5 comments about The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biography of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., 1835-64.

1. Ms. Bundy paints an exceptionally fine picture of the Boston cultural and political scene in the pre-war years. She clearly knows the Lowell family's story (she's a descendent) and she also is a good writer.
   
   However, when she gets away from that and into the details of the war, she falls very short. Her information on Ball's Bluff, for example, contains several errors. Capt. Caspar Crowninshield did not command the 20th Massachusetts and was not the only officer from that regiment to make it back from Ball's Bluff.
   
   On three occasions, she describes California governor Leland Stanford as a "copperhead" or a southern sympathizer though Stanford helped found the Republican party in California and was an ardent Unionist.
   
   She notes Sen. Henry Wilson of Massachusetts as Chairman of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, though Wilson was not even a member of that committee.
   
   She treats the tactic of fighting cavalry dismounted almost as if it were invented by Col. Lowell instead of being an old and well-known dragoon technique.
   
   There are numerous other small mistakes like that which some fact-checking or a little more research would have let her avoid. I give the book three stars instead of two only because it is very well written and because the mistakes she makes are not central to the story she is trying to tell about Lowell. They are very jarring, however, and the reader should be prepared for them.



2. I first became interested in the career of Charles Russell Lowell Jr., when earlier this spring I saw the author, Carol Bundy, speak about him and read from her book on TV, on a fourm provided by the Public TV station Boston's WGBH. For this reader Boston visits always include at least a few hours spent curled up in front of a high-definition TV and turning on the public station, for it seems nowhere else in the country do the arts get such play. Nor the humanities, including the utterly humane biography that Bundy has written of a man she says is her great-great-great-great uncle I think. She was amazed when, after her grandmother died, among her trunks and effects out tumbled the clattering sword of Lowell, as well as his dress uniform, preserved through generations who had relished remembering him as their fallen hero.
   
   As though honoring this family mandate, Bundy has done her level best to help preserve his memory for at least another generation. For on the one hand although Lowell was a forgotten soldier, dead before he was thirty, he fought with distinction at a number of pivotal sites in the War Between the States, at one point serving with "Mosby's Marauders." He was a curious chap, as Bundy relates. While his peers and elders were romantic dreamers-transcendentalists, really-who swore by the abolitionist movement and excused the barbarities of some of its activists as examples of ends justfying means, Lowell took the middle ground, sort of turning his nose up at the ideals in question, while cherishing a different set of ideals, by and large culled from a classical education and a tour of Europe on the grand scale. On this extended sojourn, the privilege of young gentlemen of the 19th century, Lowell became haunted by Michelangelo's painting of the three fates. Later on in the annals of art scholarship, ironically enough, it emerged that the painting was not by Michelangelo at all-not even close. But such is its power that it made Lowell sort of an ironist, and a fatalist too.
   
   Bundy brings the War alive as Shelby Foote did, though from the union side of course. The sights and sounds of the battlefield waft over the reader who dares finish this exhsuaring biography all the way through, not only the sounds of glory but the rotting flesh of the dead and the mad faces of the survivors. Like Shakespeare, Lowell begs the question. No wonder his funeral was attended by so many notables, still spooked by him, for none could follow the oddments and the contours of his soul. Today his distinguished descendant has widened the field of inquiry, allowing us to see the lineaments of a brief life with tantalizing hesitance.



3. This is a three way review, along the lines of "readers who enjoyed this book also enjoyed....." Each of these books enriches reading of the other two. They are, in order of publication (and the order in which I read them), The Metaphysical Club, by Louis Menand, The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl, and The Nature of Sacrifice, a biography of Charles Russell Lowell, by Carol Bundy; These three fit together like birds in an Escher sketch. The many other reviews of each of these three explore their focus, their scholarship, their pace, breadth and depth, skillful turn of phrase and weaving of ideas: all of them excel in every way that their respective genre demands. What has intrigued me is how each, from their own genre and viewpoint, contribute to a fuller picture of the ideas and times that the others explore and a more informative and enjoyable total reading experience.
   
