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.
Glenn A Knight
In my study
Showing posts with label Patrick O'Brian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Patrick O'Brian. Show all posts
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Knight's Reading List III: March 2007
In March 2007 I finished reading the following books:
fx-9750G Plus User’s Guide. xxv + 455 pages.
A Book of Middle Eastern Food, by Claudia Roden. (1968, 1972), 453 + xiv pages, including Index.
Peter Wells, The Complete Semi-Slav. (1994) 304 pages.
The Mauritius Command, by Patrick O’Brian. (1977) 348 pages.
Eric Flint and David Drake, The Dance of Time. (2006) 468 pages.
No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. (2005) 309 pages.
I also listened to the audiobook, The Majesty of the Law, by Sandra Day O’Connor.
I think we can skip lightly over the user's guide to a graphing calculator I bought myself, although it was part of my continuing effort to master some of the higher mathematics. There will be more on that later. I'm also going to ignore The Majesty of the Law, although it was both enjoyable and informative. The Supreme Court is a long-time interest of mine, and there were other books on that subject which came over my desk this year.
The Mauritius Command is another good, workmanlike novel by Patrick O'Brian, and is based upon an actual incident (or series of incidents) on and about the island of Mauritius. Mauritius is, in case you didn't know, in the Indian Ocean, and was the home of the late lamented flightless bird, the dodo. O'Brian has quite a knack for finding obscure theaters of war during the long struggle between England and France in the early 19th century, and placing his characters in them to display their virtues, as well as their faults, in the course of solving the puzzles set for them. The Mauritius Command, for those of you interested in combined-arms operations, illustrates both how difficult it could be to obtain effective cooperation between the naval and the military forces of the some country, and how helpless an enemy could be in the face of such cooperation. These seem to be lessons that need to be learned anew by every military command, in the circumstances of each new war.
One example of good cooperation is that between Grant's army and the Union's naval forces on the Mississippi, during the Vicksburg campaign. If one compares the imperfect state of cooperations during the operations around Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, earlier in the war, to the finely coordinated actions in 1863, one can see how much effort and intelligence is needed to obtain a result, the need for which seems self-evident.
David Drake wrote the outline for The Dance of Time, and Eric Flint then put flesh on that skeleton. This has been a good system for the two writers and their publisher, but, in my opinion, The Dance of Time shows the Belisarius series running out of steam. The trajectories of the actors are determined to a large degree by what occurred in earlier books in the series, rather than by what is between the covers of this book. These books, by the way, also illustrate the successful use of combined arms, but I rather think it comes off a little too effortlessly. I could, of course, be wrong, and I'd have to re-read some of the earlier works in the series to validate my thinking. I might, at least, mention the rather interesting scene early in Drake's solo novel (in his Lord of the Isles series) Servant of the Dragon, in which some of the difficulties of training up a military force are indicated when two oared ships attempt a passing maneuver, and some of the rowers don't get their oars out of harm's way quickly enough.
Which brings me to the great work of this month. I should mention that I have the habit, for good or ill, of simultaneous (or, more precisely, contemporaneous) reading of several books at once. I'll read a chapter in one, and then two chapters in another, and then a chunk of a third, so the timelines of my books all overlap. It is, therefore, indicative of the grip established by Cormac McCarthy on this reader, that I read No Country for Old Men in three days, beginning on March 19 and ending on March 21, 2007. Cliches such as "page-turner," "gripping," "couldn't put it down," come to mind, and are all inadequate to express McCarthy's accomplishment here. The story here is that of a man just a little too stupid to pass up good fortune, and the consequences - the terrible consequences - of his ill-considered action.
In brief, in West Texas in 1980, a drug deal has gone wrong, and the buyers and sellers have managed to kill one another to, it appears, the last man. A trailer-park cowboy comes upon this scene and finds bags of money without apparent owners. He takes some, and, I think, the real hook in this story is that so would you. At least, it is quite believable that, under these circumstances, any of us might say "What the Hell?" and make off with a stash of "found money." From that point on, this becomes a story of violent responses to violent stimuli, all the more compelling because it all follows so naturally from the original situation. Of course, Adam and Eve are driven from the Garden of Eden; they took the apple, didn't they?
