What are you reading?

A new trailing thread, dedicated to what we're currently reading.

And. . . we hope. . . with participation from you.

What are you reading right  now? Add it down in the commentary section

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June 21, 2016

Give Me Eighty Men

I'm presently reading Give Me Eighty Men by Shannon Smith. It's a history of the Fetterman Fight, and a history of the history of the Fetterman Fight. I'll review it when I'm done, but I'll note that the favorable mention of the book by the authors of The Heart of All That Is caused me to pick it up, even though I'd been inclined to previously avoid it.

So far, I'm enjoying it, and its certainly raising a lot questions in my mind about the Fetterman battle, although I'm reserving my judgment on various things so far.

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July 5, 2016

Red Cloud's War

I must be stuck on a theme right now.  Having read The Heart of All that Is, and having learned about Give Me Eighty Men from that, I am now reading Red Cloud's War by McDermott which I learned about from Give Me Eighty Men.  I wasn't actually aware that John McDermott had written a two volume history of Red Cloud's War until I saw it referenced, with a bit of criticism as to his treatment of Fetterman, in Smith's book but I'm enjoying it so far, having just started it today while riding on airplanes and sitting in airports. So far, I'm really enjoying it.

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July 29, 2016

The Lost Mandate of Heaven
The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam

I just finished the excellent Red Cloud's War earlier this week and started on this over breakfast this morning. While I'm not far into it, so far its been very readable and very interesting as well.

Update:

I just finished this book and I'm left, yet again, wondering why the Kennedy Administration continues to  have such an golden aura surrounding it.

Besides Kennedy's personal ickiness, his administration was a foreign policy and moral wreck.  Camelot?  More like the court of AEthelred the Unready.

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October 13, 2016

Blacklisted by History
The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy
by M. Stanton Evans 

A good, and very well read, friend of mine has been recommending this book to me for quite some time.  I just picked it up, and as I had been getting a lot of airport time, I'm about 3/4s of the way through it, even though its a lengthy book (in excess of 600 pages) and its incredibly dense in cited facts and sources.

Indeed, it's a hard book to describe.  It purports to be the "untold" story of Senator McCarthy, and I had some concern that it might be a revisionist essay, but it's neither really solely about McCarthy nor is it so much of an essay (although it is that) as an incredibly detailed example of investigative reporting.  Evans, who wrote the book, had a career in journalism and that shows.   Given that it is investigative journalism, basically, combined with history, and because Evans knew he was taking on the prior record, it's extremely densely packed with cites to original sources and its also somewhat repetitive.  Nonetheless, its riveting. 

What the book really is, is a history of Soviet penetration into American government in the 1930s and 1940s.  It starts well before McCarthy was on the scene and looks at a lot of data before he ever made his appearance.  It then picks up his role in exposing Communists in American government once he arrives.

I'm not finished with the book yet, but while I'll come back with my full opinions when I'm done, I'm satisfied that its not a simple hard right McCarthy fan piece.  Indeed, the friend who recommended it to me actually noted that when Evans started the book off he expected to find the opposite of what he did, which may explain in part why the book is so extraordinarily careful in slamming the reader repetitively with original sources.  And I also have to note that its slightly,  but only slightly, anti climatic (so far) in that the story in this area has really changed dramatically since 1990.  McCarthy, however, hasn't really been rehabilitated so far in the public eye.

That's a bit surprising as following the 1990 collapse of the Soviet Union and the release of Soviet records, combined with the Federal Government's release of the Army's Venona files we now knew beyond a shawdow of a doubt that Soviet espionage efforts were far deeper than previously believed. Figures like Whitaker Chambers who suffered for sounding the alarm turn out not only to be correct, but in fact the Soviet effort was far greater than was previously known to anyone but the government and its investigative arms.  Venona has confirmed that many of the people that left wing and liberal apologists maintained were innocent victims of accusations were in fact Communist operatives, just as they were accused of being.  Indeed, people who were only sort of expected turn out to be proven Communist operatives.

Evans builds on that and demonstrates that the individuals on the original McCarthy list of suspects and the amended one, some 60 or so people, were in fact generally what they were accused of being.  He also goes on to show that McCarthy clearly had sources inside at least a couple of agencies that were supplying him with up to date information so the period accusations that his stories were old news were inaccurate.

I'll leave it there, and there is more to discuss, but I'll pick that back up when I finish the book.

