**Floating this review because it just won an Edgar Award for best novel. Also, it's been officially revealed that James Kestrel is a pen name for Jon**Floating this review because it just won an Edgar Award for best novel. Also, it's been officially revealed that James Kestrel is a pen name for Jonathan Moore, an author I've been reading for several years now. If you liked this one, check out other Moore novels like The Poison Artist and Blood Relations.**
I received a free advance copy of this from the author.
It’s a Hard Case Crime novel set in Hawaii just weeks before the infamous Pearl Harbor attack occurs on December 7, 1941. I pretty much feel like that’s all I need to say to convince people to check it out.
But fine, if you want to know a little more, then keep reading…
Joe McGrady is a police detective in Honolulu who is called to a gruesome double murder. Things get complicated when one of the victims turns out to be a relative of a prominent Navy admiral and the other is a young Japanese woman. With tensions high, Joe’s boss just wants the case solved as quickly and quietly as possible, and McGrady ends up hot on the trail of the killer across the Pacific. However, the outbreak of World War II derails the investigation as well as Joe’s life.
This is one of those books that’s tricky to review because I don’t want to say much more about the plot because it takes some surprising twists that end up being the best part of the of the story. So I don’t want to spoil those, but then I can’t really dig into some of the particulars.
What I can say is that this is a novel built on making readers feel like they’re in a particular time and place, and James Kestrel does a superior job of that. From describing the streets and people of Honolulu in 1941 to several other locations, you get all of the atmosphere without it feeling like a bunch of regurgitated facts from a history class.
The plotting is also very well done as it mixes the realistic grind of detective work with some of the historical details of the setting. For example, one clue revolves around how there were no Packard dealerships in Hawaii at the time so that type of car was very rare on the islands, but trying to track down a particular one means spending hours reviewing car registration records. There’s a lot of great procedural bits about trying to track down a killer in the era before computer databases and modern forensics. Even the methods of communication play a part with cables being a key element to how things unfold.
Character work is another strong element with Joe McGrady being the kind of complex figure you want at the center of this kind of story. As an ex-soldier with no family to speak of, Joe is a loner who didn’t grow up in Hawaii so he’s seen as an outsider even by his fellow cops, and it’s evident from the start that he’s not entirely trusted by them. The feeling goes both ways as Joe deals with the agenda of his boss and others. His one real connection is his growing feelings towards the woman he’s been seeing, Molly.
The story also plays off the readers knowing that World War II is about to start to good effect. Kestrel drops a few well-placed ominous hints that foreshadow that the whole world is about to go sideways even as Joe is hoping to get the case wrapped up in time to spend a romantic Christmas with Molly. It makes the whole thing one of those books where you’re tensed up the entire time, and just wish that you could warn everyone in it what’s coming.
It’s a fantastic crime novel that takes the classic tale of a determined detective hunting a killer and turns it into the tragedy of one man who gets caught up in epic historical events....more
I received a free ARC from NetGalley of this for review.
A book with the word Girl in the title? I’ve never seen that before….*cough*
In the last days oI received a free ARC from NetGalley of this for review.
A book with the word Girl in the title? I’ve never seen that before….*cough*
In the last days of World War II in Europe an Italian fisherman named Cenzo hauls in what he thinks is the body of a dead young woman. Only she’s just playing possum, and Cenzo quickly finds out that Giulia is Jewish and on the run from Nazis who just killed her family.
Cenzo hides Giulia, but it turns out that she has a secret that someone is desperate to cover up by killing her. Things get more complicated when his estranged brother who has been doing propaganda films for Mussolini’s government shows up, and Cenzo finds himself drawn into the circle of once powerful people who are now looking for the exits as the Allies approach.
I’ve been a longtime fan of Martin Cruz Smith, particularly his series about Russian detective, Arkady Renko. Like Renko and many of his other characters, Cenzo is a smart guy who generally wants nothing to do with the schemes of the corrupt people above him in society, and yet he’s also incapable of just letting an obvious injustice happen. It’s another Smith staple that many around Cenzo see him as a pawn to use for their own purposes, but he’s got a knack for turning the tables on them while he pursues his own agenda. Smith is also great at setting stories in historically interesting places and periods, and he makes the most out of this one.
This isn’t an action thriller, and it’s also not a straight up whodunit historical fiction. It kind of falls into the category of character drama with some of those elements. Overall it’s Smith doing his usual thing, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.
