Category Archives: History

book reviews, History

Book Review: Jews, God and History

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Sometimes I pick up a used book and place it in my reading pile. Years may go by before I pick it up and read it. I don’t know how many times I never get to a book, or it will be years before I’m looking for something to read, dig deep in my pile, find something, and decide “This is the one for right now.”

A good book. If it weren’t falling apart, it might find a place in my library. Difficult call.

That was the case with Jews, God and History by Max I Dimont. When I pulled this from the pile, I found no label on it. Inside was a very faded receipt. I can just make out that I the receipt says I bought three books at Helping Hands, a local thrift store with a great books section, paid a total of $2.00 cash for all three. The purchase was at 10:42 a.m., but the date is too faded to read.

This is a mass-market paperback with cheap binding. While I was reading it, it fell apart into two sections. So much for such books printed in 1962.

This was an informative book. Dimont is a skillful writer. He gives much information, not statistics and data, but sweeping narrative about the Jews throughout over four millennia: where they were, what influenced them, who they influenced, what their motivations were. In 421 pages of 10-point font, Dimont gives a comprehensive documentation of this amazing people.

I have a couple of criticisms of the book, however. By the time I was done with it (two months elapsed between my starting and finishing it), I had pretty well forgotten what had come at the beginning. In other words, while I was impressed as I read, the writing didn’t stick with me. I sometimes, when I finish a book, go back and re-read the Introduction to see if the writer achieved whatever goals were stated there. In this case I haven’t yet done that, and don’t think I will.

My other criticism is that the book is totally unsourced. Along with the information given, Dimont makes sweeping judgments on the why of the history, not just the what. Here’s an example of one of those:

Like a Freudian libido flowing through the unconscious, attaching itself to previous psychic experiences, the Haskala flowed through the body of Judaism, attaching itself to former Jewish values and creating new ones. It attached itself to Hebrew and Yiddish, creating a new literature. It attached itself to Jewish religion and created Jewish existentialism. It attached itself to politics and created Zionism.  Zionism fused the Jews in Eastern and Western Europe with the Jews in the United States and created the new State of Israel. This vast transformation and fusion began with a few Talmudic students fighting the Hasidists, who were preaching a return to primitivism of feeling as a way of relating themselves with God.

To me, such broad statements need to be sourced. Where did these ideas come from? Are they the author’s interpretation? They are stated as fact when they seem to be opinion. I would have liked it to be clearer.

Those criticisms aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, if being maddened at it a few times. I certainly don’t regret taking time to read it. It will not, however, have a permanent place on my bookshelf. I don’t think it would even if it hadn’t fallen apart.

However, while the book is unsourced, it does have an extensive Bibliography. Pages and pages of published works are listed, many of them look inviting. I’m tempted to tear these pages from the weak binding and find a permanent place for them in my library, being a list of potentially valuable sources for future research. The only thing making me think I should do that is the thought: How will I ever find those pages again?

book reviews, History

Book Review: “Rush to Judgment”

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I’d been wanting to read this for some time. It finally bubbled up to the top of the reading pile.

It wasn’t too long ago that I reviewed Mark Lane’s Plausible Denial, a book about the JFK assassination. This was the first thing of Mark Lane’s I had read. I’d heard his name often, as he was an early critic of the Warren Commission often cited by other writers. I never read his first book on the subject, until now.

Rush to Judgment was published in 1966. Aside from articles in magazines, I believe this was the first book published critical of the Commission. Lane was in a unique place, having been hired by Marguerite Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother, to function essentially as Oswald’s defense attorney during Commission deliberations. That’s a simplification. But it put Lane in some meetings and hearings, and allowed him to see things, that were denied to most not directly associated with the Commission’s work.

Lane, who died in 2016, was a lawyer. Much of Rush to Judgment deals with the minutia of legal issues. He criticized the Commission for not following rules of evidence and rules of cross-examination as you would have at a trial. He looked at evidence that law enforcement agencies had given to the Commission and found it wanting. For example, Lane spends a lot of time on the paraffin test applied to Oswald to show if he had recently fired a gun. The police said the test was positive, whereas Lane showed the inconsistency in the test and was critical of police statements, even before the test results were available,  that said the test would be found positive.