   Briefly, The Metaphysical Club is primarily about ideas, and secondarily about their men: Oliver Wendell Holmes; William James; Charles Peirce and John Dewey, but Menand also necessarily explores the milieu from which these men and their eyes emerged. Holmes and James received the lion's share of delving into their history, as I recall from my reading several years ago, principally their lives as sons in their natal families, and their experiences with the Civil War: Holmes' an intimate, lucky survivor's life emerging from the corpses of a great many of his boyhood and college chums, James', a more distant, detached view. Menand explores how these war time experiences, as well as their exposure to zealous causes, such as abolition and the copperhead reaction thereto, shaped their approaches to life, to dealing with ideas, with movements, how Holmes applied these ideas in his jurisprudence and James in his philosophies. The Metaphysical Club is dense, tersely but often breezily written, requiring frequent re-readings of paragraphs and sections. If you let your mind wander for a sentence, you must retreat and reread. Menand also follows their ideas into the twentieth century, and their effects on public and higher education and other important areas in our country. We learn quite a bit about Boston, Cambridge and New England.
   
   The Dante Club is fiction, which takes place within the boundaries, both geographical and temporal, of the Metaphysical Club. The club members tickle but do not overlap with the Metaphysicals: O.W. Holmes' father, the "diminutive doctor," as famous in his day as his son came to be in his; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the key figure, then widowered, and bringing forth his English translation of Dante's Inferno, with the help of Holmes Sr., and James Russell Lowell, poet, critic, and a founder of the Atlantic Monthly magazine, among other things, (including the uncle of Charles Russell Lowell, subject of the third book); and Charles Washington Green. The Dante Club is an exciting, interesting, chatty, rather informative and fast moving murder mystery, set mostly in Cambridge in the first few years after the Civil War had ended, partly in Boston, with forays to Boston's north shore, to civil war battle grounds south of the Mason Dixon line, and an occasional mention of Italy. Cameo appearances of Holmes Jr and his friends, his wounds and his ideas give hints of the developments of the Metaphysical Club, which was just then perhaps starting to take form. The Dante Club is a refreshingly easy reading barnstormer, a nice, light dessert after the Metaphysical Club. It inks a palpable picture of Cambridge after the civil war, and is great fun to read while sitting in a park along Brattle Street. J. R. Lowell enjoys a large role in it, and to understand its mystery, and the resolution thereof, it is helpful to know something of the lives, privations and crises of the everyday civil war soldier, and his officers. This then brings us to the missing piece in the puzzle, The Nature of Sacrifice.
   
   The Nature of Sacrifice is Bundy's first published book, as the Dante Club is Pearl's. (Menand has several books to his credit, but he is mostly known for his remarkably wide ranging articles, essays and other short pieces that have established him as one of today's leading public intellectuals.) Bundy's biography of Charles Russell Lowell, J. R. Lowell's nephew and sometimes housemate, uncannily fills in territory left open by both these books about non-existent clubs, almost as if her book were written just for me, so that I could enjoy the other two more. Bundy's book is at once more compact, more potent than both, because her subject died before his 30th year, and also because he was a real live hero. She writes of the sounds, smells and sights of soldiering and battle with such vigor, organization and thrust that images and whole scenes arise in the mind's eye, as well as the mind's ear, and the mind's nostrils. Bundy's prose soars and charges, leaving the reader with no doubt that it tells the story of a flesh and blood man who lived earnestly, and died violently, leaving a family and community eviscerated by his death; and not only his death. Portrayal of His death stands as the synechdoche, the one death, put before us to call forth every single death in every family that lost a son to the Civil War adding up to the over 600,000 civil war deaths, and with just a little imagination, to all deaths, in all wars. Bundy gives us the catalogue of Boston and Cambridge families who sent their treasure to war, and lost that treasure, their individual names, their beautiful faces, the faces of their sisters, their playmates, the lists of places where they died, the lists of names who died in the same battles, or the same years; families with two sons dead (as was the case for the Lowells); She depicts the normal, daily childhood these boys led before they went off as men to kill and be killed. Bundy provides the real raw material for Holmes' pragmatic views, and James' different pragmatic views, for the motivations behind the actions of the main characters in the Dante Club, a picture of Dante's Hell, as well as really helping the reader to understand the insanity of the action in the Dante Club as something other than insanity, rather as a reaction to civil insanity that is beyond sane and insane, beyond good and evil as opposites. Bundy's descriptions also of the social and political background of the Civil War is very helpful to understand that war at at least a casual level. It certainly isn't and doesn't try to be an in depth study of those backgrounds, which studies have been done again and again. But it helped to get a picture of the country before the Civil war on many levels. Bundy's book is also a real counterweight to the other two, because much of the story is gleaned from sources written by or to women: Lowell's mother, his sister, his wife, wives of his comrades. Not to be simplistic, but mothers and sisters do have different views about war, risk and death than do most men.
   
