Puttering in the Study

American Warlords: How Roosevelt's High Command Led America to Victory in World War II - Jonathan W. Jordan

Just finished listening to this book and really enjoyed it.  Although I've recently read at least four or five books on virtually the same topic, there was almost no overlap in anecdotes.  The only caveat is that this book is the worst offender at overuse of metaphors and simile.  It starts with the attack on Pearl Harbor and was so melodramatic I started wondering if I could make it through the whole thing.  About the only metaphor it didn't include was the standard comparison of the capsized battleship Oklahoma to a beached whale.  But it did seem to get better (or I just used to it) and it was worth it for the many. many new insights and observations about the various actors.

Interestingly, Jordan does not tell anything like the same "near mutiny" story about Stimson and Marshall that Hamilton has in Mantle of Command, nor does the book provide Hamilton's insight into MacArthur during the 1942 Philippines campaign.  I don't count that a negative - it just means Jordan told different stories.

Churchill - The Teaching Company - Prof. J. Rufus Fears

I downloaded and listened to this relatively short set of lectures recently, and it wasn't one of my favorites.  While I liked the subject matter and learned a lot about Churchill, Fears' treatment is pretty uncritical, and at times inconsistent.  For example, at one point he calls Churchill a political genius and then within only a few moments points out what terrible political decisions he made.

More important, while there is much to praise, of course, his principal thesis that a great leader must have a moral compass, that Churchill did, and that it was the defense of freedom, he never even attempts to really reconcile Churchill's alleged commitment to freedom with his even greater commitment to the preservation of the British Empire during World War II and after.  Freedom from Nazi tyranny was all very fine, of course, but freedom from political and economic domination by Great Britain - that was a different matter entirely.  It may be, as he has Churchill saying, that allowing colonial peoples independence was not likely to result in a better outcome for them, but it is hard to reconcile that statement with Fears' claim that Churchill was, first, last and always, committed to freedom.  

But I did learn a lot, and the lectures provided a good framework for diving into some of the biographies that I eventually need to get around to reading.

Saturn's Children - Charles Stross

As I have posted previously, I have really enjoyed Charles Stross' Laundry novels, so I thought I'd try some more.  My first was Saturn's Children, which is a sci-fi set in the future, where humanity has ceased to exist, but our robots have remained.

The heroine is one of a series of sex bots (what a novel idea - she actually has retractable stiletto heels in her feet) that is trying to eke out a living and has an adventure.  With the function for which she was made being obsolete (there are no humans left for her to service, but her skill set as basically a robotic courtesan can come in handy for other uses, such as, potentially, spying for various interests).  The best parts of the novel for me were the ways the characters have to put up with the enormous inconvenience and times involved in travel within a solar system inhabited exclusively by various robots who are building a civilization without humans to serve.  And since they're all designed and conditioned to obey humans, the political gains of recreating an actual human would be enormous, which is a subplot in the book.

Anyway, pretty good book.  I like it better than the next one in his Singularity series. It's a bit dense and really difficult to follow.  Not that I understood the plot of this one all that well, but the characters were memorable and as it was told from the first person perspective, it was not as easy to get lost.

The Rosetta Key (Ethan Gage Adventure) - William Dietrich

This book is so old I started with the paperback before I started listening to books on audio.  There are already two sequels.

Read the first one in the Ethan Gage series (Napoleon's Pyramids)in 2008 and it was okay, so I started on the second.  It just got old after a while.  I finally finished it right after our trip when I was running low of trash fiction, and I'm probably not going to pick up 3 or 4.  Just don't much care what happens.  At the end of this one you could see the girlfirneds peeling away to clear the decks for the next book (plausible or not) and I decided I'd already read this story.

Oh well.

Star Trek Into Darkness - Alan Dean Foster (audiobook)

I just finished listening to this novelization of the new movie by Alan Dean Foster, read by Alice Eve (actress that plays Carol Marcus in the movie), and I really didn't like it.  I mean a lot.  Here's why.

The thing I've liked about Foster's novelizations, going back to his Star Trek Log books, which remain some of my all time favorites, is that he sketches in lots of extra detail.  Extra facts, extra dialogue, extra detail, all of which is very interesting when you're reading it, and going fairly quickly.

