Puttering in the Study

Reorganizing the Study Bookshelves (military history, U.S. history, Lincoln, space exploration, science, ocean liners, archaeology, Ian Fleming and H.P. Lovecraft)

Spent some quality puttering in the study time Sunday reorganizing the shelves to make more room for the World War II acquisitions that don’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.

It started with trying to assign numbers to some of the many books in the book database that don’t have them (yeah, I have one, and I am way too interested in it), and as I got more books in I started thinking about moving some things around to make more room in the VI - the military history stack (the right-hand one).  I pushed some of what had previously been in VII - naval history over there last week to make room in that stack (by creating a dedicated Pacific War shelf that is for anything that’s not just naval) and really liked having the WW II separated with separate shelves for Atlantic and Pacific theaters, and general histories below that, and special topics (Germany, air war, land war, etc.) above it. Way easier to see what I have.

To get more room I moved all of Miss Selma and Emma Mae Brotze's books on Lincoln that were not Civil War-related into V - U.S. history in the left top shelf, and started organizing the U.S. history books by topic, discarding old Fodors travel books to make room. That stack needs more work, but eventually it’ll be organized by U.S. history, Texas, presidents, and White House. (The last two categories get a little mixed up  because the oversize go on the bottom shelf).

That was so much fun that I moved over the mess in the IX - Science stack (left in second picture).  I created separate shelves for space exploration (promoted up to shelf 5 so it’s the easiest to see) science, ocean liners and archaeology, organizing the general shelves to make room.  

I then worked on the X - Literature stack that’s adjacent, adding my Flemings to the Tim Powers and Christopher Priest shelf, threw out some old stuff to make room (which I am getting better at - I made $14 at HP Books last week. Well, before I spent $78 but it's still progress), and created half a shelf for Lovecraft (with Cthulhu plush) down at IX - 7 so the Horror shelf could be restricted to Dracula, Frankenstein, and a little Poe and Endore. No real changes to IX-4 or 5 - the Tolkien or Forester shelves.

I'm not the only one that numbers my shelves, right?

Brothers, Rivals, Victors: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley and the Partnership that Drove the Allied Conquest in Europe Paperback – Jonathan W. Jordan

I finished this book a month ago, and really enjoyed it.  As I mentioned about Jordan's subsequent book American Warlords, the prose is a little over the top at times, but it seems to fit this book better, since the three generals tended to speak to each other in language that is slightly stilted to modern ears.

The choice of story is magnificent. While I knew something about the three and their prior acquaintanceship in the peacetime army, the anecdotes of Eisenhower and Patton's time together at Fort Meade in the 1920's with their families were incredible.  Remember the scene in The Incredibles where Bob and Frozone are sitting in a car at night waiting to catch criminals? 

Patton and Eisenhower literally did this for fun at night with loaded pistols looking for "highwaymen."  Another time they wanted to see if a machine gun's accuracy would be affecting by it overheating, and accidentally causing it to go on full automatic with no one at the controls, spraying bullets everywhere and threatening to cook off boxes of ammunition and had to crawl through their own fire to get close enough to shut it off.

I learned a lot about the levels of corps and army group commander - something I wasn't previously familiar with.  But the best part of the book was that on almost a page by page basis, which of the three was talking sense and which was doing something dumb, or at least inadvisable would change. There wasn't a clear-cut presentation one that was always right and one that was always wrong. Eisenhower grew throughout the book, both in his ability to lead and his decisionmaking.  Bradley was almost always the most competent and reliable commander to both Eisenhower and Patton.  And Patton was the preeminent field general on the American side, but with equally great shortcomings.

The real story of the book is Eisenhower's willingness to tolerate Patton's constant incidents during the war, which was in part due to their friendship, at least early on, but later was because he knew that he would need Patton as a field commander, a decision that paid off handsomely in the fall and winter of 1944.

Again, a really good book.

War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941 - Megargee, Geoffrey P.

This is another short book, but provides an excellent background on Barbarossa, as well as a concise explanation of the first year of the campaign.  It includes a phase by phase analysis of the Nazi plan and practice for genocide against the inhabitants of Soviet Russia.  

Some of what happened was planned, some wasn’t, but the next effect was that millions of the Soviet soldiers and civilians that found themselves behind German lines were dead before the next spring.  Some were killed in combat or because they were Jews or other groups that Germans intended to kill anyway, but most died from starvation and exposure as a result of the failure of the German high command to provide for their survival.  Nor was this mere negligence - Germany never intended to provide for the survival of POWs in large numbers, and deliberately took food and winter clothing from civilians to support its home front and the troops on the Eastern Front.

Horrible story, but efficiently told.

June 1941: Hitler and Stalin - Lukas, John

Just finished this short book about the relationship between the two dictators leading up the the German invasion of the Soviet Union.  It’s more of a talk than a book, and the citations are thin, but it’s an excellent study of how the two men related to each other, why Hitler did what he did, and what Staling refused to admit it was coming.

The Devil Rides Out - Dennis Wheatley

I don’t know how this happened. Some post somewhere suggested that this was a classic piece of horror fiction from the 1930’s, and it ended up being almost camp.

