Catching Up

Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.

Your friendly neighborhood bookseller is stiff and sore and jet-lagged beyond belief, but dedicated to bringing you the best book blog possible, thus he finds himself clacking away on a hot, sunny morning in Memphis. Heat warnings are out again, 98 for a high, all is right with the world.

At least, it would be if I hadn't dragged a cold back with me from Europe. Gack.

*** West Virginia University Library has a rare book room that would make bibliophiles of any caliber envious. Donated long ago by an alumnus, the collection includes Four Shakespeare First Folios. Wowser! It's included here because, lets' face it, bookies can't get enough of reading about other people's collections.

A collection to drool over

*** Who says books are for nerds and wimps? Certainly not Captain Nathan Harlan. Many moons ago the Indiana National Guard officer bought a copy of The Federalist, aka The Federalist Papers, at a flea market, without knowing exactly what he had bought. He found out last week, however, when the exceedingly rare book netted $80,000 just before he shipped out for another tour of duty in Iraq. Heritage Galleries even waived their 20% fee for his service to the country.

Captain sells a treasure to support his family while he is away

*** Being a southerner brings with it certain conflicting feelings regarding the US Civil War (aka The Second Revolution, The War of Northern Aggression and, what I feel is the most accurate, The War For Southern Independence). On the one hand, nobody in their right mind can think of slavery as anything other than a barbaric practice, an example of Man's inhumanity to Man at its worst. On the other hand, however, many southerners inherently feel that the South had a right to govern itself if that's what it wanted. After all, there is really very little difference between the feelings of southerners who fought for independence and Americans who fought against the British in 1776. Many Southerners believe the South had the right to do what it did, and yet are glad the south lost because it ended slavery. Quite a schism for the mind.

And now Auburn University has received one of the most poignant documents of that awful war, the letter that Robert E. Lee sent to US Grant requesting terms of surrender. Holy cow! It's hard to imagine a more important document emerging from that war. And value? Cut signatures of Lee are worth thousands, so how much is a letter with unique historical content worth? At least 6 figures, I'm sure. Anyone in the Auburn area should try to see this letter once it goes on display.

Rare Lee letter acquired by Auburn

*** It's hard to imagine a more despicable person than a book vandal, but a book thief would qualify. The University of Kansas library has been afflicted with both recently. If you want to stop this from happening, let me deal with them. I can assure you that would end it.

Evil is as evil does

And now some book reviews that have piled up since I've been gone.

*** One of the enduring mysteries of world history is Why did Adolf Hitler hate Jews so much? The answer would explain much about the history of the 20th century, and yet with Hitler himself long since dead (or, at least, locked away in a UFO circling Mercury and therefore unavailable) the answer to that question will forever be a matter of conjecture. A new book, Hitler's Jewish Hatred: Cliche and Reality by Ralf-George Reuth, takes a different tack from most historians, who date Hitler's bigotry to a number of different causes, most commonly his life on the streets of Vienna before World War One. Reuth takes a different approach, claiming that it was his experiences after the war that spawned his obsessive anti-semitism. It's an interesting theory but hard for me to buy.

Now, maybe his feelings that the Jews betrayed Germany during WW1 solidified an existing hatred, that's certainly possible if not probable, but I find it hard to buy that the post-war experiences alone caused the Holocaust to form in Hitler's mind. Still, it's good to have new scholarship on this ultra-important topic.

Another answer to what caused the Holocaust

*** Speaking of atrocities committed during World War Two, one of the most brutal was the Bataan Death March. When the US forces in the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese in April of 1942, no one suspected the horrors to come. Starving and sick, the Americans and their Philippine allies were forced to march 66 miles without food or water, those who fell out were shot or stabbed, the beginning of more than 3 years of hell and torture at the hands of the Japanese. A new book on the topic, Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath by Michael and Elizabeth M. Norman, brings a fresh perspective to this sometimes forgotten chapter of the war.

The brutalities of Nazi Germany have been well represented, but those of the Japanese are sometimes overlooked. They shouldn't be. In some respects the Japanese were even worse than the Nazis, not only to the civilian populations they conquered but to the foreign soldiers they captured. Stories of beheaded Americans are not uncommon.

