Sunday, June 4, 1944. The Fall of Rome, Overlord postponed, the capture of the U-505.

Rome fell to the Allies, with the first elements of the 5th Army from the 88th Infantry Division entering the city in the evening.  It was the first of the (former) Axis capitals to fall to the Allies.

Injured U.S. solder outside of Rome, June 4, 1944.  The soldier is wearing paratrooper boots, although he's not a paratrooper, but rather a tanker.

The historic city center remained intact, as the Germans had ignored Hitler's order to blow up the bridges over the Tiber.

While there wasn't much fighting on the way into Rome, there was some.  Here, US troops rush past a burning Tiger tank.

RAF Group Captain James Stagg, a meteorologist, recommended postponing Operation Overlord by one day due to predicted bad weather, which Gen. Eisenhower agreed to, resulting in ships which had left port being recalled.

The weather itself was actually very nice on the morning of June 4 and Stagg's prediction, which also predicted a break in the weather on June 6, was based on barometric pressure readings from a single ship stationed 600 miles west of Ireland.  His prediction would prove to be absolutely correct.

Weather conditions for the massive operation had to be optimal, something difficult for the English Channel, given the huge number of vessels the operation involved as well as the planned nighttime drops.  Postponing the mission was risky, given the massive assembly of men in ships, some of which had departed, and Field Marshall Montgomery urged the mission to go ahead in spite of the weather report.  But Eisenhower deemed proceeding in bad weather a higher risk, which given the deterioration throughout the day, was correct.

The bad weather ultimately caused Rommel to feel secure in returning to Germany for his wife's birthday.  Remaining German commanders in Brittany went to a training exercise on June 5, the feeling generally being that weather conditions had become so horrible that an invasion was impossible.

In Medieval times, victory in battle that was suddenly favored by the weather was attributed to God.  In modern times, such things are often scoffed at, but it's worth noting that this news and the decision came on a Sunday, putting the invasion fleet to rest, sort of, on that day, and preventing going forwarded into a weather disaster which would have kept the airborne from departing for targets on this night.

US troops that were not part of the invasion force continued training in the United Kingdom.

Men of the 2nd Infantry Division, training at St. Donat's Castle in Wales.

The U-505 was captured by the U.S. Navy, further aiding the Allied codebreaking effort which was already well advanced, as the boat was captured with its Enigma machine and code material entact.

Last prior edition:

Saturday, June 3, 1944. Rome declared an open city.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, German SS, German Wehrmacht, Horse Racing, Medicine, Operation Overlord, Personalities, Rome, World War Two

A conversation with an old friend. The Good Death, and the Good Life and Existential Occupations.

A really old friend of mine and I were talking about it just last week.

I had to catch up with him as he was working on something for me.  It was Friday, but I was fairly formally dressed and he noted it. The reason was that I had just come from my uncle's funeral earlier that day.  He extended his sympathies, but I noted that my uncle had lived a long and good life.  Not a life free of troubles, as no such thing existed, but a long life, that was well lived, and he'd remained sharp right up until the end.  His health had declined in recent years, but only in very recent ones.  It was the last few months that were rough.

My friend and I, who first knew each other as National Guardsmen back in the 80s, are co-religious.  Neither of us was married when we first met, but both of us have, and have seen our kids grow up since then.  And of course, we've seen our parents pass away, his before mine.  He has siblings, which I do not, and one of his brothers died, only in his 50s.  I noted that in the Middle Ages, people often prayed for good deaths, and he noted that a prayer group that he's in now does that every week.

Prayer for a Happy Death

O God, great and omnipotent judge of the living and the dead, we are to appear before you after this short life to render an account of our works. Give us the grace to prepare for our last hour by a devout and holy life, and protect us against a sudden and unprovided death. Let us remember our frailty and mortality, that we may always live in the ways of your commandments. Teach us to "watch and pray" (Lk 21:36), that when your summons comes for our departure from this world, we may go forth to meet you, experience a merciful judgment, and rejoice in everlasting happiness. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

I'm constantly amazed by people who work into old age, as I'd judge it, and keeping working.  A dear friend of mine, now in his 70s, noted that just the other day.  He doesn't have to, he just is.  Likewise, I know a collection of lawyers who fit that description.  The law is a hard job, surrounded by hard facts, hard people, and difficult scenarios

I think they just know nothing else, their real personalities, perhaps, burnt to the core eons ago.

