Collected Miscellany

American middle and high school student must reads?

Kevin Holtsberry — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:07:55 +0000

Ricochet is trying to come up with a Book List, Teen Edition. Ursula Hennessey explains one problem she had:

For starters, I wonder if I’m the only dolt on here who had the following problem: I was asked to read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn before I knew anything about slavery, Animal Farm without grasping the most basic forms of government, The Scarlet Letter without really “getting” adultery, and Romeo and Juliet with only a modicum of understanding of my own English, much less that from 400 years earlier.

Then she poses the question:

What are 5-10 books we should expect middle and high school students to 1) understand, 2) learn some useful history from, and 3) learn a life lesson from?

What say you?

It’s a Book!

Kevin Holtsberry — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:56:24 +0000

It’s a Book by Lane Smith looks like a fun little book based on this trailer:

H/T: Debbie Stier

The American Spectator on The Breaking of Eggs

Kevin Holtsberry — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:45:34 +0000

Over at The American Spectator Larry Thornberry reviews a book in my TBR pile: The Breaking of Eggs by Jim Powell:

This impressive first novel is part coming of age story and part spy story, with a primer on 20th century European history thrown in. History at the most personal, small-picture level. It’s also about redemption, second chances, and what home means.

In the Mail: Loser’s Town

Kevin Holtsberry — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:10:47 +0000

Loser’s Town: A David Spandau Novel by Daniel Depp

From the Publisher

Private investigator David Spandau, an ex-stuntman familiar with the ins and outs of Hollywood—a smart, tough, and wickedly funny observer of la vie L.A.—finds his patience almost sapped when he’s hired to protect actor Bobby Dye from a blackmailing scheme gone wrong. Dye—young, brash, and on the verge of becoming a major star—has been set up by gangster Richie Stella, a nightclub owner and drug dealer with dreams of becoming a Hollywood producer. And he has a movie perfect for Dye. Problem is, it’s the worst script anyone’s ever read. But Richie is not easy to say no to, and when he retaliates, the game becomes deadly for more than a few of its players.

Charged with the elements of all great L.A. noir&crackling dialogue, fast-paced plot, and seedy, jaded characters—Loser’s Town is a deftly written thriller and a gruesomely hilarious depiction of what goes on beneath those white letters on the mountainside.

Road of 10,000 Pains: The Destruction of the 2nd NVA Division by the U.S. Marines, 1967 by Otto J. Lehrack

Jeff Grim — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:40:54 +0000

I don’t know about any of you, but I find myself reading military history books on various time periods. I have many interests in military history. One of my favorite topics is the Vietnam War. I just read the second of four books that I recently received on Vietnam. This most recent book, entitled Road of 10,000 Pains: The Destruction of the 2nd NVA Division by the U.S. Marines, 1967by Otto J. Lehrack, is an oral history of a series of battles that occurred in the Que Son Valley.

The Que Son Valley is located southwest of Da Nang. The Valley was important to the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) because it linked the western and eastern portions of South Vietnam and it was fertile area for rice production. It fell under the jurisdiction of the I Corps Tactical Zone of South Vietnam. From April to September of 1967, in an attempt to deny the Valley to the enemy, the Fifth Marine Regiment battled the 2nd NVA Division in a series of battles that cost the Marines more than 900 killed and thousands wounded. The Marines in return killed and wounded thousands of NVA soldiers and generally knocked the NVA division out of the war for a few months.

Lehrack organizes the book into chapters that cover the different battles. The chapters are written around the personal accounts of the soldiers who participated in the battles with narrative of the battle interspersed. It took me a little while to get used to this format because it was hard to understand how the individual accounts fit into the framework of the overall battle. I think it is hard to write an oral history of a battle or campaign that includes the perspective of the participants and that also gives the complete story of the battle or campaign. However, I think Lehrack is able to do both.

In my early years of study of the Vietnam War, I did not have a good impression of the NVA or the Viet Cong. I thought that we were far superior in training and equipment. This view has changed because of books like this one. The men interviewed by Lehrack describe how the 2nd NVA Division was a well-trained and well-equipped infantry unit. They had a superior rifle in the AK-47 (the M-16 was in its earliest form and had problems with jamming). The NVA tactics were to overwhelm the Marines – in a few instances they almost succeeded if it was not for American airpower and artillery.

Lehrack includes many photographs throughout the book. These portray the Marines in action and photos of the Marines who fought so bravely. He also includes some general maps of the Que Son Valley that delineate where the various operations occurred. I don’t know if this was possible, but I wish that he would have put more tactical maps in with the battle descriptions in order to get a better idea of the battle.

