"Books, books, books in all their aspects, in form and spirit, their physical selves and what reading releases from their heiroglyphic pages, in their sight and smell, in their touch and feel to the questing hand, and in the intellectual music which they sing to thoughtful brain and loving heart, books are to me the best of all symbols, the realest of all reality."

-- Lawrence Clark Powell

currently on my reading shelf:


Five stars means I really liked the book and it would behoove you to read it as well; no stars means it should be pulled from library shelves and used as a doorstop. If you gather there's a book out there I need to get my mind around, or if you think a book deserved more (or fewer) stars, hook me up. If you'd like to buy a book, just click on the the front cover image.

September 25, 2008
Undaunted Courage : Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West
 by Stephen Ambrose


A book of high adventure. Told in Ambrose's easy style, it chronicles Lewis's relationship with Thomas Jefferson which led to his being chosen to lead the Discovery Expedition. By all accounts, Lewis should have failed. The enormous physical obstacles, many of them wholy unknown, had already repulsed other explorers to the West. The Indians were a completely unknown factor. However, despite the odds, Lewis and Clark pulled the thing off, even though they did not discover an all-water route from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean. What they did discover was a beautiful untamed country inhabited by unpredictable and unruly Indian tribes, and a pelt/fur economy waiting to be exploited. Lewis and Clark's journey prompted a great migration into the northwest in the early 1800s, and stands today as one of the greatest voyages of discovery in history. Ambrose does a great job explaining just how hard the trip was, making it all the more real. You can find this book in just about any airport bookstore in the country; pick it up and read it.

August 15, 2008
John Adams
 by David McCullough


An incredibly engaging biography. Opens up the richly complicated world of 18th century America like no other book I've ever read. A little biased against Adams' political rivals (Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton, in particular), but overall a comprehensive look into the mind and life of an extraordinary man who provided crucial guidance during the country's formation. This book won the Pulitzer and it certainly deserves it. McCullough genuinely finds Adams fascinating and imparts that fascination to the reader free of contemparary judgment. The book is refreshingly free of revisionism or axe-grinding, rather focusing on the great bond between Adams and his wife Abigail (who was a remarkable figure herself). I heartily recommend this book, and then I recommend that you come over and watch the HBO series with me. Again.

June 30, 2008
1776
by David McCullough


Fantastic book. Details the year George Washington struggled against Lord Howe's superior British army in Boston, New York, and New Jersey. Focusing mainly on the military situation, the book weaves in events that shaped the Continental army's size and morale. Very well written.

June 21, 2008
The Story of My Life
by Helen Keller


Wonderful story of perseverence and the love of life and art.

May 29, 2008
The Day Dixie Died: Southern Occupation, 1865-1866
by Debra Goodrich


Fascinating portrait of the South after Lincoln was killed.

May 19, 2008
Sharpe's Rifles
 by Bernard Cornwell


Novelized story of a regiment of British infantry in Spain fighting against Napoleon's armies in 1809.

May 9, 2008
Colditz: The Definitive History: The Untold Story of World War II's Great Escapes
by Henry Chancellor


Classic stories of life in a German prisoner-of-war camp. Well documented, if a little long.

April 12, 2008
Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters
 by Dick Winters


Quite well-written memoir. If you liked Band of Brothers, you'll like this.

March 23, 2008
Shiloh: A Novel
 by Shelby Foote


This rather short novel tells the story of the Civil War battle of Shiloh, which took place in Tennesse in April of 1862. It is told by a series of individuals who were actually there in the thick of it, and follows the events as they were described by the men during and after the war. If you've ever wondered what it must have been like to charge across an open field filled with flying lead and smoke and booming cannons, this book will tell you. It will tell you what happens to men when faced with almost certain death. It describes vividly the chaos and horror of war, as well as the random and the mundane. Told in first person, the novel sweeps along in the style and idiom of the men whose story it tells, making it a fascinating journey through a 19th century battlefield.

March 21, 2008
Profiles in Courage
 by John F. Kennedy


As support for Barak Obama grew and grew in late 2007, I repeatedly heard pundits and fans compare him to John F. Kennedy. Not being familiar with Kennedy's speeches and writings, I decided to read his most famous work. I never read it in high school, although I now realize I should have. This is truly one of the great books in American literature. If you haven't read it, read it now. Briefly, the book is a sequence of stories about moments in America's history when its statesmen have been forced to choose between their conscience and their reputation. Beginning with John Quincy Adams, Kennedy recreates the historical context with clarity and eloquence, describing the complexity of political decisions in which the fate of the nation is at stake. He brilliantly recounts the story of Edmund Ross, the Kansas Republican who cast the deciding vote that ended the impeachment proceedings against President Andrew Johnson, thus deferating the Radical Republicans and ensuring that the U.S. government would never be run by mob rule. Each story make a compelling case for political courage, even if the stance taken proved to be wrong in the end. The book's eloquent defense of courage, even when it means sacrificing one's career by defying partisan and regional allegiances, makes it a truly vital text. Everyone should read this book.

