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What are You Reading?


Epigonos

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  • 3 weeks later...

I am just starting on Jeffrey Toobin's new book True Crimes & Misdemeanors, the Investigation of Donald Trump.

Recently I finsihed novels by John Grisham- Camino Winds, and Scott Turow- The Last Trial. Never Ask Me by Jeff Abbott was good too.

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Believe it or not I have over dosed on nonfiction books on the World War II naval war in the Pacific. Am currently reading my fifteenth book on the subject - "Sink Em All: Submarine Warfare in the Pacific" by Charles A. Lockwood. I saw the film Midway which picked by in interest in reading something about the Battle of Midway. Being the obsessive compulsive I am, it just mushroomed from there. I still have nine more book to read on the subject. I tend to get hooked on a certain subject and then go way overboard.

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I recently read a history of the Vikings, which led me to The Birth of the West by Paul Collins, about the historical importance of the 10th century, in which the simultaneous pressures of both the Vikings from the north and the Muslims from the south were critical in the creation of what became a recognizable western European civilization.

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Remember Emma Donoghue’s Room, made into the award winning 2015 movie? I just finished her latest, The Pull of the Stars. It is set Fall 1918, another mainly claustrophobic environment, a special makeshift maternity ward in a hospital supplies closet for Spanish flu infected women giving birth in Dublin. The protagonist a nurse/midwife.

 

Conceived and written just prior to the current CoV pandemic. It reads at a blistering thrilling pace. If you think we have it bad ...

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  • 1 month later...

Just finished all 1,000 plus pages of the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - one of many reads but now it is in a different context.

As many know, the Germans, Nazis in particular, were incredible record keepers and note takers. All of Hitler's meeting were transcribed, all of his generals, admirals, major party members kept almost daily diaries. All of this was quoted in the book as well as introduced as evidence at Nuremberg.

What is frightening fascinating is if you close your eyes - it is Trump. The verbiage, the actions, the claims, the lies - all Trump.

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'Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe' By John Boswell.

 

Fascinating to find out that same-sex unions were blessed and performed in the early Christian Church! This evidence is kept hidden in the Vatican Archives and kept from the general public.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-Sex_Unions_in_Pre-Modern_Europe

 

 

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Edited by Danny-Darko
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"The Day Before America - Changing The Nature Of A Continent" by William H. MacLeish......

 

from the jacket: "MacLeish paints a heart-rending portrait of the lush, miraculous New World on the eve of the Encounter - the arrival of the first Europeans, after which nothing would be the same".....

 

fascinating to me is a map of the extent of the Ice Age in North America inside the front cover...............and a map of the US Interstate and state highway system inside the back cover.....very clever and, somehow, sad

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I'm still on a World War II in the Pacific kick. So far I've read twenty books on the subject. I just finished the final volume, "Twilight of the Gods" of the Pacific War Trilogy by Ian W. Toll -- outstanding. I love the Wagnerian title. I am currently reading "Clash of the Carriers: The True Story of the Marianas Turkey Shoot of World War II" by Barrett Tillman which I'm quite enjoying. Next up is "Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King" by Thomas B. Buell. I read Buell's The "Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A Spurance" and very much enjoyed it so I'm looking forward to the King biography. I would also recommend E.B. Potters two biographies "Bull Halsey" and "Nimitz" both are outstanding.

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Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship by Jon Meacham. $10.99 paperback at Costco, originally published in 2003. Kind of granular but would be of great interest to history buffs. Shows a crafty FDR and and even craftier Winston.

 

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam. Been on the best seller for a while - $15.99 at Costco. Have only sampled a few pages but very readable.

 

The Last Juror by John Grisham. This is my 10th Grisham book since lock down - I bought about 15 of them off Craigslist last year for just a few bucks. You just can't beat Grisham for readability and interesting plot (though a couple of them ended sadly).

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I am reading Empires of the Sea by Roger Crowley, about the titanic struggle between Christians and Muslims for control of the Mediterranean in the 16th century. The vivid descriptions of the conditions endured by the citizens of Malta during the three month siege of the island by Ottoman forces in 1565 is a humbling counterpoint to complaints about our 2020 lockdowns.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I am just starting on Jeffrey Toobin's new book True Crimes & Misdemeanors, the Investigation of Donald Trump.

