Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938-1946. With a Preface by Stephen E. Ambrose and an Introduction by Samuel Hynes. New York: Library of America, 1995, 2001. xxiii + 874 pages. Chronology, 1933-1945. Maps. Biographical Notes. Note on the Texts. Acknowledgments. Notes. Glossary of Military Terms. Index. ISBN: 1-931082-05-7. $18.95. Paperback.
Read February 20-April 14, 2010.
I believe I've commented on this book before. This is a wonderful source of contemporary writing about World War II. The contemporaneity gives the writing a punch and liveliness that no historian, however well-intentioned, could match. Classic writing about important events.
Glenn A Knight
In my study
Showing posts with label World War II. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World War II. Show all posts
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Reporting World War II
Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938-1946. New York: The Library of America, 1995, 2001. xxiii + 874 pages. Preface by Stephen E. Ambrose. Introduction by Samuel Hynes. Chronology 1933-1945. Maps. Bibliographical Notes. Note on the Texts. Acknowledgments. Notes. Glossary of Military Terms. Index.
This is not a review of this book, because I haven't finished reading it yet. But it's been on my current reading list since February, and I wanted to assure you that I've been reading it. It's a big book. There are some 65 news articles, radio reports, and bulletins in here, from William L. Shirer's account of the cession of the Sudetenland to Germany in 1938, to John Hersey's account of Hiroshima after the bomb fell. There are some very famous journalists represented here: Edward R. Murrow, Ernie Pyle, Margaret Bourke-White. There are also some who have been almost forgotten.
And no wonder. World War II was a long time ago. I graduated from high school 19 years after World War II ended. This May we'll celebrate the 65th anniversary of V-E Day, though I doubt there will be much of a celebration; everyone's forgotten about it, most of the people who lived through it are dead, and they don't teach history in the schools anymore.
The thing about Reporting World War II is that this isn't history. These are stories written during the action by people who were witnesses to these events, or who spoke with actual witnesses when the grime of battle was fresh on their uniforms. It takes us back to when defeating the Germans and the Japs was not dead history but a matter of life and death.
I'm nearing the end of the book (as of this morning I had read just over 70% of it), so I can say that it's worth reading for anyone with an interest in World War II, in how America was sixty-odd years ago, or even in what your grandparents did when they were young.
By the way, this is the one-volume paperback edition issued in 2001. It was cut down from the two-volume hardcover edition published in 1995.
This is not a review of this book, because I haven't finished reading it yet. But it's been on my current reading list since February, and I wanted to assure you that I've been reading it. It's a big book. There are some 65 news articles, radio reports, and bulletins in here, from William L. Shirer's account of the cession of the Sudetenland to Germany in 1938, to John Hersey's account of Hiroshima after the bomb fell. There are some very famous journalists represented here: Edward R. Murrow, Ernie Pyle, Margaret Bourke-White. There are also some who have been almost forgotten.
And no wonder. World War II was a long time ago. I graduated from high school 19 years after World War II ended. This May we'll celebrate the 65th anniversary of V-E Day, though I doubt there will be much of a celebration; everyone's forgotten about it, most of the people who lived through it are dead, and they don't teach history in the schools anymore.
The thing about Reporting World War II is that this isn't history. These are stories written during the action by people who were witnesses to these events, or who spoke with actual witnesses when the grime of battle was fresh on their uniforms. It takes us back to when defeating the Germans and the Japs was not dead history but a matter of life and death.
I'm nearing the end of the book (as of this morning I had read just over 70% of it), so I can say that it's worth reading for anyone with an interest in World War II, in how America was sixty-odd years ago, or even in what your grandparents did when they were young.
By the way, this is the one-volume paperback edition issued in 2001. It was cut down from the two-volume hardcover edition published in 1995.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Current Reading
As you can see, I have a few books working now, and I finished a few in January and earlier this month. The most recent start was on the Library of American paperback Reporting World War II. This book was originally published in two hardcover volumes in 1995, and the current version is excerpted from that material. Over 800 pages, with all sorts of scholarly impedimenta, and including pieces by Ernie Pyle, Edward R. Murrow, William L. Shirer, and so on. I bought this book in 2007 at the Borders remainder store in the outlet mall in Castle Rock. That store is gone now, and there are many vacant storefronts in the mall. We went up there on Friday to shop for sheets, but the Wamsutta outlet store is gone, too.
