Mrs Astor Regrets
The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach
By
Meryl Gordon
Hardcover; 336 pages
Published by Houghton Mifflin: 12/03/2008 @ $28.00
Biographical family stories are usually written long after the principals are dead. In this case, Ms Gordon has been blessed with the longevity of her subjects, and a current court case which is the raison dêtre of her book. One can read the book and follow the case in court. An opportunity not to be missed.
Hell has three gates: lust, anger, and greed, and Ms Gordon touches them all in her book. A lady who is no stranger to affluence herself, Gordon covers this saga with balance and sympathy. She does not succumb to the ‘Everyone hates Anthony Marshall’ school of condemnation, even though it is difficult not to. She uses her significant journalistic experience to describe the facts as she uncovered them.
All of the participants are contemptible in equal measure. They all have a pecuniary interest in one side or the other succeeding. As I progressed through this litany of greed, I could not find one person who convinced me of altruistic intentions.
Someone once said ‘Show me a large fortune, and I will show you a large crime’. Never was a truer word spoken in this case.
The story starts with a summary of Brook Aster’s life and times. Her three marriages were love at first sight. That is first sight of the potential hubby’s bank account. Husband number one was father of Anthony and wife beater in that order. He didn’t have a long life so Anthony had to fill-in as whipping boy. This lasted all his life and still does. None of the cast of thousands, who are using their best endeavours to put Marshall behind bars, and leech cash from the Astor Estate, pay any regard to the fact that Anthony Marshall is a decorated Marine officer wounded in action in the South Pacific during WWII. He also had an important job with the CIA and the government. I mention this only to highlight the fact that none of his accusers have the slightest understanding of the word ‘JOB’. For them, working could be a city in China.
The revolving bride finally snared an Astor, and when he shook off his mortal coil left an obscenely wealthy widow, who used his money to manipulate and dominate anyone who got in her cross-hairs. She kept everyone on their toes by changing her will every week. This lasted until senility overcame her, and her only son took control of the estate under the guidance and advice of an attorney. All the players who had encouraged the old lady to dole out money, favours and property, where discombobulated when her son introduced prudent fiscal measures which impacted them negatively. The most aggrieved was a grandson who recruited some willing executioners to instigate a witch-hunt against Anthony Marshall. The plan was to use the courts to wrest guardianship of the senile Mrs Astor away from her son into the hands of a more amenable chum. The court did not accept the basic accusation of cruelty, but the furore did attract the attention of the District Attorney.
The case against Anthony Marshall is before the courts as we speak, and could see him in jail for the remainder of his life unless wiser heads prevail. His accusers (including his sons), vehemently profess to not wanting him in jail, but that has not inhibited them from roundly condemning him from the witness box on charges far removed from those they instigated.
Ms Gordon’s (the first – I think), book is an excellent read. In places it reads more like a court brief than a work of literature, but it is non-the-worse for that. More than an excellent read, it is an important work of non-fiction. People should learn how the mighty are fallen, and when the going gets tough, they tear each other to pieces.
Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill
Nation Books © 2007/08 – 550 pps
The rise of the world’s most powerful mercenary army.
“Jeremy Scahill actually doesn’t know anything about Blackwater.” So says Martin Strong Vice President Blackwater Worldwide. With the greatest respect to Mr Strong, if he is right, it is a pretty facile comment on 550 pages of detailed research and information. Unless, or until Mr Strong or anyone else from Blackwater elaborates on this blanket rejection, we must conclude that what Jeremy Scahill tells us is correct.
Blackwater is at once a compelling and frightening read. It is a detailed exposé of the private security industry generally and Blackwater in particular. It introduces us to the founders and their associations with the people and policies of the last US administration. It describes in minute detail how this cozy relationship enabled Blackwater to become an adjunct of American foreign policy.
Knowing Scahill’s background, one might have expected a scathing attack -― but no, all his arguments are reasoned and nonjudgmental. Indeed, his portrayal of Eric Prince the company founder is complimentary. He tells us that Mr. Prince came from a very wealthy and successful family, but chose to join the military. While in the military, he excelled as a Navy Seal, and would have remained as such but gave it up to support his ailing wife and their children. The first Mrs. Prince died in tragic circumstances shortly after.
Not content to bask in considerable family wealth, Prince emulated his successful father by starting a business. The business he chose was one of which he had expert knowledge. He identified a need for military and law enforcement training and established a state of the art training facility at North Carolina.
