The Smoke at Dawn

The Smoke at Dawn
© 2014 Jeff Shaara
528 pages

The bells of the South in 1863 rang death knells, not peals of joyous victory. In July, on the same day that Lee's army suffered a staggering loss at Gettysburg,  General Grant of the Union army took possession of Vicksburg, and within it gained complete command of the Mississippi river. The South fractured and its strength wasted, the Confederates needed a fresh triumph. In November, General Braxton Bragg commanding rebel forces in Tennessee thought he might be the man to deliver it. After routing a Union army, he cornered them in Chattanooga, where he hoped a quick siege would see their surrender and regain the South its lost momentum.  The Smoke at Dawn is the story of the Chattanooga Campaign, of armies stumbling in the night through battlefields that soar into the sky.  It's also the tale of commanding personalities, of men set at odds even against their comrades. The third book in Shaara's new Civil War series is a third triumph for the author -- and General Grant. 

Like Shaara's other works, The Smoke at Dawn is a swiftly-moving narrative composed largely of the thoughts and conversations of generals commanding the battle. This combined with more conventional narration is highly effective at putting the reader into the generals' position without being rambling.  Many of the characters are familiar names; Grant, Longstreet, and Sherman among them.  The greatest maneuvers and best battlefield performances, however, are put on by generals who fame has ignored.  The focus on the generals from across the field give the reader a strategic understanding of what is happening, allowing witness of the way the armies wrangled around one another, attempting to control supply lines or use the river to land by stealth and deliver devastating stealth attacks. The river puts the generals in the curious place of sometimes being closer to their foes than their friends;   Generals Thomas and Grant, commanding, can view Burnside's own headquarters  from their own positions.   

As in his more recent work, Shaara also employs a few infantrymen to deliver combat scenes; the most notable here is Fritz Bauer, a Wisconsin orphan who would be alone in the world were it not for his best friend Willis. When Willis leaves the volunteers for the regular army, Bauer follows suit, and their course through the campaign gives not only plentiful action scenes, but the realization that soldiers often fought not for ideals but for their comrades. The book as a whole is steeped in the power of human relationships;  the obstinate and autocratic Braxton Bragg's contemptuous attitude toward his subordinates withers away his own army's effectiveness.  He earns no one's trust save Jefferson Davis', spending the entire battle fighting with his own officers and  once sending an entire corps away just to be delivered from a potential threat to his authority. Between Bauer's devotion and Bragg's contempt is the happy medium of rivalry,  most prominently Sherman's running duel with his equally highly effective Confederate counterpart. Despite Sherman's reputation and Grant's high esteem of him,  Sherman can't seem to best Patrick Cleburne.  For all of Bragg's discipline and Sherman's speed, however, ultimately the battle's upset is decided by unpredictable forces -- like a diversionary force that advances further than planned, attempting to avoid being slaughtered by artillery, and results in routing  an entire army. 

Readers of Civil War fiction will find The Smoke at Dawn most attractive. The fourth book in Shaara's series will concern the Fall of Atlanta.

A Chain of Thunder

A Chain of Thunder
© 2013 Jeff Shaara

‘Twas at the Seige of Vicksburg,
Of Vicksburg, of Vicksburg,
‘Twas at the Seige of Vicksburg,
When the Parrott shells were whistlin’ through the air...

July 4th, 1863 was an unfortunate day for the Confederate States of America. Even as Robert E. Lee limped away from the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, where some of his finest, long-victorious troops were butchered and turned away,  General John Pemberton was preparing to surrender the City of Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant. With it, the Mississippi river would be controlled entirely by the Federal army, and the western rebelling states cut off from the rest of the south.  Chain of Thunder is the story of the battles and the siege that led to that surrender, the story of the fall of Vicksburg as told through the generals and soldiers of both armies...and usually for for Shaara, through the eyes of a civilian woman. The follow-up to Blaze of Glory, which covered Shiloh, it's second in Jeff Shaara's new Civil War trilogy, covering the western theater.

Although I generally expect a good tale from Shaara, a novel about Vicksburg gave me pause; how exciting can reading about one army waiting for a city to grow tired of starving be?  After a slow start, though, Chain of Thunder proves a worthy sequel.  The book is not entirely about the siege; Shaara covers both armies as they maneuver and fight in a series of skirmishes around Mississippi, as the Federal army moves doggedly toward Vicksburg and the Confederates try time and again to thwart their progress. The skirmishes are all one-sided, in part because the rebels are cursed by a divided command:  Pemberton, commanding on the ground, is subjected to opposing orders from Jefferson Davis and General Johnson, Pemberton's superior.  But whereas Jefferson has given Pemberton a general order ("Defend Vicksburg at all costs") and leaves the decision up to him how to do it, Johnson insists on trying to command the battle from long-distant Tennessee. Not only does Pemberton have to figure out whose orders to obey, but his own subordinates have opinions of their own, and by golly if Pemberton isn't going to do what they think is best, they'll take their troops and go home.  Pemberton had the misfortune to be born a Yankee, and is thus regarded by all of the characters as suspect. His wife may be a southern belle, and he may claim to be fighting for her honor and defense, but the only people south of the Mason-Dixon who believe him are her and Jefferson Davis.