A few years ago, on one of my trips to North Carolina, Dave Drake gave me a copy of The World Turned Upside Down. This anthology of science fiction stories was edited by Dave, along with Eric Flint and the late Jim Baen. Anyone into science fiction will recognize such stories as "A Pail of Air," "The Menace from Earth," "St. Dragon and the George," "The Cold Equations," and "Who Goes There?" Great stuff, and there have been, so far, a few stories I'd never read before. I'm loving this stuff!
The Monster Book of Zombies: Tales of the Walking Dead (2009, originally published in 1993 as The Mammoth Book of Zombies) is edited by Stephen Jones, and it contains some fine old classic horror stories by Lovecraft, Lumley, Poe, Manly Wade Wellman, and Karl Edward Wagner, as well as more recent stories. The most intriguing title belongs, of course, to the last story in the collection, "On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks," by Joe R. Lansdale. I read "A Warning to the Curious," by M. R. James, today, and it's interesting to contemplate how effective a story first published in 1925 can be.
A few years ago, on one of my trips to North Carolina, Dave Drake gave me a copy of The World Turned Upside Down. This anthology of science fiction stories was edited by Dave, along with Eric Flint and the late Jim Baen. Anyone into science fiction will recognize such stories as "A Pail of Air," "The Menace from Earth," "St. Dragon and the George," "The Cold Equations," and "Who Goes There?" Great stuff, and there have been, so far, a few stories I'd never read before. I'm loving this stuff!
The Monster Book of Zombies: Tales of the Walking Dead (2009, originally published in 1993 as The Mammoth Book of Zombies) is edited by Stephen Jones, and it contains some fine old classic horror stories by Lovecraft, Lumley, Poe, Manly Wade Wellman, and Karl Edward Wagner, as well as more recent stories. The most intriguing title belongs, of course, to the last story in the collection, "On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks," by Joe R. Lansdale. I read "A Warning to the Curious," by M. R. James, today, and it's interesting to contemplate how effective a story first published in 1925 can be.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Knight’s Reading List XI: November 2007
Reading List:
Ambrose, Stephen E. Citizen Soldiers.
Drake, David. Queen of Demons.
Drake, David. Servant of the Dragon.
Drake, David. The Mirror of Worlds.
Krantz, Steven G. Calculus Demystified.
Marks, Sheldon, M.D. Prostate and Cancer.
Ornish, Dean, M.D. Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish.
Rosen, Jeffrey. The Supreme Court.
Theroux, Paul. The Old Patagonian Express.
Torrey, E. Fuller, M.D. Surviving Prostate Cancer.
Non-Fiction:
Ambrose, Stephen E. Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. 512 pages. Notes. Bibliography. Index.
The late Steve Ambrose was a very well-known popular historian, author of Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, and multivolume biographies of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. This book is in the tradition of oral histories of World War II, of which John Toland’s Battle: The Story of the Bulge (1959) is a fine example. I was a little surprised not to see Toland’s book in Ambrose’s Bibliography. Nor did he refer to John Keegan’s Six Armies in Normandy (1982, with a new introduction 1994), a really fine account of the period June-August, 1944.
Ambrose’s accounts of D-Day and the liberation of France, the Battle of the Bulge, and the late battles will be familiar to those who have read much in the history of World War II. Less familiar and, therefore, perhaps more interesting, was the section on the battle of the Hurtgen Forest. The drama of the battles around Bastogne may have led us to ignore the almost utterly pointless slaughter occasioned by Eisenhower’s decision to continue offensive operations on the Western Front through the bitter winter of 1944-1945. Had the allies settled down into winter quarters, a fine tradition of European warfare, they could have resumed the offensive in the spring with little difference – except that many casualties suffered in the Hurtgen Forest would not have occurred.
Another interesting aspect of this book is that Ambrose devotes a section of six chapters to “Live in the ETO.” This covers the roles of the many non-combat personnel involved in the theater: nurses, medics, prisoners, as well as some discussion of what was a thoroughly segregated army. Even though World War II modified American social and technological life, it was, nonetheless, a product of the culture of the time, and many assumptions and relationships were carried over from the homeland to the European theater.
Krantz, Steven G. Calculus Demystified. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003. xii + 343 pages. Bibliography. Solutions to Exercises. Final Exam. Index. About the Author.
I still find calculus mysterious, but that isn’t Krantz’s fault.
