It is a good thing Father's not home: The Father of Us All by Victor Davis Hansen

Victor Davis Hanson is an expert in the Peloponnesian war. In high school I remember reading his book the difficulty of damaging Greek agriculture in a local college library. The library had a tower with this perfect academia aesthetic for reading books of ancient history. I sat in that library happy as a clam reading that book, and it shows the deep knowledge that VDH has on the subjects of agriculture and the Peloponnesian war. The Father of Us All: War and History Ancient and Modern is proof that expertise in one subject does not translate to expertise in others, even related subjects.

This collection of edited articles was released in 2010, and it shows in almost every page. The takes are so wrong they are sad. There is a lot of praise for the surge in Iraq, the status of Afghan democracy, and other things that time has proven to be embarrassing failure. It was entirely possible to foresee this as the time, as many who where paying attention, and who were not blinded by their views. 

That would be enough to throw his conclusions into question if it wasn't for another glaring issue with all these issues. Hanson keeps coming back to the Peloponnesian war again and again for examples no mater how tenuous the connection. Either he is using it because the Peloponnesian war has the recognizable name or because that is his only area of expertise, and he is genuinely ignorant of the other wars that we know less about. Now I don't want to cast any aspersions, but that cuts out a lot of potential lessons. 

All in all this book was not fun. Reading and writing about it have been like pulling teeth. This has taken forever to write, and I am not sure I said anything worthwhile. I think that is the final statement I want to make about this book. There is nothing worthwhile in this book. 

A slow burn: Wood Heat by John Vivian

Wood Heat by John Vivian is a book I came close to dropping many times. I know this may be shocking, but a book about heating your house with a wooden stove can be a bit boring. There were a couple of things that kept me coming back, and now that I have finished I am satisfied. It's unlikly that I will ever need the information. My place has a fireplace, but I have been here for two winters and I have never started a fire in it. But I kept at it, and now I will tell you about it. 

I earlier mentioned the couple of things that kept bringing me back. The first the origin of the book. I acquired this book from the estate of my Grandfather. He didn't have very many books. Many of them were either things he had inherited from his father, mostly chess books. This one is practical, and I can actually imagine him consulting this book. His house in rural Wyoming was in poor condition by the end, and I can imagine him looking to get some repairs done and consulting this book for ideas. It is a little point of connection to him, one that I did not have much of when he was alive. That idea is probably just a pleasant fantasy, but it is sweat to have. Family can be very funny. 

The second thing that kept me coming back was that it was occasionally very interesting. The book was written in 1976, so the energy crisis is prominent. John Vivian loves wood heat, and he confidently predicts the downfall of other forms of heating. The cost comparison he runs is very amusing. Inflation really hits hard. His passion really shows through. It is not enough to make flue repair interesting. There are occasionally some really interesting tidbits, but it is not enough to make the book worth reading. Unless you are homesteading, or the apocalypses has happened I would not recommend this book. Occasionally interesting is one of the worst things for a piece of media to be. The repeated promise of something good in the next chapter or episode is one of the worst as it robs you of time. I should have dropped this book long ago.

So lets move on. This time, I think I will go back to the old ways. Fully random, all the way. There has been a few more book shelves added since last time. We are up to 25 bookshelves. I rolled up shelf 17 and book 23. That happens to be The Father of us all: War and History Ancient and Modern. by Victor Davis Hanson. This is a collection of Victor's writing on the topic of war and history. This will be an interesting read because Victor has transitioned from being a serious historian to a conservative pundit, and this book is from after that transition happened. I expect to find plenty to disagree with. 

Not revolutionary : The American Indian Wars by John Tebbel & Keith Jennison

The American Indian Wars by John Tebbel and Keith Jennison has gotten me to consider why I have always been disinterested in US history outside of the World Wars and the Civil War, but it has not changed my mind on the subject. It effectively covers the Indian Wars, and in an impressively even-handed manner. Presented in its complexity and depth this area of history holds a passing interest, but after reading this I am satisfied, and it will likely be a long time before I pick up a history like this again. 

Cover is a little bland, I wish they had chosen something that pops.

Before I go into that I need to address a concern I had when I started this book. I read the front inside of the dust cover and the publication date and was concerned. I should have read the inside of the back cover as well, then I would be concerned about different things. One of the authors is part American Indian, but none of the authors are historians, being a journalist and an editor. As for its coverage of the tragedy of war, it is impressively even-handed. Massacres and brutality abound in frontier battles like this, and I have the impression that the reason more of the white massacres of Indians are described is because the whites won, and being on the winning side means you can massacre your enemies, not the other way around. The Carthaginians got destroyed rather than the Romans because the Romans won. 

It's a decent piece of artwork, but I like some works on back covers.

