I’ve done a lot of reading about WWII and aircraft history. I approached this audiobook — borrowed from the Alexandria Public Library and downloaded to my iPhone — thinking it was probably going to go over some familiar ground. It does, but there’s a good enough mix of strategic and tactical detail to keep this armchair historian interested.

The author provides a very good overview of the role of aircraft in bludgeoning Japan into submission. While never minimizing the role of seapower in strangling Japan’s WWII economy, Stillman documents Allied land and sea originated air war efforts, the centerpiece being the role of the Boeing B-29.

The mechanical failings of this aircraft and its initial ineffective utilization from China for high altitude bombing are succinctly documented, as are the increasingly effective tactics of moving to lower altitude incendiary bombing under the guidance of LeMay. Eyewitness accounts from land and air are woven throughout the text in just the right amount to balance the strategic context being provided.

This is not an elegantly written book, but it is a good introduction to understanding what happened as the Allies turned their attention to Japan. As with other books such as Max Hastings’ RETRIBUTION: THE BATTLE FOR JAPAN, 1944-45, I was again amazed at the scale of what went on during that war. Overnight tens of thousands of civilians were incinerated as, literally, hundreds of bombers flew overhead, buffeted by evil smelling fiery updrafts from square miles of cities in flame. It’s difficult to comprehend from this point in history. That’s enough of a reason to make sure books like this are available.

Book review copyright (c) 2012 by Dennis D. McDonald

Hastings tells the story of the final year of the Pacific War from multiple perspectives. Much of this will be new to people whose awareness of Chinese, British, and Russian action against the Japanese is low.

For me two factors stand out.

First, Hastings is unflinching in his portrayal of Japanese militarism and its responsibility for so much suffering among both its enemies and the Japanese people themselves. Hastings details the brutality of Japan in dealing with both military and civilian opponents. His description of the self deception and inaction on the part of the Japanese government, maintained long after logic had determined the war was unwinnable, represents one of the most criminal behaviors ever committed by a government against its people.

Second, reading this book one cannot help but be impressed and ultimately horrified by the sheer size and scale of the War in the Pacific. Also true of the war in Europe and on the Eastern Front between Germany and Russia, the scope of people, casualties, distances, equipment, hardware, and supplies involved is simply staggering for those of us who have grown up with more “limited” wars.

Dealing with this scale were people who brought with them all their own naturals strengths and weaknesses. Some rose to greatness; others blundered. Hastings is especially tough on Chiang Kai-shek of China and Douglas MacArthur of the US military and describes how they put their own political  interests ahead of the interests of their own people and of winning the war. Regarding Chiang, Hastings repeatedly accuses Roosevelt of naivete in his dealings with Chiang and China. Regarding MacArthur, Hastings is a bit less clear about why MacArthur’s superiors tolerated his megalomania and seems to suggest it was due to his superior intelligence and salesmanship, not to his military performance.

This is a great book and is well worth the time it takes to read it. 

Copyright (c) 2012 by Dennis D. McDonald

This book covers the development of British science from the time of Cook’s famous voyage (which stopped at Tahiti) up to Darwin’s Beagle voyage. It concentrates on a few key luminaries (the Herschels, Davy, Mungo Park, Farady, Banks) and at the same time explores  the relationship, sometimes synergistic, between art and science.

The author does much more than recite famous findings and mythical “Eureka!” moments. Instead, he interweaves tales of the plodding nature of experimentation and observation with personal relationships, societal developments, thoughts about religion, personal rivalries, and the clear advantages that monied upper classes had in pursuing scientific work. Still, he never loses sight of the science. The tales of William and Caroline Herschel’s astronomical work is especially enthralling.

Also fascinating is the negative perspective of the dangers of science as represented by Mary Shelley’ Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The much-accepted intermingling of science, art, and literature addressed in this section is quite telling and makes one wonder why there is not more cross-fertilization today. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that there actually is more intermingling of art and science today than ever before simply because the tools of creation are so technologically dependent.