No witnesses were subject to cross-examination during Commission hearings. Lane took transcripts of the testimony of many witnesses and picked it apart. A woman who saw the murderer of police officer J.D. Tippet is alleged to have identified Oswald as the man, but her statements and response to a police line-up were inconclusive. To Lane, she described a different man. While no official cross-examinations were make, Lane showed how lawyers for the Commission did critically question witnesses who told something other than what the Commission’s foreordained conclusion was.

Lane was critical of the witness list. Many witnesses were never questioned; others were questioned only by the Commission’s lawyers. These were witnesses who were in Dealy Plaza, or who knew Oswald, or who knew Jack Ruby, or who had other information about the three murders (Kennedy, Tippet, and Oswald). He makes a good case that the Commission’s work was sloppy and incomplete and that, had the rules of a courtroom been followed, the Commission never could have come to the conclusion it did.

The book is good. A couple of times Lane heads down rabbit holes, spending too much time on small items. A number of times Lane uses legal vocabulary that requires a dictionary. I looked a few of those up, but further into the book just skipped over them, doing the best I could based on the context. The organization of the book was fine, as was the length and the quality of the writing.

As this is an early book in JFK assassination research, it lacks some details that other authors brought out. One has to remember when it was written, however, in order form a judgment on the book.

As I have accumulated a fairly significant, though far from comprehensive, collection of JFK assassination books, I will keep this one. Will I ever reread it? I don’t know for sure, but maybe.

America, History, memories

Remembering the Moon Race, Part 2

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This was a great source of national pride.

So it was 50 years ago tomorrow that man first walked on the moon. The day before that the Apollo 11 Command Module, along with the Lunar Module and the Service Module, were picking up speed as the moon’s gravity started to have an effect. By the end of the day they would be orbiting the moon.

I had been watching the Apollo missions closely. Well, that is once they got off the ground. Apollo 7 had stayed in earth orbit, checking out all the systems. Apollo 8 flew to the moon and orbited it. Apollo 9 stayed in earth orbit, deploying the LM with two astronauts, testing its systems. Apollo 10, in May 1969, flew to the moon and orbited. This was a full dress rehearsal for the landing. They deployed the LM, flew it to within 10 miles of the moon’s surface, successfully docked back with the CM, and returned. All that was left was actually landing.

Word had it that the USSR was going to launch an unmanned probe to make a soft landing on the moon, and that they were going to get it there before we landed. This was a little drama as Apollo 11 launched. Would we make our manned, soft landing before the Soviet’s did their soft, unmanned? At some point, possibly during our flight, we learned that the Soviet craft crashed on the moon, 5 minutes early. That was exactly the amount of time their retro-rockets should have fired to slow it to the soft landing. The cause of that failure was thus obvious (though some think it may have crashed into one of the taller mountains on the moon). The result was we had the moon to ourselves at that time.

I remember July 20, 1969. ‘Twas a Sunday. The moon walk was originally scheduled to take place late. My memory, which may not be correct, was that it was to happen after midnight, maybe around 1 a.m. on the 21st. NASA decided to move it forward, to around 11 p.m. on the 20th, after a four hour rest for Armstrong and Aldrin. But that was moved forward even more so that the moon walk would happen during East Coast prime time. [Note: I can find documentation of only one change in time for the moon walk.]

I remember the transmission, the first words, the astronauts walking on the surface, taking note of their bouncy steps in low gravity. It was all mesmerizing. I consider this one of the high points of my life. It was a privilege to watch this on TV. Oh, and I thank NASA for moving the walk forward, allowing me to watch it in prime time.

History, memories

Remembering the Moon Race, Part 1

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Never having seen one of the Saturn V rockets in person, I can only imagine it’s size.