The American Indian Wars covers the subject chronologically and makes some interesting choices in its focus. Around half of the narrative takes place before the founding of the United States, and only 1/8th of the book covers the period after the Civil War. Marginalizing the main period people think of when they think of American Indians is a bold choice, but the authors present it persuasively. The period of initial contact was the period when the conflict was most equal. By the time the United States was an independent country its resources vastly outweighed any single tribe and was even able to overpower the larger groups of tribes assembled by charismatic leaders without too many difficulties. By 1865 the disparity was too great, and the flood of settlers could not be stopped. The whole book then takes the air of a great tragedy, as culture after culture is overwhelmed, and mistreated from sea to shining sea. It is hard to present the past accurately and not have a sense of tragedy about it. Nostalgia is a trap.

What The American Indian Wars did not do well is make me reconsider my disinterest in American history. I have been thinking about it, and I think it is because it feels so small. I know that is a weird thing to say about one of the largest counties in the world, bear with me. The tendency for isolationism is strong even in this history. Spain appears only to sell Florida, and there is no real mention of Mexico. How did the Mexican border affect the wars with the Apaches? The only powers of long-term interest in this book are France and Britain, and they still feel like sideshows. History has a greater impact when it can keep the wider causes and effects in mind, and address them in a memorable if cursory manner. Maybe I subconsciously connect the dots in areas I am more familiar with, but usually, the feeling is of smallness. 

Would I recommend The American Indian Wars? No, not for a moment. While a decent read, I am not satisfied it was a good history. I don't know much about the subject so I cannot state definitive facts, but it feels like it is not enough. If American Indians interest you there has to be a more modern book on the subject written by an actual historian rather than a journalist. I don't think journalists make good historians.

Now that, that is dramatic colors, I like it.

This has been delayed a bit because I ordered a book and I wanted to review it when I got it. I have not talked about it yet on the blog, but I am a big Warhammer 40k book fan and the Black Library has just released a book I have been really looking forward to has been released. The End and the Death Volume 1 by Dan Abnett is going to be the next book I review. I am looking forward to tearing into this brick of a book. 

The End and the Death is a huge book. Don Quixote for scale. 

A logistics narrative: Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army by Donald W. Engels

Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army is a fairly recent addition to my collection. I picked it up after it was cited on my favorite blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, the blog by Prof. Bret Devereaux. The book comes up fairly regularly in ACOUP (I love that initialism) when talking about how much armies eat, and how fast they can move. After seeing, it comes up a bunch (at least 5 times) I decided to pick it up, and I did not regret it.

Great color choice here, and very nice image selection.

I have to applaud Donald Engels for doing something I have never seen done before. Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army is a logistic narrative. It tells the history of Alexander's campaign in the Persian empire entirely based on how the army was supplied and moved. This approach is deeply fascinating because it covers the parts other narratives would brush over, and skips over what others would narrate. That means it deals with the day-to-day experience of the army much more than a focus on the battles would. It is important to remember that until the First World War battles would be a rare experience for the soldier. How they got their food, how they marched, and what effect this had on the local population, are the majority of soldiers' experiences. The battle is not going to be fought if the army cannot get there in order to fight it. 

I love the reversal of the colors on the back cover too. Great graphics design.

Indeed Engels makes a point that Macedonian logistics were at least as revolutionary as anything they did on the battlefield. No greek army could have done what Alexander did, and because its logistics could support the rapid conquest of a disintegrating Persian empire the Macedonian king created the Hellenistic world. The hidden secret of greatness, do the basics really well. It is important to be reminded of, even if Putin's war is also serving that point with comparisons of the Americans and the Russians. American technology is not so much different from Russian technology, but the American army has fought three successful lightning campaigns in thirty years halfway across the globe while the Russians failed to do one against their neighbor because the Americans can do the logistics, and the Russians can not. 

While the book was an interesting read it also left me wanting more. There are so many histories that go over the fighting again and again. It would be a nice change of pace to read a history that covers the logistics of say, the allied advance across Europe after D-Day, or the epic campaign across the Pacific. The two-ton truck might not seem impressive compared to a Tiger tank, but it certainly got the job done. I think that is a good review to leave on a book that was written very academically. I found most of the books written like this to be much less inspiring. 

So I would have to recommend Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army. Not only is it a welcome difference from most military histories, but it also contains important information about how armies worked before the internal combustion engine. I would recommend it to anyone that wants to understand how armies of the past worked. It helps that it is on the short side, so it is not a big ask to read. 

Now on to the next book. I didn't get any books for Christmas this year, same as most every year, but I am still working through a number of recent real-world book acquisitions. Of course, it goes without saying that my ebook collection cannot stop growing, especially with the large number of interesting books available on Kindle for quite cheap, but this section of the blog is focused on books I can smell. Maybe Ill cover ebooks on this blog as well in the future. 

