The twelfth winner of the Newbery was, surprise surprise, set in a country that is not America! It was Young Fu Of the Upper Yangtze, by Elizabeth Foreman Lewis.
It tells of the coming of age of the titular Fu, a fourteen-year-old boy from the countryside who in the 1920s arrives in the vast city of Chungking (modern Chongqing) with his widowed mother. Apprenticed to Tang, a consummate coppersmith, Fu learns to temper his naïve curiosity, swallow his fears, face the bizarre novelty of foreign devils and gasoline-powered cars, and master his pride. Episode by episode, Fu grows wiser from his mistakes, and is a very likeable, sympathetic hero who risks his life for others on two occasions.
This is an exciting and engaging young adult novel. Like many books of this era, it reflects an era of more exacting learning in schools. Some of the vocabulary is rather abstruse – badinage, enmity, stinting, auspicious, for just a few random examples – and the writing is sometimes tortuous ("Not one man in all China but would make the journey"). But it’s rewarding, and a book-loving kid could easily get plunged into this almost alien world that was once very real. The most interesting thing about the book, indeed, is seeing the differences and similarities between Fu’s world and thought and those of us today. There are eternal truths about humans, and Fu shows bravery and kindness and pride and stupidity, all of which readers can relate to. But then there's the traditional Chinese way of life, with its reverence for age and unquestioning obedience of mothers, fear of evil and mischievous spirits, fatalistic resignation to oppression, foot-binding, coolies, poverty, opium, sedan chairs, draconian punishments, and so on. At a few decades past the turn of the century, many Chinese still lived the way their ancestors did thousands of years previously, and knew just as little about the outside world. Fu, for example, cannot imagine the ocean across which the foreigners live, assuming it must be smaller than the mighty Yangtze. (Actually, judging from some of the travel literature about China I’ve read, such as the superb Iron & Silk, some Chinese in the countryside even ten years ago knew very little about geography, space, and other fields irrelevant to their lives.) Lewis’ wonderfully written book (her first!) is a terrific window for young adults into history and the study of other cultures.
Recommended for children: Yes, for older children, who have a love of reading and fearlessness about new vocabulary and concepts.
Recommended for adults: Yes! Everyone should delve into other cultures, and this is a well-written story.
Showing posts with label book reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book reviews. Show all posts
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Newbery XI - 1932
In 1932, one of my favorite books of all time, Brave New World, was published. And in an almost entirely unrelated development, the award for best children's book went to Waterless Mountain, by Laura Adams Armer.
This book is an episodic novel of the Navajo people (standing then as yet another example of the ALSC's propensity for "ethnic" tales). A boy called Younger Brother, party inspired by his Uncle, a shaman, leaves his family and goes west, following the Turquoise Woman who went west to marry the sun. Along the way, he rescues a white boy, routs some horse thieves, and flies in a plane with “Grandfather,” the white trader who knows and loves the Navajo.
It’s all told in a very muted style, almost entirely from the Navajo point of view, so that ceremonies and scenes of nature do seem mystical and full of moment. It's rife with the type of poetic phrases for human experience, such as “my heart is making a new song,” that various American media have always found so compelling. It’s an interesting book, but I didn’t find it particularly engaging, probably because of its episodic plot: there’s no great struggle or resolution. And as we all learned in our freshman literature class, there is no Drama without Conflict. Or is that just the demanding way of the white man?
Recommended for children: Yes, especially for young boys who would appreciate the adventures of Younger Brother; but also for its message of the importance of a connection to nature.
Recommended for adults: Not really.
This book is an episodic novel of the Navajo people (standing then as yet another example of the ALSC's propensity for "ethnic" tales). A boy called Younger Brother, party inspired by his Uncle, a shaman, leaves his family and goes west, following the Turquoise Woman who went west to marry the sun. Along the way, he rescues a white boy, routs some horse thieves, and flies in a plane with “Grandfather,” the white trader who knows and loves the Navajo.
It’s all told in a very muted style, almost entirely from the Navajo point of view, so that ceremonies and scenes of nature do seem mystical and full of moment. It's rife with the type of poetic phrases for human experience, such as “my heart is making a new song,” that various American media have always found so compelling. It’s an interesting book, but I didn’t find it particularly engaging, probably because of its episodic plot: there’s no great struggle or resolution. And as we all learned in our freshman literature class, there is no Drama without Conflict. Or is that just the demanding way of the white man?
Recommended for children: Yes, especially for young boys who would appreciate the adventures of Younger Brother; but also for its message of the importance of a connection to nature.
Recommended for adults: Not really.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Newbery X - 1931
Yes, I'm still doing this for some reason!
The tenth Newbery winner was The Cat Who Went To Heaven, by Elizabeth Coatsworth. This slim tale is set "far away in Japan" (exotic locales, as we have seen in this series, being to the Newbery as playing the wise moron is to the Oscar).
A poor artist's housekeeper brings in a small spotted cat, who is named Good Fortune. Shortly afterwards, the artist is commissioned by a temple to paint Buddha’s death scene. The artist meditates on the various sacrifices that various animals --- the snail, the horse, the deer, the ox, the monkey, the dog --- all made for the dying Buddha, or made when they were the Buddha in a different lifetime, and then he paints them coming to pay respects. Then, even though the cat, an independent, ill-favored animal, did not receive the Buddha’s blessing on his death, the artist puts the cat in the picture as well. This is not looked upon favorably by the local priest.
It’s a sweet tale, full of gently subtle teachings on restraint, sacrifice, and love for all beings. Many of the animals sacrifice themselves for the benefit of Buddha or their masters; the deer, for example, convinces a king to become vegetarian by offering himself for sacrifice at a feast.
Recommended for children: I would guess that most American kids these days would find this a charming story, perhaps a bit over their heads but planting seeds of great ideas for the future. It’s not as lightweight as its brevity implies, and has a certain timeless, fairy tale quality to it.
Recommended for adults: Yes, for the same reasons.
The tenth Newbery winner was The Cat Who Went To Heaven, by Elizabeth Coatsworth. This slim tale is set "far away in Japan" (exotic locales, as we have seen in this series, being to the Newbery as playing the wise moron is to the Oscar).
A poor artist's housekeeper brings in a small spotted cat, who is named Good Fortune. Shortly afterwards, the artist is commissioned by a temple to paint Buddha’s death scene. The artist meditates on the various sacrifices that various animals --- the snail, the horse, the deer, the ox, the monkey, the dog --- all made for the dying Buddha, or made when they were the Buddha in a different lifetime, and then he paints them coming to pay respects. Then, even though the cat, an independent, ill-favored animal, did not receive the Buddha’s blessing on his death, the artist puts the cat in the picture as well. This is not looked upon favorably by the local priest.
It’s a sweet tale, full of gently subtle teachings on restraint, sacrifice, and love for all beings. Many of the animals sacrifice themselves for the benefit of Buddha or their masters; the deer, for example, convinces a king to become vegetarian by offering himself for sacrifice at a feast.
Recommended for children: I would guess that most American kids these days would find this a charming story, perhaps a bit over their heads but planting seeds of great ideas for the future. It’s not as lightweight as its brevity implies, and has a certain timeless, fairy tale quality to it.
Recommended for adults: Yes, for the same reasons.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Newbery IX - 1930
The ninth winner of the Newbery award was Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, by Rachel Field.
This rather charming book purports to be the autobiography of a small antebellum wooden doll, the titular Hitty, who is carved out of mountain ash-wood by a traveling peddler.
Preoccupied with her fine clothing and her dignity, Hitty goes through a variety of more or less unrelated adventures, from being taken to a crow’s nest by a mother bird, to staying a year in a barn with mice, to being worshiped as an idol by island "savages," to being used as in an Indian fakir’s snake-charming act, to serving as a portrait-painter’s prop, to touring as an antique at a doll show. With each passing year she learns a bit more about people and their various cultures and foibles, and loses bit by bit her vanity.
It’s thus broadly similar in content and plot to Kate DiCamillo’s excellent 2006 book The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane, but with a less modern (obviously), less mature attitude toward love and loss. Any lessons learned about human nature in Field's book are clearly secondary to the whimsical fantasy of the sentient doll. It's certainly an enjoyable adventure story, full of twists and turns, suspense and drama (and how telling that in order for the protagonist in such a globe-trotting adventure, normally the province of boys alone, to be female, it must be a wooden doll). It's also often wryly amusing, so fun to read for an adult as well as a child.
I don't want to belittle the book for what it's not, which is the most ignorant style of review. But I think the premise offers a good chance to parody, reflect, or magnify human nature through observation and allegory, a chance that Field missed in favor of a simpler tale of the episodic ups and downs in a wooden doll's life. Perhaps this is just an aspect of the book's being dated; modern children want and deserve deeper messages in their literature, even in their fantasy.
Recommended for children: Yes, it's a fun story.
Recommended for adults: It's hardly a bad book, but I can't think why an adult would want to read it unless he was reading all the Newberys in chronological order for some reason.
This rather charming book purports to be the autobiography of a small antebellum wooden doll, the titular Hitty, who is carved out of mountain ash-wood by a traveling peddler.