I heard a review of the movie the Coen brothers have made from this book on NPR a few days ago. The reviewer asserted that the movie was "nine-tenths of a masterpiece." The book is closer than that.
By the way, in March of 2006 my friend Al Vogel and I went down through New Mexico to the Big Bend country of West Texas. This has been Cormac McCarthy's homeland since Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses. The stark, dry, deadly landscape is not only a fine setting for the grim story of No Country for Old Men, it goes a long way to explain the characters McCarthy discovers there.
fx-9750G Plus User’s Guide. xxv + 455 pages.
A Book of Middle Eastern Food, by Claudia Roden. (1968, 1972), 453 + xiv pages, including Index.
Peter Wells, The Complete Semi-Slav. (1994) 304 pages.
The Mauritius Command, by Patrick O’Brian. (1977) 348 pages.
Eric Flint and David Drake, The Dance of Time. (2006) 468 pages.
No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. (2005) 309 pages.
I also listened to the audiobook, The Majesty of the Law, by Sandra Day O’Connor.
I think we can skip lightly over the user's guide to a graphing calculator I bought myself, although it was part of my continuing effort to master some of the higher mathematics. There will be more on that later. I'm also going to ignore The Majesty of the Law, although it was both enjoyable and informative. The Supreme Court is a long-time interest of mine, and there were other books on that subject which came over my desk this year.
The Mauritius Command is another good, workmanlike novel by Patrick O'Brian, and is based upon an actual incident (or series of incidents) on and about the island of Mauritius. Mauritius is, in case you didn't know, in the Indian Ocean, and was the home of the late lamented flightless bird, the dodo. O'Brian has quite a knack for finding obscure theaters of war during the long struggle between England and France in the early 19th century, and placing his characters in them to display their virtues, as well as their faults, in the course of solving the puzzles set for them. The Mauritius Command, for those of you interested in combined-arms operations, illustrates both how difficult it could be to obtain effective cooperation between the naval and the military forces of the some country, and how helpless an enemy could be in the face of such cooperation. These seem to be lessons that need to be learned anew by every military command, in the circumstances of each new war.
One example of good cooperation is that between Grant's army and the Union's naval forces on the Mississippi, during the Vicksburg campaign. If one compares the imperfect state of cooperations during the operations around Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, earlier in the war, to the finely coordinated actions in 1863, one can see how much effort and intelligence is needed to obtain a result, the need for which seems self-evident.
David Drake wrote the outline for The Dance of Time, and Eric Flint then put flesh on that skeleton. This has been a good system for the two writers and their publisher, but, in my opinion, The Dance of Time shows the Belisarius series running out of steam. The trajectories of the actors are determined to a large degree by what occurred in earlier books in the series, rather than by what is between the covers of this book. These books, by the way, also illustrate the successful use of combined arms, but I rather think it comes off a little too effortlessly. I could, of course, be wrong, and I'd have to re-read some of the earlier works in the series to validate my thinking. I might, at least, mention the rather interesting scene early in Drake's solo novel (in his Lord of the Isles series) Servant of the Dragon, in which some of the difficulties of training up a military force are indicated when two oared ships attempt a passing maneuver, and some of the rowers don't get their oars out of harm's way quickly enough.
Which brings me to the great work of this month. I should mention that I have the habit, for good or ill, of simultaneous (or, more precisely, contemporaneous) reading of several books at once. I'll read a chapter in one, and then two chapters in another, and then a chunk of a third, so the timelines of my books all overlap. It is, therefore, indicative of the grip established by Cormac McCarthy on this reader, that I read No Country for Old Men in three days, beginning on March 19 and ending on March 21, 2007. Cliches such as "page-turner," "gripping," "couldn't put it down," come to mind, and are all inadequate to express McCarthy's accomplishment here. The story here is that of a man just a little too stupid to pass up good fortune, and the consequences - the terrible consequences - of his ill-considered action.
