When I realized the new Tom Hanks movie Greyhound is based on this book by the author of the Hornblower books I had to go back and reread it. Terrific read - started it last night and finished it today. I know I’ve read it before - notes say I got it in San Diego which means a long, long time ago, but I’m pretty sure I read it at the time.
Can’t wait to see the movie!
As part of my research into exactly how an Essex-class carrier operated when recovering an Apollo command module, I picked up this book direct from the U.S. Naval Institute about the experience of the USS Hornet (CV–12) which recovered the Apollo 11 astronauts in July 1969.
There good things and bad things about this book. Under the category of "inexplicable bad things" why in the world would you put a picture on the cover of the Hornet in the 1950s in a completely different configuration than when it recovered Apollo 11? It is completely unrecognizable as the same ship.
Similarly, the book begins with a number of false notes, beginning with the overwrought praise of the Hornet's wartime record as making it a peculiarly appropriate choice as the recovery ship. Yes, the Hornet had an exemplary wartime record, but it was not uniquely appropriate that it was selected to recover Apollo 11. Once you get over that schmaltz, which is probably unavoidable given that the author spent years interviewing former crewmembers and clearly adopted their completely understandable pride in their ship, there are repeated instances, especially early in the book where some editing would've been in order, because the author frequently says things about persons two or three times, with each sentence having its complement of adjectives. It isn't as bad as reading '40's fiction, but it's close.
There are also some odd statements, such as the reference to an officer having assigned a young Lieut. John F. Kennedy to command of U.S. PT boats in the Pacific. It is technically correct that he assigned Kennedy to command a couple of boats – but the sentence could easily be read as that he assigned Kennedy to command of all U.S. PT boats in the Pacific, which would not be correct. Neil Armstrong is similarly called out for his positive qualities in "spaceflights " prior to his assignment to Apollo 11 But Armstrong only had one spaceflight before Apollo 11.
Either the writing got better or I stopped noticing, because before long the book had me very interested in the subject matter. It explained how the Hornet was run, and how it absorbed the new task of recovering the astronauts. It went into detail about the equipment used and how the crew was trained in the recovery, including a great deal of detail about the Navy and NASA personnel that went from ship to ship ensuring that the recovery would be done correctly. The sections dealing with how the ship managed to visit of President Nixon, who arrived on the Hornet to watch the recovery, but spent only three hours on the ship, were very interesting as well.
The point at which I realized that this book was not going to be a direct read on the Essex's recovery of Apollo 7 the previous October was when it began discussing the extreme fear at the time that the astronauts would bring back "moon germs" which would infect Earth and kill us all. Accordingly, detailed procedures were developed and followed during the recovery to limit as much as possible the extent to which the returning astronauts could contaminate the Hornet during the recovery process.
One thing this book did not do, which I appreciated, was focus on the popular obsession with Apollo 11 that was present in society at large at the time of the mission. It certainly mentions it in numerous places, but it avoids going into it in so much detail that a regular Apollo reader would get bored.
All in all, although I wish the book had been edited a little better, it was a very interesting story and literally kept me up at night.
This was a really good book. It started from the premise that all of the writing about the "Greatest Generation" might be overdoing it a bit. Yes, they survived the Depression, and fought World War II, but there was a seamy underside to all of it as well. The book goes through the experience of the soldier and the home front and persuasively argues that much of what we "remember" that generation during the war was based on mythmaking that occurred later.
Very interesting book.
Parker had told me a couple of stories about this movie (doesn't your 17-year-old provide recommendations on movies about postwar Soviet apparatchicks?), so last weekend we decided to sit down and watch it. OMG it was hilarious. That may sound like an odd thing to say, but all you need to know that the director's best-known work in the United States is Veep. So when he takes on the power struggle of Soviet party leaders after Stalin's unexpected death, it's going to be from an unexpected perspective.
Good story, good script, magnificent actors – what's not to like? It was particularly fun to watch Steve Buscemi (who plays Nikita Khruschev because of course) just get handed the keys to the movie. Typically it seems like he gets a line every so often and then just watches the other actors react and carry the movie. Here, perhaps because we know he's the one to watch, we are always looking to see what he does, and he never disappoints. I mean, Vyacheslav Molotov is played by Michael Palin, and you don't even notice.
I highly recommend.
Bram Stoker's Dracula has fascinated me since I first read it in 1983. Not for the subject matter, but for the atmosphere of dread and horror that Stoker managed to convey. In the ensuing decades I have picked up a lot of good literary commentary on the book, including fascinating analyses of where Stoker got his information and how he put the book together, all because I am interested in finding out how this dull, conventional, Irish theater manager could have told a story with so many levels and in places with such skill. For this reason, annotated versions of the book have been an obsession of mine going back to the mid-80s.
This version is a little different, however, in that the annotation by creative writing professor Mort Castle doesn't explain the people and places that Stoker was referring to, but instead uses the text to teach writing students how Stoker was telling the story in order to convey what he was doing as a writer.
While I appreciated the intent of the edition, and did learn a lot from it, the book left something to be desired for two reasons. First of all, putting the invitations in a tiny font in red ink made them very difficult to read. I often spent more time trying to find the tiny red circles in the text indicating what sentence the annotation pertaining to that I did reading the annotation.
More importantly, it doesn't appear that anyone reviewed the annotations to make sure that they were clear. In numerous places, the annotations took the form of exclamations or comments that were potentially intended sarcastically, but the reader couldn't be sure. Therefore the entire intent of the annotation was lost because the meaning wasn't clear. A sentence like "are we being treated to a little more of Stoker's humor?" would work well in a classroom followed up by an explanation of the relevant passage. But in an annotation, it is often unclear whether the question is rhetorical or actual.