It is then that sinister opportunities presented themselves in the form of the Iraq war. Blackwater were not alone in exploiting this opportunity ― they were just better at it than others were. The Bush administration identified a benefit in employing civilian contractors in a variety of functions previously carried out by the military. From a certain perspective it worked very well and like Topsy it grow’d until the number of civilian contractors almost equaled the military.
Using civilian contractors checks many boxes. There are considerable financial benefits to companies and individuals. There are benefits for government with fewer political problems than there might be with serving military. Activities can be pursued beyond the public glare. However, in all this there is one thing missing ― military discipline and legal restraint. Scahill describes how Blackwater was able to slip between the rock of military discipline and the hard place of the law. In a time of left of center politics, a rightwing mercenary army numbering around 30,000, is ominous indeed.
This is a truly excellent book, and should be read by everyone who wants to really know what is happening on the ground in Iraq, and elsewhere ― including mainland USA.
Winston Churchill – Flawed genius of WWII
Winston Churchill
The Flawed Genius of WWII
By Dr.Christopher Catherwood
Berkley Caliber © 2009 326 pps $26.95 (Amazon $13.46)
A review by Colin Edwards
“He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” (George Bernard Shaw)
What causes us to lift a non-fiction volume from the bookstore shelves and part with taxed dollars to own it? Hopefully it will be a volume to challenge, inspire and edify us. It may even anger us. It should, at least, entertain us.
It was with this in mind that I studied Richard Hasselberger’s jacket design. It shows Bettmann/Corbis’s “Churchill and Generals Study”. The original photograph posed (left to right) General G.G. Simonds, Sir Winston Churchill, General Montgomery and General Sir Miles Dempsey intently looking at something on a jeep, parked presumably, on the Normandy beaches. General Simonds is immaculate in a spotless battledress and beret (which were notorious for attracting fluff), and regulation (for generals), pair of binoculars hanging around his neck ― to check presumably for the location of the mess-truck. Sir Winston looks like a ferryboat captain with cap and reefer coat. Viscount Montgomery also has a spotless beret, albeit twice the size, adorned in multiple badges. Richard Hasselberger’s cropped off poor Sir Miles – but then in the original he did look as if he had an unpleasant smell under his nose. The only other photograph is an under exposed portrait of Dr Catherwood himself, taken by Mrs Catherwood whose talents tend more towards music than photography. All of this should have warned me that this was not a book to be taken seriously.
Dr Catherwood is a teacher. Not only that, he is a teacher at the top of his profession. He has every academic qualification known to man, and teaches at the most prestigious seats of learning in the land. In his own estimation, he is a “…renowned historian …” with “ …an unflinching unbiased eye toward revealing the often painful truth …”. Well, what we read here is not truth, painful or otherwise. It is an anti-English diatribe hastily written for the American market. Notwithstanding the fact that Dr Catherwood (and his family) owes everything to England, he is not English. He is an Ulster/Welsh/Scot all of whom have great antipathy towards the mother country.
The great revelation of this book is that America fought the Japanese, and the Russians fought the Germans while the Brits made lunch. To be more precise, America won the war in the pacific, and Russia won the war in Europe. Well, I have to tell him that my Dad fought the Luftwaffe in the RAF, my cousin Reg fought and died fighting the Luftwaffe also in the RAF, and my cousin Ian died at Monte Cassino also fighting the Germans. This of course does not alter the fact that America did win the war, and the Russians fought and died in their millions, but that does not justify Dr Catherwood rubbishing the Brits as he does in this book.
What is not factual is all the ‘counterfactual what-ifs’ that the good Doctor describes as fact. How can anyone ― even one as worthy as Dr Catherwood say that if that had happened, the result would have been that.
Sir Winston Churchill is the villain. His biggest crime was that between 1940 and 1945 he made political decisions and acted like a politician. Duh? That is what politicians do. And in case his history degree course missed it, it is politicians who start wars for political reasons, determine their direction and decide how they will end. Perhaps in the rarefied atmosphere of Cambridge, the politicians head for Maui and leave the generals to fight the war. Another Churchillian sin was his reluctance to consider premature independence for India. Did it not occur to Dr Catherwood that Churchill realized that premature independence for India would result in massive bloodshed ― which it did.