That's a nice painting. The painting as cover is a bit lazy but effective.

I rolled up The American Indian Wars by John Tebbel & Keith Jennison. The subtitle on the front cover reads "The conquest of America by the white man revealed in all its drama, cruelty, and heroism." Oof. Copywrite MCMLX or 1960 in useful numbers. Hopefully, it is more even-handed than the year and that subtitle would lead me to expect. I am cautiously hopeful. Though I am an American I have not really engaged with much of my own country's history because I found it so boring. I blame the fact that between first and third grade we covered the period between 1776 and 1900 at least three times. 

Much used, and little loved: The Rationalists

The Rationalists is an old textbook of mine from college. I took a lot of philosophy and political science in college, so much so that I could have double majored in poli sci if I wasn't convinced that it would have been a waste of time.  I won't call all of them wasted, but the philosophy credit hours would probably have been better spent somewhere else. I don't regret the poli sci classes though, that Thucydides class was great, even if the professor was wrong about the ending. This book was a much-recycled textbook. I count three different used stickers on my copy. Much used, and little loved, the fate of many a textbook.

Dear Reader, I did not finish The Rationalists. In truth, I barely gave it a start. I come to you now to confess my sins. I bounced right off of Descartes. That is a combination of the language and the subject matter. I have never read the work in its original language, and I never will, but the translator didn't punch up the language to make it more readable. "For to hold converse" is a phrase that exists, and I don't like it. I prefer a translation that preserved the text's meaning without using styles and structures that seem like gatekeeping. By that, I mean that the construction of the sentences makes it harder to understand what the author means, in a way that those who cannot parse it easily get frustrated and those that can feel superior. The responsibility of effective communication lies in the communicator, not the recipient. Too much of philosophy and political science is focused on communicating with their peers, and not being approachable to the general public. This lets ideas in more approachable formats spread better than other works. A good example of this is the works of Ayn Rand, which would not have been half as successful if not presented in a novel.

Enough about the language, now onto the subject matter. I did not find the ideas gripping. I will admit that I ventured none to deep, but I was unconvinced from the start of my revisitation. Descartes states early in the book that his approach to truth was to sit in a room alone and think his way through the issue. To trust that Descartes got anywhere near the actual truth is to have a great deal of trust in Descartes. But my points of view are so different than his that the base he builds his conclusions on does not seem like a solid stone foundation but rather sand. With that, every one of his conclusions is shaky. 

What is more, I recently bought a bunch of books. With a nice, new book sitting so tantalizingly close, it is hard to force yourself to work through a book you already read before, and are sure you are not going to really enjoy reading again. So I am dropping The Rationalists and reading a book new and interesting to me that I didn't pick at random. That book is Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I am looking forward to it.

A real time capsule: U.S.S. Lunga Point CVE94 A Pictorial Log covering the ship's Career in the War against the Axis

 Hey Eric, wasn't your next post supposed to be for a completely different book, one on philosophy? Yeah, but I read this one instead because it was so much more interesting and it came to me in an interesting way. My grandfather recently passed away, the last of my three grandfathers. Grandpa was a hoarder, and what is more he had a lot of land in rural Wyoming, which only served to facilitate his hoarding tendency. Now it has fallen to my father to be the executor of the estate so he has been driving out there and coming back with truckloads of family heirlooms, and on the most recent trip, he also brought home this book. My family has no idea why he had it.

Very auster and serious cover on this one. 

My Grandfather didn't serve in the Second World War and as far as we know none of that side of the family served in the navy during the time. None of the names in the crew list are familiar to me. There are some pencil marks in the book to several names, but I don't know what they mean. Very mysterious.

If you can read the above or know one of the names with arrows let me know

What isn't mysterious is the purpose of the book. My dad has a book like this from his days in the navy. Ships would put together a cruise book to commemorate the voyage so people could look back on the fond memories. It is basically a yearbook for warships. In this case, it is almost exactly a year. The main part of this book runs from May 14th 1944 when the ship was commissioned, to May 14th, 1945 and commemorates the first year of the life of the U.S.S. Lunga Point, but because the war ended only a few month later there is a bit added on the end to bring the story full circle. 

U.S.S. Lunga Point was an escort carrier, a merchant ship hull with a flat top and elevators, the bare minimum needed to work as a carrier. Too slow to ride with the battlefleet and too short to launch the most modern fighters escort carriers were called expendable for a reason. They provided excellent air cover for merchant convoys or air support for landings. For most of its life that was the Lunga Points job. It was a veteran of the liberation of the Philipines, and the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. It was a dangerous job, and the book has great first-person accounts of being shot down on Japanese-held islands and desperate escapes, and action photos of incoming Kamikazes. The real danger comes through in these sections.

