It’s interesting that, having come up with the role-playing sensation “Dungeons and Dragons” and instantly cornering the market on the newly-crafted RIt’s interesting that, having come up with the role-playing sensation “Dungeons and Dragons” and instantly cornering the market on the newly-crafted RPG industry, the folks at TSR took so long to learn the basics of good game design. While there are flaws in the playability of early D&D rules, they at least managed to put something together that was more or less playable with minimal fudging, and actually stripped it down to a pretty good core with the release of the Holmes Basic Set. This game, which came years later, however, is just a mess, which probably explains why it is less well-remembered, so far as I can tell, than any of the other “side” games TSR put out during the 1980s.
There’s so much wrong with this game, I’m not even sure where to start. Part of the problem is that the designer doesn’t ever seem to have played a table top role-playing game, and so doesn’t understand the dynamics of what happens when you’re playing one. He imagines a group of people getting together, creating characters that have nothing in common and no real reason to work together (and in some cases being adversarial to one another), each going about his or her own business and ignoring what the others are doing until they wind up in a big shootout or car chase together. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that while the reporter character is running around digging up stories, all the other players are sitting there bored wondering when the GM will give them some attention, and that all of the cop and detective players are SITTING RIGHT THERE while the criminal(s) lay out and enact their nefarious schemes that their characters aren’t supposed to know about. And, wow, those criminal rules – basically several pages of obscure bookkeeping more appropriate for the kind of computer-moderating Play-By-Mail (pbm) games that were current at the time than for any kind of hanging out for a good time in-person with people game. And, since weeks or months of in-game time are needed to make a profit from running numbers or loansharking, you slow down the action to a crawl every time you use these rules.
Now, I did play “Gangbusters” with a group at least once, and the way I remember it we broke into two groups – one for criminals, one for law-abiding characters – and left the room in shifts as each side did their “secret” stuff, only coming together for the finale in a bootlegger’s warehouse. And we ignored all that bookkeeping stuff. I think we had another game going, like a card game or something, for my group when we waited for the “other side” to finish up. It worked well enough, but I think we were all happy enough to return to our D&D games afterward.
The rest of the rules are good enough, in terms of ability scores, levels, combat, skills, etc., no better nor worst than other non-D&D games TSR was putting out at the time. It’s mostly percentile-based, like the similarly “realistic” “Top Secret” game, with some things (like NPC reactions) being resolved by rolling 2d10 rather than a d20. It does seem to me that level progression and skill improvement is too slow, especially for a game that’s unlikely to spawn any long-term campaign playing, but that was typical at the time (and could easily be adjusted). Being a historian, I found the stats and descriptions of the various 1920s gangsters to be pretty interesting, as well as the fact that the writers pretty much accept as plausible the theory that John Dillinger’s death was faked (though this may have been more for in-game reasons than actual historical conspiricism). The idea of a straight 1920s prohibition game seems intriguing, but I think “Call of Cthulhu” is ultimately a better system....more
Because I was working as a collection development librarian when it came out, I bought several copies of this book when it was new, but never seriouslBecause I was working as a collection development librarian when it came out, I bought several copies of this book when it was new, but never seriously considered reading it. With the release of the Martin Scorsese picture this year, I did want to go look at it and see how it compared. Having intended to skim, once I started, I got drawn in and read the whole thing, more or less. It does differ from the movie. Scorsese’s film is, unsurprisingly, a gangster film (with Italian American actors playing the main gangsters no less), while the book is a nonfictional account with elements of the true crime book, the whodunit, and what I suppose might best be called the social justice advocacy genre, all with a journalistic approach to history. It is a fascinating account, but I can certainly see why, in its structure alone, it could not be adapted directly to a cinematic telling. Before I get into these weeds, however, let me touch on the basics: the Osage tribe is a community of Native Americans who, having been forced off most of their previous expansive range of territory, were limited to a small dusty flatland in Oklahoma by the end of the Nineteenth Century. Seemingly doomed to dwindle in poverty, their fortune suddenly changed when oil was discovered on this previously worthless land. Nearly overnight, the Osage became the highest per-capita-income nationality in the world, and began to live accordingly. This brought out the worst elements of “civilized” society to cheat, exploit, and otherwise benefit from their new largess. Some of the worst of the worst went so far as to kill Osage for their “headrights” to land parcels, and this brings us to the subject of the book and the movie, the “Reign of Terror,” as David Grann calls it, during which anywhere from 24 to close to 600 Osage were murdered, in many cases by people they thought of as friends, trusted mentors, or even family-by-marriage. Grann’s approach to telling this story is non-intuitive, though it begins prosaically enough. He begins by telling us the story of one Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, who lost most of her family within a few years during this period, and who was deathly ill herself and close to the brink by the mid-1920s. During this portion of the book the audience is as much in the dark as poor Molly as to the culprits, though dark hints are dropped here and there. The second section is the procedural portion