The Life of Greece

The Life of Greece – The Story of Civilization Volume 2 – by Will Durant

Wow.  Just wow.  This book gets a five star rating, if anything, for its volume.  I checked this book out from my local library with the intent of finishing it within the two week time frame.  I needed to do a recheck for another two weeks.  I’m only saying this because I would recommend that you take about two months to digest a work such as this.  This thing is a thick, detailed, monster.  But a kind monster.

This book was simply an incredible experience to read.  The author (along with his wife Ariel) started the “Story of Civilization” series in the mid 1930s (this one was written in 1939).  They got up to volume 11, detailing the Napoleonic Empire, before Mr. Durant passed away.  It took him about four or five years to complete each volume.  That in itself is extraordinary.  I don’t think I could have written a book such as this if I would have had 50 years.

We are fortunate to know much about the Greek civilization.  Sadly, much of it has been left to speculation since the origins began several thousand years before Christ.  What we do know, you’ll find in this book.  Will Durant does an exhaustive research on everything related to the Greek Empire.  This book isn’t simply history.  Had it been, that would have been just fine.  He tackles everything, though, in very meticulous detail.  Imagine walking into a high school and reading every text book that every class has to offer – History, Science, Art, Mathematics, even Physical Education, and you’ll have an idea of just how encompassing this piece of work is.  I confess that there were portions of this book that I did not find as captivating as I found others.  When the author was describing, pottery, for example, I kind of just skimmed the pages (yes, that’s “pages”) where he describes in detail every nuance of the particular art.

This sort of thing can also be a drawback since there are so many people and places involved through the history of Greece.  Oh sure, most of us have heard names such as Euripides, Sophocles, Socrates, Homer, and Alexander, but there are a bazillion other characters as well.  Unless you have an uncanny knack for mastering alliteration, it can be quite a chore to digest names such as Achaeus, Acheron, Aeolus, Adrastus, Adonis, Arctonnesus, Aristomenes, and Aristophanes.  Sometimes many of these names are all on the same page.   Keep in mind, I’m only listing some of the “A’s”. 

As the book progresses in time, it became a bit easier to follow.  We have a lot more information handy of events that happened in 300 B.C as opposed to 3000 B.C.  Still, though, this is a book that must be read slowly to get the full effect – preferable with a notepad handy.

It’s really fascinating to see just how advanced the civilization was so many moons ago.  Equally absorbing is the fact that much of our modern day society resembles this era as well.  One can only hope our ending will be happier.  It’s also fascinating to see just how much of what we now know and use today, we can attribute to the Greeks.  Whether Geometry, Drama, Religion, Morals, or Philosophy – so much originated from Ancient Greece.

This book is highly recommended, but it’s definitely not for everyone.  This is an incredible reference, and reads as such as opposed to a more concise history book.  Definitely the text book sort.  Will Durant is also quite easy to follow.  He makes many wonderful observations within the book, and I found myself wishing that I owned the book (as opposed to it being borrowed from the library), so I could get a highlighter and mark it up.

I’ve already procured a few other of his works, and intend one day to read the entire 11 volumes.  Hopefully I’ll live that long.

Zero Day

Zero Day - by David Baldacci

There are many authors that base their literary career around a particular character.  Think of James Patterson’s Alex Cross or Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone.  David Baldacci, however, has several different books that feature several different sets of recurring characters.  His most famous ones are the King and Maxwell books, and the Camel Club books.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone, when he keeps introducing new recurring characters into the fold.  This book was his first to feature John Puller.

Who is John Puller?  He’s an ex-military “special agent”.  I would guess he’s in his mid 30s.  Tough guy, yet quiet.  Rarely smiles, but an overall good guy.  Sleeps very little, and drinks a lot of coffee.  Single, mainly because he really doesn’t have time for romance.  And very good at what he does – both from the physical perspective and the mental.

When a military colonel and his family are killed in rural West Virginia, Puller is called into investigate.  The town in West Virginia is right out of a John Grisham novel.  The main industry there is the coal industry.  So the only jobs there are mining coal, so everyone is poor, destitute and dying from some sort of coal “disease” (so it seems).  Puller teams up with the head of the police department, Samantha Cole, to investigate these killings.  Of course, during the investigation, many more things go wrong.  It seems as though someone is trying to put a stop to Puller’s investigation, and they obviously have quite a bit of muscle to accomplish some of the things that they implement to try to get rid of the guy.

I really enjoyed this book.  Baldacci has been hit or miss with me throughout his career.  He rivals Stephen King as someone that can write a brilliant book, and then follow it up with one that is absolutely dreadful.  Like King, this cycle goes back and forth, so you never really know if you’ll be safe when you pick up a new book.  So I was relieved that this book was so entertaining.  You could make the argument that it got a bit unrealistic about halfway through, but I was never bored, and I found the whole story to make sense despite all of the twists and turns.  Baldacci is also famous for writing “short” chapters.  I seem to remember the average chapter length to be about four pages in length.  Some don’t like this, but I enjoy it as it’s easy to come to a stopping point when you’re ready to stop reading for a while.  A lot of his chapter endings could be considered as minor “cliffhangers” as well.

Looking forward to the next John Puller story.

No True Glory - A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah

No True Glory – A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah by Bing West

As I write this review, the United States of America is still shell shocked by the brutal terrorist killings that occurred in San Bernardino, California in November 2015.  Sadly, the country doesn’t appear to be united.  President Obama and the far left think that stricter gun laws can prevent such atrocities whereas those on the far right, including presidential candidate Donald Trump, are essentially wanting to ban all Muslims from the United States.  War is hell.

I only say this because the whole Iraq mess seemed to culminate from the terrorist attacks on 9/11.  We went to war believing Saddam Hussein was hoarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Since most agree that we had faulty intelligence and no weapons were found, what could we do now that we’ve committed ourselves?  Well, the good news is that Hussein was toppled from power, and forced to flee (he was eventually found, and systematically executed).  The Iraqi people rejoiced, and our 24 hour news coverage showed a jubilant population celebrating in the streets while ransacking his ubiquitous palaces and statues that wallpapered Baghdad.

The problem was, what happens next?  Here’s where most people, excluding the political astute, simply were clueless.  Many believed that we could “destroy” Iraq and then somehow rebuild the backwards country to resemble the state of Vermont.  Those who know better knew better.

This book puts us right in the middle of the nastiest place in Iraq, the ugly grime-filled city of Fallujah.  This is the last place where anyone would want to be during a war.  A bit like the Siberian Front in World War II.  What author Bing West manages to do is tell a very thorough account of the frontlines during this calamity that begin in April 2003.  He spends equal time talking about the battles with several of the key players on the ground, as well as many involved in the military and political leadership.  The author shows us that there’s a very big disconnect going on here.