We are less than a month away from the 50th anniversary of the first time mankind walked on the moon. I was 17 years old, about to be a senior in high school. I have some clear memories of it, while other things quite famous I have no memory of at all.

I thought I’d do a brief series (maybe three posts scattered over the next three to four weeks) about my memories of it. I hope my readers won’t mind this departure from my regular posts, which are related to writing.

Those who lived through it will never forget the earthrise photos that came from Apollo 8.

Yesterday evening, after my wife and I watched a 1996 Sherlock Holmes movie, we switched to regular TV to see what we could find. It happened to be the top of the hour, and we saw the start of a National Geographic program on the moon race. That took me back to my first introduction of how we were going to get to the moon.

It was in August 1965. I was at Camp Yawgoog, the Boy Scout camp in SW Rhode Island, my first year to go to scout camp. That week is more memorable for what happened on Sunday, after Dad picked me up and we headed home, but that’s another story, loosely recounted in my short story, “Mom’s Letter”. But I digress.

On Saturday evening, all the scouts, scouters, and staff gathered in the amphitheater for a program. It was done every week of the summer. This particular Saturday the program was about NASA’s space program, specifically about how we were going to get to the moon.

What the speaker showed us that night was a model of the entire LM, not a cutaway like this. It was a complex spacecraft.

I don’t remember the name of the speaker or who he was with. He may have been someone NASA hired to get the word out. He did a fantastic job. He had models of the different space craft that would be used. The Mercury program was over by this time. The Gemini program had begun. He explained how that was for the purpose of testing vehicle docking in zero gravity, extra-vehicular activities, longer times in space such as what would be experienced in a moon shot. The models were large enough for us to easily see.

I remember how he described the many parts of the moon shot: the Apollo rocket to get them into earth orbit; the engine burn of the command module to boost them on a moon trajectory; the separation of the lunar module from the command module; the descent to the moon and landing; the burn of the LM engines to send half the LM back to the command module, leaving half of the LM on the moon; re-docking with the command module; and the return to earth.

That happened 54 years ago, but it is all very clear in my memory. I suppose it is because I found it fascinating. Prior to that, I had of course followed what NASA did. Each Mercury and Gemini flight had captured my interest. It was earlier that summer that the first EVA had happened. While I was at camp Gemini 5 was in space, the first flight to go beyond a few days in space.  So I wasn’t ignorant of the space program, but that presentation helped me to understand it better, gave me something to judge progress against as future flights would occur.

I’m glad to have such memories of the space program as it was during it’s early days, and am sorry for the kids of today that don’t have that sort of thing. Space travel still isn’t commonplace, but it doesn’t get news coverage as it used to. And that’s too bad.

America, Documenting America, History, research, Writing

Documenting America: From the Cutting-Room Floor

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The United States Constitution. What a great system of government.

As I mentioned in a previous post, as I’m going through the source documents for Documenting America: Making the Constitution Edition, much good material gets edited out. It winds up on the cutting room floor, so to speak, using the movie industry term.  Some of this is good material. I’d love to use it in my book, but, alas, I need to keep the book a reasonable size.

The thought came to me to use it for blog post material. So, instead of just dumping it, I’ve been saving it for use when it’s time to write a blog post and I have nothing else in mind. It could also be newsletter material, I suppose, if I ever take the plunge to writing a newsletter.

But, again alas, something I put into a file last week, from one of the Federalist Papers, is now nowhere to be found. What did I do with it? Did I save it to my Documenting America Vol 3 folder? It’s not there. Did I save it to my Blog folder? It’s not there either. Maybe, without paying attention, I saved it to the root folder of my Documents. Nope, not there either. Did I fail to save it and let it go drifting off into the ether?

Whatever, the excellent item I was going to use for today is not on my computer. I could spend an hour looking for it, but think, instead, I’ll find something else. I saved other stuff.

Here’s one from an anonymous writing from someone from Pennsylvania who didn’t like the proposed constitution.