Marks, Sheldon. Prostate and Cancer: A Family Guide to Diagnosis, Treatment, and Survival (Third Edition). 2003. xv + 349 pages. Index.
I concur with Dr. E. Torrey Fuller’s comments on this book. “Originally published in 1995, this is one of the best books available on prostate cancer. It is user friendly, with forty chapters in question-and-answer format and a helpful index. Like most books written by urologists, it primarily covers treatment issues and includes little on causes (except nutrition), research, and other issues.”
Ornish, Dean, M.D. Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish. 1996. xxi + 344 pages. Index.
Ornish is a well-known television doctor who pushes diet and meditation as pathways to better health. This cookbook represents an attempt to bring Ornish-healthy food to people who can’t afford a personal chef. I didn’t find it an indispensable addition to my kitchen’s library (unlike, say, Joy of Cooking). I do have Ornish’s Eat More, Weigh Less, but his recipes end up on my table a lot less often than dishes from Gabe Mirkin’s Fat Free, Flavor Full or Sarah Schlesinger’s 500 Fat-Free Recipes.
Rosen, Jeffrey. The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, Times Books, 2006. 274 pages. Cases Cited. Notes. Acknowledgments. Illustration Credits. Index.
This book was written as a companion to a PBS series on the United States Supreme Court in American history. (I have not seen the series, so I can’t compare the book to it.) This may explain Jeffrey Rosen’s choice of format: Each of the four principal chapters is structured around the relations between two key players in an important period of the Court’s history: John Marshall and Thomas Jefferson in the early history of the Republic, John Marshall Harlan and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., around the beginning of the 20th century, Hugo Black and William O. Douglas in the mid-century period, and William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia in the 1980s and ‘90s.
Rosen’s thesis is that temperament matters more than intellectual brilliance, political power, or legal knowledge. A justice with the right temperament will be able to build coalitions, broker compromises, and affect many decisions. A less fortunate justice will anger and alienate his or her colleagues, and write many minority opinions whose brilliance can’t conceal the simple fact that they are written in a losing cause.
This is an attractive thesis, and it helps to account for the inability of Antonin Scalia to participate more often in the majority side of decisions. I have, however, a few reservations. John Marshall’s congenial (and convivial) disposition certainly helped him to carry his Court on many occasions. On the other hand, one reason for his influence in American jurisprudence is that Marshall was Chief Justice from 1801 until 1835; Jefferson was President from 1801 to 1809. It may also be a little unfair to compare Holmes and the first Harlan, as they were on the Court together for only nine years, out of tenures that exceeded thirty years for each man.
Theroux, Paul. The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1979. (Introduction, 1997). A Mariner Book. xv + 404 pages.
This is a really fine travel book, by one of the outstanding travel writers. The author travelled from Boston, Massachusetts, to southern Argentina, by train. Theroux’s observations are keen, and his descriptions are clear. Theroux isn’t about taking his own viewpoint out of the picture; in his books the reporter – his experiences, his frustrations, his opinions – is very much a part of the story. An elegantly written book.
Torrey, E. Fuller, M.D. Surviving Prostate Cancer: What You Need to Know to Make Informed Decisions. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, Health and Wellness, 2006. xv + 280 pages. Notes. Index.
Fuller was an M.D., but not an oncologist (cancer specialist), when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004. His purpose was to write “the book I wish had been available to me when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.” In my opinion, as an interested party, he has succeeded remarkably well. Of the various books I have read on prostate cancer, this one ranks with Prostate Cancer for Dummies as the most useful.
Part of the usefulness of Surviving Prostate Cancer is Fuller’s attitude, as captured in the title. Fuller expresses, and shares, a determination to beat this disease. Driving this book is the conviction that prostate cancer is beatable. Fuller covers the various treatment options – and there are many – clearly and thoroughly. His bibliography includes a brief description of each book, with an indication of his recommendations. (He recommends both Prostate Cancer for Dummies and Prostate and Cancer.) For example, he does not recommend the American Cancer Society’s Complete Guide to Prostate Cancer with this comment: “Thus, the book lacks specific information to help a man choose which treatment is best for him. These shortcomings may be an inevitable consequence of having sixty-two authors and trying not to offend anyone.”
Fiction:
Drake, David. Queen of Demons. New York, Tom Doherty Associates, A Tor Book, 1998. 480 pages. Sequel to: Lord of the Isles.