Remembering the horrors of the Japanese

*** When America entered the Second World War, their British allies viewed American generals with nearly open contempt. They, the British, were considered the professionals, the Americans as little more than amateurs. For their part, the Americans considered the British as plodding dinosaurs. Both were right. Neither country supplied the fighting troops with the upper leadership it deserved. A good example for the British is Archibald Wavell, the commander in North Africa early in the war who could have swamped the Italians in Libya and forestalled the Germans from deploying Rommel and the Afrika Korps. Like Montgomery, however, Wavell suffered from an excess of caution and the chance was lost.

A new biography of this important general seems destined to fill a gap in the literature of the war. Wavell wasn't the worst of generals, he had his good moments, but good or bad he played an pivotal role throughout the war and deserves to be studied. By all accounts The Empire's Soldier by Adrian Fort is a pleasure to read, despite its length, and so is included here because Wavell really is a man who needs to be known.

Archibald Wavell

*** It has long been my view that among the monsters of the 20th century, it's really impossible to choose between either Stalin or Hitler as being the worst. Hitler has gotten the most press, but that's mostly because German records and memoirs have been easier to access than those from the former Soviet Union. Even those not translated into English are somewhat accessible: for example, I read enough German to make out the gist of most things, especially when a dictionary or online translator is available. Language is a barrier, but not an insurmountable one. Russian, however, doesn't even use the same alphabet, and opponents of Stalin weren't exactly eager to chronicle their opposition.

But while countless millions of Soviet citizens were killed to satisfy Stalin's rampant paranoia, there was one man that he feared that he should have feared: Leon Trotsky. Murdered in Mexico in 1940, Trotsky was a seminal figure in early Soviet history and deserves to be studied. Thus a new biography is a welcome addition to the history of the 20th century. Stalin’s Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky by Bertrand Patenaude, helps put this man's life into context as the USSR teetered on the brink of the Second World War.

A new look at the life of Leon Trotsky

*** Given the almost ultra-left wing slant on today's college campuses, it's hard to think that prior to WW2 these same schools were a haven for American Nazis, but a new book makes it clear that this was, in fact, the case. The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses by Stephen H. Norwood. We forget now about how Nazism was viewed before its excesses were known; how many people are familiar with the American Bund? Crowds packed large auditoriums were the US flag flew side by side with the Nazi flag and this was seen as a legitimate political viewpoint. Examining how our schools of higher education responded is a fascinating counter-point to the revisionism that seeks to exonerate those same schools from ever having supported fascism.

Nazi influence on American campuses before World War Two

Back on track

Yes, people, I'm just back from a grueling but thrilling 10 day trip to Europe, landing in Memphis about 5 pm yesterday after a 10 hour flight from Amsterdam. I'll give details later about what I found (and what I didn't find), including my impressions of the famous English language bookstore in Paris 'Shakespeare Books'. Right now I'm pretty much drained.

In the coming days, though, I hope to get this blog back on track. With any luck the series of disasters, near disasters and just plain bad luck over the last 8 months will abate.

This to Judith: if you're reading this, then you're in the right place. Drop a comment and let me know you found it. Oh, and by the way, it's 97 in Memphis today and so humid it feels like you're swimming. If you thought Florence was hot, try Memphis.

It's good to be home.

Thanks to all of our veterans!

Good day bookies! It's wet here in West Tennessee, but with Memorial Day being tomorrow it seems a good time to blog a bit about some forthcoming WW2 books, as well as some loose clutter form my recent unplanned sabbatical.

*** Anthony Beevor is one of the more respected World War II historians working now, otherwise, the news that there is yet another book on D-Day and the liberation of France would pass by without comment. I mean, at some point we get it, right? The Allies invaded France, fought hard to get ashore and eventually overwhelmed the bad guys. How many more details can there be to flesh out yet another book on the subject.

However, I'm not calling foul on this one for two reasons: First, the book I am currently reading is Shattered Sword: The Untold Battle of Midway which I resisted reading for several years because, let's face it, how much more of Midway's story could possibly be untold, right? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot of it. So if it's true for Midway who knows, it might also be true for D-Day.

Second, Beevor is a really fine historian who is not usually content to simply regurgitate what others have written. If he thinks there is a fresh story here to tell then maybe there is. I'll sure give him a chance to show me.

