This was the first, very first book I ever read. I read it the first time in the 3rd grade, and that was a long, long time ago. Yet, I always remembered that. Then I picked it up and read it again as a refresher to post on this blog. I wondered if it was good for someone beyond the 3rd grade to read,
And, yes, I must say, it certainly is. In fact, as a much older person, I saw much more in the book than I'd ever have known to put in it in the third grade.
For example, I did not remember how well Capt. Lawson was to fly that B-25 to bomb Japan. Yet, the book reminds me that he'd studied aeronautical engineering in college, worked in a plant that built the plane and actually had a part in designing parts of the plane. Then he became a pilot and then joined the Army Air Corps where he flew the B-25 for a year or more before war was declared and he made that flight to Tokyo.
The bombing of Japan that April 1942 did little damage, but it lifted American spirits, certainly, and that was something considering at that time so much of what Americans had heard had been depressing: the bombing of Pearl Harbor and then the fall of the Philippines.
So, what I am saying here again, is if you like to read, get the book and read it. You will enjoy it for what it will tell you about the war at that stage and also what you will learn about airplanes. There were some very large and advanced airplanes at that time, which also is rather surprising.
I end with this about the book. First Capt. Lawson reports that every time one of the B-25 flew off the deck of the carrier Hornet on its way to Japan, the sailors on board cheered. And, on his own take-off from the deck, he said:
"I just went off at deck level and pulled out in front of the great ship that had just done its best to plant us in Japan's front yard."
Capt. Lawson said after each aircraft took off, it circled around and lined up for its run to Japan by flying back over the carrier that was pointed in the direction of Japan. Most amazing is he says the plane flew at 20 feet above the water all the way to Japan. That was low!
I once flew with an Air Force unit that bragged about flying 125 feet above ground level! But, wow, 20 feet above sea level would have amazed even them.
Again, read the book, you will love it--for what it tells about the Americans who fought the war, for what it tells about the home front and what it tells about airplanes of that era.
Oh, before I forget, one interesting side light about the book is how Capt. Lawson withheld telling his wife anything about a terrible injury he had sustained in the wreck of his plane at the end of the Tokyo mission. What an interesting story!
Monday, January 4, 2010
Thursday, December 3, 2009
"Bring Out Your Dead," "The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793"
All the books I list on this web site are great books, books that I truly enjoy. Some of them I've read several times and still find something in each reading I did not notice before. Though I'm never really sure what I notice in a second or third reading. I have to read it again and again until I like wring the last drop of humanity out of it.
That is the case with this book, "Bring Out Your Dead," by J.H. Powell originally published in 1949.
If you like great adventure stories, this is a great adventure every bit as much as any Indiana Jones or Rambo book or movie you can imagine. The difference is this is a real story and a story that no one single mind could possibly create.
The book is about a yellow fever plague that raged throughout Philadelphia in the late summer of 1793, but if you want to make the story fit modern times just substitute some other disease for which no cause is unknown like cancer or AIDS everytime you see the words "yellow fever." It is the same kind of story.
Just as in modern times as doctors attempt to discover cures for these terrible diseases, the doctors of 1793 tried a variety of steps to cure yellow fever. But, try as they did, they could do little for the terrible agony that their patients endured before they died. Oh, they'd try one "cure," and one patient would recover. They'd try the same "cure" on another patient, and the patient would die.
The steps they tried sound truly amazing or incredible as you read about them today, so much so that as you read about them you are inclined to wonder: "My goodness, why would they ever try something that stupid ? Were they nuts?"
But in the midst of an epidemic in which hundreds of people were dying every day, those doctors tended to try anything and everything hoping that something would work.
Then, incidentally, people believed invisible vapors or germs some called "formites" carried the disease. So, they thought if a place was scrubbed with lye and other harsh cleansers, the "formites" would die and the place would be safe from yellow fever. Yet, nothing they did work, including dragging a cannon up and down the streets and firing it off ever few blocks. Some thought the noise and smell of gun smoke from the cannon going off would kill whatever it was that carried the disease.