Review copyright (c) 2011 by Dennis D. McDonald

Book review by Dennis D. McDonald

Why I liked this book:

1. Every page contains something new (to me).
2. Many chapters include historical information about how our knowledge of the sun has grown over the ages.
3. There are several exciting examples where advances in one field have impacted advances in other fields (e.g., spectroscopy and understanding solar composition).

At a profound level this book readably demonstrates human intelligence and creativity at their best. Berman’s historical approach highlights how our current understanding of the sun has grown over time despite the often primitive nature of instrumentation and computation technology. I guess the combination of creativity + discipline + data + imagination is hard to beat, whether you live in the 21st Century or the 17th.

One more thing: Reading this book makes me look forward to June 6, 2012.

Book review copyright (c) 2011 by Dennis D. McDonald

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Book review by Dennis D. McDonald

This is the third or fourth Joe Pickett novel I’ve read. It’s not one of the best. There are the deft characterizations, interesting sub-plots, recognizable real world family relationships, and realistic depictions of Wyoming’s landscape. But this time the plot machinations are too visible and the denouement comes with a courtroom surprise worthy of an old Perry Mason TV show. (I’d be interested in hearing the discussion that took place between Box and his editors about whether or not to actually mention the name “Perry Mason” in the text.)

Intermixed are political swipes at the Federal government and its energy policies and constant disdain for fake cowboys and transplants seeking to make it in Wyoming. (People dependent on tourism are always disdainful of the people who bring money into the area, it seems.)

All in all, I like reading these novels. Having visited this area with my family I think it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth and the folks are great. Box describes that beauty, its wildlife, and its residents with uncanny flair. But there’s just too much going on in this novel that makes me think that, having plotted out the book on a whiteboard, he ended up with a tangled area on the right hand side that he couldn’t resolve without introducing one too many coincidences. But on the positive side he doesn’t put Pickett’s family in danger again, which is something I appreciate.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Dennis D. McDonald

In the U.S. edition it’s spelled “Agincourt.”Nick Hook is an archer in Henry V’s army. The events in this novel go from 1413 to 1415 and follow Hook as Henry’s army invades France to assert his claim to the French throne.

Hook is not a nobleman, he’s a small town boy, a  peasant, and he regularly suffers — and metes out — the indignities of his low position. But he’s raised from childhood to learn the longbow — and Henry needs archers. 

How Nick finds himself in the army, how his family’s feud with another local family follows him to France, and how both the good and the evil of the Church at that time assault him or help him, all culminate on the killing fields of Azincourt in France. There Henry’s army wins an incredible victory based on luck, cunning strategy — and archery.

Real life events are intertwined with the novel and the author provides an afterword where he describes where he has strayed from history. We get a lot of detail about food, armor, weapons, arrows, armor, siege warfare, mud, and the carnage of medieval warfare.

We also have a variety of characters included who don’t always come off as convincing or real. The author’s strong suit is not characterization, it’s telling a story with a lot of detail and action as realistically as possible. He succeeds in that, even though his writing style is not what I would call colorful or artistic. His meat-and-potatoes writing style gets the job done in a clear and action oriented fashion.

Overall I enjoyed this novel greatly even through the scenes of warfare tend to drag on. But the reality and grittiness of an exceptionally famous military campaign from the perspective of a footsoldier is told splendidly.

Review copyright (c) 2011 by Dennis D. McDonald

While I would not put this in the same class as my favorites by Stephenson (e.g., Diamond Age) and Vinge (e.g., A Deepness in the Sky) it’s still pretty darn good and I look forward to the sequel.

It’s long. I’d say it really starts cranking about page 420 when the Women of Troy make their demands on one of the (human) protagonists. Till then there’s a huge amount of back story which, while entertaining, leaves the reader wanting more.

It’s incredibly imaginative. Especially in the last third of the book I found myself shaking my head in amazement at the cleverness and originality. But I do have two beefs that prevented me from enjoying the story more:

1. I didn’t find any of the human characters engaging. Fully a third of the story is taken up with a group of post-technological humans trying to discover What’s Really Going On and none of them seems to register emotionally — even the Wandering Jew. Actually, I found the two deepspace robots to be much more interesting, given their focus on Shakespeare and Proust.
2. It’s violent. The author revels in detailing the bloodshed and havoc that occurs in the battles in front of Troy. It gets tiring after a while, even when the Gods are involved.