Beevor does D-Day


--- Monday, May 25. Update. Beevor is quoted in British newspapers as saying that Allied bombing of French cities post-D-Day is almost a war crime. What utter rubbish. After reading this nonsense, Beevor comes across as a revisionist clown who is re-writing history because of his own political agenda. Some say he is only doing this to draw attention to the new book, but I can tell you that after reading his comments I have to assume the book is slanted by this crap. Count me out.

*** With tomorrow being Memorial Day, it seems appropriate to mention another new book on World War II, this time the memoir of a US fighter pilot who was shot down and fell into the hands of the SS and found himself at Buchenwald. Unlike places like Auschwitz, Buchenwald not not a death camp per se. It was a work camp, supplying slave labor for German industry, but the difference is only one of degree. Surviving Buchenwald was highly unlikely.

It was not a place captured military personnel were usually sent and Joe Moser found himself there along with other American fliers and barely escaped death. His story is told in the book A Fighter Pilot in Buchenwald, a book aviation buffs would probably enjoy.

Surviving the worst

*** Booksellers have always known that one of the biggest problems in the industry are forged signatures. By and large this doesn't apply to the lesser valued titles, books that sell for less than a couple of hundred dollars, because forging a book to sell it for $50 or so just isn't worth it. That's not to say it can't happen, just that it's rare. Used booksellers in West Tennessee that I know, and who shall remain nameless, are aware that a probable forger has been operating in a southern state for many years now. (Is that vague enough for you? Good. I love writing this blog but lawsuits aren't part of the plan.) I've talked to people who claim they know people who claim they know employees who did the actual forging.

Maybe, maybe not.

Anyway, legitimate dealers are always happy to see forgers charged and convicted, thus the following happy link, wherein a bad guy pays the piper for his crimes.

Bad guy takes the fall for forgeries

*** A sequel to Catcher in the Rye? Yep, it's true. Bet you didn't know that. Of course, it wasn't written by J.D. Salinger but you take what you can get, right? Except John David California's 60 Years Later Coming Through the Rye has caught Salinger's attention and, more importantly, the attention of his lawyers. Can you say lawsuit? This could be interesting, though, because it appears that Mr. California (I get this mental image of a big guy in Speedos, which is not an image I wanted to have) has done his homework in avoiding infringement. This one might be worth following.

Salinger isn't happy, or so we hear

*** I would put this next blogbit under the category of 'There is so much data flow happening that my brain can't pay attention to things I really would like to pay attention to.'

I'm a Sherlock Holmes fan. Not a buff, I don't read every scrap out there written by just anybody, I haven't joined my local chapter of the Giant Rats of Sumatra, but I do really enjoy the character. So, how is it that I didn't know Robert Downey, Jr., was making a new Sherlock Holmes film, one that appears from the trailer to be right up my alley? Just too much to keep up with in a world that is far too joined-at-the-hip. Information overload, indeed.

Sherlock Holmes to the Rescue

From out of the shadows

Hiya Bookies! You see the date on this blog, but this introduction is being written on May 23. Yeah, I know, three weeks. Ridiculous. Life intrudes.

*** Building on three weeks ago(!) thoughts on treasure hunting, a man prowling through an antique store dug up what might be the original formula for Dr. Pepper. A ledger filled with formulas stuff from the Waco, Texas drug store where Dr. Pepper was invented and first sold, is expected to bring between $50-75k at auction. Neat stuff.

But what struck me about this story is that the guy paid $200 for the ledger and expected to sell it for up to five times that much on ebay. First, who pays $200 for an old ledger and expects to make $1000 on it? There's something fishy here, because I've been doing this a long time and antique ledger books filled with columns of debits and credits are not exactly in hot demand. Now, it did say 'Castle's Formulas' on the front, so perhaps there is a market for such a book, but to pay $200 for it on the front end you would either have to know exactly what you were buying, or to be a damned fool. I suspect this buyer knew precisely what he was getting when he bought it and all of this 'gosh aren't I lucky stuff?' is a smokescreen to get publicity.

Or maybe that's just me being cynical because it hasn't stopped raining here in West Tennessee for days now. Dank weather, dank mood. Bring on the sunshine!