in which the hero shifts to one Tom White, an agent for the still-young Bureau of Investigation, working for a still-largely-unknown J. Edgar Hoover. He looks at the evidence collected by other law enforcement men, employs a variety of snoops, undercover agents, and stool pigeons to get to the truth, and eventually unmasks Mollie’s husband Ernest, and his uncle Bill Hale as the killers, taking out Mollie’s relatives one at a time so that all their vast inheritance will come under her name, and then to Ernest when she dies. The movie, by contrast, is centered around Hale and Burkhart from the outset, because that’s how a good gangster picture works; you want to see villains being villainous, and also being family men and members of their community, and to wonder, agog, how such people can commit such heinous acts and still be so likeable. A true-crime thriller, however, is more concerned, at least outwardly, with victims and ultimately with law enforcement, who always get their man. But, in the third section, Grann goes off script. He becomes much more personal in this section, describing the meetings he had with Osage, survivors and descendants of survivors of the Reign of Terror. He intimates that there was a conspiracy far vaster than that of two men killing off one family. He documents specific cases that were never prosecuted or solved, even though the facts are in some cases still clear nearly 100 years later. He shows that Tom White didn’t, or maybe couldn’t possibly, arrest and prosecute all, or even a majority of those involved. Because nearly every white person in Osage county, and many beyond seem to have been culpable to some extent. Taking down Hale was an impressive feat, given his political and social influence in the area, but he was just the tip of a much larger iceberg. The “Indian business” was winked at, and abetted by doctors, lawyers, sheriffs, bootleggers, chauffeurs, cow hands, politicians, bankers, insurance agents, oil company agents, and undertakers throughout Oklahoma. All of this comes down to a shocking ability for systemic racism to erase moral consideration from all levels of society. Each in their different ways, Grann and Scorsese are exposing and condemning this phenomenon, and honoring the memory of the many victims. Which is the more effective telling of the story will be judged by each viewer/reader, but Grann’s is by far the more explicit in showing the scope of the murders. ...more
This book is a catastrophe. Essentially a political rant about how the upper class is a threat to democracy, it is a case study in lazy research, cherThis book is a catastrophe. Essentially a political rant about how the upper class is a threat to democracy, it is a case study in lazy research, cherry-picking methodology, and poor editing. Those who follow me on goodreads know that I will read almost anything to the end, once I’ve started, but this just wasn’t even worth it. You only live so long, and this book isn’t worth another hour of my life.
Although it claims to draw extensively from archives, checking the back verifies that almost every chapter is drawn from a limited supply of popular secondary sources, with an average of one or two archival citations per chapter. It looks to me like she sent an intern to look at some MI5 and Home Office records for a day or two, and then used a handful of whatever they looked at, whether or not it was really relevant.
It will be painfully obvious to any German speaker that no one involved with this project had any familiarity with the language. I only saw one German source cited, and that may have been a printing of an English-language essay, since the author was British. But it’s the use of German in this text that really gives it away. “Der Stürmer” is consistently referred to in the text as “Die Stürmer" (though it’s right in the citations). Umlauts are frequently dispensed with. Nouns are not capitalized. Amusingly, “Führer” is NEVER correct, but there are two versions: when the word appears in the main text it is “führer” (yes umlaut, no capitalization), and when it is in a quote it is “Fuhrer” (no umlaut, yes capitalization). The most egregious error is a misreading that renders “Parteitag” (meaning “Party Day”) as “Parteig,” a non-word that has never been in any other text. This word is sprinkled over dozens of pages without ever being caught by a proofreader.
Fact-checking is equally weak. She repeats Anne De Courcy’s error about Julius Streicher being NSDAP party member #2 (but without citing her source), for example. The point where I stopped reading was on page 101, where she says (again, sans citation) that the 1936 Berlin Olympics “began with a screening of the two-part, four-hour propaganda film Olympia by Leni Riefenstahl.”
For those playing at home, “Olympia” was a documentary about the 1936 Berlin Olympics that was released on April 20, 1938. According to Young, the Nazis had developed time travel and were able to screen a movie at an event that hadn’t even been filmed yet (remarkable that they still managed to lose the war, with technology like that). That’s the kind of lazy writing I just don’t bother with. ...more
I was torn when I rated this – I think most people who enjoyed a book as much as I enjoyed this one would give it at least four stars. But my personalI was torn when I rated this – I think most people who enjoyed a book as much as I enjoyed this one would give it at least four stars. But my personal rating system for nonfiction is not based on my pleasure, but on how well the author succeeds at what they were trying to do, and here that was marginal, at best. In his Introduction, Weismann states that he “aims to provide a solid and comprehensive general introduction for the student, a guide for the curious, and a rousing good time for the casual reader.” It isn’t really any of these, and that’s probably at least in part because the three aims are in constant danger of canceling each other out. The biggest problem I think he set for himself was to be “comprehensive” in less than 220 pages, with the result that items that should be covered in chapters are given paragraphs, while those that really need whole paragraphs are covered in a sentence. The book is made even less valuable by a too-short index in which some of those very substantive sentences are missed as “passing references” and so much of what the student needs cannot be readily located.
