 and published by his wife. Patton example of leadership is applicable to all leaders and all leaders would benefit by reading this book. Appended to this book are copies of Patton's general orders for the conduct of the 3rd Army in Europe which includes some very good practical advice for the fighting soldier and commander.

5 comments about Kill-Cavalry: The Life of Union General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick.

1. This author falls into the same trap that's been laid for researchers for the past 135 years. The most glaring example is the standard portrayal of Kilpatrick at Gettysburg, all of which is based on one source who admitted years later he was never a witness to what actually happened or was said on the field that day. Like researchers before him, the author missed this glaring truth.

   Here are two hints of Kilpatrick's character and performance: (1) His men held him in such high esteem that they petitioned Lincoln to have him promoted to general (a rare occurrence in the CW); and (2) after the battle of Gettysburg his men presented their commander with a Damascus sword in appreciation for his leadership on July 3.

   In short, an author who doesn't dig deeper than his predecessors is dancing to the worn-out tune of incredulity.




2. This book smacks of a work done by someone who had a thesis and then did everything he could to prove it, rather than letting the research bring him to a conclusion.

   Fortunately, I did get the feeling that the basic history of Killpatrick was decent and reasonably fair-minded. At the end of each chapter, however, Martin adds his commentaty about how the foregoing information shows that Kilpatrick was a horrible leader, womanizer, thief, etc. At one point, Martin suggests that the attempt on Jefferson Davis' life introduced the idea of assination, even to the point of possibly leading to Lincoln's murder. Right.

   Killpatrick's womanizing, thievery, etc comes out, for sure, but were his casualities really highter than comparable commanders? That's not clear. He won some battles and lost others--like most Civil War leaders.




3. 
   To say Hugh Kilpatrick was a controversial figure would be an understatement. Small in stature, it's my opinion he suffered from the "little man" complex: he attempted to over-compensate for his slight physical size by his recklessness and bravado. This would explain his rashness regarding his plan to attack Richmond and free the prisoners there, which was repulsed decidedly by the Confederates (though Sheridan attempted the same thing 10 weeks later with the same results). Disparaged by many of his fellow officers (Sherman called him a "damned fool"), it's also reported that his men respected him. Martin is highly critical.
   
   Kilpatrick was born in New Jersey in 1836 and graduated from West Point the year the Civil War broke out. He commanded a number of New York Cavalry brigades during the first two years of the war, receiving a serious wound at Big Bethel and then seeing much action in Virginia. After participating in the largest cavalry engagement of the war at Brandy Station in June 1863, he was promoted to brigadier general. He was conspicuous at Gettysburg, where his orders to E.J. Farnsworth to attack Hood, who was well-positioned behind stone walls, on the third day caused much slaughter to Farnsworth's men and Farnsworth's own death from five separate wounds. In the winter of 1864 he made his ill-fated attack on Richmond which resulted in failure. In the spring of that year he served in the Atlanta campaign and was wounded seriously for the second time at Resaca, GA. Recuperating by August, he performed well as commander of cavalry during the Carolina campaign and was a major factor in the capture of Fayetteville, NC, in March 1865. After the war he was appointed U.S. Minister to Chile, where he died in 1881.
   
   Martin's dislike for his subject is quite clear. In this he joins a long list of historians, most of whom regard Kilpatrick as showing poor judgment and costly wantonness. He finds his failure at Richmond to be his worst mistake. Despite this, however, I thought the book was interesting and well written, and made an honest attempt to capture the life of the man for the reader. The book also contained excellent maps and clear elucidation of military affairs. Not the definitive work on Kilpatrick, but not one for the waste heap, either.



4. There are some figures of the Civil War that it is very easy to hate. Even today, very few Civil War buffs have anything good to say about Braxton Bragg or Henry Halleck for example. While not as well known as Bragg or Halleck, there is much to distain in the life of Hugh Judson Kilpatrick, a Union cavalry commander from New Jersey. Samuel J. Martin provides more than enough dirt on Kilpatrick's rather sordid personal life and less than honorable character. Kilpatrick was a selfish and vain man whose ambition for power and glory led him to act rashly and often foolishly while covering his mistakes in the press and reports to his superiors. Furthermore, Kilpatrick was a womanizer who had no qualms about cheating on his wife and discarding mistresses, even those who he impregnated. Martin certainly proves that General Kilpatrick was a scoundrel.
   
   Martin leads the reader through Kilpatrick's rather checkered Civil War career. Graduating from West Point in 1861, Kilpatrick served with the New York volunteers and became known for his rash charges and his willingness to fight. Martin seems to accept this reputation but seems to argue that Kilpatrick was a physical coward, a rather odd statement considering the general's willingness to fight on the battlefield or off (even calling out Southern cadets at West Point to fist fights). Kilpatrick won some fame for driving his men to within 2 miles of Richmond as part of the Stoneman Raid during the Chancelorsville campaign and became a general in the summer of 1863. While part of his division won laurels at Gettysburg (Custer's brigade), the Kilpatrick ordered charge on July 3 proved to be an error, costing the lives of many men of Farnwsorth's brigade including Farnsworth himself. Kilpatrick would lead another raid on Richmond in early 1864, hoping to free a number of Union prisoners, pass out Lincoln's amnesty proclomation and capture and perhaps kill key Confederate leaders including Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. Martin agrees with the Stephen Sears that Kilpatrick was in charge of the raid though a recent article by David Long (which he is turning into a book) argues that Dahlgren planned to kill Davis and that Kilpatrick, a notorious leaker to the press, was out of the loop. After the failure of the raid, Kilpatrick was sent west and led Union cavalry for Sherman's march to the sea and Carolina campaigns.
   
