"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

I had remembered it was a long time since I posted here. I hadn't realized it had been nearly four years. The last year or so has felt like much more than four years in and of itself, so four *actual* years... whew.

What made me come over here was a desire to post a slighter long piece of writing than what I put on Facebook. I have my wargame blog, but that's for wargaming. I have my writing blog, but that is for (one day) actual writing. This is more in the way of being sort of a rambling but short essay.

Mostly to say that I've come to realise that a lot of the pleasures I pursue centre around potentiality. Games or videos or music that I buy, books that I purchase, miniatures that I order all sit delightfully where I store them, waiting to be turned into experience. I can open a game, take out the rules and flip through them, look over the brightly coloured counters, lay out and trace over the maps, admiring their artistry and finding the familiar places on them. But until I actually lay out the game and play it, it's a bubble of delightful potential. Once I've played it, it may still be delightful, in a different way. I may love the experience of playing the game, or I may hate it, or find it indifferent pleasing. But it will never have that same sort of feeling, of a field of fresh snow before you walk on it.

And I am coming to realise, that is a good deal of the value that I get when I purchase something--the feeling of anticipation of enjoying an experience yet to come. John Hurt, playing Stephen Ward in the 1989 film "Scandal" (about the 1961 Profumo affair, an incredibly tame scandal by todays standards), has speech I recall the sense of, about how sometimes his character finds the anticipation of sexual pleasure greater than the act itself. There's something of that here. A new book by a favourite author or a new recording by a favourite musician may not quite live up to their past standards. Wargame figures, when I paint them, will inevitably fall short of the beauty of the finished pieces turned out by more skillful (and more patient) painters. But while they're there, bare metal or plastic in my hands, I can imagine their finished beauty.

That's part of how I can buy something and never "use it properly" for years, but still "enjoy" it. Whenever I go to our storage unit (which has half to three-quarters of my gaming collection in it, because we accidentally bought a house much smaller than we meant to), I have a feeling of great pleasure opening the hatch and looking at all the game boxes lined up on shelves there like old friends, waiting one day to be played.

Pleasure deferred, not denied. Anticipation. Potentiality. 

Recently completed:

Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby (1). A charming account of the author's initial captivity as a British officer in an Italian POW "camp" (a repurposed orphanage) and his wanderings in central Italy after the Fascist government surrendered. He recounts several months spent among the rough and poor, but amazingly kindly peasants of the region, who risked a tremendous amount to shelter and support escaped POWs like him. His descriptions of the people, the landscape, the lives of wartime farmers and herders, and his unsparing portrait of himself are fascinating and tremendously readable.

The Seven Wonders by Steven Saylor (2). The author of the acclaimed Gordianus the Finder mysteries was begged by hs fans to write prequles, tellign some of the oft-referred to experiences of his protagonist as a young man. This is (chronologically) the first, a series of short mysteries solved by the newly adult Gordianus as he follows his former tutor on a tour of the Seven Wonders of the World, from Greece to Asia Minor to Babylon and finally to Egypt. Bite-sized mysteries tied together with a "road trip" narrative and a little extra meta-story besides. Very enjoyable.

In process:
The Venus Throw by Steven Saylor
With Zeal and Bayonets Only by Matthew Spring
The Philadelphia Campaign: Brandywine and the Fall of Philadelphia by Thomas J. McGuire
Queen Victoria's Book of Spells Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran by Michael Axworthy
Little, Big by John Crowley
Eastward to Tartary by Robert B. Kaplan
Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine by Anna Reid

The Far Side of the World and The Reverse of the Medal by Patrick O'Brian (32, 33) I do love O'Brian's novels, and I've managed to read and re-read about half of them and left the other half deiciously undiscovered. The Reverse of the Medal marks my first step into that undiscovered country.

The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner (34) I keep doling these out sparingly to myself because they're so wonderful, and I can read each of them for the first time only once. This came with a lovely prequel short story that was full of character and charm despite it's brevity. The novel itself was worthy of Dunnett in its complexity and "headology". And, like Dunnett's books, I love some of these characters and appreciate others without liking them, but I find all of them fascinating.

