|
June 27
|
|
Jared
added:
The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Paperback)
by Will Eisner
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
Jared said:
"A gift from my parents. Eisner's last work. It's a shame he's gone. He was a genius. In a time when this preposterous libel is regaining credibility around the world, what a clever idea to try to counter it using one of the most appealing and easy-to...more
A gift from my parents. Eisner's last work. It's a shame he's gone. He was a genius. In a time when this preposterous libel is regaining credibility around the world, what a clever idea to try to counter it using one of the most appealing and easy-to-read media - comics!...less
"
|
|
Jared
gave
to:
Typee (Paperback)
by Herman Melville
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
Jared said:
"Listened to this recently in audio version from LibriVox (www.librivox.org). A vividly told and well-observed first-person account of Melville's time among a preindustrial South Sea islander society that had minimal contact with the West. Part polemi...more
Listened to this recently in audio version from LibriVox (www.librivox.org). A vividly told and well-observed first-person account of Melville's time among a preindustrial South Sea islander society that had minimal contact with the West. Part polemic, part adventure story, part amateur ethnography. The book that made Melville famous, before he blew his reputation on "Moby Dick." I was disappointed to learn later that much of it was made up....less
"
|
|
January 08
|
|
Jared
gave
to:
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (Paperback)
by Nathaniel Philbrick
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
read in December, 2007
Jared said:
"Got this book last year as a gift from G. As a sometime New Englander, frequent visitor to Mystic Seaport, and admirer of Melville, this book was right up my alley. I read the whole thing through on a recent cross-country flight.
At the age of 28,...more
Got this book last year as a gift from G. As a sometime New Englander, frequent visitor to Mystic Seaport, and admirer of Melville, this book was right up my alley. I read the whole thing through on a recent cross-country flight.
At the age of 28, George Pollard set out in command of the whaleship "Essex." He had a brilliant reputation, he had the firm trust of the ship's owners, and he had two dozen able and dutiful crewmen ready to follow his orders for endless months at sea killing whales and rendering their flesh into valuable oil. Two years later, he was found in a whaleboat with one of his crew, drifting near South America, delirious and near death. He had lost his ship in a bizarre incident in which it was attacked by a whale. He had lost his crew during terrifying weeks at sea in small boats. He and the other survivors had fallen to cannibalism, eating their fellows as they died of starvation. Not only that, but one of the dead was his own nephew, whom he had sworn to protect! And not only that, but the rescuers found the two men gnawing desperately on the marrow-bones, which they refused to let go of, as if they were the most precious thing possible! It is hard to imagine a more vivid example of how the hazards of seafaring could drag a man down from the peaks of success. And that is why the history of sailing holds such a great fascination, because it presented such harsh challenges to the men who sailed, in a way that starkly tested the men's character.
Melville grasped how the roles of the men on a whaler serve as archetypes for qualities of leadership, courage and duty. It is the conflicts between Ahab, Starbuck, the harpooneers and and the crew, reflected in the greater conflict between duty and ontology, that give "Moby Dick" its power. In Philbrick's analysis, the fate of the "Essex" and its survivors were determined by the character and conflicts among captain Pollard, first mate Chase and a few of the crew. While the first mate was too self-sure, the captain was too diffident, and sought consensus with his subordinates when he should have issued orders based on his own opinion. Most critically, Pollard followed the mates' wishes in sailing the whaleboats against the wind towards South America, rather than with the wind towards Tahiti. They were afraid to find cannibals in Tahiti, and the captain thought they were wrong but didn't know enough facts to argue them down. The irony of their own eventual cannibalism is evident. And yet the headstrong first mate led the men better in his own little boat, and saved more of them, than did the captain. The counter-examples to the "Essex" are striking. The crew of another whaleship, sunk by a whale years later, sailed their little boats towards a heavy shipping route and were saved in two days. At another time a ship's crew, adrift in lifeboats, lost a member to starvation and decided not to eat him, but to cut up the body as bait. This way they caught enough sharks to feed the other survivors.
If the survival story is supremely harrowing, the working routine on a whaler was grueling enough, as the book deftly relates. Aside from the bad pay and the back-breaking labor, the sheer youth of the crew is shocking. The captain was 28, the first mate 23, most of the crew were teenagers, and one was only 14. The camaraderie of coming from the same hometown of Nantucket must have eased the harsh conditions for many of the crew. But here the survival story acquires a sinister ethnic overtone. All the ship's officers and about half of the men were Nantucketers. Of the ones who survived, almost all were Nantucketers. None of the African-American sailors survived. While the author discounts any deliberate factional killing, it is clear that group mentality and perhaps even racism influenced who survived and who didn't.