Still, I don’t want to trash this – rarely do writers on horror media have so much to say about the subject that is worth considering. Weismann’s interest in the “transgressive” and how it has changed over different eras makes this, if not a “rousing good time,” a pretty interesting study of the topic. He manages to be sensitive to the ways in which horror reinforces societal roles even as it questions them, and I think given more time to develop his ideas in a more targeted format, could add something significant to the scholarship. While not truly “comprehensive” (I mean, how is that even possible?), this work is wide-ranging enough to suggest new avenues to explore even for long time horror fanatics. Worth reading even if not perfect. ...more
I won this book as a drawing for participating in the 2022 “Buster Keaton Blogathon,” so I have to be nice, don’t I? Actually, it’s a pretty good bookI won this book as a drawing for participating in the 2022 “Buster Keaton Blogathon,” so I have to be nice, don’t I? Actually, it’s a pretty good book, certainly by the standards of a showbiz biography. Biographies of entertainers are generally hampered by the fact that much of the documentary evidence is tailor-made by publicity agents, and it doesn’t help that figures like Keaton were generally more interested in telling good stories than in adhering to the factual truth. Curtis has tried to counter-balance this by wading through as much material as possible, questioning standard myths, and, where possible, contacting surviving contacts of Keaton and conducting new interviews. The result is an impressive narrative of one of the more difficult figures to get right.
Curtis’s subtitle emphasizes that Keaton was more than a mere “slapstick comedian,” or even a “movie star” (whatever those terms may mean), he was an original creator of some of the most lastingly effective and influential films in the history of cinema. To take just one example, arguably his masterwork, “The General” consistently appears on lists of significant American films, including the AFI’s top 100, and generally heads lists of the best silent films ever made, such as the one on “The Silent Era” website. This book discusses the production process, the opportunities Keaton took, and the work of bringing each of these pieces to the screen, as well as their reception by critics and box office successes and failure as they happened. It also discusses the painful downfall of Keaton from a position of controlling his own production facility, to a contracted player, to an increasingly sidelined position in the industry. Some of this can be laid at his own door – Keaton’s alcoholism in the early 30s both fueled and was fueled by his divorce from Natalie Talmadge – but a lot of it was just ill luck combined with bad management decisions by others. A different man, making different decisions, might have avoided the worst results, but nothing could have turned things completely around after 1932 or so.
However, this is not to say that the second half of this book is all bad news. There is a bit of a redemption coming, once Keaton has (mostly) dried out and found a helpmeet (Eleanor) who truly support him – he was surely the longest-and-hardest-working former Silent Clown of the sound era. Not everything he did was good, but he kept at it in movies, live performances, TV appearances, commercials, and even industrial educational shorts right up until the end; working every single year as much as he could. There’s also a sense that he was accessible to and loved by his children and grandchildren, despite the bitterness of his separation. There’s no sense that he spent his declining years in frustration or fruitless nostalgia – he always seems to have been eager for the next new challenge, which is itself a justification for Curtis’s subtitle. A filmmaker may not always be the one sitting in the director’s chair, but they are the one bringing something new to the table. In this telling, at least, Keaton earned that role and that respect, and that’s as happy an ending as anyone gets. ...more
Universally hated by film historians and classic film fans, I think Kenneth Anger’s book suffers most from being mistaken for a failed attempt at writUniversally hated by film historians and classic film fans, I think Kenneth Anger’s book suffers most from being mistaken for a failed attempt at writing history. It isn’t that, it’s more of a highly successful Satanic Mass orchestrated against the secular religion of the Cult of the Movie Star, written at a time when it was first possible to do so without major studios suing for libel. In that, it prefigures the modern tabloid era, in which celebrities “spin” scandal for the furtherance of their careers, and so it is written in an almost “National Inquirer” style, but with added wit and subversiveness thrown in. Of course, one should not rely on it as a source for anything – except, maybe, for what was published in the tabloids and scandal sheets of the period covered, but even there, you’d want to check the original sources as Anger has no qualms about making stuff up when he needs to. A fun read....more
This short pamphlet served as the government’s account of the progress of the labor movement, and possibly was intended as an argument, during a “Red This short pamphlet served as the government’s account of the progress of the labor movement, and possibly was intended as an argument, during a “Red Scare” period of US history, for the legitimacy of maintaining a Department of Labor. It celebrates the recent merging of the AFL and CIO, discounts a great deal of radical and populist labor history, and talks about Communists only in terms of their efforts to infiltrate and corrupt existing unions. It does give some good history, as far as it goes, particularly in terms of laws passed by Congress that impact labor and Supreme Court decisions that (often) undermined them. It also acknowledges some of the worse excesses of the “robber Barons” at the turn of the century. The main narrative does not mention the Haymarket Affair at all, and the chronology at the end only mentions it in terms of the policeman killed and others injured, not in terms of the kangaroo court that sentenced seven innocent men to death. Possibly a valuable primary source in terms of researching government propaganda, anyone looking to learn more about American labor should look to more current, and less biased, sources....more