The wealthy and ambitious, who in every community think they have a right to lord it over their fellow creatures, have availed themselves, very successfully, of this favorable disposition; for the people thus unsettled in their sentiments, have been prepared to accede to any extreme of government; all the distresses and difficulties they experience, proceeding from various causes, have been ascribed to the impotency of the present confederation, and thence they have been led to expect full relief from the adoption of the proposed system of government, and in the other event, immediately ruin and annihilation as a nation. These characters flatter themselves that they have lulled all distrust and jealousy of their new plan, by gaining the concurrence of the two men in whom America has the highest confidence, and now triumphantly exult in the completion of their long meditated schemes of power and aggrandisement.

Whoever wrote this, a small part of a much longer article, was, I think, spot on concerning what happens when power is obtained and then applied to government. Wealthy and ambitious people do tend to lord it over their fellow citizens. They are successful, often from their own work, and they see this as a reason why they should 1) be held in high esteem by others, and 2) have positions of political power.

The writer of the original document seems to have been wrong, however, about the motives of those who wrote the Constitution and about how the government would function under it. Things turned out much better than his dire predictions. He knew things weren’t going well under the Articles of Confederation, and saw this new document as setting up a government of the rich and powerful. I believe most of our 232 year experience with it shows us that this isn’t so.

My Documenting America series focuses on our historical documents, and tries to inspire people to seek the documents out and read them.

Or is it? As I look on Congress today, I see lots of multi-millionaires. I see people who make laws that apply to others but not themselves. I see the rich and powerful say the government should take over your health care while they keep a very nice plan for themselves. Same with pensions and Social Security.

I could go on and on. Can you tell I’m not a big fan of Congress? I think most of the ills in the nation that are often attributed to the president—every president, no matter who it is—are often the fault of Congress, either due to their action or inaction.

So why didn’t this particular passage make it into my book? Simply a matter of space. This document, like all of them I’m using in the book, is chock full of good phrases and arguments. Some turned out to be wrong arguments, some right. It’s all worth reading. If someone reads Documenting America and then digs into the source documents, they’ll see this. All the better. If they don’t, this will remain obscure and unread.

Perhaps my book and this blog will help others to find and read it.

 

Adam Of Jerusalem, Bible study, Christianity, Documenting America, History

We Interrupt this Book Review to…Write

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This is close to the cover I want to use for “Adam Of Jerusalem”, but I can’t find the copyright holder of the photo. I’m probably wrong in even posting it here.

In my last post I wrote part 1 of a two-part review of John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government. I said I would do the next part soon. However, soon is not today. Instead, I’m going to write about what I’m writing, and what I’m preparing to write.

I have two books in progress, one complete and being edited, one being written. The first is Adam Of Jerusalem. I finished this in mid-December 2018, let it sit a few weeks over the holidays, then began editing in mid-January. I think those dates are right; it’s all kind of blurry without looking at my diary. I’ve made three editorial passes, and given the book to three beta-readers. I have figured I would publish it then.

But, in January I joined a newly-formed writers critique group. I decided to run AOJ by them. They didn’t like chapter 1 in January or chapter 2 in February. Not enough description they said. Too much getting from point A to point B without flourishes. Alas, that must be the engineer in me.

So I went through these two chapters looking for places to add some description, some of what I call extraneous information that gives the reader a better experience, that makes them feel like they were there when the action was taking place. It caused chapter 2 to increase in length 25 percent. If I did that for the entire book, the novel would go from 72,000 words to 90,000 words. That’s not awful, but I would have to think about that.

Still, I decided to go on with this for a few more chapters at least. Last night I re-edited chapter 5, having completed 3 and 4, and found a number of places to add those flourishes. I’ll type these last edits sometime today and step back and see how it looks to me. I imagine I’ll go on with this while waiting on beta-readers to get back to me.

And, perhaps, a fourth to this one? Yes: Making The Constitution Edition, hopefully in 2019. Update: It will come in 2019!

Then, my current writing project is Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition. I’ve written about this series before many times, and this particular volume. At some point, around February 12, I began gathering source documents and completed the editing and writing of one chapter on February 18. Yesterday I completed the twelfth chapter (out of 31 or 32) and edited the source document for the thirteenth. I did that in the evening in manuscript, so will be typing that today.