This book is a tale well-told, rich with many compelling insights on history, character and society. Well-deserving of its National Book Award....less
"
|
|
December 23
|
|
New comment on gwen's review of
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
(see all 2 comments)
|
|
December 19
|
|
Jared
gave
to:
Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew (Paperback)
by Brian Hicks
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
read in December, 2007
Jared said:
"A quick read, and not bad. I got this as a gift last year from G, after vacationing in Spencer's Island NS, where the infamous ship was built in the 1860s (I believe we even stayed in the shipbuilder's house). This year, after reading one seafaring b...more
A quick read, and not bad. I got this as a gift last year from G, after vacationing in Spencer's Island NS, where the infamous ship was built in the 1860s (I believe we even stayed in the shipbuilder's house). This year, after reading one seafaring book on a flight to the West Coast, I read through this lesser but still enjoyable history during the return flight. The book relates the 25-year career of the small and unremarkable cargo ship, whose only claim to fame is the unsolved mystery of why its crew disappeared without a trace in the middle of the ocean, leaving the ship entirely intact. The prose is haphazard and poorly edited, often heavily padded with irrelevant trivia, but sharp in some parts such as when describing the naval court hearings following the ship's recovery. The author gets points for wading through the mountains of false stories that have grown up around the ship for over a century, and comes up with a convincing explanation for the famous incident, which he withholds until the end in order to keep up the suspense. It is also interesting to realize that this is basically a story about commerce, and a sort of a mystery story, and if much of the tale hinges on the details of 19th century shipping insurance policies or how cargo was stored in a ship's hold or how much it cost to renovate a ship in New York in 1872, the author has done a good enough job to make engaging reading out of these common things....less
"
|
|
November 07
|
|
Jared
gave
to:
The Second World War (Six Volume Boxed Set)
by Winston S. Churchill, John Keegan
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
recommended for: anyone
read in January, 2007
Jared said:
"Been rereading this at random, in bits and pieces. It's one of those works I can do that with, every few years or so, and it's always a pleasure. I can pick up almost any book in the set, and open it almost at random, and immediately appreciate the g...more
Been rereading this at random, in bits and pieces. It's one of those works I can do that with, every few years or so, and it's always a pleasure. I can pick up almost any book in the set, and open it almost at random, and immediately appreciate the great sweep of events being portrayed by this keen and aggressive mind, and the lively prose. Even the reprints of Churchill's daily memos are fascinating and lively. More than recounting events and his role in them, Churchill can weave those events thoroughly into a number of ongoing historical themes and arguments. Foremost is the need for unity among nations in the face of danger. Churchill portrays nearly every wartime success by the Allies as due to such unity, and every failure or setback as due to the lack of it. He takes great pains in "The Gathering Storm" to go into detail about the various European countries that tried to remain neutral as the Nazi menace grew, and were gobbled up one by one.
Among all the events of that terrible war, I often come back to the account in "Their Finest Hour" of the British attack on the French fleet at Oran in 1940. This episode stands out for its unusual drama, pathos and moral complexity, its vivid portrayal of the penalties of ruthless action, sadly forseen.
Another observation. Nowadays, Churchill has a (well-deserved) bad reputation for his unreconstructed colonialism, his desire to keep hold for ever and ever over all the British Empire and its oppressed millions. Yet in reading these books, you can see how he made use of the colonies during the war, and it casts the colonial enterprise in a new light. Freetown and Capetown, Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria and Suez, Basra, Sri Lanka, Bombay, Burma and Singapore, instantly became strategic strongpoints, launching-points and transport routes for military action in support of allies or against enemies. Britain's enemies, Germany, Italy and Japan (and for a short while, Russia) coveted these same locales for the same reasons and in some cases Britain was forced to cede them, like knights or rooks sacrificed off the chessboard. It makes one think that the British Empire's architects, men like Churchill, chose their colonies for that very reason, to help defend the home country against other world Powers, and that they never gave a damn about the people who lived there, it was never about spreading civilization or culture or commerce at all. And seen in the light of the events of 1940-42, when Britain was beaten time after time but by making use of key bases around the globe, it kept on fighting and rebuilding its strength, you might say that the Empire served its purpose....less
"
|
|
October 20
|
|
Jared
gave
to:
Fighting the Flying Circus: The Greatest True Air Adventure to Come out of World War I (Paperback)
by Eddie V. Captain Rickenbacker
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
|
| |
recommended for: People interested in aviation or WWI military history
read in October, 2007
Jared said:
"This book is 80 percent rubbish. But there are some interesting bits in the other twenty percent.
I read this on a whim. I had a copy of it on my shelf that I had bought (or maybe my mom had bought for me) many years ago through some kind of mail-...more
This book is 80 percent rubbish. But there are some interesting bits in the other twenty percent.
I read this on a whim. I had a copy of it on my shelf that I had bought (or maybe my mom had bought for me) many years ago through some kind of mail-order offer from Time-Life. I've long had an on-again-off-again interest in the history of flight. Inspired by a recent trip to the unique and wonderful Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, I wanted to read a bit more about WWI aviation, so when I realized that I had a copy of this book I thought I'd give it a read. I didn't know what to expect, but I soon found out.
By rubbish, I mean that this book is a hastily-written war memoir, published immediately after the war, full of rah-rah enthusiasm for the fight and sensational accounts of his daring escapades. Rickenbacker was the most successful American fighter pilot of the war, and something of a national hero, so I bet the book sold well in 1919. He was about twenty-nine when the events in the book took place, and thirty when it was published. It's not badly written, in the sense of being unpleasant to read, but it lacks almost all substance and polish, so I'd say it probably wasn't ghostwritten. Nonetheless, it reads as if the author wrote the book by simply copying over every significant flight report from his flying log, and padding them with detail. The result is a string of anecdotes that appear even to a knowledgeable and interested reader like myself to be indistinguishable, in the end almost boring.
The book covers the period from February to November of 1918, during which the author was in almost constant action in France, flying fighter planes against the opposing German forces. During this time he flew hundreds of missions, survived scores of aerial combats, killed dozens of German pilots or destroyed their airplanes in midair, and rose from a novice pilot to command a squadron of two dozen pilots and several hundred supporting staff.
(to be continued)...less
"
|