The problem is that when it's a fast-paced movie, which you've seen, the book drags by horribly slow.  And it's worse than that - although the same action is taking place on the page, characters are engaging in extended repartee and observations when it's completely inappropriate and unrealistic.  When lives are at stake and seconds count, Spock would not stop to express his opinion on a human characteristic.  Yet that happens over and over, and even when the action is only in their head, it's excruciating to listen to it read.  I'd probably like it a lot better reading it.  Also, Foster takes time to try to plug plot holes as he goes through, but all that does is highlight the plot hole - not fill it.  It's helpful, but usually unsatisfying.

And some of the discussion is just not worthy of a Trek novel - the book goes into an extended riff on the importance of the captain's chair as a metaphor for leadership, but takes it to a silly extreme.  For example, Sulu is afraid to sit in "the chair" when he needs to fill in, and verbally says as much.  I don't think that was in the movie, and I disagree with Foster's decision to highlight it.  It was inconsistent with Sulu's character and, frankly, with the job of a naval officer.  By that point in his career he would have stood watch in the chair repeatedly - it wouldn't be magical, and he certainly would not be afraid it.  Uhura is similarly ill-used by having her whine about her man in the open, failing in some cases to recognize that this is a dangerous job, and her boyfriend just might get killed, and she shouldn't get quite so overtly upset about it.  In the movie she plays it low key, and it works,  In the book it's a soap opera and about as believable.  Again, she might think this, but she would never say it.

To me that underscored just how out of whack this Trek universe can get in terms of its leadership.  Neither Kirk nor Uhura not McCoy graduated from Starfleet, and after a demotion Kirk is dropped not to commander but back to the Academy as a student - then zings back up to first officer, Sulu has one cruise on a starship bridge (it's unclear whether he's been on a ship before Enterprise last movie)Scotty's background is unclear - but he's instantly chief engineer and when he leaves they toss it to 17-18 year old Chekhov.  What, no other senior engineering staff - you trhow the navigator down there?  Whiz kid - I get that, but it's odd this universe has one admiral, one captain, one commander and half a dozen college kids - and that's it.  Only Spock has apparently earned commander rank through actual service.  Now all these people with no experience - and I mean none - are running things, and when they need replacing (as they often do) there are no senior officers under them to take their place.

The reason I point this out is that it becomes increasingly unclear how the chain of command works in this outfit, and what credibility this Jim Kirk has.  It looks more and more like the cast of Friends on a starship, with no one bringing any experience to their position, Kirk the most notable.  The decision to start Kirk out at the Academy and then accelerate him from student to first officer, to captain of StarFleet's flagship in a day was always one that strained credulity in the first movie, but bouncing him around here, and making it look like there's no alternative but Spock started getting old.  Not that I disliked the movie or the plot - it's just that when exposed in book form, it starts to come apart.  Kirk just has no credibility as a senior officer the way Foster presents it.  (It also makes me see that the movie similarly struck a false note when Kirk is "sent back to the Academy" after demotion.  It implied he was resuming his career as a student and didn't take the opportunity to put a floor of experience under him.  Demoting him directly to captain of a smaller ship, or first officer, and then having Pike bring him back as first officer on his ship would have made more sense, and made him a little more credible as a leader.  Instead he heads back to the frat house, then is back at the top of the heap in a day.

All that having ben said, Eve is not my favorite narrator - an English accent narrating Star Trek is a novelty, but she adopts the right accents for the characters.  But I found her Admiral Marcus over the top, and her John Harrison was uniformly a parody of Benedict Cumberbatch.  I don't know why she went to over the top on them, especially Harrison.  I also had problems with her voice getting too soft for an audiobook, where (in the truck) I have a lot of ambient noise, but that's a minor detail.

Can't wait for the movie to come out on digital.  I enjoyed it far better than the audiobook.

 

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English - John McWhorter

I just finished this as an audiobook and found it really interesting.  Lots of information about the odd characteristics of English and where they may have come from, including Celtic and Phoenician (seriously).  The author seems to relish attacking the conventional wisdom on some points, and made it really entertaining to listen to (the author was the narrator).

Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour - Lynne Olson

I listened to this lengthy book in the truck in recent weeks, and ended up really enjoying it.  It is about the great time Pamela Churchill had during World War II as Winston Churchill's daughter in law, and lover of Averell Harriman, Edward R. Murrow and God knows who else.  Oh, and there was a war on too.

The book is about the Americans that came to London during the war to assist in the war against Hitler's Germany, most notably, the U.S. ambassador following Joe Kennedy, John Gilbert Winant (a towering figure, who I'd never even heard of before), Harriman, and Murrow, as well as others.  It's a great, great read, and tells you about aspects of the wartime experience in Britain, and America's entry into the war.

Although it's impossible to overstate the contribution Winant made, the story of Tommy Hitchcock, Jr. is what blew me away.   Hitchcock was the golden boy of interwar America, a World War I fighter pilot who was a polo champion during those years.  When the new war started, he became a military attache in London, and campaigned for high altitude, long range fighters to escort American bombers on raids into Germany, specifically the P-51.  Prior to that time, the unescorted bombers were suffering horrendous losses on missions into Germany, and the "bomber mafia" was actively opposing development of fighter escorts because it claimed the bombers didn't need them.  Hitchcock thought otherwise and used a lifetime's connections to lobby for the fighters. 

The story of the first P-51 to see combat - a single plane from a formation that was otherwise lost and which charged into an attacking formation of Luftwaffe fighters which had never seen a fighter anywhere close to that far into Germany, will bring tears to your eyes.  The pilot, James H. Howard, on January 11, 1944 charged some thirty Luftwaffe fighters that were attacking a formation of B-17 Flying Fortress bombers.  For more than a half-hour, Howard defended the heavy bombers of the 401st Bomb Group against the German fighters, repeatedly attacking the enemy airplanes and shooting down as many as six.  Importantly, none of the bombers he was defending were shot down.  Howard was awarded the Medal of Honor.  From what I've been reading, the normal attrition rate was 10-20% at this time.  That was the value of long range, high altitude escorts - and that was what Hitchcock had been aggressively lobbying for. 

This book is full of great stories like that.  I really, really enjoyed it.

Bare Bones - Kathy Reichs

Just finished my second Temperance Brennan novel, and really didn't like it any better than the first.  The plot-heavy book is just hard to follow in an audiobook format - the names run together and I realized how much trouble the audio format in one respect - you can't tell when something is a proper noun and when it isn't.  For example I heard repeated references to the "foot farm" and the "Palmer cousins" and couldn't make heads or tails of either not until late in the book when I realized it was "the Foote farm" and "Mr. Palmer Cousins." 

Again, this is a "but only if under ten dollars" kind of audiobook.  The writing is good (once you get past the first few pages, which are sugar-sweet with metaphors) but it's just not much fun to listen to.  I keep being reminded that the book Temperance is middle-aged and has a college-aged daughter, and while let's get real - that's my current demographic - I prefer the TV version with Emily Deschanel.

Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief - James M. McPherson

I also recently finished listening to this book on Lincoln's wartime military leadership during the trip (maybe just after I got back - can't remember for sure).

I enjoyed it - and gained a new appreciation for Phil Sheridan and the Battle of Cedar Creek, which arguably saved the 1864 presidential election for Lincoln and the war for the Union, as well as Lincoln's personal leadership in retaking Norfolk in 1862 when the opportunity presented itself, but I found it to be a little limiting.  It did make clear that Lincoln's military leadership sometimes had to take into account the political necessities of his office as well, but all the same it didn't quite get across the towering achievement that his successful prosecution of the war was in the way that, for example, Goodwin's Team of Rivals does.  But I did appreciate the extra detail into Lincoln's military strategy.  There is a wealth of information here - the more I read the more I see why so many historians are interested in the Civil War.

Long 19th Century: European History from 1789 to 1917 - Professor Robert I. Weiner,

This is my latest course from The Teaching Company, and I really enjoyed it.  It overlapped with the course on Victorian Britain that I had just before it, but was broader in scope both in subject and time.