In contrast, I'm also constantly amazed by those who have extensive plans for their retirements well before they can retire.  Another friend of mine fits this category, but when I look at him, I can tell his physical condition is so poor it'd be amazing if he lives long enough to retire.  It's one of those things where you don't know what to say.  If you were to be blunt, you'd say that the dreams of early retirement are probably forlorn, but that his dreams of retiring at all may be foreclosed by a bad early death, if some correction isn't made soon, and those corrections are harder to make once you are past your 30s.

The call came to my wife on Saturday.  I could tell from the tone what the topic was, without even being told.  A relative of hers was on his way to the hospital by helicopter.  Even though he was being sent in, in that fashion, I knew, but did not say it, that he'd not make it.  I'm not even sure if he wanted to.

And so another death.

In this case, unlike my uncle, he was much younger.  My age, in fact.  I hadn't seen him for many years, and before his troubles really set in.  He hadn't been able to adjust to them well.  The most common comment from people, none of whom were surprised, was that his torment was over.

I don't have any big plans, like one of my friends, for retirement.  I hope to be healthy, and just become more of an agrarian-killetarian than I presently am.  Funny thing is that recently I've been running into people who claim "you're looking really good". Somebody asked me the other day, indeed at the funeral gathering, "you're working out", the question in the form of a statement.  Not really.

Indeed, I've gained some weight I seemingly just can't lose, which I think is the byproduct of my thyroid medicine, which has made me hungry, and I know that I'm not in the physical condition I was before my recent health troubles commenced.  People close to me just won't accept that, which brings me to the other side of the retirement coin noted above.  Some lawyers I know are already planning for me to work into my 70s, as that's the thing to do, apparently. Long-suffering spouse, for her part, won't say something like that, but from an ag family, she doesn't really accept the concept of retirement anyhow.  Having said that, I wouldn't plan on my retiring from the ag operation either.

It finally occured to me, however, what's different about agricultural jobs as opposed to others, at least if you are an owner of the enterprise or part of it.  The occupation itself is existentially human.  It is, if you will, an Existential Occupation, or at least it is right now. The mindless gerbil like advance of "progress" may ruin that and reduce it to just another occupation.

Existential Occupations are ones that run with our DNA as a species.  Being a farmer/herdsman is almost as deep in us as being a hunter or fisherman, and it stems from the same root in our being.  It's that reason, really, that people who no longer have to go to the field and stream for protein, still do, and it's the reason that people who can buy frozen Brussels sprouts at Riddleys' still grown them on their lots.  And its the reason that people who have never been around livestock will feel, after they get a small lot, that they need a cow, a goat, or chickens.  It's in us.  That's why people don't retire from real agriculture.

It's not the only occupation of that type, we might note.  Clerics are in that category.  Storytellers and Historians are as well.  We've worshiped the Devine since our onset as a species, and we've told stories and kept our history as story the entire time.  They're all existential in nature.  Those who build certain things probably fit into that category as well, as we've always done that.  The fact that people tinker with machinery as a hobby would suggest that it's like that as well.

Indeed, if it's an occupation. . . and also a hobby, that's a good clue that its an Existential Occupation.

If I were to retire from my career, which I can't right now, I wouldn't be one of those people who spend their time traveling to Rome or Paris or wherever.  I have very low interest in doing that.  I'd spend my time writing, fishing, hunting, gardening (and livestock tending).  That probably sounds pretty dull to most people.  I could imagine myself checking our Iceland or Ireland, or fjords in Norway, but I likely never will.

What I can't imagine myself doing is imagining that age and decline don't occur, and that I should be in court in my 70s.  I don't think that the lawyers who do that realize that younger lawyers don't admire that, and most of the lawyers I'm running into in court are younger than me now.  

And indeed, frankly, it isn't admirable.  People who work a hard non-existential job and keep at it into their advanced old age, or at least past their 7th decade, have just lost something they were when they were young, and much of that is themselves.  They've lost who they were.

AN ACT OF FAITH IN ANTICIPATION OF THE HOUR OF DEATH

From the works of St. Pompilio M. Pirrotti

On my journey toward eternity, dear Lord,

 

I am surrounded  by powerful enemies of my soul.