I've run out of ways to praise Saga at this point so I'll just say that it continues to be one of the most entertaining, creative, funny, heartbreakinI've run out of ways to praise Saga at this point so I'll just say that it continues to be one of the most entertaining, creative, funny, heartbreaking, profane, graphically violent, and well drawn comics I've read. ...more
This reminded me a lot of the movie Titantic not just because it’s about a disaster at sea, but also it would have been a lot shorter and better withoThis reminded me a lot of the movie Titantic not just because it’s about a disaster at sea, but also it would have been a lot shorter and better without the romantic subplot. Only in this case it was U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and Edith Bolling Galt instead of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Although I gotta admit that the scene when ole Woody sketched Edith in the nude was pretty hot…..
Wait. I might have mixed something up there.
This is part of the continuing trend of Erik Larson’s books for me. He has this weird knack of being able to write something that is about 50% interesting, but the other 50% always seems like it’s him stretching to tie some other kind of element to give it a hook it doesn’t really need. He can’t just tell us the story behind the 1893 World’s Fair, he has to make half the book about a serial killer. (Some people would tell you that it’s vice versa as to what’s good about that one). Or instead of doing a non-fiction pop history novel about the invention of the wireless by Marconi, he had to tie it into the capture of a famous murderer of the day. Giving a day-to-day account of living in Nazi Germany wasn’t good enough so he had to put half the focus on a promiscuous American woman and her boring father in Berlin.
So this time out we’ve got the sinking of the Lusitania, a fascinating historical event about which many intriguing questions remain to this day, and yet a good chunk of this book is spent detailing how President Wilson found love again after the death of his first wife. If this was a book about Wilson, or if it was some kind of deep dive into his response to the attack where knowing his mindset at the time is critical to the story, then I might understand why so much time is spent on detailing how the two of them met and how their courtship progressed.
However since none of those things really matter I had that that same feeling while reading that I had when watching the aforementioned Titantic: Quit falling in love and hit the damn iceberg already. (Only it’s a German U-boat instead of a chunk of ice this time.)
As usual with the parts I actually care about Larson does a pretty decent job of creating narrative history to give us a vivid account of what life was like for the passengers and crew of the ship as well as the Germans on the submarine. He also gives us a good idea of the touchy political situation that existed between the various nations involved because of World War I.
He does seem to prefer doling out trivia and anecdotes rather than dealing in any meaningful way with the bigger questions of the event. The conspiracy theories about why England didn’t do more to protect the ship and speculation about the what caused a secondary explosion after the torpedo hit are barely touched on, but at the same time I know what kind of wallpaper was in the reading salon on board. Or I learned that Woody and Edith ate chicken salad on their wedding night, but nothing is said about the critical role she later played in his administration after he suffered a stroke later.
It’s not bad, but it’s also a fairly shallow look that seems more interested in telling you what happened rather than really digging into the questions of how or why it did. It’s like the Hollywood screenplay version of history. With romance!...more
I’ve noted in reviews of the three other Martin Amis novels I’ve read that he’s got this incredible knack for writing despicable people while still maI’ve noted in reviews of the three other Martin Amis novels I’ve read that he’s got this incredible knack for writing despicable people while still making them funny and entertaining. But doing a book about Nazis running a concentration camp?
Well, you can’t say the man isn’t willing to take on a challenge.*
The story is told by first person accounts from three men. Angelus Thomsen is a Nazi officer and nephew to Martin Bormann whose hobby is seducing women. He’s got his eye on Hannah, the wife of camp commandant Paul Doll who is our second narrator. The third one is Smzul, the leader of a work gang of Jews who have to search and dispose of the bodies of people murdered in the gas chambers.
Amis does a great job of riding the line of mocking the Nazis and their beliefs without ever trying to use humor to disguise the horror all around. Smzul is the character who keeps the book honest with the depiction of him as a man forced to do the unthinkable but doing it well. Thomsen is a bit trickier with his motivations initially being only a desire to sleep with Hannah and seemingly not much reaction to what’s happening around him. He only comes into focus late in the book.
Like many other Amis characters, Doll is a stupid brute without the self-awareness to realize what a pathetic joke he actually is. Amis does some of his sharpest work here in highlighting the utter terrifying banality of Nazi evil by making Doll a clown, but then pointing out that things can go seriously wrong when the clowns start running the circus.
I’m struggling to put my finger on why this didn’t do more for me, and I think it’s just comes down to the setting. Amis manages this delicate tone about as well as anyone could, and obviously reading this should make someone feel uneasy at the very least. Maybe my problem is that I have genuinely enjoyed reading when Amis puts an awful person front and center despite them doing some pretty terrible things, but you can’t get into that same mindset when the terrible things actually happened.