Fortunately, this is not a “Pro War” nor an “Anti-War” book.  The author manages to focus on war, and any war is extremely unpleasant.  While reading, I couldn’t help draw many parallels to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.  A big criticism of that war is that it seemed as though the U.S. wanted the South Vietnamese to win the war more than the South Vietnamese did.  Such seems to be the case here.  Even with Saddam Hussein gone, you can’t expect a nation that has been embroiled in a set way of living to suddenly throw all the shackles off and embrace democracy.  Even after Saddam is gone, there are rife political sides, and most still hate America.  A sad analogy: If you adopt a five-year-old dog that has been abused and tormented its whole life, that dog will never be “normal”, no matter how much love you shower upon it.

So America really wants to help.  Money is spent.  Money is given to Fallujah and Iraq.  Lots of money.  That will inspire them.  Right?  Nope.  So we give more money.  More decisions are made, more disagreements between leaders, more frustrated marines on the battlefield.  etc. etc.  You have to admire the marines for wanting to get the job done.  They know they have the manpower to obliterate this hell-hole, and they’re highly motivated after seeing all of the injustice and nastiness firsthand.  But we can’t fight wars that way anymore.  Not with CNN reporting every move we make.  Sadly, casualties in a war always expand beyond the enemy on the frontlines.  Buildings get bombed containing innocent civilians, and the 24 news networks are quick to make these the lead stories, which then drives up animosity for any conflict.  So President Bush knows he has to be careful.  One needs to only remember the Abu Gharib prison story that made headlines during all of the Fallujah crap.  Most Americans can probably tell you more about that incident than they can the whole Fallujah episode because, let’s face it, a story about prisoners being unjustly tortured makes sensational headlines.

Hindsight tells us that even though we were finally “successful” in Fallujah, nothing has really changed.  Imagine turning on your kitchen lights at 2 a.m. and seeing 100 cockroaches.  If you’re lucky, you can kill about 5 of them, but the rest will scurry under the surface, multiply, and be back the next night.  And the cockroaches in Fallujah have guns and homemade bombs.  Like Vietnam, we may have dropped a lot of bombs and killed far more of the enemy than what we lost, but until you break the psyche of the enemy (as we did with Germany and Japan), you can never really say that you’ve “won” the war.  We were never able to accomplish that in Iraq, and Fallujah was where this was at its ugliest. 

A good, but depressing read.

Spartan Gold

Spartan Gold – by Clive Cussler and Grant Blackwood

This is the first book that I’ve read by Clive Cussler that he co-authored with Grant Blackwood.  I believe Cussler has “written” with about 7 or 8 different authors in the last 15 years or so.  This has led many, myself included, to believe that Cussler probably had very little to do with this book, other than grant his name to the title so the book could sell more copies.

The Cussler “formula” is definitely here.  These books with Blackwood are labeled “The Fargo Adventures” that focus on husband and wife explorers Sam and Remi Fargo.  Like other Cussler heroes, they usually encounter some long-lost ancient treasure only to cross paths some very sinister beings that are after the same plunder for far more dubious purposes.

In our story, the Fargos discover a German submarine from World War II in the marshes of the East Coast of the U.S.  One thing leads to another, and they end up searching for some lost wine bottles that belonged to none other than Napoleon himself.  Seems there are also some evil forces from the Middle East that are after the same treasure, and they’ll stop at nothing, including eliminating the Fargos by murder.  What’s so important about these wine bottles?  As I recall, they were “coded” with instructions as to where to find some kind of treasure.  It’s not like they were needed to save the planet, or prevent some sort of geothermal disaster or anything.  It seems as though Sam and Remi want to risk their lives for nothing other than the sake of adventure.

The plot itself really isn’t too bad.  Like most Cussler stories, it borders on the imaginative and the unbelievable. Our husband and wife protagonists are what you might expect – they seem to be quite knowledgeable about everything and have absolutely no fear of anything.  Because we have a husband and wife here, there’s no need for any romantic interludes, which commonly occur when Cussler has a “solo” hero.

What bothered me the most about the book is the seemingly ease of the linear progression of the story.  Since our characters are, in a sense, on a global treasure hunt, there are many clues that need to be discovered and many mysteries that need to be unlocked.  It seems they’re able to proceed through this labyrinth with unbelievable simplicity, and there’s not much imagination or creativity that go into the scenes.   We’ll see, for example, Sam and Remi show up at some “expert’s” door with lots of questions.  The expert, at first, can’t seem to help them, but then says something like “Oh Wait!  I think I DO know something that can help you!”  And they then manage to give our heroes a huge piece to the puzzle that allows them to easily transfer to the next location and the next conundrum.  And on and on and on.

Then there’s the fact that these wine bottles have some sort of ridiculous “code” embedded on them that is supposed to lead to a treasure.  So the reader has to read about the clues on the bottles, and then hear Sam and Remi “process” the solutions out loud within the pages that, again, just seemed incredibly unrealistic and detailed.

The book is very lightweight and does what it needs to move forward.  It might even make an interesting movie or television show if proper care went into it.  It just seemed as though it moved too briskly and was too frothy for me to really care that much.

If you’re “new” to Cussler, I would recommend his solo Dirk Pitt novels (up until about the year 2000).  I also enjoy his Numa Files series and his Isaac Bell adventures.   I’m not sure I would want to read another one of the Fargo escapades anytime soon unless I get really really bored.

The New Anti-Semitism

The New Anti-Semitism by Phyllis Chesler

This book by feminist Phyllis Chesler is not so much a book as it is a rant.  She is mightily ticked off.  Reading this book, I kept wondering, when she turned in the draft to her publisher, if she typed the entire manuscript with the caps lock key on.  One feels as though they are being assaulted while reading.  I can definitely excuse her, however.  Being a well-educated Jew, she has every right to be infuriated with the current state of affairs concerning Israel and its mistreatment by the rest of the world.

When I say the “rest of the world”, I mean that quite literally.  As history as shown us time and time again, there always seems to be an infuriating hatred against the Jewish people.  Why?  Search me.  We’re talking about a race of people who have spent their entire history being abused, persecuted, humiliated, and regularly killed for no other reason than their identity as being Jewish.  What aids in the author’s anger is that she identifies herself as a leftist feminist, yet feels many of this crowd shares the same hatred towards Jews, Israel, Zionism, etc.  So she rightly feels betrayed.  How can people “on her side” be so prejudiced as well?