Although I enjoyed it, I wasn’t super-impressed by Michael Witwer’s biography of Gary Gygax, Empire of Imagination. It seems to me that with this bookAlthough I enjoyed it, I wasn’t super-impressed by Michael Witwer’s biography of Gary Gygax, Empire of Imagination. It seems to me that with this book, and the collaboration of his illustrious co-authors, that Witwer has leveled up as an author. This is a simply beautiful work of visual history, a coffee table book for geeks to pore over, with a carefully crafted, convincing narrative tracking the artistic style of the best game ever designed. I read it slowly, taking time to enjoy each individual illustration, and to let it sink in as I went. It’s a hefty book as well – at over 400 pages there’s room for each edition of the game to be treated in detail, as well as giving space to such side issues as computer games, the animated series, newer television and streaming programs, miniatures, and other things. I’d have liked to see a bit more about the lives and careers of the artists themselves, but that’s not as important as what there is here: lots of great pictures. Fun ideas like the “Evil-ution” of certain monsters, the “Artist’s Favorite” images, and the “Arteology” of familiar images, as well as the chapter titles being names of increasingly high-level spells, give the book a feeling of being part of a ludic narrative, as much as a document of history. Strongly recommended....more
This volume recreates the first D&D “basic” modules from the late 1970s, and so is a huge nostalgia piece for geeks of my generation – those of us whoThis volume recreates the first D&D “basic” modules from the late 1970s, and so is a huge nostalgia piece for geeks of my generation – those of us who first encountered one or both of these adventures at a tender age. For me, it was B2: “The Keep on the Borderlands,” but this also includes B1: “In Search of the Unknown,” about which I’d heard for years, but never actually read. This is a nice piece of “gaming archaeology,” because it includes reproductions of each of the editions of each module, so you can see how they evolved over time. Most of the changes are very minor and will only interest fairly extreme grognards, but it’s great to have the opportunity to geek out over them. There are also some nice introductions, written by folks involved with the hobby then and now, and to judge by them most players seem to have come to the game the way I did, through B2. B1 has the interesting feature that it was published without defining the monsters and treasures found in each room, but instead providing lists of options, allowing the GM to design aspects of their own dungeon, and this is reproduced for the reader as well.
The final section, devoted to the Fifth Edition conversion, is probably of the most interest to most current buyers, but I find the most to criticize in it. First, a lot of superfluous extra encounters have been added, and given the speed with which characters advance in level, this means that players will rapidly be too strong for the dungeons, designed for levels 1-3. Second, they have added a whole storyline to B1, rather than allowing the DM to design their own details, and even have linked the dungeons with an extra encounter area. All of this is admittedly fascinating, but takes away from the authenticity of the conversion. It would have been nice to see a “straight” conversion, with the extras offered in an appendix. Instead, the appendices have been devoted to stats blocks for monsters and magic items, which really should be in the text of the adventure to avoid having to flip back and forth during play. Finally, I found much of the artwork in the Fifth Ed section to be inferior and cartoonish, taking away from the charm of the package. There is a brief color section at the back which reproduces the original covers, however, which makes up for this a bit.
Despite these criticisms, I hope that new generations of players will discover and enjoy these excellent adventures through this source, perhaps correcting and redesigning as they go....more
In a review of a different work, I wrote this book off as a “breezy, journalistic account with a lot of irrelevant personal data about the author’s gaIn a review of a different work, I wrote this book off as a “breezy, journalistic account with a lot of irrelevant personal data about the author’s gaming.” That’s the one-sentence summary, and it more or less still stands. And yet…
I will admit that Ewalt drew me in, and that on a closer look, those “irrelevant” details seem to me to be the more successful part of the book. He’s certainly no historian, although at least he was lucky enough to have Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventure from Chess to Role-Playing Games, to use as a source, so where he covers material from that tome, he gets the facts right and also makes them a bit more accessible to a popular audience. When he strays from that source, his history suffers. The worst part is his chapter on Live Action Role-Playing (“LARPing”), which manages not to mention the Society for Creative Anachronism, “Vampire” The Masquerade,” or the name of Mark Rein-Hagen, rendering it effectively worthless. And yet…
Even in that chapter I got drawn in by his account of his own experience. Ewalt admits that he returned to D&D reluctantly as an adult, that it slowly became more and more important to him until it began to take over his life, and that he became increasingly un-self-consciously “nerdy” as he went from experiment to experiment. I had a similar experience with the book. I started with it at arm’s length, chuckling occasionally over a familiar reference, and became more and more drawn in, until I was intimately fascinated by his description of designing his first campaign while at a Con where the new Fifth Edition was being play tested. I really appreciated his description of 5th ed as an effort to reunite the various warring tribes of the previous editions: I just wish it had worked out that way (1st Ed grognards like me find it almost as bad as the previous one).