Preoccupied with her fine clothing and her dignity, Hitty goes through a variety of more or less unrelated adventures, from being taken to a crow’s nest by a mother bird, to staying a year in a barn with mice, to being worshiped as an idol by island "savages," to being used as in an Indian fakir’s snake-charming act, to serving as a portrait-painter’s prop, to touring as an antique at a doll show. With each passing year she learns a bit more about people and their various cultures and foibles, and loses bit by bit her vanity.
It’s thus broadly similar in content and plot to Kate DiCamillo’s excellent 2006 book The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane, but with a less modern (obviously), less mature attitude toward love and loss. Any lessons learned about human nature in Field's book are clearly secondary to the whimsical fantasy of the sentient doll. It's certainly an enjoyable adventure story, full of twists and turns, suspense and drama (and how telling that in order for the protagonist in such a globe-trotting adventure, normally the province of boys alone, to be female, it must be a wooden doll). It's also often wryly amusing, so fun to read for an adult as well as a child.
I don't want to belittle the book for what it's not, which is the most ignorant style of review. But I think the premise offers a good chance to parody, reflect, or magnify human nature through observation and allegory, a chance that Field missed in favor of a simpler tale of the episodic ups and downs in a wooden doll's life. Perhaps this is just an aspect of the book's being dated; modern children want and deserve deeper messages in their literature, even in their fantasy.
Recommended for children: Yes, it's a fun story.
Recommended for adults: It's hardly a bad book, but I can't think why an adult would want to read it unless he was reading all the Newberys in chronological order for some reason.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Newbery XIII - 1929
Welcome to the eighth installment of what is unquestionably the Internet's finest collection of all the Newbery winners reviewed in chronological order.
The year was 1929. In October, a stock market crash marked the beginning of a global depression. Canada's high court ruled, in what most jurists regard as a moment of sheer lunacy, that women legally counted as people. And the first Academy Awards were handed out, to the interest of hardly anyone outside of Hollywood.
Meanwhile, the ALA's choice of best juvenile book was The Trumpeter Of Krakow, by Eric P. Kelly. In keeping with the Association's love for stories from far-flung lands and eras, they chose one set in Poland, 1461. The main character is one Joseph Charnetski, a fifteen-year-old, who travels with his family to Krakow after their home and fields in the Ukraine are destroyed. And yes, he becomes the trumpeter of the title. Oops, spoiler.
The family befriends a wise scholar and goes to live in the house of an alchemist and his daughter. Joseph becomes a watchman in the Church of Our Lady Mary. In the tower there, he plays on the hour the Heynal, a theme that is traditionally broken off in mid-note out of respect for a brave Polish lad who was killed by an arrow while playing it as Tartars advanced. (Click on that Wikipedia link for an interesting side note to this ancient legend, which may not be one at all.) The family is shadowed and accosted several times by a mysterious rogue, who turns out to be the dreaded Ukrainian warlord whose men originally drove them from their home and is out to steal a priceless treasure which, to Joseph's surprise, his father is guarding for the king.
This is a fine historical adventure, written in a clear but highly literate style, full of drama and suspense. Krakow is also made central to the story, as Kelly lovingly details its various buildings and streets. Nor is this a story that could be transplanted to another time, as lesser historical tales can be; alchemy plays a great role in this book, as part of the drama stems from Kreutz, the alchemist, and his attempts to find the secret of transmuting base metals to gold. It's fun to read, and the brisk pacing and suspense keep the pages turning --- a perfect young adult adventure story.
Recommended for adults: Yes.
Recommended for children: Yes.
The year was 1929. In October, a stock market crash marked the beginning of a global depression. Canada's high court ruled, in what most jurists regard as a moment of sheer lunacy, that women legally counted as people. And the first Academy Awards were handed out, to the interest of hardly anyone outside of Hollywood.
Meanwhile, the ALA's choice of best juvenile book was The Trumpeter Of Krakow, by Eric P. Kelly. In keeping with the Association's love for stories from far-flung lands and eras, they chose one set in Poland, 1461. The main character is one Joseph Charnetski, a fifteen-year-old, who travels with his family to Krakow after their home and fields in the Ukraine are destroyed. And yes, he becomes the trumpeter of the title. Oops, spoiler.
The family befriends a wise scholar and goes to live in the house of an alchemist and his daughter. Joseph becomes a watchman in the Church of Our Lady Mary. In the tower there, he plays on the hour the Heynal, a theme that is traditionally broken off in mid-note out of respect for a brave Polish lad who was killed by an arrow while playing it as Tartars advanced. (Click on that Wikipedia link for an interesting side note to this ancient legend, which may not be one at all.) The family is shadowed and accosted several times by a mysterious rogue, who turns out to be the dreaded Ukrainian warlord whose men originally drove them from their home and is out to steal a priceless treasure which, to Joseph's surprise, his father is guarding for the king.
This is a fine historical adventure, written in a clear but highly literate style, full of drama and suspense. Krakow is also made central to the story, as Kelly lovingly details its various buildings and streets. Nor is this a story that could be transplanted to another time, as lesser historical tales can be; alchemy plays a great role in this book, as part of the drama stems from Kreutz, the alchemist, and his attempts to find the secret of transmuting base metals to gold. It's fun to read, and the brisk pacing and suspense keep the pages turning --- a perfect young adult adventure story.
Recommended for adults: Yes.
Recommended for children: Yes.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Newbery VII
When we last looked in on the venerable Newberys, the winner was the lovable, racist Smoky the Cowhorse.
In 1928, the Newbery Committee in all its wisdom chose as the best children's book of the year Gay-Neck: The Story Of a Pigeon, by Indian-born author Dhan Gopal Mukerji. This would prove to future generations of children to be a problematic choice for two reasons. One, it is called Gay-Neck, and that's just not something you can live down anymore. Two, it is the story of a pigeon.
The plot begins in the early 1900s, with a young Indian boy who raises carrier pigeons. The titular Gay-Neck, named for his colorful neck plumage, is the finest, able to outfly eagles and hawks. When WWI breaks out, Gay-Neck is used as a messenger pigeon under the boy’s friend, Ghond the hunter. The bird finds he must dodge the screaming mechanical eagles (planes) and barking dogs (machine guns) that try to destroy him.
During the course of the war, both the pigeon and Ghond are wounded, and both develop a form of traumatic disorder. So they travel to the lamaseries in the Himalayas to meditate and overcome their fear. The story is told mostly from the boy’s point of view, but occasionally Gay-Neck narrates when the bird is alone, and Ghond is also given his view, during the most harrowing battle. It is a story of a pigeon, in a strict sense, but the plot is really only the steed that the message rides, so to speak.
Mukerji's main concern is promoting Buddhist concerns of peace, courage, and wisdom. Prayers and meditations on overcoming fear are not only included, they're the main lesson of the story – "No beast of prey can kill his victim without frightening him first," and "each being that lives is a reservoir of infinite courage." I like that second one, by the way. Trying saying it to yourself. Go on. I'll wait.
Rarely does a children’s book manage to tread such deep waters without looking ridiculous, but Mukerji manages to imbue his little tale with an enormous amount of inspiration and wisdom.
Recommended for children: Well... oh dear. It's a good book, and kids love animal stories. But, see, it's called "Gay-Neck."
Recommeded for adults: Yes.
In 1928, the Newbery Committee in all its wisdom chose as the best children's book of the year Gay-Neck: The Story Of a Pigeon, by Indian-born author Dhan Gopal Mukerji. This would prove to future generations of children to be a problematic choice for two reasons. One, it is called Gay-Neck, and that's just not something you can live down anymore. Two, it is the story of a pigeon.
The plot begins in the early 1900s, with a young Indian boy who raises carrier pigeons. The titular Gay-Neck, named for his colorful neck plumage, is the finest, able to outfly eagles and hawks. When WWI breaks out, Gay-Neck is used as a messenger pigeon under the boy’s friend, Ghond the hunter. The bird finds he must dodge the screaming mechanical eagles (planes) and barking dogs (machine guns) that try to destroy him.
During the course of the war, both the pigeon and Ghond are wounded, and both develop a form of traumatic disorder. So they travel to the lamaseries in the Himalayas to meditate and overcome their fear. The story is told mostly from the boy’s point of view, but occasionally Gay-Neck narrates when the bird is alone, and Ghond is also given his view, during the most harrowing battle. It is a story of a pigeon, in a strict sense, but the plot is really only the steed that the message rides, so to speak.
Mukerji's main concern is promoting Buddhist concerns of peace, courage, and wisdom. Prayers and meditations on overcoming fear are not only included, they're the main lesson of the story – "No beast of prey can kill his victim without frightening him first," and "each being that lives is a reservoir of infinite courage." I like that second one, by the way. Trying saying it to yourself. Go on. I'll wait.
Rarely does a children’s book manage to tread such deep waters without looking ridiculous, but Mukerji manages to imbue his little tale with an enormous amount of inspiration and wisdom.
Recommended for children: Well... oh dear. It's a good book, and kids love animal stories. But, see, it's called "Gay-Neck."