   After the war, Kilpatrick, who in the war expressed presidential ambitions, made two failed efforts to get the Republican gubenatorial nomination in New Jersey, ran unsuccessfully for the House of Represenatives in 1880 and twice served as ambasador to Chile. He passed way in 1881 in Chile at the age of 45. While a Republican, he was recalled from Chile by Grant which led to his supporting Horace Greely in 1872. Kilpatrick returned to the GOP and supported Hayes in 1876 and Garfield in 1880.
   
   Martin certainly reveals Kilpatrick's dismal character and offers a solid, if often overly critical, account of his military career. In all fairness Martin had little to work with as Kilpatrick's papers were destroyed. Still, Kilpatrick's political career could have been examined in greater detail. For all his faults, Kilpatrick had an energy and ambition to him which made him a fairly represenative figure for his times. One is left wondering, after reading Martin's book, why Kilpatrick simply was not shelved. Kilpatrick, again with all his baggage, was a fighter and those were few and far between in the Union ranks. His ambition forced him to the battlefield and took him into politics. While Martin reveals the dark side to this ambition, Kilpatrick rose out of youthful obscurity to win a solid reputation. He could not have been merely the talentless scoundrel that Martin depicts. While Martin seems to rely a great deal on secondary sources, he really had no other choice. Despite that, one suspects that Martin went into writing the book with his thesis already formulated and that is what proves frustrating about this book. Martin should have given the reader a portrait of Kilpatrick in full as opposed to bashing us over the head with how much of a jerk the man was.



5. The earlier critical comments about "Kill-Cavalry" are generally accurate. Here are some of the main points.
   
   1. Author Samual J. Martin is neither a trained writer nor a trained historian. He is a retired businessman in South Carolina whose post-retirement hobby is doing Civil War research. The lengthy bibliography attests to his detailed research, much of which is semi-original (manuscripts, official documents, correspondence, newspapers, etc.). His writing itself is dreadful, not in the sense of poor grammar or sentence structure but in its straightforward and completely uninvolving style.
   
   2. Although Kilpatrick led an extremely colorful (if brief) life, he is a difficult subject for historical research. His daughter burned his personal papers after his death, his contemporaries are long dead, and his tendency to exaggerate his successes and disguise his mistakes make most surviving accounts suspect. Factor in the difficulty of tracking the activities of any individual cavalry unit during the Civil War and you have a very difficult task making any definitive claims about Kilpatrick.
   
   3. Martin has an obvious ax to grind concerning his subject. While Kilpatrick was a self-promoting scoundrel, an objective examination of most of his contemporaries would reveal that these qualities were almost a prerequisite for ascendancy within either army. Martin's anti-Kilpatrick agenda sidetracks him from the two best biographical styles for a subject such as Kilpatrick. The most entertaining would be a light-hearted examination of his escapades (Kilpatrick was a Civil War version of actor Errol Flynn-both of Irish descent) and a fun look at his exploits would be quite entertaining. Another alternative would have been to draw parallels with contemporaries like Dan Sickles, Phil Sheridan, and George Custer. Unfortunately Martin's pious disapproval does not allow him to explore either avenue.
   
   4. Because of Martin's prejudices about his subject and his lack of good source material he seems compelled to editorialize throughout the book. Bad enough, but his narrative often contradicts his conclusions. For example, Martin is convinced that Kilpatrick was a cowardly soldier and points to many examples of Kilpatrick losing his nerve in combat situations. Yet at the same time he details Kilpatrick's drive for recognition and tendency to recklessly commit his command to action. Like all but the most senior cavalry officers, Kilpatrick was up in a saddle with his troopers on all their raids and maneuvers, and remained this style of cavalryman for almost the entire war. He was not an armchair general but a field officer in a serious pursuit of advancement and fame. There were far easier and safer commands for West Point trained officers. Had he been lazy or cowardly he would have sought a desk job but he believed the cavalry offered him the best prospects for advancement and recognition.
   
   5. Martin is highly critical of both Kilpatrick's command performance and his refusal to expose himself to danger at Brandy Station in 1863. He does not even mention Kilpatrick's saber fight with a hated West Point classmate during that engagement. But Eric Wittenberg goes into detail about this incident in "The Union Cavalry Comes of Age" (2003): Kilpatrick squared off with a Confederate officer he had known and disliked at West Point...the Southerner gave Kilpatrick a slight cut on the arm...receiving a vicious slash the Confederate officer reeled in his saddle. Seeing an opportunity Kilpatrick killed his injured foe with a slashing cut of his saber. The victorious colonel rejoined his brigade, proclaiming, "That rights a wrong. I have wanted to meet him ever since the war commenced".
   
   6. Rather than bring Kilpatrick to life, Martin fills many pages of the book with general Civil War history. For a book of only 268 pages, there is simply too much detail about the battles and movements of the two armies, without regard to whether Kilpatrick himself was involved.
   
   7. Martin sensationalizes the cavalry charge Kilpatrick and Merritt ordered during the 3rd day of Gettysburg. He goes into great detail about a somewhat dubious account of Kilpatrick's interaction with a subordinate commander, yet fails to examine the very real tactical opportunity that he and Merritt had recognized and were trying to exploit. One of Merritt regiments had tied up the two brigades of Confederate cavalry in Fairfield; leaving the right flank of Lee's army open to attack. Had Law's (formerly Hood's) division been positioned to support Longstreet's assault on the Union center, the cavalry charge would most likely have been a significant success.
   
   Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.