Something else about the book is you will be reading about the work of what at that time were some of the leading medical minds in the United States. One in particular was Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and, oh, what Mr. Powell says about him! Here is an example from his preface:
"Dr. Rush's radiant charm is seductive. I sometimes I forget, in the spell of his presence, that he had no common sense. But sense that is common is also dull. And dull, Dr. Rush never was." No, Mr. Powell did not live in Dr. Rush's time or know him. He is able to write as he does about the famous doctor because he read many of his papers related to how he attempted to treat his patients, often with deadly results. Many of his patients died because as hard as he tried to cure them, what he did hurried many of their deaths. For example, he believed in excessive bleeding, that is actually opening veines to let blood flow out in profusion. He added to that the use of heavy doses of not telling what that was intended to clean their digestive systems n the extreme.
The story also gets into two of the true and surprising heroes of the epidemic, both former slaves who are represented as if they were the equals of other citizens. That is especially curious given the year and the time, even in a place like Philadelphia. You will like both of them as well as so many other characters, manyof low social standing in normal times who attain the status of giants for their courage in a deadly battle.
I will stop. Just suffice it to say: get the book, and read it. I found my copy on Amazon.com for under $5 delivered, I think it was.
That is the case with this book, "Bring Out Your Dead," by J.H. Powell originally published in 1949.
If you like great adventure stories, this is a great adventure every bit as much as any Indiana Jones or Rambo book or movie you can imagine. The difference is this is a real story and a story that no one single mind could possibly create.
The book is about a yellow fever plague that raged throughout Philadelphia in the late summer of 1793, but if you want to make the story fit modern times just substitute some other disease for which no cause is unknown like cancer or AIDS everytime you see the words "yellow fever." It is the same kind of story.
Just as in modern times as doctors attempt to discover cures for these terrible diseases, the doctors of 1793 tried a variety of steps to cure yellow fever. But, try as they did, they could do little for the terrible agony that their patients endured before they died. Oh, they'd try one "cure," and one patient would recover. They'd try the same "cure" on another patient, and the patient would die.
The steps they tried sound truly amazing or incredible as you read about them today, so much so that as you read about them you are inclined to wonder: "My goodness, why would they ever try something that stupid ? Were they nuts?"
But in the midst of an epidemic in which hundreds of people were dying every day, those doctors tended to try anything and everything hoping that something would work.
Then, incidentally, people believed invisible vapors or germs some called "formites" carried the disease. So, they thought if a place was scrubbed with lye and other harsh cleansers, the "formites" would die and the place would be safe from yellow fever. Yet, nothing they did work, including dragging a cannon up and down the streets and firing it off ever few blocks. Some thought the noise and smell of gun smoke from the cannon going off would kill whatever it was that carried the disease.
Something else about the book is you will be reading about the work of what at that time were some of the leading medical minds in the United States. One in particular was Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and, oh, what Mr. Powell says about him! Here is an example from his preface:
"Dr. Rush's radiant charm is seductive. I sometimes I forget, in the spell of his presence, that he had no common sense. But sense that is common is also dull. And dull, Dr. Rush never was." No, Mr. Powell did not live in Dr. Rush's time or know him. He is able to write as he does about the famous doctor because he read many of his papers related to how he attempted to treat his patients, often with deadly results. Many of his patients died because as hard as he tried to cure them, what he did hurried many of their deaths. For example, he believed in excessive bleeding, that is actually opening veines to let blood flow out in profusion. He added to that the use of heavy doses of not telling what that was intended to clean their digestive systems n the extreme.
The story also gets into two of the true and surprising heroes of the epidemic, both former slaves who are represented as if they were the equals of other citizens. That is especially curious given the year and the time, even in a place like Philadelphia. You will like both of them as well as so many other characters, manyof low social standing in normal times who attain the status of giants for their courage in a deadly battle.
I will stop. Just suffice it to say: get the book, and read it. I found my copy on Amazon.com for under $5 delivered, I think it was.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Three wonderful books by a master story teller! Read them all!
Erich Maria Remarque is another of my favorite authors because of three of the books he wrote.