Recently I finsihed novels by John Grisham- Camino Winds, and Scott Turow- The Last Trial. Never Ask Me by Jeff Abbott was good too.

I hadn’t realized that was Toobin’s latest book. Ironic title given his recent experience.

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Just finished all 1,000 plus pages of the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - one of many reads but now it is in a different context.

As many know, the Germans, Nazis in particular, were incredible record keepers and note takers. All of Hitler's meeting were transcribed, all of his generals, admirals, major party members kept almost daily diaries. All of this was quoted in the book as well as introduced as evidence at Nuremberg.

What is frightening fascinating is if you close your eyes - it is Trump. The verbiage, the actions, the claims, the lies - all Trump.

I agree. I read RFTR years ago and in these last 4 years have had flashbacks to the arc of history of the 30’s. Today I’m thinking maybe Donald will burn down the White House rather than relinquishing it to Biden. Shades of the Reichstag.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Singular Sensation by Michael Riedel.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1501166638/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_2?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

 

A follow-up to his first book, Razzle Dazzle, it's an in-depth look at the business of Broadway through the 90s.

 

Well-written, dishy, informative and a fun read if you're a lover of Broadway.

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As anybody who knows me well, knows reading is one of the great joys of my life. I read constantly, frequently two or three books at a time. Thus I’m always looking for new things to read. I frequently get fixated on a topic and attempt to ready everything I can find regarding it – that explains the nine book I have recently read on The Battle of Midway. There are actually two more that I want to read but they are both way out of print and very expensive. Knowing me I will eventually spring for the money because I WANT to read the books.

SO WHAT ARE YOU GUYS READING?

 

I have read these Midway books and greatly enjoyed them:

 

Boreneman, Walter R., “The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King – The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea”.

Buell, Thomas B., “The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance”.

Carlson, Elliot, “Joe Rochefort’s War: The Odyssey of the Codebreaker Who Outwitted Yamamoto at Midway”.

Kleiss, N. Jack “Dusty Kleiss, “Never Call Me a Hero: A Legendary American Dive-Bomber Pilot Remembers the Battle of Midway”.

Martell, Ronald E., Showdown in the Pacific War: Nimitz and Yamamoto”.

Potter, E.B., “Nimitz”.

Prange, Gordon W., “Miracle at Midway”.

Rigby, David, “Air Group Commander Wade McClusky and the Battle of Midway”.

Symonds, Craig L., “The Battle of Midway”.

 

I’ve also recently read and enjoyed:

 

Kaufman, Jonathan, “The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties that Helped Create Modern China”.

McGrath, Tim: “James Monroe: A Life”.

 

I am about to read:

 

Penn, Thomas, “A Royal Tragedy: The Brothers York”.

Santopietro, Tom, “Considering Doris Day”.

You should check out Ian Toll’s Pacific Trilogy. The writing is exceptional. The first volume, Pacific Crucible, contains great stories about FDR making cocktails for Churchill when he visited the White House for a few weeks in early 1942. For some reason, the Pacific War never received the attention that the European theater did. It was a titanic struggle in which the US did most of the heavy lifting, with help from Australia and NZ. At one point there were 1 million US servicemen in Australia.

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In my school days, Dad gave a birthday gift of Clay Blair, Jr.'s "Silent Victory", a comprehensive record of the Pacific theater's naval warfare during the Second World War. Mainly focused on the submariner experiences, I wondered why he chose this for me, but after getting started on the 1,071 page tome, it became a most interesting read about the men and machines of the sub service. My younger brother would help himself to read it, and eventually he became a submariner himself. I still will grab it to read myself to sleep, some 40 years on. My retired escort friend in Miami and I are working our way through the Augusten Burroughs works,discussing-as a book club- after each one and I've just ordered through the reopened library system here a copy of "Hillbilly Elegy".

Hillbilly Elegy is a great read.

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  • 2 months later...

I am currently reading The Global Age by Ian Kershaw, a history of Europe from 1950 to 2017. It is very long and detailed, so it has taken me a long time to get through it, but it interests me because I spent a lot of time in western and central Europe in the last third of the 20th century, at different times living in England, studying in Austria, and working in Czechoslovakia, so I lived through a lot of what he is describing, and I think he gets most of his analysis right.

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