I live in fear and trembling,

especially at the thought of the hour of death,

on which my eternity will depend,

and of the fearful struggle that the devil will then have to wage against me,

knowing that little time is left for him to accomplish my eternal ruin.

I desire, therefore, O Lord,

to prepare myself for it from this hour,

by offering you now, in view of my last hour,

my profession of faith and love for you,

which is so effectual in repressing and rendering useless

all the crafty and wicked schemes of the enemy

and which I resolve to oppose to him at that moment of such grave consequence,

even though he should dare alone to attack with his deceits

the peace and tranquility of my spirit.

I N.N.,

in the presence of the Most Holy Trinity,

the blessed Virgin Mary,

my holy Guardian Angel

and the entire heavenly host,

affirm that I wish to live and die under the standard of the Holy Cross.

I firmly believe all that our Holy Mother,

the holy, catholic and apostolic Church,

believes and teaches.

It is my steadfast intention to die in this holy faith,

in which all the holy martyrs, confessors and virgins of Christ have died,

as well as all those who have saved their souls.

If the devil should tempt me to despair

because of the multitude and grievousness of my sins,

I affirm that from this day forth

I firmly hope in the infinite mercy of God,

which will not let itself be overcome by my sins,

and in the Precious Blood of Jesus

which has washed all my sins away.

If the devil should assail me with temptations to presumption

by reason of the small amount of good

which by the help of God

I may have been able to accomplish,

I confess from this day forth

that I deserve eternal separation from God

a thousand times by my sins

and I entrust myself entirely

to the infinite goodness of God,

through whose grace alone I am what I am.

Finally, if the evil spirit should suggest to me

that the pains inflicted upon me by our Lord

in that last hour of my life

are too heavy to bear,

I affirm now that all will be as nothing

in comparison with the punishments I have deserved throughout life.

In the bitterness of my soul

I call to remembrance all my years;

I see my iniquities, I confess them and detest them.

Ashamed and sorrowful I turn to you,

my God, my Creator and my Redeemer.

Forgive me, O Lord, by the multitude of your mercies;

forgive your servant whom you have redeemed by your Precious Blood.

My God, I turn to you, I call upon you, I trust in you;

 to your infinite goodness

I commit the entire reckoning of my life.

I have sinned greatly, O Lord:

 enter not into judgment with your servant,

who surrenders to you

and confesses his guilt.

Of myself I cannot make satisfaction to you for my countless sins:

I do not have the means to pay you for my infinite debt.

But your Son has shed his Blood for me,

and greater than all mine sins is your mercy.

O Jesus, be my Saviour!

At the hour of my fearful crossing to eternity

put to flight the enemy of my soul;

grant me grace to overcome every difficulty,

for you alone do mighty wonders.

Lord,

according to the multitude of your tender mercies

I shall enter into your dwelling place.

Trusting in your pity,

I commend my spirit into your hands!

May the Blessed Virgin Mary

and my Guardian Angel

accompany my soul into the heavenly country. Amen.

We should all hope and indeed pray for a happy death.  And perhaps we should pray for a happy life, which is one worthwhile.  That doesn't, quite frankly, include the "I'm going to work here at my desk until I die".  That's surrendering to fear or meaningless, in most cases.

Again, there are exceptions.  People with Existential Occupations, people who own their own special business, and the like.  The list can't really be set out in full.

That doesn't include pouring through the latest edition of the IRS code for deductions, or reading the Restatement (Second) of Torts, or engineering an oilfield implement. 

Blog Mirror: 878: A Strategy for World Domination

This blog is often facetious, but occasionally it raises some really interesting points, as in this edition:

878: A Strategy for World Domination 

Sunday, May 13, 1923. Mother's Day. Russian's bluster, Elopement frustrated, Pool Halls closed, Shirt Sleeves Slim back, Parachute Jump.

The Russian habit of threatening other nations was in evidence on this Mother's Day of 1923.

And related to the theme of the day, in a way, an elopement was frustrated.  The intended bride was 16, the groom 20.

I wonder if that ended it, or if their union later developed? Seems like the parents, implicitly, were not thrilled.  Note also the judge intended to go ahead with it.