Meanwhile, as I work on DA:MCE, I’m coming across material I realize I can use in a future edition. I don’t know what I’ll do next. The choices are many. I read some inspiring, early abolition works, and thought that a volume on the abolition movement might be good. So I created folders on my computer and began seeking out source documents for that. I’m a long way from doing anything with this book, but maybe, just maybe, I’m starting it the right way. Except, I should start a writing diary for it, even if it will have major time gaps in it.

One other project that I’m (somewhat) actively working on is a Bible study I developed and taught some years ago called Sacred Moments. It’s a study of the sacraments and the importance of them in the life of the Christian. They are sacred moments. I had a little trouble finding the files I created on that years ago. On a shelf in my closet, in an unmarked, green three-ring binder, I found the paper copies—preserved in sheet protectors, no less. Digging around in files transferred from an old computer, I found the computer files. I transferred them into my cloud storage.

I have no schedule for working on Sacred Moments. I feel I must do more research if I’m to publish it as a Bible study. It will be the first of those critters for me, and I would want to do it right. I did lots of research before, and even some after, but too many years have passed since I developed and taught it, so I’ll have to re-do some of that research.

That’s pretty much it. One other, more minor, task I want to work on soon is to get my ideas notebook in shape. I found it this week, on that closet shelf. I can’t remember the last time I looked at it. I’m thinking that may be a Sunday task, with a mug of coffee, in the sunroom.

 

 

America, Documenting America, History, Writing

Don’t Bash Rhode Island

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I had a different post planned for today, but think I’ll go this way instead.

There’s a reason The Independent Man is atop our statehouse: We are independent minded. Or, are we just stubborn?

Yesterday, I thought I was done with my research in Documenting America: Making the Constitution Edition. I had all my chapters lined-out, all my source text found and entered in a Word document. Well, almost all, as the source text for one chapter eluded me. Yesterday I found an alternative (actually, two) and that’s now in the document. I even wrote my commentary on a chapter yesterday. Now up to nine chapters complete out of a probably thirty-one.

I started work on the next chapter, editing the source text. It’s a letter from Thomas Jefferson, while he was in Paris in 1787, to Edward Carrington. TJ made some very good points and I’m happy to have that in my book. I figured writing the chapter around it would be somewhat easy.

But, I wanted to see what Carrington had written to TJ to prompt this letter. I went to the Library of Congress website, which has been my source for so much. It didn’t take too long to learn Carrington hadn’t written to TJ in six years. TJ had re-initiated the correspondence. I decided then to see how Carrington responded.

That was easy to find with the tools on the LOC site. Jefferson wrote Jan 16, 1787; Carrington responded April 24, 1787, a reasonable lag given the time for a letter to sail across the ocean. So last night I began reading the April 24 letter, and enjoyed it until I came to this sentence.

Rhode Island is at all points so anti-federal, and contemptible, that her neglecting the invitation, will probably occasion no demur whatever in the proceedings. 

I kept reading, however, as a good researcher should do. I next went to Carrington’s June 9, 1787 letter to TJ, written before Jefferson had responded. It this letter I found the following.

All the States have elected representatives except Rhode Island, whose apostasy from every moral, as well as political, obligation, has placed her perfectly without the views of her confederates; nor will her absence, or nonconcurrence, occasion the least impediment in any stage of the intended business.

And I though, them’s fightin’ word mister! How dare you bash my home state like that. I suppose, however, he’s correct. He’s talking about choosing and sending delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. This followed the failed Annapolis convention in 1786. Rhode Island didn’t attend that one, though they did appoint delegates who simply didn’t arrive on time.

Now, however, as the Constitutional Convention drew near, Little Rhody was the only State to boycott it. They liked the ineffective Articles of Confederation just fine, thank, and didn’t want them changed. They liked doing things their way, even if they wound up being a tiny, independent nation.

