by Richard Subber | Oct 26, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature
he taught himself to read and write
Book review:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass:
An American Slave
by Frederick Douglass
Benjamin Quarles, ed.
Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, written 1845, copyright 1960
163 pp.
Narrative is a devastatingly calm account of the life of Frederick Douglass as a slave and then a free man.
It’s very hard to read, let alone imagine the reality of the whippings that Douglass describes. It’s horrifying to recognize that some human beings brutalized other human beings with a whip.
Douglass taught himself to read and write.
He informs us about history that we don’t want to know, but must accept as true.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Poets talk about poetry
…a red hot bucket of love…
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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 | Oct 23, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, History, World history
those tricksters…
Book review:
The Man Who Never Was
by Ewen Montagu
Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1954
This is the original first-hand account of “Operation Mincemeat,” the classic World War II intelligence caper that duped Hitler and his military commanders into believing that the Allies would not attack Sicily in July 1943. You know how it all turned out: the Allies captured Sicily after extended combat with about 23,000 Allied casualties and about 165,000 German and Italian casualties.
Montagu led a small group of ingenious British planners who managed to put false documents on a corpse (“the man who never was”) that drifted ashore in southern Spain and gave the Germans every good reason to think that the phony invasion plans were real.
The true identity of the fictitious “Major William Martin” is not revealed in this book, and later there was some dispute about it. Montagu himself wrote that the real man who served his country in death was Glyndwr Michael, a homeless man from Wales.
The Man Who Never Was is a simply written account that reports the meticulous planning and the insightful intelligence assessments of how the Germans would react to the false documents planted on the corpse.
Montagu frankly expresses, seemingly in typical British unemotional remarks, how wildly happy he and his crew were that Operation Mincemeat was a spectacular success. Lots of Allied veterans who fought on Sicily, and their families, can be thankful for that.
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Book Review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
“Many waters cannot quench love.”
Love will rise to meet you…
(what you hear is poetry)
Book review: St. Ives
by Robert Louis Stevenson
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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 | Oct 5, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Politics
a casual look at Civil War history
Book review:
A History of the People of the United States
During Lincoln’s Administration
by John Bach McMaster
New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1927
693 pp.
This is an intriguing historical excursion into American history from the vantage point of 1927.
McMaster’s style is notably less than academic—his very casual quotation style is a distraction.
Basically, he offers a sometimes superficial political perspective on the origins, conduct, and denouement of the American Civil War.
A well-informed reader can skim A History without undue loss.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Old Friends (book review)
Tracy Kidder tells truth about old age…
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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 | Sep 28, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History
…they just walked away…
Book review:
Ends of War:
The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army
after Appomattox
by Caroline E. Janney
Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2021
331 pp.
I thought I know a lot about the American Civil War. Janney’s book, Ends of War, is a good reminder that there’s lots more to learn.
Lee surrendered his army to Grant on April 9, 1865. Of course it’s pretty well known that other Confederate Army units were still fighting for several months after that event.
Janney confirms this stark point: for tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers, the war didn’t end then. They just stopped actively fighting the Union forces.
Close to half of Lee’s men never actually surrendered at Appomattox, and this unappreciated reality was part of the foundation of the dangerous Southern mythology of the “Lost Cause.”
Lee had a bit less than 50,000 men under his command when he signed the surrender document in Wilmer McLean’s house. Less than 30,000 of Lee’s men were officially but very haphazardly “paroled” in the days following the surrender.
At least 20,000 men in dirty gray uniforms walked or rode away from Appomattox without officially surrendering, most of them hoping to head for home. Many of them remained devoted to “the cause.”
It seems that Grant and Lincoln and the Union forces desperately wanted to end the fighting, but there was no real Northern plan to deal with the peace that was the presumptive goal, and to end the Southern insurrection, and to realistically bring the people of the rebel states back into the Union.
For my taste, the book is too long. I’m sure Janney could have established her argument, made her case, and proved her point in fewer pages.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Cradle Place
by Thomas Lux
just poems wrapped in a wet rag…
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 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 | Sep 19, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Politics, Power and inequality, World history
swords, but no ploughshares…
Book review:
The Great Game:
The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia
by Peter Hopkirk
New York: Kodansha International, Ltd., 1992
564 pp
This was almost entirely new history to me. I guess I’m a typical Westerner—I don’t know much about Asia.
It’s not enough that the indigenous peoples of Asia have been squabbling and fighting with each other for centuries. The British and other Europeans and the Russians decided to get involved in the “Great Game” of trying to control and expropriate the riches of the East.
The Great Game tells it all.
It hasn’t turned out well at all.
Endless warfare is not the way to go about it. It don’t work.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review:
The American Revolution: A History
The “Founders” were afraid of “democracy”…
by Gordon S. Wood
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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 | Sep 5, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Politics, Power and inequality, Revolutionary War
umm, they forgot about “patriotism”…
Book review:
The Political Depravity of the Founding Fathers:
Studies in the History of The United States
by John Bach McMaster
New York: Noonday Press, division of Farrar, Straus & Company, 1964
Originally published as With The Fathers in 1896
McMaster writes with the perspective of 125 years ago, and it’s all too obvious. However, this is not a fatal problem.
The Political Depravity of the Founding Fathers is a largely chronological elaboration of the many political and self-interested motivations that were the controlling factors in the creation of the Constitution, the Monroe Doctrine, George Washington’s presidency, and a broad scope of public concerns during the 19th century.
McMaster has not written anything like “love ya” biographies of the so-called Founding Fathers.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Sea Runners
…it informs, it does not soar…
by Ivan Doig
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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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