Recent Reading: Non Fiction

 Alamo In The Ardennes by John McManus

The story of the Battle of the Bulge usually centers on the 101st Airborne Division and its defense of the besieged and surrounded town of Bastogne until rescued by Patton's Third Army, and it is indeed a memorable event.  Years ago, while noted WW2 historian John McManus was interviewing veterans of the 101st, some of them mentioned that the unsung heroes of the Bulge were the soldiers of the 28th Infantry Division, which prompted McManus to do the research and tell their previously untold story.

The German plan for their winter offensive, which began on December 16, 1944, was to capture the key road hub of Bastogne by mid-day on December 17 and then pivot northwest and cross the Meuse River.  The entire offensive was a desperate gamble with very little chance of success, but failing to seize Bastogne would doom even that small chance.

The 28th Division had just been through a brutal struggle in the Hurtgen Forest and was sent to a quiet section of the front in north Luxembourg to recuperate.  Instead they found themselves taking the main blow of the surprise German offensive.  What followed were a series of small scale engagements; company and squad size, in which the American infantry, usually outnumbered 5 or 10 to 1 and facing German Panzer divisions, were able to slow down the planned advance while sacrificing themselves in the process.  The hardest-hit regiment of the 28th lost all but 400 of its 3,250 soldiers.  Not to be forgotten was the assistance from from Combat Commands of the 9th and 10th Armored Divisions which were rushed to the scene with directions to slow down the Germans and suffered terribly in accomplishing that task.

The result was that German forces only began their approach to Bastogne late on December 19, which gave time for the 101st to reach the town and hold it.  By the next day, when the Germans reached the area in force, it was too late to launch a direct assault on the town.  Though the siege now began, the German strategic gamble had failed.

McManus does a great job in the book balancing the big picture with the details on these small-scale engagements.  He tells the stories of individual soldiers and, at times, provides almost a shell by shell narrative.  A compelling book providing well-deserved recognition for these brave Americans.

The Widowed Ones by Chris Enss

When George Armstrong Custer died at the Little Bighorn in 1876, he did so along with two of his younger brothers, a nephew, and a brother-in-law.  The Widowed Ones is about the seven officer wives left as widows and what happened to them in the years after.  George's widow, Libby served as the center for trying to keep them together and sane in dealing with the aftermath.  It is a fascinating story but I was disappointed with the book which was not well-written and not particularly insightful about the women.

One Damn Thing After Another by William Barr

An autobiography of the two-time Attorney General and a rollicking read because the last three quarters are about his tumultuous 22 months as AG in the Trump administration.  He defends the President when he did things that are defensible, he criticizes him freely for things that weren't, and is very insightful about Trump's personality.  Worth a read.  Some of the content is captured in an interview Barr gave to Bari Weiss last year about which I wrote (see Unbarred).  I may write about the book in a separate post.

Napoleon In Egypt by Paul Strathern

Napoleon's expedition to conquer Egypt in 1798 is extraordinary.  Leaving Europe and revolutionary France on what seemed a quixotic adventure and one, as Paul Strathern explains, understandable in the context of an extraordinary man.  The author tells the story in an effortless way.  A pleasure to read. 

Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb by James M Scott

The subtitle tells it all.  The author provides a more sympathetic, or at least more understandable, portrait of LeMay than seen in most recent books on the subject.  We learn of the debates around the logistic, technological, political, and military considerations that led to the decision to firebomb Japanese cities.  Along the way, Scott also exposes the reader to the brutal reality of the horror in Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945, as we follow the fate of some of those caught in the firestorm which killed more than 100,000 residents.  Highly recommended.

Moral Capital by Christopher Leslie Brown

The history of British abolitionism.  A scholarly book on the origins of British sentiment on abolishing slavery, beginning in the early 18th century and exploring why that sentiment did not coalesce into an effective political program until the latter part of the 1780s.  It is very interesting but heavy going for a casual reader.  Brown emphasizes the key role played by the American Revolution in spurring British abolitionism to become a political force.  Contra to the argument made by the 1619 Project that the abolition movement started in Britain and the threat of ending slavery was a significant motivator in the revolution, Brown argues the opposite.  Brown points out that similar abolitionist sentiment began in the colonies earlier in the century and that, for British who supported the revolutionaries, the ending of slavery in several of the newly independent states, served as an inspiration.  For those opposed to the colonists who enjoyed pointing out the hypocrisy of those proclaiming liberty while enslaving others, they, in turn, were forced to face their own hypocrisy because of the existence of large-scale slavery in the Caribbean sugar islands.

Gentleman Revolutionary by Richard Brookhiser

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Those words were written by Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816), who also "wrote" or assembled the rest of the Constitution, stitching it together from the various resolutions passed at the Constitutional Convention.  Morris later served as Minister to France during the Revolution and Terror and late in life was responsible for the street grid pattern of Manhattan and instrumental in the construction of the Erie Canal.

Brookhiser has written a series of brief biographies of the Founders.  This one is fine, but more like a sketch of an interesting life, and it's not as good as some of his others.

The War On Heresy by R.I. Moore

Learned of this book while listening to a three-part The Rest Is History podcast on the Albigensian Crusade (honest, I really did).  The first part addressed the nonsense in the Dan Brown books, while the final episodes were on what really happened and why.  Moore is a well-known medieval scholar who, based on his more recent research, completely revised his views on the origins of the Albigensians and the reasons for the Crusade declared by the Church against the people of Languedoc.  According to Moore, there was not a secret church based on ancient beliefs.  Rather, unsophisticated people in the region had various versions of beliefs that were consistent with different strands of Christianity.  Unfortunately, they ran into a series of Pope's determined to regularize doctrine and bureaucratize belief.  There's a lot more to the book and it's another one I plan to write about in a separate post.

The Soviet Century: Archaeology Of A Lost World by Karl Schlogel

I've only read bits and pieces of this book, because it is 900 pages and not meant to be read all the way through in one burst.  The author is a German scholar of Eastern Europe and the book is a tour of the Soviet world, examining the artifacts of that lost civilization, exploring what it was really like to live in that unique place.  We have chapters on the queues that formed every day; on doorbells, nameplates and signals; communal apartments; on the management of libraries and publications; Stalin's cookbook; the Beryozka shops; and prison camp tattoos.  A great read in small doses.  In its strangeness and weirdness it reminds me of the best book on the post-Stalin Soviet Union, Red Plenty. 

I'm also nearing the end of the two volume journal of Lafayette's 1824-25 return to America of which I've written about recently and to which I will return once completing.