I think it was the word “contemptible” that rankled me. Yes, Rhode Island is a different kind of state. The top of our statehouse has a statue titled the Independent Man.  We have our quirks and love having our quirks.

Then the word “apostasy” also rankled. Carrington didn’t mean this in the religious sense, but rather in terms of politics, that we had fallen away from the sense of cooperation that pervaded during the Revolutionary War. We had ceased looking at ourselves as part of a larger union. Still, the word hurt.

It also hurt that he said it didn’t matter if Rhode Island showed up or not. He said that twice, once in each letter. Was that because of our size and relatively small population? Most likely.

I’ve been away from Rhode Island now for 45 years. I still visit from time to time, and keep in touch with relatives and friends there. I may live in Arkansas, but I still feel like a Rhode Islander.

And I love this research I’m doing for the book. I need to be careful, however. I could research for days and days, enjoying it so much that I’d never get the book written. I need to cut it off and just stick with the writing.

And I will, just as soon as I absorb these Carrington letters.

America, Documenting America, History, Writing

Religious Freedom Revisited

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As I’m working on Documenting America: Making the Constitution Edition, I find that certain topics come back into current American life that have been discussed and, supposedly, settled before. Religious freedom seems to be one of them.

My research suggests that the Founding Fathers did indeed want to keep some degree of separation between religion and government. Their primary focus was preventing the government from regulating religion or restricting who/how/why people could worship.

The latest infringement on the free exercise of religion is US senators asking candidates nominated to various government positions about their religion and how it would affect their performance in office. I first noticed this almost 20 years ago when Chuck Shumer, then a relatively new senator from New York, asked Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft how he could turn off his evangelical Christianity so he could do a proper job as A.G.

I was shocked then and am shocked now when people like Senator Feinstein says to a candidate, “The dogma is strong in this one.” The U.S. Constitution says:

but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

When Shumer asks “How do you turn it off” and Feinstein says “the dogma is strong in this one,” what is that if not a religious test. Shumer is saying you can’t be Attorney General if you’re a practicing evangelical. Feinstein is saying you can’t be a Federal judge if you are a devout Catholic. Shame on these senators!

This was all settled in the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson led the way in his writing the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was later put into law in that state. Religious freedom came in this form.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

Note that religion should not affect their “civil capacities.” In other words, the law shouldn’t punish someone because of their religion. By the time the Constitution was written, this was applied to Federal officials through the religious test clause.

So here we are, 232 years later, fighting the same battles we did years ago. What will it take for this to end, for us to win the battle again that a person’s religion cannot disqualify them from holding a Federal office? Maybe it will take one nominee to refuse to answer a question about their religion, to tell the senator who asks, politely, where to shove the question, to show that the Constitution means something.

I’m hopeful that will happen next time the situation comes up.

Documenting America, History, Writing

On to the Next Book

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My most recently completed novel, Adam Of Jerusalem, is in the hands of two beta readers. Sunday I will put a print copy in the hands of a third. I received a little feedback from one and a little more feedback from the other. That process is working.

I contacted a cover designer while I was in Texas. She responded that maybe she can help me, though she is busy. I haven’t contacted her again; that’s on the schedule for today, though today looks to be very busy.

So, it’s on to the next book, which is the next in my non-fiction series. Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition is next. In theory it’s the third book in the series, although since I did a homeschool edition of the first it is in reality the fourth. I can’t remember how much I’ve written about it before, so I think I’ll just plunge in and tell about it and where I am.

I then took the first book and expanded it into a homeschool edition.

The book covers the period from 1783 to 1789. The Revolutionary War is over. During the war, the Articles of Confederation worked as a form of government. Now in peace time, however, it turns out they don’t work. The central government was a little too weak, and the states a little too independent, for government to function. Wise men saw there was a real chance of the confederation breaking apart into thirteen nations, or perhaps into a few regional nations.

In 1787 a convention was held to revise the Articles of Confederation. The delegates saw that was hopeless, and went in a different direction. They devised a whole new system of central government and wrote a document that became the Constitution.