Once the rebels are pushed back to Vicksburg itself, the tempo changes; the city is a fortress, and not even Grant can take it.  He thus digs in for a siege while anxiously looking behind him in case Johnson wanders in with another army. Pemberton's only hope is the possible arrival of Johnson, and it is that hope that prompts him to try to endure the siege. The action doesn't disappear during these long weeks of waiting:  in addition to scenes from the home front through a young society lady turned nurse (think of an orphaned Scarlett O'Hara, but considerably more pleasant), readers are treated to a duel of sharpshooters. Chain of Thunder is less dominated by combat than Blaze of Glory; instead, Shaara follows up on the stories of his characters as introduced in the Shiloh novel; the conflict between Johnson, Pemberton, and Davis, for instance, and the evolution of William Sherman's total-war thinking. The book defends the characters of both Pemberton (dismissed as an faithless incompetent) and Grant (regarded as a sometimes drunkard) while making a few attacks of its own, like unexpected swipe at the modern anti-vaccine movement.  I found it rather enjoyable on the whole.


Oh, well will we remember
Remember, remember,
Tough mule meat, June sans November,
And the minie-balls that whistled through the air!



("Twas at the Siege of Vicksburg", ACW song performed by Bobby Horton.)

Related:
The Most Glorious Fourth

A Blaze of Glory

A Blaze of Glory
© 2012 Jeff Shaara
464 pages

Come all you gallant soldiers, a story I will tell

About the bloody battle on top of Shiloh's hill

It was an awful struggle; it'll cause your heart to chill

All from the bloody battle on top of Shiloh's hill.

  In 1974, Michael Shaara wrote an unparalleled novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, eschewing a traditional narrative and telling the story directly from the point of view of various generals and infantrymen who contended against one another amid Pennsylvania’s rocky hills and woodlands. The novel met enormous critical and popular success, and when it became a movie,  Shaara’s son Jeff was prompted to consider picking up where his late father left off and writing similar novels in the same time. He responded with Gods and Generals, concerning the war’s beginning, and later with The Last Full Measure, making his father’s original part of an American Civil War trilogy. Keeping his father’s style, Shaara followed up on his success with novels set in all of the United States’ major wars – the Invasion of Mexico, the War of Independence, and the two world wars.  The WW2 novels saw Shaara attempting to create his own narrative approach, one focused on fewer characters, but in A Blaze of Glory he returns to both his original style and setting:  1862, the American Civil War. But this time Shaara writes not of Lee and Grant, of the armies of the Potomac and of Virgina. Here, the action begins in the west, and the main event is the staggeringly bloody battle of Shiloh.

            Shaara turning his attention to the little-regarded western theater is most welcome:  although the battles of Shiloh and Vicksburg may have some name recognition,  the eastern characters and battles (Lee and Grant;  Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg) dominate the national imagination.  I also welcome Shaara’s return to his and his father’s former style: the WW2 novels were overly dominated by one or two characters and didn’t deliver the varied substance of The Killer Angels and other works. Here, Shaara’s panel includes Albert Sidney Johnston, Nathan Bedford Forrest,  Grant, Sherman, and a few infantrymen from both sides. This allows Shaara to tell the story from both sides, without demonizing either. Consistently, the generals chide their men for dehumanizing the enemy, pointing out that the “rebs” or the “bluebellies” are just as clever, just as tough, and just as resolute in believing the righteousness of their cause as their respective side is.

            Shaara’s writing in A Blaze of Glory is as compelling as ever: he captures splendidly the utter confusion in the opening day of battle, as the southern troops hammer through a bewildered Union line, and the grisly impact of the bloodshed on the second day. It’s an experience that leaves one stunned, especially when main characters become part of the carnage. At novel’s end, one can’t help but reflect on how much was lost in one battle for relatively nothing, and the epilogue doesn’t improve judgments of the battle’s worth.  Unlike battles covered in other novels, there’s no triumph to celebrate, nothing to redeem the carnage and make it seem worthwhile. And yet even knowing this, I’d read it again, because Johnston is a particularly inviting character, and the suspense and action make it an exciting read even given the subdued ending.

            If Blaze of Glory is any indication of what we have to look forward to, Shaara’s new ACW trilogy will prove quite a treat, for it begins with a battle that is both a thriller and gives opportunity for sober reflection on the costs of the war.