Update, November 14, 2016:

I finished the book noted above (some time ago actually) and highly recommend it, although it does have a very unusual style.  It's author's role as a journalist really shows, as its basically a series of essay points and explorations of evidence.

As good as it is, I still wouldn't say that its the definitive biography of McCarthy.  It's really simply an exploration of his role in exploring Communist infiltration into the US government and the opposition that he met in doing that.  I'd regard it as slightly partisan, but very well done.

I also think, however, that a full biography that's not biased would be in order, which I understand has not really been done. This book explores McCarthy's early life a bit, although not much, but completely omits anything regarding his personal life upon reaching public office.  His marriage to a much younger member of his staff, for example, isn't even mentioned.

All in all, a very good correction to the record, very well researched, and convincingly written.

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November 14, 2016

The Secret War
by Max Hastings 

Hastings is extremely well known to students of World War Two and has written a number of absolutely excellent books on that topic. The former journalist hasn't focused solely on the Second World War, and recently wrote one on World War One.  At the time he wrote that book, he indicated that he was done writing on World War Two, but obviously, he wasn't.  He's noted that he's returned to the Second World War after making such statements before, doing so this time to examine intelligence and espionage during World War Two.

I must be on an espionage and fifth column kick, as the book noted immediately above is also basically on that general theme, but when I heard that Hastings had written a new book on this topic, I knew that I'd get it. Due to a series of long flights, I actually started it before I completed Blacklisted By History.

I'm still reading it and still have quite a ways to go, but so far, it meets with Hastings high standards of writing and research.  I'll detail more on it when I complete the book.

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May 4, 1918

Comment

This blog has a bunch of "trailing threads" that I have not been keeping up on. The same is true of the pages on the blog.  I'll often think of updating them, but rarely do.

So I'm surprised to see that I haven't updated this entry since November 2016.  I skipped 2017 completely.  I finished The Secret War, enjoying it very much, and never entered anything else.

Pathetic.

May 4, 1918

Since  my last entry, I read (at least):

Stalin:  Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928
Stephen Kotkin

This excellent book, which is part of what will be a three volume treatment of Stalin's life, is excellent.  It's also somewhat depressing and distressing, but then so is the life of Stalin.

I read this during 2017 but towards the beginning of the year shortly after finishing Hasting's book noted above.  I should have noted it then. Anyhow, the treatment of Stalin is exhaustive, detailing his early life and distressing rise to power.

The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945

Nicholas Stargardt

I'm frankly not sure if I picked this book up after the first volume treatment of Stalin's life or not.  I may have.  Some of the books I noted above I read while doing a great deal of traveling, which always makes for a lot of reading for me.

Anyhow, unusually, I read this book rather slowly.  Often just a few pages at a time while eating breakfast, until perhaps the last third of the book which I read more rapidly (and again, partially while travelling).

This book is extremely interesting and extremely distressing.  It details the views of average Germans on what they were thinking.  The book is a large one, extremely interesting, and after reading it I still don't know if I understand what they were thinking.  It seems they largely supported the war while knowing that some of their aims at least were grossly immoral.  In some ways, the book details the success of propaganda and self delusion over clear thinking, something that perhaps gives us a very distressing lesson for the present day.

Kristin Lavransdatter: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Sigrid Undset

I'm presently reading this book, which is actually three books by Undset which were written sequentially and which take up the life of the protagonist, Kristin Lavransdattter sequentially.

Set in Medieval Norway, Udset's books The Wreath, The Wife and the The Cross are frankly masterpieces and she accordingly received the Nobel Prize for Literature for them.  She was a deep student of Medieval Norway to such an extent that the books portray what almost seems like a world that picks right up where the Scandinavian Sagas leave off, and almost read like one of them for that matter.  Beyond that, the books sort of mirror an intense series of personal struggles and revelations that the author was going through at the time that she wrote them.

I'm about half way the book now, having started it a couple of weeks ago, which says something about how readable it is as the book is over 1000 pages long.  I'm deep into The Wife now.  I'll report back when I finish, but highly recommended so far.

April 4, 2019

Once again, I've been bad about updating this thread.

For whatever reason, Kristin Lavransdatter, which I was reading when I last posted nearly a year ago, took me a long time to read.  In part that was because, as is often the case, I tend to read a lot in airports and while traveling, and starting about that time it seems my travel slowed down.