What Ewalt succeeds at doing is awakening in the reader (this one at least), the memory of the romance of D&D. In order to understand WHY it is important, or to get the facts right on its history, I would recommend Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic Over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds instead. Still, this book was a lot of fun to read, even when I was nit-picking in all the ways he says not to in his introduction....more
I got this book after taking a “ghost walk” in the city of York that was, I believe, hosted by the author in 1984. It is a nice collection of local loI got this book after taking a “ghost walk” in the city of York that was, I believe, hosted by the author in 1984. It is a nice collection of local lore and folk stories, all with a ghoulish or ghostly bent. Although modern hauntings are covered in depth, the author has made considerable effort to track down historical references is newspapers and archives, justifying the “ancient” part of the title. There doesn’t seem to be much logic to the organization of the stories, and there is no index, but a table of contents gives a title for each story, which generally only run a page or two, so navigation of the text is simple enough. Certainly of better quality than a lot of the sensationalist “ghost hunting” of the present day....more
This book, which came out a few years after Albert Speer’s memoir became an international best-seller, reflects a period of public fascination with thThis book, which came out a few years after Albert Speer’s memoir became an international best-seller, reflects a period of public fascination with the leadership of the Third Reich. It has relatively little new to offer, but the promise of a psychological analysis of each of the Nuremberg defendants was enough to guarantee sales. Unfortunately, it hardly delivers on that promise.
The book is actually a new analysis of a set of Rorschach tests that were applied to the defendants prior to trial by psychologist G.M. Gibert, whose books Nuremberg Diary and The Psychology of Dictatorship Based on an Examination of the Leaders of Nazi Germany are more valuable first-hand accounts of the mental state of the Nazis after their defeat. At the time of the trials, the Rorschach test was a relatively new tool, and the authors admit that its application was not entirely correct. By the 1960s, it had become a widely-used and applied technique, although it has declined considerably since then, in part because the ink-blot patterns used in the test are now so widely familiar that spontaneous responses are relatively improbable. This book came out at a time when educated readers were likely to be familiar with the test and also to regard it as a solid scientific method.
Today, I’m somewhat skeptical of its validity, and this book does little to change that view. The lack of color in the photographs of the tests themselves makes I hard at times to understand the responses properly. The authors seem to be looking for indications of pathology in most cases, and will change their interpretations of the patients’ words to fit that expectation. In some cases, they seem to decide that the test is indicative of the intelligence of the subject, although it is not designed to measure that. And, typical of the psychiatry of that period, they are eager to find sexual perversion in the words of every answer. Certain leaders’ tests are not included (the only explanation is that they were “not available”), and this is disappointing, particularly in the case of Julius Streicher, the one Nazi whose sexual fixations were fairly open and unquestionable.
This book does offer some interesting character sketches of several of the Nuremberg defendants, but it is not the most useful book for anyone seeking deeper insight to their personalities....more
This “mini-book” for children includes color illustrations and various stories about UFO sightings and ends by saying that, “One thing is certain – UFThis “mini-book” for children includes color illustrations and various stories about UFO sightings and ends by saying that, “One thing is certain – UFO sightings cannot simply be dismissed.” Many of the stories it repeats include so little information that it is impossible to follow up or confirm them, but it does include the names of Travis Walton, the Sutton family, Thomas Mantell, and a few others. For some reason, it does not recount the Betty and Barney Hill encounter. The sort of thing I liked to read as a child to get my imagination going. ...more
This book came out as a kind of companion piece to the documentary “Blood in the Face,” which showed the activities within the Aryan Nations complex iThis book came out as a kind of companion piece to the documentary “Blood in the Face,” which showed the activities within the Aryan Nations complex in Michigan in the late 1980s, but its coverage is actually rather broader than that of the movie. The author is a journalist who had focused on the rise of the New Right in the Midwest during the 1980s, and he had seen the growing popularity of fringe-right (what we might call “Alt-Right” today) influences within that milieu. Today it has some value as a historical source, as those tendencies have continued to gain mainstream acceptance and even, by way of the Tea Party, some degree of governmental power.
