One of the hazards of reading a nonfiction book, especially one about a well-known subject, is that you know what happens in the end. Every time I got to a section about the Confederates, I was just thinking, “Oh, sweetie, this is not going to turn out well for your side.” Be that as it may, there were plenty of things I didn’t know going into this, especially as I can by no means be called a history buff. I knew that Lincoln was President, […]
The Girl in the Painting
I hadn’t heard of Jojo Moyes before reading The Last Letter From Your Lover back in April, but she is fast approaching a must-read author for me. Part One of The Girl You Left Behind begins in Occupied France in late 1916; Sophie Lefevre is doing her best to keep her family safe from the German soldiers who traipse through her hotel bar when a new Kommandant begins to take an interest in her and a portrait her husband painted of her before the war. […]
Not as Illuminating as the Title Would Suggest
Marie-Laure is a blind Parisian girl whose father works at the Museum of Natural History. When she goes blind at age 6, her father builds a to-scale model of their neighborhood so she can learn her way around gradually. Then the Nazis occupy Paris. They flee to Saint-Malo, where they find refuge with extended relatives, Madame Manec and shell-shocked Etienne. Oh, and Marie-Laure’s father carries a jewel with him that may or may not be magical but is most certainly valuable, which is sought tirelessly by a German jeweler, von Rumpel. Meanwhile, […]
Horror Story on the Eve of Hitler’s Takeover
Grossman returns with a prequel to his horrifying The Sleepwalkers, which I’ve reviewed earlier. In Children of Wrath, the respected Berlin homicide detective and decorated WWI veteran Willi Kraus is just starting to feel the effects of the rising tide of anti-Semitism. It is 1929, and Hitler is still largely viewed as a vulgar upstart by the self-absorbed political aristocracy, but his power is nonetheless growing as the Great Depression begins to ravage the war-weary German economy. The Kripo, the bureau of criminal investigation where […]
Keeping up with the Lindberghs
Everyone knows two things about Charles Lindbergh: he piloted the first solo, non- stop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris and in 1932 his son Charles Lindbergh Jr was kidnapped and murdered. This book is a fact-based, although fictional, recollection of Anne Morrow Lindbergh who tried to create her own life within the shadow of her famous husband. I learned a lot about Lucky Lindy, particularly how far reaching his influence was in the world of aviation, but Anne is the true star of […]
Even the Best Laid Plans Can Lead to Failure
Following my reading of Above the Dreamless Dead I decided that I wanted to read more about World War I. I studied the war relatively well in my undergraduate career, but my focus had always been about the long and short term causes and effects, the more social history view. I knew very little about the battles of the war outside the concept of trench warfare, generally speaking. A good place to start seemed Barbara Tuchman’s 1963 Pulitzer prize winning The Guns of August which […]
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