I really enjoyed this book, but couldn’t help thinking that if she would have taken a few deep breaths from time to time, the material could have been presented a bit better.  She pulls no punches.  Quite often she opens up a paragraph with “Let me say again…..” or “Let me be perfectly clear….”, so it’s quite obvious she feels quite exasperated.  I would not want to challenge this woman to an argument.  I must say again, that such sentiments are entirely justified based on history, and the perceived resistance by many to do anything differently. 

She spends a good amount of time pointing the finger at everyone throughout history – Arabs, Christians, Fascists, Liberals, etc. since all parties have, in fact, been guilty at one time or another of fierce anti-Semitism.  Throughout much of the book, she basically details a dirty laundry list of many key figures, countries, and governments and all of their offenses.  Despite her anger, she’s quite fair in her assessments, and does tend to look at everything rationally.  Example: She acknowledges that the United States has been guilty of crimes in the past – whether it be slavery, colonization, the treatment of Native Americans, or anti-Semitism, but she points out that one really needs to grade on a curve when looking at a country’s history.  America, like Israel, is definitely guilty of some crimes during its existence, but when matched up with its charitable contributions and philanthropic efforts, it’s very clear that rational people really shouldn’t be demonizing nations that do so much good for the world.

I also enjoyed the fact that she rarely mentions God, or quote scriptures throughout the book.  I only say this because it’s easy for one to be skeptical of Israel since they identify themselves as “God’s chosen people”.  Secularists will argue that this doesn’t matter (some would call the claim ludicrous), yet Chesler shows us that Jews throughout history have never used the “God is with us” argument to grab what they want, and they continue to be persecuted regardless.  In other words, God or no God, there’s no excuse to not give Israel what is rightly theirs, and was taken away from them over a thousand years ago in barbaric fashion.

Speaking of God, I felt that this book makes a very strong case for the Judeo-Christian deity.  How else can such a tiny underdog persevere under such conditions unless they have a higher power on their side??  You would think civilized people would cheer and rally to the Jewish cause, but alas, this is not to be.  Perhaps because Israel and/or the Jewish community has persevered and triumphed so many times is what makes so many cynical “intellectuals” hate them?  How dare a country keep winning wars that other people start.

I really didn’t read anything here “new” about the “new” anti-Semitism.  It’s the same old same old, the author just sadly reminds us that nothing has gotten better and, in many cases, gotten worse.  Perhaps I’m more of an optimist, but in the circles that I frequent, most are not oblivious to the situation, and apart from the occasional crabby celebrity who doesn’t have a clue as to what he is talking about (Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters comes to mind), most seem to rally behind Israel’s cause.  Even Howard Stern.

A good book, yet frustrating at times.  Not because of the author’s literary screaming in-your-face diatribes, but because so much still hasn’t changed, and too many ignorant “intellectuals” still can’t quite eradicate their obvious anti-Semitic attitudes.

Edge of Eternity

Edge of Eternity – by Ken Follett

The last book of the Century Trilogy by Ken Follett is, by far, the worst of the three.  In fact, it’s really the only bad one of the bunch.  But, boy, is it bad.  The first two were magnificent, but he manages to hit rock bottom with this one.

The Century Trilogy begins around the time of World War I.  The author focuses on four different families, each one is a different nationality – German, English, Russian, and American.  This way, the author can tell a story while incorporating a lot of history within the pages.  We seem to find our main characters right in the middle of some of the most important and well known events of the past century.  The first book ends around the conclusion of the First World War – with all of the main characters having babies.  The second book focuses on World War II, with all of those babies now grown up and being promoted to center stage.  Of course, they then have babies of their own so we can then have a third book taking place around the 1960s.

So, yes, the formula is the same with this, third, book.  The problem here is that Follett has run out of ideas on how to tell a good story.  Yes, we have the characters again immersed in the times of the early sixties – the main players being The Civil Rights movement, The Berlin Wall, The Cuban Missile Crisis, and, oddly, The British Invasion music scene.  Instead of well thought out characters doing what well thought out characters do, Follett has simply relegated everyone to be backup pieces to all of the major events.  In many ways, you could argue that this book could serve as a Cliffs Notes for 1960’s world history.  As I would read about these characters being smack dab in the middle of some of the most famous events in history, I couldn’t help be reminded of Forrest Gump.  Yes, Forrest Gump was a good movie, but it wasn’t supposed to be taken seriously.  This book, unbelievably, tries to pass off as being serious.

It just became tiresome after a while.  Example: When we read a chapter that begins with a character who is working with Dr. Martin Luther King going to Memphis in April 1968, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what will happen after the next twenty pages or so.  The entire book is like this.  The author also simply tries to include too much.  The Vietnam war is actually a minor player, but Follett figures he has to tell SOMETHING about the tragedy, so he hurriedly has a character get drafted, then in the jungle, and then experiencing every horror conceivable in only one chapter.  We basically never read or hear about it again.  It’s embarrassingly contrived.

Then we come to the sleaze factor.  Sadly, this is becoming a bit of a given with Ken Follett’s recent work, so I would be an eternal optimist to expect anything to change.  It can be downright sickening.  Yes, it’s ok for characters to fall in love and make love, but Follett simply doesn’t know where to stop with all of his pornographic descriptions.  I really wish he didn’t feel the need to tell us every personal, nauseating detail of what goes on in a closed bedroom between lovers, but his descriptions are enough to make any sane person lose their lunch.  It also happens over and over and over and over again.  He could have easily trimmed about 100 pages but cutting out all of the explicit sex. 

Speaking of unnecessary sleaze and sex, we even get to read about President Kennedy’s fictitious escapades behind the scenes.  Now, history tells us that Kennedy, sadly, was a womanizer, but is it really necessary to go into such X-rated descriptions here??  Apparently one of our main characters, a young female White House staffer, is having an ongoing affair with the married President, so we have to read about it ad-nauseum.  In every nasty detail.  Including when the young woman gets pregnant and Kennedy makes her get an abortion.  Yes, the author actually includes such ridiculous offensive garbage.  This make-believe event actually happens fairly early in the book, and a part of me wishes that I had just quit reading at that point.

About half of this book is 1960-1963, and the second half goes from 1964 to present day.  He should have stuck with the first half, as he zooms too quickly through history once 1964 arrives.  You can’t really tell a good story covering four different families on multiple continents over 54 years in only 500 pages.  So instead, we basically get regurgitated history thrown at us.  To be completely honest, at this point I basically DID give up, and just skimmed the remainder of the book.

It was also hard for me to remember all the characters from the first two books, and what their significance was.  They’re only minor players here, and Follett does do an adequate job refreshing the reader with who they are and what they did, but there were just too many people to keep track of, even though I did enjoy reading about most of them in the first two books.