Ritualized bride kidnapping is a surprisingly common human custom, perhaps derived from actual bride kidnapping.  In Christian societies actual bride kidnapping cannot give rise to a valid marriage, but in many non-Christian societies, including pre-Christian European ones, it was fairly common. The entire origin of Rome came about that way.

After the rise of Christianity in various cultures, some retained a ritualized form of which, as in this instance, existed to overcome parental objections.  The bride was complicit in her kidnapping and consent was generally given afterward with a negotiation on the bride's price.  This was common, for example, in Medieval Scandinavia.  Implicit in the negotiation was; 1) as women could freely consent to marriage, there was no stopping it, and 2) the girl was likely "ruined" by that time, or would be so regarded.  Additionally, the use of force by the groom implied that the kidnapping was not so much that, but an armed intervention in favor of the couple's intentions, which was a dicey thing to disregard without violence.

In spite of the constant boosterism, the real nature of Casper was showing through.  Pool Hall fights were breaking out during an era when Casper had a really thriving open red-light district.  "Shirt Sleeves" slim was going to be escorted out of town.  

In boosterism, a parachute jump was planned over a new subdivision.

Mother's Day (Muttertag) was officially recognized for the first time in Germany, although it had been widely celebrated the year prior.  Lacking the nationalist tones that it had in Germany, the day had been recognized in the United States since 1908.  The celebration also spread to Czechoslovakia and Poland for the first time in 1923.

It was of course Mother's Day in the US.

In Philadelphia, the unknown mother of the unknown soldier was honored.

In various states, such as Michigan, the Governor issued a proclamation in honor of the day.

A Proclamation By the Governor

Mothers' Day Proclamation By the Governor

In compliance with our beautiful custom, which in a few years has come to be universally observed throughout the land, the time has come to set apart a day in honor of American motherhood.

The American home is at once the cradle and the bulwark of all that is finest and best in our present day civilization, and the American mother is the heart of that home. If the home spirit is what it should be the major portion of the credit belongs to her.

It is impossible for us to compute the debt we owe our mothers, and it is only fitting that in this way we should pay our tribute of respect and devotion to the mothers of the nation, living and dead.

Therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as Governor of the State of Michigan, I do hereby designate and proclaim Sunday, May thirteenth, 1923, as Mothers' Day, and I call upon our people, both old and young, to gather in their several places of worship and take part in services appropriate to the day.

And let absent sons and daughters take this occasion to visit the mother in the old home, or, where such a visit is impossible, let them send a message of cheer and greeting.

In accordance with a resolution of the Congress of the United States, I further request the people of Michigan on the day aforesaid to display the United States flag in their homes and in other suitable places, as a fitting expression of their desire to pay homage to American motherhood.

Given under my hand and the Great Seal of the State this Twenty-seventh day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and twenty-three, and of the Commonwealth the eightyseventh.

Alex J Governor.

By the Governor:

Oddly, the Casper paper for the day didn't mention Mother's Day at all. 

Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus

Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus

I declare that I, Patrick, – an unlearned sinner indeed – have been established a bishop in Ireland. I hold quite certainly that what I am, I have accepted from God. I live as an alien among non-Roman peoples, an exile on account of the love of God – he is my witness that this is so. It is not that I would choose to let anything so blunt and harsh come from my mouth, but I am driven by the zeal for God. And the truth of Christ stimulates me, for love of neighbours and children: for these, I have given up my homeland and my parents, and my very life to death, if I am worthy of that. I live for my God, to teach these peoples, even if I am despised by some.

With my own hand I have written and put together these words to be given and handed on and sent to the soldiers of Coroticus. I cannot say that they are my fellow-citizens, nor fellow-citizens of the saints of Rome, but fellow-citizens of demons, because of their evil works. By their hostile ways they live in death, allies of the apostate Scots and Picts. They are blood-stained: blood-stained with the blood of innocent Christians, whose numbers I have given birth to in God and confirmed in Christ.

The newly baptised and anointed were dressed in white robes; the anointing was still to be seen clearly on their foreheads when they were cruelly slain and sacrificed by the sword of the ones I referred to above. On the day after that, I sent a letter by a holy priest (whom I had taught from infancy), with clerics, to ask that they return to us some of the booty or of the baptised prisoners they had captured. They scoffed at them.