The book’s main appeal at the time was the many photographs and graphics, perhaps most famously a reproduction of a map of a proposed “raciallized” USA where all the Jews are moved to “West Israel” (Long Island), all African Americans to “New Africa” (Florida and parts of southern Alabama and Mississippi and eastern Louisiana), and Asian Americans to “East Mongolia” (Hawaii). There are pictures of klansmen and neo-Nazis, skinheads and various ethnic caricatures drawn from the literature of the extreme right, all of which is always a good draw for crowds. Some of the history of these groups is unfortunately simplified; especially in the case of the KKK, which was about to undergo a renaissance of historical study when this book came out.
Where the history is exceptionally strong, however, is in the case of the Posse Comitatus, one of the root sources of the recent armed occupation of the Malheur National Park by Ammon Bundy and his supporters. This book, along with “Bitter Harvest,” represents some of the best information available on this group or movement, so far as I have found. In addition, while Ridgeway’s pre-1980s history may be weak, his documentation of the contemporary scene is thorough and largely accurate, so this book serves as a useful historical document, with names that are still familiar today such as David Duke and Don Black, and gives an important snapshot of one point in their long commitment to their ideology. Anyone baffled by the current Presidential election in the United States will find valuable information (if not much comfort) in this documentation....more
This book is less interesting for itself than for the three introductions (or rather, the preface, foreward, and introduction) that precede it. We’ll This book is less interesting for itself than for the three introductions (or rather, the preface, foreward, and introduction) that precede it. We’ll get to those in a minute. The contents of the book purport to be the memoir of a German psychiatrist who treated Adolf Hitler during the period of his rise to power, from 1919 to sometime around 1930. This is errant nonsense. Any historian of the Third Reich will instantly recognize this as a forgery – the personality he describes is not the real Adolf Hitler, but the caricature seen in media reports of Western countries. It is even more obvious than the books of Hermann Rauschning, which at least have a tint of plausibility about them. The book was printed at the height of the war, a time when English-speaking audiences were frantically reading about Hitler and Germany, and almost anything could (and did) get into print. Fortunately, so far as I can tell, no historian has ever relied on it for accurate information. The text is only amusing in its application of outdated Freudian stereotypes to that popular image of Hitler.
But, back to that prefatory matter, which is so interesting. The first brief “foreward” is written by Upton Sinclair, the famous novelist and social critic. I think he was fully aware of the dubious nature of the book, and he retains a sly distance from the text. He even goes so far as to suggest that “Kurt Krueger” may not really exist at all (“I assume he exists, because I have a letter from him”). For him, the book is merely evidence that Hitler “is one of the most interesting men who have ever lived,” and that interest in him will continue long after the war ends. He never really endorses the content in any way, but presumably he received a nice royalty check from it for a few years. This is followed by a “Preface” by one K. Arvid Enlind, who may or may not be the actual author of the text. His prose is certainly similar, although it’s possible that he was the uncredited editor of a work written in German or bad English by a German-speaker. His point is that the world has produced monsters like Hitler (and, presumably, Stalin) because it has abandoned God and Christianity. This, I suspect, was the reason for the book in general (that and cashing in on the interest in Hitler), and it is at its most obvious in this preface. Finally, Otto Strasser, the exiled ex-Nazi whose brother Julius was killed in the “Night of the Long Knives” action, provides the introduction. Strasser engages in schadenfreude and exalts in repeating old gossip about Hitler’s sex life. He sets the reader up to expect prurient revelations in the text to come, and he serves to legitimize those stories because “he was there” and he believes them (or claims to). Strasser, of course, is a notoriously untrustworthy witness, who was happy to endorse anything that might undermine Hitler’s regime, especially if he could get paid for it.
That’s about all that’s worth saying about this book. Read it for an insight to what people read and believed in the forties, not for any actual information about the Third Reich....more
I wrote the below review about two years ago, in 2016, and have since gone ahead and read the book from cover to cover. I still agree with most of whaI wrote the below review about two years ago, in 2016, and have since gone ahead and read the book from cover to cover. I still agree with most of what it says - this book is boring, technical, and highly subjective - but I'm going to upgrade it one star because it was possible for me to finish it. I actually think where this book will be most valuable to historians is in piecing together Speer's ambiguous postwar legacy, and in that sense it's a shame that Gitta Sereny didn't give it more attention in Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. I also had some problems with the translation, especially the inconsistent translations of SS ranks, which made it hard at times to figure out who was superior to whom. The book ends with a series of "appendices" which are more like incomplete chapters or essays that didn't fit into the rest of the book. This may be more common in German publishing, but the fact that the American publisher left it in is a testament to their perception that a new Speer book would sell well, no matter how rambling and dull it was.
I’m provisionally giving this book 1 star, because I tried twice to read it and got too bored to finish. That was half my life ago, however, and someday I’m going to need to return to it and read it as a more mature, educated person. Looking it over again, I think it might be more interesting than I thought. For now, however, I’m going to try to reproduce my twentysomething criticisms.