The author even manages to invent a fictitious story about Ronald Reagan which shows the man as truly evil and demented.  We don’t read anything at all about Reagan’s role in things such as, aiding the Berlin Wall getting torn down.  A bit odd since the Berlin Wall is a major player in this story. But, for whatever reason, I guess we’re not supposed to read about anything good the man did since his ideologies conflict with the author’s.  Oddly, I only found this episode to be mildly annoying after all of the explicit X-rated affairs of Kennedy were detailed.

It’s too bad the author didn’t stop after two books.  They were actually quite good.  Follett has written mostly good work throughout his career.  I would recommend “The Pillars of the Earth”, “The Man From St. Petersburg” and “The Eye of the Needle”.  Yes, he has written some that were less than great, but none as bad as this one.   This one was atrocious.

Life After LIfe

Life After Life – by Kate Atkinson

I enjoy playing video games.  Quite often, when I start playing a game, and am doing particularly poorly, I’ll “cheat” and quickly press the Reset button and start all over again.  I’ve often wondered what life would be like if we could do the same thing.  I know I’m not alone in having such thoughts, and author Kate Atkinson does an absolutely marvelous job of telling such a tale with this book.

Ursula Todd is born on a cold, stormy winter night in 1911.  Because of the hazardous conditions, the doctor doesn’t make it on time to deliver the baby, so the baby dies.  End of story.  Right?  Not quite.  It seems that the author has invented/imagined a universe where “do overs” are possible.  So Ursula is born again in an alternate universe, and this time she survives.  Well, this time she only survives for a few days.  So the reset button is pressed again.  And again, and again, and again.  It can get confusing because these “lives” that we are reading about aren’t necessarily linear.  One life she may live until her twenties, the next life, she lives until her teens.  Then, we’re immediately transferred to, say life #6 where she’s in her thirties.  Then, we go back to life #3 where she’s still a schoolgirl.  It can get mightily confusing.

Yet somehow Kate Atkinson makes the whole thing work quite brilliantly.  This book is quite a remarkable achievement in how we can keep going back and forth, yet still be able to somewhat keep track of Ursula and her family.  Her “family” changes a bit as well from life to life, since such events (such as death) can radically change the cosmos, so to speak.  It might be beneficial to read this book with a tally sheet and a notebook handy.

The most interesting part of this book was during the days of World War II.  In one “life”, Ursula is a civil servant working in London (all of Atkinson’s books take place in England) helping the ravaged city cope through Hitler’s 1940 persistent bombing.  In “another” life, Ursula is a German citizen during the major conflict, and is actually close friends with Eva Braun.  Talk about a stretch.  Again, though, all of this works quite well.

After living so many lives, Ursula begins to have frequent bouts of déjà vu and “second sight”.  She goes through many episodes during her lives where she feels as though she’s “been here before”.  We, of course, know that this is true, but Ursula is nervously going through her lives wondering how and why she’s able to “predict things”.  If one pays close attention, you can actually see that she’s able to clearly choose the paths of her last two lives.  By then, her déjà vu is so strong, that she knows that her decisions that she makes can alter the course of history.  I confess that I didn’t quite “get it” until I read the “questions for discussion” section at the very end.

I’ve stated in other reviews that Kate Atkinson’s books aren’t for everybody.  Her style is quite anomalous, and probably won’t appeal to those who like to read straight-forward, meat and potatoes, stories.  In fact, this was the book that made Atkinson known to the masses after someone conducted an interview with Stephen King and he stated that this book was one of his favorites.  When Stephen King plugs your book, well…….. 

Her style of writing is par for the course compared to her other books.  Believe it or not, I actually found this book to be the least depressing of her catalog (and her books can be mightily depressing.) A pretty strong statement when the main character literally keeps dying all the time, but in a strange way, it gives us some sort of hope, in a bizarre, twisted way.  I would bet that 99% of the characters in her other books would have loved to have a reset button during their lives as well.

This was definitely one of a kind – and such a book could have ended up a garbled mess, yet the author manages to create wonderful, bizarre, strange story.

Crusade

Crusade – by Rick Atkinson

If you took a sight-seeing vacation via automobile, upon your return, I would love to have heard about the great things that you saw on your vacation. I would not love it if you would have, instead, popped the hood of your automobile and showed me every component of your car’s engine.  If you videotaped your vacation, and had videotaped 120 hours of footage, I would like to see a 15-minute recap of the highlights, I would not like to have to sit through and watch all 120 hours of unedited footage.

I use these analogies because while I was reading this book, I sometimes felt like I was watching 120 hours of video of someone showing me every component of a car engine.  I felt like this book was simply too much, and was way overdone in terms of detail.

This book is about the 1991 Gulf War.  A war that lasted six weeks.  Yet this book is 500 pages long.  Think about that for a second – a 500-page book about a six-week war.  I’m not sure anyone could do a good job giving such a drawn out narrative about such a brief moment of time, so safe to say, I would have enjoyed this book a lot better had it been carved in half.  There’s just too much detail.  Too many descriptions of military movements, weapon specifics, battle positions, and detailed meetings of Norman Schwarzkopf constantly berating his generals.  I was just mainly bored.  This book actually took me longer to read the book than the actual conflict lasted.  I had to force myself to read ten pages every day just so I could get through with it.

Then there’s the fact that most of this book focuses on the “here and now” and not enough on the causes of the war, and the backgrounds of the countries involved in the conflict.  Some of this is here, but not enough.  Had the author given us more background of the Middle East, and the turbulent histories, it would have made a much better book.  Instead, it seems were transplanted immediately to the battlefield and we immediately start following all the tactical moves in precise detail without really knowing much about the “why”.  This would have helped tremendously since most U.S. citizens had never even heard of Saddam Hussein until Kuwait was invaded.

Then, this book was written very shortly after the conclusion of the war, so there really isn’t any opportunity to reflect back on the conflict, and see where and why things happened the way that they did, and what many of the post war effects actually were.  This probably would have been a better book had it been written five or six years after the conclusion of the war.

The author does give us some insights, however.  He does talk in detail about the “goal” of the war – which was never to destroy Saddam Hussein and his evil regime, but to simply get them to withdraw from Kuwait.  George Bush was very careful about minimizing U.S. casualties, and figured that ousting Hussein would be too costly, and wouldn’t be worth the battle.  Plus, he earnestly believed that, after the war, Iraq would then dispose of their leader via a coup, and that would free the U.S. and its allies from having to do much of the bloody work.  Of course, hindsight now tells us that such judgements were mistaken, but we don’t get to read too much of this here though because, again, this book was written so closely after the war ended.

This book will tell you just about everything that happened during the war on the battlefield, so if that’s your thing, this book gives a great synopsis.  I just wanted “more” of some things, and definitely “less” of others – such as all the meticulous detail.