   These 3 books also reinforce each other, because they feel to be pieces of the same cloth. Nothing, or hardly anything in either of them contradicts matters in another, or jars the sense of the places and times established by the others.
   
   So, I heartily recommend all three of these books to anyone interested in any one of them. And, I think that reading in the order of publication, or probably even better, its reverse, is the way to go, keeping Dante in the middle as a quick, driving light weight, between the two much more serious, albeit compelling and exciting non-fictions.



4. Drawing her story from hundreds of family letters, Carol Bundy describes with vivid detail the life and death of Charles Russell Lowell. She is a fine writer, and this, her first book (amazingly), is a remarkable achievement. I found it totally absorbing. Yes, Bostonian readers especially will discover many familiar names, but Bundy's viewpoint is neither partisan nor provincial. I highly recommend this book as one of the best I've read in a long time. Just one caveat: it is very, very sad.



5. The Nature of Sacrifice: Charles Russell Lowell's Civil War
   The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biography of Charles Rusell Lowell, Jr. 1835-1864, Carol Bundy, Farrer Strauss and Giroux, 560pp., endnotes, index, 2005, $35.00.
   
   Within the first several chapters, this reader found Charlie Lowell a 'child of the(19)sixties living in the 1850s and not the Brahmin snob that he thought he would encounter.
   
   Born in 1835, immediately before his family slipped from high social standing and wealth and into the 'poor cousins' category, Charlie the grew up in the 'high'culture' of Boston of close-knit kinship relations and opportunities.
   
   With Transcendentalists and Abolitionists as neighbors and relatives, with books and debate as a part of family dinner discourse, and with newspapers and current bestsellers as a part of the table top literature of the household, Charlie grew into an apparently aimless but articulate Harvard student. Slight in build and height, surpassed all, after giving the commencement day address at Harvard in 1856, he took a manual laborers job on the Boston wharfs.
   
   He approached manual labor and business in general with the soul of a philosopher and philanthropist. He was a subversive idealist in the workplace, a worker with a social conscience, and a son who wished to succeed where his father failed. Charlie chose the iron industry as his place in the world. By 1860, after an interlude in Europe recovering from tuberculosis, he was managing an iron foundry, west of Sharpsburg, Maryland. Voting Republican in the presidential election, he watched the secession crisis from western Maryland. The attack on Massachusetts troops by a Baltimore mob in the spring of 1861 brought him into the ranks of the Union army as a cavalry captain.
   
   By 1863, after seeing action on the Peninsula and serving on McClellan's staff during the Sharpsburg campaign, Charlie Lowell commanded the 2nd Massachusetts cavalry in what he considered a 'backwater' assignment, Mosby's Confederacy. It was difficult and distastefull duty for him but one at which he excelled. Lowell collected near missed throughout the war; on the Peninsula he shook out his bedroll from behind his saddle and minie balls dropped out. At Antietam, he discovered his horse to be winded and removed the saddle and found the beast hit several times under it. As a colonel of a brigade during the 1864 Shenandoah campaign, he participated and rationalized the destruction of civilian farmsteads. He finally received a wound from a ball that clipped his elbow, traveled up his sleeve,crossed his shoulder, traveled down and cut a small portion of his spine. He died within 24 hours; he was survived by his wife whom he married in 1863 and was seven months pregnant.
   
   The nature of Charles Russell Lowell's sacrifice was multi-faceted: the happy bachelor who left a wife and child, the workplace manager with a heart for the workers, sleight twenty-somenthing who had become a leader of cavalrymen, and the intellectual who became a anti-guerrilla fighter.
   