Albert Speer wrote this book after his considerable success with “Inside the Third Reich” and “Spandau,” hoping no doubt for another success as the moderate, contrite voice of the Nazi high echelons. He claims to have started it with the intention of writing a history of the armaments industry in Germany during World War Two, the area for which his ministry was responsible. But, he says, as he went through the documents of the time, he discovered how the powerful and vast bureaucracy of the S.S. had fought him at every turn, and how Himmler had hoped to make his organization the dominant power in the postwar Reich, and that is what he wrote about instead.
I said that I found this book boring, and that was my biggest problem with it at the time I read it. Most of it consists of highly technical details about materials, factories, production numbers, and official and unofficial conferences. It is not a memoir or biography, nor is it a discussion of the most heinous acts of the S.S., it is an exploration of their interference with private industry, and that isn’t going to appeal to many readers. (It may be a valuable historical record, however, which is part of why I want to come back to it). The other problem is that Speer has fallen into the trap of reproducing his own rivalries with Himmler and others in the Nazi hierarchy (including Bormann, Lammers, and Goering) from his subjective viewpoint, without seeing that he was as much a part of the “problem” of a squabbling and back-stabbing court as his enemies were. In choosing Himmler as his villain, he also reproduces the “alibi of a nation” argument – it wasn’t me, it was the guys in black hats (and uniforms) that did all the evil of the Third Reich. (In that sense, however, the book may more accurately reflect Speer’s weaknesses as a witness).
If you are serious about detailed study of the technical workings or intrigues of the Third Reich, this book may have some value, but it is not an interesting read, and its biases are only too clear. Fair warning....more
Before the founding of the Church of Satan (1966), most writings on Satanism were sensational and accusatory, not made with any interest in understandBefore the founding of the Church of Satan (1966), most writings on Satanism were sensational and accusatory, not made with any interest in understanding the phenomenon, but with the intention of titillating an audience while condemning a shadowy scapegoat. This book, while it draws heavily on such sources, is an exception to that trend, which is why Anton S. LaVey drew heavily from it in writing the Satanic Rituals. Rhodes attempted a scholarly study of the phenomenon of devil-worship, and this book is the product of his work. He attempts to read his sources against the grain to come up with a plausible history of Satanism and its ritual activities and beliefs.
The problem is ultimately that so many of his sources are frankly fictional. This probably did not trouble former carnival-organist LaVey, who after all was more than willing to make inflated claims about CoS membership numbers, participation in movies he had no involvement with, and personal relationships with conveniently dead celebrities who could not contradict him. From our perspective today, however, it makes this source a dubious history, more of a compilation of urban legends and folklore of an earlier era than a secondary source on an actual religion. It documents a shift in attitude in post-war morality, a half-way mark between universal condemnation of the exploration of the Left Hand Path and its open proclamation as an option on the spiritual marketplace.
In short, this is an amusing and well-written document of history, but not a reliable historical source....more
This book is certainly not going to be for everyone, but I will admit to enjoying it a great deal myself. The fact of the matter is that its subject iThis book is certainly not going to be for everyone, but I will admit to enjoying it a great deal myself. The fact of the matter is that its subject is probably too obscure to justify a book-length treatment, and that this treatment is handled in a manner that will inevitably turn off many readers. But, for those of us that “were there,” playing D&D in the heyday of Gygax’s control over TSR, it is a fascinating read.
I “met” Gary Gygax in August of 1985, when I attended Gen Con in Milwaukee as a teenager. Actually, it wasn’t so much a meeting as an audience – I attended a Q&A with him and asked a rather obnoxious question. My response to his answer at the time was that he was too rules-bound and attached to a limited vision of role-playing, but over the years it has stayed with me and, I think, ultimately re-shaped my understanding of the role-playing game concept. My friends and I played a version of D&D in those days that was highly improvisational and random: fun in the short term, but lacking in balance and sustainability. I now can look back and see why all those rules actually did make for a more fun experience over time. A few months later, Gygax was kicked out of his company and lost any control over the game he had invented.
This story may partially explain why, now in middle-age, I take an interest in the life of a man now dead, who peaked in his forties whose name I once cursed for his lack of imaginative freedom. Witwer tells the story in an unconventional manner, and relies heavily on interviews with friends and family members for his sources (for few others exist). He makes the story into a series of fictionalized vignettes, sprinkled with fantasy allusions that Gygax would have enjoyed. I found the early part of the book most interesting, as it describes a world I never knew: the world of gaming before Dungeons & Dragons changed it forever. I think Witwer tries a little too hard at the end (especially the final chapter) to “prove” the importance of his subject and the influence that D&D has had, but this is probably a result of the fact that this book began as a Master’s Thesis, and he was trying to meet the demand of his adviser rather than the reading public.