The Great Movies

The Great Movies – by Roger Ebert

I confess that I’m not a big fan of movies or other forms of visual art.  It’s not that I really have anything against the medium, it just seems that my time is so limited, that I rarely want to devote several hours of my frugal day to sit still and stare at a moving picture.  I only mention this in my review because if someone such as myself can really enjoy this type of book, I would think that those who actually love going to the movies would find such a companion essential.

Roger Ebert first became a household name when he teamed up with fellow Chicago film critic Gene Siskel, and the two hosted the weekly syndicated show “Siskel and Ebert”.  On the show, they would review three or four movies per week and gave each movie a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”.  The show was so successful that there were many copycat shows that surfaced during the 80s and 90s, but Siskel and Ebert were the originals, and the best.  Nothing was better advertising for a new movie that could bolster the moniker “Two Thumbs Up!” as part of its advertising.

As time went on, the astute learned that being a film critic wasn’t necessary a job that “anyone could do”.  In the late 80s, Roger Ebert started releasing annual books of his reviews, and one learned that the man was very insightful when it came to distinguishing great works of art from cookie-cutter exploitation.  Then, the internet came along, and one could basically read every Roger Ebert review ever printed by going to his website.  His insights and commentary were indispensable to all and he quickly became the most well-known film critic.  I was one who, every time I would watch a movie, jump on to his website and read about what he had to say about the film that I had just watched.  Most of the time I agreed with him, and he always had the ability to look much deeper and find things and see things that I could not.

That seems to be what prompted him to do his “Great Movies” series.  Unlike what many people might think, this book (and the two others that followed) aren’t actually <I>reviews</I> of these movies, but rather essays where Ebert goes a bit further and explains in more depth why these movies are, in fact, great.  It should be pointed out that when Ebert actually reviewed a movie, he tried very hard not to include spoilers.  When he writes these essays, however, he assumes that his audience has already viewed the films, or if they haven’t, would rather <I>study</I> such works and not really care that he often, gives away much of the plot.

This book of movies covers a lot of ground, and I’m sure Ebert had to be a bit selective when choosing what films to feature.  Most of the obvious ones are here (Star Wars, Citizen Cane, Gone with the Wind), but he also includes some very bizarre choices that 99% of movie goers not only haven’t seen, not only haven’t heard of, but probably couldn’t view such a film because of its limited availability.  A lot of old, silent, foreign, and/or documentaries are featured here as well the more familiar. Again, though, this really isn’t a drawback.  I imagine someone who seriously loves films would take a significant amount of time to attempt to track down all of the works that are featured here and purchase them to study for themselves.  Fortunately, things such as the internet makes such an arduous task a bit more manageable.

I really can’t think of anyone better than Roger Ebert to produce such a work as this, yet I must confess that the man’s devotion to the cinema could be rather frightening at times.  As I read this book, I often thought “Did this man ever do anything in his life <I>other</I> than watch movies?”  He would state things such as “I manage to go back and watch this film a couple of times per year”, or “I often study this movie with a film class, and we do a shot by shot analysis.”  Sheesh.  I really can’t imagine anyone devoting that much time to <I>anything</I>, let alone watching movies, but this was what made the man so respected in the industry.

As I mentioned, if one is a bit lazy, one doesn’t really need to purchase this book, as he includes his “great movies” series on his internet site.  Since many people can now access the internet via a tablet or a Kindle, one could definitely take such an advantage.  It was sort of nice, however, to have all of these narratives in one place, which was why I chose to purchase it (and the fact that Amazon was having a sale).

I’m sure I’ll not be the first person that will say this as I conclude this review, and it does sound a bit hokey, but here it goes: This book is a definite Thumbs Up.  Thumbs way Up.

The Sleeping Doll

The Sleeping Doll – by Jeffery Deaver

Kathryn Dance was a character that we were first introduced to in the last Jeffery Deaver book, The Cold Moon.  That was one of Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme books, and the character of Dance was brought in to help Rhyme and company solve a case.  Dance, it seems, is a private investigator from the West Coast, who is also a “Kinesics Expert”.  What this means, essentially, is that she has the unique ability to read a person’s body language and Para verbal behavior, and tell whether or not a person is lying.  Sort of a human polygraph machine.  Her appearance in that story was welcome, as it helped keep the Rhyme series somewhat “fresh”, and since Deaver does an immense amount of research for his books, we learned a lot about the art of people lying.

It was great, then, when Deaver decide to promote Ms. Dance and make her the main protagonist for many of his future books.  This one was the first, and it’s very good.  The formula, though, really isn’t that much different from a Lincoln Rhyme adventure.  We meet Kathryn Dance, learn things about her personal life (such as she is a widow and has two children), meet some of her colleagues (that we know will probably remain as supporting actors in future books), and learn an awful lot about kinesics.

For this story, she’s sent to question Daniel Pell – a man behind bars, to see if he can assist with knowledge of a current crime.  Pell is dubbed the “Son of Manson” as his history and crimes resemble the infamous lunatic Charles Manson.  Like Manson, Pell is pretty smart, so the interrogation, in a strange way, turns out to be a battle of wits.  On a somewhat tangent point, Pell manages to escape during a prison transfer, so our main focus now is for Dance and her team to put their smarts to the test and find him.

Here is where the distinction between a Rhyme story and a Dance story can get a bit blurred.  Whereas Rhyme would find every minute piece of evidence and micro analyze it help him solve the conundrum, Dance essentially does the same thing by talking to everyone involved, and deducing the “real” truth by her gifted abilities. So, had Deaver modified this story slightly, it could have easily passed for a Lincoln Rhyme book (he and partner Amelia Sachs actually make a cameo).

We’re also allowed inside the mind of creepy Daniel Pell.  He’s able to obtain help from the outside by a gullible young woman who has fallen in love with him via correspondence, and we see how Pell utilizes his gift of controlling other human beings.  Creepy, yes, and those who followed the Charles Manson story can probably learn how such individuals are able to obtain a large amount of zealous votaries.

Throw in several plot twists, several characters who aren’t what they seem, and you have the recipe for a great Jeffery Deaver book.  I thoroughly enjoyed this story, even though I felt that I’ve read such a story many times before by the same author – even with a new protagonist.

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones (Book 1) – George R.R. Martin

I should first state that I am not a fan of the Fantasy and/or the Science Fiction genre (I only group them together because I’ve noticed that most who really love one, tend to also love the other).  The only reason I read this book was, well, the same reason a lot of people read this book, and that was because they’re a fan of the HBO series.  I actually never even started watching the show until after season five was over.  Like most, I was incredibly impressed with the series.

