by Richard Subber | Apr 20, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Revolutionary War
King George wanted to win the war…
the other guys, not so much…
Book review:
Iron Tears:
America’s Battle for Freedom,
Britain’s Quagmire: 1775:1783
Stanley Weintraub (1929-2019)
New York: Free Press, 2005
375 pages
For some time I have indulged my suspicion that the British never really tried very hard to win the Revolutionary War.
Stanley Weintraub’s Iron Tears isn’t the first book that has reinforced my understanding of this most iconic event in American history. If you’re interested, try Nick Bunker’s An Empire on the Edge or Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy’s An Empire Divided.
Weintraub offers a solidly researched and richly anecdotal account of the military details and the political wrangling that prolonged the war for several years until the British ministers and politicians finally admitted to themselves that they couldn’t win the war.
King George III was fatuously optimistic and persistently unrealistic—to the bitter end—about the prospects for winning a war that he desperately identified with his own persona and his royal stature.
Weintraub makes it irrefutably clear that at no time during the Revolutionary War did the British send enough men and ships to win in North America, that is, to put down the rebellion and re-establish full constitutional Parliamentary control of the 13 colonies. Hint: the British “sugar island” colonies in the Caribbean were more important, and the British never stopped looking over their shoulders at prospective and real war with France, Spain, and other countries.
On October 18, 1781, General Washington accepted the capitulation of the army of General Cornwallis at Yorktown. On November 25, an official dispatch with the bad news finally reached Lord North, the British prime minister, at Downing Street. It is reported that he exclaimed “Oh God! It is all over!”
Quite possibly he was overcome with grief and relief.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: A Cold Welcome
The culprit was global cooling,
500 years ago…
by Sam White
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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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by Richard Subber | Apr 12, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
Say “repine” a couple times…
I read lots of poetry—colonial, classic American, modern—and I don’t find much that I like.
I’m a bit puzzled by this. I think hard about what I like and dislike about poetry, especially my own poetry. I confess my sincere failure to discern anything meaningful in the kind of poetry I classify as “obscure,” you know, the wayward romp through disconnected words and disjoint images, and the wanton disregard of verb tense/pronoun antecedents/subject and verb relationships/sentence structure—I think you may have seen this kind of stuff:
“Sky falls cloud sheep bray at starry islands in my hoping
are them my lost love I step around the dog poo….”
I just rapped that out. It doesn’t make me proud.
I’m trying to get to the point:
I’ve read a bit of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). Longfellow was a lyric poet who tried his hand at free verse, although much of his work is constrained to the often stultifying shackle of line after line and page after page of rhyme. Longfellow wrote at length. I confess I can’t make myself keep turning the pages to read “Evangeline” and “The Song of Hiawatha.” I do understand that this fashion of poetry was written and enjoyed before the successive advents of radio, TV, Sony Walkman, the internet, and social media. I guess reading a poem for an hour or so was more doable in the 19th century.
Longfellow does offer something to me in his more bite-size poetry. He was a capable wordsmith and he dreamed out images and insights and perspectives that appeal to me, and even nudge my sometime muse to wakefulness.
In “Snow-Flakes” he placidly described a snowfall:
“Out of the bosom of the Air,
…The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.
This is the poem of the air…”
In “The Rainy Day” he said something we all know:
“…Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.”
Thus, in Longfellow, something of poetry.
Admit it, we don’t use “repine” often enough in our casual conversations.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Financier
Theodore Dreiser’s villain…
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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 | Mar 29, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Books Commentary, Joys of reading, Language, Poetry
Moby-Dick and stuff….
I know whale tales aren’t for everyone.
If you’re still with me, you might be interested to know that Herman Melville’s iconic whale story was published 174 years ago (titled: “The Whale”) in London, and then, a month later, in New York.
The original American title is Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Melville actually went to sea as a crewman on a whaling vessel, and based his novel in part on a real sperm whale named Mocha Dick, known to South Pacific sailors in the 1840s.
Early in his career Melville was briefly acclaimed for some of his South Pacific stories, such as Typee, but he was obscure during the last 30 years of his life. He earned only $1,200 or so from the sale of about 3,200 copies of Moby-Dick, which was out of print when he died in 1891.
A first American edition of the book can easily be secured if you have about $80,000 (free shipping!) to spend.
Melville wrote in a variety of genres—again, not for all tastes. I’m a big fan of Moby-Dick, and I’m also an advocate for Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street. Nothing of the South Pacific here. The circumstances of this desiccated short story are curious, even eccentric, incredulous. The withered and aloof Bartleby is presented, examined and disdained, until his very dispirited isolation makes him the object of the narrator’s genuine but increasingly troubled caretaking.
Don’t overlook Billy Budd, Sailor. It’s a searing morality play.
You may be surprised to know that Melville also wrote poetry. One critic has somewhat ponderously suggested that Moby-Dick is filled with Melville’s incipient poetry. I certainly believe that a story can contain a poem, but I don’t see anything like that in Moby-Dick.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
The “dime novels” in the Civil War
Think “blood-and-thunder”…
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 52 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 | Mar 27, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Politics
The merry-go-round keeps turning…
Book review:
Age Power:
How the 21st Century Will Be Ruled by the New Old
Ken Dychtwald (b1950)
New York: TarcherPerigee, 2000
288 pages
Dychtwald reviews the continuing retirement of Baby Boomers, and gives his take on the impact of extended life spans for everyone. He covers economics, politics, health care, and workplace issues.
The text of Age Power is a bit over-written (like most books on current issues). It’s easy to recognize the parts that can be skimmed, that is, the abundant details of the flamingly obvious: the Boomers are going to live much longer than any generation that preceded us, and we’re not ready for the consequences.
Age Power: How the 21st Century Will Be Ruled by the New Old
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 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 | Mar 20, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry
warm blasts of beautiful…
Book review:
The Asking: New and Selected Poems
by Jane Hirshfield (b1953)
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023
343 pages
There is lots to like and lots to pass over in Jane Hirshfield’s poetry.
Most often her style boils down to the “wild child” type, apparently she’s not too concerned with the idea of “the best words in the best order.” Many of her poems strike me as disorderly, albeit enthusiastic.
I think it’s worth reading through Hirshfield’s The Asking collection to get the taste and the occasional warm blast of beautiful insight and intuition. Here’s a taste:
“Stone did not become apple….Yet joy still stays joy.” (from “Counting, New Year’s Morning, What Powers Yet Remain to Me”)
“She closed her eyes,
opened her mouth
to receive the end of her life.
Its last tasting.” (from “A Day Just Ends”)
“The impossible closes around
like a smooth lake
on an early morning swim.” (“Everything That Is Not You”)
“How sad they are,
the promises we never return to.” (from “Autumn Quince”)
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Myths of Tet
How people get killed by lies…
by Edwin E. Moïse
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 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 | Mar 15, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
it’s not “extra”…
Book review:
Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics
by Dan Harris and Jeff Warren, with Carlye Adler
New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2017
286 pages
I tried meditation once, about 20 years ago or so, and, I confess, I didn’t stick with it.
It seemed like an “extra” thing to do, and I think I felt like I was busy enough.
Harris makes a believable case for giving it a try.
He has good news, in part: you don’t have to sit cross-legged with your knees painfully lowered, you don’t have to pick any kind of “mantra,” and you can start off with 5 or 10 minutes a day—and he repeatedly says “one minute of meditation absolutely counts.”
I’m retired, and now I know I have the time to meditate if I feel like it.
I can count my breaths, so I can get started.
I’ve tried it a couple times already, and, I confess, I think there is a welcome stillness connected to the whole thing.
I think there may be a new way to be me.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 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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