Thankful

At year's end I want to give my thanks to Big Medicine and Big Pharma.  Joking here, as I dislike these phrases which are commonly used in a negative context so, while I have my criticisms of specific elements of the health care system, I'm going to use the labels in a positive way. 

Here's why.  In March, I had a saddle embolism, a large blood clot in my lungs, which temporarily stopped my heart from beating.  Thanks to two Picacho Peak State Park rangers, the Avra Valley EMTs, and the team at Northwest Tucson Medical Center, I made it through okay.

Due to the innovation of Big Medicine, the embolism was extracted from me the next day via a procedure that did not exist in 2005 and only came into common use less than 15 years ago.  If this happened back then I would have been hospitalized for several days, eventually sent home and required to stay in bed for a lengthy period while, hopefully, the blood thinners did their job and reduced the clot, all the time at continued risk of another heart stoppage.  Even if the clot dissolved there was a substantial risk of permanent heart damage because of the continued pressure of the embolism upon the heart.  Instead, the clot was removed in a 45-minute procedure, I was discharged less than 24 hours later, had a speedy and full recovery with no permanent damage, and was back to my regular routine, including exercise, within a month.

And here's where Big Pharma comes in.  The blood thinner I will be taking for the rest of my life is both more effective and has fewer side effects than prior blood thinners.  In fact, in my case, there have been no side effects.  Made by Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer, it only came on the market in 2012.    

So a big thank you to both.  Happy to still be here. 

Reading 2025: Non-Fiction Part 2

King George, Lords North and Germain, Generals Clinton, Cornwallis, Howe, Burgoyne, the Earl of Sandwich, and Admiral Rodney are The Men Who Lost America according to Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy (now that's a catchy moniker!).  The book is both a biography and a chronology of the key British figures in the prosecution of the war against the American rebels.  Lots of interesting information: I had not realized how quickly many of the players discovered the war unwinnable.  However, the structure of the book leads to a lot of repetition and the writing is pedestrian.

I've written a couple of prior posts about my readings on slavery (here's one) and this year read Atlantic Cataclysm: Rethinking the Atlantic Slave Trades by David Eltis, described by Henry Louis Gates Jr of Harvard as "a tour de force by the world's leading scholar of the slave trade".  It is the reflection of a life's work by the author and he reaches some surprising conclusions.  I'd previously read The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas by Eltis, covering the period from the early 1500s to the early 18th century.

Slavery in part of the Old World is the subject of Justin Marozzi's Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World.  Though covering a longer period (1,000 years compared to 350) the number of Africans trafficked in the respective trades are similar.  I will be writing a longer piece reflecting on the Eltis and Marozzi books in 2026.  Both are highly recommended. 

Not surprisingly, I did a lot of Civil War related reading in 2025, particularly as I often purchase books by our Roundtable speakers. 

The Great Partnership: Lee, Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy by Christian Keller, professor at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. was a very interesting study of the close relationship forged between the two over the eleven months between the Seven Days and Jackson's death at Chancellorsville.  I thought I knew everything already about that relationship but Keller brings out details, particularly about Lee and Jackson's shared religious faith, that explains their unique bond. 

Alex Rossino's investigation of the Calamity at Frederick: Lee, Special Orders No. 191, and Confederate Misfortune on the Road to Antietam was a revelation.  His methodical research process identifies the leading suspect responsible for the loss of Lee's Order 191, which when discovered by Federal soldiers revealed the position of Lee's scattered army to General George McClellan. 

I'd always found the two-week Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864 to be confusing.  Chris Mackowski's book, A Tempest of Fire and Lead, brought some needed clarity to those events.  Chris has an engaging writing style that is accessible to the non-specialist. 

Everyone has heard of Jesse James. While Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War covers his entire life, author TJ Stiles explains how Jesse's fighting experience during the Civil War shaped the remainder of his life.  There's some myth busting in this book, as Stiles shows how post-war Missouri politics assisted James in his escapades. 

In 1862, slave Robert Smalls was sent by his master to Charleston Harbor to work on a Confederate naval boat.  Smalls managed to steal the boat, smuggle his wife and two children on board and, with the help of fellow slaves, sailed it out to join the Union fleet blockading the harbor.  That story and more is the subject of Be Free or Die by Cate Lineberry.  Smalls went on to become the first black commander of vessel in the history of the U.S. Navy.  After the war, Smalls was elected to the U.S. Congress during reconstruction and purchased his former owner's house.