* I know that another Amis book, Time's Arrow, also features a Nazi character, but I haven't read that one yet so I can't compare it to this one....more
I’ve had a long-standing policy that I will not read an unfinished sci-fi/fantasy series because I spent ovI got nobody to blame but myself for this….
I’ve had a long-standing policy that I will not read an unfinished sci-fi/fantasy series because I spent over a decade waiting for a certain master of horror to get off his ass and finish what he started. Plus, I have no urge to join the ranks of fans of other fantasy writers who seem to spend more time coming up with excuses and side projects rather than producing new books to finish their on-going series.
Ignorance isn’t a good defense, but it’s all I can claim. I picked this up on a whim after hearing it mentioned on the Incomparable podcast. I was a little leery when I saw it was almost 600 pages, but I didn’t bother looking into exactly what I had gotten myself into until I started the book That’s when I freaked the hell out:
“9 novels?!? 9 goddamn novels and they’re all this long? Holy shit! Only 5 have been released? It’s an unfinished series?? IT’S AN UNFINISHED SERIES! Oh, sweet jebus what have I done? And holy shit snacks they’ve been releasing off-shoot novels! ARGGHHH!! This is a nightmare…. OK, calm down. Let’s see, there’s actually two guys writing it under one pen name. Two guys can keep each other focused and moving forward. They’ve been releasing books like clockwork and have a schedule to bring it home. That’s good news. And these off-shoots are Kindle shorts so it looks like they’re really just true extras and not them filling their pockets while dawdling on the main series. Oh, and the Syfy network is doing a TV series based on it? That could be cool. Maybe this isn’t so bad after all. Wait, one of the authors also works as an assistant to….Uh oh. Well, maybe he’s learned what NOT to do when you’re working on a series…Or maybe I‘ll end up not liking it very much and can just stop here.”
No such luck. Damn it. I’m a sucker for the kind of sci-fi where even though they’re in space the characters have dirt under their nails and skinned knuckles rather than lounging around in pristine uniforms on ships that look like corporate cube farms. I’m also much more of a believer in the idea that if humanity does make it to other worlds that we’ll be dragging all our collective baggage out there with us rather than being explorers from a utopian society. Plus, I’m a big mystery fan and one of the main characters is a burned out space detective with a cynical outlook. And I also like (view spoiler)[zombie stories. So when it’s alien vomit zombies? (hide spoiler)] Oh, yeah. I’m in.
I particularly liked the push/pull between the two main characters. Holden is an idealist who thinks that people will make good collective choices as long as they’re told the truth, and that contrasts well with Miller’s bleak outlook that people are stupid sheep. Put those two guys in a society built out among our solar system’s asteroid belt that is about to go to war with Earth and Mars as they try to unravel the conspiracy behind it, and you’ve got yourself a pretty damn compelling sci-fi story.
I still kinda feel like a rube though….
Update 2/7/17 - You can tell from the original review I posted that I had a lot of misgivings about starting an unfinished series back when I first read this. A few years later after re-reading it I'm happy to report that it all worked out for the best. The authors have stuck to their schedule and delivered a book a year since they started, and the entires series has become one of my favorite sci-fi things ever. I also got a bonus in a pretty damn good TV series based on the show since then which just started it's second season. So this gamble has paid off pretty well so far. ...more
“Mr. Kemper, I hear that you are somewhat familiar with me?”
“I am.”
“Please tell me what you know. Be succinct.”
“You are haunted by“Hello, Mr. Ellroy.”
“Mr. Kemper, I hear that you are somewhat familiar with me?”
“I am.”
“Please tell me what you know. Be succinct.”
“You are haunted by the unsolved murder of your mother which occurred when you were a child and led you to become obsessed with crime and women. You frequently dreamed of scenarios in which you could save damsels in distress. You let your rich fantasy life rule you and with no ambition or discipline you became a homeless drunk and drug addict in your teens. You eventually hit bottom and got sober. You became a writer and used your fascination with true crime and post-war Los Angeles to create what you called the L.A. Quartet. You started with a fictionalized version of the Black Dahlia case, and one of the books, L.A. Confidential, became an acclaimed movie. You wrote a trilogy called Underworld USA that followed bad men doing bad things in the shadows of recent American history. You investigated the death of your mother with an ex-cop and published the results as a memoir. You wrote a second autobiography in which you admitted that much of what you wrote about your state of mind in the first book wasn’t true. You recently published a new novel called Perfidia that you state is the start of a new Second L.A. Quartet.
“What are your impressions of Perfidia? Please be brief.”