But the book is pretty light-hearted. They are mostly inside jokes though. There is a lot of references to the smoking light being lit or going out that really confused my mother. It must have been constant. Also, the section of one sentence reminders must bring a lot of chuckles to those who were there but is a bit of a mystery today. In this way it accurately represents the experience of war. It is not combat all the time, it had the light hearted moments, and the moments of just people being normal. The joy of ice cream, the private jokes, the birth of children. The men and women who fought that war were not mythically tough, they were just normal people. So I would encourage you to take a look around your house for a book like this, and get a chance to connect with the past. While the past is a foreign country, the people there are humans like you and me, and not totally alien. Next time it should be back to the usual.

I think I need an updated version: Books in World History: A Guide for Teachers and Students by W. Warren Wagar

Books in World History: A Guide for Teachers and Students by W. Warren Wagar came into my collection in the great college expansion. I was working at the college library one summer when they were downsizing the collection. They wanted to create more room for study tables, and get more people into the library. It is an interesting trend among libraries, one I originally opposed, but now I feel better about. As a result, they were getting rid of a boat load of books, and by getting rid of I mean recycle. I had the job of getting books ready by cutting the covers off and then cutting the binding up. Reader, it was hard for a book lover to destroy that many books. However, there was an out. I could take the books home with me. I cannot remember how many I took, but it was either 1 of every 5 books, or more reasonably, 1 of every 10. Now that left me with a problem. Books are pretty dense, and I have had to carry these books around ever since. 

The stark red and white really work here.

So what did I get for all the years of carrying this book from place to place, and state to state? Well, a fun little read, and I do mean little. Books in World History is only 182 pretty small pages, and it really took no time at all. This was helped by the nature of the book. The author wants to create a guide to world history to help the poor teacher that has to teach the subject. As a guide he selected a number of books that cover the whole of human history, tell you where you can get them, how much is will set you back and why you should read it. These summaries are really great, concise and engaging. The biggest problem I had was that the books I wanted to get for myself as a result were all way too expensive. He picked books that were currently being printed, so 50 years latter most of them are out of print. But there is more to the book then just these summaries.

W. Warren Wagar offers his own thoughts on teaching World History, and sadly a lot of his ideas are still relevant. World History is poorly taught, because after high school and maybe Western Civ in college every other history class you take is very specialized, so when those students go back to teach world history they are unprepared. It is an interesting conundrum, and Wagar has some interesting ideas about it, especially the idea to teach world history backwords. Unfortunatly interesting approaches to history class seem unlikely in the current teaching reality of overworked and underpaid teachers teaching standardaised classes. But it is good to dream, and Wagars ideas are worth approaching. So I would recommend reading Books in World History: A Guide for Teachers and Students by W. Warren Wagar but I would even more recommend keeping an eye out for an updated version, maybe filled with books that are presently advalible for reasonable prices. If you have a recommendation like that please let me know.

Is this the best picture of dice ever? No, no it is not

On to the next one. Shelf 2, book 13. Lucky number 13. The result is The Rationalists a collection of the writings of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. I am not sure if there is an author to pick from all of these, because they all have different translators. Five books collected into one.

The philosophers of the seventeenth century had great hair.

This one should be interesting. Delving deep into seventeenth century philosophy. Unlike the last time I touched on philosophy we won't be getting it in a text book, this time its straight from the horses mouth. 

I, Nerd: I, Jedi by Michael Stackpole

 A lot of stuff has been going on since I last posted. I was laid off from my job and found a new one that take me into the office every day, and a good friend of mine had a wedding that took up a lot of my time. During that whole thing, I  will admit to neglecting the blog a bit. A lot of that is down to mood and the book. This is not a job; this is for fun, and if the mood is not in it, the reading is a lot harder. I had expected it to be just a fun little book, but I found reading it to be a lot more of a slog than I expected.

I find this cover really strange because I can't tell if the person in the background is supposed to be Luke Skywalker or Mirax. I feel it could really go either way. 

The book in question is I, Jedi by Michael A. Stackpole. I know a lot more about how I got this book than many others because I bought it. I picked it up from Goodwill for $4.99, the sticker is still on the back dust cover. Goodwill is a pretty good place to pick up books if you are looking for cookbooks, bestsellers, less popular genre novels, movie tie-ins, and politicians' memoirs. For a decent price as well. It is not really someplace I would recommend if you have something specific in mind, but it is a great place to get a book to take with you camping, or if you just want to see what your eye lands on, and that can be really fun. 

I didn't pick up I, Jedi to take it camping, I picked it up because I loved the X-Wing series as a kid, specifically the first four books, those written by Michael Stackpole. The series continued after that, but I never found them in Goodwill so I never picked them up. I believe the series still holds up, for the most part. They focus entirely on space fighter combat and are basically the space combat bits of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi as a book, with both new and returning characters. Stackpole was a great choice to write these. He has a lot of experience in writing military sci-fi tie-in novels, writing for Star Wars and BattleTech, and the space combat scenes he writes are a lot of fun. I, Jedi has some of that, and those scenes are a treat, but they are not the main focus of the book, and it suffers from that, and from other issues.