In brief, in West Texas in 1980, a drug deal has gone wrong, and the buyers and sellers have managed to kill one another to, it appears, the last man. A trailer-park cowboy comes upon this scene and finds bags of money without apparent owners. He takes some, and, I think, the real hook in this story is that so would you. At least, it is quite believable that, under these circumstances, any of us might say "What the Hell?" and make off with a stash of "found money." From that point on, this becomes a story of violent responses to violent stimuli, all the more compelling because it all follows so naturally from the original situation. Of course, Adam and Eve are driven from the Garden of Eden; they took the apple, didn't they?
I heard a review of the movie the Coen brothers have made from this book on NPR a few days ago. The reviewer asserted that the movie was "nine-tenths of a masterpiece." The book is closer than that.
By the way, in March of 2006 my friend Al Vogel and I went down through New Mexico to the Big Bend country of West Texas. This has been Cormac McCarthy's homeland since Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses. The stark, dry, deadly landscape is not only a fine setting for the grim story of No Country for Old Men, it goes a long way to explain the characters McCarthy discovers there.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Knight's Reading List II: February 2007
In February 2007 I finished reading the following books:
Caro, Robert A. Master of the Senate. 2002. xxiv + 1167 pages. Includes Selected Bibliography, Notes, Index. Volume 3 of The Years of Lyndon Johnson.
Drake, David A. Other Times than Peace. 2006. 331 pages.
O’Brian, Patrick. H. M. S. Surprise. 1971. 379 pages.
Other Times than Peace is a collection of Drake’s stories in various warlike settings, going back nearly 30 years. For those who don’t know, David Drake is a lawyer and Vietnam veteran who has written a very large amount of fantasy and science fiction. His sensibilities are stark. His imagery is informed by his personal experience of war. I am pleased to be able to count Dave as a friend. Those of you who read the eleven stories in this volume may discern some of the reasons I value Dave as a friend, and as an author of solid, engaging prose.
I spoke of Patrick O’Brian in the context of one of the books in my January 2007 list, Post Captain. Although H. M. S. Surprise follows in the series – O’Brian did no flashbacks: the publication order of the books and the ostensible chronological order of the events described in them are the same, it certainly stands on its own as a novel. O’Brian doesn’t waste a lot of time recounting what has occurred in previous works.
Someone commented that O’Brian was better than C. S. Forester at putting himself into the mind of an eighteenth-century man. Indeed, having read both the Hornblower and the Aubrey-Maturin novels complete, I can attest that Hornblower is a 20th century man – someone Forester might have known, placed in scenes of the early 19th century. Jack Aubrey, the commander of H. M. S. Surprise, has much more of an 18th century mind. This is probably due to O’Brian’s reliance on the journals and letters of contemporary sea officers as a source for language and incident.
Looking at these two books as fictional presentations of men at war, the main difference between Drake and O’Brian, in my opinion, is that Drake’s characters tend to be haunted by the expedients to which they are forced. O’Brian’s have a greater ability to sit down with some wine, music, and toasted cheese, and let bygones be bygones.
Master of the Senate is the third volume in Robert Caro’s amazing biography of Lyndon Johnson. The project has already taken a few decades of Mr. Caro’s time, and I don’t know if he will outlive its completion. I had read the first two volumes – The Path to Power* and Means of Ascent** – years ago, when they were published, but I re-read them both before starting Master of the Senate. I was reading Robert Caro for a year, from February 2006 until February 2007. By the end, I felt as if I knew Lyndon Johnson as well as it is possible for one human being to know another. Caro is both critical of Johnson’s weaknesses, and some of his strengths, but in Master of the Senate he is portraying Johnson as a man in the perfect milieu. Had Johnson not been driven to become President, his mastery of the people and the institutions that are the United States Senate would have been the hallmark of his career.