Dr. Pepper doesn't sound so tasty in its original form

*** A rich vein for future historians, me included, comes as the Czech Republic publishes a cache on heretofore unpublished records of the German occupation of Prague and the Prague Uprising in 1945. If they are translated into English this is something your friendly neighborhood bookseller would love to see.

New Records from behind the Old Iron Curtain

*** There are some moments when you realize just how cosmopolitan was the effort in defeating the Axis during World War II. Today's obituary is one such moment. In Jack Good's long resume are such diverse experiences as helping break Germany's Enigma code and helping Stanley Kubrick dilm 2001: A Space Odyssey. We will miss such men, even if we don't know it.

So long to another good man

*** World War II was the first war in which one of the combatants, Germany, made the conscious decision to embed photographers with combat units. The PK, or Propaganda Korps, are the reason we have so many amazing photos from the German side of the war. But the German obsession with photography didn't stop with the PK, the individual German hauled his Leica around too. The Wehrmacht, the German Armed Forces, had regulations about what you could and could not photograph. Of course, like soldiers the world over, the Germans were no more likely to follow regulations than any other, and so we have private photos the soldiers took about parts of the war the high command would rather not have been memorialized. And now Spiegel has selected the most illustrative of these in book form.

Ordinary Germans looking at World War II

Treasures, revisions and outrages

Good day bookies! Stand by for news and comment.

*** Who doesn't love stories of treasures lost and found? I do, for sure, and when I read about charities that have been given rare and valuable books it makes me wonder if the donators knew what they were donating. Anyway, the attached story is one such, and gives me yet another reason to want to make a book pilgrimage to England and Scotland.

Rare books left on doorstep in Edinburgh

*** Franklin Roosevelt is often held up by liberals as their vision of the nearly perfect president, just as Ronald Reagan is cited by conservatives as their template for greatness. In FDR's case one of the biggest stains on his presidency was the charge that he was indifferent to the plight of Europe's Jews as the Holocaust swept millions of them away. It has been very hard for his defenders to make a case otherwise, but a new book attempts to do just that.

The new book Refugees and Rescue makes the claim that FDR tried, starting in 1938, to allow tens of thousands of German and Austrian refugees to come to the US or Palestine, but that he was thwarted by those who didn't approve. Your friendly neighborhood bookseller hasn't read this book so he can't say how compelling the evidence might be. He can, however, say that, to contradict the rather mountainous evidence against FDR on this issue, the book will have to be pretty convincing.

Did FDR really try to save the Jews?

*** When I first logged onto the internet, when was that? 1993? 1994? It's been a long, long while. But whenever that long ago universe-changing event occurred, the first message boards that I encountered were on AOL. You paid per minute back then for internet access, AOL charged a monthly fee, but boy, what you got in return! You had instant access to people all over the world who had the same interests as you did. It was all quite grand! And AOL was leading the way. I know that I was posting there in 1997 and am pretty sure the beginning was before that.

In those days everybody was on AOL, including authors and other famous people. The Hardboiled board, a board devoted to Hardboiled PI fiction, featured as one of its posters Anthony Bourdain, whose novel Gone Bamboo, was current. He was just as funny then as now, maybe not quite as confident. But that's not the point of this entry, which is, in fact, a rambling bash of the idiots running AOL.

See, that board and all of the others I posted on were recently wiped out by the cretins whose task is apparently to destroy AOL once and for all. And, for the record, John Donahoe has nothing to do with it. This is a completely separate group of numbskulls.

Boards that were 12-14 years old, boards that were, in internet terms, historical classics, are now gone forever. And with them went a large chunk of whatever audience AOL had left. Now it's just another sterile site with nothing in particular to offer. Might as well be Yahoo. Without the traffic, that is. Who makes these decisions? Who sits in an isolated office somewhere and decides that whatever audience your site still has needs to be alienated? I don't know. Nor do I care. Whoever it is should be fired immediately, but the reality is they will probably get a huge bonus.

There is no requiem for what was lost, no mourning for the glory that was AOL. What a shame. What a damned shame.

Making headway

Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.

First, the ongoing drain on my time and energy may be coming to an end. Let's hope so. At the least I'm making headway. If anyone ever asks you to be executor for an estate, think twice before you say yes. I had no idea how much time, effort and willpower it took.