The summary of the 1950’s Hammer movie based on it (which tells you all you need to know) tells the story:

”When the Duc de Richleau (Christopher Lee) and Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene) arrive at a fashionable party thrown by de Richleau's protégé, Simon Aron (Patrick Mower), they soon realize that the party is in fact a gathering of a Satanic cult, led by the high priest Mocata (Charles Gray), that plans to initiate the beautiful Tanith (Nike Arrighi) that night. It's up to de Richleau and Van Ryn to defeat the devil-worshiping Mocata and save innocent young Tanith and the others from a terrible fate.”

That’s pretty much it.  The best part of the book was the 1930’s environment it was set in, complete with cars, manor houses and airplanes. It wasn’t bad at all - it was about like watching an old episode of MacGyver. Or, candidly, a dramatic version of a Scooby Doo episode.  That’s just true horror fiction though.  It wasn’t remotely scary or supernatural.

The Devil Rides Out - Dennis Wheatley

I don’t know how this happened. Some post somewhere suggested that this was a classic piece of horror fiction from the 1930’s, and it ended up being almost camp.

The summary of the 1950’s Hammer movie based on it (which tells you all you need to know) tells the story:

”When the Duc de Richleau (Christopher Lee) and Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene) arrive at a fashionable party thrown by de Richleau's protégé, Simon Aron (Patrick Mower), they soon realize that the party is in fact a gathering of a Satanic cult, led by the high priest Mocata (Charles Gray), that plans to initiate the beautiful Tanith (Nike Arrighi) that night. It's up to de Richleau and Van Ryn to defeat the devil-worshiping Mocata and save innocent young Tanith and the others from a terrible fate.”

That’s pretty much it.  The best part of the book was the 1930’s environment it was set in, complete with cars, manor houses and airplanes. It wasn’t bad at all - it was about like watching an old episode of MacGyver. Or, candidly, a dramatic version of a Scooby Doo episode.  That’s just true horror fiction though.  It wasn’t remotely scary or supernatural.

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa - E.B. Sledge

This is the first of several books that were required reading for my first WW II Studies course, and while only part was required - the portion on Okinawa, I read the entire thing since I was familiar with the author because he is one of the primary characters in the HBO miniseries The Pacific.

They were not wrong to focus on him.  Sledge had a distinguished career as a college professor and only wrote what was initially intended as a private memoir for his family late in life, but he - like Alvin Keenan, who I’ve written about previously - puts his academic skills for writing to good use here, narrating how Marines were trained and how they fought in two of the worst battles of the war - Peleliu and Okinawa.

The book is rightly considered one of the best military memoirs of all time, and we’re fortunate that someone stared at the horrors of close combat over a prolonged period of time, and had the ability to explain to the rest of us what he saw.

The Shadow Land - Elizabeth Kostova

I am an eternal follower of Kostova because I loved The Historian so much. That means I will (eventually) drag myself through even this book, which tells a lengthy story about political persecution in postwar Bulgaria.  

As always, it’s well-written, but it was mistake to get it on audiobook, where I had to sit (drive, actually) through the endless travails of the narrator, who discovers the story of a political prisoner in Bulgaria during its tenure at a communist satellite of the Soviet Union. I could have sped-read through much of it and gotten the story without marinating in the misery.  Yeah, that’s shallow of me, I know, but this is one I came really close to never finishing.

Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journey - Michael Collins

Collins’ book about his experiences as an astronaut in the space program is hands down not just my favorite astronaut memoir, but probably my favorite memoir of all.  He is good at relaying the relevant information about his experiences in a way that makes you understand what he’s talking about.  And funny - he is so funny.  No matter how serious the issue, he sees the humorous side.

If you’re going to read one book about an individual in the race to the moon - this is the one.

Marshall: Organizer of Victory - Leonard Mosley

Several years ago, when I was looking at whose portrait I would put over my non-naval military history shelves, I had a hard time deciding on someone. Naval was easy - the steady hand of Chester Nimitz during the Pacific meant he was the first of the bas-relief medallions. 

But who for the military?  I considered Winston Churchill for a long time since there are few leaders who make the decisively right choice at the right time with such enormous consequences as his in the summer of 1940 to stand against Hitler.  But even before reading Hamilton's complete trilogy, it was already clear that Churchill as a military leader had serious flaws, and his support for colonialism was a bridge too far.

But who else is there?  Most good military leaders have limited scope, and few are free of bad decisions.  Patton?  Not MacArthur, certainly.  Montgomery, Eisenhower - maybe Grant? 

 

Finally I realized that there was a single figure who was the indispensable man at the center of the U.S. preparation for war, whose integrity and good sense made so much of what the Allies accomplished possible.  To be sure, his strategic sense can be questioned.  His belief that France could be invaded by Allied troops in 1942 or even 1943 was wrong, as was his opposition to the peripheral operation that did make sense - the November 1942 invasion of North Africa. Nor is his management of the Army before Pearl Harbor beyond reproach, although there he had a lot of company.

But George Catlett Marshall was a man of honor and accomplishment, as this book I picked up two months ago at a HPBooks in Waco makes clear.   It was actually a really good read - but what I'll always remember about it is the incredibly poor quality of the paper.  I've never seen such a relatively new book (1983) so eaten up with acid. The paper was substantial but quite brittle.  I was glad when I finished it, not because I was glad to be done reading it, but because I was glad to be able to stop handling such a fragile book.