Although we won the battle, my heart is filled with pain

The one that brought me to this life I'll never see again

I pray to the lord  if consistent with his will

Lord save the souls of them poor boys that died on Shiloh's hill.

Related:

• The Killer Angels; Gods and Generals; The Last Full Measure; Gone for Soldiers; Michael and Jeff Shaara
• Shiloh, 1862, Winston Groom
• "The Battle of Shiloh Hill", various artists. The most haunting version I've yet heard is Bobby Horton's. YouTube has a cover by Wayne Erbsen.

The Final Storm

The Final Storm
© 2011 Jeff Shaara
446 pages

The Final Storm is an appetizer served in lieu of a main course: tasty, but unsatisfying. As fine a story as it is, it's a frustratingly disappointing treatment of the Pacific War.

Jeff Shaara has penned three prior novels set during the Second World War, all set in the European theatre. Shaara borrows his father's intimate writing style, which combines traditional narration with a stream-of-consciousness approach that conveys the thoughts and emotions of his lead characters. In the case of the Final Front, "lead character" is a more accurate expression, for this novel distinguishes itself among Shaara's work by focusing heavily on one character: Clay Adams, Marine. Adams is among the ranks of the men who are expected to pray the Japanese army from Okinawa and set the stage for the greatest, bloodiest battle ever imagined: the Invasion of Japan.


The Final Front picks up in spring 1945, when Japan is defeated, but defiant: despite the lack of naval and aerial support, the Japanese soldiers on Okinawa fight ferociously and cost the American marines and infantry dearly. Battle is inevitably gruesome, but the island battles of the Pacific War are exemplars of the horrors of combat: Eugene Sledge's stomach-churning details of Okinawa  ("hell's own cesspool") still linger with me over a year after reading his memoirs, and Shaara's account brought those memories into sharper focus.  While the Battle of Okinawa is meant to depict the difficulties, cost, and savagery of the Pacific War as whole, the fourth act -- relatively minor -- offers Adams and the reader some relief by promising to bring the war to a swift conclusion through the use of the atomic bomb.

The fourth act seemed more like an epilogue than anything else: ultimately this is a novel about the Battle of Okinawa. Clay Adams is the predominate character,  relegating almost everyone else to the sidelines until the final pages when Truman and bomber pilot Col. Paul Tibbets take priority. The focus on Adams  may be a sign that Shaara is developing his own style (moving away from his father's use of multiple viewpoint characters from all sides), but it means that this is NOT a book about the Pacific War as a whole. Shaara is perfectly capable of penning a  grand Pacific trilogy, one beginning in 1941 and following key characters,  through to Okinawa and beyond, doing justice to the Marines, airmen, and sailors who fought,  but apparently his publishers are in a hurry for him to write a Civil War trilogy to be published next year in time for several anniversaries.

While it's a fine story, I'm hard-pressed to recommend it. This isn't a suitable tribute to the Pacific War, and those wanting to read about Okinawa would be better served reading Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed. 

No Less than Victory

No Less than Victory
© 2009 Jeff Shaara
449 pages

This was released only a month ago, and completes Shaara's WW2-Europe trilogy, the previous titles being The Rising Tide and The Steel Wave. The books are historical fiction, although most characters -- perhaps all in this book -- are historical personalities. Shaara borrows from his father's style in writing the book in a way that depicts the soldiers' and generals' reactions to the war as it develops around them: sentences are often styled to convey the thoughts of each chapter's viewpoint character. Eisenhower and Patton have been viewpoint characters throughout the whole of the series, but they are the only two carry-overs: grunt soldier George Benson joins the cast on the American side to give readers both an overview of the war (the generals' chapters often serve as exposition and move the plot along) and the soldiers' view on the ground. As is typical of Shaara, viewpoint characters are drawn from both sides of the conflict, and at least two German officials make their prescense known throughout the book. An elderly German general who is expected to take the blame for the Wehrmacht's defeat in the west serves the same function as Rommel in previous books, -- giving the reader a "good" German who loves his country and is frustrated by Hitler's refusal to listen to reason, -- while Albert Speer serves as the reader's eyes into late-war German government given his role as one of Hitler's familiars.

The book opens in December 1942:  in the past sixth months, the Allies have liberated most of France, but have slown down to a near-stop as winter visits Europe. Rather than sit and twiddle its thumbs all winter while  American and British bombers continue to bomb them, the Wehrmacht launches a counteroffensive against American lines, resulting in what history will call the Battle of the Bulge. This conflict consumes over half the book, since it is the last gasp of German military capability. The book's plot is much slower in the first half of the book, and varies from chapter to chapter depending on the viewpoint character:  soldiers experience plot minute by minute, while months can pass by during a general's chapter rather quickly. Shaara's books are expressly about American history, drawing as they do from American sources, so readers hoping to visit the eastern front will be disappointed. Narrative flows more slowly than it might in say, Harry Turtledove's works, but it doesn't bog down too much -- and it picks up swiftly after the book's halfway point, when American troops begin marching into Germany proper and seeing the ravages of war.