Still, it’s a very good and interesting read. But it is certainly not as psychologically or emotionally engaging as another Simmons novel The Terror, which I am still digesting. Nor are there any characters with the depth of mystery of the Shrike, but that’s asking a lot.

Review copyright (c) 2011 by Dennis D. McDonald

I’ve never seen the True Grit movies. Till I ran across this book at a yard sale I was never even aware of the novel’s existence. But when you need a Western, as I sometimes do, this appears to be just what the doctor ordered.

I was not disappointed. My son had just given me a tour of the Red Dead Redemption video game and I must admit I was in the mood for cowboy stuff.

The story: a 14 year old girl hires a mean old ranger to help her track down and “bring to justice” the former hired hand who killed her father. The novel is told in the girl’s voice and follows the chase through town and (mostly) country. Details of atmosphere, color, weather, language, custom, and culture are sprinkled so liberally throughout the novel that by the end you have to shake your head in wonder at the research and craft that have gone into writing this taut, engaging, and often funny story.

Make no mistake, though, this is not a warm and fuzzy tale. Death lurks around every corner. But the characters shine. Plus, by the end you’ll never be able to think about “corn dodgers” without smiling!

Review copyright 2011 by Dennis D. McDonald 

I put off reading this book. Frankly, I’ve grown so attached to Aubrey and Maturin that I was not looking forward to the career disaster and legal troubles I knew were about to befall Jack. 

I shouldn’t have waited. Granted, there’s much less sea action here — much takes place on land — but the writing, characterization, and just plain wonderful writing take the reader back in history to Old England. Politics, intrigue, and emotion predominate. Maturin tries mightily to help his friend out of his legal troubles; what he ends up doing at the end of the book for Jack is dramatically and emotionally exquisite. What  friend!

Instances of lovely writing abound. My favorites: the cricket match, the preparation of Jack’s home in anticipation of his wife’s return, and Maturin’s walking tour of the English countryside.

I am not looking forward to running out of books in this series to read!

Review copyright (c) 2010 by Dennis D. McDonald

I love space opera, but I’m probably not going to read Book Number Three in this series. My reaction to Book Two has been pretty similar to how I responded to Book One: too long, no sympathetic characters, and a disappointing explication of the Void’s pull on so many human imaginations.

All along I’ve been puzzled by why so many have been so eager to capture the Second Dreamer and why Inigo’s Dreams were so attractive in the first place. The description of time and causality manipulation reminded me a lot of the impacts of long term usage of the Spice Melange by the Navigator Guild and others in Dune. Moreover, the ability to manipulate history and cause-and-effect would seem to be a capability that transition to Hamilton’s post mortem digital consciousness would already provide.

So, call me underwhelmed and still a bit puzzled about why so many humans are drawn to the Void, given that the only real believers we’ve really heard from are the self-aggrandizing religious zealots at the top and the silly couple who wanted to buy Araminta’s apartment.

I also suspect that the author’s ability to create and manipulate so many different characters, timelines, and technologies is beginning to wear on him. He still has the ability to craft impressive high-tech action sequences, but keeping so many many balls in the air, especially when he crosscuts the plot with the humdrum medieval world in the Void, becomes increasingly annoying. It’s as if his fantastic writing talents are responding to the need to explain and involve so many threads, not to the need to tell a ripping good yarn.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Dennis D. McDonald

It’s over 1,000 years since the events described in Pandora’s Star. Investigator Paula Myo is still around and is tied into the fractious digital overmind that thinks it rules the galaxy. Unfortunately her personality is more cryptic than ever and she contributes little to the story.

As with other Hamilton novels the number of story lines and characters is vast. Mentally I imagine a huge diagram on Hamilton’s wall with literally thousands of nodes and connections displaying characters, technologies, and events, all coded to indicate in which book each will appear.