However, according to Dr Catherwood, Churchill’s cardinal sin was not agreeing to General Marshalls plan to invade Europe in 1943. This is the same Marshall who originally wanted a 200 division army in Europe but changed his mind in favor of a 90 division one using his individual replacement system. This (IRS), excogitated by Marshall was an utter disaster and had completely broken down by 1944. It was so detrimental to the allies war effort, it has been suggested that he receive the Iron Cross for services to the Wehrmacht. And it is the same General Marshall that recommended Lt. General Lloyd Fredendall of Kasserine Pass fame. This is not to dismiss General Marshall out of hand; he just did not have any operational experience ― nor did his staff. Churchill knew this and preferred his own judgment and that of his experienced generals. And he wasn’t alone; Roosevelt did too. Like Dr Catherwood, George Marshall was a teacher. His entire career before 1941 was training as was General Eisenhower’s. That is not to condemn them, it just happens to be the truth. Northern Europe in 1943 was no place for on-the-job training.
Dr Catherwood; who has a masters in literature, fills this work with very silly statements like, “if that had happened (and it was Churchill’s fault that it didn’t), this would have happened, and then this would have happened resulting in that etc …” It is quite ridiculous to be so dogmatic about outcomes which no one could possible predict. There is nothing wrong with writing a ‘What If’ book: Robert Cowley has done very nicely doing so; but it should be sold as such, not disguised as a legitimate work of history. It is even more outrageous when this deception for personal gain involves the character assassination of the greatest man of the 20th century.
Of course Churchill could have done things differently ― maybe even better, but he did do one thing that made all the difference. He stood up to Hitler when no one else had the guts to do so. In combat as in everything else in life, it is the first man in that makes the difference. To lead from the front, not push from the rear.
As an English infantry officer who bears the physical scars of association with Dr Catherwoods ilk in Northern Ireland, I take exception to his constant derision of Britain’s forces. Members of the armed services do as they are told. They do not decide where or when to fight. If the troops did not fight in a particular theatre, it is because politicians did not want them to. I really must curb my indignation at the way Dr Catherwood revels in fantasy as I know full well who he is pandering too, but when he says “ …the United States did enter the war, and it was that entry that enabled Britain to be on the winning side come 1945.” The United States did not enter the war, they were attacked by Japan and therefore had no choice but to defend themselves, and Germany declared war on them so the same response applied. There are good arguments to suggest that had Germany not declared war in 1941, America might not have entered the European war and concentrated on the Pacific. Clearly the lend lease would have prevailed as it was very good business; indeed, it pulled America out of the depression. Had America stood shoulder to shoulder with Great Britain in 1939, there never would have been a war ― not then anyway.
Dr Catherwood states on page 69 “ …since the United States would have found it remarkably difficult to manufacture an excuse to intervene on the side of the democracies without being attacked first.” How about Nazi tyranny? Wouldn’t that work? Page 70 “It is miraculous that they (the Luftwaffe), failed over Britain as well.” “The UK could have been invaded and flattened by the Third Reich at any time …” It amazing that Hitler or any of his staff didn’t know that – maybe because it was not true?
Notwithstanding the above, Winston Churchill – the flawed genius etc., must be a scholarly work as it has ten pages of acknowledgments. The Cambridge archives have also revealed hitherto unknown gems like “Churchill’s cigar, more waved than smoked.” Wow – I didn’t know that.
If you subscribe to the belief that Britain should have stood aside in 1941and left the prosecution of the war to General Marshall and Marshal Stalin. If you believe that the people of London, Coventry and Bristol were mugs who didn’t know they were beaten. If you believe that winning the Battle of Britain was an amazing fluke, and that the 700,000 military casualties and 60000 civilian deaths was just what we deserved for being such chumps: then this is a book for you.
But, if like me, you believe that the 72 million soldiers and 47 million civilians who died during and as a result of the Second World War didn’t die in vain, but died, doing the best they could with what they had: then leave this fiction to gather dust on the shelf as most people have done.
Ends
The Irregulars by Jennet Conant
The Irregulars
by
Jennet Conant
Simon & Shuster © 2008 416 pps. $27.95 (Amazon $18.45)
A Review by Colin J. Edwards
Five weeks after my second birthday, at around 4 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon while having tea at my family home in London, Adolf Hitler exploded into my life. He decided to send 348 bombers – Heinkels, Dorniers and Junkers, plus 617 Messerschmitts forming a block 20 miles wide and filling 800 square miles of sky – to kill me. He didn’t succeed, but by the end of the war 60,000 British civilians were not so lucky. Until the middle of 1944 there were more British civilian deaths than military. I do not profess memory of the start of the Blitz, but I do remember the end of it – and the aftermath.