“Perfidia begins the day before Pearl Harbor is attacked by the Japanese. Many of the characters are ones you used in other books like Dudley Smith, a corrupt police officer who was a large part of the L.A. Quartet, and Kay Lake from The Black Dahlia. Others are based on real life people like William ‘Whiskey Bill’ Parker, another LAPD officer who would go on to become the chief of police. A new addition is a brilliant police crime scene technician, Hideo Ashida, of Japanese descent. The murder of a Japanese family coincides with the news of the attack, and the investigation takes place as L.A. is consumed by a mixture of patriotism and paranoia. Corruption enters the scene immediately with many people scheming on ways to profit from the war even as the ships are still burning at Pearl Harbor.”
“That’s a summary. I asked for your impressions.”
“There is a lot here to appeal to your fans. The wartime setting with a mystery that blends fiction with history against a L.A. that is completely corrupt is something that you know how to utilize to provide a gritty noir atmosphere. Your plotting with the characters aligning and betraying each other almost at whim is as dense and intricate as ever. Your style of short sentences in a stream of consciousness patter as the perspective shifts from character to character is still sharp, and you retain the knack of writing scenes of brutal violence that seem to pass in moments yet leave lasting effects.”
“That’s the positive side. Please tell me where you think the book was lacking.”
“While some longtime fans will be delighted at the way you’ve incorporated so many characters from your other books, it also brings some of the problems inherent to prequels into the mix.”
“Explain.”
“If you know that a character is alive and has a career with the police department in a book set after Perfidia, then I know that they will not die or lose their job in this book despite anything that may occur. This naturally removes some of the drama.”
“Naturally. Please continue.”
“If not done well, the characters may act in ways or accumulate knowledge that seems at odds with the other incarnation. For example,(view spoiler)[ the idea that Dudley Smith is the father of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, is something that is pretty shocking and wasn’t even hinted at that I can recall in his previous appearances. (hide spoiler)]
“I understand the point. Move on."
“Usually your books take place over a period of months or years. This allows for on-going events and new information to change the perspectives and motives of characters. Since this novel occurs entirely in the weeks immediately after Pearl Harbor, the time frame is greatly condensed from your usual work yet you incorporate as many betrayals, shocking revelations and changes of allegiances as your other books. This makes all of the characters seem rushed and erratic. Plus, everyone in the book seems to have an amazing ability to look into the future. None of the major players seem that concerned about the war with the Japanese. All of them somehow immediately know that the war will be won and that there will future tension between America and Russia.”
“Are there any other things you consider shortcomings of the book you would like to share?
“You also use some of the same phrases and tricks here that seem in danger of becoming tropes of your work.”
“State some examples.”
“Using short sentences to indicate a series of actions. For example, ‘Dudley winked. Dudley scratched. Dudley howled….’“
“And?”
“And characters making instant judgments and psychoanalysis of each other that is 100% accurate.”
“And?”
“And repeatedly using the word ‘and’ as a way of continuing the flow of information.”
“Very droll, Mr. Kemper. And?”
“And you really got into this thing where a lot of the dialogue is someone demanding information in a blunt and condescending fashion. You used to save that for when one had a definite edge on another, like J. Edgar Hoover interrogating an underling, but it seemed like it happened on almost every page in this book. These conversations also frequently have one person delivering a set of orders.”
“You have communicated your viewpoint, Mr. Kemper. You will write up a review on Perfidia. You will give it no less than three stars. You may bring up the points you have outlined here, but you will still credit my work as still being an enjoyable read. You will also praise my ability to create damaged characters operating in amoral ways for selfish reasons at a street level and use them to illustrate broader themes on subjects like the effect of History on the individual. Once you have completed this review, you will post it on Goodreads. If you don’t do this, I’ll engage in another trope of mine, and have you shot in the face repeatedly. Do you agree, Mr. Kemper?”
“One three star review of Perfidia coming right up!”
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.
This should teach me to pay more attention when I ask for an ARCI received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.
This should teach me to pay more attention when I ask for an ARC.
I requested this from NetGalley on a whim when I saw the title, and I didn’t realize that I was getting a book that was almost a thousand pages.* I also didn’t consider that a kitten-squisher of a biography about a notorious Nazis wasn’t going to be ideal summer time reading. I’ve done my best to give it a fair review, but any critical comments I make should probably be taken with a grain of salt by anyone interested in it.
Peter Longerich uses Joseph Goebbels’ diary as a guide post from the time when he was a wannabe writer and radical through his rise through the Nazi party to become the chief architect of its propaganda. By contrasting what Goebells claimed in his journals against other documentation Longerich gives us the real history.