Anyhow, I finished it and it was absolutely excellent.  I very highly recommend it.

Anyhow, I did finish that book some time ago and now I frankly can't remember if I read another after it, other than a series of books on hunting dogs after we got our Golden Doodle, Odo.  More on him in some upcoming post.  Anyhow, last spring there was an entire series of books I read on training hunting dogs.

I gave up on that endeavor, however, and had somebody who knew what they were doing take up that task.

One book I did read after Kristin Lavransdatter was:

American Riding and Work Saddles, 1790-1920
Ken R. Knopp.

I've basically read this book twice, as I was privileged to read a pre publication version first.

It's excellent.

It probably would have come through a lot more a decade ago when I first started this blog, but at one time I rode a lot and have a deep interest in the topic. As part of that, I have a really deep interest in the material culture of riding.  I post a lot, in fact, at The Military Horse, the best web sight there is for folks with this interest.  And I've read a lot on the topic.

Knopp's book is excellent and in some ways is a nice companion to Margaret Derry's Horses In Society, a book that if you are interested in this topic, you need to read.  Taking on a century and a half of American saddlery is a daunting task, and Knopp does it very well.

I'm currently reading:

Vietnam, An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975
Max Hastings

I love Max Hasting's works, which are focused on World War Two more than anything else (he's stated a couple of times that he wasn't going to write on World War Two anymore, only to come back and write on it again).  This time he's writing on the what may be the defining war for American culture in the post 1945 era.

I'm only up to the assassination of Diem right now, but Hasting's doesn't disappoint.  I'll report back when I've finished the book, but I'm glad to have an English author write on the topic.  There have been other good histories on the war or on parts of the war, but they're all American or French, and therefore have a participants bias to at least some degree.  Hasting's does not.  Indeed, in reading his book I've already come to a better appreciation of the failings of The Lost Mandate of Heaven, discussed above, and a couple of other more recent histories on the Vietnam War.

Update, July 17, 2019.

Still reading this book but have to note, my collection of military historian friends who served in Vietnam, and Vietnam veterans in general, I suspect will really hate this book.

This isn't a condemnation of it by any means.  It's excellent.  And this book was necessary.

Update, August 2, 2019.

I concluded reading Hasting's book, Vietnam, An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975.

Gut wrenching would likely be the best description.

Hastings has done the history of this topic, and frankly Americans, an enormous service by writing this book.  It's arguably the first really objective history of the war, in no small part because as an English military historian and former journalist, he has no stake in the fight and how it is recalled.  Additionally, as a masterful writer in the English language, his book is widely accessible to those with an interest in the history of the war, which is largely the American audience.

Hastings' book is excellent, as are all of his books which I've read (I haven't read them all by any means).  His research on the war is excellent, admittedly hampered somewhat by the fact that the Hanoi government has not come close to releasing the information that it retains on the war.  His descriptions are, moreover, are both fascinating and heart rending.

Hastings is clear from the very onset of the book that he regarded the French and then the American effort in the war (most of the book deals with the American effort) as completely doomed right from the onset.  This doesn't make him a sympathizer with the North Vietnamese effort, however, and he's clear that it was lead by brutal men who engaged in brutal acts.  His concluding sections make it plain that whatever the communists claimed to be fighting for, and whatever those in the South and North believed about what the communist victory would mean, it mean unyielding and ongoing repression.

Still, reading the book really makes a person wonder if a different outcome was possible.  Hastings basically regards the American effort from 1965 to 1973, when the US pulled out of active participation, as inept, and its really hard not to join him in that conclusion.  He also makes the observation, which is undeniable, that the Saigon government was hopelessly corrupt and its military plagued with all the problems that largess and graft could bestow upon it.  Nonetheless, it's clear in Hastings account that a fair amount of the ARVN fought hard and valiantly right to the end and that some Southern units were stubbornly fighting right until the Southern government surrendered.  It's also hard not to come to the conclusion, as Hastings himself does, that the Republic of Vietnam would have weathered the 1975 North Vietnamese invasion if the U.S. had committed air power, as it had in 1972.  Hastings feels that such a commitment in 75 would have only postponed things to a later date, as the North Vietnamese government was totalitarian and dedicated to winning no matter what losses it sustained, but by 1975 it was done to soldiers in its early teens.  Frankly, I'm far from convinced that Hastings views are correct on that score, and strongly suspect that had American air power been committed in 75, the losses that would have been sustained by the North would have been too severe for them to really recover from for at least a decade.  . . and a decade stretching to 1985 would have made quite a difference.