This experience makes me a sponge for anything to do with World War II – and there is never a shortage of subject matter. My latest read has been Jennet Conant’s The Irregulars.
I found Conant’s work engrossing. I had difficulty putting it down and almost read it at a sitting. The work is essentially a biography of Roald Dahl. Had it been advertised as such, it would have never left the store as I always found his writing a little quirky. But it is so much more than that. It is the story of a very attractive, wounded flying ace (Roald Dahl), who is sent to the British Embassy in Washington in 1942.
He graduates from Air Attaché to intelligence agent whose sole purpose is to infiltrate the rarefied air of Georgetown society and use it as a springboard into US government circles. He achieves this by wooing the women and wowing the men with the ultimate aim of influencing decisions in England’s favor.
In the process of depicting this, Conant introduces us to everybody who is anybody in World War II America. Dahl’s nefarious sexual exploits are described with dignity and charm, and are never sordid. According to Conant, all of the agents were extremely handsome and charming, which tended to pall over time. But then; perhaps they were. This story of deceit, duplicity and moral ambiguity is meticulously researched and beautifully written, and I will certainly be seeking out other work by this very talented lady.
If it never occurred to you that Great Britain had spies in America during the Second World War, I urge you to read this and be amazed. Whether you invest $18.45 in Amazon, or borrow it from your local library, get this book. You will not regret it.
Ends
The Last days of the Romanovs
The Last days of the Romanovs
By Helen Rappaport
St. Martin’s Press ©2008 254 pps $25.95 (Amazon $16.52)
A review by Colin J. Edwards
Tragedy at Ekaterinburg.
Ye-ka-tyer-in-boorg. That is the only pronunciation I will be giving from a book where the unspeakable are also the unpronounceable.
I know why this book was written, what mystifies me, is why it was published?
Everyone knows the story don’t they? The Tsar and his family brutally oppressed the Russian people for centuries until they took the opportunity to fight back and do to him what he had done to them. There have been attempts to add a little mystery to this as to who was murdered and who wasn’t, but the fact remains: he (and she) who lives by the sword will (ultimately), die by the sword. However, the Tsar Nicholas II industry is nothing if not persistent, as it was only as recently as April last year that the Russian authorities announced that all of the Tsars family had been identified and accounted for. This was not good enough for the Russian Orthodox Church who still do not recognize the remains as being those of the Tsar and his family. Let us hope that Rappaport’s book will close the door on this imperishable saga.
Ms Rappaport has put her considerable erudition of all things Russian into this work. When 6% of a book is bibliography, can anyone doubt that the author is on top of her subject? Authors and critics of whom I have the greatest respect have been so complimentary of Rappaport’s book, I hesitate to offer my own opinion. How do you follow “…quite simply stunning …”(Alison Weir), “That perfect blend of history …”(Susan Hill). These women are not chums of Helen by any chance – are they?
To depict a moment in history of which almost everyone is aware, and make it fresh and stimulating is a difficult task and one, I regret, beyond Ms Rappaport. She has trawled through mountains of documents and studiously recorded them in separate chapters in the nature of a thesis. Even so, I tend to doubt the accuracy of some of her observations. Her scene setting benefitted perhaps from a little artistic license, and there are some factual ‘howlers’. Also distracting was her lack of sympathy for the ‘cause’. Are revolutionaries always dirty and drunk? Is she really telling us that a necrophiliacs assault on the Tsaritsa was recorded by someone as a contemporaneous note?
I applaud that she was trying an interspersion of family scenes with individual biographies. But this did not work, and was an obstacle to narrative flow.
The last days of the Romanovs is a depressing read. If Russia was as bad as Rappaport describes it, dying would have been a blessed relief. Bad things have to be recorded, but do they need to be written about ad nauseam?
Helen Rappaport is a Russian expert, and if Russian history is your thing you will find all you ever needed to know – even to the angle they wore their hats – about the last days of the Romanovs. But for the rest of us, be content that the Tsar and his family were all reburied with appropriate ceremony in Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral, St.Petersburg on July 17 1998, where they were able to look down or up upon it.