This portrayal shows that Goebbels was a raging narcissist that achieved the recognition he craved by dedicating himself to Adolf Hitler who Goebbels helped elevate to the supreme leader of Germany. (We all know how well that ended.) By making Hitler into an almost god-like figure, Goebbels could then validate himself as great by earning Hitler’s respect and praise. Hitler’s opinion was so important that Goebbels and his wife Magda (Who it seems Hitler had a bit of a thing for.) made him a de facto father figure that they treated like a member of the family and consulted on domestic decisions.
Perhaps what’s most interesting is how Longerich uses what Goebbels claims against other historical documents to show how much Hitler used him like a chump. While Goebbels liked to brag about his close relationship with Hitler and boast about his many accomplishments, the records show that in fact Hitler often kept him out of the loop, ignored his advice, and even occasionally used him as a diversion. If Goebbels had more self-awareness he might have realized that Hitler saw his value as a talented creator of propaganda but didn’t credit him as much more than that, at least until the end of the war left him with few other options.
After establishing what he believed about Goebbels' personality, Longerich is content to relay the facts of his life in chronological order while letting quotes from the diary clue us into what Goebbels was thinking and correcting the record with a minimum of commentary aside from occasionally pointing out patterns. This approach gives a remarkably detailed and rich portrait of Goebbels as well as the inner workings of the Nazi party.
However, it’s also one of the problems with the book. Everyone has habits and routines. When you read something that covers 20+ years of a person’s life, it’s going to get repetitive no matter what they’re doing even if they’re Nazis perpetrating some of history’s greatest crimes. So whether it’s Goebbels kissing Hitler’s ass or Goebbels having some bureaucratic squabble with another Nazi or Goebbels feuding with his wife or Goebbels launching another anti-Semitic propaganda campaign, there comes a time when the point has been made so it seems like the same thing is being rehashed over and over.
In a weird way the strength of the book became one of its irritations for me, but I’m not sure what could have been done about it. It’s tempting to say that it could have used more analysis and less detail, but the details are what eventually give you such an understanding of what made Goebbels tick. It seems unfair to fault Longerich for being too thorough, but in the end that’s almost what it feels like.
If you’re looking for a seriously detailed in-depth biography of Joseph Goebbels that also provides a lot of behind the scenes history of the Nazis, then this is the book for you. If you’re in the mood for a lighter pop-history that tells you the basics about Goebbels, you should probably look elsewhere.
* About 40% of the book is its bibliography and notes....more
The thing I love best about Kurt Vonnegut is that he was both the ultimate cynic and the ultimate humanist. What better character for him to create toThe thing I love best about Kurt Vonnegut is that he was both the ultimate cynic and the ultimate humanist. What better character for him to create to embody those views than a Nazi with good intentions?
Howard W. Campbell Jr. was an American citizen who grew up in Germany and became a prominent Nazi thanks to his virulent anti-Semitic propaganda. However, Howard had actually been recruited before the war began to be an American spy who provided vital intelligence to the Allies via codes hidden in his frequent radio broadcasts. Years after the war has ended, Howard recounts the story as he is being held in Israel awaiting trial for war crimes. As he explains what happened before, during and after the war Howard repeatedly touches on the unasked question that haunts his life: Does pretending to be evil in the service of a good cause still make you evil?
I had always felt alone in thinking that his was actually Vonnegut’s best book so I was happy to be validated by the comments of several other Goodreaders sharing the same thought.
Vonnegut’s gift was looking at the world with clear gaze and acknowledging that people were pretty much shit, but still having enough compassion and empathy to look for moments of dignity. He did it with that that unique bittersweet sense of humor that allowed him to write about the horrors of something like the Holocaust and give it a tone of a very wise man shaking his head with a bitter chuckle at a dark, sick joke....more
Just your typical story about a couple from opposing species of an interstellar war falling in love and having a baby, then fleeing the governments anJust your typical story about a couple from opposing species of an interstellar war falling in love and having a baby, then fleeing the governments and hired mercenaries of both sides in a wooden rocketship with their ghost babysitter...
Three volumes in and so far each one has been 5 stars. I'm pretty sure that has never happened to me before. ...more
It’s odd how you think your opinion of a bunch of murderous assholes couldn’t sink any lower, and then you read something like this that makes you reaIt’s odd how you think your opinion of a bunch of murderous assholes couldn’t sink any lower, and then you read something like this that makes you realize that they were even worse than you thought. Nazis weren’t just xenophobic bullies who institutionalized mass murder, they were also thieves. They were probably lousy tippers, too.