Watching the show, however, contained a lot of frustrating elements if you’re not a big fan of “Fantasy”.  Where does this world exist?  What is its history?  Why do the “seasons” seem to last several years instead of only a few months?  Where do the creepy White Walkers come from?  Well, these are things that you really shouldn’t try too hard to understand.  Doing such a thing takes away much of the joy, and one should just relax and be entertained.  One shouldn’t worry about, when watching “Star Wars” for example, why “The Force” can tell you when a planet is being blown up a bazillion miles away, yet it can’t tell you when you’re kissing your own sister.

The biggest frustration when watching the show is the multitude of major and minor characters that parade in and out of the scenes.  There’s so many people to keep track of, and they all have lengthy histories before the story ever even starts.  So we have to assimilate all of the different kingdoms, the different players (all with “Fantasy” names – no Doug, Skip, or Mary), all of the arranged marriages, all the incestuous relationships, all the children born out of wedlock, etc.etc.   If you’re new to the show, I would recommend watching with the Closed Caption feature turned on – it’s really helpful to keep all of the players in order when you can read all of the names as well as hear them as the dialogue is being spoken. 

Which is why this book is so handy and welcome.  Reading this book allows you to revisit the story that you already know, but at a slower pace.  I actually learned a lot about the characters that, while I’m sure the show told me, were told in such a quick manner that it was quickly lost on me.  It’s easy to follow some of the main characters – Tyrion, Eddard, Cersie, and Jamie, but when you get to all the minor ones and what their exact roles are in this epic yarn, it helps to have it all written down.  I now know, for example, a lot more about the character of Theon Greyjoy, and don’t refer to him in my head only as “the guy that looks like Mick Jaggar” - which I did up until about Season 3.

Still, though, even the book is weighted down with too many characters.  Fortunately, there is a handy “who’s who” in the back of the book that aids one tremendously, but such references are quite hard to access when reading a story on an E-book, such as I did.

The plot?  Well, from what I can tell, there are seven kingdoms in this fantasy world, but the kingdom of Kings Landing is the kingdom that rules all the kingdoms.  Obviously, all of the kings think that they’re the rightful heir to this throne, so the “Game of Thrones” consists of armies and kingdoms constantly at war, negotiating, battling and marrying their offspring to form alliances.  It’s a big complicated game, all right, and not something too different from the history of our own world.  There’s also some elements not familiar to our world that appear from time to time – we have dragons, white walkers, and “stone” people that all tend to complicate things, but make for a better overall story.

The first book is essentially season one.  The show doesn’t deviate much at all from the book, which I think is a good thing in this case.  As I’m writing this review, there have been five books written, and five seasons of the show, so I’m guessing they match up pretty evenly.

Had the show not been so brilliantly done, I don’t think I ever would have bothered to pick up the book, but there’s a reason that the series is as highly regarded as it is.  The scenery in itself is incredibly beautiful and majestic, and the acting is first rate.  Of course, there’s a lot of blood, even more violence, and even more explicit sex.  But that’s HBO for you.

If you love the show and want “more”, these books (at least volume 1) will provide it.  Even though there is very little in the books that didn’t make the cut to film, having such a book that details such fantasy worlds are welcome, if anything, to aid you in your overall understanding of this make believe place.

W is for Wasted

W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton

Kinsey Milhone is back for her 23rd crime solving adventure.  If you’ve read any of these, you know the drill.  This book was very good - not one of the best, but far from the worst.  Sometimes I wonder if Sue Grafton actually gets a bit tired of Kinsey.  I know I certainly do.  When you name your books after the letters of the alphabet, however, you probably feel a bit obligated to get all the way through the letter “Z” before you write anything else.

For Grafton’s last several books, she’s slightly altered her style and told some of the story in third person - focusing on different characters other than Kinsey.  I find this incredibly refreshing since these diversions are a nice change of pace, and leads me to believe that Grafton might actually succeed even better if she took a temporary detour from the “Alphabet Mysteries”.  I’m guessing that won’t happen, however, at least until the conclusion of book number 26.

A bit odd since the word in the title represented by the corresponding letter of the alphabet really has nothing (to my knowledge) with the story itself.  I’m not sure who, or what is actually “wasted” in this story, but it is somewhat of a moot point.  Grafton delivers as she normally does, and had this book been my ninth or tenth as opposed to my twenty-third, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it significantly better than I did.

For this book, two seemingly unrelated deaths happen before our story begins.  One death is of a sleazy private investigator (Pete) and the other is a homeless man living on the beach.  Kinsey is dragged into the saga because it seems that the unknown vagrant had Kinsey’s name and phone number in his possession when he died.  So the saga begins.

Well, the main criticism of Sue Grafton’s writing is that she goes into descriptive overload.  She spends just as much time telling you the mundane goings on of Kinsey’s day to day life as she does focusing on the actual plot.  This tends to get old.  I’l admit that Sue Grafton actually does a very good job of this.  There aren’t that many authors that can spend an entire page and a half describing someone packing a lunch and keeping the reader somewhat interested.  It’s just that after 23 books…..well…it does get a bit old.  I found myself skimming/skipping the parts of the book where such events are described.

This was a bit frustrating for this book in particular since I felt that the actual story could have been told in better detail.  By the time I got to the last 20 pages, I felt like there needed to be at least 50 more, and Grafton wraps up the story in, what I felt, was a bit of a hurried fashion since we had already passed the 400 page mark.  I felt a bit cheated since I wanted more of the actual plot.

I’m sure I’ll read X,Y and Z when they come out, but I’m looking forward to some variety by this wonderful author one day in the future.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes

The Complete Sherlock Holmes - by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This was one of the first e-books I bought when I received a Kindle for Christmas in 2012.  Because of copyright laws, it’s incredibly easy to purchase “The Complete Works of….” your favorite author - provided your favorite author has been dead and buried for some time.  I’m not sure how far back the writings have to go to qualify, nor do I know the legal logistics, but there are plenty of old authors of centuries past that you can easily procure masses of volumes in one electronic book for a very cheap price - usually from about 99 cents to about $3.99.

So I snapped this one up.  Would I enjoy it?  Would I actually read this entire thing?  I honestly didn’t know.  But for a price of $1.99 or whatever it was, I simply couldn’t pass up such a bargain.   It was money well spent, and I did end up reading all ten volumes within this e-book.  Of course, I couldn’t do it sequentially.  No, my attention span simply couldn’t stay focused in one direction for that length of time, but I slowly made my way through all of these works.  It took me about two and one-half years, and I literally read more than 100 other books during this same timeframe to keep my mind fresh.