*** The new issue of iloveamysterynewsletter is posted. I have a couple of reviews in it, and now a link back to this blog. also, I'm changing the descriptive header at the top to something a bit less accurate and a bit spiffier. Given the choice between content and spiffiness, I'll pick spiffiness every time.

*** The Nebula Awards were given out last weekend. For those who don't know, the Nebulas are awarded to Science Fiction writers based on the votes of fans, kind of like the People's Choice Awards, as opposed to the Hugos, which are more like the Oscars. M.Scott Edelman is a longtime SF writer/editor and here's a link to his blog from that weekend: Edelman does the Nebulas. Some great photos there, as well.

*** Sadly, it should be noted that Thomas Deitz has died. Dietz was young, 57, a well known SFF writer and by all accounts a good guy. I'm sorry I never had the chance to meet him.

Thomas Deitz

*** I find this next item fascinating. Why do people are publications spend so much time, effort and space on negative book reviews? If the book is wretched, why waste your breathe going on about it? It's a really good question.

For example, the second worst book I've ever read is The Da Vinci Code. Complete and utter rubbish, not only because of its idiotic 'research', I can stretch willing suspension of disbelief pretty far, after all, but moreso because of the hideously poor writing involved. Dan Brown has never met a cliche he can't use at least a dozen times, and the book buying public seems to crave more of this. So why do people like me feel the need to go on and on about it? I think the article makes some good points about that very thing.

Why bother bashing books?

*** Here's a book I want to read about an event I didn't know happened. Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip by Matthew Algeo. It seems that after he left office, Truman and wife Bess, and nobody else, went on a 2500 mile road trip across America. Imagine such a thing! You're hanging out eating breakfast at a diner, dead tired after getting off work in the bicycle factory, and in walks the former POTUS and his wife to grab supper. Incredible. And yet, apparently, quite true. This may be one of those 'I've got to look this book up' books.

Harry and Bess go for a drive

Munich

Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.

Not much time today, but a quick observation about a phenomena I have seen up close.

*** I list this link not because it has book associations, but because I've done much of what is discussed here. Munich, home to the Nazis, was the first stop on a group tour of Europe that included yours truly a few years ago. Reading about Marienplatz, Hofbrauhaus, etc., brought back fond memories of a great time. We did not, of course, take the Hitler tour, we took just a general tour, but you can't even do that in Munich without tripping over Nazi history.

To offset this we toured Dachau and visited the Museum of Modern Art. Hitler would absolutely have hated the latter. For example, one exhibit had a video camera that filmed visitors (you) walking up a flight of stairs, then displayed the images on a giant screen. A computer then turned those images into amorphous blobs floating around, kind of like a lava lamp. Odd, maybe a little entertaining, definitely not Adolf's cup of tea.

Nazis remain big business

Oh, and I did buy a book while in Germany, in German, no less, so that makes it book related.

Good news, new news and bad news

Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.

The 'life comes at you' stuff that has eaten up my time in the last few months has been at it again, so my apologies for not having a blog up lately. This could continue for a while yet, but I hope not. Anyway, let's get to today's news and comment.

*** Ah, leave it to the French to make something good out of something very bad. In this case, the very bad part was surrendering to the Germans during World War II. Sure, the downside was pretty drastic, having German soldiers getting big discounts and the best tables in all of the swankiest restaurants, putting up with those drab Gestapo men standing on street corners giving you the creeps. No fun. But the upside! Ah, the upside. If you were a madam in a bordello, or even just a common streetwalker, those were the best of times.

At least, that's the claim in a new book that has France all a-twitter. (No, not Twitter, a-twitter.) 1940-1945, Erotic Years by Patrick Buisson is a history of the French sex business during the German occupation. According to many of those Buisson interviewed for his book those years were an absolutely howling good time, business was booming for brothels and the Germans were just fun-loving teutons far from home who only wanted to have fun.

Quite predictably, the French aren't wild about this book, portraying as it does a harsh reality many would like to forget, namely, that not only did the French Army gets its butt kicked badly but the French people weren't all that upset about it. C'est la vie!

When the Germans came it was party time for the French!

*** I'm a big movie buff, especially good war movies, and double especially war movies about World Wars 1 and 2. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of good WW2 movies, but far fewer about WW1. I mean, once you've shown the horror of living in a mud-filled trench for months at a time, with machine guns ready to slice you in half and the occasional artillery barrage that might obliterate all traces you were ever there, there just isn't all that much left to portray. Except for the very small number of movies about the war in the air. And one of the best of those was The Blue Max. George Peppard was great, of course, but the whole thing was well done.