   This biography surprises in many ways. Charlie Lowell is put in the context of a family on economic decline, of a social conscience within the environment of the empheral ideas of Transcendentalism, and of a top achieving Harvard student who condemns the college's curriculum of constant mind-numbing rote memorization. In 1861, few would have picked Charlie Lowell become a successful leader of cavalrymen. Appreciated by McClellan, Stanton, and Mosby, Lowell became a hero. The nature of Lowell's sacrifice was the loss of a future earned by a man who believed that there are no problems, only solutions and seized his duty to find a way to succeed.

5 comments about Changes.

1. U have got to read this and I'll tell u why. I have never read anything like this before. This book is real, it has to be. I mean, first there's Lelani. She seems all prim and proper, but later on in the book she seems a heck of less than perfect. Then, there's Jasmine aka Jazz. She seems kinda like me. She doesn't take nothing off nobody. She very no nonsense, but she kind of drops that when it comes to Moe. Now Moe, is just... I mean, I know that the character is a she, but it seems like she's is a he based on how she acts and how she talks. Her friends are like that too. This book was different and entertaining. I was up til like 2'o'clock in the morning reading this book I was so glued.

   All I can say is u have got read this!




2. I'm in the minority by giving this book 3 stars instead of 5 like everyone else. This was a good story, but parts of the book seemed like a broken record (i.e., "they just did that"). The characters, although misunderstood by everyone around them, are likable and smart. However, they are mostly untrusting and cannot make committments (to themselves or to others). The book's format keeps the reader interested, but the overall story is depressing. Except for the excessive slang, the language is moderate and the sex is relatively non-descript.
   
   To get the most from this story the reader should be melancholy, as it will likely bring down a good mood and reinforce a poor mood.



3. CHANGES is the revolving story of 20-somethings Lelani, Jasmine and Moe, players in the game of love--all at different skill levels.
   
   Lelani is the rookie, a mere virgin to both love and sex. Best friend Jasmine has had her share of rocky relationships, including a strained one with her baby's father. And Moe is the stud extraordinaire, who's had more women than she can count (or keep up with). These unique women are looking for different things from love--until their paths cross in several different and dramatic ways.
   
   Jasmine, who says she's bisexual, begins a sensuous flirtation with Moe, who regularly visits Jasmine's self-owned salon to deliver FedEx packages or to get her hair hooked up. They have a great first date, and although Moe believes Jasmine could be "the one" to make her give up the game, Moe still can't let go of her wicked ways.
   
   Meanwhile, Lelani is looking for "the one" herself. She thinks she may have found it in L.D., Moe's best friend. The pair meet one day when Lelani is distraught and strike up a quick friendship that gradually turns into something more. But all the romantic dinners and picnics in the park dissolve after Lelani asks to meet her mother; L. D. simply can't take it there because of the ex who still has a piece of her heart.
   
   This is when the drama erupts. There's a lot of back and forth, but the story ends happily, with everyone gettng their relationships intact, even playa-playa Moe.
   
   S. D. Lewis created a credible plot that keeps you riveted. She manages to give each woman a distinctive voice, as each woman has her own story to tell and changes to make.



4. CHANGES is the revolving story of 20-somethings Lelani, Jasmine and Moe, players in the game of love--all at different skill levels.
   Lelani is the rookie, a mere virgin to both love and sex. Best friend Jasmine has had her share of rocky relationships, including a strained one with her baby's father. And Moe is the stud extraordinaire, who's had more women than she can count (or keep up with). These unique women are looking for different things from love--until their paths cross in several different and dramatic ways.
   Jasmine, who says she's bisexual, begins a sensuous flirtation with Moe, who regularly visits Jasmine's self-owned salon to deliver FedEx packages or to get her hair hooked up. They have a great first date, and although Moe believes Jasmine could be "the one" to make her give up the game, Moe still can't let go of her wicked ways.
   Meanwhile, Lelani is looking for "the one" herself. She thinks she may have found it in L.D., Moe's best friend. The pair meet one day when Lelani is distraught and strike up a quick friendship that gradually turns into something more. But all the romantic dinners and picnics in the park dissolve after Lelani asks to meet her mother; L. D. simply can't take it there because of the ex who still has a piece of her heart.
   This is when the drama erupts. There's a lot of back and forth, but the story ends happily, with everyone gettng their relationships intact, even playa-playa Moe.
   S. D. Lewis created a credible plot that keeps you riveted. She manages to give each woman a distinctive voice, as each woman has her own story to tell and changes to make.