A Sort of Samurai by James Melville (35) A re-read, a case early in the reader's acquaintance with Inspector Tetsuo Otani of the Hyogo Prefectural Police. I wish more of Melville's enjoyable Otani novels were available as e-books; at the moment, only the first three are.

In process:
With Zeal and Bayonets Only by Matthew Spring
The Philadelphia Campaign: Brandywine and the Fall of Philadelphia by Thomas J. McGuire
Queen Victoria's Book of Spells Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran by Michael Axworthy
The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon by John Ferling
John Macnab by James Buchan
Dodger by Terry Pratchett
Little, Big by John Crowley

Recently read:

Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman (24) More of Gaiman's excellent short fiction and poetry. Some striking horror, comedy, and of course comedic horror in this collection of short tales from the inimitable tale-spinner.

Lincoln's Spymaster: Thomas Haines Dudley and the Liverpool Network by David Hepburn Milton (25) A counterpoint to Our Man in Chalreston, an account of the Quaker lawyer from New Jersey who served for ten years as US consul in Liverpool, documenting and trying to thwart the Confederate use of the neutral UK as a base for building and equipping its small by very modern fleet of commerce raiders. This book, among other things, provides clear evidence of how heavily some factions in the UK supported the Confederate states, to Britain's eternal shame.

The Surgeon's Mate by Patrick O'Brian (26) More sailing war stories, glimpses of Regency domestic life and finances, and intelligence web-spinning, as Lucky Jack Aubrey and Dr Stephen Maturin travel from Nova Scotia to Britain, to the Baltic, to Paris, and all the stormy seas in between.

In process:
ISIS: The State of Terror by Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger
The Ionian Mission by Patrick O'Brian
With Zeal and Bayonets Only by Matthew Spring
Queen Victoria's Book of Spells Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran by Michael Axworthy

Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South by Christopher Dickey (15) I quite enjopyed this book, despite not being generally that interested in 19th century American history, to include that of the Civil War. This book describes the person and activities of Robert Bunch while he held the position of British Consul in the city of Charleston, South Carolina, from 1853 to 1864. It's quite a fascinating read, the story of a man with ardent anti-slavery beliefs forced to live and cultivate relationships with soime of the most ferocious advocates of slavery in the American South. At one point I hoped to have a career as a foreign service officer, so I find accounts of the realities of the diplomatic life provide an interesting glimspe of a world I trained to live in but missed out on. Bunch took many risks in his role--somewhere between a proper diplomat, an intelligence officer, and a commercial representative of the Crown. He forged unique relationships with some highly placed mambers of Britain's foreign policy elite The book also gives us insights into the background of the issues and contorversies Bunch was responsible for reporting on, including the attempts to subvert and then defy the US government's committment to end the slave trade. Some characters that pass through these pages are familiar from other books I've read (which seem to have fallen between the cracks of my reporting)--including Sen. Charles Sumner from The Greater Journey and Charleston Harbor itself from War on the Waters.

One Christmas in Washington by David J. Bercuson and Holger H. Herwig (16) A rather mediocre history of the Arcadia Conference (the first meeting between FDR and Churchill and their staffs to plan war strategy after America's entry into World War II), this book may have suffred from having two authors. I don't know what their work process was, but if they wrote separate portions and then tried to knit them together, it might help explain some of the work's idiosyncracies, like revisiting a topic already described as if it were being raised for the first time. Other problems are more mysterious, like describing events completely out of their correct time (at one point during the narrative, the fall of Signapore is discuseed as if it happened during Churchill's trip to Washington, even though it took place a month later). Some of the authors' descriptions of the relevant characters are thorough and well put together. Others are mere caricatures, lacking depth or understanding of their subjects. In particular, their focus on making Eleanor Roosevelt out to be a petty, catty housewife, more concerned with scoring personal snubs than policy or principle is nothing short of regrettable. They seem overly attached to describing Churchill's eccentricities, instead of getting a closer look at his personality. And it is only fitfully that one glimpses FDR's personality and strategy through the constant barrage anecdotes about his dog and his propensity for making cocktails. While it seems to provide the basic facts of the conference, this rather scattershot and ditzy account of Arcadia could surely be improved upon. One cause for celebration: I notice that the overblown and inaccurate subtitle of the recorded edition--"the secret meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill that changed the world"--appears to have been replaced with a less grandiose and more accurate one--"Churchill and Roosevelt Forge the Grand Alliance"--in subsequent editions.

