No comments about Recollections of a Long Life (Large Print Edition): An Autobiography.

5 comments about Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters.

1. I am hooked on the mini-series and can almost quote the dialogue. This book fills in a lot of the the missing parts and solidifies a lot of the truths of the film. A well written and very good reading book that is filled with facts and great memories. Probably should be read after seeing the series.



2. The moral character of Maj. Winters is impecable and unimpeachable. His book is one every kid in school chould read to learn what it is to stand fast in the face of fear and the enemy wether foreign or domestic. This is important now because we may be facing a time when we must once again face a enemy that is domestic. I would hope we would have leadership similar to that given by Maj. Winers.



3. A wonderful companion to the HBO "Band of Brothers" miniseries. The book fills in some gaps and details to give you a more complete picture of Easy Company's trek through the war in Europe. Highly recommended!



4. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Reading Winters' account after reading Band of Brothers offered unique insights. I was heartened by Major Winters' faith and how he used this to make it through the War. Stationed in Germany, I had the opportunity to make a voyage to the memorial & Peace Gardens in Bastogne and to Foy as well; a trip inspired by Major Winters. To him & to all others who served in WWII, what you did for the world is not forgotten & will forever be appreciated.



5. Reading Major Dick Winters' memoirs after first watching the mini-series and reading Stephen Ambrose's - BAND OF BROTHERS, provided a clearer sense of actual facts of the most significant event in war history. I felt like I knew Major Winters and found myself saying to myself as I was reading, "give the job to me, I'll do it!!!" Very inspiring; profound sense of gratitude, and understanding why these citizen soldiers followed the CO of Easy Company into war to free the world of tyranny.

2 comments about A Dead Man In Trieste.

1. The first in a series featuring Sandor Seymour, an agent of the British Special Branch with a talent for languages, this slim work leaves a great deal to be desired. Most mystery series rise and fall on their detective, unfortunately Seymour barely makes a blip on the radar in his debut outing. We are given snippets of his East End immigrant background, and we are told he's generally so hard at work that he doesn't have time for the ladies, and he's got a knack for languages. By the end of the book we learn that he's a fair man, and got a fairly sharp mind ("for a policeman"), but that's about it... He's one of the flattest, least-developed fictional detectives I've come across!
   
   Alas, the story that he's tossed into isn't so great either. Trieste in 1910 (it's not clear why the promo copy says 1906, it's clearly 1910) makes an excellent backdrop for fiction, one of the foremost ports in the world, it's brimming with intrigue and scoundrels from all over Europe. Pearce gives glimpses of this here and there of plazas, the canal, old coffeehouses (mostly telling, rather than showing), but it all feels as false as a painted set. There's no depth, no aura created, just a basic canvas backdrop for Seymour to operate against. His assignment is to try and find out what's happened to the British Counsel, who's gone missing. (It's not particularly convincing that some policeman would be plucked from Special Branch to investigate this just because he can get by in a few languages, the Foreign Office would have plenty of their own fluent people who would be more adept at navigating the perils of such as place.)
   
   In any event, Seymour shows up and starts poking around. As he discovers, the city is a hotbed of high feelings, from the officious rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to the passionate Italians who want the city back, to the various Serbs, Bosnians, and Herzegovinans who have their own agendas. The counsel's disappearance is linked to all this, and over the course of the story, Seymour pieces it altogether in plodding fashion. The prose limps along weakly without any style whatsoever, and anachronistic phrases jarringly appear in descriptions of Seymour's thoughts. This is writing at its most basic, which is a shame, 'cause the basic premise of a detective running around the major cities of pre-WWI Europe is a good one. I'm fairly big fan of historically set mysteries, so I'm hoping Pearce decides to actually give Seymour some depth for his next outing (Istanbul). in the meantime, this book is best avoided unless one has some kind of keen interest in Trieste or Futurism (see below).
   
   The one somewhat interesting element in the book is that Seymour becomes friends with a bunch of artists hanging about the plazas of Trieste. These include James Joyce (for some reason "Juice" in the story), Italo Svevo (who is called by his true first name: Ettore), and the founder of the Futurist movement, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Indeed, the climax of the novel takes place at the very first "Futurist Evening", which was a real-life event orchestrated by Marinetti. The futurists come across as a zany, madcap, fun-loving, bunch of boozehounds in the book. What readers might not know is that Futurism was hugely influential in the development of Italian fascism, and that Marinetti was a Milanese millionaire who would go on to become a supporter of the Italian invasion of Libya, an intimate of Mussolini, and Secretary of the Fascists Writers Union!



2. This book provides a fascinating view of Trieste and some of it's inhabitants in a time leading up to WW1. As with Pearce's series set in Egypt in the same time frame, it helps to know background and the way the British government operated at the beginning of the 20th century.
   Pearce has a very dry sense of humor which some people may find off putting but how else to highlight the difference between the British Establishment's haughty world views when living and working among the inhabitants of a differnt world?

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