But even with those shortcomings, the annotations help point out where Stoker was enhancing the tale with ambiguity, humor, foreshadowing, and especially towards the end, simply staying out of the way of the action. In doing so, it explains to the would-be writers reading it some of the tools they have available, and how to use them. It doesn't shy away from noting where Stoker made what Castle believes to be in error, and could have made a point better, and this is very useful as well.
Over and over it praised – and rightfully so from a writing perspective – Stoker's decision to present the story in an epistolary format where multiple narrators and sources present bits and pieces of the story. From the first time I read years ago it this tool – which I had never seen before – impressed me enormously, and it was interesting seeing a writing professor explain why it was so effective.
So this is something of a specialty Dracula, but if you're interested in an exposition of the book as an exercise in writing, this is the one to get.
I picked this book up last spring or the spring before at the Smithsonian in Washington when we were going through with Collin and Parker. It is a beautiful little slipcased book, and had the best illustrations I've ever seen of dinosaurs.
Only as I started working my way through it did I realize that it was about the dinosaur collections of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, and was created to coincide with a traveling exhibition of that museum's T. Rex "Trix" and the international release of Jurassic World. But it provided an extensive background on the history of the collections and of the history of paleontology as applied to dinosaurs, including a substantial collection of paintings and engravings from the earliest days of dinosaur illustration.
Overall, a very entertaining book.
This turned out to be a really good book. A number of years ago I read Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Gary Wills and really enjoyed it. At least I think I did – I just took it down from my bookshelf and there's a bookmark at page 148, so maybe I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I did. And as I look at my bookcase, it also appears that I have another book Lincoln's Greatest Speech; the Second Inaugural by Ronald C. White Jr., so I may actually have read about this before. But as the late Ralph Hall once said, there are three nice things about getting older about getting older. You meet new friends every day, a new woman makes you breakfast every morning, and you meet new friends every day.
My point is that even if I didn't remember that I already had a book about this speech, I knew that I was already interested in books about the genius of Lincoln's two short speeches.
Achorn's book is actually weak weak on the address itself – his focus is on the events of the few days leading up to its delivery as a means of acquainting us with Abraham Lincoln and the people he interacted with in Washington DC in the last days of the Civil War as he was beginning to turn to the challenges of Reconstruction. He gives a magnificent insight into Lincoln the man – how desperately ugly and awkward he was, how sorrowful and serious, how hated by so many of those around him, and how unappreciated. But you also get the sense of how extraordinarily intelligent and almost inhumanly patient he was, and how politically astute. By walking through the actions of his days immediately preceding his second inauguration, the book provides a sometimes riveting account of what was actually happening in and around the Capitol before and during the ceremony itself.
Those parts of the book were my favorite. My least favorite were the side visits into the bit players of Lincoln's world – Salmon P. Chase, Clara Barton, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, and even John Wilkes Booth. I understand that they provided some insight into the subject matter, but they just weren't as interesting as Lincoln and what he was thinking and doing.
Again, it was surprising how weak the book was on the address itself - when it finally got to Lincoln standing to present his address, it skipped through parts of it and only discussed portions, and most importantly to me it didn't tie – at least adequately I thought – Lincoln's thoughts and policies into the words of the address. It attempted to, but by going through chapter after chapter of minutia, it unfortunately transformed the address to minutia as well. The centerpiece of the book was not the address, but Lincoln as he was preparing and delivering it. If the book had been focused on Lincoln's second inaugural, I wouldn't have noticed this is much, but since it focused on the address itself, I did.
But for that reason, if you're interested in the speech, you need to read this book, because it says a lot about the man who delivered it.
One of the good things about working from home is that I get to spend the day looking out my study at my tulip poplar (liriodendron tulipifera). It’s a historic tree - we got it as a sapling through Historic Trees of America from a tree at Franklin Roosevelt’s home in Hyde Park, New York in 2001 after touring the home and learning it was FDR’s favorite tree.
It was a favorite of our founding fathers as well, with Washington and Jefferson putting it in places of honor at Mount Vernon and Monticello. Jefferson’s retreat at Poplar Forest outside Lynchburg, Virginia also has them -
here’s a picture of some of the old bulls still around - and they are still replanted at the site. (The plastic sheeting is covering archaeological excavations of the original circular drive).
Ours spent three years as a 3’ tall sapling in our back yard on South Washington before we transplanted it to our new home on Harris Lake Road in 2004. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that it was planted so it’s precisely in the middle of the center French door as I sit at my desk. Surely I’m not that compulsive-retentive. But the house - Poplar Hill - was actually named for it, so maybe so.
It is slower growing than the red maple to its right that I planted in 2002, but it’s probably 30 feet now. Last week
was the first time I’ve seen it blossom and it certainly looks like its cousin at Springwood’s (blossom close-up).
The blossoms are high in the tree, and this is the first year I knew where to look (from upstairs) and when. No, I didn’t site my bathroom so it overlooks it. That is absolutely just a coincidence.
I still think Phillips' The Egyptologist was a great book, but I hated this one. He writes well, and his protagonist's bad luck broke my heart at the beginning of the book, but the ending infuriated me. I won't spoil it, but I was not amused that he brought me into a story and got me interested and involved in the story of this Ottoman doctor, and then ... did what he did at the end. It wasn't how the story turned out - it was how the book ended.
This one's going to Half Price Books when they lift the stay at home. I won't have this on my shelf.