5. I must say... based on the reviews, I was leery of purchasing this book, but I am glad I listened to the better of the reviews, and my better judgement. This book was awesome, I read it fast... almost too fast, and I was sad when I had finished it in under 3 hours.. LOL ok well I speed read too, but that does not by any means discount the excellent story line, and engaging characters this piece of literature has to offer. I look forward to reading the follow up to this book, which I should receive by monday of next week if not by the end of this week. I think in the meantime though, I will reread Changes while I wait. :)

2 comments about Firing and Flying for the Field Artillery in Korea.

1. As a infantry company commander and regimental intelligence officer (S-2) in Korea during the War, I foudn that the friendly field artillery support provided to my unit decimated the enemy, thus minimizing friendly casualties.
   
   This book is a tribute to the professional expertise of the field artillery support as described with the personal experience of Lt. Col. Kincheon H. Bailey in his book "Firing and Flying for the Field Artillery in Korea". It's frank and goes to the base line of the way things were.
   
   I highly recommend this excellent depiction of the professionalism and techniques used in supporting infantry combat units by the 64th Field Artillery Battalion (105mm Howitzer) during the Korean War.
   



2. These days, for many of us, wars are reduced to their most visually enticing elements to be presented on silver platters with dinner every night. The stories are reduced to casualty statistics, and then all of these things are subsequently interpreted and judged for us as a number of `experts' weigh in on a war they've never seen with their own eyes.
   
   Bailey's book Firing and Flying for the Field Artillery in Korea is the antidote to the mediated wars of our time. Bailey offers little interpretation and does nothing to spice up his work. What you will find in this book is nothing but the raw facts, the movements, the individuals involved and exactly what they went through. It's not, by any means, a simple read. It's technical, meticulous, and well-informed. Inside you will not find the political strife of interested parties or the drama of broken families. You will find the real movements and real actions of the real men fighting in a real war.
   
   Bailey uses this real recount to give us the suspense of the war from the eyes of the soldiers who fought in it. And suspense there is, as the soldiers were caught in the crossfire of one of the largest wars of the century. In knowing the truth and all the facts, we can have a better understanding of what was lost and what was gained in this war, as well as having an insight into what is at stake in every war.
   
   If you have a sincere interest in the military actions of your own government, if you want to know the non-fictional non-colored version of what war is like, or if you enjoy the study of real military strategy and tactics, this is the book for you.
   
   TB Koskie
   T&R Reviews

2 comments about HITLER'S GLADIATOR: The Life and Wars of Panzer Army Commander Sepp Dietrich.

1. Josef "Sepp" Dietrich was a charismatic leader of the Waffen-SS. He fought in World War I and became the first true military leader of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler in 1933, which became the first division of the Waffen-SS in 1941. Acting on the orders of Hitler (not to mention Himmler, Goering, and others), he was directly responsible for executing several SA members in the June 1934 Nazi party purge of its enemies that became known as the Night of the Long Knives.
   
   He fought in all major German fronts in World War II, except for North Africa, including the invasion of Poland, the invasion of France, the evacuation at Dunkirk, the invasions of Greece and Yugoslavia, the invasion of Russia, the defense of Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, and the defense of Vienna. Throughout these campaigns Sepp Dietrich and the accomplishments of his men were lauded in the German press to the point that he rivalled Rommel in press coverage and adulation.
   
   At first commanding the SS LAH until it grew to divisional size and strength during Operation Barbossa, Sepp Dietrich later became commander of the First SS Panzer Corps, and eventually, after his successful maneouveres in defending the invasion of Normandy, commander of the Sixth SS Panzer Army.
   