Shaara sometimes seems present in the book. Unlike Steven Saylor, he doesn't mention to the readers what his sources were, or how extensively he drew from them, so -- except in the case of Albert Speer, whose work I am familiar with -- I do not know which of the characters' opinions belonged to their historical personalities or which belong to Shaara. At one point,  Winston Churchill pays Eisenhower a visit and gripes about the Yalta Conference: England was largely ignored, to his believable annoyance, but what really gets Winnie's goat is that Roosevelt wrote Poland off. It's difficult for me to believe Churchill cared for the people of Poland, although in a more cynical light I can easily believe in his being outraged at Russia growing in strength. Interestingly, Shaara's characters often compare and contrast Allied and Nazi morality, particularly after Dresden but before the discovery of concentration camps. While Shaara's narrative isn't too romantic, it's definitely friendly to warm and gushy patriotism. Perhaps that's appropriate: the reader must decide.

No Less than Victory is definitely a fair read. I enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed Shaara's other works, and I suspect those interested in American military history would eat it up. I read the book mostly out of loyalty to Shaara: I've been reading him since high school, and it would seem strange to stop, particularly in the middle of a series. I understand he's planning on writing about the end of the war in the Pacific.

This Week at the Library (3/7)

Books this Update:

• The Steel Wave, Jeff Shaara
• The History of Science in the 19th Century, Ray Spangenburg and Diane Moser
• Tales of the Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov
• No Ordinary Time, Doris Kearns Goodwin
• The Blank Slate, Stephen Pinker

The first book I read this week was Jeff Shaara’s The Steel Wave. I’ve been waiting for it for a little over a year, or ever since I finished The Rising Tide. Strictly speaking, The Steel Wave is “historical fiction”: Shaara attempts to tell a story from history through the eyes of various historical personalities, using memoirs and such to inform his retelling. The style is informal, and quite personal. If you remember, The Rising Tide was first in a planned trilogy of WW2 books: The Rising Tide focused on the American invasion of Africa (Operation Torch) and all that followed, including the invasion of Sicily and the Italian peninsula.

Three characters from The Rising Tide return in The Steel Wave: General Dwight Eisenhower, who is now in charge of planning the invasion of continental Europe, or “Operation Overlord”; Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, who happens to have been sent to the “backwater” Normandy countryside as punishment for losing Africa and being too “defeatist’; and Sgt. Jesse Adams, a paratrooper. Adams participated heavily in the invasion of Sicily, as his paratroop unit was to help tie down Axis armor in the area. General George Patton also appears in the beginning and end of the book as a viewpoint character, but he spends the overwhelming majority of the book commanding the fictitious First Army, which the Nazis believe is poised to invade northern France. Shaara also uses supplemental characters when necessary. For instance, he introduces the book with “The Commando”. whose job it is to infiltrate the area around Utah beach and collect soil samples to see if the area is sturdy enough to handle heavy equipment.

The book isn’t quite as thick as some of Shaara’s other contributions, but it’s a good read. I was never disappointed by the story, which moved quickly. While the central conflict of the book is military, we also see bureaucratic conflicts. In The Rising Tide, Eisenhower has to balance the forceful personalities of George Patton and Omar Bradley, both of whom want the glory -- while dealing with the cautious and methodical style of Bernard Montgomery, the British officer in the area who had been defending British possessions in Africa from Rommel. In The Steel Wave, Montgomery and Bradley are both nominally under Eisenhower’s command. While Montgomery’s cautious approach arguably costs the Allies’ military campaign, Eisenhower has to balance military needs with the need to keep the morale of British citizens up by keeping their hero in the fight. Eisenhower also has to deal with Patton, who has a tendency to make an ass of himself and embarrass the American side of the Allied command. Fortunately for Eisenhower, he finds the perfect place to stick Patton and keep him out of trouble.

On the German side, Rommel -- who takes his duties seriously -- has to deal with a variety of issues. Hitler is becoming more authoritarian and less competent -- a pair of traits that seem to go together. The Reich is stressed because of this, as the war in Russia is not going well. By “not going well”, I mean that the Red Army has stopped only because Stalin wanted to wait for the Allied invasion of France. Rommel can’t get the supplies he needs to adequately defend against the threat of Overlord, and Hitler’s constant interference means that Rommel has to ask the Fuhrer’s permission to even use his panzers -- a problem that will cost Hitler’s empire down the road.