March 10, 2008
Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan
 by Ronald Spector


This is one of the best-written books on WWII I have read. Following the course of America's war with Japan from Pearl Harbor to the bombing of Hiroshima, Spector gives detailed accounts of major battles from a tactical and political standpoint. I had no idea how plagued by ego and politics the armed forces were in those days. The towering personas of Nimitz, McCarthur, Turner and others constantly swaggered among the issues, frequently complicating them. The book does a great job of explaining how we won the war despite the administrative turmoil. It's also filled with ground-level stories of combat conditions and events, which flesh out the larger progressions of the campaigns. The one MAJOR problem with the book is the lack of maps. The inside cover has one small map, but many, many references are made in the book to islands and places not shown, which I found frustrating. Other than that, a very accessible and thorough story of our war with Japan.

February 28, 2008
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
 by Mark Bowden


Maybe its because the U.S. is currently in a military conflict, but lately I've been reading a lot about warfare. Ever since I saw Band of Brothers I've been fascinated with the dynamics of battle. I saw the film Black Hawk Down when it came out and liked it, but I'd heard that the book was very good. It is. It gives a detailed, play-by-play account of the incident sparked in Mogadishu in 1993 after a team of Rangers and Delta operators kidnapped some local thug leaders. If you haven't read it or seen the movie, I'll just say that the operation was successful--they got the thugs--but then the shit hit the fan. 18 American soldiers died and many more were injured over the next 48 hours. The best thing about the book is that it is written well; it flows through the events, telling enough backstory of the men and their histories to dramatize the intensity of the situation. It also describes issues within the respective miltary branches that contributed to what happened. What the book does not do, however, is place the debacle in a larger social and polictical context. Bowden is a journalist, and admits in the introduction that he only wanted to tell the soldier's stories. Don't read this book if you are looking for an analysis of the merits and problems with U.S. military policy in Africa. Do read this book if you've wondered what its like to find yourself in a strange land, engaged in a firefight of unimaginable proportions, surrounded by an extremely competent team of soldiers--all of them outgunned. Whether we should have been there in the first place, what emerged was an impressive story of bravery and desperation.

February 18, 2008
Stalkers and Shooters: A History of Snipers
 by Kevin Dockery


The first half of this book is a rather interesting history of the development of sharpshooting, with highlights from particular moments - the "anatomy of a shot" as the author puts it. Dockery convincingly recounts the sniper's increasingly important role in world conflict. Then, he gets to the Iraq War. The book's quality tapers off suddenly at that point, since it provides no details on how sniping is conducted in the Mideast but rather spends several pages explaining why the war was justified. Hussein was a tyrant, there were WMD's, etc. The typical military line, I suppose, but not very informative when the reader wants to know a bit about modern sniping techniques. I was hoping to read maybe a small paragraph about the Canadian sniper in Afghanistan who in 2002 made a shot from 2,430 meters away--the longest recorded kill in history. Nope.
The rest of the book focuses on police sniping skills, which was interesting.

February 10, 2008
The Bourne Supremacy
 by Robert Ludlum


Again, not a bad pageturner. Crazy plotline, bordering on incredible, but lots of good technical black ops action.

January 20, 2008
The Golden Compass
 by Philip Pullman


When the film based on this book came out in 2007, there was a lot of wringing of hands from the church claiming that the book is a focused attack on organized religion in general and the Christian Church in particular. Much of this is based on a fabricated quote by the author expressing a desire to “kill God in the minds of children.” Naturally, this debate caught my attention. After reading it, I'm convinced that the book contains little anti-religious hatred, and is actually a charming tale of self-discovery and heroism. It's a book for younger readers, undoubtedly, and hardly compares with some other books in the fantasy/adventure genre, but it is a good read. Although the Catholic church is portrayed as a very powerful entity (which it is in real life) with a few diabolical megalomaniacs in positions of power (which there are in real life), the book is hardly about that fact. Rather, the book seems to me to warn against the dangers inherent in all organised religion when political power rather than spirituality becomes its driving focus. After all, the church is a power-wielding institution and can become the source of atrocities like any other institution. Moreover, the book does not suggest the church is necessarily to blame when this happens. It acknowledges that individuals often use the church to further their own ends, and that sometimes removing those individuals can solve the problem. That being said, the book should hardly be limited to these interpretations; it is about other things as well. The average young reader will find it delightfully imaginative and exciting, with the larger polical and religious issues in the background rather the forefront.

January 13, 2008
The Bourne Identity
 by Robert Ludlum


Clever story, well written in places, but ultimately a potboiler. Vaguely unrealistic and over-the-top dramatic in several places. Strange to say, but I liked the movie better. The film and the story are very different.

January 7, 2008
The Sleeping Juror & Other Baldwin County Courtroom Tales & History
 by Samuel N. Crosby


Of purely local interest only. Rather brief collection of legal anecdotes and history of Baldwin County, Alabama. I'm glad that people publish this type of book, however.

January 3, 2008
Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage
 by Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew


This is a good read if you're interested in submarine warfare and the nightmarish possibilities of the cold war. It is also a good introduction to naval politics, which were quite intense in the eighties. The book was written in 1998, so the ending is dated, but overall the book provides a good look at how integral submarine development was during the cold war and how the particular nature of nuclear war made submarines so important. Lots of good anecdotes and some rather surprising stories of mid-sea collisions, etc.



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"When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes."

-- Desiderius Erasmus