Was President Franklin Roosevelt effective in ending the Great Depression?  That's the topic of False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery 1933-47 by George Selgin. I grew up thinking that the answer was "of course he was!" but over the years there has been a growing controversy about the right answer.  Selgin approaches the question analytically, making a distinction between FDR's policies intended to provide relief, or to institute longer-term reforms, versus those designed in whole, or in part, to end the economic downturn.  Too much of the literature on FDR has been polemical, both pro and con, and it was helpful to have a more analytical approach. Selgin's verdict is mixed but the topic is important and complex enough that I plan on a post devoted to the book. 

I've read a good deal on the Spanish Civil War, both histories and personal accounts.  The latter have all been from the Republican perspective (including Alan Furst's outstanding historical novels).  Mine Were of Trouble by Peter Kemp is the first from someone who fought on the Nationalist side.  Kemp was a British law student who volunteered to fight in the conflict because he was an anti-communist and heard about the atrocities committed at the start of the war.  His account is very well written and while explaining why he fought and the details of battles, it does not shy away from sordid acts committed by some of Franco's units, and provides insight into the factional disputes among groups forming the Nationalist coalition.  Kemp was badly wounded and returned to Britain; with the advent of World War II, he joined the Special Operations Executive and was infiltrated into Albania to help the partisans fight the Germans, and later into Poland, events he recounted in No Colours or Crest: The Secret Struggle for Europe, which I have also read. No Colours or Crest is quite good but Mine Were of Trouble is definitely the one to read if you have a choice.

James Holland and his partner Al Murray run one of my favorite podcasts, We Have Ways Of Making You Talk, all about World War Two.  He is also a prolific author (see here for an example) and his latest is Cassino '44, covering the Italian campaign from January 1944 through the liberation of Rome in early June of the same year.  Something I particularly appreciate about Holland's books is that he uses documents written at the time, not accounts from years later, which gives his books an immediacy.  He also nicely balances strategic discussions with the personal intimate accounts by soldiers on the ground in that grinding campaign.  Northwest Europe with Normandy and the Bulge gets more attention and celebration but we owe a lot to the Allied soldiers in the Italian campaign.

I'm currently reading Vietnam's American War by Pierre Asselin.  In Dereliction of Duty (HR McMaster's indictment of the process by which American ground forces became engaged in Vietnam)  I referenced a previous book by Asselin, Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War: 1954-65.  Asselin speaks and reads Vietnamese and has access to the archives of the Vietnam government, which have become available to researchers over the past thirty years.  His work focuses on the perspective of the Vietnam communists, and often upsets the neat story told by Western academics.  His new book takes us back into the ancient history of Vietnam, along with its colonization by France before America's involvement begins in 1954.  That background is essential because Asselin's thesis is that Vietnam was engaged in a civil war between communists/nationalists and anticommunists/nationalists into which America got dragged, rather than a conflict between patriotic Vietnamese (who happened to be commies) and the Americans and their Vietnamese puppets.  Another book I will be writing more on.

Reading 2025: Non-Fiction, Part 1

Ancient History 

What happens if you are a Greek mercenary, deep in Mesopotamia, and the guy you hired you gets killed in battle and his cause collapses?  Read Anabasis by Xenophon to find out.  Also called The March of The Ten Thousand, Anabasis is the story of those mercenaries, hired by Cyrus the Younger in 401 BC to help seize the Persian throne from his brother Artaxerxes II.  This is one of those books I'd read about countless times but had never read until this year.  Xenophon, one of the mercenary commanders, wrote Anabasis about thirty years after the events.  Before reading I'd been under the impression that the core of the book covered the fighting retreat of the Greeks after the battle of Cunaxa until they reached the Black Sea but that's only half the story.  Quite an adventure and a reminder of how different and violent the Classical world was.  

Cato the Younger was Caesar's great enemy at the end of the Roman Republic.  Fred Drogula's study attempts to reconstruct Cato's life and motives and provides a convincing explanation for his ultimate ineffectiveness and inability to help forge a compromise that might have saved the Republic.