Overall, the book was good. The narrative was excellently written. I didn't see anything factually wrong, although I did have exclamation point movements every time characters would mention the Luftwaffe, as in the book they seem to regard it as a credible threat. I thought that the Luftwaffe was pretty much a nonentity by this point; the Allies enjoyed a massive advantage in numbers (something like 25 to 1), and Eisenhower was confident enough about that advantage to tell the troops that the only planes they would see would be Allied ones. Because of this, it's hard for me to take these characters' concerns seriously -- but I think Shaara must have justification for writing it. Perhaps the German army officers were unaware as to how many planes the Luftwaffe was losing.

Next I read The History of Science in the 19th Century. The 19th century is huge for science. Not only are some tremendous advances made in chemistry, biology, and astronomy, but science as a discipline is really taking form -- the scientific method is beginning to be adopted, leading (pleasantly) to the partial extinction of things like phrenology and astrology -- which live only in the minds of the gullible. I learned about something completely new in this book -- spectroscopy. If you want to learn about it, you can go here. It’s a good resource for explaining scientific concepts to laypersons like myself. I found the site initially when I looked for how we know what the speed of light is, and when I looked this up again while reading The History of Science, I happened upon the above linked topic just as I was beginning to read about spectral lines, which is something of a coincidence. I said before that science as a discipline was taking form -- here we see groups like the Lunar Society, which was frequented both by Benjamin Franklin and Erasmus Darwin, Charles’ grandfather. Other groups, like the American and British Associations for the Advancement of Science, are formed in this time period. The National Academy of Science was also founded in the United States at this time, although the British, French, and German equivalents were founded two centuries earlier.

After this, I read Isaac Asimov’s Tales of the Black Widowers, the first collection of his “Black Widower” mysteries. The Black Widowers are a group of six men who meet in a New York restaurant once every month to socialize with a guest -- a guest who invariably happens to bring a mystery to the table. Tales of the Black Widowers contains twelve titular tales. In each, the Widowers attempt to find the solution to the mystery through reason. As in More Tales from the Black Widowers, the “mysteries” vary. Sometimes one of the Widowers catches something intriguing in their customary interview of the guest and wants to follow up on it: sometimes people come to the Widowers for help. One of the stories was completely different, and it is by far my favorite in either book. It’s called “The Obvious Solution”, and I think the book is worth finding just for that one story alone. As usual, Asimov introduces the book and provides lovely afterwords after each story.

Because I have a friendly and personal writing style, readers have a tendency to write to me in a friendly and personal way, asking all kinds of friendly and personal questions. And because I really am what my writing style, such as it is, portrays me to be, I answer those letters. And since I don’t have a secretary or any form of assistant whatever, it takes a lot of the time I should be devoting to writing.
It is only natural, then, that I have taken to writing introductions to my books in an attempt to answer some of the anticipated questions in advance, thus forestalling some of the letters.

For instance, because I write in many fields, I frequently get questions such as these:
“Why do you, a lowly science fiction writer, think you can write a two-volume work on Shakespeare?”

“Why do you, a Shakespearean scholar, choose to write science fiction thrillers?”

“What gives you, a biochemist, the nerve to write books on history?”

“What makes you, a mere historian, think you know anything about science?”
And so on, and so on.

It seems certain, then, that I will be asked, either with amusement or with exasperation, why I am writing mystery stories.

Here goes, then.

This is how Asimov begins his introduction to this book: as ever, I enjoy this part of his short-story collection the most. I think Asimov intended for his readers to solve the mysteries along with the Widowers, and sometimes I was able to do so. But honestly, sometimes I found myself so enraptured with the story that I just wanted to see how he ended it, brilliantly. I was only disappointed once, but I won’t mention the story lest I spoil it for someone else. As usual, I love this book. Sadly, though, my local library doesn’t carry any more of the Widower tales. I think they have one more collection of short stories, but just the one.

Next I read a recommendation: No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The book is a larger one, which is fitting given that it focuses on the lives of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, two historical personalities who seem larger than life at times. FDR is far and way my favorite president, and has been ever since I can remember, so when a friend of mine brought my attention to the book, I made haste to find it. The book is about life in the United States during the Second World War, but because the Roosevelts were so involved, the book is dominated by their two personalities.

The book is essentially the story of what happened on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, beginning in the late 1930s. The author takes care to introduce subjects when they come up -- offering brief biographies of various personalities, brief histories of issues like civil rights and the labor movements -- but it moves at a steady pace through the end of the thirties and into the forties. Because FDR is my favorite American president, I knew quite a bit of it already -- but there were numerous things I didn’t know. For instance, toward the end of the book the author brings up FDR’s plans to build a new “liberal” party. According to the author, Franklin believed that the nation needed a defined liberal and a defined conservative party: as it was then, both parties were fractured. He aimed to start this process by partnering with Wendell Wilkie, the man who ran against him in 1940 -- a liberal Republican who seemed to back FDR’s policies very nearly to the letter. One can certainly see why Roosevelt would have wanted a strong liberal party, as he struggles constantly with the southern Democrats, who are vigorously opposed to any kind of social reform. (By “vigorously opposed”, I mean “beating up people for being black”). Civil rights becomes a major issue because the nation needs soldiers and it needs workers -- and blacks (the author uses the word “Negroes”, apparently so the reader won’t lose contextual focus) were being largely ignored (and beaten up). Roosevelt got his wish posthumously, of course -- the Democrats adopted civil rights as a key party platform and the southern bloc left. (Good riddance.)

