Knight’s Reading List V: May 2007

Knight’s Reading List V: May 2007

In May 2007, I finished reading these works:

Fisk, Robert. The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. 2005. xxii + 1107 pages, including Acknowledgements, List of Maps, Preface, Notes, Select Bibliography, Chronology, and an Index. The Great War for Civilisation is not misspelled; the author is British, and the publisher didn’t change the title for the American edition. Robert Fisk was for many years a reporter in various countries in the Middle East and North Africa, from Algeria to Afghanistan. There are fascinating stories here, and the book has the strength of quite detailed and colorful reporting on various wars and crises around the region. Its weakness is that Fisk, while based in Beirut and keeping his eye on things, tends to be focused on one conflict at a time, so that there is less continuity than one might wish. Fisk’s constant anti-Americanism is irritating. More of a problem, is that Fisk chooses to criticize every choice taken by the United States or Britain, without making clear in the least which alternative might have been less disastrous for either the great parties or the countries which have been subjected to their rough embrace.

Kirst, Hans Helmut. The Affairs of the Generals. 1978. 253 pages. Begun 28 April 2007, finished 8 May 2007. A novel which is not even a roman a clef, but which gives a detailed, if imaginative, account of the manner in which Adolf Hitler, Reichskanzler, drove some distinguished military leaders from office and, by so doing, asserted his control of the German military. A sordid and interesting story.

O’Brian, Patrick. Desolation Island. 1978. 325 pages. Begun 28 April 2007, finished 5 May 2007. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin return in a tale of love and intrigue in the far Southern Hemisphere.

PMI (Project Management Institute). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (The PMBOK Guide). 2004. viii + 390 pages, including an Index. Begun 24 March 2007, finished 14 May 2007. The PMBOK Guide is of some interest to those seeking professional certification in project management, but of no interest otherwise.

Rodger, N. A. M. The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1845. 2004. lxv + 907 pages, including List of Illustrations, Forword, A Note on Conventions, Maps, Introduction, Appendices, References, English Glossary, Foreign Glossary, Abbreviations, Bibliography, and Index. Begun 15 March 2007, finished 10 May 2007. Nick Rodger wrote The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, 660-1649, and published it in 1997. This is the sequel, which I read just about two years after the first volume. This is serious history, with wonderful maps and accounts of several aspects of the development and use of the British Navy and its predecessor bodies.

Shveshnikov, Evgenny. The Sicilian Pelikan. 1989. 280 pages. Begun 12 May 2007, finished 22 May 2007. This is a book of instruction in a sub-sub-sub-genre. That is, there are books on games, within which category are books on chess, among which are books on the Sicilian Defense (1 e4 c5), some of which describe the Pelikan Variation (5 … e5).

Sachs, Oliver. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. 1987. x + 243 pages. Begun 12 May 2007, finished 16 May 2007. Short, quick, fascinating, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, by the author of Awakenings (movie version starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro), is about memory, consciousness, and how the brain actually functions. From my point of view, this book, along with several of the works of Daniel Dennett, does much to support the view that the “mind” is a product of the manner in which the brain functions, rather than an autonomous organ.