Peter Brown is considered the leading historian of late antiquity and Through The Eye of A Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD, is a masterwork.  I had some hesitation before starting the book, worried it might be dry and too scholarly.  It is certainly scholarly but not dry and extremely well-written and engaging.  The title is from the words of Jesus as recounted in the New Testament, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."  Avoiding cynicism, Brown provides a sympathetic study of how a struggling church, embraced by a minority of the population in 350, becomes the dominant and wealthiest player in the formerly Roman west two centuries later as it tries to reconcile the words of Jesus with the conditions of the disintegrating empire.  Making the reader rethink some of the common assumptions about that era, Brown focuses on individuals like Augustine, Ambrose, Pelagius, Jerome, Ausonius and others to help the reader understand the arguments over the appropriate role of wealth and the wealthy within the Church.  In other books and articles I've found it difficult to understand the nuances of early Christian theological arguments, but Brown provides admirable clarity in this work. A very rewarding read.

A decade ago THC wrote about the history of Rome after the 4th century (Belisarius Enters Rome)  relying greatly upon Richard Krautheimer's classic work from 1980, Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308.  The last few decades have seen an upsurge in archaeological activity in Rome focused on the post-Empire history of the city and this year I read two books by Hendrik Dey incorporating the new information; The Aurelian Wall and the Refashioning of Imperial Rome, AD 271-855 and his most recent work, published in 2025, The Making of Medieval Rome: A New Profile of the City, 400-1420.  Building upon the work of Krautheimer and the recent archaeology, Dey's books provide an update portrait and way of thinking about the city during its "dark ages".  I will be writing more about both books in 2026.

Israel

The Old City of Jerusalem is, as the name states, "Old" and contains the Temple Mount.  However, it is only in the past three decades that close to, but not within, the Old City is the City of David, dating back to King David around 1000 BC.  When The Stones Speak by Doron Spielman tells the story of its discovery and excavation and the political storms ignited by the archeological work.  Spielman has worked on the project and the discovery part is quite exciting, particularly finding the passageway between the City of David and the Temple Mount.  Because the area of the City of David is adjacent to an Arab settlement and given the Palestinian strategy to deny any historical Jewish connection with Jerusalem, each step of the excavation process has triggered controversy.

In The War Of Return, Einat Wilf argues the hypothesis that the highest aspiration of the Palestinian people is to have their own state has been proven to be incorrect as they have repeatedly demonstrated that the destruction of the Jewish state is a higher priority.  She writes that the actions of the United Nations, and of Western Nations, and the peculiar nature of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has contributed to the inability to resolve the conflict.  UNRWA created a unique category of refugee for Palestinians, unlike that of the tens of millions of other refugees around the world created in the wake of WW2.  UNRWA has become a facilitator of Palestinian rejectionism and the only hope to resolve the conflict is the dissolution of UNRWA.  I previously wrote about Wilf and her hypothesis in An Irreconcilable Conflict of Principles.

Music

I read the first two volumes of Ricky Riccardi's trilogy on the life of Louis Armstrong, Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong and Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong.  Riccardi is director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in the borough of Queens, NYC (worth a visit!) and himself a musician.  This is an incredibly well researched and almost day by day account of Armstrong's life and brings a lot of previously unknown information to light.  Riccardi is a great admirer of the man but does not shy away from giving us a portrait of the man in full.  If you like Armstrong's music you'll find some new cuts to enjoy and be overwhelmed by the man's drive and talent.  It remains a miracle to me that a young man could come from such a trying and terrible background and grow to display not just enormous talent but such a positive disposition and view of life. It's why I've written many times about Armstrong.

Inspired after watching A Complete Unknown, I read Elijah Wald's, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties.   Dylan Goes Electric gave me a much better understanding of the folk music revival of the 50s, Pete Seeger's key role, and why Dylan's rejection to being annointed the savior the folkies had been searching for was so significant.  The movie and the book also inspired my recent visit to the Dylan museum in Tulsa.

Reading 2025: Fiction

My favorite novel of the past year is Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.  It only took me 40 years to get around to reading, finally prompted to do so by this article by David Polansky in The Hedgehog Review.  I'd read the other book Polansky writes about, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, about twenty years ago.  Although admiring McCarthy's writing I much prefer Lonesome Dove.

Lonesome Dove is an epic tale, and much more hard and grim than I'd anticipated.  With its two compelling main characters, equally compelling side characters, and intersecting story lines it employs some of the sentimental tropes of traditional Westerns but tells an unsentimental, unyielding and, at times, brutal story.  It took about 75 pages to fall into its rhythm but since the novel is more than 800 pages that's an acceptable admission fee.

Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae remind me of the characters played by John Wayne in John Ford's The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, half-barbarous men needed to tame the frontier but who are unsuited to live there once it is civilized.  As Gus says to Woodrow, "Me and you done our work too well. We killed off most of the people that made this country interesting to begin with".

It had been many years since reading PD James crime novels featuring Inspector Adam Dalgliesh.  The Children of Men is not a crime novel, instead set in a near future England where children are no longer born.  Though full of action it is quite a reflective and pensive novel.  In some ways the future it predicts has already happened.  

Finding a new series of well-written historical novels is always a joy.  Alfred Duggan, an Englishman born in 1903, wrote 15 novels between 1950 and his death in 1964, and I read six this year.  While some are still in print, a couple I could only find secondhand as Ace Paperbacks, sold for 50 cents back in the 1950s!  Duggan's novels are all set in the classical or medieval eras.  The ones I particularly enjoyed were Conscience of The King, a speculative life of the founder of the Kingdom of Wessex in the sixth century, The Little Emperors, the story of the final chaotic years of Roman rule in Britain during the early fifth century, told from the perspective of a bureaucrat, and Knight With Armour, the tale of an ordinary English knight on the First Crusade.  Duggan is excellent in conveying the mental framework of his characters as reflecting the eras they lived in.  

Sink The Rising Sun is the debut novel by my friend Jon Gabriel.  Set in southwestern Australia in the opening months of America's involvement in World War Two, it is the tale of a submariner trying to stop the advance of Japan into the waters of Southeast Asia.  Well-researched and written, it's a gripping tale that accurately portrays the balance between boredom and action in the naval life.  Jon was a nuclear reactor technician on a submarine and brings his experience to this adventure.  

The High Crusade is 1960 science fiction by Poul Anderson, in which English knights and villagers during the Hundred Years War encounter an alien spaceship which they seize but then, in turn, find themselves hijacked and off to adventures in a distant galaxy.  How they cope and whether they succeed or fail in their new environment makes for an amusing tale.

Thomas Perry is a crime and mystery novelist.  Pro Bono, set in California with an well imagined and engaging plot, is the first Perry novel I've read. While writing this post I looked up his bio and found that he died in September 2025.  With thirty novels published I have a lot more ahead of me. 

Another historical novelist I enjoy is Robert Harris.  Precipice is set in the summer of 1914 when a British intelligence officer is assigned to find out how secret government communications were disclosed and stumbles across the affair between Prime Minister Asquith and the young Venetia Stanley.  A good read, but not his best.  If you haven't read Harris before I recommend starting with Fatherland; Act of Oblivion; Pompeii; or An Officer and a Spy.  His 2026 release is about Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the right hand man of Augustus, a great subject for a historical novel.

Finally, I read the latest installments by three crime novelists who I've collectively read more than 50 times.

The Lincoln Lawyer, Mickey Haller, features in Michael Connelly's The Proving Ground, involving a case in which artificial intelligence plays a role in the murder of a young woman.  Another solid entry from Connelly.

The 20th novel by Robert Crais starring Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, The Big Empty, is one of his best.  A mystery with some very unexpected twists.

Martin Walker's Bruno, Chief of Police series is set in the Vezere and Dordogne River valleys of France, a frequent destination for us over the years. I enjoy the settings for the novels, but the 18th in the series, An Enemy In The Village, continues the recent trend of a decline in quality in the stories.  If I had not enjoyed the earlier books so much I would stop reading the series.

Winston's Christmas Message

When he received news of Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill felt a sense of relief, writing that on the evening of December 7 he "went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved", knowing that now that America was in the war, victory was inevitable.

He then proceeded to invite himself and his military chiefs to visit President Roosevelt in Washington DC.  Arriving on December 22, he found that FDR had provided him lodging in the White House.  Two days later, FDR asked Churchill to join him for his annual Christmas message broadcast on radio.

This was Winston's message to America: 

I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home.  Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States.  I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome,  convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.

This is a strange Christmas Eve.  Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other.  Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field.  Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart.  Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm.  Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace.

Let the children have their night of fun and laughter.  Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play.  Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.

And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.

Merry Christmas Baby

 It's that time of the year again when THC posts the Otis Redding version.