This is, by the way, more than a biography of Lyndon Johnson. Caro brings together a number of strands to form this story. He gives a brief, but very informative, history of the Senate itself, and the manner in which it had become a very powerful obstacle to social change. He provides a summary biography of Richard Russell of Georgia, a complex and powerful man. And, by using the Civil Rights Act of 1957 as the focus of the work, he reveals much about American society and its institutions at a time when it was under great pressure to change. The Civil Rights Act of 1957, for all its faults, showed Lyndon Johnson's ability to understand the forces at work in the Senate, and beyond, and to bring about a surprising result, and one with implications beyond the apparent.
* The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume I: The Path to Power. 1981, 1982. 882 pages.
** The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume II: Means of Ascent. 1990. 522 pages.
Caro, Robert A. Master of the Senate. 2002. xxiv + 1167 pages. Includes Selected Bibliography, Notes, Index. Volume 3 of The Years of Lyndon Johnson.
Drake, David A. Other Times than Peace. 2006. 331 pages.
O’Brian, Patrick. H. M. S. Surprise. 1971. 379 pages.
Other Times than Peace is a collection of Drake’s stories in various warlike settings, going back nearly 30 years. For those who don’t know, David Drake is a lawyer and Vietnam veteran who has written a very large amount of fantasy and science fiction. His sensibilities are stark. His imagery is informed by his personal experience of war. I am pleased to be able to count Dave as a friend. Those of you who read the eleven stories in this volume may discern some of the reasons I value Dave as a friend, and as an author of solid, engaging prose.
I spoke of Patrick O’Brian in the context of one of the books in my January 2007 list, Post Captain. Although H. M. S. Surprise follows in the series – O’Brian did no flashbacks: the publication order of the books and the ostensible chronological order of the events described in them are the same, it certainly stands on its own as a novel. O’Brian doesn’t waste a lot of time recounting what has occurred in previous works.
Someone commented that O’Brian was better than C. S. Forester at putting himself into the mind of an eighteenth-century man. Indeed, having read both the Hornblower and the Aubrey-Maturin novels complete, I can attest that Hornblower is a 20th century man – someone Forester might have known, placed in scenes of the early 19th century. Jack Aubrey, the commander of H. M. S. Surprise, has much more of an 18th century mind. This is probably due to O’Brian’s reliance on the journals and letters of contemporary sea officers as a source for language and incident.
Looking at these two books as fictional presentations of men at war, the main difference between Drake and O’Brian, in my opinion, is that Drake’s characters tend to be haunted by the expedients to which they are forced. O’Brian’s have a greater ability to sit down with some wine, music, and toasted cheese, and let bygones be bygones.
Master of the Senate is the third volume in Robert Caro’s amazing biography of Lyndon Johnson. The project has already taken a few decades of Mr. Caro’s time, and I don’t know if he will outlive its completion. I had read the first two volumes – The Path to Power* and Means of Ascent** – years ago, when they were published, but I re-read them both before starting Master of the Senate. I was reading Robert Caro for a year, from February 2006 until February 2007. By the end, I felt as if I knew Lyndon Johnson as well as it is possible for one human being to know another. Caro is both critical of Johnson’s weaknesses, and some of his strengths, but in Master of the Senate he is portraying Johnson as a man in the perfect milieu. Had Johnson not been driven to become President, his mastery of the people and the institutions that are the United States Senate would have been the hallmark of his career.
This is, by the way, more than a biography of Lyndon Johnson. Caro brings together a number of strands to form this story. He gives a brief, but very informative, history of the Senate itself, and the manner in which it had become a very powerful obstacle to social change. He provides a summary biography of Richard Russell of Georgia, a complex and powerful man. And, by using the Civil Rights Act of 1957 as the focus of the work, he reveals much about American society and its institutions at a time when it was under great pressure to change. The Civil Rights Act of 1957, for all its faults, showed Lyndon Johnson's ability to understand the forces at work in the Senate, and beyond, and to bring about a surprising result, and one with implications beyond the apparent.
* The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume I: The Path to Power. 1981, 1982. 882 pages.