The main problem with this book is that there is a large section of the book has a completely different focus from the main plot. At the start of the novel we are reintroduced to Corran Horn, the main character of X-Wing series, and quickly get into the central plot. Horn's wife is missing and it is related to the force and the pirates in the opening action scene, and Corran needs to become a Jedi and track her down. It is a pretty good hook, and the opening was very nostalgic for me, full of familiar characters and a real sense of urgency. And then the problems starts because Corran has to go to Luke Skywalkers Jedi Acadamy to become a Jedi Knight. 

At this point I, Jedi starts working on what I think are the plot points and characters from different novels in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Some of them are good. Mara Jade is great when she shows up. There is a scene where she is spending time with Lando Calrissian, and Corran says something like "it seems like she wants to buy him for what she thinks he is worth and sell him for what he thinks he is worth" and that is a great burn. Mara Jade is also wearing Lando's clothes at the time because he "lost" her luggage and has been buying clothes for her that he wants her to wear and she is having none of it. That I loved, it is a very funny and characterful interaction. 

The part I didn't love is the main plot at the academy. The training really needed to be a montage, and too much depth goes into it without being interesting. There is also the evil Sith lord part which I think is a plot from a couple of other Extended Universe novels, and it does not transition well here. From what is here I don't think it was very good in the original either. I would love to know if its inclusion was some editorial mandate or something that was required only because of when this book was set in the Expanded Universe timeline because it does not work. It seems small and distracting when what the reader and the main character want is to go and deal with the original plot. There is a hint that it was not originally wanted because Corran talks about how he had lost himself by going to the academy. When the novel returns to the main plot, it seems to rush it a bit. A trope I love is the main character bringing down an organization from the inside, but in this case, it is not given enough room to breathe.

So would I recommend anyone pick up I, Jedi? No, but don't think that reflects on the author or the Star Wars Expanded Universe as a whole. They can be a lot of fun, but I don't think that this one was really that good. Go read the X-Wing series, or the Thrawn trilogy, which are a fun collection of novels, and maybe leave this one alone. Alright, now to roll up the next book. 

I find it funny that I basically rolled 19 twice.

It is a small little book.

And I rolled up Books in World History A guide for Teachers and Students  by W. Warren Wagar. This is going to one of the stranger books I read, and it is another one for the books read in a way they were not the intended genre common here on Eric's Bookshelves. This is an annotated bibliography, a relatively rare style of academic writing. Essentially a book of book reviews. Maybe it will help make the blog better. At 174 pages it should not take long to read. 

Textbooks do not make light reading. Everyday Morality: An Introduction to Applied Ethics Fourth Edition

 I didn't get rid of many of the books assigned to me in college, because I am addicted to books. So you would think I would recognize a textbook, and connect it with one of the classes I took. But I have no idea how I got Everyday Morality: An Introduction to Applied Ethics Fourth Edition by Mike W. Martin. I have a couple ideas. What I guess happened is that I acquired it from a retired priest. My college was an old seminary, and they would put up retired priests in the dorms, and if they wanted to get rid of books they would leave them in the hall. There was no way I could resist. But whoever I got it from studied from it. There are lots of little notes in it, written in cursive in red ink, and relevant passages underlined. It is just a shame that I can't read any of it. Their handwriting is really scrunched together and small, and I never was any good at reading cursive. It is a shame, I would have liked to know, it might have made some sections a bit more interesting.

Everyday Morality: An Introduction to Applied Ethics Fourth Edition by Mike W. Martin is a textbook, down to its discussion questions. Now, I will admit that I skipped the discussion questions. In my defense, have you ever sat down and read a textbook like you would a normal book? It is strange, especially a philosophy textbook. Philosophy textbooks I remember, and youtube videos about philosophy as well, present ideas, but don't really engage with them. Sections of this book suffered especially hard from this most notably the beginning. The focus is on exposing an idea to you, not on really grappling with them. The recommended reading section is for that. There is something to be said for something like that. However when you are sitting down to read a book for entertainment that is not really what you want.

I like the colors on this cover. Nothing flashy, just some good colors together.

It is also not like you would read this for fun. There are entertaining philosophy books. Starship Troopers is basically a work of political philosophy given broader appeal by having dudes in power armor fight giant bugs. However Everyday Morality: An Introduction to Applied Ethics Fourth Edition by Mike W. Martin is not entertaining. Most of the earlier chapters are a pretty bland as Martin parades a variety of authors and their thoughts before the reader and it is still very general. The later chapters, when it focuses on specific issues like euthanasia, gambling and abortion, are much more interesting. The specific is more engaging. That is a problem I feel with a lot of generalist philosophy, the question of how do you apply them. In addition, how a person feels about a specific should, if they are consistent, tell you how they will feel about related issues. 