Ends
Dali and I
Dali and I
by
Stan Lauryssens
Thomas Dunne Books (2008), Hardcover, 304 page
A Review by Colin Edwards
Dali and I is a supremely readable book. This is due in no small measure to the dubious character of the author. Lauryssens is at once a playboy, thief and confidence trickster – not to mention a successful author. He is so proud of his ability to deceive, that one wonders how much reality there is in this alleged autobiographical work. His actual writing however is suspect, so listening to an audio book beats wading through his convoluted prose.
Stan Lauryssens is a 63-year-old Belgian who oscillates between London and Antwerp. His literary career started by writing fake interviews with Hollywood stars for Panorama magazine. He graduated from this grubby little endeavour to masquerading as an art investment consultant exclusively selling works purporting to be by Salvador Dali. For this, he ended up in jail for an all too brief period.
The book recounts in fantastic detail how he lied and cheated his way from poverty to conspicuous affluence, and back again. He unsuccessfully attempts to assuage his guilt with a veiled suggestion that his ‘marks’ were just as dishonest as he was – perhaps more so. A Robin Hood in Armani suits and exotic motorcars.
At no time does he ever suggest that his actions were anything other than fraudulent; however, I think that this is a moot point. A genuine Dali is one painted and signed by him. There is ample evidence to suggest that Dali stopped painting in the late forties, so every ‘Dali’ since then is a fake. If all the work since the forties is faked, how can one fake be more fake than another fake? Ipso facto, fakes are genuine: or as genuine as you can get. However, it was Lauryssens intention to deceive (mens rea) regardless of the provenance of the goods he sold, he therefore committed the offense of obtaining pecuniary benefit by deliberate deception. That makes him a criminal.
I had the feeling that Lauryssens was working to a deadline as the story became more ragged and fantastic towards the end. Impossible situations were resolved as if by magic. He pleads absolute poverty (wearing the same clothes that he wore in prison etc.), but that does not seem to inhibit his air travel.
Whether or not Mr Lauryssens is deceiving us as he did his luckless clients, I know not. Certainly all the people he exposes are long dead, so there can be no betrayal there. In any event, Dali and I is a very enjoyable read, and I thoroughly recommend it. One is almost encouraged to seek out more of Lauryssens’s work, safe in the knowledge that that really would be fiction.
End
A Frenchwoman’s Story of Her War
Résistance
By
Agnés Humbert
(Translated from the French by Barbara Mellor)
Published by Bloomsbury 2008 - 370 pps $26.00
Agnés Humbert (1894-1963)
Humbert was born in Dieppe, France, the daughter of French army officer Charles Humbert and English author Mabel Wells Annie Rooke. She spent her childhood in Paris, where she studied painting and design. In 1916 she married the Egyptian artist Georges Hanna Sabbagh (1877-1951), by whom she had two sons: Jean Sabbagh, a sub-mariner and advisor to General de Gaulle, and television director and producer Pierre Sabbagh. From 1929, she studied the history of art at the Sorbonne and at the Louvre school, and took a course in philosophy. Agnès and Georges divorced in 1934. Her first book was on the painter Louis David, published in 1936. She then worked as an Art historian at the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris, and broadcast on art on Radio Paris at the start of 1936. She was 46 when her story begins.
Apparently, this work was first published in France in 1946 as Notre Guerre. Translation into English, and sale in the USA has taken 62 years: and I can understand why. Humbert’s book has so many qualifications; they almost exceed the work itself. There is an introduction; a 33 page ‘translators notes’; and a 36 page ‘afterword’ which is essentially a book report. If one reads that first, there is little point in reading the book. There are 16 pages of ‘appendix’ together with a comprehensive ‘index’, ‘bibliography’ and notes on the author and translator. Phew!
If a diary needs all that explanation, shouldn’t we be suspicious of the credibility of it? Well, it’s not exactly a diary. The first 54 pages are contemporaneous notes, but the rest is from memory – or might that be imagination? The book was written in 1946 a time when Europe in general and France in particular, had been devastated by the Germans. One would have expected more venom from Humbert that is apparent here. This is my problem with the work. It doesn’t ring true.
Madam Humbert describes the most frightful deprivations that she was a victim of, but it seems to have little effect on her. At the same time that she is being starved, frozen and beaten, she describes in erotic terms her fellow female prisoners. At the drop of a hat she strips naked and dances around the room to demonstrate her thinness (or something), to fellow prisoners. She mentions inmates copulating under machines and getting in trouble for it. Not inmates copulating with guards for various benefits, but inmates coupling with inmates. In between being starved, frozen, beaten and having acid poured on them as they go blind – they pop under a machine in full view of everyone including guards, for a quick tumble.