The Civil War edition was published in mid-2017.

From fall of 1787 to late 1788 the states considered this new government. One by one they ratified it. Only nine affirmative votes were needed. They got eleven, with North Carolina and Rhode Island being the only holdouts. Electors met in January-February 1789 and elected Washington to be president. He took the oath of office on April 30, 1789, and the new government was underway.

Here’s the status of the book: I’ve done most of my background reading and have identified the documents I want to use and how to organize them into chapters. I have 30 chapters identified, though some of them are tentative. I have four chapters where I have the source documents identified (The Federalist Papers) but I haven’t read the documents. I plan on starting on that tonight.

Yesterday I took a big step. I created my folder on OneDrive, created the book file, and began to seek out digital copies of my source documents. I found most from the first half of the book—all but one. I copied the full documents and added them to my book file. The fourteen source documents are there, 55 pages and 29496 words. Today (if I have time; if not tomorrow or Sunday) I’ll work on the next fifteen chapters and do the same, all except the four chapters I still have some reading to do on. I hope to have all this done by about Wednesday of next week, including the four lagging chapters.

Then comes the editing/excerpting of the source documents. I have that partly done for about eighteen chapters in my copy of the Annals Of America, where I’ve marked paragraphs to use. That’s far from complete, and some of it was done over a year ago and is thus vague in my memory, but it’s at least started.

I won’t excerpt the documents all at once. I’ll start with Chapter 1, which is a document by Alexander Hamilton about the unfair treatment of loyalists It is 5,221 words. I’ll except this down to around 1,000 (plus of minus 250, at least that’s my target; some documents demand more words be kept), then write my part of the chapter. That process is likely to take two to four days per chapter.

That may be a bit optimistic. Documents from this era are in archaic English, and reading/editing can be a chore. In the book they are all in different formats and will have to be reworked. Four days per chapter to re-read, except, write historical commentary, and tie to a current issue may take longer on average. I don’t really know for sure.

So that’s the plan. Now in retirement, possibly it will all go faster. On days when the stock market is open, and I’m making or watching trades, I plan on doing this work simultaneously. Maybe it will go faster than I think. I’m not ready to look ahead and project a publishing date. Perhaps in two weeks I’ll be ready to take a stab at that.

Oh, one thing I haven’t done yet is create my book journal. That’s another task I hope to get done today.

book reviews, family, History, non-fiction

Book Review: The Day of Battle

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During World War 2, my dad had an interesting story. Older than the average G.I. at 26 when the war broke out for the USA, he found himself in North Africa, staging to go on the invasion of Italy. Just before he embarked, he was transferred to the Stars and Stripes, the G.I. newspaper and on his way to Algiers to set type. Before long he was in Italy, setting type on the mobile unit of the paper: within sound of the guns.

Rick Atkinson is an excellent war historian and writer.

So, some years ago I found The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy at some discount store, I grabbed it. It sat in my reading pile for a couple of years, until I finally read it beginning last fall and ending in early January.

I’m glad I did read it. Rick Atkinson has done a wonderful job of making the war in these areas come alive. He deals with the generals and the soldiers. He helps the reader see what it was like to be pushed forward by Patton. Or how impossible missions were undertaken in Italy and men slaughtered as a result. I had never read any detailed information about the campaign in Italy. Atkinson brought it alive for me.

I’ve read some of the reviews on Amazon. Most are positive, though a few are that are negative. At least one criticized Atkinson for using obscure words. He did have a few of those, but, in my mind, not many. I only looked up one or two. I was able to pass over the others without loss of meaning. A few seemed to be military technical terms.

This book is a keeper. I have a fair collection of WW2 books. Most I’ve never read, and those I’ve read I haven’t retained as well as I wish I had. Someday in the future I might pick this one up again, and re-read it. Or, if I ever do get around to writing that memoir of my mom and dad, this could be source material for the conditions Dad worked in.

If I review this on Amazon, I’ll give it 4 or 5 stars.