Civil rights is a recurring issue throughout the book, for two reasons: the war makes the racial reckoning unavoidable, and Eleanor Roosevelt is determined to effect positive change however she can -- which causes the president some problems. The author also mentions FDR’s balancing act between helping labor and getting big business on his side to fight the war without isolating either. A few weeks ago when I was doing some temporary work for a plant, I thought to myself that it would have been most unpleasant to be a factory hand in the 1940s. I assumed (rightfully so, it turns out) that workers would be made to work long hours in uncomfortable environments -- and I speculated to myself that one couldn’t complain without being branded an enemy sympathizer. It turns out my suspicions were correct, as apparently both labor and big business accused one another of trying to use the war to assert their own primacy.

The other recurring home-front issue that bears on today’s world is that of women’s rights. As the men were being drafted to fight the war, women were running the factories -- and finding out that they rather liked the idea of being productive. Social expectation changed, and society started to change with it. It seems that the headway that was made in civil rights and gender quality was lost in the 50s, though, as I’ve never heard of any real advances in either of those areas happening until the 1960s.

This book isn’t completely about social history, of course -- but social history is one of my pet history subjects, so these three topics were the ones I paid most attention to. The author also writes about the Roosevelts’ various friendships, their hobbies, and their personalities -- but I was most interested in the social developments. While the book is mostly complimentary of Roosevelt, it does bring up one of the more infamous acts of his presidency -- executive order 9066, which allowed military commanders to define areas of the country as “military areas”, which would allow them to forcibly resettle the people living and working in certain areas -- and “certain areas” turned out to be Japanese-American farms and neighborhoods. The policy also made the military responsible for housing displaced persons, and the result was camps for people whose ancestors came from Japan. Outside of John Adam’s Alien and Sedition acts, the Red Scares, and the Military Commissions Act, the internment of American citizens is one of the darkest moments in the history of American civil liberties. The book is a lengthy read, but well worth if it you like the Roosevelts or want to learn more about social developments in the 1940s.

Lastly, I read Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. It’s also a recommendation, although I think I would have gotten around to finding it myself, given my interest in neuroscience and the biological (no Freud) aspects of psychology. Pinker deals with three ideas about human nature in his book: the blank slate, or the idea that human minds are born as Play-Doh, completely malleable : the Noble Savage, the idea that human beings are essentially good creatures and are corrupted by societal pressure and needs: and the Ghost in the Machine, the idea that in each of us is some ethereal spook that makes choices independently of the biological processes of the mind. Pinker doesn’t call the book The Modern Denial of Human Nature for a reason: it is his idea that the latter two can be safely tied to the Blank Slate idea. Throughout the book, Pinker first deals with the implications of the Blank Slate as a whole, and then deals with the latter two specifically.

I found this book astonishingly interesting. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always wondered why people were the way they were. Even during high school when I was incurious about the world at large, I was still captivated by the question of why people were the way they were. This is one of the reasons I liked sociology so much when I first discovered it in my first two years of college -- and the reason I like books like V.S. Ramachandran’s Phantoms in the Brain and this one. My view of human nature is naturalistic, of course, and was that way even when I was a fundamentalist Pentecostal. I still believed in an immortal soul, I just didn’t know where it went or what it did. (Since I believed then and still believe now that every aspect of “being human” is controlled by our genetic information, the idea of a soul to explain anything is really superfluous.) In high school, I was introduced to the “nature/nurture” debate where people question which has a bigger influence on why we are what we are: our genes, or our environment? Now, back then and until recently (recent years) I thought our environment had a bit more to do with it. In the past two years, though, as I read more and more biology, I realize how much our genes impact our lives. While the environment we’re raised in is very important, our genes determine how we respond to that environment.

Pinker’s view places more emphasis on genes than I have previously. After establishing this, he goes on to examine four arguments against the naturalistic view of human nature :

The anxiety about human nature can be boiled down to four fears:

If people are innately different, oppression and discrimination would be justified.

If people are innately immortal, hopes to improve the human condition would be futile.

If people are the products of biology, free will would be a myth and we could no longer hold people responsible for their actions.