Would I read this book again cover to cover? No. It is a text book. I might pull it out for reference, but not read it for fun. Or, to phrase it a different way, I would use this book in a way closer to its intended purpose, it seems good for that. 

Look some dice, aren't they nice.

On to the next book, and please, let it not be a textbook. For the first dice I rolled a 3 and the follow up was a 28. and I got lucky, not a textbook and not a nonfiction either. We venture again into fiction.

Tie in fiction! 

For next time I will be reading I, Jedi by Michael A. Stackpole. I am pretty excited about this. I have a lot of fond memories of the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, and Michael Stackpole did a great job with the X-Wing series. I have read the book before as well, but only once, a long time ago, in a house actually not too far away. 

The opening chapter of 21 different books: Makers of Modern Strategy edited by Edward Mead Earle

 Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler is a collaboration of some 20 writers attempting to detail the evolution of military thought from the 16th century to 1943. That very specific year makes it an interesting book, as it came out just before the final stages of the Second World War. My copy was printed in 1972, and I find it very interesting that it was not updated in almost 20 years between its original copy write date and its republication. This book came from my West Point collection, which I talked about in the first post I ever did, which brings up some questions because the implication is that this was required reading in a West Point class, even though it had not been updated since before the advent of the nuclear age. Surely someone has done some worthy thinking since then, something that a West Point cadet would need to know about.

These are some very 70's colors

What is in the book is interesting but dense. A well-spiced jerky, rather than a tender steak. Each chapter covers either a single thinker or, more and more as time relentlessly advances, multiple different related thinkers. Those chapters are some real tough meat. A meat I am not certain I properly digested if I am going to be honest. Textbooks are meant to be studied with pen and paper for notes on hand, not read in snippets while on break from work, or an hour or two on a lazy Sunday morning if you are really going to get something out of it, especially when they are this dense. 

That density is put to good use though. I am passingly familiar with some of these thinkers, and if the whole book is about as good it is fairly good coverage, right up to the time of writing. They try to present an understanding of Japanese, German and Soviet military thought as of 1943 and they seem off the mark, but to the book's credit, there is an acknowledgment that full knowledge may be many years and declassification in the future. Learning about how wars are thought about is very important. How you think about war guides how you prepare for it, and how you fight it, and I believe that many here in America don't think about war that deeply. This is a little strange when you consider we are enjoying the first peace in 20 years. One would think that fighting for so long would make us much more interested in winning wars but no. It is much more superficial, and people seem too focused on the tactical rather than strategic dimension. How do you win a fight, rather than you do you win a war. That is not a good way to win wars. 

So would I recommend Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler? Recommending older scholarly works is really difficult. In my experience, the newer stuff tends to be better as it can expand and respond to the older works. Also, readability is more widely recognized as being important. Therefore, I would recommend something like this book, but not this book.

Now to my next read. Hopefully, a little less dense. The first roll is a two, which gets me a shelf of 31 books. The second roll is a two and a 9 for book number 10.

Looks like I felt like rolling 2s.

Book number 10 is another textbook, with a very different subject. Everyday Morality: An Introduction to Applied Ethics by Mike W. Martin. We turn from war to such delightful subjects as murder, and drug abuse. I hope you will join me next time.

A much more ascetically pleasing cover, but modern books seem less well made.

Drop zone confirmed: Inherited Risk by Jeffrey Meyers

 When I rolled this book up I made some comment about how this was taking me outside of my comfort zone, and boy was I right. Another mystery book, and definitely not one I would have bought for myself. Though whoever did buy it got this very shiny hardcover for 25% off. I have never been too interested in biography books, and especially not in biographies of movie stars. I am concerned that I was lent this book by a well-meaning relative (possibly my grandmother) and they never asked for it back. It probably went on a shelf years ago and I promptly forgot about it. Don't worry it is not a library book.

It is very shiny and silvery

What this book is is the first book in this project that I am dropping. Before I discuss why I am dropping it I want to justify dropping books in general. I drop a lot of books. Sometimes it is because I got bored and I was not actively engaged. Sometimes, such as in this case, it is because the experience is a bad one. When you read something for fun you are not swearing an oath to finish the book at any hazard. You are engaging with the book to have a good time. That is its purpose. If it is not serving that purpose get out as soon as you figure that out. Then pick up something different. There are so many options out there that it is better to move on rather than grinding your way through if it is not worth it. I have around 500 books on my shelves, with more waiting for shelves, and more ebooks on top of that. The written word is not rare, and by reading a lot of books, even if you don't finish them you get a lot of different perspectives. So drop books, especially when you don't like reading them.