That makes the U.S. look really bad, of course, and indeed the U.S. comes out of this book looking absolutely horrible, including the American military throughout the war and in particular in the later stages of the war.  Nixon and Kissinger come out looking awful, and they should.

I'd put this book in the must read category for a serious student of American history, and rank it was Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace on the French war in Algeria as a must read for contemporary American policy makers and military men (and women).  It's interesting in that regard that two of the really seminal works on Western wars in non western lands have been written by British historians whose nations weren't involved in them.  We're fortunate that they've written them.

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August 10, 2019.


The Vanquished. Why the First World War Failed To End
Robert Gerwarth

I decided to take a break from Vietnam and read something that coincidentally fits in really well with this blog.  The Vanquished is a short book (about 1/3d of it is end notes) that deals with the wars and revolutions that came immediately out of World War One.

I'm about 1/3d of the way through this book now.  It's quite good, although I'm not really learning anything I didn't already know.  The reason for that, however, largely has to do with being a student of the era and, frankly, also because putting together the frequent posts for this blog have informed me about a lot of wars that followed World War One that I  wouldn't have otherwise known much about.

I suspect that most people don't know that much about then, however, and have the idea that when the Great War ended, the fighting simply stopped and the soldiers went home. That's far from true, for any of the combatants.

This books, so far, has been doing a nice job of explaining why that was the case, and where it was the case.

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September 5, 2019

I finished reading The Vanquished.  For a student of World War One, modern history, or history in general, I think it's a must read.

It's become very common to believe that when World War One ended, there was peace, but it simply isn't true.  Indeed the United States may be the exception to the rule in that it largely entered peace, even though it still had troops in a combat role in Russia after November, 1918.  Almost every other combatant was fighting on in some other war, and some of the wars were pretty intensive, at least locally. And most of those wars were an offshoot of World War One.  The results of the war itself were very much in doubt for some time, and the new map wasn't established for years as new nations slugged it out over their borders or even for their existence.

It probably goes without saying, but all that is not only important and interesting history in its own right, it's necessary history for the understanding of World War Two.

I'm now reading;

A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
Norman Maclean

Most people are familiar with the really excellent movie based on this semi autobiographical novella by Norman Maclean which was made into an excellent movie by Robert Redford.  I just started reading it a few days ago and I'm already well into it.  I'll give, of course, a review of it when I've completed reading it.

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September 8, 2019

I finished A River Runs Through It and Other Stories yesterday.

The novella A River Runs Through It has achieved almost mystical status in certain quarters, with it being particularly highly regarded among those who like "western" literature, or perhaps I should say literature of the modern west, although all of these stories are set in the period prior to World War Two.  The reputation is well deserved.

Various reviews attempt to compare the work to other well known authors who wrote in the same genera, with Hemingway being noted.  Well, it's much better than any work of Hemingway's, even if we consider that the Hemingway outdoor works set in the West actually are good, as compared to the rest of his writing which is not all that great, frankly.  A River Runs Through it, the longest of the novellas, is truly a masterpiece.

Maclean describes the West of the 1910s through the 1930s in a way that would be highly recognizable to anyone whose grown up in the real West even today.  The novella is hugely interior, and for that reason the task of putting it on film must have been really difficult to say the least.  To anyone wanting a real grasp of how Westerners see the West and themselves, this novella is the work to read.

One question that a person whose seen the excellent movie may have is how much does the novella depart from the film?  Not much, but it does some, and the film adds some elements that are lacking in the novella.  The novella does not deal with how Norman meets Jessie, his wife, in any fashion.  Jessie Maclean really was from Wolf Point Montana, but the story of their early relationship is completely omitted.  Indeed, throughout much of the novella Norman is already married, including those parts dealing with Jessie's brother.

It's hard to describe the writing of a novel, although this is barely a novel and close to a memoir and that also raises the question here on how much of the story is fiction and how much is fact.  I'm not familiar with Maclean's life enough to know how much of the story is fictionalized, but I suspect its not all that much.  By way of a plot spoiler, one thing that's definitely true, but somewhat fictionalized, is that Paul Davidson (Paul Maclean's actual nom de plum) did indeed die from being beat up in an alley in the late 1930s, just as described, and the murder remains an unsolved murder.  It was a Chicago murder, however, as Norman Maclean had convinced Paul to come to Chicago where he worked as a reporter and for the press office of the University of Chicago.  This wouldn't really fit the Montana centric story line however, as would the fact that Paul was a Dartmouth graduate.