If people are products of biology, life would have no higher meaning and purpose.” (P. 137)

He then commits a chapter to each. He then examines how this idea of human nature “can provide insight into languages, thought, social life, and mortality (Part IV), and how it can clarify controversies on politics, violence, gender, childrearing, and the arts. (Part V).” (P. 3) While some of the book is pure science -- and thus will take some time to digest it -- most of the book is simply an exercise in reasoning, looking at what that science means. Pinker uses a lot of quotations to illustrate points . Richard Dawkins and E. O. Wilson (both biologists) are quoted heavily, but he also references the ancient Greek aristocrat Pindar and the poet Kahlil Gibran, as well as employing popular culture references (“Gee Officer Krupke” from West Side Story and comic strips, as well as bits of 1984 and Huckleberry Finn) to make his points. In my view he’s an excellent writer and the book deserves to be read -- even if it makes some of its readers, including myself, slightly uncomfortable. According to Wikipedia, Skeptic magazine criticized the book, which is interesting. I’d like to read that criticism.

Pick of the Week: A tie between Tales of the Black Widowers and The History of Science.
Quotation of the Week: There was an excellent quotation on the importance of maintaining civil liberties during war by Eleanor Roosevelt in No Ordinary Time, but I’ve not been able to find it again -- so I’ll just substitute one from her autobiography. “Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.”

Next week:
- The History of Science from 1895 to 1945. I’m continuing the series, of course.
- Isaac Asimov’s Treasury of Humor: 640 Jokes, Anecdotes, and Limericks, Complete with Notes on How to Tell Them, from America’s Leading Renaissance Man by (of course) Isaac Asimov.
- Murder in the Lincoln Bedroom by Elliot Roosevelt. When reading No Ordinary Time, I discovered that one of the Roosevelt sons wrote a series of mystery novels starring his mother. No, I’m not making that up. I decided to check one out to see what it was like.
- Portraits of Great American Scientists by various authors. I found this book when I looked up “E.O. Wilson” at my local library. Since E.O. Wilson is on the cover of this one, I’m going to take a leap of faith and say he is one of the scientists looked at in the book.
- The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel set in a world where the United States is taken over by fundamentalist Christians; a recommendation.
- Darwin, His Daughter, & Human Evolution by Randal Keynes. While moving toward the science section to pick up the history of science book, I saw this one displayed. The cover caught my eye, and it looks readable so I decided to go with it.

This Week At the Library (13/8)

Smellincoffee003: I read my first Harry Potter book today.
Potterhead: excellent
Potterhead: and?
Smellincoffee003: I kinda liked it.
Potterhead: muhuhahahaha

They're out to get me! This is the library I have gone to all of my life, by the way. I literally grew up with this library, as it added a new wing when I was in seventh grade. If you look at the second chimney, you can see where the library used to end. Everything to the right of that chimney is new, as is the courtyard below. The nonfiction and reference sections are in the upstairs of the older part, and the adult fiction is downstairs. The children's section is in the upstairs of the new wing, and the downstairs is mainly offices and conference areas. The inside hall facing the courtyard serves as an art gallery.



My first read last week was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which is first in the seven-book series. The majority of my online friends have been insisting (with varying degrees of intensity) that I read the the first book. Annoying as this was, it did prompt me to investigate. The Sorcerer's Stone is an enjoyable book. I enjoyed the storytelling, although I didn't really like "Lord Voldemort's" backstory. Too much supernatural weirdness for me, what with the "talking out of the back of other people's heads" thing. He'd better get his own body pretty quick-like.

There's little point in writing about the plot of the book, seeing as everyone who reads this has probably already read the Potter novels…but I will anyway. This is the story about a young boy named Harry Potter who is orphaned and sent to live with his relatives. His relatives don't like him and they mistreat him as he grows up. When Harry is very scared or angry or whatever, strange things happen -- like a large snake being released from its cage. Harry is magical, you see.

In this, the book reminded me a lot of Roald Dahl's Matilda. Matilda is about a young girl who is raised by obnoxious relatives who mistreat her as she grows up. When they are making her life miserable, however, strange things happen...like the television blowing up. Matilda has telekinesis, you see. Both Harry and Matilda get to escape to school. Despite having trouble there with other students and teachers, Harry and Matilda are both enormously helped by school. Matilda is adopted by her teacher, Miss Honey, and Harry gets six more books.

The Sorcerer's Stone also reminded me of The Sims: Makin' Magic, which I never bought for a number of reasons. I have read numerous reviews and Sim-stories, so I know what the game is like. Magic is treated the both way in both the novel and the game expansion. Overall, I enjoyed the book. My favorite part was the interplay between Ron Weasely and Hermione and Wizards' Chess. Much better than three-dimensional chess from Star Trek.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Turtles and Tortoises was wholly devoted to the subject of turtles as pets. I have given thought to how my life will be after university and such, and I figure I'll have a few pets -- a cat if I can, plus a smaller pet like a hamster or turtle. After reading the book, I am now certain that turtles deserve more care than I may be able to give them. I had already come to this decision a few weeks ago. Of course, if I move to a place where cats are prohibited (and that will factor in, as I want one), I may rethink this issue. The book is informative, but doesn't get into the behavior of wild turtles so its appeal is limited.