It is clear that Humbert is a rabid communist, and I suspect homosexual. It may be that people of that persuasion have a different libido to the rest of us. It will come as no surprise to married men that there are occasions when a headache can be an obstacle to sexual satisfaction, never mind being starved, frozen etc.
I was also astonished by the resilience of her and her fellow prisoners. She describes in the detail a manufacturing procedure that requires the use of corrosive acid. No protective clothing is supplied and the acid regularly assaults their bodies causing gruesome wounds. It also causes blindness. No medical treatment worth the name is offered, so they ‘self-medicate’ by picking at the wounds and urinating on them. This does not seem to incapacitate them. Indeed a couple of the inmates attempted suicide by drinking a ‘tumbler’ of acid. This same acid burns through to the bone. This kills them of course – no, it doesn’t! The guards gave them a quick swig of antidote, and they were right as nine pence. One woman had a serious heart condition but none of the above killed her.
I live in Naples SW Florida, known as God’s waiting room. Every medical treatment known to man is available here to the many heart patients, but they drop like flies. How could someone who starts sick survive such treatment?
The agony continues with no respite until the end of the war (five years), and the Americans arrive at Humbert’s prison. At this point, I would have expected her to be carried off on a stretcher to an American Military hospital for treatment for her blindness, black frostbitten feet, emaciation, burns and general mistreatment, and a long period of recovery and rehabilitation. Err – No, she immediately becomes in charge of the town administration, local prison camps and the provision of shelter, food and first aid to refugees. Moreover, in her spare time she is the official Nazi hunter for the Americans. What a woman. If she had headed up the French Army instead of a department in the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires the Germans would never have reached France.
I love diaries, and I read this at one sitting. I found it a compelling read and, if it contained only a grain of truth it would still be a remarkable story.
This is not a book for everyone, but if ‘women’s struggle against the odds’ is your thing, you will enjoy this work.
The Terminal Spy
The Terminal Spy
By Alan S. Cowell
Published by Doubleday 2008 $26.95 432 pps.
A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder.
The Terminal Spy is an intrigue with a Russian theme where the unspeakable do horrid things to the unpronounceable. I tend to confuse my …skayas, with my …oviches, and by the time I have sorted those out I have lost the plot. Mr Cowell anticipated my, and perhaps others dilemma, and opens his book with Dramatis Personae. This introduces us to 40 principle characters. I respectfully suggest that the reader studies these three and a bit pages as it will greatly enhance comprehension of the remaining 430.
Cowell’s work is at once an important and rewarding example of detailed investigative reporting. Important because it reveals how a foreign (I was tempted to say hostile), country carried out a successful nuclear attack on London, Britain’s capital city. Rewarding because it reads like a fiction spy thriller. It will come as no surprise to the reader to learn that Alan Cowell is an experienced and accomplished journalist and citizen of the world. He is ‘at-home’ in London Paris or New York, and has vast experience of the Middle East and Africa.
The Terminal Spy is a dissection, in the minutest detail of the evidence pertaining to the calculated murder in broad daylight of Alexander Litvinenko at London on November 1st 2006. It is the manner of this murder and why, that makes this volume a page turner par excellence.
No one has been brought before the courts for this crime, but by the end of the book there can be no doubt of the identity of the culprit and his accomplices.
The book is very well written. It is never dull – which is quite an achievement when one considers the exposure espionage and intelligence gets these days. There are no loose-ends or innuendoes which in a book like this can be infuriating.
The Terminal Spy is an extremely rewarding and enjoyable read, and I thoroughly recommend it.
Sea of Thunder
Sea of Thunder by Evan Thomas
Published by Simon & Shuster 2006 414 pps.
A Review by Colin J. Edwards
Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign.
One might be forgiven for thinking that everything that can be said about World War II, has already been said. That is probably right; but it is not what is said, but how it is said. In Sea of Thunder, Evan Thomas brings a balanced appraisal of the leading personalities involved in the Battle of Leyte Gulf at the close of World War II – warts and all.
Readers of military history fall into two camps. One consists of those who thirst for knowledge and comparison of differing opinion. The other likes a patriotic ‘fix’, while enjoying summaries of past victories. Thomas’s book will satisfy the former and antagonize the latter. This review will attempt to hover between the two extremes.