So what does the average person know about Sherlock Holmes?  Well, they probably know that he was a famous literary detective that practiced his trade in the 1800s in London, England.  They know he wore his trademark deerstalker hat, had a pipe and tobacco that he slowly puffed while deep in thought, and had a companion, Dr. Watson, that was always faithfully by his side.  I’m guessing most have never read any of the books since these works are more than a century old.  It isn’t even necessary to read any of these works to know about Sherlock Holmes since there have been several movies, movie spin-offs, made for television movies, and even a “modern day” television show that appeared just a few short years ago.

I found all of these books to be incredibly satisfying - 4 full length novels and 6 collections of short stories.  The biggest enjoyment for me, however, was not necessarily the mysteries in and of themselves, yet the fact that these stories are told in such a rich Victorian English style and vernacular.  Most of these stories are told through the eyes of flatmate Dr. Watson, as he retells these sleuthing tales that he has recorded from his extensive catalog of notes that he jots down every time the great detective solves yet another impossible crime.

These aren’t stories that you can “match wits” with the protagonist.  The author doesn’t give you every detail of every crime being solved so you can challenge Holmes to see if you can figure out the mystery before he does.  I’m reminded of the “Encyclopedia Brown” series that I read when I was younger.  It was always fun to read and reread those stories so you could try to solve the case on your own.  No, these stories don’t quite work the same way.  Example: when Sherlock receives a visitor to his apartment requesting help to solve some sort of conundrum,  Holmes can immediately deduce much about his visitor - his background, his occupation, his nationality, etc. just by observing his visitor’s skin tone, the color of mud on their boots or how they hold their walking cane.

To be fair, some of the observations, conclusions, and methods don’t stand the test of time that well.  Anytime a suspect is a non-white European, they are immediately branded as “intellectually inferior”.   Conversely, if the perpetrator leaves a hat behind at the crime scene and the hat happens to be larger than average, that means that the suspect obviously has “above average intelligence” because, well, if the hat is large, then so was the person’s head.  There were also too many stories where characters would wear disguises to remain anonymous amongst colleagues and even family members.  It seems silly, nowadays, to believe that a man could hide his true identity from his wife by wearing some sort of silly camouflage. 

Those sins are minor, however, as the real joy is in the tone of the storytelling and not how believable everything is.  It should also be pointed out that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was not limited in his literary career to just writing about this famous detective.  He had masses of other publications and narratives, and we sometimes get a glimpse of what those diversions might have been like.  For example, one of my favorite of the full length novels here was “The Valley of Fear”.  That story was told in two parts.  Holmes and Watson solve the crime at the end of part one, and part two is a narrative from the criminal’s perspective of how and why the crime was committed.  We’re allowed to take a journey several years before the crime, and even on another continent.  You could easily forget you were reading a Sherlock Holmes story during this distraction, yet the tale was so well told, that you really didn’t care.  In fact, it was an enjoyable diversion from the all-too familiar at that point.

It should also be pointed out that the last collation in this volume, “Tales of Mystery and Terror” are not really Sherlock Holmes stories at all.  Part of me thinks that they don’t belong here amongst the other stories.  There were one or two stories where Holmes “sort of” made a cameo appearance (never in person, he was just referred to in the story, although not by name), but the stories are independent of the familiar.  Again, though, there was nothing upsetting about such a diversion.  If anything, it was a refreshing detour.

It’s not necessary for one to read everything here.  If you stumble on such a collection as I did, and want to spend a mere pennies for a huge collection, you can find just as much joy and satisfaction in reading only a few of these volumes and still feel satisfied.   

I’m glad that Holmes and Watson have lived on for so long after these books first saw the light of day.

One Summer

One Summer - David Baldacci

I only read this one because, once I discover an author that I like, my anal tendencies force me to read everything by the author that has ever been published.  Although Baldacci’s main genre deals with political/government thrillers, every once in awhile he’ll take a detour and write about the sweet and sentimental.  That, itself is o.k., but unfortunately, he doesn’t really fare too well in this area.  Maybe he does fare well in this area, and it’s just that I don’t particularly like books of this nature.  I really wanted to like this one.  I really wanted him to pull it off.  I actually started out reading this book and thinking it might turn out o.k.  Even half-way through it I thought I might be able to give it at least a passing grade.  Unfortunately, the last 25 pages or so takes what is a very mediocre effort and brings the whole experience down to a category of “just plain bad and stupid.”

Baldacci has been guilty of “lazy writing” before in many of his other books.  Even some of the good ones.  This book has “lazy writing” all over the place.  By “lazy writing”, I mean that when he’s trying to advance the plot, he gets lazy and pulls things out of thin air that make absolutely no sense, nor really are believable, just to ensure that the story can keep going and moving in a forward direction.  I’ll get to that in a bit.

This story is about Jack Armstrong.  A 30 something year old man with a wife and three kids.  Unfortunately, Jack is dying.  He only has a few weeks to live when our story starts in November, and Jack is hoping to hold out long enough to celebrate one more Christmas with his family.  What is he dying of?  Baldacci never tells us.  The only thing we know is that the disease is so horrible, that Jack can’t even pronounce it.  This is the first example of “lazy writing”.  I guess Baldacci figures that if he gives us a real disease, he’ll have to do some research and explain why things might happen the way they eventually do.

One night during the hectic holiday season, Jack’s wife forgets that they’ve run out of his medication, so she heads out to the drugstore on a cold wintery night where they live in Ohio.  She’s killed in a car crash.  So now the three kids have no mom and a dad that will be dead in a few days.  Well, Jack’s in-laws are in town, fortunately, and arrangements are quickly made to permanently disperse the three kids to different relatives while Jack goes to die in hospice.  There’s a toddler, an elementary aged child, and a teenage daughter.  The teenage daughter seems perpetually ticked off at the world early on in the book because….well…she’s a teenager, and teenagers are supposed to be in a constant rebellious stage.  I guess.  The only thing she really clings to is her guitar because she’s a budding songwriter/guitar player or something.

So Jack goes to hospice to die, but (GASP!) he doesn’t die!  Somehow during the next several weeks he miraculously recovers!  So much so, that he’s able to walk out of hospice, retrieve his children (against his mother-in-law’s wishes.  Why? I honestly don’t know) and start life over again in a South Carolina beach house owned by one of his late wife’s relatives.  It seems Jack’s wife grew up in this town, and she sadly had some skeletons growing up there.  I believe she had a twin sister that died there when they were very young due to meningitis or something.  So Jack wants to start anew there, and maybe reconnect with his wife’s past.