There isn’t as much new astonishing technology introduced this time, which is a disappointment. We do have a new faster-than-faster-than-light starship drive technology that attempts to make up for some of the travel delays that were glossed over in earlier Hamilton novels. That’s nice. Plus, one of the most interesting concepts from earlier novels — the rapacious Prime alien culture where multiple physical entities shared the same mind — has been dusted off and applied to human culture to facilitate, among other things, wild sexual orgies.

What hasn’t changed is the vast array of unsavory and unsympathetic characters. In the far future, apparently, the ability to extend physical and mental life almost indefinitely has resulted in the disappearance of compassion, charity, and humanity. Perhaps Hamilton’s message is that, when you do away with the need to regularly replenish the human race with birth and childhood — given that everyone can live so long and can be re-animated after death — you also do away with the traits we often associate with the concept of “humanity.”

The centerpiece of the novel — the shared dream that humanity sees that drives a large semi-religious faction to plan a mass pilgrimage to the center of the Galaxy (the Void) — is the weakest. We are asked to believe that the medieval culture story that runs through the book and apparently makes up the shared dream that is stimulating millions to go on a dangerous pilgrimage to the Void is massively alluring. Those who wield authority believe that this mass pilgrimage will trigger a massive growth in the Void and the resulting destruction of both human and alien civilizations.

That’s a great theme but I have seen nothing that would convince me that the view of the dull and backward magic-dependent medieval culture is actually a view of a desirable paradise. That’s a dramatic problem in this novel’s story that, for me at least, generated both confusion and disappointment about the central conflicts driving the story.

Perhaps this is just a trick on Hamilton’s part that will be explained in the second novel in this trilogy. I hope so. I enjoy Hamilton’s imagination even though his humans are so venal and unappealing. Hopefully some more interesting aliens will show up in the second book to provide greater interest.

Review copyright (c) 2010 by Dennis D. McDonald

The theme of this book is that scientists do sometimes believe things that seem opposed to reality or common sense. The author catalogs a series of such events in different chapters to illustrate that point. In other words, science has progressed over the years not only based on a steady aggregation of theories, hypotheses, and testing but also because of — or in spite of — the seeming craziness of some ideas and the conflict among different viewpoints that followed.

The common example of this is Newton’s serious interest in alchemy. Even there the author brings out the usual comment that alchemy, despite its fundamental flaws about matter, did familiarize some scientists with the need for testing which, as a byproduct, served to advance the cause of real chemistry.

Other chapters focus on different errors and misconceptions. Some of these led to total blind alleys. Others — e.g., research surrounding electricity and living organisms — did finally result in the emergence of testable and reproducible results.

Interestingly, the addenda and chapter notes provided by the author are as fascinating and as thought provoking as the content of the chapters themselves. Also entertaining are the author’s frequent comments on his own scientific beliefs as a child and how these changed over time.

While very entertaining, the fundamental message I take away from this book is quite profound and reflects some of my own beliefs. That is, there’s a lot about the universe that we don’t understand and sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to assume that the “rules” we now understand about matter and energy will be constant or unchanging. Some might say that this is because humans aren’t able to understand how the mind of God works. Others might say this is because the universe is just so big and complex that our species may not last long enough to figure everything out. Either way, we’ll keep trying to understand and, along the way, crazy ideas will emerge.

Review copyright (c) 2010 by Dennis D. McDonald

This is a grim but witty tale of Cold War skullduggery in pre-revolution Cuba. An expatriate British vacuum cleaner salesman whose teenage daughter has expensive tastes agrees to serve as a paid informer for the British secret service. He starts inventing agents and intelligence reports in order to pad his monthly expense reports.

All seems innocuous till people start getting killed. Someone, it seems, is taking his reports seriously.

The hot, fetid, alcohol-soaked and vice-ridden view Greene presents of a deteriorating Havana seems real and reminiscent of the colonial Saigon in another Greene novel, The Quiet American. Instead of satirizing Americans as he does in that novel, Greene acidly skewers British character and colonialism. Satire as well as class- and race-based references abound.