This is a story about an American admiral and a Commander, and two Japanese admirals. However, the book starts and ends with Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., USN. The culmination of the work is Halsey’s lapse of judgment at Leyte Gulf, and the suicide mission of Cdr Evans resulting in his death together with much of his crew. The final score was one American and one Japanese left standing.
Thomas is a leading journalist, and his book betrays that occupation. Seen from both sides of the ‘41to’45 conflict (1939 to 1945 for everyone else), the story grips the reader from start to finish. Unfortunately, in his desire to be ‘balanced’ – a prerequisite of today’s journalism, his prose lacks passion.
There is little indication of the success of the Marine landings, only a reminder of their failures. The Kamikaze assaults seem a minor inconvenience, and not the serious threat they really were. The set-piece sea battles somehow got lost in the writing. Maybe I was not paying attention, but it seemed to me that the Japanese could not decide what to do. Halsey went off chasing personal glory -exactly as the Japanese thought he would. His incompetence did not stop there. He was found guilty of dereliction of duty during not one, but two typhoons causing death and destruction on a massive scale. Fortunately, the top brass were old chums, so Halsey went on to promotion as a five star fleet admiral. If a blundering drunk can reach the dizzy heights of five star rank, there is hope for the rest of us.
While all this was going on, the defenders of Leyte Gulf did their job, and the Marines did theirs with conspicuous gallantry.
Evan Thomas’s book is very well researched, and a compelling read. It is available from Amazon for a ridiculously small price, and will be enjoyed by everyone who has in interest in World War II, particularly that part of it played out in the Pacific Ocean.
Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.
The Man Who Made Lists
By Joshua Kendall.
. G. P. Putnam’s & Sons. (297 pps) 2008 $25.95
A Review by Colin J. Edwards
“Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.” AESCHYLUS. Prometheus Bound
Joshua Kendall’s ‘The Man Who Made Lists’ is a refreshing break from the plethora of spiteful political exposés that have demanded our attention this election year. With a tutored eye, he introduces the reader to the life and times of Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869), physician, theologian, lexicographer and compiler of Roget’s Thesaurus.
Born in London while England fought America at the front door, and Spain at the back, Roget started what was to be for him a sad and humorless life. Nevertheless, Kendall’s light touch sails us through this ocean of misery and madness in a way that might otherwise try the reader’s endurance.
Disturbed people surrounded young Peter; indeed, he exhibited obsessive- compulsive behavior himself long before such a condition was recognized. However, he handled it by exercising his fertile brain to the exclusion of normal life.
Long before his thesaurus was published, Roget …
· Qualified as a physician at Edinburgh University.
· Developed a new laboratory test for arsenic poisoning.
· Published a paper on the slide rule, inventing the log- log scale.
· Discovered that the retina typically sees a series of still images as a continuous picture, with subsequent implications for film making in the future.
· Achieved success as an academic physiologist.
· Published a 250,000-word treatise on animal and vegetable physiology to international acclaim.
His day job was as a dedicated physician at industrial Manchester where he endured great hardship while tending to the poor. Not too many doctors do that these days – not in SW Florida anyway.
He was also involved in what could have been a life threatening adventure. One of Roget’s many activities was to accompany a family of young children on a grand tour of Europe to give them what would have been an intensive education. When they were in Switzerland, Napoleon demanded the arrest of all adult Englishmen. Swift and persistent action on his part allowed him to return to England with his charges; safe and sound. There is even a suggestion that his escape plan was suspended long enough for Madam de Stael to seduce him.
Madam de Stael was not the only ‘name’ to punctuate his life. Roget was no stranger to Jeremy Bentham and Humphrey Davy. He had more than a nodding acquaintance with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Erasmus Darwin, (Charles’s grandfather), and Benjamin Franklin’s son William were notable conversationalists. He was involved in a book club that Isaac D’Israeli, (Benjamin Disraeli’s father), was invited to join.
It was towards the end of his life that the Thesaurus was published. It had 28 printings before he died, and continued by his family. Roget died while on holiday in West Malvern, Worcestershire aged 90, and lies in the cemetery of St James’s Church. Maybe the steep hills there had something to do with it.
Roget’s life was filled with sadness, but Kendall avoids melancholy and moves the biography on at fiction speed. The result is a well-written biography of a very interesting intellectual who prospered despite adversity. A pleasure to read – more than once.
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