There are many subjects I wish he could have explored more fully. I would have especially liked a more detailed discussion of “Dragon” magazine, and the “Dungeons and Dragons” animated series, both of which I was deeply involved with as a consumer. I’m also sad that the name of Dave Trampier scarcely appears; the artist behind the cover of the original “Player’s Handbook” and the “Wormy” comic series had a fascinating and tragic life, and I would have been fascinated to know the shape of his intersection with Gygax. Still, Witwer was, as I’ve suggested, limited by his source base and the relative obscurity of his subject, and could only write about the most well-documented aspects of Gygax’s life. He has done well, and entertained me, and hopefully a few others as well. ...more
This is the second volume in Churchill’s history of the Second World War. Like the other four volumes, it contains huge amounts of data and documentatThis is the second volume in Churchill’s history of the Second World War. Like the other four volumes, it contains huge amounts of data and documentation of the activities of the British government and their allies throughout the period covered. It can make fairly dry reading, for someone not used to government documents and procedural records, but it also is fascinating to those who are interested in the story it documents. The period covered is from May, 1940 (when Churchill first formed his cabinet as Prime Minister) until the end of that year, at which point Churchill declares the Battle of Britain was “won.” This includes the Fall of France, battles in North Africa and naval battles in many parts of the globe, the Italian invasion of Greece, the occupation of the Channel Islands, and plans on both sides to cope with an invasion of the British Islands (“Operation Sea Lion”).
There is a lot to be said for the highly factual approach this book takes, but on a more abstract level, I have a problem with it. Churchill declares the “Theme of the Volume” to be, “ How the British people held the fort ALONE till those who hitherto had been half-blind were half-ready.” I don’t so much mind his calling Americans (much less the Soviet leadership) “half blind,” but I do take issue with his use of “British people” here. Strictly speaking, the Britains are the English, the Welsh, and the Scotch. But, these were not the only people “holding the fort.” The Canadian people were there, as were the Australian people, the people of New Zealand and South Africa. There were regiments formed in Northern Ireland and India (which at the time included people we would now call “Pakistani” and “Bangladeshi”), as well as Egypt and the Middle East (which included the modern countries of Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq). The people of the island nations of Singapore, Ceylon, Barbados, and Jamaica also sacrificed, fought, and died for the cause of the Empire, and even the tiny Falkland Islands did their bit. It was not, as the modern myth likes to claim. “one tiny island” that fought the German war machine through 1940, but peoples of nearly every race, color, and creed in the world.
The funny thing is that the text of the book itself is much better about giving credit where it is due and at pointing out the important contributions of the Dominion and Colonial troops. But beyond the facts lies the myth, which is implicit in the speech from which Churchill drew the title of this volume: “the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.” Of course, the nation was at a critical juncture, and it is perfectly understandable for Churchill to state the stakes in extreme terms, but sight is so easily lost of the importance of a global coalition, most of whom fought voluntarily alongside the British, that I feel it necessary to offer a correction in this review. Otherwise, of course, the book is as strong as the others in this series I have reviewed, and does cover a particularly fascinating period. ...more
Few world leaders have been as competent at documenting their own contribution to world events as Winston Churchill. And few world leaders can claim aFew world leaders have been as competent at documenting their own contribution to world events as Winston Churchill. And few world leaders can claim as important a contribution. For those reasons alone, the series he published on the Second World War remains in print and readily available for historians and history buffs. A serious researcher will want to confirm his claims by checking primary sources, but one of the strengths of this series is the heavy use it makes of government memoranda and other documents to sharpen its author’s memory.
Of the three I have read so far, I found this to be the most interesting in the series. I think that is in part because much of the story he has to tell here is of the period when he was in opposition, outside of the government, or playing a subordinate role. For that reason, the prose is more varied, the stance less defensive, and the events seen from a more interesting variety of perspectives. After he becomes Prime Minister, the story becomes one of a unified identity between himself and the government, and there is less controversy and friction.
The thesis of this particular book (far less for the others) is that World War Two was “The Unnecessary War” and he is constantly arguing for ways in which it could have been prevented. From the Treaty of Versailles to its enforcement, to the Munich Conference to the Polish crisis, at each step Churchill suggests ways the international community could have, in his view, prevented or forestalled the conflagration. Some of these arguments are more convincing than others, while some seem to be unfair to his predecessors (especially Chamberlain) who were reacting to situations whose outcomes they could not possibly have known. I was in fact surprised at how much kinder Churchill is toward the Labour government of Ramsey MacDonald than his fellow Conservative, Chamberlain.
It would be impossible to touch on all of the subjects Churchill covers in this book in the space of this review. Suffice to say that it is nearly exhaustive in scope and detail. One example is the detailed discussion of research into the development of radar, protection of that secret from the enemy, and its use in warfare. As always, Churchill provides detailed documentation of his own involvement and decision-making processes, as well as passing along the materials presented to him by the researchers and the reports from the air force on its use.
Churchill’s writing can be dry at times, but I find this to be the most readable of his works that I’ve seen. It is a trove of information for those willing to invest the time. ...more
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