Recommeded for adults: Yes.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Sunday Warbooks: Why the Allies Won
A review of Why the Allies Won, by Richard Overy.
Just as the title indicates, this is a thorough examination of how WWII --- the outcome of which was decidedly uncertain before late 1943 or so --- ended the way it did. Overy is a masterful and convincing historian, who over the course of 330 pages lays out a cogent argument based on everything from economy and materiel production to the warped philosophy of the Axis powers.
It's impossible to distill the mass of fascinating information into a few paragraphs, but there are a few main points that especially ring true. The first is, of course, the industrial production of the USA and USSR, unmatched by any of the Axis powers. Overy argues that America’s capitalist society and the Soviet centralized dictatorship were each in their own way ideally suited to maximize their vast resources. In contrast, Hitler's less focused, more cutthroat dictatorship failed to make the most of Germany's limited resources. A telling example is when Hitler’s armies took Soviet oil fields, but then had no engineers to make the oil available to Germany, so it made no discernible change in their production.
Overy further argues that the Allied powers made simple, reliable, mass-produced weapons, and kept a healthy ratio of mechanics on hand. The opposite was true of the Germany industrial complex, which was fixated on ever-newer technologies, so obsolescence and difficulty of repair became issues as the war progressed. Overy concludes that even Germany's much-vaunted missile program, which was inarguably years ahead of anything the Allies had, was "a lost cause" for these reasons: impressive, yes, but not a war-winner.
The second main theme is the rapid learning curve of the allied powers, who learned from their many early defeats and focused intently on producing only what was needed to win. The Germans and Japanese, by contrast, has a very slow learning curve, and coasted on early victories, believing that their militaristic will-to-power philosophy made victory a foregone conclusion. This learning curve extended to every facet of the war --- improvements in bombing, defense, codes, and so on ensured the Allies’ early losses were not often repeated.
The final main theme that runs through the whole book, though it's not made as explicit as the others, is the mindset of the various leaders. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin had many philosophical and strategical differences, but were able to work in lock step for the single goal of destroying Nazism utterly. Hitler had no such restraint, unable to maintain even the farce of an alliance with Stalin until the war in the west had been concluded. Stalin, for all his faults, promoted reliable men, wanted to hear the unvarnished truth about how the war was progressing, and allowed himself to be overruled when it came to important strategic decisions. Hitler, famously, removed officers who told him bad news, even if it was true, and obsessively insisted on micro-managing the war (sounds like Bush and Rumsfeld!), with a deleterious result for Germany's chances for victory.
Perhaps the most interesting example of how much Hitler's self-supposed strategic genius hurt Germany was Hitler's insistence on treating the Normandy landings lightly, thinking they were only a ruse, until it was far too late and Patton had already swept over half of France. Historical events like this always give rise to their hypothetical counterparts: what if Hitler had allowed Rommel and others to fight the war they wanted to? The modern Anglo-American mind reels at the horror.
In all, this is an inexhaustibly fascinating book, one sure to promote argument among WWII buffs for its calm, reasoned analysis and sometimes unexpected conclusions.
***
Sunday warbooks scoreboard:
Greco-Persian wars: 2
WWI: 2
WWII: 6 <----winning big, like the Allies in late 1945
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
Afghanistan war: 1
General warfare: 2
Just as the title indicates, this is a thorough examination of how WWII --- the outcome of which was decidedly uncertain before late 1943 or so --- ended the way it did. Overy is a masterful and convincing historian, who over the course of 330 pages lays out a cogent argument based on everything from economy and materiel production to the warped philosophy of the Axis powers.
It's impossible to distill the mass of fascinating information into a few paragraphs, but there are a few main points that especially ring true. The first is, of course, the industrial production of the USA and USSR, unmatched by any of the Axis powers. Overy argues that America’s capitalist society and the Soviet centralized dictatorship were each in their own way ideally suited to maximize their vast resources. In contrast, Hitler's less focused, more cutthroat dictatorship failed to make the most of Germany's limited resources. A telling example is when Hitler’s armies took Soviet oil fields, but then had no engineers to make the oil available to Germany, so it made no discernible change in their production.
Overy further argues that the Allied powers made simple, reliable, mass-produced weapons, and kept a healthy ratio of mechanics on hand. The opposite was true of the Germany industrial complex, which was fixated on ever-newer technologies, so obsolescence and difficulty of repair became issues as the war progressed. Overy concludes that even Germany's much-vaunted missile program, which was inarguably years ahead of anything the Allies had, was "a lost cause" for these reasons: impressive, yes, but not a war-winner.
The second main theme is the rapid learning curve of the allied powers, who learned from their many early defeats and focused intently on producing only what was needed to win. The Germans and Japanese, by contrast, has a very slow learning curve, and coasted on early victories, believing that their militaristic will-to-power philosophy made victory a foregone conclusion. This learning curve extended to every facet of the war --- improvements in bombing, defense, codes, and so on ensured the Allies’ early losses were not often repeated.
The final main theme that runs through the whole book, though it's not made as explicit as the others, is the mindset of the various leaders. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin had many philosophical and strategical differences, but were able to work in lock step for the single goal of destroying Nazism utterly. Hitler had no such restraint, unable to maintain even the farce of an alliance with Stalin until the war in the west had been concluded. Stalin, for all his faults, promoted reliable men, wanted to hear the unvarnished truth about how the war was progressing, and allowed himself to be overruled when it came to important strategic decisions. Hitler, famously, removed officers who told him bad news, even if it was true, and obsessively insisted on micro-managing the war (sounds like Bush and Rumsfeld!), with a deleterious result for Germany's chances for victory.
Perhaps the most interesting example of how much Hitler's self-supposed strategic genius hurt Germany was Hitler's insistence on treating the Normandy landings lightly, thinking they were only a ruse, until it was far too late and Patton had already swept over half of France. Historical events like this always give rise to their hypothetical counterparts: what if Hitler had allowed Rommel and others to fight the war they wanted to? The modern Anglo-American mind reels at the horror.
In all, this is an inexhaustibly fascinating book, one sure to promote argument among WWII buffs for its calm, reasoned analysis and sometimes unexpected conclusions.
***
Sunday warbooks scoreboard:
Greco-Persian wars: 2
WWI: 2
WWII: 6 <----winning big, like the Allies in late 1945
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
Afghanistan war: 1
General warfare: 2
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Newbery VI
Continuing where we left off...
In 1927 the America Library Association took a break from heaping praises on less than stellar collections of legends from faraway lands, and turned to a quintessentially American story in Smoky the Cowhorse, by Will James.
This book follows the life of a range horse, from his birth, though the various occupations he's put to, and finally to being put out to pasture for retirement. James makes the horse the center of the story, and tells it as realistically as possible while making Smoky an exceptional beast. (The horse never voices an opinion, let alone talks; James tries to express silent instinct or antipathy without anthropomorphizing the animal.)
Indeed, Smoky isn't actually his name, except inasmuch as a bronco buster named Clint calls him that for a while. Most of his life he's a nameless, wild horse, free on the range, learning to stay with the herd, avoid and kill rattlesnakes, fight wolves, and so on. Annually he is corralled by cowboys and made to do range work: herding steer, which he grows to enjoy. After some misadventure, he is known by the name of Cougar as a famous cowboy-killing bucking bronco, and later still he's called Cloudy as an indifferent riding horse for greenhorn dude equestrians.
Things look bleakest for him when, older and enfeebled by a lifetime of action, he’s sold as a workhorse, regularly beaten and mistreated. Of course there’s a happy ending, but James lets it unfold with patience; nothing is neatly packaged or trite, and Smoky is far from a pet, or even so much as tame, even at the end. It’s a superior animal story, but unfortunately made a bit difficult for the modern reader by two factors.
One, James writes in a sub-literate dialect ("them horses was running," "If Smoky could only knowed, there’d been a lot of suffering which he wouldn't had to've went thru"), which may have been intentional or not, but either way it's not charming or conducive to good reading practice. And then, common words, even equine vocabulary such as "gait," are misspelled, which indicates that the ungrammatical dialect may have been the best James could do. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it makes for hard reading.
Second, and far worse, there's a deep racism in the book. The two villains are Mexican. One is referred to with contempt as a "breed" (short for "half-breed," he being half-Mexican, half "other blood that’s darker") with no morals. The other is a similarly immoral, cruel man who is beaten for his cruelty by a white man in front of a laughing sheriff who stops the fight, but only because the Mexican's death would make work for him, "same as if he were a white man." It's a pity, because James is a decent storyteller, and though I don’t care for animal tales as a rule, this one drew me in. This is a book a product of its time, certainly.
Recommended for children: I'm afraid not.
Recommended for adults: It's not bad, if you can look past the ugly racial views and the cowpoke writing style. Not for everyone, at the very least.
In 1927 the America Library Association took a break from heaping praises on less than stellar collections of legends from faraway lands, and turned to a quintessentially American story in Smoky the Cowhorse, by Will James.