During World War II a handful of art experts in the Allied military forces took on the challenge of trying to protect the cultural treasures of Europe. As the war raged, these guys did their best to save historical buildings and art from the general destruction going on around them. They also tried to track down and recover what the Nazis had stolen. Hitler and his pals took advantage of the war to pull the biggest art heist in history, and this included looting the culture of countries they invaded as well as stealing the private collections of people they killed or imprisoned.
This is one of those stories that I knew the basics of but hadn’t realized the scale of the crimes committed, and I knew nothing about the men who tried to mitigate the damage. The Nazis literally stole trainloads worth of art and stashed away so much that it required massive logistical efforts just to get it all recorded and returned after the war.
What’s more shocking than that is how few resources were initially dedicated to the preservation effort. Eisenhower issued a general order instructing his troops to avoid damaging anything of cultural significance unless there was a military necessity, but only a handful of Monuments Men were scattered around Europe and they had no official support staff or supply sources. Simply getting transportation was often difficult or impossible. One of the men was briefly arrested as a suspected German spy when a zealous MP soldier refused to believe that anyone carrying out such a large and important mission would be wandering around by himself.
Even though there weren’t many of them and they had to improvise constantly, the Monuments Men did manage to save countless pieces of art including helping to track down huge stolen stockpiles that the Nazis had stashed away in mines and other hidey-holes. It was dangerous work and a couple of them were killed in action while trying to carry out their mission.
It’s an interesting and important story that gave me a new appreciation of some of history’s forgotten heroes so why only 3 stars? I dunno. This is a weird one. I can’t point to anything of significance. The writing is fine, and the research seems solid. There’s enough detail pointed out about the people involved to give you a sense of their character and make you appreciate their struggles.
I was planning on seeing the movie version, but then came the ‘meh’ reviews for it so that killed my interest in the film and may have dampened my enthusiasm for the book. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, and I don’t regret learning the story, but for some reason it never hit that next level where I couldn’t wait to read more while I was in the middle of it. ...more
It’d be a bad idea to challenge Tim O’Brien to a round of Truth-Or-Dare because he’d find a way to pick Truth, launch into a story, recant it, then maIt’d be a bad idea to challenge Tim O’Brien to a round of Truth-Or-Dare because he’d find a way to pick Truth, launch into a story, recant it, then make you think he really chose Dare, but in the end, you’ll be pretty sure he actually told you the Truth after all. Maybe…
That’s kind of the point about this account of his time Vietnam as an infantry soldier that warns us that war stories are tricky. The ones that sound true are probably lies and the ones that seem outlandish probably have a healthy dose of truth in them. By telling us some fact and some fiction, then revealing which is which (Allegedly.), O’Brien shows that sometimes a well told lie based on fact has more power than a real story accurately told.
Taken together, O’Brien’s stories make it clear that he spent the decades after the war mulling over the various things he took away from it. This isn’t the memoir of a guy who obtained some kind of closure by writing it, it’s the story of the fear, doubt and confusion he still wrestled with decades later. In order to convey that experience, he had to tell the reader some war stories and let us decide just how true they were. ...more
Maybe if more people would have listened to T.E. Lawrence after World War I then an American president wouldn’t be at the UN today speaking on the SyrMaybe if more people would have listened to T.E. Lawrence after World War I then an American president wouldn’t be at the UN today speaking on the Syrian crisis as I write this review.
It’s hard reading a history of lost opportunities because I always have an irrational hope that it will somehow end differently this time. (There’s a marketing ploy. Write up a non-fiction book, but then switch to alt-history fiction in the last chapter. “And they all lived happily ever after. The End.”) There are certainly no shortages of miscalculations and mistakes that have haunted the world since the ‘war to end all wars’.
As the title suggests, this is primarily about T.E. Lawrence (a/k/a Lawrence of Arabia) whose exploits in the Middle East during World War I became the stuff of legend. However, this is not just another biography, rather it examines all the political intrigue, double dealing, back stabbing, and outright espionage that went on in that region during the war. Then it digs into how all this plotting created a mess that we’re still dealing with today.
In addition to Lawrence several other people and their actions are detailed. There was William Yale who worked for an oil company that pulled all the kinds of sleazy maneuvers to secure future profits, and then he went on to be America’s chief intelligence officer in the region once the US entered the war. Curt Prufer was a German diplomat in Cairo that ran a variety of intelligence and propaganda operations. Aaron Aaronsohn was a Jewish agronomist who set up a spy ring as he supposedly worked for the Turks in the hope that he could use it to convince England to set up a Zionist nation after the war. Mark Sykes was a British diplomat who secretly negotiated a treaty to divvy up the area with France after the war, and then promised the Arab leaders independence if they’d revolt against Turkey.