The Rising Tide is a novel of the Second World War, written by Jeff Shaara. I've read everything else Shaara has written, and had high expectations for this book. Those expectations were met; I think this is one of his better works. Shaara writes about the war through the eyes of the men who fought it. He writes in the same style as his father -- a style that attempts to convey the character's thoughts as they would think them. It's a curious style, but effective. I was pleased to learn that The Rising Tide is in fact first in a three-part series about the second world war. This one concentrated on North Africa, moved to the invasion of Sicily, and ended with the deposition of Mussolini and the invasion of Italy. The principal characters were General Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and two enlisted men named Logan and Adams. Logan was a tank gunner in Africa, and Adams was a paratrooper. I don't recall their first names. I found this book, like all the others written by the Shaaras, to be both informing and entertaining, and I look forward to the second and third books of the series. Both are as yet unwritten, but the first is supposedly centered around Operation Overlord -- the invasion of Normandy.

I checked out Blood and Iron thinking it was a novel of German history, focusing on one particular family. It turns out that this is a novel of genealogical history, focusing on one particular family, with German history providing the setting. I'm not all that interested in familial histories; I wouldn't even read a book on the Roosevelts.

The last book I finished was Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-5", a work of fiction inspired by his experiences as a POW in Dresden when it was firebombed. It is a rather curious book. It was very interesting and entertaining, but it was such a peculiar read that I'm really not sure what to say about it. Vonnegut tells his story through the character of a man named Billy Pilgrim. Pilgrim isn't Vonnegut, but he is supposed to have been one of Vonnegut's fellow POWs. The book tells about Pilgrim's war experiences, but it also tells about what happens after the war, even covering his death. The book doesn't do this in a chronological fashion, though. Pilgrim thinks he has been abducted by aliens and they allow him to experience all of life all at once, so that he can be in 1964 in one minute and in 1934 in another. While Vonnegut is telling this story, he's also commenting on greed and war. However peculiar a read this was, I think I may read more of Vonnegut's fiction in the future.

Pick of the Week: The Rising Tide by Jeff Shaara.

This week, I didn't really make a reading list. I had two books I knew I would get, but I hadn't gone beyond that. First, I was planning to check out Shelters of Stone to finish the Earth's Children series (as it is written so far; Auel hasn't finished the sixth book yet). Secondly, I decided to read the second Harry Potter novel.

Last week, I visited the children's section first to covertly check out the first Harry Potter book. I was more than a tad uncomfortable being present in the children's section, seeing as I haven't fit that label for quite some time. I felt the same way when I sneaked in there to check out a Redwall book, but not as embarrassed as I felt to be walking around with Left Behind novels. After I checked out the book, I placed it my car and re-entered the library through the main doors. That way, no one saw me walking about with a "kiddy" book. This week I decided to check out my adult books first, then exit the library through the children's section and pick up Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on my way out. After I picked up Shelters of Stone, I had no real idea what to get upstairs. I thought I should get another book on Germany, so I picked out The Germans. Then I saw a book called Storms from the Sun that looked interesting. After that, I decided to dart inside the children's section.

As it turns out, the librarians were having a meeting right beside the shelf where the Harry Potter books were. I'd be spotted by two of the main librarians! I stood there dumbly for a minute, then realized they could see my head over the short shelves and went to get the book. It wasn't there. I kneeled there listening to them speak, but the book wasn't there. I thought maybe they had isolated some of the books and put them in a special display. I went to get the movies -- I was checking out the first two movies as well -- but still couldn't find the books. Eventually one of the librarians noticed me wandering about (looking uncomfortable) and asked me if I needed help.

It turns out the web catalog was showing the book as "in" when it was really "out" and due in tomorrow. She gave me a "hold request" to sign, so they're going to call me tomorrow to come fetch the book. I chatted a bit with one of the librarians, and she says lots of adults check out books in the children's section. It was really a moot issue by then; I had been wandering about the children's books for so long by this point that whatever "adult dignity" I had was gone. I felt as comfortable as I felt when I was little and one of the founding members of the Goosebumps Fan Club.

So, the reading for this week:

1. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (if it's returned on time)
2. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (I'll pick it up when I pick up the second.)
3. Shelters of Stone, Jean M. Auel
4. The Germans, by Gordon Alexander Craig
5. Storms from the Sun by Michael J. Carlowicz

I'll also be watching the first two movies. I actually already watched the first movie today, and I enjoyed it immensely.

Special thanks to Mikado, for spotting the errors that I miss. I've gone a lifetime thinking Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was written by "Ronald" Dahl!