“All Quiet on the Western Front,” is one you have no doubt heard about and maybe read, but two others that are almost sequels to it that you may not have read are “The Road Back” and the “Black Obelisk.”
If you have never read them all, read them in that order because the characters in the first appear in the next two.
In case you did not know, “All Quiet on the Western Front” is one of the best war novels ever written, but if you are a woman do not be turned off by that because it is a good story. It also is the book that won the wrath of Adolph Hitler because of how it portrayed war, as something terrible with nothing redeeming about it. Some of this book is so graphic as to be disturbing, but it is presented in a very thoughtful way, if that can be done. There also is humor in the book, and Remarque is a master of humor.”
“The Road Back” picks up where “All Quiet on the Western Front” leaves off or at the end of World War I. It follows a group of soldiers who after four years of war try to find their way back to civilian life. To most of them readjusting is a very difficult task.
One example of that is when they return to high school (or whatever is like that in Germany) to finish their educations which they dropped to go to war. There, they no longer place on pedestals the “masters” whom they greatly admired and even feared before the marched off to war. That is because when the masters try to talk to them about the glory they earned during the war for the “fatherland,” they can only laugh disparagingly because they know from their own experiences that there is no glory in war. Remarque says this much better than I do.
Finally, aw, finally there is what has to be my favorite book of the three, “The Black Obelisk.” It picks up where “The Road Back” ends and carries the reader on to the rise of Hitler.
I cannot say enough about what an entertaining story this is and all of the characters who appear in it. Most curious, however, has to be the heroine who is in an insane asylum.
Anyway, get these books. You will like them.
If for some reason you don’t, I’d like to hear why.
My only real regret, by the way about Remarque is that he died in 1970, and I was in Germany from 1962-64 and could have probably have met him. That, I think, would have been worthwhile.
One final note: he has written a slew of other books, but I have not found any of the others as good as the three mentioned above.
“All Quiet on the Western Front,” is one you have no doubt heard about and maybe read, but two others that are almost sequels to it that you may not have read are “The Road Back” and the “Black Obelisk.”
If you have never read them all, read them in that order because the characters in the first appear in the next two.
In case you did not know, “All Quiet on the Western Front” is one of the best war novels ever written, but if you are a woman do not be turned off by that because it is a good story. It also is the book that won the wrath of Adolph Hitler because of how it portrayed war, as something terrible with nothing redeeming about it. Some of this book is so graphic as to be disturbing, but it is presented in a very thoughtful way, if that can be done. There also is humor in the book, and Remarque is a master of humor.”
“The Road Back” picks up where “All Quiet on the Western Front” leaves off or at the end of World War I. It follows a group of soldiers who after four years of war try to find their way back to civilian life. To most of them readjusting is a very difficult task.
One example of that is when they return to high school (or whatever is like that in Germany) to finish their educations which they dropped to go to war. There, they no longer place on pedestals the “masters” whom they greatly admired and even feared before the marched off to war. That is because when the masters try to talk to them about the glory they earned during the war for the “fatherland,” they can only laugh disparagingly because they know from their own experiences that there is no glory in war. Remarque says this much better than I do.
Finally, aw, finally there is what has to be my favorite book of the three, “The Black Obelisk.” It picks up where “The Road Back” ends and carries the reader on to the rise of Hitler.
I cannot say enough about what an entertaining story this is and all of the characters who appear in it. Most curious, however, has to be the heroine who is in an insane asylum.
Anyway, get these books. You will like them.
If for some reason you don’t, I’d like to hear why.
My only real regret, by the way about Remarque is that he died in 1970, and I was in Germany from 1962-64 and could have probably have met him. That, I think, would have been worthwhile.
One final note: he has written a slew of other books, but I have not found any of the others as good as the three mentioned above.
Monday, November 16, 2009
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover--a Surprising Find!
The only bare mention of Herbert Hoover at all in most surveys of American history is to connect and most often blame him for the Great Depression. But, oh, how disappointing those references are to what has to have been a truly great and generous man.
Great, maybe, you might buy, understanding how that word could be applied to almost any president. Yet, “generous,” you wonder, now what in the world could that mean?
