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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Nothing Changes and Yet Everything is Completely Different
Vienna 1814
by David King
A Review by Colin J. Edwards
Published by Harmony Books $27.50 2008 434 pps.
“The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.” Aldous Huxley
Do not be confused by this book about the Congress of Vienna in 1814. It reads like a novel, but it is serious history as the almost 90 pages of “Notes & Sources” can testify. The style is easy: perhaps a little simplistic in places, but none-the-less an excellent read.
If your politics lean ever so slightly to the left, David King’s book will drive you to distraction. It describes in detail how the privileged few, carved up Europe after Napoleon’s abdication. It demonstrates the blatant greed and narcissism of Kings, Emperors and their Ministers.
We learn about the rich man’s wars, but not too much about the poor man’s fight. King takes us deeply into the chess game that was European politics, and we can see the mind-set that set Europe ablaze in 1914.
Well-behaved women rarely make history. Vienna 1814 confirms that in spades. I never cease to be amazed by man’s inability to keep his level of concentration above his navel for more that limited periods. The future of Europe was never allowed to interfere with the latest sexual conquest. A 100 years later, nothing had changed. During cabinet meetings discussing the war in France, H.H.Asquith (Prime Minister), wrote love letters to Venitia Stanley. They were not very effective. She got engaged to one of his staff – but omitted to mention it.
There were however two notable exceptions to this broad condemnation of the ‘Powers that be’; and they were both English. The first was Robert Stewart – Lord Castlereagh, foreign secretary under Lord Liverpool, and the Duke of Wellington. Castlereagh did his best to get some sense out of the Congress, and was fired for his trouble. The Iron Duke took over and was fortunate that Napoleon skipped Elba and he was able to charge off to Waterloo and win the ultimate battle.
The frightening thing about this book is that nothing has changed. The Congress of Vienna was dominated by an aggressive Russia hell-bent on expansion. Replace Tsar Alexander with Mr Putin, and it is apparent that we have not progressed very far in the last 194 years. Rich man’s war, poor man’s fight – ‘twas ever thus.
The Immortal Game (330 pps)
by David Shenk
Published by Doubleday @ $26.00
“Think of a virus so advanced it infects not the blood, but the thoughts. But of its human host. Liver and spleen are spared; instead this bug infiltrates the frontal lobes of the brain, domination such prime cognitive functions as problem solving, abstract reasoning, time motor skills and, most notably, agenda setting. It directs thoughts, actions, and even dreams. This virus comes to dominate not only the body, but the mind.”
So begins David Shenk’s The Immortal Game. The game of course is chess. If you have never played, never wanted to and have no interest in it; then neither this review nor the volume itself will hold any interest for you. Good bye – see you next time.
However, if you are intrigued by the game, and the fact that after four moves there are 10 to the power of 120 possible moves (that is one with 120 zeros or one thousand trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion), then this slim volume will captivate you. Certainly the information about the trillion, trillion stuff, made me feel better about my own game; now I know why my computer keeps thrashing me with morbid regularity.
Shenk’s book is supported on two planks. One is the fact that his great grandfather, Samuel Rosenthal was a ‘legendary chess master’, and two, the friendly game between the German Adolf Anderssen and the Estonian Lionel Kieseritzky in London on June 21st 1851 known as the Immortal Game.
Samuel Rosenthal was born at Suwtki, Poland 7th September1837, and died, almost exactly 65 years later at Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. He became a law student and moved from Warsaw to Paris during the Polish revolution in 1864. He settled in Paris as a chess professional and writer.
The actual immortal game between Anderssen and Kieseritsky, was a ‘warm-up’ for the London International Tournament. Anderssen won; and walked away with the tournament, clutching the equivalent of half a million dollars in today’s money. The tournament was propitious for Anderssen in another sense: he went on to be the leading player in the world until 1866 (save for a couple of years when he wasn’t trying). Kieseritsky’s life by contrast, ended two years later in a Paris mental hospital: very dead and very broke. It is said that not a single person attended the interring.
Subtitling the chapters as move numbers in the Anderssen/Kieseritsky game, Shenk takes the reader on an extravaganza of chess history. From its origins in Persia in the fifth century, to an aid to education in today’s America, Shenk misses nothing. There are answers here to all our “…I always wondered about that”.
Shenk’s sources and notes are comprehensive and copious, as are his appendices. However, I thought Appendix I, pointless. If a reader didn’t know the rules of chess, I doubt they would stay with Shenk for 244 pages. That said, appendix II and III are worth the purchase price of the book alone.
If you love chess, you must buy this book. If you only know the moves – but enjoy the game, you must buy it. For everyone else – you should buy it too. Who knows, there could be a Grand Master lurking within you just waiting to come out.
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