The novella is, I feel, a must read.

As noted, this book contains three stories, not one, although A River Runs Through It is the longest and best known.

The second one is Logging and Pimping and You're Pal, Jim.

Maclean worked as a logger while attending college.  The precise details of that I don't know, but it was for at least two seasons. This novella deals with that and I suspect, and indeed I'm certain, that it's much more fictionalized than A River Runs Through It.  It's also of uneven quality.

In this novella Maclean sought to describe loggers but I suspect that he ended up, as is so often done, by fairly grossly exaggerating his depiction as he went on, which is unfortunate. Some elements of the description, in particular his description of clothing, are really excellent. But it decays as it the novella goes on and this one may be said to have almost no real point, other than being an odd character study.

The third one is USFS 1919, which deals as with Norman's work on a Forest Service crew in 1919.

This one is excellent, and again not only is the story worthwhile, but the descriptions of life at the time, and particularly a very distinct rural occupation of the time, are superb.  Descriptions of horses, packing and Forest Service work in a now bygone era are extremely well done.   This story is also probably mostly fiction, but his work for the Forest Service at a very young age (Norman is 17 when this story takes place, and he'd already worked for the Forest Service for two years) is not.  This novella is well worth reading.

On a couple of other observations, knowing that the movie was from a novella, I've wondered if the plot details of the film were filled out from the other novellas in the book. They are not.  As noted, the film includes story lines, such as Norman meeting Jessie, that aren't in the book at all.  About the only added details provided is that Norman worked as a logger and for the Forest Service, and his work as a logger is mentioned in the film.

Anyhow, the stories included in A River Runs Through It and Other Stories are first rate stories in the modern Western genre and much better than many, maybe most. The stories due have an earthy element to them, and all three have some references to illicit unions of one kind or another, but they aren't graphic and they don't get down in the mud as much as later works of Larry McMurtry.

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September 12, 2019

The British Are Coming:  The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777
Rick Atkinson

This book is a new release by noted historical author Rick Atkinson.  Atkinson, whose Liberation Trilogy on the American ground campaigns in North Africa and Europe set the bar for the histories of the U.S. Army on that topic, now turns his eye on the American Revolution for a three volume treatment.

I've just started the book and I'm still in the prologue, but it promises to be excellent.

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July 30, 1920

The King and the Catholics.
Antonia Fraser

When I update this thread it occurs to me how bad I am at keeping it updated.

And looking back on this thread it also occurs to me how much my reading has slowed down during the pandemic, which is an odd thing to realize.  Work has not slowed down for me at all, but travel really has, and that's a lot of the reason for that.

Anyhow, after I finished The British Are Coming I started, and just finished, The King and the Catholic by Antonia Fraser.  It's not a large book so I should have read it quickly, but for whatever reason it took me awhile to read this very interesting work.

The book deals with Catholic Emancipation in the United Kingdom, which then included Ireland, and which took place over a period of several decades in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries.

The UK has a complicated relationship with Catholicism and went from being a deeply Catholic country after its conversion to Christianity to one that was embroiled in turmoil following King Henry VIII's severance of ties with Rome, to being a virulently anti Catholic country some time later. In that latter period it outlawed the Church and persecuted Catholics.  In spite of that, some families in England and Scotland, including some prominent ones, remained loyal to the Catholic Church. By the mid 18th Century they were able to practice their faith at some personal risk, but were deprived of office and position.  Ireland, for its part, had been incorporated into the UK against its will and it remained overwhelmingly Catholic.

During the American Revolution the law slowly began to change, in part as a response to it, although it faced enormous opposition and backlash.  Nonetheless Catholics were largely freed from legal disabilities in 1829. This book traces that odd and interesting history.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm actually adding this book on the day I finished it, showing how much I've neglected this thread.

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August 1, 2020

The Great Plains During World War II
R. Douglas Hurt

I've just started this book which is about just what its title indicates.

I'm only in the introductory chapter, so I don't have much to report as of yet, other than that it looks promising.