Snuff by Terry Pratchett (17) Another excellent adventure for Sam Grimes, his family, the police force of Ankh-Morpork, and a host of new and familiar Discworld characters. Pratcheet at his best, combining well developed characters with exciting stories and thoughtful moral commentary.

I seem to have forgotten to report on

War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 by James M. McPherson (18?) and
The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough (19?)

both excellent books that I greatly enjoyed (though I hear only an abridged version of the latter). I've got to figure out where my reviews of them went to, and if I missed any others.

In Progress:

The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 by Alistair Horne
Brilliance of the Moon by Lian Hearn
With Zeal and Bayonets Only by Matthew Spring
Blood of Victory by Alan Furst
Queen Victoria's Book of Spells Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran by Michael Axworthy

Also waiting are a whole slew of new books on the American Revolutiuon, especially a coupel of books on the campaign of 1777 in Pennsylvania and environs.

Since I haven't managed to decide between GoodReads and LibraryThing yet, I'll stach another list of books read here for the moment.

Read:
A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett (1)
Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett (2)
Holes by Louis Sachar (3)
Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett (4)
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett (5)
Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett (6)
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett (7)
Making Money by Terry Pratchett (8)
Thud! by Terry Pratchett (9)
The Philadelphia Campaign: June 1777-July 1778 by David G. Martin (10)
Storm Front by Jim Butcher (11)
Fool Moon by Jim Butcher (12)

In progress:

With Zeal and Bayonets Only by Matthew Spring
The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 by Alistair Horne
Dunkirk: Retreat to Victory by Julian Thompson
Queen Victoria's Book of Spells Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett (44)
Guards, Guards by Terry Pratchett (45)

I'm quite enjoying Terry Pratchett, now that JMR got me started on him. Some of the things that held me back from reading him all these years (the 'just a bit too clever' cleverness, the slight air of smugness) are still there and occasionally irritate, but when I look back at authors I was quite fond of in the past, I see faults as or more egregious. And often those old favourites, on being revisted, don't have the wit and charm that I find in Pratchett. He's like a slightly sharper, slightly more bitter, but also slightly less predictable P.G. Wodehouse.

JMR suggested I read Men at Arms first, and I did, then picked Guards, Guards to follow it with as it seemed to be where the characters I had already met had been introduced. The "message" in M@A was heavy-handed and obvious, but it didn't intrude too much into the story, and the characters were entertaining and interesting enough that they occupied my attention thoroughly. Likewise, what seemed to be the thrust of G**2 was...there...but he didn't seem to feel the need to prose on about it forever, and the story itself was fun to read and the characters (again) entertaining.

In news unrelated to books, I'm growing my beard back, it being the end of the reenacting season (limited as it was for us this year).

In Progress

Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett
Blood of Victory by Alan Furst
Dunkirk: Retreat to Victory by Julian Thompson
Queen Victoria's Book of Spells Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
1914: The Days of Hope by Lyn MacDonald
Learn Python the Hard Way by Zed A. Shaw
Think Python: How To Think Like a Computer Scientist by Allen B. Downey
The Somme by Robin Prior and Trevor Williams
What Color Is Your Parachute? 2015: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers by Richard N. Bolles
Crisis on the Danube: Napoleon's Austrian Campaign of 1809 by James R. Arnold
McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon
The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston
Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran by Michael Axworthy
Boer Commando by Denneys Reitz
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Other New York: The American Revolution Beyond New York City Ed. by Joseph S. Tiedemann and Eugene R. Fingerhut