So I don't know which is the cause of the greatest grief for me: whether those who were slain, or those who were captured, or those whom the devil so deeply ensnared. They will face the eternal pains of Gehenna equally with the devil; because whoever commits sin is rightly called a slave and a son of the devil.

For this reason, let every God-fearing person know that those people are alien to me and to Christ my God, for whom I am an ambassador: father-slayers, brother-slayers, they are savage wolves devouring the people of God as they would bread for food. It is just as it is said: ‘The wicked have routed your law, O Lord’ – the very law which in recent times he so graciously planted in Ireland and, with God's help, has taken root.

I am not forcing myself in where I have no right to act. I have a part with those whom God called and destined to preach the gospel, even in persecutions which are no small matter, to the very ends of the earth. This is despite the malice of the Enemy through the tyranny of Coroticus, who respects neither God, nor his priests whom God chose and granted the divine and sublime power that whatever they would bind upon earth would be bound also in the heavens.

Therefore I ask most of all that all the holy and humble of heart should not fawn on such people, nor even share food or drink with them, nor accept their alms, until such time as they make satisfaction to God in severe penance and shedding of tears, and until they set free the men-servants of God and the baptised women servants of Christ, for whom he died and was crucified.

The Most High does not accept the gifts of evildoers. The one who offers a sacrifice taken from what belongs to the poor is like one who sacrifices a child in the very sight of the child's father. Riches, says Scripture, which a person gathers unjustly, will be vomited out of that person's stomach. The angel of death will drag such a one away, to be crushed by the anger of dragons. Such a one will the tongue of a serpent slay, and the fire which cannot be extinguished will consume. And Scripture also says: ‘Woe to those who fill themselves with what does not belong to them’. And: ‘What does it profit a person to gain the whole world and yet suffer the loss of his or her soul?’

It would take a long time to discuss or refer one by one, and to gather from the whole law all that is stated about such greed. Avarice is a deadly crime. Do not covet your neighbour's goods. Do not kill. The murderer can have no part with Christ. Whoever hates a brother is guilty of homicide. Also: Whoever does not love a brother remains in death. How much more guilty is the one who stained his hands in the blood of the children of God, who God only lately acquired in the most distant parts of the earth through the encouragement of one as unimportant as I am!

Surely it was not without God, or simply out of human motives, that I came to Ireland! Who was it who drove me to it? I am so bound by the Spirit that I no longer see my own kindred. Is it just from myself that comes the holy mercy in how I act towards that people who at one time took me captive and slaughtered the men and women servants in my father's home? In my human nature I was born free, in that I was born of a decurion father. But I sold out my noble state for the sake of others – and I am not ashamed of that, nor do I repent of it. Now, in Christ, I am a slave of a foreign people, for the sake of the indescribable glory of eternal life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If my own people do not recognise me, still no prophet is honoured in his own country. Could it be that we are not of the one sheepfold, nor that we have the one God as our Father? As Scripture says: ‘Whoever is not with me is against me’; and ‘whoever does not gather with me, scatters’. But it is not right that one destroys while another builds. I do not seek what is mine: it is not my own grace, but God who put this concern in my heart, that I would be one of the hunters or fishers whom God at one time foretold would be here in the final days.

They watch me with malice. What am I to do, Lord? I am greatly despised. See – your sheep around me are mangled and preyed upon, and this by the thieves I mentioned before, at the bidding of the evil-minded Coroticus. He is far from the love of God, who betrays Christians into the hands of Scots and Picts. Greedy wolves have devoured the flock of the Lord, which was flourishing in Ireland under the very best of care – I just can't count the number of sons of Scots and daughters of kings who are now monks and virgins of Christ. So the injuries done to good people will not please you – even in the very depths it will not please.

Who among the holy people would not be horrified to take pleasure or to enjoy a banquet with such people? They have filled their homes with what they stole from dead Christians; they live on what they plundered. These wretched people don't realise that they offer deadly poison as food to their friends and children. It is just like Eve, who did not understand that it was really death that she offered her man. This is how it is with those who do evil: they work for death as an everlasting punishment.

The Christians of Roman Gaul have the custom of sending holy and chosen men to the Franks and to other pagan peoples with so many thousands in money to buy back the baptised who have been taken prisoner. You, on the other hand, kill them, and sell them to foreign peoples who have no knowledge of God. You hand over the members of Christ as it were to a brothel. What hope have you in God? Who approves of what you do, or who ever speaks words of praise? God will be the judge, for it is written: ‘Not only the doers of evil, but also those who go along with it, are to be condemned’.