This book follows the life of a range horse, from his birth, though the various occupations he's put to, and finally to being put out to pasture for retirement. James makes the horse the center of the story, and tells it as realistically as possible while making Smoky an exceptional beast. (The horse never voices an opinion, let alone talks; James tries to express silent instinct or antipathy without anthropomorphizing the animal.)
Indeed, Smoky isn't actually his name, except inasmuch as a bronco buster named Clint calls him that for a while. Most of his life he's a nameless, wild horse, free on the range, learning to stay with the herd, avoid and kill rattlesnakes, fight wolves, and so on. Annually he is corralled by cowboys and made to do range work: herding steer, which he grows to enjoy. After some misadventure, he is known by the name of Cougar as a famous cowboy-killing bucking bronco, and later still he's called Cloudy as an indifferent riding horse for greenhorn dude equestrians.
Things look bleakest for him when, older and enfeebled by a lifetime of action, he’s sold as a workhorse, regularly beaten and mistreated. Of course there’s a happy ending, but James lets it unfold with patience; nothing is neatly packaged or trite, and Smoky is far from a pet, or even so much as tame, even at the end. It’s a superior animal story, but unfortunately made a bit difficult for the modern reader by two factors.
One, James writes in a sub-literate dialect ("them horses was running," "If Smoky could only knowed, there’d been a lot of suffering which he wouldn't had to've went thru"), which may have been intentional or not, but either way it's not charming or conducive to good reading practice. And then, common words, even equine vocabulary such as "gait," are misspelled, which indicates that the ungrammatical dialect may have been the best James could do. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it makes for hard reading.
Second, and far worse, there's a deep racism in the book. The two villains are Mexican. One is referred to with contempt as a "breed" (short for "half-breed," he being half-Mexican, half "other blood that’s darker") with no morals. The other is a similarly immoral, cruel man who is beaten for his cruelty by a white man in front of a laughing sheriff who stops the fight, but only because the Mexican's death would make work for him, "same as if he were a white man." It's a pity, because James is a decent storyteller, and though I don’t care for animal tales as a rule, this one drew me in. This is a book a product of its time, certainly.
Recommended for children: I'm afraid not.
Recommended for adults: It's not bad, if you can look past the ugly racial views and the cowpoke writing style. Not for everyone, at the very least.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Newbery V
The 1926 Newbery Medal winner was Shen Of the Sea: Chinese Stories For Children, by Arthur Bowie Chrisman. It is a collection of humorous folk tales from China, written in a light, mostly tongue-in-cheek style that seems to mimic the inflections and honorifics of the Chinese language.
The title story describes a monarch who tricks and captures the shen, or demons, of the sea, who wish to flood his domain. Other entries are explanation tales, reminiscent of the Just-So stories: how chopsticks came to be (the king invented them after being attacked by his irascible queen with the silverware) how fine porecelain came to be (it was a collection of mud pies fired hard by dragon breath), or how tea came to be (a witch enchanted Chah's herbs so they'd help him stay awake, after he saved her from a black dragon, or oo long; cha is Chinese for tea). A couple are love stories between men and spirits, and a few are like the European folk tales of silly people who do things literally, but in the end their silliness is their salvation.
It's fun reading, but there's nothing spectacular about the prose, nor particularly memorable about the tales, so I do hope this wasn't actually the finest children's book of its year. As with the previous year's winner, Tales From Silver Lands, perhaps the committee thought multiculturalism trumped non-spectacular writing.
Recommended for children: sure.
Recommended for adults: not really, unless they're Sinophiles.
The title story describes a monarch who tricks and captures the shen, or demons, of the sea, who wish to flood his domain. Other entries are explanation tales, reminiscent of the Just-So stories: how chopsticks came to be (the king invented them after being attacked by his irascible queen with the silverware) how fine porecelain came to be (it was a collection of mud pies fired hard by dragon breath), or how tea came to be (a witch enchanted Chah's herbs so they'd help him stay awake, after he saved her from a black dragon, or oo long; cha is Chinese for tea). A couple are love stories between men and spirits, and a few are like the European folk tales of silly people who do things literally, but in the end their silliness is their salvation.
It's fun reading, but there's nothing spectacular about the prose, nor particularly memorable about the tales, so I do hope this wasn't actually the finest children's book of its year. As with the previous year's winner, Tales From Silver Lands, perhaps the committee thought multiculturalism trumped non-spectacular writing.
Recommended for children: sure.
Recommended for adults: not really, unless they're Sinophiles.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Sunday Warbooks: Tales Of the South Pacific
A review of Tales Of the South Pacific, by James Michener.
A collection of tales not so much of war itself but of the ordinary men who waged war, and how the war (and the South Pacific) changed them. This book, written in 1947, won the Pulitzer Prize, and deservedly so. It's utterly readable and timeless. Indeed, Michener's narrator evokes prescient shades of Catch-22's 1961 absurdist hero Yossarian in the opening piece. Unable to express what he did in the war, he tells a gruff, glory-loving major about what island life was like:
Why did it take me until I was 38 years old to read this book? The omission of this work from the typical academic canon is utterly incomprehensible to me; it’s everything that the more boring and less complete in scope All Quiet On the Western Front is said to be, and more.
Michener is far more than a captivating storyteller, collector of colorful characters, painter of vivid natural imagery, and chronicler of the orchestrations of world warfare. Each of the "tales" comprising his carefully-constructed epic narrative is thematically and stylistically related to the other smaller narratives and at the same time artistically whole in itself. While he does have poetic phrases at his command, what he can say without saying it --- a subtly omitted word or a hint --- is breathtaking.
Michener impresses with his vast understanding of the scope of a military operation, as in the chapter “Alligator” (the codename for a fictitious invasion) --- the planning, the estimated casualties, the number of hospital beds needed, the men needed to build landing strips and docks and housing, the men needed simply to replace pencils and paper for plans, and on and on --- and then he finishes with a few brief, poignant lines of a man who wrote to a plain woman ("who would never be married in a hundred years anyway") a proposal:
That talent of Michener’s, the ability to juggle the big picture with the little human details, the forgotten grunts, the KIA and the faceless laborers, just blows me away. With every paragraph he weaves a new story of heroism, or efficiency, or defiance, or laziness, or lust, or bravery, or shame, and every character is all too human and believable. It makes the climax of the book, the landing at the island of Kuralei, all the more moving, as his narrator surveys the littered beaches and mourns the dead.
This book is quite simply a brilliant masterpiece that should be read by every student of American history; it may be fiction, but it shows more plainly why this was known as the "Greatest Generation," without hagiography or needless embellishment. They did what they were asked to do, and worked and complained and loved and died, and they weren't saints or the ultimate soldiers. They were Americans, is all.
***
Sunday warbooks scoreboard:
Greco-Persian wars: 2
WWI: 2
WWII: 5
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
Afghanistan war: 1
General warfare: 2
A collection of tales not so much of war itself but of the ordinary men who waged war, and how the war (and the South Pacific) changed them. This book, written in 1947, won the Pulitzer Prize, and deservedly so. It's utterly readable and timeless. Indeed, Michener's narrator evokes prescient shades of Catch-22's 1961 absurdist hero Yossarian in the opening piece. Unable to express what he did in the war, he tells a gruff, glory-loving major about what island life was like:
"Why, hell!" the major snorted. "Seems all he did was sit on his ass and wait!"Easily more than the sum of its parts, this collection of stories is an eye-opening account of life in wartime: not the horrors of war (though there's a bit of that), but the waiting, the selfless heroism, the bottled-up passion, the thankless endless toil, the vast logistics of a campaign, the suddenness of death and loss and love.
"That's exactly it!" I cried, happy to find at least someone who knew what I was talking about.
Why did it take me until I was 38 years old to read this book? The omission of this work from the typical academic canon is utterly incomprehensible to me; it’s everything that the more boring and less complete in scope All Quiet On the Western Front is said to be, and more.
Michener is far more than a captivating storyteller, collector of colorful characters, painter of vivid natural imagery, and chronicler of the orchestrations of world warfare. Each of the "tales" comprising his carefully-constructed epic narrative is thematically and stylistically related to the other smaller narratives and at the same time artistically whole in itself. While he does have poetic phrases at his command, what he can say without saying it --- a subtly omitted word or a hint --- is breathtaking.
Michener impresses with his vast understanding of the scope of a military operation, as in the chapter “Alligator” (the codename for a fictitious invasion) --- the planning, the estimated casualties, the number of hospital beds needed, the men needed to build landing strips and docks and housing, the men needed simply to replace pencils and paper for plans, and on and on --- and then he finishes with a few brief, poignant lines of a man who wrote to a plain woman ("who would never be married in a hundred years anyway") a proposal:
"You was very sweet to me and I want to tell you if I…"But, Michener says, that last letter plus the one from the chaplain was almost as good as being married.
But he didn't. Some don't.
That talent of Michener’s, the ability to juggle the big picture with the little human details, the forgotten grunts, the KIA and the faceless laborers, just blows me away. With every paragraph he weaves a new story of heroism, or efficiency, or defiance, or laziness, or lust, or bravery, or shame, and every character is all too human and believable. It makes the climax of the book, the landing at the island of Kuralei, all the more moving, as his narrator surveys the littered beaches and mourns the dead.