   Sepp Dietrich's contemporaries in the Wehrmacht, namely the Prussian officer class, acknowledged his personal skills in motivating and leading his men but most believed that he had risen above his abilities in becoming if not a corps commander then certainly commander of his own army. Nonetheless, his successes against overwhelming odds continued at both the corps and army level and his few failures were more often than not based on factors outside of his control, such as Hitler's micromanagement of strategy and tactics, which eventually led to a rift between the two men.
   
   At the end of the war, Sepp Dietrich was sentenced to life imprisonment at a war crimes trial over allegations of his involvement, due to vague orders regarding the taking of prisoners, in the deaths of numerous U.S. soldiers at Malmedy during the Ardennes offensive. This was later reduced to 25 years and he ended up serving 10. (No one was ever executed for the Malmedy massacre because it came to light after the trial was over that confessions used at the trial were obtained by beatings, torture, and psychological manipulation, including mock executions.) He was also condemned to death, in absentia, by the Soviets for atrocities committed by the SS LAH during the Battle of Kharkov. Finally, he received a 19-month sentence by a German court for his part in the Night of the Long Knives. Released in 1959, he lived until 1966. Despite his controversial past, six to eight thousand comrades in arms attended his funeral.
   
   Charles Messenger's "Hitler's Gladiator" is the first and only attempt to tell Sepp Dietrich's story in English. (There is also one in French but inexplicably none in German.) In so doing, the author does an excellent job of objectively assessing Sepp Dietrich's history based on meticulous and thorough research. Woven throughout that history is also a history of the Nazi party and World War II. Included are a sprinkling of maps and two sections of photos. Essential reading for students of World War II in Europe, Nazism, Hitler, or the Waffen-SS.



2. There was a lot of man in front of the eyes when you take a look at the history of the Third Reich. And there is alot of things to say about them. When the SS matters, one can easily count Sepp Dietrich`s name in the top 5. So he must have been one of the most well-known persons in the Third Reich history, but not.
   
   This biography especially deals with the wars of Sepp Dietrich. I couldn`t find many useful information about his early life and what did he do just before the WW2 between 1933-1939 (the book spared only 20 pages for that). The 47 years of his life between 1892-1939 covers only 70 pages and most of them are not directly about Sepp, only giving a brief summary of the events.
   
   Sepp will be still a mystery after reading this book. And many new questions will arise about him.
   
   But there is a big advantage of this book. It`s the one and only. So I won`t say "Don`t buy this one". Read it if you have interest about Sepp but minimilise your expectations.

2 comments about Destination: Israel: How a Handful of Rag-Tag Flyers Helped to Save a Newborn Nation.

1. If you want a book about flying fighters for Israel, this ain't it (despite the cover picture). If you want a book about flying cargo into Israel (an Me-109 crammed into a C-46, for instance), and about shady methods used to get around international rules in order to fly cargo to Israel, then you want this one.

   Also a personal story about the author beginning to get the big picture of life, rather than the small, selfish picture he had.




2. An excellent account of brave men and women of a previous era - the stuff few if any young people are willing to do anymore, for their own lives/countries or others... enviable opportunities these people had to really risk all for a belief in something that was more than personal material gain... Regardless of your views on Israel, very worthwhile, easy, exciting reading. Great stuff Harold, and all those others!

5 comments about Hemingway: A Biography.

1. Carlos Baker is generally known as the founding father of Hemingway biographical studies. His 1969 biography, "Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story" is the so-called "authorized" Hemingway bio and it was the first book of its kind to explore the author's life. All subsequent biographers owe a great deal to Baker and the seven years he spent producing "Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story."

   Calling Baker's bio the definitive bio of Ernest Hemingway is difficult though for several reasons. First of all, being published in 1969, the book is now outdated to a great degree. Second of all, a slew of other biographies have been published since 1969 and some are very formidable. Baker's book, in my humble opinion, is probably the most tediously researched biography of Hemingway. His "Notes" section is just over 100 pages.

   If I had to recommend one standard Hemingway biography, I would likely choose "Hemingway: A Biography" by Jeffrey Meyers. I have read many Hemingway biographies and in comparing them, the work of Meyers does stand out. He offers details not present in other bios and provides fine commentary on EH's literature. Meyers gets as close to definitive as I think one can come in a single book.