The book is an easy read at 276 pages, including a few pages at the end debunking some of the myths surrounding the war and its veterans. I found this brief section informative. For example, the atrocities committed in Vietnam were far fewer than in any other of America’s wars despite all of the claims made around My Lai.

The book is a wonderful tribute to those men who fought and died in a little known corner of South Vietnam.

In the Mail: Angel of Death Row

Kevin Holtsberry — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:09:39 +0000

Angel of Death Row: My Life as a Death Penalty Defense Lawyer by Andrea D. Lyon

Kirkus Reviews

Courtroom tales from a DePaul University law professor passionately committed to defending those accused of capital crimes. Since her first job as a public defender in the mid-’70s, Lyon has tried more than 130 murder cases, all of which demonstrate “the ways in which individuals and institutions can go horribly astray, but . . . also reveal what remains human and noble in the midst of such waste.” Of the 19 cases that went to the penalty phase, in which the judge or jury decides whether to execute the defendant, Lyon has won all 19. She’s been fired by a woman on trial for her second murder, who many years earlier had smothered her infant daughter-”I sent Jenny to heaven to protect her”-and was now “volunteering” for the death penalty, insisting that all appeals be dropped. Lyon’s characteristic refusal to go along, her insistence that the “defense attorney’s job is not to help deliver the poison,” begins to answer the question she’s faced throughout her career: “How can you defend those people?” In a criminal-justice system that overwhelmingly favors the prosecution and confers enormous advantages according to wealth, race and social status, a rigorous defense, particularly in capital cases, is essential if we hope to entertain any pretense about justice. However, it takes an unusually dedicated, special kind of person to handle these psychologically and emotionally draining cases. Freely detailing her personal life, Lyon explains how she came to this career, tells some amusing/appalling tales about the prejudice she faced early on as a female attorney, stresses the importance of thorough investigation and speaks briefly about her midlife work as an appellate attorney and law-schoolprofessor. Without minimizing the horror of her clients’ crimes, the author humanizes each person and reveals the subtext beneath the legalities of any trial that often determines the outcome. Clear-eyed about her role-”In a battle between a witness and a defense lawyer, just assume the jury likes the witness more”-she delivers a strong argument against the wisdom of the death penalty, the sole punishment that forecloses the possibility of redemption. Riveting stories from a persuasive attorney.

In the Mail: Scent of the Missing

Kevin Holtsberry — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:00:09 +0000

Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search-and-Rescue Dog by Susannah Charleson

Library Journal

Humans have long used dogs, with their remarkable scenting abilities, to find lost, injured, or dead people. However, recent tragedies and disasters—9/11, Hurricane Katrina—have brought search-and-rescue recovery to the forefront. Charleson introduces us to this world as she trains her dog Puzzle to work with Dallas’s elite Metro Area Rescue K9 unit. Interspersed with stories of such routine activities as housebreaking and walking on a leash are the hold-your-breath moments when the author describes actual rescue/recovery missions such as the shuttle Columbia explosion. VERDICT This memorable tribute to the dedication of these dog-handler teams is an essential read for dog lovers.

Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War by Ted Morgan

Jeff Grim — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:03:30 +0000

I recently finished reading Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War by Ted Morgan. Morgan comprehensively examines the Battle of Dien Bien Phu from the fighting in the trenches to the diplomatic discussions (both public and private) at the Geneva Conference to bring the Indochina War to an end.

As many people know, the Indochina War led to direct American involvement in South Vietnam in the Vietnam War. Many people may not know how involved the United States was in the Indochina War – toward the end of the war the U.S. was paying for more than 80% of French war expenses. In addition, during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the CIA contracted with the French government to allow CIA pilots to fly resupply missions for the besieged French. The U.S. also had some advisers stationed in Saigon and Hanoi. Morgan adroitly points out that President Eisenhower was willing to assist the French in defeating the Vietminh up to a point – he was not willing to send in U.S. military aircraft or ground troops unless they were part of an international force.

Morgan’s writing on the diplomatic talks leading up to and including the Geneva Conference is probably the strongest part of the book. He explains how Eisenhower walked a tight rope of trying to keep the French fighting to stop the Vietminh and not committing American troops to the fighting. Although Morgan does not totally dissect Eisenhower’s decision making, he does give the reader a pretty good idea of how and why the Eisenhower administration made their decisions regarding the war.