I did not like reading Inherited Risk: Errol and Sean Flynn in Hollywood and Vietnam by Jeffrey Meyers, and the main reason is the subject matter. It is a biography of the actor Errol Flynn and his son Sean, which is already a red flag. And then in the three chapters I read it was clear to me that the focus of this work would be on the "glamorous" lifestyle of these two men that the author fawned over while the substantive events of their lives make them pretty bad people. A big problem with biography is its narrow focus. Unless you are intensely interested in the person there is not much to get out of single biography, and in this case, three chapters were enough to produce an intense dislike of two men who were most notable for how handsome and glamorous they were while being bad people. So I dropped it. I would be interested in a history of old stars of the silver screen, or a history of Vietnam war journalists that included a paragraph on these people, but a 324 page book? That is too much, especially when the author and I disagree so much on the value of glamorous people. 

This book is going in a box, but there are plenty of other books on my shelves. A d20 gets me shelf number 11, that has 23 books on it, so another d20 and a d4 gets me book number 18.

Look at my dice. One set was a gift, the other I bought myself, guess which is which.

Book number 18 is Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler edited by Edward Mead Earle. Machiavelli and Clausewitz and Marx oh my. A little heavier affair, both in weight and subject matter.

A nice little peak at shelf #11, and this interesting little book.

Avalanche of Anecdotes: Dinosaurs in the Attic by Douglas J. Preston

Dinosaurs in the Attic by Douglas J. Preston, or to give it its full title Dinosaurs in the Attic: an excursion into The American Museum of Natural History, is another one of those mysterious additions to my bookshelf. My copy bears a 1986 copywriter, but the binding and cover, as well as my vague memories, suggest to me that this copy was printed much later than that. As you can probably tell I don't remember how or why I got it. I think I picked it up for a class on Museum studies in grad school, but nothing in the book seemed to trigger anything in my mind. I was not a bad student in grad school, I read the books that were assigned, so who knows how I got it.

The book itself can best be described as a horde of anecdotes. It uses stories about items in the museum as a springboard into stories about early anthropology, early dinosaur hunting, and other activities that produced the items that fill out The American Museum of Natural History's collection. The best metaphor I can think of is a tidal pool. It is very shallow, with a lot of interesting things in it, but as you stand there and look at the pool you know the ocean is right over there. Is that a bad thing? No, because the book is fun, and Douglas Preston is a good storyteller, with a great eye for length. He gives a lot of background and information without going too long and potentially boring you. It makes the book a good entry point into a lot of different subjects. As you read the book you might find something that catches your eye, like Charles Sternberg, the fossil hunter who wrote poems about how God called him to paleontology. I looked up his work in A Story of the Past; or The Romance of Science and it is pretty good. It is not every day you read a poem that is basically the equivalent of the novel Raptor Red by paleontologist Dr. Robert Bakker.  Devout paleontological poems are not something I would have looked up myself without stumbling on it in this book. 

So I would recommend this book. It didn't change my life, but it was a good fun read. Perhaps I would even pick it up again and read a section or two later, just for fun. If you want a bunch of interesting anecdotes from a museum I would read it. To dip into another metaphor it is more of a sample plater than a meal.

With that metaphor, we are on to the next. A roll of a 3 actually gets us the shelf that has Raptor Red the dinosaur novel so maybe I'll roll that one up, but there are 27 other books (I am not counting the dictionary also on that shelf) so luck will be the determiner. Both the d20 and the d8 rolled a 2, so it is book number 3. Book number 3 is Inherited Risk Errol and Sean Flynn in Hollywood and Vietnam by Jeffrey Meyers. I had no idea I owned any sort of Hollywood biography. This little project is taking me out of my comfort zone.

A good short story the length of a novel: A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

 A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. I have no idea how I picked up this 1969 copy of a book almost a hundred years old. If I bought it, there is no evidence of a price tag, and I don't recognize the name written on the inside cover, which makes it being a gift unlikely. It is quite possible that I obtained it through some sort of book lover's osmosis. It's an old Charles Scribner's sons mass market paperback, a rather delightful example of 60's cheapness, down to the back cover, which is half-filled with a list of other Hemingway titles available from the publisher. 