This book is quite simply a brilliant masterpiece that should be read by every student of American history; it may be fiction, but it shows more plainly why this was known as the "Greatest Generation," without hagiography or needless embellishment. They did what they were asked to do, and worked and complained and loved and died, and they weren't saints or the ultimate soldiers. They were Americans, is all.
***
Sunday warbooks scoreboard:
Greco-Persian wars: 2
WWI: 2
WWII: 5
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
Afghanistan war: 1
General warfare: 2
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Newbery IV
In 1925, the book that snagged the Newbery was Tales From Silver Lands, by one Charles J. Finger.
A collection of mostly unrelated stories from South American countries. Based on his narration, Finger presumably traveled all over the continent collecting these stories and tales, unless he's just making up everything out of whole cloth.
That's about it, really. There are explanatory stories ("A Tale of Three Tails," which explains how the rat and deer and rabbit got their tails), fairy tales of recognizable structure and climax ("The Hungry Old Witch," "The Wonderful Mirror"), trickster tales ("El Enano," about a fox who tricks the titular greedy monster into leaving a village) and hero tales ("The Hero Twins” and "The Four Hundred," which tell of how some heroic lads killed three giants).
While the stories are pleasant enough and Finger's authorial voice is kindly and inviting, I didn’t think there was anything remarkable in their characters, plot, or the execution of the telling. Fairy tales can be timeless and enthralling, but there's nothing suspenseful or dramatic about them. And their simplicity isn't a huge draw for me. Hey, the little orphan kid met a magic lady who tells him how to defeat the evil witch! And she's right, because people who seem to be good always are, and bad people are vicious crones or ugly giants! And heaven forfend the hero actually figure out anything on his own. Let the oracle tell him exactly what steps to take.
If I'm in the mood for such things, I'd rather read Kipling or Grimm, who did the same things better. Of all the stories, only the last – "The Cat and Dream Man" – stands out, remarkable for its surreal nature (a destructive, monstrous cat dreams of a fox-faced man who grants wishes in an ironically cruel manner) and the unusual use of a particular magic item (an axe which splits everything it hits into two replicas of the original). For the most part, though, this is pretty ordinary stuff; perhaps in 1926 the then-atypical provenance of the stories made them stand out enough to snag the award.
Recommended for children: Sure, reading fairy tales and folk stories from all over the world is a terrific foundation for kids.
Recommended for adults: Not so much, unless you're a folktale obsessive.
A collection of mostly unrelated stories from South American countries. Based on his narration, Finger presumably traveled all over the continent collecting these stories and tales, unless he's just making up everything out of whole cloth.
That's about it, really. There are explanatory stories ("A Tale of Three Tails," which explains how the rat and deer and rabbit got their tails), fairy tales of recognizable structure and climax ("The Hungry Old Witch," "The Wonderful Mirror"), trickster tales ("El Enano," about a fox who tricks the titular greedy monster into leaving a village) and hero tales ("The Hero Twins” and "The Four Hundred," which tell of how some heroic lads killed three giants).
While the stories are pleasant enough and Finger's authorial voice is kindly and inviting, I didn’t think there was anything remarkable in their characters, plot, or the execution of the telling. Fairy tales can be timeless and enthralling, but there's nothing suspenseful or dramatic about them. And their simplicity isn't a huge draw for me. Hey, the little orphan kid met a magic lady who tells him how to defeat the evil witch! And she's right, because people who seem to be good always are, and bad people are vicious crones or ugly giants! And heaven forfend the hero actually figure out anything on his own. Let the oracle tell him exactly what steps to take.
If I'm in the mood for such things, I'd rather read Kipling or Grimm, who did the same things better. Of all the stories, only the last – "The Cat and Dream Man" – stands out, remarkable for its surreal nature (a destructive, monstrous cat dreams of a fox-faced man who grants wishes in an ironically cruel manner) and the unusual use of a particular magic item (an axe which splits everything it hits into two replicas of the original). For the most part, though, this is pretty ordinary stuff; perhaps in 1926 the then-atypical provenance of the stories made them stand out enough to snag the award.
Recommended for children: Sure, reading fairy tales and folk stories from all over the world is a terrific foundation for kids.
Recommended for adults: Not so much, unless you're a folktale obsessive.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Sunday Warbooks: This Man's Army
A review of This Man’s Army: A Soldier’s Story From the Front Lines Of the War On Terrorism, by Andrew Exum.
The author, a gung-ho sort of all-American boy, went through ROTC at Penn State, then through Ranger School. After 9/11, he was deployed with the 10th Mountain Division into Afghanistan, where his men patrolled the Shah-i-Kot Valley and ferreted out al-Quaeda dug in there (a mission dubbed Operation Anaconda).
This brief memoir is perhaps a little light on the military side (9/11 does not occur until page 70, Exum's platoon leaves Kuwait and lands in Bagram on page 120, and he's back home by page 200). However, the strength of this book is not in its descriptions of combat. Instead, it's a book that, perhaps more than most "country boy goes to war" stories, reveals not so much what it's like to be in war as what it's like to be transformed by war.
Exum, a deep, educated, and introspective writer, muses thoughtfully on the dedication to serve; his need to deliberately put God out of his mind while on patrol and his disdain for those who try to graft war and Christianity; what it means to kill in combat; and the bonds between soldiers formed by combat. The book is an excellent testament to how, even when war doesn't destroy or maim a man, it leaves indelible marks on him. "After the shooting stops, how does the soldier settle back into society and modern civilization?" he asks at the end of the book, and then says, "I'm still looking for the answer."
This book is out of print, which is a shame, because out of the massive glut of Iraq and Afghan memoirs, this one stands out as a much-needed philosophical take on war in modern society.
***
Sunday warbooks scoreboard:
Greco-Persian wars: 2
WWI: 2
WWII: 4
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
Afghanistan war: 1
General warfare: 2
The author, a gung-ho sort of all-American boy, went through ROTC at Penn State, then through Ranger School. After 9/11, he was deployed with the 10th Mountain Division into Afghanistan, where his men patrolled the Shah-i-Kot Valley and ferreted out al-Quaeda dug in there (a mission dubbed Operation Anaconda).
This brief memoir is perhaps a little light on the military side (9/11 does not occur until page 70, Exum's platoon leaves Kuwait and lands in Bagram on page 120, and he's back home by page 200). However, the strength of this book is not in its descriptions of combat. Instead, it's a book that, perhaps more than most "country boy goes to war" stories, reveals not so much what it's like to be in war as what it's like to be transformed by war.
Exum, a deep, educated, and introspective writer, muses thoughtfully on the dedication to serve; his need to deliberately put God out of his mind while on patrol and his disdain for those who try to graft war and Christianity; what it means to kill in combat; and the bonds between soldiers formed by combat. The book is an excellent testament to how, even when war doesn't destroy or maim a man, it leaves indelible marks on him. "After the shooting stops, how does the soldier settle back into society and modern civilization?" he asks at the end of the book, and then says, "I'm still looking for the answer."
This book is out of print, which is a shame, because out of the massive glut of Iraq and Afghan memoirs, this one stands out as a much-needed philosophical take on war in modern society.
***
Sunday warbooks scoreboard:
Greco-Persian wars: 2
WWI: 2
WWII: 4
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
Afghanistan war: 1
General warfare: 2
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Newbery winners III
In 1924, a book called The Dark Frigate, by Charles Boardman Hawes, won the third Newbery Medal. This week, a mere 85 years later, I read that book. And like the Ancient Mariner, I must tell my tale.
This is a pirate story set in the days just before the English Civil Wars. Philip Marsham is the son of a sailor, estranged from his wealthy grandparents and apparently living by his wits. Times are hard for a poor young man, and he sets off to sea with an unsavory character he meets on the road. Marsham makes a fine boswain, but his ship is overtaken by pirates. The kind-hearted lad is forced to sail with them for a while, then escapes only to be captured and tried with the crew
The plot is very simple, but there's more to the book than the bare-boned precis above would indicate. The book is a series of encounters in Marsham's life, and its strength lies in characterization and dialogue rather than complex twists and turns of plot.
It’s an interesting book for the historical detail (down to the quite recondite speech and arcane vocabulary) and for Hawes’ unwillingness to be trite or shallow: some characters loom large and then fade away, as in life, and the villain of the piece is given his due as a brave and clever man, true to his own principles even if he is a violent, bloody thief.
But there’s something to be said for getting drama out of heroism vs. treachery, and I felt as if Marsham was merely an observer to the tale, and not its protagonist; in that sense it compares unfavorably to the somewhat similar Kidnapped or Black Arrow, both by Robert Louis Stevenson, who knew how to craft a truly gripping adventure story.
Recommended for children: It's a decent tale, but I can’t imagine most adults, let alone children, of today reading this book with much understanding: the language is really very obscure, and some of the action bafflingly subtle.
Recommended for adults: See above. I've deliberately cultivated a very extensive vocabulary all my life; also, I was practically raised on archaic Britishisms and sea lingo thanks to my English father and British Navy uncles, and I found the speech hard to fathom at times.