Anyway, this is where the story really gets sappy and stupid.  I held out hope at this point  because I felt like things could have turned out o.k. story wise, but Baldacci, again, succumbs to more lazy writing.  Early on in the summer, Jack is trying to mend his distant relationship with his rebellious teen-age guitar playing daughter.  They stop to eat at a local restaurant called “Little Bit of Love” because the name of the restaurant is, according to Jack’s daughter, a “Def Leppard song” (It’s not.  Why couldn’t Baldacci pick a real Def Leppard song?  “Pour Some Sugar On Me” for instance?)  They go to the restaurant, and they meet the owner, who just happens to be a  divorced woman who, golly-gosh-darn-it, just so happens to be “good looking” and “about Jack’s age”.  This woman, golly-gosh-darn-it, also happens to have a son who is the same age as Jack’s daughter!  Her son, golly-gosh-darn-it, just happens to be a musician as well!  And the woman also has, golly-gosh-darn-it, some work at her house that Jack can do for her because, well, golly-gosh-darn-it, since Jack just moved here out of the blue, he needs to find some kind of work to pay the bills.  Oh, and also, this good looking divorced restaurant owner also, golly-gosh-darn-it, happens to be (ta-da) a lawyer!   A lawyer?  Jack doesn’t need a lawyer.  Well, because of Baldacci’s lazy writing, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out he’ll probably need one sooner or later.

It would be pointless (and painful) for me to go on any further with this lousy excuse of a story.  Everything is simply too stupid and contrived.   I do remember another golly-gosh-darn-it instance early in the story:  For no apparent reason, completely out of the blue, Jack decides to show his daughter a “self-defense move”.  This comes out of nowhere, has no connection to what is currently happening, and is so ridiculously out of place, that it’s incredibly obvious that his dear daughter will somehow need  this “self-defense move” sometime before the summer is over.  I’ve seen middle school students tell a more convincing tie-in within a story.

Again, I had hopes for this one.  It really could have been so much better.  Really, the only good thing I can say about this book is that it’s somewhat short, and I think I read the whole thing in about two days.  The last 30 pages, I read in about 5 minutes, just skimming the highlights (now THERE’S a misnomer!)  Had I read it carefully, I would have become nauseous.  I really hope that all “sappy” books aren’t this bad.  Of course, if they are, I could easily become a millionaire.  And so could just about anyone else that puts a pen to paper.

Vietnam - A History

Vietnam – A History  by Stanley Karnow

Most everyone in America agrees that the entire war in Vietnam was a very big mistake.  There are a lot of reasons why – some actual fact, some innuendo, some outright falsehoods.  Stanley Karnow’s excellent Pulitzer Prize narrative does an outstanding job giving the reader a very clear, yet thorough account of all of the comings and goings around the Asian country before, during, and even after the conflict.  This book was incredibly enlightening.  Much of it had to do with the fact that the author was actually there during the war, serving as a war correspondent.  He’s also interviewed many key figures several years after the conflict to try to add some perspective to many of the events that we now look back on in bewilderment and disgust.

It should first be pointed out that this entire book is not only about the actual war in Vietnam.  That event is the main player, however, yet Karnow realizes that a lot of background is needed before the reader can truly understand why things happened the way that they did.  In fact, I seemed to recall that the first (approximately) 300 pages of this book deals with what happened prior to the actual “war” that was fought by the United States during the 1960s and 1970s.  This might be a turnoff for some, but I found the whole background portion of this book incredibly helpful and highly interesting.

The first chapter deals with present day conditions (the book was written in the 1980s, then revised sometime in the 1990s).  The author tells us that even though the United States “lost” the war, conditions are still insufferable, and the country is, by no means a thriving nation.  Nobody really “won” this war.  We then go back – way back, to the beginning of recorded history including the French colonization during the 1800s.  It seems that the French decided to occupy this country because, well, they could.  Besides, if they didn’t, another powerful nation would do so anyway.  Sadly, that’s how countries did things back then.  Enter communist leader Ho Chi Minh who abhors this arrangement, and his followers decide to successfully fight the French during the 1950s, culminating with the fall of Dien Bien Phu.

Well, after the conclusion of World War II, the United States believed that any country wanting to become communist would be a threat to worldwide matters someday (Google “The Domino Theory”), so after the French fail, the U.S. slowly steps into the quagmire.  The Nationalist South Vietnamese are the “good guys”, so America’s goal is to build them up, support them and fight side by side until they can run the show themselves.  The problem is the South Vietnamese government is a joke.  Basically, the United States wanted South Vietnam to win the war more than the South Vietnamese did.  Right after their aloof leader, Ngo Dihn Diem is exiled and assassinated, President Kennedy is also assassinated.  Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson is essentially thrown into this mess, and doesn’t really want any part of this war (contrary to what Oliver Stone told you).  Johnson comes across as an incredibly bad leader.  He seems to think that by doing something silly like inviting Ho Chi Minh to his Texas ranch over a heaping plate of bar-b-que brisket will somehow fix the problem and smooth over relations.  

Well, Johnson and his team make a mess of things, and he essentially declines to run for re-election in 1968 because of his failure.  Enter Richard Nixon who doesn’t seem to do much better.  Even though Nixon does ultimately end the U.S. involvement and bring the boys back home, most agree that he did too little too late because he was trying to achieve “Peace with Honor”.  So the troops come home, Vietnam really never achieves “Peace with Honor” and the North Vietnamese conquer Saigon only a couple years later.  Fortunately, the new U.S. President, Gerald Ford, realizes that the war was a lost cause and has no intention of jumping back in to save the fledgling, uncooperative South Vietnam.

One of the most fascinating observations that I encountered while reading this book was the realization that, had Vietnam not happened, then it probably would have happened someplace else in some other war.  In other words, the United States was so convinced that they couldn’t lose a war, that they kept fighting in archaic, untested fashions over and over again.  At some point, they argued, the enemy simply had to capitulate.  Sadly, we sometimes don’t learn such lessons until after the fact.  It’s actually a good thing that whenever a potential global conflict now occurs that the U.S. will, or might, get involved in, that the question  always comes up “Will this be another Vietnam?”  So sadly, the war became a very painful, yet probably necessary, lesson for the United States to learn.

The hardest part about reading this book was the monosyllable Asian names of the main players.  To my Western mind, it could get very confusing to keep all of the names clear when you read Minh, Diem, Gap, Nu, Thuc, etc. etc.  Fortunately, the author provides a useful “cast of characters” at the end of the book that serves as a handy reference.  

I would have also liked to have read more about the common soldiers’ experiences.  Being that the author is a well known and respected journalist, we get plenty of insight (often from firsthand interviews) of many at the top, but much of the suffering and personal experiences of the soldiers on the battlefield doesn’t quite get as much attention as I would have liked.

I also thought the book ended rather abruptly.  We read about the choppers evacuating the American Embassy in 1975, then that’s it.  Perhaps some of the first chapter could have been told at the end as opposed to the beginning?  Minor complaints, however.  This might be the only book you’ll ever have to read about this truly sad time in America’s history.