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter (26) Carter has always struck me as the best president in my lifetime. Not the "nicest" president or the "best person"--the best *president*. While I think he is a very *good* person, and a true Christian (as I was brought up to understand Christ's message), those are usually ways people diminish him, damning him with faint praise. "Oh, he was too honest to be president" or "oh, he was so much better as an ex-president". But, by implication, "he was an awful *president*." Nonsense. Far too many people have bought into the mythology of the Reagan era and the GOP fiction spinners who have run the White House for more than half the time I've been alive. This book (the recorded version of which, to my delight, is read by the President himself) chronicles one of his greatest achievements--the Camp David Peace Accords--but also the failure of subsequent US presidents to put the sort of pressure on all parties that Carter did, and the subsequent growth of unilateral, imperialist policy in Israel, scuttling the peace process because it can simply take whatever it wants, with the supine acceptance of the United States and the rest of the western powers. Carter is unsparing of his own naivete and ignorance, his optimism in hoping that Israeli and Arab leaders could be convinced of the benefits to be gained by working together to achieve stability. His conclusion is that, as much as Israel thinks it can simply create stability with guns and bulldozers, concrete and barbed wire, it will only continue to stoke the frustration and determination of Palestinians to resist occupation and tyranny. Both sides need to come together with honest intent before peace can be achieved; Carter is much more hopeful than I am that this will eventually happen.

Berlin Diary by William Shirer (27) Literally, Shirer's diaries of his time as foreign correspondent in Berlin from 1933 to 1940. Shirer concealed some names of persons and places to protect friends, peers, and sources in case his journals were seized by the Nazi government, but the names that remain include Edward R. Murrow (his co-worker and boss at ABC) and Joseph Harsch (an alumnus of Williams College I met briefly, who like Murrow and Shirer is one of the legends of wartime reporting from World War Two) as well as all the famous figures of European politics of the 1930s and 40s, large and small, whose deeds and words Shirer reports with unflinching candor and much insight and humour. Having read so much of went on in these days as dry history, I found it fascinating to hear the perspective of a reporter working in the middle of the events, recording day by day his perceptions of the events unfolding around him. Equally interesting, in a geeky way, were the insights one gets from his adventures about the technical side of radio broadcasting and the often remarkable lengths to which reporters had to go to get their stories on air (and the lengths that the German government would go to to control what news went out, both sly tricks--like using studio microphones that reduced background noise, so listeners couldn't hear the sounds of an air raid going on during the broadcast--to heavy-handed censorship.) Shirer saw daily life in Germany and neighboring countries before and during the war, from political riots in Paris to head of state visits in Italy, covering the Nazi seizure of Austria, traveling to Poland to see the fighting firsthand and to to France and the Low Countries to see the aftermath of the 1940 blitzkrieg. For much of the war, Shirer's wife and daughter lived in nearby, neutral Switzerland, and the contrast he observed in his visits to them between wartime Germany (literally darkened and under sever rationing) and the bright, bustling nightlife of Berne and Zurich was quite remarkable. I was glad that I had recently read Lynne Olson's Those Angry Days, as a number of personalities of the time get mentions here which I would not have understood as well if I hadn't been introduced to them already.

Dragonsong and Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey (28 and 29) Re-reading some YA books I enjoyed in S. Still enjoyable light reading.

Mistress Masham's Repose by T.H. White (30) An old family favourite, this was one of Melissa's picks when we were scavenging an awesome used bookstore in Sidney, BC. I re-read it after she was done, and found it agreeable, but a little tiresome in its heavy-handed humour. Taking some ideas and situations from classic literature and re-applying them to a YA adventure: A+. Attempted satire: C-.

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan (31) A fascinating story of the first great forest fire after the creation of the national forest system in the United States. This revisits several characters whom I met in Edmund Morris's three-volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt, like Roosevelt himself and his successor in the presidency, the hapless and feeble William Howard Taft. It even mentions William Allen White, who I'm sure was mentioned in Morris but who served as a central character in (again) Lynne Olson's Those Angry Days, given his role in pushing America out of isolation and towards participation in World War Two. But most of all, this book gives gives me a broader picture of Gifford Pinchot, advisor to TR and FDR and sometime governor of Pennsylvania, but first and foremost the architect of the National Forest system and the first head of the US Forest Service. This tale conveys his passion for forestry and conservation, stoked by his ealry mentor, John Muir. Much of the story deals with Pinchot's battles with the timber and railroad barons who wanted to exploit public lands for their resources and turn them into a vast patchwork of mines, factories, towns, and cities. Pinchot (under TR and, for a while, Taft) fought a losing battle against these predatory corporate trusts and their congressional allies, trying to preserve the wild beauty of the West for future generations. While the great fire of 1910 was a disaster of epic proportions for the western forests and the homesteaders and towns that lay in its path, Pinchot used the heroic deeds of the outmatched forest rangers who tried to fight it. With an astute sense of politics and public relations, Pinchot turned the tide of public opinion and forced through reforms that allowed the Forest Service to grow and assume a more powerful role. Ironically, however, the men who went on to lead the service worked hand in glove with the timber barons in a way that horrified Pinchot. And the lessons that the Forest Service chose to learn from the fire, that all fires, no matter how small, had to be fought to extinction, actually worked against the health of the forests, as it brought to a halt the cycle of cleaning and revitalizing burns that had kept the forest ecosystems healthy.