2. I'm going to return this book because the printing was so poor. The photographs are unrecognizable and the type is smearing and difficult to read.
   
   There is no place in #1 for a 0 or minus rating, but this volume is unacceptable.



3. Found this first edition at our annual library sale this year for $1. After reading the other review on Amazon I am anxious to read it.



4. Jeffrey Meyers' eponymous biography of Ernest Hemingway is, as some have made it, a saltier companion to Carlos Baker's masterful 1969 definitive authorized biography. Meyers is not overly adoring of his subject and gives us a different view of Hemingway. Still, although Meyers is grittier than Baker and manages to dig deeper into Hemingway's complex and contradictory personality, he is not gritty enough nor does he dig deep enough to displace Baker as the biographer nonpareil.
   
   And neither does he capture the reader's imagination. HEMINGWAY: A BIOGRAPHY presents Ernest Hemingway in surprisingly muted tones, especially considering the almost cartoonish excesses to which Hemingway could drive himself. This is a very competent and workmanlike biography. However, its pacing and voice are didactic and dry and its portrait of the artist lacks color. Like twenty other books about the man, HEMINGWAY: A BIOGRAPHY belongs on the shelf as part of a well-rounded collection, but can replace none of them.



5. Now being well into my fifties, being in good health, and financially sound I have had the opportunity to study my favorite author. I have already traveled to his old haunts in Italy, London, and Paris (Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore) but I needed more in the way of in a truly great biography.
   
   So I decided to buy the biography of EH by J. Meyers after this book was recommended to me by a EH scholar in Paris.
   
   Anyway, what I wanted was a book that would give me insight into what kind man EH was all about. Where did he get his passion and his energy? Did he have a temper? What did he drink? What hours did he keep? Why did his love relationships fail? When did his health go bad? Why was he so prone to accidents?
   
   This book that gave me more than his life's history and I think you will have a good read, too. BTW, Key West and having a go at deep sea fishing is next of my list of things to do. This is a buy!

No comments about The Floating Time Bomb.

2 comments about The Fighting Pattons.

1. The Generals Patton, father and son, served their country for 79 years, altogether, in careers unsurpassed by any other American military family. General George S. Patton Jr's life, in particular, has been examined microscopically, but the section of this work which recounts his career is enhanced by comments, for the first time, by his son and daughter.
   That alone would make the book worthwhile, but the bulk of the work tells the story of Major General George S. Patton (1923 - ), himself a fine fighting general and one of the best trained officers ever to wear the uniform. Like his father, he was a scholar of his trade who understood that skillful audacity accomplishes the mission with minimal casualties.
   Very readable, with invaluable comments by Major General Patton interspersed; photos, bibliography, and index. Highly recommended.

   (The numerical rating above is a default setting within Amazon's format. This recviewer does not employ numerical ratings.)




2. I served in the 2nd Armored Division during MG Patton's tenure. He was an inspiration to many of us. The stories are true and very accurate. I am sure there are a few more that are not in the book! BB

No comments about As If It Were Glory: Robert Beecham's Civil War from the Iron Brigade to the Black Regiments.

5 comments about American Daughter Gone to War.

1. I thought this memoir was excellent. I was in Da Nang, Viet Nam from "69 to "70. I saw and experienced what she did; today, I feel the same way that she does. This great country of ours and the people in it have let all of us "Viet Nam Veterans" down because, I believe, of the devisiness of the war. All that we ask is that we be treated with respect as other Vets are. A wonderful book of how she coped. This is real.



2. As a nurse of almost 25 years who graduated from high school in 1975 (just after Nixon's negotiated "peace with honor"), I have a sense that I could have done just what nurses like Winnie Smith and Lynda Devanter did. Gone to war to take care of people who would have needed me. Only time did save me...

   This is a disturbing book and ultimately convincing in one of its' pleas: Let's NOT send young people to combat anymore. I'd send a copy to our war-bent president if I thought it would make a difference.

   As an experienced ICU and ED nurse, I was horrified at the conditions these nurses worked (and lived) in.