Sometimes the satire is pretty heavy handed, as in the rather shallow treatment the London based intelligence administrators receive. Also not well done is the relationship between the main character and his teenage daughter. While I had to laugh at how she manipulates her dad into buying her a pony, I can’t fathom how he acquiesces so easily to her accepting rides from the Cuban police captain who, people say, has a “…cigarette case covered with human skin.”

Still, the police captain is the most interesting character in the novel. Listen to his description of who is “torturable” and who is not. Greene’s ability to make your skin crawl while delivering humor is uncanny.

Our Man in Havana is a fun read. It’s not profound but it does entertain and makes you think back to the days of the Cold War and how much has changed — and how much has not.

Review copyright (c) 2010 by Dennis D. McDonald

This little book is organized around George Washington’s first and second terms as U.S. President. The first chapter concentrates on the relationship between Washington and his Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson. The second focuses on the visit to the U.S. by Edmond-Charles Genêt, also known as “Citizen Genêt,” whose job it was to secure support from the American people for the French Revolution. Also covered are the Jay Treaty with England and the Whisky Rebellion. The author ties all these together in terms of the evolving relationship with France and how France and its Revolution were viewed by Washington, Jefferson, and the American people.

While I’m a great fan of history (see book reviews here and movie reviews here) I found this book to be a bit annoying. One can tell that the author has a point of view about history that is at odds with other historians; for me that’s not a problem by itself since he usually makes his opinions clear.

One problem I have is that his writing style — including basic sentence structure — can be hard to follow in occasional situations where it is unclear whether what is being stated is based on explicit historical evidence or on the opinion or inference of the author.

I suppose you could argue that this book was not intended as a scholarly work but I don’t think that’s the case here. I think that what this book represents is an extension of the author’s ongoing debates with other historians. Amateurs who aren’t well-grounded in the major intellectual issues surrounding this period’s history — such as myself — enter at their own risk.

That said, there are some major “plot holes” here that left me hanging. For example, the author makes a good case for stating that Washington did not trust Jefferson when it came to foreign affairs regarding England and France. But his attempt to explain why Washington kept Jefferson around, despite a lack of trust and despite Jefferson’s involvement in political activity that openly opposed Washington’s policies, is unsatisfactory and at one point seems to rest on quoting an imaginary statement by Jefferson — written by another author!

In summary, this book reads as if it was written for a small circle of scholarly friends and foes who are already familiar with the issues and debates about Washington and Jefferson.

Once you know that, though, reading this book should definitely interest you in reading more about this period of U.S. history!

Book review copyright (c) 2010 by Dennis D. McDonald

Have you ever worked by yourself for an extended period of time in a foreign country? If so, you’ll recognize a lot of what author Delisle writes about in Shenzhen.

In 1997 he stayed 3 months in Shenzhen, China while he managed an animation crew for his French employer. At that time the difference between Shenzhen and nearby Hong Kong was like the difference between night and day. Where Shenzhen was gritty and grim, Hong Kong was bright and lively.

What sets this book about his experiences apart from his North Korean illustrated adventure PYONGYANG — aside from the fact that China is not North Korea — is that here he is able to get “out and about” where his observational powers (and wry sense of humor) come to play. His Western eyes register small details of cultural differences in ways that someone visiting as a tourist may fail to notice.

Boredom and loneliness. He expresses them well here. Occasionally there does emerge a glimmer of human tenderness, but not that often. The atmosphere is totally different from his book BURMA CHRONICLES where he spent time with his family in a relatively comfortable living situation. Here he’s stuck in a hotel room for 3 months and after a while that gets to him. He expresses that well. But as a gifted artist and a sensitive observer he’s consistently entertaining.

This book in some ways may also serve as a historical document, too. Is life in Shenzhen the same as it was in 1997? Maybe not. It would be interesting to compare now with then. But I doubt that Delisle would want to spend another three months like he describes in this book.

Review copyright (c) 2010 by Dennis D. McDonald