Update:  October 1, 2020

I finished this excellent book and recommend it, although it does tend to read like a textbook to some degree.

Meticulously researched, and covering every topic imaginable in its scope, the book leaves the reader with the realization that much of the rah, rah mythology surrounding the home front on World War Two is just that.  Not that real patriotism didn't exist on the Great Plains in particular and the country in general, but rather that it was much more nuanced than we might commonly imagine.

A must for the study of the home front during the war.

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October 1, 2020

The SS A New History

Adrian Weale

I just started this history of the SS so I can't offer any review of it yet.  It'll be interesting to read, I'm sure, as its by the much respected British historian Adrian Weale and it covers a topic that's been heavily mythologized.

Indeed, I have a small volume on the SS around here somewhere that's interesting but clearly inadequate and I'd regretted not picking up The SS: Alibi of a Nation, when I saw it in a bookstore in Denver some years ago.  Weale's book comes highly recommended.

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November 14, 2021

I"ve been terrible about updating this thread.

I didn't complete the book on the SS noted above, but perhaps because I already knew much of the history, even though it's only a year ago, I don't have a lot to report about it as it didn't make a huge impression on me.  It is a well done academic book.  If you're looking into the SS, I'd recommend it.

Since that time I may well have read other books, but I'm not immediately recalling them off hand. That is a year ago, and I'm never not reading a book.

Right now I'm reading the following:

Stalin:  Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

Stephen Kotkin

This is the second volume of an anticipated three volume biography of the Soviet dictator.  The first volume is referenced up above with a 2018 entry.

This is an excellent tome, but its style is unusual for about 3/4s of the book, with very short chapters.  Frankly, I think Kotkin had a hard time with this volume, and it shows it.  It's a good work, but somewhat plodding in the first 3/4s. Frankly, it could have used some good editing, which would have frankly cut about 1/4 of it out.  

February 8, 2022

I finally finished the second volume of Stalin, noted immediately above, and in spite of what I noted, I’m looking forward to the next volume, which I hope will come out soon.  It isn't out yet.

Nonetheless, my comment above remains applicable.  The book is a very long one of nearly 900 pages.  Normally length doesn't bother me at all, and it didn't with volume one, but this one is broken up into very short chapters, much of which deals with Stalin's involvement in minutia.  I get it, he was involved with minutia, and that was part of the nature of his personal dictatorship, but lots of interruptions to deal with his involvement with a single book, or play, or things of this type is a bit much.  The point, I think, is that Stalin's dictatorship was haphazard but all encompassing.

This volume deals with the terror in great detail as well, which needed to be done, but which also gets a little overdone.  Kotkin never really offers an explanation for the mass killings, although he hints that it was simply to wipe out the old in favor of the young, so we're left a bit wondering.  Perhaps its simply inexplicable.

The book really picks up in the final fifth or so as it starts to heavily deal with the Soviet Union's dealings with Nazi Germany.  I don't know that any of this is new ground at this point, but it is very well put and puts the Second World War and the Soviet Union in a prospective that histories, starting I suppose with the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which came out earlier, tend to miss, and often still do. The common narrative, and the one I've always accepted, is that Hitler turned his gaze East as he always intended to do that, making, in essence, everything that happened in the war up  until that time really a preamble to an inevitable war against the Soviet Union. Kotkin doesn't view the war that way at all.

Kotkin's view, and it's really backed up with lots of evidence, is that the Soviet Union was ready to treat with Nazi Germany and then reached too far.  And, he holds, Nazi Germany was likewise ready to treat with the Soviet Union.  He views a war between the two as sooner or later being an inevitability, but not at the time it occurred.

Rather, he maintains, that following the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact the Soviets hoped to secure a better deal and the Germans explored it. What that would have required is the USSR going to war with the United Kingdom, as the Germans, he maintains, regarded the British Empire as their principal enemy.  The Soviets indeed were willing to consider entering the war against the British, and presented a list of demands to the Germans as to what that would require.  I.e., they wanted concessions in Eastern Europe that essentially gave them a free hand there.  The Germans were not willing to do that, and at that point they went to the second option they'd been considering, which was to invade the USSR and simply take the resources that they wanted.  The Soviets were never able to grasp that the Germans weren't going to make a counter offer, and in spite of the fact that they were well aware that Germany was building up for an invasion, they believed they'd get a final demand first, which they might accept, or might use to hold the Germans off through the invasion season.