   At the end of the book, though you feel less worried about Winnie Smith, you never get the sense that life will be "all better" for her. This pain, this scar is deep and everlasting.

   A raw and real book. I'd recommend it to anyone as I would DeVanter's book (Home Before Morning).




3. Another thrift shop purchase that I wasn't sure I would take too but strangely enough I was compelled to read the book from cover to cover.
   
   At first the author Winnie Smith didn't strike me as all that likable, look at it from my point of view, a young white and attractive woman of the sixties, promiscuous yet strangely innocent, racist though she doesn't know it, after all racism was something that most people accepted as a kind of norm and at first filled with gung-ho patriotism to do her "bit" in Vietnam.
   
   However as I turned each page I began to see the human side of Winnie and I realised she was a woman of her time or rather she was a woman living in time of misunderstood values, and misplaced values that she just happened to be partaking a part in.
   
   Knee deep in blood, gore and guts Winnie does her "bit" sometimes seeing friends die in front of her, a particularly gruesome experience is seeing the chopper pilot she is with get the top of his head sliced off when their helicopter crashes. It is obvious from the way she writes that she is remembering every moment of that terrible incident.
   
   Despite all of this horror she seems to get used to sending young men back home minus limbs or their minds or in body bags and she gets on with her job of being a nurse.
   
   Interspersed in all of this is her innocence that is slowly but surely eroded by war and its indifferent cruelties, I laughed out loud when I read a section where she has to be told what "condom" is at the ripe old age of 22, Winnie grew up in Vietnam, came of age as did many of her counterparts but as woman she was never to be counted as one of the "survivors" of the Vietnam war.
   
   Winnie is as much a causality of the war as the men she has helped put back together or sent home in a casket. She doesn't realise this until she is sent stateside and only then does the real horror begin, she has to come to terms with what she has seen and been through.
   
   This is not a sentimental read, it is abrasive, harsh and mind numbing but it is also gives a real insight to the "other side" of war, of what it was like to be a Nurse looking after the soldiers wounded in battle.
   
   Despite having a loving family at home Winnie is never able to make them understand what it was "truly like" in Vietnam but if Winnie is anything she is a survivor and in the end she comes to terms with her being a "Vietnam Vet" and gets on with her life, scarred, battle weary but totally and utterly a survivor.



4. This book is different. This book goes where no memoir has gone before. It is a soul sharing account of former US Army nurse Winnie Smith's three years in the US Army nurse corps with the focus on Viet-Nam and its devastating personal aftermath. You follow her from her initial days in the US Army to Japan where she gets her first views of the war in Viet-Nam. She starts developing strong relationships with the "warriors." Some become extended family. This closeness takes it toll as because the men she liked, and sometimes loved, were killed, lost in action, or wounded. Her testimony of life at the Third Field Hospital in Saigon and then in the head trauma unit of the next hospital were so vivid you are there. She lets it be known that the army was not set up for females by the lack of facilities available. She danced with David Nelson of Ozzie and Harriet fame with out even knowing who he was until the other nurses asked what he like was. Her fear had her turn down marriage proposal from West Pointer Peter. After the service, she had trouble with relationships. In the years ahead, she lived in Dallas then San Francisco. While she went to graduate school the years following Viet-Nam are a vivid picture of the horrors of past traumatic stress disorder. The book is a painful look at this horrific disorder. The book shows there is hope and in many ways seem to be her avenue for dealing with it. She is surprised other persons have similar difficulties coping. She is shocked to learn that her stepfather who lost a leg in World War II had been injured days into the combat zone and thus had no real experience of war as a point of common ground. The book is worth your time. It shows the human toll of any war.



5. very captivating, couldn't put it down. Tells how life was in vietnam and the aftermath of life with PTSD (before PTSD was known about). Very honest in the most detailed of emotions. Having read 'home before morning' many years ago, this is at least as good if not better. I highly recommend.
   
   Details of caring for the most critically wounded and working with not enough trained people to care for them, of having to let some die so that those with a better chance could be treated.
   
   Explains how the stupidity of the Vietnam war policies trickled into the health care of wounded and those who treated them.