In Progress

Dark Star by Alan Furst
Wilson by A. Scott Berg
Dunkirk: Retreat to Victory by Julian Thompson
Queen Victoria's Book of Spells Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
Master and God by Lindsey Davis
1914: The Days of Hope by Lyn MacDonald
Learn Python the Hard Way by Zed A. Shaw
The Somme by Robin Prior and Trevor Williams
What Color Is Your Parachute? 2015: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers by Richard N. Bolles
Crisis on the Danube: Napoleon’s Austrian Campaign of 1809 by James R. Arnold
McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon
The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston
Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran by Michael Axworthy
Boer Commando by Denneys Reitz
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Other New York: The American Revolution Beyond New York City Ed. by Joseph S. Tiedemann and Eugene R. Fingerhut

Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 by Lynne Olson (18) I need to come back and give this a proper review later, but it's another excellent book about America in the 1930s, which has broadened my appreciation of the politics and society of that period and provided more material for my ever-changing impressions of FDR. Like Blackett's War, this is not truly centered exclusively on its titular protagonists, as the action covers a much wider sweep of American and European personalities than even these two larger than life men constitute. As have many books I've encountered in the last few years, it gives me a pang of longing for something now long-dead, the liberal, progressive wing of the Republican Party, featuring as it does the few remaining hangers-on to the ideals of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, among whom I think Wendell Wilkie (a man I knew almost nothing about before encountering him in this book) should be numbered.

Wobble to Death and The Detective Wore Silk Drawers by Peter Lovesey (19) and (20) Two of a series of novels about a police detective in Victorian London. I remember seeing several of these stories televised in the 1980s. They're all right, but not great; they feature murders set in two of the popular sports of the time: long-distance competitive walking and (illegal) bare-knuckle boxing. I'm still trying to drag out of memory what the other detective series by a modern author set in the Victorian era was, since this wasn't it.

The Dragon Scroll by I.J. Parker (22) A detective novel of Heian-era (11th century) Japan. I'd read a selection of one story online and bought up a couple of copies of Parker's series cheaply on the strength of it. I'm glad that they were very cheap, as I find from closer acquaintance that not only is her style heavily dependent on that of Robert van Gulik (who she credits as her inspiration), but her writing is not very good and (this novel, at least) filled with attitudes, behaviours, and physical culture that seem entirely out of place in Japan, let alone medieval Japan. Most of her characters sound and act very much like modern Western people, which is highly disappointing.

Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East by Jared Cohen (23) A travelogue by an American postgraduate student wandering through the Middle East, meeting and interviewing young people in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Considering that the author had traveled through some pretty hairy parts of central Africa and was a Rhodes Scholar in international relations at Oxford, he seems to have been remarkably, astonishingly naïve and ill-informed about the places he went during the course of researching this book. That he parlayed his experiences into a job on the US State Department's policy planning staff and advisor to two Secretaries of State is even more amazing. Despite his quite remarkable lack of understanding of the places he went and the people he encountered, his book is nonetheless quite interesting and enjoyable, both for the insights it provides into popular culture and political discourse among young people in a pivotal region, but also for the simple human interactions he engages in with ordinary people throughout the region.

In progress:

Dunkirk: Retreat to Victory by Julian Thompson
Berlin Diary by William Shirer
Shinju by Laura Joh Rowland
Queen Victoria's Book of Spells Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

The Chinese Bell Murders by Robert van Gulik (11) Another interesting set of Chinese mysteries from the Dutch Sinophile and diplomat van Gulik. Judge Dee handles a crime of passion, a gang of smugglers, an ancient feud, and a suspicious monastery with the help of this two trusty lieutenants and his dependable sergeant.

Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman--from World War to Cold War by Michael Dobbs (12) It would take some time to give this book a proper review, but as an opener let me say that I found it much more satisfying then the similar work by Michael Beschloss that I recently listened to. Some of the difference is doubtles due to the latter having been an abridged version (I hate those), but I find Dobbs to be, among other things, simply a better writer. That said, what stands out is the richness of detail and the vivdness of the character portraits he provides, things that might well be compressed in an abridged edition. Likewise, the breadth of the topics touched on is incomparably to the advantage of Dobbs's book. One fair point of comparison, I think, is that while Dobbs introduces a good many of the people invovled in the events of the period, from US Ambassador Averill Harriman and Soviet FM Molotov right the way down to the American and Russian soldiers meeting for the first time along the Elbe River, his focus remains on the principals: FDR (and later Truman), Stalin, and Churchill. Beschloss spends a tremendous amount of time and attention on Henry Morgenthau, Jr. While he was an important advisor to FDR and a major player in the considerations behind Allied treatment of postwar Germany, it makes little sense to pay more attention to him even than to Roosevelt, especially given that his plan for the occupation, though an important chip in the three-power game of poker, wwas never implemented.

The Wages of Zen by James Melville (13) and A Sort of Samurai by James Melville (14) I've started rereading Melville's Superintendent Otani mysteries, enjoyable stories about a mid-ranking Japanese police official in the city of Kobe. Otani, who served briefly in World War Two, is in middle age when we meet him in these tales, set in the 1970s. Otani-san is ably assisted by two colorful characters, Kimura-san, who handles the department's contacts with foreigners, and Noguchi-san (informally known as "Ninja"), who deals with Kobe's underworld denizens. Otani's wife, Hanae, often figures as a supporting character, and his radical-turned-solid-middle-class daughter and son-in-law are never too far away. In The Wages of Zen, the police are called in to a Zen temple to investigate drug smuggling that isn't but soon find a murder has taken place. In A Sort of Samurai, Kimura's language skills and debonair charm are required as the police investigate a suspicious death and some related unpleasantness. Melville (real name R.P. Martin), an Englishman, spent many years in Japan in various diplomatic and cultural positions and was well able to give Western readers a glimpse into the world of postwar Japanese culture. I imagine that his Kobe of the 1970s and 1980s might seem almost as foreign to today's younger Japanese as it was to European and American readers when the novels were published. Melville's stories are entertaining and enlightening without being hugely demanding; his characters are genuine and full o f personality, well rounded rather than simple cut-outs.

The Ultimate Battle: Okinawa 1945—The Last Epic Struggle of World War II by Bill Sloan (15) My reading of this follows my reading of Sloan's book on the battle of Peleliu, Brotherhood of Heroes. Since the two campaigns followed each other as well, many of the US Marine Corps men familiar from that book appear here as well, almost like old friends. Reading Brotherhood was wrenching, a tiny glimpse of the horrific conditions of fighting, even living, in the conditions that Marines suffered under in that battle being enough to turn one's stomach. The same can be said for Ultimate Battle, which conveys the brutality, the awfulness, the bitterness of losing friends and comrades, the horror of warfare, the frightful conditions on the ground, the mixture of fear and adrenaline rush of fighting off kamikaze attacks at sea, the stolid determination of the Japanese military (who knew they could not win the battle in any sense of the word) to inflict as much damage as possible on their enemy before they died, and of the destruction and terror of the native Okinawan noncombatant population, truly the shrimp crushed in the battles of the whales. Even the aftermath, in which is detailed the end of the war and the last attempts by fanatics to hold out in Japan, even to the extent of trying to overthrow the wartime government and the emperor in order to keep fighting, is fascinating. And the recounting of the postwar lives of the men who survived the fighting, who have become familiar to the reader, is heart-warming in its assurance that so many were able to find purpose and live on to ripe old age, many of them being interviewed by Sloan for the book, sixty years and more after the war.

In progress:
Blackett's War by Stephen Budiansky
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Dunkirk: Retreat to Victory by MG Julian Thompson
Crisis on the Danube: Napoleon’s Austrian Campaign of 1809 by James R. Arnold
McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon
The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston
Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran by Michael Axworthy
Boer Commando by Denneys Reitz