This is a pirate story set in the days just before the English Civil Wars. Philip Marsham is the son of a sailor, estranged from his wealthy grandparents and apparently living by his wits. Times are hard for a poor young man, and he sets off to sea with an unsavory character he meets on the road. Marsham makes a fine boswain, but his ship is overtaken by pirates. The kind-hearted lad is forced to sail with them for a while, then escapes only to be captured and tried with the crew
The plot is very simple, but there's more to the book than the bare-boned precis above would indicate. The book is a series of encounters in Marsham's life, and its strength lies in characterization and dialogue rather than complex twists and turns of plot.
It’s an interesting book for the historical detail (down to the quite recondite speech and arcane vocabulary) and for Hawes’ unwillingness to be trite or shallow: some characters loom large and then fade away, as in life, and the villain of the piece is given his due as a brave and clever man, true to his own principles even if he is a violent, bloody thief.
But there’s something to be said for getting drama out of heroism vs. treachery, and I felt as if Marsham was merely an observer to the tale, and not its protagonist; in that sense it compares unfavorably to the somewhat similar Kidnapped or Black Arrow, both by Robert Louis Stevenson, who knew how to craft a truly gripping adventure story.
Recommended for children: It's a decent tale, but I can’t imagine most adults, let alone children, of today reading this book with much understanding: the language is really very obscure, and some of the action bafflingly subtle.
Recommended for adults: See above. I've deliberately cultivated a very extensive vocabulary all my life; also, I was practically raised on archaic Britishisms and sea lingo thanks to my English father and British Navy uncles, and I found the speech hard to fathom at times.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Sunday Warbooks: Last Citadel
A review of Last Citadel: A Novel of the Battle of Kursk, by David L. Robbins.
In 1943, as the war rages on the Eastern Front and the outcome seems bleak for the Soviets, the biggest tank battle in history occurs in the fields around Kursk and Prokhorovka. Robbins takes his title from Operation Citadel, the German code name for the attack on Soviet forces dug in around Kursk.
Robbins interweaves four basic storylines: first, there's the old (but not obsolete) Cossack Dimitri, a master horseman turned tank driver under the commander, his son Valentin (literally under him --- Valentin steps on his shoulders to get him to steer). Dimitri deals with the war through the eyes of a traditionalist and clansman, who sees his son slipping away to the colder Soviet mentality. Next, Dimitri’s daughter, Katya, is a “Night Witch,” one of the female night bombing crew; she is shot down attempting to rescue her lover, a pilot, and joins a band of fierce partisans led by a gruff bandit self-styled “Colonel Bad.” The war for intelligence is tackled as well: German Colonel Abram Breit is an intelligence officer secretly supplying the Russians with information under the Lucy spy ring. Finally, there’s Luis de Vega, a Spanish SS officer, gaunt and skeletal thanks to a Soviet wound, who hungers for revenge and redemption as the commander of Germany’s new fearsome, supposedly invincible Tiger tanks.
Robbins brings it all together in a tight, fast-paced, dramatic, deeply researched book. At 414 pages, it’s an epic, but it centers on the human interest rather than the big picture. We feel Dimitri’s sense of loss, away from his son, his horses, and his swords, and the way he treats the tank like a living steed; Luis’ rage at being defined by his wound, and his love of bullfighting; Briet’s inner monologue as he betrays his country for all the right reasons; the heroic sacrifices that all the characters make. Robbins doesn’t make any of the characters one-sided; they all have their motivations, histories, and beliefs. We can empathize, if not sympathize, with even the Nazis.
It’s the story of a massive tank battle and an impressive rout, but Robbins tells it as a battle of wills: the differences between the personalities of Luis, who sees his men as faceless tools to be used and discarded in the undying quest for victory and adulation, and Dimitri, who holds clan above all else, are as telling as the technical differences between their tanks. It’s an exciting, hugely successful historical novel.
***
Sunday warbooks scoreboard:
Greco-Persian wars: 2
WWI: 2
WWII: 4 <---winning big now!
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
General warfare: 2
In 1943, as the war rages on the Eastern Front and the outcome seems bleak for the Soviets, the biggest tank battle in history occurs in the fields around Kursk and Prokhorovka. Robbins takes his title from Operation Citadel, the German code name for the attack on Soviet forces dug in around Kursk.
Robbins interweaves four basic storylines: first, there's the old (but not obsolete) Cossack Dimitri, a master horseman turned tank driver under the commander, his son Valentin (literally under him --- Valentin steps on his shoulders to get him to steer). Dimitri deals with the war through the eyes of a traditionalist and clansman, who sees his son slipping away to the colder Soviet mentality. Next, Dimitri’s daughter, Katya, is a “Night Witch,” one of the female night bombing crew; she is shot down attempting to rescue her lover, a pilot, and joins a band of fierce partisans led by a gruff bandit self-styled “Colonel Bad.” The war for intelligence is tackled as well: German Colonel Abram Breit is an intelligence officer secretly supplying the Russians with information under the Lucy spy ring. Finally, there’s Luis de Vega, a Spanish SS officer, gaunt and skeletal thanks to a Soviet wound, who hungers for revenge and redemption as the commander of Germany’s new fearsome, supposedly invincible Tiger tanks.
Robbins brings it all together in a tight, fast-paced, dramatic, deeply researched book. At 414 pages, it’s an epic, but it centers on the human interest rather than the big picture. We feel Dimitri’s sense of loss, away from his son, his horses, and his swords, and the way he treats the tank like a living steed; Luis’ rage at being defined by his wound, and his love of bullfighting; Briet’s inner monologue as he betrays his country for all the right reasons; the heroic sacrifices that all the characters make. Robbins doesn’t make any of the characters one-sided; they all have their motivations, histories, and beliefs. We can empathize, if not sympathize, with even the Nazis.
It’s the story of a massive tank battle and an impressive rout, but Robbins tells it as a battle of wills: the differences between the personalities of Luis, who sees his men as faceless tools to be used and discarded in the undying quest for victory and adulation, and Dimitri, who holds clan above all else, are as telling as the technical differences between their tanks. It’s an exciting, hugely successful historical novel.
***
Sunday warbooks scoreboard:
Greco-Persian wars: 2
WWI: 2
WWII: 4 <---winning big now!
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
General warfare: 2
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Sunday Warbooks: Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, & Scorpion Bombs
A review of Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological And Chemical Warfare In the Ancient World, by Adrienne Mayor.
Yes, it came time for the Citadel and it's come time for Sunday Warbooks: for the first time, the author is... a girl. I know! Hard to believe, but they say women-folk can be just as handy with the pen as their betters. Let's find out.
Nope! I knew it! Case closed!
In all seriousness, I was slightly disappointed with this book. The subject is, of course, intriguing as hell: the use of poisons and other biological agents in the ancient world is a starting-point surely rife with obscure tidbits. In addition, Mayor promises to refute the commonly-held belief that the ancients had some sort of code against biological warfare and subterfuge.
As to the first, the book is rather heavy on the padding, relying on mythological sources for some stories and rather stretching the definition of "biological agents" to include war elephants and strategic use of terrain such as pushing the enemy toward swamp, or diverting rivers. That's not to say that there isn't fascinating material here --- there is. We hear tales of toxic rhododendron honey, poisonous snakes being catapulted onto ships, red-hot iron scraps flung onto armor, the use of burning naphtha, arrows with detachable barbs dipped in poison and feces, and other horrors. I was particularly intrigued by Mayor's well-supported hypothesis that the Hebrews' Ark of the Covenant was actually a plague box, where elders kept infected items to be distributed to enemies.
The book is written in large part like a doctoral thesis, with repeated passages meant to support main ideas, which is a bit distracting. What is more disappointing is that Mayor doesn't, in fact, refute anything definitively --- the ancient sources she cites are, as is to be expected, ambivalent on the subject of biological warfare, as one might suppose all people are. Some hawks are all for using poison on their enemies, some forward-thinking men hesitate due to moral concern, and of course most end up using whatever is necessary to defend their homes and lives, and "moral standards" go hang.
In the end, this is a book full of interesting anecdotes, but without an overarching idea to tie it all together. That's not a deal-breaker even so, except that Mayor tries too hard, with myth and other less than solid examples, to present the historical material as if there were an overarching theme. There isn't. The ancients used a lot of biological weapons. Some hated the idea and some didn't, but it happened anyway.
Mayor gains a good chunk of validation by bringing us to the present at the end, when she compares our modern attempts at disposing of chemical weapons to the ancient Greeks' "many-headed hydra." We can bury it under a boulder like the hydra's immortal head, but it's still festering there, poisoning the earth.
***
Sunday warbooks scoreboard:
Greco-Persian wars: 2
WWI: 2
WWII: 3
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
General warfare: 2
Yes, it came time for the Citadel and it's come time for Sunday Warbooks: for the first time, the author is... a girl. I know! Hard to believe, but they say women-folk can be just as handy with the pen as their betters. Let's find out.
Nope! I knew it! Case closed!