Did you know that it was based on a book? It was. And that book's author has, sadly, just passed away. Jack Hunter was 87 and lived in one of the great cities of America, St. Augustine, FL.

Blue Max author has written his last chapter

*** I have to admit that reading stories about great book collections being auctioned is something that I always find fascinating. I don't really know why. Maybe it's just the chance to see what other people collect, to wonder where they found this or that rarity. Anyway, he's a short piece about a major collection going under the hammer down under.

New Zealand collection auctioned

*** When Burt Reynolds posed for Playgirl magazine there was quite an uproar. How could a man possibly be a pin-up? Women didn't want or need that sort of thing, did they? It was considered bad form and, to a male eye, with good reason. But Burt wasn't the first, oh no, not by a long shot. No doubt some ancient Roman had his likeness carved into a wall somewhere for the admiration of the girls. But even if Trajan wasn't a pin-up in his day, we know someone who was: Hermann Goering.

That's right, the Reichsmarshall himself, was once a glamour boy for women of the Reich to swoon over. Hitler's Number Two was considered an ideal of German manhood, at least, he was before he gained so much weight that he looked like a bipedal walrus. And, largely forgotten today, Goering really was a hero of the First World War. He was an ace, a very good pilot and the last commander of the famed Richthofen Flying Circus. Goebbel's propaganda machine had some actual grist for its mill with Goering, which must have surely irritated the club-footed little doctor no end, since the two men could not stand each other.

I do take exception with one piece of the article, however. National Socialism wasn't so much a fascist regime as it was a hodge-podge of whatever kept the economy from collapsing at the moment.

Thank God he wasn't wearing panty hose

*** Just when you thought Ebay could not do anything more stupid than they already have, along comes John Donahoe to prove you wrong. The doofus who ruined the company last year is now saying it may take another 3 or 4 years to completely destroy it. Not in so many words, mind you, but from the beginning nothing this man has said has come through, none of his changes have proved beneficial, the stock price is less than half of what it was...one can only wonder what he's got on the board of directors that allows him to keep his job.

Ebay's Donahoe says more stupid things to go along with all of the other stupid things he's said

*** Here's something you don't see every day: Holocaust victims being pursued as terrorists. Jews in Lithuania who escaped captivity when the Nazis marched in, who then went on to fight a partisan war against the Nazis and their countrymen who helped the Nazis, are now being investigated for those actions.

In truth, Lithuania had no good choice. In 1940 they ceased to exist as a nation when the Soviet Union overran them without a fight. Stalin wasted no time in rounding up and executing thousands of Lithuanians who might oppose his rule, so is it any wonder that when the Germans came through on their anti-Bolshevik march the Lithuanians supported them as liberators?

That's not to make excuses, merely to point out that things aren't always as cut and dried as they seem. Anyway, this relates to books because much of the evidence against one of these so-called criminals is his memoir, The Partisan. The claim is made that members of a partisan band executed Lithuanians who aided the Germans. Seems pretty thin to me, but then again, I'm not a Lithuanian prosecutor.

Be careful what you put in your autobiography

*** For lovers of fine literature, fans of compelling thrillers and researchers of obscure history, this week brought the worst possible news: Dan Brown has written a sequel to The Da Vinci Code. That's right, as if writing the 2nd worst book of all time wasn't bad enough, now this hack has to slaughter a whole new generation of trees to publish more worthless nonsense. The only question for me is, after using every cliche known to the English language in his previous book, what will he do for an encore? Use the same ones again? Find cliches from other languages?

Fortunately, I won't read this tripe and won't care. May God have mercy on those who will.

This and the other, no that

Good day, bookies! It's the weekend! Stand by for book news and comment.

*** Torpedo 8. If you're a WW2 buff, I need say no more, you know exactly what this was and what happened. However, if you're not a WW2 buff, a short explanation is in order. Torpedo 8 was the carrier torpedo plane squadron that was wiped out to the last plane, and almost to the last man, during the Battle of Midway in June, 1942. Ensign George Gay was the sole survivor. This would be a tragic story if their sacrifice had not lead directly to the staggering US victory at Midway.