It is with the small blurb on the back cover that I want to start my response to the book. I am going to reproduce it in its entirety. "A magnificent and tender tale of love and war on the Italian Front in World War I, this novel is among the most enduring works of fiction produced this century." If this is an example of what people in the 30s or 60s thought of as a tender tale of love then my sympathies go to those poor women. I did not buy that these characters were in love till the last quarter of the book. Part of that I feel can be blamed on the writing. Characters repeat themselves a lot, and when it is otherwise romantic dialogue it makes that dialogue less romantic and more sad. Catherine, the female lead, seems like she is in this relationship against her better judgment, and she just can't trust Henry, the male lead, in anything he tells her. The romance gets better later in the book, and I am just going to through up a spoiler warning if you are concerned. The book is a hundred years old so I am not sure how necessary that is, but let's be fair. It does get better after Henry deserts from the Italian Army and he and a pregnant Catherine flee to Switzerland. The book had actually kind of grabbed me, enough that the death of Catherine and her child in childbirth had an impact. But I am not sure if it was enough to save the love story.

So much for love, what about war? Hemingway's depiction of war is also less than stellar. For the majority of the book it is just a backdrop, discussed but not described. There are a lot of scenes where the characters discuss the war over sausages, or whiskey, or wine, or breakfast. Occasionally interesting, not very exciting. The time it ventures to the front it is over pretty quickly. There is one scene of the war I loved, which was shell burst that wounded the main character. That was great writing.

I have spent almost all of this post being quite negative about the book, and I think that it is because it is the wrong style of book for me. I like fiction sci-fi and fantasy, and so books such as A Farewell to Arms fall into some sort of fictional uncanny valley, both too real and too fake to be enjoyed. Of course, because people are complicated this is not a hard and fast rule. I liked Pride and Prejudice. But A Farewell to Arms was not for me. Would I recommend it? Probably not. It is a classic so if you are into books like it you have probably read it already, and if you are not it is not going to change your mind. There are better love stories like Pride and Prejudice, and better books on World War 1. I would recommend Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger, a great memoir. 

With that, it is time to select the next book. The number of shelves has not changed yet, so a d20 gets us shelf 6. There are 28 books so I am going to roll a d20 and a d10, subtracting 1 from the result and rerolling if roll a 30. I got a 14 and an 8, for 21. The book is Dinosaurs in the Attic: An excursion into the American Museum of Natural History by Douglas J. Preston. A more modern result. 

Had me in the first half: Dropzone Normandy by Napier Crookenden

I am finding beginning this project a little difficult. I have never blogged before, never done book reviews, and have not done much writing since I finished grad school five years ago, so I am just going to let it come out and leave it at that. The first book is Dropzone Normandy by Napier Crookenden. History books will likely make up a large number of the books I roll for this blog, given my love of the subject. This particular book is from what I think of as my West Point collection. It is a strange story, but not very long so I will tell it here. A while ago my father mentioned my love of history, and the couple of degrees I have in the subject, to a coworker who has a large collection of history books. He then arranged to put me in his will as the inheritor of his library. This coworker of my father, after arranging for the inheritance, remembered me when a friend of his was looking to downsize his collection, and so this friend twice removed called me up and said "Hey I have a bunch of old books from my West Point years, do you want them?" I jumped on it, and now I am the proud owner of a bunch of books from a student who attended West Point in the late 1970s. 

As a book, and not an excuse to tell a story, Dropzone Normandy, published in 1976, is in the sad position of trying to do two things and failing at one of them. It is a history of the British and American airborne landings on D-Day, June 6th, 1944, and the fighting that the American 101st and 82nd Divisions, and British 6th did to hold the approaches to the beaches for the next week. To do this also tells a history of these units, how they were formed, equipped, and trained, and in that it succeeds wonderfully. There are a lot of interesting differences between the two nations, and both nations get great and even-handed coverage. I quite enjoyed the book, until it comes time to present a narrative of the fighting itself. One of the best quotes I have heard on military history is that it is very hard history because it seems so easy, and I feel the author walk right into that. The narrative is confusing, which I initially put down to the confusion caused by sprinkling 20,000 men over France like salt on a steak, but that confusion lasts well after the units form up and lines solidify. The greatest cause of this is that Dropzone Normandy addresses almost all levels of battle. The movement of Corps, divisions, battalions, companies, platoons, squads, and even individuals are all addressed, and this means that the author never spends enough time with any one group for the reader to be familiar with the who and what and where before we are off to another village. 

So in the end I left Dropzone Normandy feeling a little letdown. The first section of the book was really good, but the latter sections were frustrating, and the bibliography is atrocious. Chicago Manual Style, use it. Authors who wrote books 50 years ago, go forward in time and pick up a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style, and then go back and use it. Seriously though, I found the book worth a read, enjoyable in places, and if I ever feel the need to go over the development of British and American airborne forces in the Second World War I might pick up the first bit, but this is not a book I would read cover to cover again. 

With that book done, it is time to determine the next book. I currently have 20 shelves full of books with more books needing shelves, but I will pick from the shelved books today. The roll of a d20 gets a 5 for a shelf with 29 books on it, and a roll of a d20 and a d10 gets 17 total, so book number 16 on the shelf. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. I have never read any Hemingway. I'll let you know what I thought when I am done.