In all seriousness, I was slightly disappointed with this book. The subject is, of course, intriguing as hell: the use of poisons and other biological agents in the ancient world is a starting-point surely rife with obscure tidbits. In addition, Mayor promises to refute the commonly-held belief that the ancients had some sort of code against biological warfare and subterfuge.
As to the first, the book is rather heavy on the padding, relying on mythological sources for some stories and rather stretching the definition of "biological agents" to include war elephants and strategic use of terrain such as pushing the enemy toward swamp, or diverting rivers. That's not to say that there isn't fascinating material here --- there is. We hear tales of toxic rhododendron honey, poisonous snakes being catapulted onto ships, red-hot iron scraps flung onto armor, the use of burning naphtha, arrows with detachable barbs dipped in poison and feces, and other horrors. I was particularly intrigued by Mayor's well-supported hypothesis that the Hebrews' Ark of the Covenant was actually a plague box, where elders kept infected items to be distributed to enemies.
The book is written in large part like a doctoral thesis, with repeated passages meant to support main ideas, which is a bit distracting. What is more disappointing is that Mayor doesn't, in fact, refute anything definitively --- the ancient sources she cites are, as is to be expected, ambivalent on the subject of biological warfare, as one might suppose all people are. Some hawks are all for using poison on their enemies, some forward-thinking men hesitate due to moral concern, and of course most end up using whatever is necessary to defend their homes and lives, and "moral standards" go hang.
In the end, this is a book full of interesting anecdotes, but without an overarching idea to tie it all together. That's not a deal-breaker even so, except that Mayor tries too hard, with myth and other less than solid examples, to present the historical material as if there were an overarching theme. There isn't. The ancients used a lot of biological weapons. Some hated the idea and some didn't, but it happened anyway.
Mayor gains a good chunk of validation by bringing us to the present at the end, when she compares our modern attempts at disposing of chemical weapons to the ancient Greeks' "many-headed hydra." We can bury it under a boulder like the hydra's immortal head, but it's still festering there, poisoning the earth.
***
Sunday warbooks scoreboard:
Greco-Persian wars: 2
WWI: 2
WWII: 3
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
General warfare: 2
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Newbery Winners II
In this, the second installment of my newest and possibly most pointless project, I take on 1923's winner, The Voyages Of Dr. Dolittle, by Hugh Lofting. Because of the 1967 movie starring Rex Harrison, this is a book that probably quite a few adults think they're familiar with, even if they haven't read it. Well, as with most of these cases, if you haven't read the actual book, you miss the nuances (like Moby Dick being about more than a guy chasing a whale).
The narrator, one Tommy Stubbins, begins at the moment when, as a nine-year-old lad, he came to meet the man who can talk to animals and became his assistant. Dolittle is a very cheerful man, a little round childlike fellow who doesn't stand on ceremony and has a duck for a housekeeper. He learned the languages of the animals from Polynesia, a parrot. Well, anyhoo, Tommy and the doctor travel together to Spidermonkey Island, which is a floating island, in a search for one of the world’s great naturalists, an Indian named Long Arrow. They encounter him, but find it difficult to leave the island, for reasons which I won't go into in case anyone cares to read the book.
Though I wasn’t highly impressed with the book with the first few chapters, after they get to the island, a plot breaks out. And even before then, there are two memorable scenes involving Dolittle interrogating a dog at a murder trial and pretending to participate in a bullfight in Spain.
In all, it’s an amusing, if lightweight, bit of fantasy, part of the wide British reaction to the horrors of WWI. Two items of interest that people who have not read the book might not know are:
Recommended for adults: For its historical and cultural impact, but not its literary value.
The narrator, one Tommy Stubbins, begins at the moment when, as a nine-year-old lad, he came to meet the man who can talk to animals and became his assistant. Dolittle is a very cheerful man, a little round childlike fellow who doesn't stand on ceremony and has a duck for a housekeeper. He learned the languages of the animals from Polynesia, a parrot. Well, anyhoo, Tommy and the doctor travel together to Spidermonkey Island, which is a floating island, in a search for one of the world’s great naturalists, an Indian named Long Arrow. They encounter him, but find it difficult to leave the island, for reasons which I won't go into in case anyone cares to read the book.
Though I wasn’t highly impressed with the book with the first few chapters, after they get to the island, a plot breaks out. And even before then, there are two memorable scenes involving Dolittle interrogating a dog at a murder trial and pretending to participate in a bullfight in Spain.
In all, it’s an amusing, if lightweight, bit of fantasy, part of the wide British reaction to the horrors of WWI. Two items of interest that people who have not read the book might not know are:
- Although this is the book that won the Newbery, it's actually the second in the Dolittle series, The Story of Dr. Dolittle being the 1920 debut. I was unaware of this even after I'd finished the book.
- The book has mildly racist overtones, with several uses of the N-word and a healthy serving of the white man's burden as a plot point.
Recommended for adults: For its historical and cultural impact, but not its literary value.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Sunday Warbooks: Medal of Honor
A review of Medal of Honor, by Allen Mikaelian (with some commentary here and there by Mike Wallace).
Eleven Medal of Honor recipients are profiled here, from the highly controversial woman non-combatant winner, Mary Edwards Walker, a doctor during the Civil War, to two Vietnam War heroes who were affected by their experiences in very different ways. There’s a little bit of background on the history of the medal itself, but mostly this is a book about men who showed incredible valor in the face of great danger. It’s a very affecting look at military experience — not a homogeneous thing at all, but perhaps unified by a common call for unexpected, immediate and astonishing bravery.
It's a light read, with little in the way of military history to put things in context (Wallace's bits don't make much of an impact). And perhaps that's the way it should be; this is solely the "boots on the ground" viewpoint, in which the desires of high command figure little. I've forgotten who said it, but someone who knew what he was talking about once said that men don't fight for their heads of state or for their country; they fight and die for their fellow soldiers. This is a book that makes the sentiment clear. It's especially true in the stories of the black and Nisei soldiers, whose selfless valor in the face of cruelty, persecution and suspicion by their fellow soldiers gives their tales the most emotional resonance.
There's nothing necessary about this particular book, by which I mean it gives no new insights into the nature of bravery or the minds of soldiers in war, nor is the caliber of the prose worth remarking on. But Medal of Honor earners' lives are stories that deserve to be told, and that's reason enough for Mikaelian to publish these particular ones. There's nothing in the most dramatic Hollywood war picture to compare with the real miracles these soldiers performed.
***
Sunday warbooks scoreboard:
Greco-Persian wars: 2
WWI: 2
WWII: 3
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
General warfare: 1
Eleven Medal of Honor recipients are profiled here, from the highly controversial woman non-combatant winner, Mary Edwards Walker, a doctor during the Civil War, to two Vietnam War heroes who were affected by their experiences in very different ways. There’s a little bit of background on the history of the medal itself, but mostly this is a book about men who showed incredible valor in the face of great danger. It’s a very affecting look at military experience — not a homogeneous thing at all, but perhaps unified by a common call for unexpected, immediate and astonishing bravery.
It's a light read, with little in the way of military history to put things in context (Wallace's bits don't make much of an impact). And perhaps that's the way it should be; this is solely the "boots on the ground" viewpoint, in which the desires of high command figure little. I've forgotten who said it, but someone who knew what he was talking about once said that men don't fight for their heads of state or for their country; they fight and die for their fellow soldiers. This is a book that makes the sentiment clear. It's especially true in the stories of the black and Nisei soldiers, whose selfless valor in the face of cruelty, persecution and suspicion by their fellow soldiers gives their tales the most emotional resonance.
There's nothing necessary about this particular book, by which I mean it gives no new insights into the nature of bravery or the minds of soldiers in war, nor is the caliber of the prose worth remarking on. But Medal of Honor earners' lives are stories that deserve to be told, and that's reason enough for Mikaelian to publish these particular ones. There's nothing in the most dramatic Hollywood war picture to compare with the real miracles these soldiers performed.
***
Sunday warbooks scoreboard:
Greco-Persian wars: 2
WWI: 2
WWII: 3
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
General warfare: 1
Sunday, January 11, 2009
I'm gonna read all the Newbery winners
Hello and welcome to a new 90-part series I like to call "I'm gonna read all the Newbery winners."
Part One: 1922's winner, Hendrik Willem van Loon's magnum opus The Story Of Mankind.
And what a hefty fellow this book is! Published in 1921 and updated every decade or so until the mid-80s, this world history for the younger set clocks in at a generous 590 close-typed pages.
Van Loon starts at the very beginning, with a mention of how very brief Mankind's time on Earth has been compared to other previous inhabitants' reigns, and then moves right into our early ape-like ancestors, the development of tools and writing, Egypt, the Sumerians, Greece, and so on. He's got a breezy, warm style, writing as if he's talking to an interested (and advanced) young scholar, and it's mostly engaging. Every once in a while, though, van Loon gets caught up in tangents and relative clauses, and we get a nightmare sentence like this:
Some of it is interesting (the brief chapter on the life of Jesus is handled beautifully), but the sheer depth of it all starts to take its toll. And it gets worse. Van Loon died in 1944, so the chapters on post-war Europe, Vietnam, the space race, and the Cold War are written by other scholars, who lack van Loon's affable (if sometimes meandering) narrative style. The last dozen or so pages are particularly redolent of the dry textbook.