Torpdeo planes needed to be close to the water to drop their torpedoes, otherwise they would malfunction. The TBD Devastators of Torpedo 98 were very slow and very underarmed. Sitting ducks for the Japanese Combat Air Patrol that swooped down like hungry raptors and slaughtered them. However, by doing that the Japanese abandoned defending the higher altitudes where, just as the last of Torpedo 8 was crashing into the sea, US dive bombers appeared. Unhindered by fighters they went on to sink 3 out of the 4 Japanese aircraft carriers, effectively ending the spread of the Japanese across the Pacific and handing the initiative over to the US.

A new book, A Dawn Like Thunder by Robert J Mrazek finally does justice to the sacrifice these men made. When the Japanese CAP was swarming around them, not one plane veered off from its attack run. They all stayed on course, died, and in so doing set up victory.

The Story of Torpedo 8

*** Smith College is hosting an exhibit that I would love to see, "From Weimar to War: Popular Propaganda in Germany 1928-1941". Mostly featuring 'cigarette albums', this shows the evolution of modern propaganda under watchful eye of the man who more or less invented it, Joseph Goebbels.

German Propganda

*** This one goes under the category of 'How stupid can you possibly be?' J.K. Rowling will no longer be the patron for the Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland. Think about that a second. You are a charity, your highest profile patron is perhaps the world's most well known author, and you lose her patronage because of a management dispute? Seriously? Who are you going to get to replace her? These people are so dense, so stupid, that frankly I have to wonder if they don't serve in the US Congress, having written the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. Indeed, they may be even more doltish than the brainless fools who wiped out the used children's books business, because we expect members of Congress to be idiots, but you would hope that managers of charities might exhibit at least the slightest bit of good sense.

JK Rowling and MS Society Scotland part ways

*** Finally, an emailer asked me if there was a new book coming out titled "John Calipari will burn in Hell." I have researched this extensively and, as of this writing, I can say that I have found no evidence that such a book is being published. Lots of evidence for the premise, but none for the book. Sorry to my correspondent, but look at it as your opportunity to write the book yourself.

Miss me?

Good day bookies! Stand by for news and comment.

So, did you miss me? Sorry, but now that the Memphis Tigers have hired a new coach I can get back to book blogging.

*** Michael Crichton may be dead, but reports are that he has new books coming out anyway. It seems he finished a rollicking historical tale of pirates in 17th century Jamaica that no one knew about. And finished means finished. Apparently he even edited it, so it's pretty much ready to go. Reports are for an initial print run of 1 million copies. The second book is a new thriller centered on technology. This one is only 1/3 finished and will need someone to do the last 2/3. No writer has been hired yet.

*** I'm not a video game guy, which is a good thing because if I were I would never get anything done at all. Those kinds of entertainments really appeal to me and I could spend all day every day playing games. But for those of you who love 'Halo', Tor Books is bringing out a trilogy based on the games, written by veteran Greg Bear.

Halo becomes a book trilogy

*** Schindler's List has been found. No, not the DVD of the movie you lost a few years ago and found under the couch, the real list, the one that inspired the movie. In Australia, of all places. How such historical documents travel around the world is often more interesting than the documents themselves. Australian writer Thomas Kenneally used the list to write his Booker Prize winning novel Schindler's Ark, from which Steven Spielberg developed his movie, and the list was found in a box of his manuscripts that had been donated to a library. Incredible, when you think about it. A list typed up in desperation during the final days of the war, by a man few at the time had ever heard of, is now safely ensconced in an Australian library as proof of what the man did for humanity.

Schindler really did have a list, and here it is

*** In my last blog entry (yes, yes, I know, you can't remember back that far. Everybody's a critic) I mentioned the passing of John Hope Franklin, a gracious gentleman who many considered the historian of the Civil Rights Movement. Here's a nice obituary of the man, much better than I could ever do.

John Hope Franklin

*** Finally, just because Hunter S. Thompson is dead doesn't mean he won't have his revenge on all of us. The Rum Diaries is being developed into a movie and the Doctor is being played by, who else?, Johnny Depp. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was really not the book to make into a movie, but this one might be. Profane weirdness is almost assured and that, of course, is a good thing.

Don't look now, but Hunter S. is coming back