All of these people and many more played a role in the ultimate outcome with their competing agendas, but it’s Lawrence who remains the fascinating pivotal figure in the story. As anyone who’s seen the classic movie about him knows, Lawrence was a conflicted man. As a scholar who knew the Middle East he started as a lowly mapmaker for the British, but eventually he became a critical part of convincing many Arabs to fight against the Turks. He was aware that he could be setting them up for betrayal and hated himself for it. At times he’d try to subvert the plans of men like Sykes while technically committing treason in the process by flat out telling his chief Arab ally Faisal that the British would double cross them for the French after the war, but he also risked his life countless times carrying out British war plans in the desert. By the end of the story Lawrence has become a tragic figure who was left shattered by the war and his failure to help the Arabs achieve a fairer deal.
It's an interesting account of the region during the war both in terms of the military and political machinations that every player was engaged in. Ironically, the Arabs so mistrusted Britain and France by war’s end that they would have preferred the Americans to step in as honest brokers, but Wilson’s administration squandered yet another chance to achieve stability by keeping the mess at a distance other than making sure the oil companies got what they wanted.
Anderson lays out how lies and greed wasted a prime opportunity to restructure the Middle East, but he’s realistic enough to note that there were far too many groups with differing motives involved to make everyone happy. That there would almost certainly have been major problems no matter who was in charge. Still, he paints a convincing picture of how things could have been better. More’s the pity....more
A couple of star-crossed lovers from two different species on opposing sides of an interstellar war are on the run in a wooden rocket ship with their A couple of star-crossed lovers from two different species on opposing sides of an interstellar war are on the run in a wooden rocket ship with their infant daughter and her ghost babysitter as they are pursued by the forces of both sides including a royal family member who is a robot with a television for a head as well as a bounty hunter who has an oversized cat who can tell when anyone is lying.
Geez, why can’t any comic book creators come up with something original?
Ah, but seriously…. This second volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s wild story is just as good as the first. One of the things I love most about this series so far is that despite all the crazy elements, Vaughan makes everything so relatable. This may be taking place in space during a massive war that involves everything from magic to worlds dedicated solely to prostitution, but whether it’s meeting the in-laws or telling us about how Alana and Marko met, there’s a very human element to all the wackiness. That’s what makes the whole thing so damn awesome....more
It’s probably a bad idea for the US military to allow the troops overseas to get the news from back home. I have this fear that someday the service meIt’s probably a bad idea for the US military to allow the troops overseas to get the news from back home. I have this fear that someday the service men and women in places like Iraq and Afghanistan will finally snap after seeing the people they’ve pledged to defend are less interested in what they’re doing than TV reality shows and celebrity gossip. If the military ever decides that the pack of assholes back in America isn’t worth fighting and dying for, we could find all that hardware aiming back at us someday. I really wouldn’t blame them.
Billy Lynn is a young soldier who was serving in Iraq with Bravo squad. After Bravo got into a hellacious firefight with a band of insurgents that was captured on camera by an embedded Fox News crew, the members of Bravo become national heroes. To capitalize on their popularity, the Bush administration has Bravo brought back to the US and sent them on a ‘Victory Tour’ (Which just so happens to run through critical electoral states for the next election.) to drum up support for the war.
The Victory Tour culminates at a Thanksgiving Day pro football game at Texas Stadium in which Bravo is supposed to play a part in the half-time show. While Billy and the other Bravo members have been enjoying some of the perks of being heroes on tour, it also means putting up with the people who want to prove their support of the troops by fawning over them as well as being used as PR props by anyone with an agenda like the owner of the Cowboys.* Bravo would also like to sign a film deal before they have to deploy back to Iraq in a few days so they can at least get a nice payday for their efforts, but the producer they’re working with is having problems getting Hollywood interested in a war movie set in Iraq.
(*Ben Fountain avoids a lawsuit by creating a fictional asshole owner of the Cowboys instead of naming Jerry Jones, the actual asshole owner of the Cowboys.)
I started noting passages I wanted to quote in this review, but I hit a point where I was finding something on every page so I gave up on that plan. There was so much about this one that I loved, that I don’t really know where to start.