I got through it, but I didn't feel as if I'd learned all that much at the end. I know adults these days give way too little credit for how much kids can and want to learn, but this tome isn't suitable for even a very intelligent fourth-grader to use as a learning tool.
Recommended for kids: No.
Recommended for adults: No.
Part One: 1922's winner, Hendrik Willem van Loon's magnum opus The Story Of Mankind.
And what a hefty fellow this book is! Published in 1921 and updated every decade or so until the mid-80s, this world history for the younger set clocks in at a generous 590 close-typed pages.
Van Loon starts at the very beginning, with a mention of how very brief Mankind's time on Earth has been compared to other previous inhabitants' reigns, and then moves right into our early ape-like ancestors, the development of tools and writing, Egypt, the Sumerians, Greece, and so on. He's got a breezy, warm style, writing as if he's talking to an interested (and advanced) young scholar, and it's mostly engaging. Every once in a while, though, van Loon gets caught up in tangents and relative clauses, and we get a nightmare sentence like this:
In central Europe, in Bohemia, the devoted disciples of Johanness Huss, the friend and follower of John Wycliffe, the English reformer, were avenging with a terrible warfare the death of their beloved leader who had been burned at the stake by order of that same Council of Constance, which had promised him a safe-conduct if he would come to Switzerland and explain his doctrines to the Pope, the Emperor, twenty-three cardinals, thirty-three archbishops and bishops, one hundred and fifty abbots and more than a hundred princes and dukes who had gathered together to reform their church.This single sentence is found in the second paragraph of a chapter ostensibly about Thomas à Kempis and "The Age of Expression;" neither Huss, Wycliffe, nor even the Council of Constance had been mentioned before. It's all a bit much for the educated adult, let alone a child trying to learn a little history.
Some of it is interesting (the brief chapter on the life of Jesus is handled beautifully), but the sheer depth of it all starts to take its toll. And it gets worse. Van Loon died in 1944, so the chapters on post-war Europe, Vietnam, the space race, and the Cold War are written by other scholars, who lack van Loon's affable (if sometimes meandering) narrative style. The last dozen or so pages are particularly redolent of the dry textbook.
I got through it, but I didn't feel as if I'd learned all that much at the end. I know adults these days give way too little credit for how much kids can and want to learn, but this tome isn't suitable for even a very intelligent fourth-grader to use as a learning tool.
Recommended for kids: No.
Recommended for adults: No.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Sunday Warbooks: The Battle of Salamis
Cringe, helots! Warbooks are back and this time it's personal. Well, not really. It's pretty much still totally dictated by finance and hegemony.
A review of The Battle of Salamis, by Barry Strauss.
This is an enjoyably readable, impressively detailed account of the sea battle that took place in 480 BC between the quasi-united Greeks --- officially under a Spartan commander but heavily influenced by the Athenian strategist Themistocles --- and the tremendously more numerous army of the Persian god-king, Xerxes.
For his account, Strauss closely follows Herodotus and other sources, accepting them as reliable for the most part (and there's fair reason to take the ancients at their word), but sweetening the tale with hundreds of details, born of modern scholarship, about the geography of the battle site, the prevailing winds, manners of dress, class structure, the physical requirements of rowing a trireme, and so forth. This book is a masterwork of erudition, yet written with a very pleasing and dramatic style that emphasizes the daring stratagems of Themistocles (for example, his false treachery to the Persians, when he sent his slave Sicinnus to say the Greeks were fleeing and that Xerxes should strike immediately, while in reality the Greeks were waiting for the Persians) and the therefore remarkable nature of the Greek victory.
The subtitle of the book is "The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece – And Western Civilization," which is a bit of hyperbole, because in my view had the Greeks lost at Salamis they simply would have girded up and won a victory elsewhere. But Strauss seems to accept this hypothetical point; he means something different. To Strauss, whileSalamis didn’t necessarily ensure classical civilization, which probably would have happened anyway, it did create a new kind of imperial democracy. Athens gained mastery of the sea and in short time her allies in the Delian League were closer akin to satellite states than allies.
Near the end of the book, Strauss given an account of this imperial Athens which seems to echo into the America of this decade. "At home,Athens Athens
Ah yes. Compromises in the name of liberty.
***
Books down for the count:
Greco-Persian wars: 2
WWI: 2
WWII: 3
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
A review of The Battle of Salamis, by Barry Strauss.
This is an enjoyably readable, impressively detailed account of the sea battle that took place in 480 BC between the quasi-united Greeks --- officially under a Spartan commander but heavily influenced by the Athenian strategist Themistocles --- and the tremendously more numerous army of the Persian god-king, Xerxes.
For his account, Strauss closely follows Herodotus and other sources, accepting them as reliable for the most part (and there's fair reason to take the ancients at their word), but sweetening the tale with hundreds of details, born of modern scholarship, about the geography of the battle site, the prevailing winds, manners of dress, class structure, the physical requirements of rowing a trireme, and so forth. This book is a masterwork of erudition, yet written with a very pleasing and dramatic style that emphasizes the daring stratagems of Themistocles (for example, his false treachery to the Persians, when he sent his slave Sicinnus to say the Greeks were fleeing and that Xerxes should strike immediately, while in reality the Greeks were waiting for the Persians) and the therefore remarkable nature of the Greek victory.
The subtitle of the book is "The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece – And Western Civilization," which is a bit of hyperbole, because in my view had the Greeks lost at Salamis they simply would have girded up and won a victory elsewhere. But Strauss seems to accept this hypothetical point; he means something different. To Strauss, while
Near the end of the book, Strauss given an account of this imperial Athens which seems to echo into the America of this decade. "At home,
Ah yes. Compromises in the name of liberty.
***
Books down for the count:
Greco-Persian wars: 2
WWI: 2
WWII: 3
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Sunday Warbooks: The Ghost Road
A review of The Ghost Road, a novel by Pat Barker.
This novel is set in England, late 1918. It won the Booker Prize.
The story deals with two men whose paths are related. Billy Prior, an officer who has three tours of duty under his belt, goes back to France for a fourth time almost fatalistic in his outlook. Meanwhile, a psychiatrist who once dealt with Prior, Dr. William Rivers, finds himself while feverish with flu mentally plunged back into his experiences with a tribe of south seas islanders, headhunters drenched in mysticism and ghost-ritual who are no longer allowed to hunt heads. These fever dreams give him new insights into how he deals with his patients.
I learned after reading this book that it's the third in a trilogy. I'm a stickler for reading things in the right order, but the book doesn't appear to exclude newcomers; I was immediately drawn into its harrowing drama. Barker blends the historical and fictional seamlessly (the poet Wilfred Owen is a character, and Rivers was historical as well), and writes of the carnage, camaraderie and ritual of war so well, you’d think she was a WWI veteran. She's an intelligent writer who easily weilds an almost poetic prose.
She’s also very capable of writing from a male perspective. Perhaps she goes overboard in the virility department, in fact, making Prior rather omnisexual. Also, she spreads the homosexual experiences rather thickly on the ground in my opinion. But then, maybe the British officer class during the Great War really was riddled with buggery. And then, too, perhaps Barker uses sexuality as a metaphor for the frantic, necessary comradeship of soldiers in war.
I was really moved by this haunting, imaginative and insightful look at WWI and its larger themes.
***
Sunday Warbooks casualty count:
Greco-Persian wars: 1
WWI: 2
WWII: 3
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
This novel is set in England, late 1918. It won the Booker Prize.
The story deals with two men whose paths are related. Billy Prior, an officer who has three tours of duty under his belt, goes back to France for a fourth time almost fatalistic in his outlook. Meanwhile, a psychiatrist who once dealt with Prior, Dr. William Rivers, finds himself while feverish with flu mentally plunged back into his experiences with a tribe of south seas islanders, headhunters drenched in mysticism and ghost-ritual who are no longer allowed to hunt heads. These fever dreams give him new insights into how he deals with his patients.
I learned after reading this book that it's the third in a trilogy. I'm a stickler for reading things in the right order, but the book doesn't appear to exclude newcomers; I was immediately drawn into its harrowing drama. Barker blends the historical and fictional seamlessly (the poet Wilfred Owen is a character, and Rivers was historical as well), and writes of the carnage, camaraderie and ritual of war so well, you’d think she was a WWI veteran. She's an intelligent writer who easily weilds an almost poetic prose.
She’s also very capable of writing from a male perspective. Perhaps she goes overboard in the virility department, in fact, making Prior rather omnisexual. Also, she spreads the homosexual experiences rather thickly on the ground in my opinion. But then, maybe the British officer class during the Great War really was riddled with buggery. And then, too, perhaps Barker uses sexuality as a metaphor for the frantic, necessary comradeship of soldiers in war.
I was really moved by this haunting, imaginative and insightful look at WWI and its larger themes.
***
Sunday Warbooks casualty count:
Greco-Persian wars: 1
WWI: 2
WWII: 3
Vietnam: 2
Iraq wars: 2
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