That means that after Herbert Hoover began his public service at the beginning of World War I, he never took a salary and even paid his own expenses. He paid his own way, his own way in everything thing he did. His public service included work on the Belgium Relief Commission, as the US Food Administator during World War I, helping President Woodrow Wilson negotiate the agreement to end World War I, as secretary of commerce for Warren G. Harding, in President Calvin Coolidge's cabinet and, finally, as president.
How could he do that? No, he was not a Roosevelt or Rockefeller.
His is another one of those only in America stories, in that he became orphaned at an early age to be shuffled off to grow up as a charge of relatives.
From there he entered and was graduated from Stanford University, and from there became a mining engineer that sent him all over the world and made him a very, very wealthy man.
There was a lot more to Herbert Hoover than money and politics, however. He had more adventures than Indiana Jones, real adventures that took him all over the world. Read them, and you have to find them amazing and more interesting than anything you'd see in many movies or read in your typical novel.
His adventures, are told in one of the three volumes of his memoirs entitled, “Years of Adventures.”
For example, he crawled into a cave in Burma looking for mineral riches only to be turned back by the very large and fresh paw print of a tiger on the cave's sandy floor. He served as a mining engineer in China with the job of identifying all of that vast country’s mineral wealth. Alas, the most valuable such commodity he could identify was coal. The rest, whatever there might have been, had long been gouged out of Chinese soil over thousands of years.
That Chinese adventure also landed him behind the protective walls of a hurriedly built fortification erected to prevent Chinese in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 from murdering Hoover and other foreigners in a Chinese city. His description of that adventure alone could make an entire movie. And the song, "There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight," existed even then because Hoover recounts how a US Marine Corps band arriving to save the foreingers played that tune.
But, that was just a minor episode in Hoover's life adventures. There was his work to get Americans stranded in Europe at the beginning of World War I home, his work on the Belgium Relief Commission to make certain the people of Belgium and France were fed during the world. And, then...
You could say "and, then..." a lot because his adventures seemed to go on forever and in places that we can only dream of today.
Read his memoirs, and I can assure you will be entertained and impressed by Herbert Hoover. You can't help it.
Great, maybe, you might buy, understanding how that word could be applied to almost any president. Yet, “generous,” you wonder, now what in the world could that mean?
That means that after Herbert Hoover began his public service at the beginning of World War I, he never took a salary and even paid his own expenses. He paid his own way, his own way in everything thing he did. His public service included work on the Belgium Relief Commission, as the US Food Administator during World War I, helping President Woodrow Wilson negotiate the agreement to end World War I, as secretary of commerce for Warren G. Harding, in President Calvin Coolidge's cabinet and, finally, as president.
How could he do that? No, he was not a Roosevelt or Rockefeller.
His is another one of those only in America stories, in that he became orphaned at an early age to be shuffled off to grow up as a charge of relatives.
From there he entered and was graduated from Stanford University, and from there became a mining engineer that sent him all over the world and made him a very, very wealthy man.
There was a lot more to Herbert Hoover than money and politics, however. He had more adventures than Indiana Jones, real adventures that took him all over the world. Read them, and you have to find them amazing and more interesting than anything you'd see in many movies or read in your typical novel.
His adventures, are told in one of the three volumes of his memoirs entitled, “Years of Adventures.”
For example, he crawled into a cave in Burma looking for mineral riches only to be turned back by the very large and fresh paw print of a tiger on the cave's sandy floor. He served as a mining engineer in China with the job of identifying all of that vast country’s mineral wealth. Alas, the most valuable such commodity he could identify was coal. The rest, whatever there might have been, had long been gouged out of Chinese soil over thousands of years.
That Chinese adventure also landed him behind the protective walls of a hurriedly built fortification erected to prevent Chinese in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 from murdering Hoover and other foreigners in a Chinese city. His description of that adventure alone could make an entire movie. And the song, "There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight," existed even then because Hoover recounts how a US Marine Corps band arriving to save the foreingers played that tune.