Speaking of decision making, Morgan also delves into how French General Navarre came to the decision to commit some of his best troops in a valley in the outback of Vietnam – Navarre wanted to block Vietminh efforts to invade Laos and he never thought that the Vietminh would be able to bring enough artillery to the hills surrounding Dien Bien Phu to destroy the French base. Morgan provides the various reasons why this assumption was way off – one of which was that Navarre had contempt for the Vietminh’s mobilization efforts of the peasants to supply their forces.

Morgan thoroughly discusses the international diplomacy between France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China to bring peace in Indochina at the Geneva Conference. Morgan explores the relationship among the participants at the Conference – particularly between the British, French ,and Americans. He explains how the British under Foreign Secretary Eden tried to make deals with the Soviets and the Chinese in order to find a way out of Indochina for France – Eden did this despite the efforts of the Americans led by Secretary of State Dulles to torpedo these plans. It sometimes makes the reader wonder who the British were allies to – the Americans or the Communists.

Although Morgan does an excellent job of describing the diplomatic events surrounding Dien Bien Phu, he does not extensively describe the military operations. I was expecting more narrative on the tactics used by General Giap to attack the French strong points and the French attempts to counter his efforts, but Morgan only highlighted in a few paragraphs the fall of each strong point that protected the central command of the base. Morgan could have balanced the book more by trimming the diplomatic discussions and expounding on the military operations.

Morgan writes in a style that is easy to read. He explains who the major personalities (both military and political) were from all the countries involved in the war. These explanations help the reader to better understand why the different sides acted the way they did.

One final thought, Morgan could have organized the book in a better manner. He switches too much between the diplomatic scene and the battle. The chapters should have separated the two areas – I understand this approach may have brought some confusion with regard to the timing of the events, but I think that would have been worth the risk because the way he organized the book chops up the events – there is not much congruity in the writing.

This book is a good choice for someone who wants a general idea of how Dien Bien Phu was lost on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.

Corydon & The Island of Monsters by Tobias Druitt

Kevin Holtsberry — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:36:44 +0000

Corydon and the Island of Monsters (Corydon Trilogy) is another young adult book I picked up in the discount section of Half-Price Books. It too deals with mythology and offers a non-traditional take (are you noticing a pattern?).

Here is the synopsis courtesy of the publisher:

A young shepherd, Corydon, is driven out of his village because of his unusual appearance and then captured and put on display as a monster. Alongside him in the traveling freak show are Medusa, the Minotaur, the Sphinx, and other classical beasts. When Corydon helps these monsters to escape their cages, they scatter to seek peace and solitude away from prying eyes. But then an army of “heroes” arrives hoping to win glory by killing the monsters, and Corydon must unite these unloved and unlikely allies to fight for their survival and for their island home.

It caught my attention for the above reasons, but also because Tobias Druitt is the pen name of a mother and son team – the mother Oxford Don and her still in school son. It turned out to be an interesting twist on the Greek Myths – the monsters are the good guys. It pits the Olympian gods against the Chthonic gods.

The story is a little uneven in parts – mostly because it seems unsure of what type of story it is – a serious or semi-comic reworking of Greek mythology in a YA fantasy. But what saves it is the character of Corydon and his interaction with the monsters.

Corydon is the type of character you root for: sincere, loyal, generous, and brave despite his rough life and seeming inability to fit into normal society. There is a certain amount of cheesiness in the “all the misfits unite to defend themselves” story but for the most part it works.

While it isn’t deep literature the characters are interesting. The monsters become more than just symbols but characters with personalities and feelings. And the twist on the normal portrayal of the heros and Olympians proved interesting.

All in all an uneven but imaginative and entertaining first book in this trilogy. It will be interesting to see how the series develops.

In the Mail: Savages

Kevin Holtsberry — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:00:56 +0000

Savages by Don Winslow

Publishers Weekly

Spare, clipped expository prose and hip, spot-on dialogue propel this visceral crime novel from Winslow (The Dawn Patrol). The future is looking good for Laguna Beach, Calif., marijuana growers Ben and Chon, until they receive an ominous e-mail from the Baja Cartel. Attached is a photograph showing the decapitated bodies of other independent drug dealers. The message is clear: sell your product through us or else. Ben and Chon try to resist, but matters escalate after cartel thugs abduct Ophelia, the guys’ beautiful young playmate and accomplice, and hold her for a cool million ransom. Meanwhile, Elena “La Reina” Sanchez Lauter, the leader of the Baja Cartel, must deal with rival drug gangs and potential overthrow from within. Ben and Chon propose a trade that Elena can’t refuse, setting the stage for the violent and utterly satisfying ending. Winslow’s encyclopedic knowledge of the border drug trade lends authenticity.