Drake, David. Servant of the Dragon. New York, Tom Doherty Associates, A Tor Book, 1999. 612 pages. Sequel to: Queen of Demons.
Drake, David. The Mirror of Worlds. New York, Tom Doherty Associates, A Tor Book, 2007. 333 pages. Sequel to: The Fortress of Glass.
David Drake, who recently became a contributor to this blog, has been writing excellent science fiction and fantasy since the early 1970s. I’ve known Dave for 34 years now, and he is both a good friend and one of my favorite authors. The Lord of the Isles/Crown of the Isles series encompasses a total of nine novels, all featuring a group of four young friends from a village back of beyond, who are thrust into position of power and peril in an age of powerful magic and malevolent magicians. Drake very nicely balances the naturalism of his prose with the fantastic aspects of his subject matter. There is very little more frightening than a horror story told in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone, and David Drake is very good at letting his stories develop their own atmospheres.
You can find out more about Dave and his books at: http://david-drake.com/index.html.
Ambrose, Stephen E. Citizen Soldiers.
Drake, David. Queen of Demons.
Drake, David. Servant of the Dragon.
Drake, David. The Mirror of Worlds.
Krantz, Steven G. Calculus Demystified.
Marks, Sheldon, M.D. Prostate and Cancer.
Ornish, Dean, M.D. Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish.
Rosen, Jeffrey. The Supreme Court.
Theroux, Paul. The Old Patagonian Express.
Torrey, E. Fuller, M.D. Surviving Prostate Cancer.
Non-Fiction:
Ambrose, Stephen E. Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. 512 pages. Notes. Bibliography. Index.
The late Steve Ambrose was a very well-known popular historian, author of Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, and multivolume biographies of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. This book is in the tradition of oral histories of World War II, of which John Toland’s Battle: The Story of the Bulge (1959) is a fine example. I was a little surprised not to see Toland’s book in Ambrose’s Bibliography. Nor did he refer to John Keegan’s Six Armies in Normandy (1982, with a new introduction 1994), a really fine account of the period June-August, 1944.
Ambrose’s accounts of D-Day and the liberation of France, the Battle of the Bulge, and the late battles will be familiar to those who have read much in the history of World War II. Less familiar and, therefore, perhaps more interesting, was the section on the battle of the Hurtgen Forest. The drama of the battles around Bastogne may have led us to ignore the almost utterly pointless slaughter occasioned by Eisenhower’s decision to continue offensive operations on the Western Front through the bitter winter of 1944-1945. Had the allies settled down into winter quarters, a fine tradition of European warfare, they could have resumed the offensive in the spring with little difference – except that many casualties suffered in the Hurtgen Forest would not have occurred.
Another interesting aspect of this book is that Ambrose devotes a section of six chapters to “Live in the ETO.” This covers the roles of the many non-combat personnel involved in the theater: nurses, medics, prisoners, as well as some discussion of what was a thoroughly segregated army. Even though World War II modified American social and technological life, it was, nonetheless, a product of the culture of the time, and many assumptions and relationships were carried over from the homeland to the European theater.
Krantz, Steven G. Calculus Demystified. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003. xii + 343 pages. Bibliography. Solutions to Exercises. Final Exam. Index. About the Author.
I still find calculus mysterious, but that isn’t Krantz’s fault.
Marks, Sheldon. Prostate and Cancer: A Family Guide to Diagnosis, Treatment, and Survival (Third Edition). 2003. xv + 349 pages. Index.
I concur with Dr. E. Torrey Fuller’s comments on this book. “Originally published in 1995, this is one of the best books available on prostate cancer. It is user friendly, with forty chapters in question-and-answer format and a helpful index. Like most books written by urologists, it primarily covers treatment issues and includes little on causes (except nutrition), research, and other issues.”
Ornish, Dean, M.D. Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish. 1996. xxi + 344 pages. Index.
Ornish is a well-known television doctor who pushes diet and meditation as pathways to better health. This cookbook represents an attempt to bring Ornish-healthy food to people who can’t afford a personal chef. I didn’t find it an indispensable addition to my kitchen’s library (unlike, say, Joy of Cooking). I do have Ornish’s Eat More, Weigh Less, but his recipes end up on my table a lot less often than dishes from Gabe Mirkin’s Fat Free, Flavor Full or Sarah Schlesinger’s 500 Fat-Free Recipes.