** The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume II: Means of Ascent. 1990. 522 pages.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Knight's Reading List I: January 2007
I read quite a lot, and quite a variety, as well. Some of the books I read are well-known - some are even regarded as classics. On the other hand, some are pretty obscure, and many of those deserve their obscurity. Still, I get something out of almost every work I read, and I'd be happy to share my impressions of any book with others who find the title of interest. In these reading lists, I provide basic information on books which I finished in the month in question.
In January, 2007, I finished reading the following works:
Nevins, Allan. The Emergence of Lincoln, Volume II: Prologue to Civil War 1859-1861. 1950. viii + 524 pages, including Appendices, Bibliography, and Index.
Melville, Herman. Billy Budd and the Piazza Tales. 2006. xliv + 338 pages.
O'Brian, Patrick. Post Captain. 1972. 496 pages
Appleyard, Dennis R. and Alfred J. Field, Jr. International Economics. xxvi + 822 pages, including Index.
Not my most productive month, January, though I could note that I was also reading four other books, which, however, I did not finish. (In fact, I have yet to finish The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.) I read a total of 1272 pages in eight books during the month.
Now, which would I recommend? On the fictional side of the ledger, Post Captain is an expertly composed and very entertaining, as well as thoroughly-researched, novel of the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Melville's style, on the other hand, is not likely to be to everyone's taste, and some of the stories miss the mark. "Bartleby the Scrivener" makes very little sense, but "Benito Cereno" is pretty good. Unfortunately, Melville uses the denseness of his viewpoint characters to build suspense (but Conan Doyle has the same fault.)
International Economics is a textbook, and I would only recommend it to someone who really wants to gain a technical understanding of that field. Economics is a subject matter which relies on recent examples to demonstrate its currency (no pun intended.) I would buy something newer if I wanted to begin study of this subject.
Allan Nevins is, I think, one of the great historians of the 20th century, who wrote a long, multi-volume history of the origins of the Civil War and the war itself. (I have four of the volumes and have read three; I need to read the volume that comes before this one.) He tends to stress the economic side of the conflict and, with regard to the war, the North's advantage in material factors. This book provides really wonderful background to two others I'll mention later: Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals and Gore Vidal's Lincoln.
In January, 2007, I finished reading the following works:
Nevins, Allan. The Emergence of Lincoln, Volume II: Prologue to Civil War 1859-1861. 1950. viii + 524 pages, including Appendices, Bibliography, and Index.
Melville, Herman. Billy Budd and the Piazza Tales. 2006. xliv + 338 pages.
O'Brian, Patrick. Post Captain. 1972. 496 pages
Appleyard, Dennis R. and Alfred J. Field, Jr. International Economics. xxvi + 822 pages, including Index.
Not my most productive month, January, though I could note that I was also reading four other books, which, however, I did not finish. (In fact, I have yet to finish The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.) I read a total of 1272 pages in eight books during the month.
Now, which would I recommend? On the fictional side of the ledger, Post Captain is an expertly composed and very entertaining, as well as thoroughly-researched, novel of the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Melville's style, on the other hand, is not likely to be to everyone's taste, and some of the stories miss the mark. "Bartleby the Scrivener" makes very little sense, but "Benito Cereno" is pretty good. Unfortunately, Melville uses the denseness of his viewpoint characters to build suspense (but Conan Doyle has the same fault.)
International Economics is a textbook, and I would only recommend it to someone who really wants to gain a technical understanding of that field. Economics is a subject matter which relies on recent examples to demonstrate its currency (no pun intended.) I would buy something newer if I wanted to begin study of this subject.
Allan Nevins is, I think, one of the great historians of the 20th century, who wrote a long, multi-volume history of the origins of the Civil War and the war itself. (I have four of the volumes and have read three; I need to read the volume that comes before this one.) He tends to stress the economic side of the conflict and, with regard to the war, the North's advantage in material factors. This book provides really wonderful background to two others I'll mention later: Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals and Gore Vidal's Lincoln.
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