I do not know what to say, or how I can say any more, about the children of God who are dead, whom the sword has touched so cruelly. All I can do is what is written: ‘Weep with those who weep’; and again: ‘If one member suffers pain, let all the members suffer the pain with it’.[Nota] This is why the church mourns and weeps for its sons and daughters whom the sword has not yet slain, but who were taken away and exported to far distant lands, where grave sin openly flourishes without shame, where freeborn people have been sold off, Christians reduced to slavery: slaves particularly of the lowest and worst of the apostate Picts.

That is why I will cry aloud with sadness and grief: O my fairest and most loving brothers and sisters whom I begot without number in Christ, what am I to do for you? I am not worthy to come to the aid either of God or of human beings. The evil of evil people has prevailed over us.We have been made as if we were complete outsiders. Can it be they do not believe that we have received one and the same Baptism, or that we have one and the same God as father. For them, it is a disgrace that we are from Ireland. Remember what Scripture says: ‘Do you not have the one God? Then why have you each abandoned your neighbour?’

That is why I grieve for you; I grieve for you who are so very dear to me. And yet I rejoice within myself: I have not worked for nothing; my wanderings have not been in vain. This unspeakably horrifying crime has been carried out. But, thanks to God, you who are baptised believers have moved on from this world to paradise. I see you clearly: you have begun your journey to where there is no night, nor sorrow, nor death, any more. Rather, you leap for joy, like calves set free from chains, and you tread down the wicked, and they will be like ashes under your feet.

And so, you will reign with apostles and prophets and martyrs. You will take possession of an eternal kingdom, as he (Christ) testifies in these words: ‘They will come from the east and from the west, and they will recline at the table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of the heavens. Left outside are dogs and sorcerers and murderers; with the lying perjurers, their lot is in the pool of eternal fire’. It is not without cause that the apostle says: ‘If it is the case that a just person can be saved only with difficulty, where will the sinner and the irreverent transgressor of the law find himself?’

So where will Coroticus and his villainous rebels against Christ find themselves – those who divide out defenceless baptised women as prizes, all for the sake of a miserable temporal kingdom, which will pass away in a moment of time. Just as cloud of smoke is blown away by the wind, that is how deceitful sinners will perish from the face of the Lord. The just, however, will banquet in great constancy with Christ. They will judge nations, and will rule over evil kings for all ages. Amen.

I bear witness before God and his angels that it will be as he made it known to one of my inexperience. These are not my own words which I have put before you in Latin; they are the words of God, and of the apostles and prophets, who have never lied. ‘Anyone who believes will be saved; anyone who does not believe will be condemned’ – God has spoken.

I ask insistently whatever servant of God is courageous enough to be a bearer of these messages, that it in no way be withdrawn or hidden from any person. Quite the opposite – let it be read before all the people, especially in the presence of Coroticus himself. If this takes place, God may inspire them to come back to their right senses before God. However late it may be, may they repent of acting so wrongly, the murder of the brethren of the Lord, and set free the baptised women prisoners whom they previously seized. So may they deserve to live for God, and be made whole here and in eternity. Peace to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Patrick, Bishop of Ireland.

A comment about Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Hog Leg. Sunday games, rural activities, and gatherings.

Soccer, Scotland, 1830s.

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Hog Leg: Nothing says America like shooting guns and watching the Super Bowl. A nice sunny afternoon was the perfect time to try out my newly borrowe...

This is interesting.

The Super Bowl used to be a bigger deal in this house than it now is. Seems like a lot of things once were.

I’m not a football fan at all, and I didn't really start watching the Super Bowl until my wife and I were married.  She is a football fan and will watch the season, and always watches the Super Bowl.  

When we were first married, there were Super Bowl parties.  We didn't have kids at first, and my wife's brothers were young at the time.  Later, however, it carried on until the kids were teens.  Then something changed, including the giving up of the farm (the farm, not the ranch), longer travel distances, and some residential changes at the ranch.  Ultimately, the parties just sort of stopped, although I'm sure my two brothers-in-law, who live in houses at the ranch yard, still observe a party, and my father and mother-in-law, who live a few miles away, likely travel to that.

