Elizabeth S's comments (member since May 15, 2009)

Elizabeth S's comments from the The History Book Club group.

I am in glorious anticipation of books as presents. My husband has hinted that we will need a new bookcase after tomorrow. How exciting!

How lovely, Bentley! Merry Christmas to you, too. As one of my favorite authors said on his blog, "May you get books as presents."

Amy, glad to have you! I agree with you as far as "bent"s in history. It is all interesting as long as it is written well and accurately researched. Hope you enjoy reading with us!

Wow, Bentley. Have you read any of these Vivaldi's? Is there one you would recommend above the others?

Hello to Jim and Joey. Lots of J's right now, glad to have you both! There is always lots to discuss, whether American History or otherwise. Bentley is right, if you put effort into the group you'll come out a winner. There is always someone who thinks about and responds to what you say. So read, comment, and enjoy!

That DOES sound amazing. Wow!

It is funny. Just last week I was talking with my friend in Australia. I was complaining about our 0 degree (F) weather. She laughed because she was having 90+ degree weather. Not much sympathy.

We haven't gotten the blizzard, thankfully, just a little more snow this morning. For all who are getting the blizzard, stay warm and safe.

John, I lived in Detroit for a short time, but never hit the UP. Everyone says it is beautiful and cold. Does that cover it? The best thing about winter is curling up with a nice book in a warm house.

Melisende, don't wait until you've read everything to jump in. There is so much to catch up on!

Hope you both enjoy the reading and the discussions. Lots to pick from. Nice to have you both join us!

Hi, Jack. Glad to have you join us. Hope you enjoy our discussions as well.

Elizabeth

Susanna wrote: "Another good one along those lines is
by Darrell Huff."

That looks cool too!

Alias Reader wrote: "Andrea, A terrific book that I can recommend to you for your students is:

Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language by Robert J. Gula (Paperb..."

Looks interesting, Alias Reader. It is so hard, sometimes, to look at arguments logically. The emotions really can override the logic. I think it'd be fun to read such a book and think it through.

Thanks for joining us, Franciszka. Hope you feel at home here.

Thanks for all your notes and comments, Bentley. I don't have time to watch it all, but I've enjoyed reading through your summaries.

Like you, I'm no expert on the Crusades. But I've always understood that there were atrocities committed by both sides, and that neither side could be considered as innocent. I guess in my mind, once both sides have so deeply bloodied their hands, it doesn't much matter who started it since both are enthusiastically continuing it. I would imagine there were individuals on each side who were honestly fighting for what they thought was right, and who did not agree with or participate in the awful parts. I am certainly willing to be corrected on any of this if there is someone more well informed!

Nice to have you join us, Sandy. "Avid reader" is always a good calling card. Hope you enjoy the books and the discussions!

Thanks for the schedule, Bentley. Looks good!

Wow, what a lot of rich information. Some day I'll have to read about the Crusades. Good thing I'll know where to look for books!

Back to the discussion of whether or not FDR knew ahead of time about the attack on Pearl Harbor. I agree with what many of you said, that there is no way FDR would have intentionally sacrificed so much of the navy, or so many people. As Goodwin says, "For the purposes of mobilizing the American people, one American ship torpedoed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor would have sufficed." (see page 293)

I like the analysis done in the book Battle of Wits by Stephen Budiansky. (This is an excellent book, by the way, about codebreaking during WWII. Enigma, of course, gets the most pages, but there is significant discussion of breaking the Japanese codes and some on other countries like Italy.)

According to Budiansky, "On the morning of December 3, 1941, a Purple message came through ordering Japan's embassy in Washington to destroy its code books, and even one of its two vital Purple machines." The US decrypted this message, but you can see it could mean a lot of things. A change in the code, for example. Someone figured it might meant Japan was going to attack the US. On the night of Dec 6 someone gave FDR the decrypted messages. So a conspiracy theorist could claim FDR "knew." But it seems obvious to me that knowing the Japanese were destroying code books isn't the same as knowing they would attack at X place at Y time with Z planes.

For those who don't know, Purple was the cipher used by the Japanese for the highest level diplomatic messages. The code used for supply orders and fleet maneuvers at the time of Pearl Harbor was called AN. The AN code first appeared on June 1, 1939.

Later, Budiansky writes, "Conspiracy theoriest continue to weave elaborate scenarios 'proving' that America had advance warning of the Japanese attack, with one branch of the 'FDR knew' theorizers insisting that AN traffic was in fact being read in 1941. Yet month-by-month progress reports, internal histories, war diaries, logs--some declassified only in 1998--are all in agreement: Not a single AN message had ever been read currently by the time of Pearl Harbor, and not a single AN message transmitted at any time during 1941 was read by December 7."

In other words, they may have been reading AN messages in Dec 1941, but they were reading AN messages from 1939 and 1940. Not much help.

After the war, some cryptanalysts went back and decoded the unread AN traffic and found messages to the Japanese fleet in the months before Pearl Harbor that, if understood correctly and interpreted correctly, could have given clues that something was building. But of even these, "none specifically mentioned Pearl Harbor."

All quotations are from Budiansky's book.

Vince, I think sometimes people forget that "influential" doesn't mean "really good" or "worthy of emulation." Although we all naturally hate to give Hitler any accolades, he certainly influenced a lot of people.

Welcome, Doug. I'm not jealous of your commute, although it sounds like fun to have a certain amount of time where you "have" to read each day. Your interest in history and economics may not make you popular at cocktail parties, but you'll be popular here. We all love history, and there are times when it might help to have a better explanation of an economic situation. Glad to have you aboard.

Thanks, Bentley, for the heads up and warnings about getting the right book. It is nice to know far enough ahead of time that I can get the book without a rush. I'm excited to read Gibbon.