Rosen, Jeffrey. The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, Times Books, 2006. 274 pages. Cases Cited. Notes. Acknowledgments. Illustration Credits. Index.
This book was written as a companion to a PBS series on the United States Supreme Court in American history. (I have not seen the series, so I can’t compare the book to it.) This may explain Jeffrey Rosen’s choice of format: Each of the four principal chapters is structured around the relations between two key players in an important period of the Court’s history: John Marshall and Thomas Jefferson in the early history of the Republic, John Marshall Harlan and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., around the beginning of the 20th century, Hugo Black and William O. Douglas in the mid-century period, and William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia in the 1980s and ‘90s.
Rosen’s thesis is that temperament matters more than intellectual brilliance, political power, or legal knowledge. A justice with the right temperament will be able to build coalitions, broker compromises, and affect many decisions. A less fortunate justice will anger and alienate his or her colleagues, and write many minority opinions whose brilliance can’t conceal the simple fact that they are written in a losing cause.
This is an attractive thesis, and it helps to account for the inability of Antonin Scalia to participate more often in the majority side of decisions. I have, however, a few reservations. John Marshall’s congenial (and convivial) disposition certainly helped him to carry his Court on many occasions. On the other hand, one reason for his influence in American jurisprudence is that Marshall was Chief Justice from 1801 until 1835; Jefferson was President from 1801 to 1809. It may also be a little unfair to compare Holmes and the first Harlan, as they were on the Court together for only nine years, out of tenures that exceeded thirty years for each man.
Theroux, Paul. The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1979. (Introduction, 1997). A Mariner Book. xv + 404 pages.
This is a really fine travel book, by one of the outstanding travel writers. The author travelled from Boston, Massachusetts, to southern Argentina, by train. Theroux’s observations are keen, and his descriptions are clear. Theroux isn’t about taking his own viewpoint out of the picture; in his books the reporter – his experiences, his frustrations, his opinions – is very much a part of the story. An elegantly written book.
Torrey, E. Fuller, M.D. Surviving Prostate Cancer: What You Need to Know to Make Informed Decisions. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, Health and Wellness, 2006. xv + 280 pages. Notes. Index.
Fuller was an M.D., but not an oncologist (cancer specialist), when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004. His purpose was to write “the book I wish had been available to me when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.” In my opinion, as an interested party, he has succeeded remarkably well. Of the various books I have read on prostate cancer, this one ranks with Prostate Cancer for Dummies as the most useful.
Part of the usefulness of Surviving Prostate Cancer is Fuller’s attitude, as captured in the title. Fuller expresses, and shares, a determination to beat this disease. Driving this book is the conviction that prostate cancer is beatable. Fuller covers the various treatment options – and there are many – clearly and thoroughly. His bibliography includes a brief description of each book, with an indication of his recommendations. (He recommends both Prostate Cancer for Dummies and Prostate and Cancer.) For example, he does not recommend the American Cancer Society’s Complete Guide to Prostate Cancer with this comment: “Thus, the book lacks specific information to help a man choose which treatment is best for him. These shortcomings may be an inevitable consequence of having sixty-two authors and trying not to offend anyone.”
Fiction:
Drake, David. Queen of Demons. New York, Tom Doherty Associates, A Tor Book, 1998. 480 pages. Sequel to: Lord of the Isles.
Drake, David. Servant of the Dragon. New York, Tom Doherty Associates, A Tor Book, 1999. 612 pages. Sequel to: Queen of Demons.
Drake, David. The Mirror of Worlds. New York, Tom Doherty Associates, A Tor Book, 2007. 333 pages. Sequel to: The Fortress of Glass.
David Drake, who recently became a contributor to this blog, has been writing excellent science fiction and fantasy since the early 1970s. I’ve known Dave for 34 years now, and he is both a good friend and one of my favorite authors. The Lord of the Isles/Crown of the Isles series encompasses a total of nine novels, all featuring a group of four young friends from a village back of beyond, who are thrust into position of power and peril in an age of powerful magic and malevolent magicians. Drake very nicely balances the naturalism of his prose with the fantastic aspects of his subject matter. There is very little more frightening than a horror story told in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone, and David Drake is very good at letting his stories develop their own atmospheres.
You can find out more about Dave and his books at: http://david-drake.com/index.html.
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