That's quite a bit different from the classic view that the invasion was simply for Lebenstraum.  It was, and that was a stated goal, but it was actually a bit secondary to a longer term goal of defeating the British Empire.  Kotkin takes the view that the Germans hoped to conquer the European portions of the USSR first, end that war, and then turn again on the British Empire, which it was otherwise unable to directly reach.

July, 2022

I just finished reading Hue, 1968 by Mark Bowden.

I really recommend the book, it's excellent.

The intense urban battle that the book is about is well known as an unusual one during hte Vietnam War.  It's come to be regarded, not without some justification, as a symbol of American defeat in the war, even though the battle was a US and RVN victory.  Bowden does an excellent job of providing a narraitve history of the Marines and soldiers (people forget nearly entirely that the U.S. Army was involved in the battle.

Bowden's book provides accounts from quite a few U.S. servicemen who served in the battle, as well as accounts from the Communist combatants.  The book is intersting in that it swings very much back towards the immediate post Vietnam sort of view of the war as an overall betrayal/lost cause, which some more recent books have not.  The book is, quite frankly, not kind to American leadership during the battle and particularly unkind to senior leadership.  It's not particularly kind to the Marine Corps overall.  It tends to be somewhat sympathetic to the VC/NVA combatants, which is unusual for an American text.

A surprising element of the book is that Bowden, who wrote Black Hawk Down, is obviously unfamiliar with many details of weaponry and the like that most military authors are.  He notes in an updated epilogue that he received criticism from readers of the book for that reason.  It's not a serious matter, but for those who are familiar with such items, it's a bit distracting.

One criticism of the book that I do have is that the role of the ARVN in the battle is really overlooked, but perhaps this was unavoidable.  The book is full of first hand accounts of the battle by Marines, soldiers and Communist combatants, but it has none from the soldiers of the ARVN.  Indeed, the only real first hand account from an ARVN unit was from their US advisor.  As the ARVN fought the entire battle, this is a fairly signficant oversight, but its frankly extremely common for US works on the Vietnam War.

January 28, 2023

I'm obviously not very good at keeping this thread up to date.

The last entry here was from July 2021, at which time I'd just finished Hue, 1968.  After that, I went on to Rasputin by Douglas Smith.

Rasputin is an excellent and perhaps definitive biography of the mysterious Russian starets who became a central figure in the Imperial Russian household.  The book examines many of the legends and mysteries regarding Gregory Rasputin, the Russian peasant, who never held Holy Orders, contrary to one of the common myths.  It's worth reading for that reason alone.

Rasputin is so mysterious, and Imperial Russia was so vast and poorly recorded even in the 20th Century, and it descended into revolution, so even with this effort, which is well done, a lot simply remains unknown about Rasputin.  What we can conclude, even though it may be unsatisfactory, is that he rose up as the second "holy man" advisor to an anemic imperial household which nonetheless had absolute rule over a vast, backwards, nation.  This was largely based on the strength of his religious character and not, as is so often asserted, because he was able to stem the bleeding of the Alexei, who suffered, as is well known, from hemophilia.

He seems to have held conventional Orthodox religious views, although he was tolerant of other faiths in an era in which that was uncommon in general and certainly uncommon in Russia.  He was not, for example, antisemitic.  

What becomes clear from the book is that he had an enormously forceful personality that attracted some, and repelled others.  He was uneducated, but could read and write, and did so simply.  He was extremely religious and a devout Orthodox believer who did not hold, as he was accused of, heretical beliefs of a perverse nature. 

Nonetheless, some of the accusations against him were true.  In spite of his devout beliefs, he became a serial adulterer and did in fact have sexual relations with a large number of women, ranging from prostitutes to ladies of noble background.  This did not extend, as was sometimes suggested, to the imperial household.  He was a heavy drinker, the two of which played together in some instances.  Both of these traits became stronger as he became more influential.

More than anything else, what this book serves to show is how bizarrely effete the Russian imperial household had become.  It's hard not to come away basically with the conclusion that the Czar and Czarina were simply not very smart and a Russian revolution simply inevitable.  That a person like Rasputin could become so influential is evidence of that.  Russia was simply rotten to the core and the empire was going to fall.

I'm presently reading Bloodlands, by Timothy Snyder, and indeed because of a recent work travel event, I'm nearly finished with it.  I'll review it shortly.