But, that was just a minor episode in Hoover's life adventures. There was his work to get Americans stranded in Europe at the beginning of World War I home, his work on the Belgium Relief Commission to make certain the people of Belgium and France were fed during the world. And, then...
You could say "and, then..." a lot because his adventures seemed to go on forever and in places that we can only dream of today.
Read his memoirs, and I can assure you will be entertained and impressed by Herbert Hoover. You can't help it.
Monday, November 9, 2009
If YOU like books, this blog is for YOU!
My purpose in writing this blog is to tell you of some great books that I've often found by accident, read and really enjoyed. If I do this properly, I will enable you to find and enjoy these books a lot sooner than I did.
What kind of books will they be?
Some will be fiction, but most will be what in today's jargon might be called "reality," but is in "reality" history. I hesitate to use that term because so many people get turned off by it.
I don't really know why because if you understand the purpose of history and all that goes into it, you realize it is not just names and dates. It is about people, people who probably were very much like you or me but who because of unusual circumstances found themselves required to act in ways they'd never have imagined.
Most recently, by the way, in reading a long book about some delicate negotiations, which could impact the lives of thousands of people, one of the principals stated how what they were making history on a world-wide stage. They were and how interesting that the realized it.
Even some of the novels I present in this blog are like history in that they, like history deal with or attempt to deal with truth. I quote here from one of my favorite novels by one of my favorite authors on this point. In the introduction to his best novel, he writes:
“Above all, it is a true story because that is the only story worth telling.”
That conveniently brings me to my first book recommendation.
It is “The Cruel Sea,” by Nicholas Monsarrat. The title is very British in that it is understated, but do not let the understatement fool you. This is a novel about the British war ships that escorted convoys of merchant ships between the United States and Great Britain during World War II, but it is so much more. It is one of the most powerful novels on the sea you will ever read. It is one of the most powerful novels on war on the high seas you will ever read.
The story becomes so real that when you finish, you will feel some of the exhaustion, physical and mental, that the men who sailed those ships must have felt because you will have been with them trying to protect those convoys on dozens of voyages over the "Cruel Sea."
What else is there to say about “The Cruel Sea?” Read it.
Oh, and I should add, this book as well as many others on this blog are no longer in print. But, you can find many of them at your library. Or, if you are like me, buy them off the Internet for just a few dollars. That way you will have them to read and re-read favorite passages as I do.
What kind of books will they be?
Some will be fiction, but most will be what in today's jargon might be called "reality," but is in "reality" history. I hesitate to use that term because so many people get turned off by it.
I don't really know why because if you understand the purpose of history and all that goes into it, you realize it is not just names and dates. It is about people, people who probably were very much like you or me but who because of unusual circumstances found themselves required to act in ways they'd never have imagined.
Most recently, by the way, in reading a long book about some delicate negotiations, which could impact the lives of thousands of people, one of the principals stated how what they were making history on a world-wide stage. They were and how interesting that the realized it.
Even some of the novels I present in this blog are like history in that they, like history deal with or attempt to deal with truth. I quote here from one of my favorite novels by one of my favorite authors on this point. In the introduction to his best novel, he writes:
“Above all, it is a true story because that is the only story worth telling.”
That conveniently brings me to my first book recommendation.
It is “The Cruel Sea,” by Nicholas Monsarrat. The title is very British in that it is understated, but do not let the understatement fool you. This is a novel about the British war ships that escorted convoys of merchant ships between the United States and Great Britain during World War II, but it is so much more. It is one of the most powerful novels on the sea you will ever read. It is one of the most powerful novels on war on the high seas you will ever read.
The story becomes so real that when you finish, you will feel some of the exhaustion, physical and mental, that the men who sailed those ships must have felt because you will have been with them trying to protect those convoys on dozens of voyages over the "Cruel Sea."
What else is there to say about “The Cruel Sea?” Read it.
Oh, and I should add, this book as well as many others on this blog are no longer in print. But, you can find many of them at your library. Or, if you are like me, buy them off the Internet for just a few dollars. That way you will have them to read and re-read favorite passages as I do.
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