by Richard Subber | Jan 10, 2020 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, World history
American leadership never was
what we thought it was…
Book review:
Fire in the Lake:
The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
by Frances FitzGerald (b1940), a Pulitzer Prize winner
Boston: An Atlantic Monthly Press Book, Little Brown and Company, 1972
491 pages
I don’t know how much of an audience there was for Fire in the Lake in 1972. I feel confident in guessing there wasn’t enough.
The American war in Vietnam was far from over in 1972 when FitzGerald wrote this densely researched journalistic review of U. S. policies and actions and ignorance in Southeast Asia. She makes it easier to understand why the American war effort was doomed from its earliest phase.
You should read Fire in the Lake to get the whole story as it was knowable in 1972. Be prepared to acknowledge that much of what you previously believed—and thought you knew—was wrong.
The American commitment to “containing Communism” was prominent, and tragically uninformed.
South Vietnam was the wrong place to try to “contain Communism,” no matter what that might mean.
There are more than 58,000 names on the walls of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Some of them are the names of my friends.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review:
Joseph Brant and His World
“Brant was fully a Mohawk…”
by James Paxton
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 9, 2020 | Global climate change, Human Nature, Politics, Reflections, Tidbits
actually, not an unthinkable thought…
“Owing in large measure to humankind’s
long, steadily accelerating career of habitat shattering,
the rate of extinction is currently
about a thousand times what is normal.
That’s how fast the planet’s biotic community
is losing member species these days…
I can’t get that extinction crisis out of my mind.
Extinction is not abstract in the least.
It’s the thousands of instances of the desolation
of being the last of one’s kind.”
Stephanie Mills, excerpt from “The One Who Steals the Fat,” The Sun magazine, January 2001
We’re not accustomed to thinking in truly absolute terms—think about it, extinction is the end.
Think again about your grandchildren.
Think again.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shakespeare’s Wife
Germaine Greer went overboard a bit…
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 6, 2020 | Book reviews, Books, Global climate change, History, Reflections, World history
It’s worth a second read…
Book review:
On the Beach
by Nevil Shute (1899-1960)
New York: Vintage International, Vintage Books, 1957
312 pages
I could not read On the Beach again without taking on some of the terminal burden of the characters. I awakened some of my disturbing memories (Weltschmerz, perhaps) of reading it the first time, almost 60 years ago.
Maybe you think you know the story line: in the aftermath of worldwide nuclear destruction, an inescapable deadly radioactive miasma is finally devastating Australia. The land down under is the last refuge of human beings on the planet.
All of them know they’re going to die in a couple months. Many of them choose to live as if they don’t know it.
The reader doesn’t need to apply much imagination. On the Beach is a baldly powerful chronicle of the unyielding imperatives of human nature, including the impulse to work side by side with someone you love, planting a garden, hoping to share a rich crop next year, ignoring the darkness in the northern sky.
Nevil Shute’s story is not out of date.
I desperately fear that my grandchildren may be re-reading this book as they survive in the hills, trying to ignore the advancing seas below.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
click here
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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