Much lower key than it used to be.  No big gatherings like there once were.

Back in the day, we had a couple of them at our house.

Basically, the dining fare was always simple. Sandwiches bought at one of the local grocery stores, chips and beer.  Typical football stuff.

At some parties at the farm, there were bowling pin shooting matches. For those not familiar with them, people shot bowling pins from some distance with pistols.  It was fun.  Frankly, I don't think a lot of people are all that interested in the Super Bowl to start with, and at least at the Super Bowl parties with bowling pin matches people went out to the match, and it ran into the game, which says something.

The other day also, I wrote on community.

I note this because, at one time, Schuetzen matches were big deals in German American communities.  And while they involved rifles, and indeed very specialized rifles, they were also big community events.

And such things aren't unique to just those mentioned.  In parts of the country, men participating in "turkey shoots" were pretty common.  

Of course, shooting clubs and matches still exist nearly everywhere, and lots of men, and women, participate in matches.  

Less common, however, are the rural informal matches.

All sorts of rural activities were once associated with holidays, and events.  I guess that the Super Bowl is some sort of large-scale informal civil holiday, even though of course it always occurs on a Sunday.  Indeed, the playing of the game on a Sunday is curious.  I put a little (very little) time looking into that, and found this CBS Sports comment on it, which it must be first noted explained that football really started being popular in the 1920s.

Sunday was a free day during a decade where it was common to work on Saturdays, so the APFA played most of their games on that day. Fast forward 30 years to the advent of television networks, who were desperately looking for programming on Sundays in the 1950s.

That makes some sense to me, as I still work on Saturdays.

I'd note, however, that is this makes sense, it doesn't quite explain why baseball games occur all throughout the week, and I think there are Monday night professional football games as well, albeit televised ones.

I wonder, however, if it has deeper roots than that. American football is the successor to Rugby, and Rugby and Soccer were hugely popular in the United Kingdom.  Prior to major league fun sucker Oliver Cromwell taking over the English government, in the United Kingdom, Sunday had been a day for church and then games.

This went back to Medieval times, before the Reformation.  People worked, and worked hard, six days out of seven, but on the seventh, they rested. And resting meant going to Mass, and then having fun, and fun often meant games and beer, as well as other activities.  In spite of their best efforts, major Protestant reformers weren't really able to make a dent in village observance of tradition until Cromwell came in and really started ruining things.  To Calvinist of the day like Cromwell, Sunday was a day for church and nothing else, although contrary to what some may suspect they were not opposed to alcohol.  Cromwell's Puritan government banned sports.

It's no wonder he was posthumously beheaded.

Cromwell and his ilk did a lot of damage to the Christian religion in the Untied Kingdom, and if you really want to track the decline in religious observance in the UK to something, you can lay it somewhat at the bottom of his severed head.  Indeed, while hardly noted, what we're seeing going on today, in some ways, is the final stages of the Reformation playing out, and playing out badly.

Anyhow, after Cromwell was gone and the Crown restored, games came back, and they came back on Sunday.  Not just proto-football, but all sorts of games.  And games became hugely associated with certain religious holidays in the United Kingdom.  The day after Christmas, Boxing Day, is one such example, as is New Years, the latter of which is a religious holiday in and of itself.

I suspect, however, that this had a lasting influence.  I don't know for sure, but I think football is on Sunday as Sunday was the day of rest, and watching the village football game and having a tankard of ale was all part of that, after church.  I also suspect that this is the reason that some American holidays are associated with football, such as Thanksgiving, which had its origin as a religious holiday, and New Years, which as noted also is.

Now, of course, with the corrupting influence of money, it's become nearly a religion to some people in and of itself.  People who dare not miss a single football game never step foot in a church.

Also lost, however, is the remaining communal part of that.  Watching a game played that's actually local, rather than corporate national, to a large extent.  And one free of advertising.  Indeed, the Super Bowl has become the number one premiere venue for innovative advertising, some of which isn't bad.

Anyhow, maybe the Super Bowl Party, in some form if properly done, is a step back in time to when the game was more a vehicle than an end in and of itself, and when it wasn't such a show that a big freakish half-time performance was expected.

We can hope so.

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.