Young Billy Lynn is one of the best and most sympathetic characters I’ve read in a long while. He’s a 19-year-old virgin who can’t legally drink, but he’s gone to war and had more experience with death than most would have in a lifetime. Billy is nervous when dealing with the older, wealthier good old boys who want to glad-hand Bravo at the game, and he has a somewhat naive belief that there is someone wiser than him that can explain all the feelings that combat and the aftermath have stirred in him. However, he also has a grunt's hyper-awareness of hypocrisy and bullshit.
As Bravo endures a long day of being used as props for photo ops and a half-time show, Billy’s musings and observations about the people and events in the stadium showcase a society that will spend billions on sports but pays it’s soldiers a pittance while patting themselves on the back for the way they support the troops by offering them applause and trinkets before sending them back to war.
That’s a powerful point, but what makes this so great is that the message is delivered so deftly and without the heavy handed political left or right wing political manifesto that is part of almost any writing done about these kinds of subjects. It’s also funny and absolutely nails many things that are great and ridiculous about America.
It’s only March, but I think I may have an early winner for Best Book I Read This Year....more
On September 10, 2001, I was on an American Airlines flight to Puerto Rico for work. Flying home several days later was a vastly different experience On September 10, 2001, I was on an American Airlines flight to Puerto Rico for work. Flying home several days later was a vastly different experience from the plane ride there. I had a bunch of paperbacks I’d bought for the trip, and I finished one and got another one out of my bag. It was Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down. I didn’t much feel like reading about the deaths of American soldiers at that moment so I picked another one and only read that book months later. So there was a certain grim satisfaction and symmetry for me in reading Bowden’s account of the death of Osama Bin Laden.
Those who read Black Hawk Down and expecting a blow by blow account of the manhunt and the military operation are probably going to be disappointed because the classified nature of it only gives Bowden enough material for summaries that aren’t much deeper then the media accounts. Instead, Bowden focuses on how a decade of war had honed the US’s tactics to find and target al Qaeda’s leadership, and how President Obama came to the decision to use those abilities.
Bowden lays out how the US military and intelligence agencies had developed hardware like drones to gather data and then linked that sophisticated databases that make it seem like The Machine in the TV show Person of Interest isn’t that far fetched. Bowden credits this evolving system with the eventual decrease in insurgency attacks in Iraq as well as being a key tool that has severely hurt al Qaeda.
Perhaps what will surprise most readers is how willing President Obama has been to use these methods. Anyone who thinks that he’s some kind egghead liberal peacenik should probably reevaluate that stance because he’s personally authorized the use of this system to target and kill al Qaeda’s leadership at a rate four times that of President Bush. One gets the distinct impression that you don't want Obama deciding that you're a clear and present danger to the United States.
The story of how this process developed is interesting and fairly scary. (After reading Kill Decision and this, I’m worried that the evil robot apocalypse will soon be upon us.) Bowden does a nice job of laying out how the changing US tactics and increases in the use of highly experienced special forces groups like SEAL Team Six contributed to the decision to risk going into Pakistan after bin Laden when the intelligence that he was actually there was not certain.
However, while this story is intriguing, it also feels a bit like filler because Bowden didn’t have enough declassified material about the manhunt and final raid to fill out an entire book. There’s a telling lapse in which the courier who was the final link to bin Laden is discovered. Bowden describes how that courier’s alias had come up several times in various interrogations over the years, but he doesn’t know how the US ultimately tracked him down. Bowden notes that one analyst told him that story would make a book in itself so it’s frustrating to be left hanging. Plus, it seems entirely possible that bin Laden was actually discovered by someone ratting him out for the $25 million reward and that this talk of tracking the courier is a story to cover for whoever dropped a dime on him.
The story of the attack itself as Obama and several of his key advisors watched in real time via drone cameras is a vivid account, but again, there’s nothing there that hasn’t been reported already. Plus, since SEAL Team Six couldn't be identified or interviewed, Bowden has to stick with bland descriptions instead of sketching out some background to give us an idea of who they are or what they were thinking during the attack.*
*My library copy of the book included a loose card with a note from Bowden noting that a member of the SEAL team released a different account of bin Laden’s final moments after his book went to press, and that he’ll research and note it in later editions.
There’s some fascinating stuff here like how the US has adapted its methods over the course of the war on terror, and there’s a very nice account of how the plan came together as well as how President Obama arrived at the decision to risk the raid. We also get some insight into how bin Laden spent his last years isolated in hiding and increasingly seeming like Hitler in the bunker ordering phantom armies into battle. Still, this feels like a good magazine feature article that’s had a fair amount of filler added to pad it out since there weren’t enough classified details released yet to make it a thorough and definitive telling of the death of bin Laden....more
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