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Tag Archives: war
The Freedom / Christian Parenti
28 September 2007 – 12:11 am
The Freedom is The Nation writer Christian Parenti’s first-person account of his stints reporting on the war in Iraq from the frontlines during 2003 and the first half of 2004. It’s a moving account, and covers ground I haven’t read in newspapers or magazines. That’s not to say it hasn’t been written, but I haven’t seen it.
For its descriptions of the facts on the ground, I don’t think the book is very useful anymore. (…)
Perilous Times / Geoffrey R. Stone
16 July 2007 – 10:57 am
Perilous Times won the 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, but I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten wider acclaim, much like A Bright Shining Lie, And the Band Played On, and Hitler’s Willing Executioners have. Of course, those works brought information to light that previously hadn’t been widely known. Perilous Times covers ground that has been tread before, but from much different directions. (…)
War Trash / Ha Jin
25 February 2007 – 8:48 am
There’s a sad similarity in most of the war novels I’ve read. Naive recruit goes to the war. Naive recruit fights. Naive recruit has to scramble to survive. Jaded veteran witnesses things he’d rather not see. There’s a lot of that vibe to Ha Jin’s novel War Trash. For connoisseurs of war novels, I suppose they can see through the sameness to the novel parts of these stories. I know I can do it with Science Fiction. (…)
Days of Judgment / Isobel V. Morin
23 November 2005 – 8:50 am
Days of Judgment is a nice overview of the war crimes trials in Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War 2. It doesn’t cover much more than the highlights though. Still, my personal knowledge of the war crimes trials was limited, and this book covers them at a high level nicely. But if you want a detailed history of why and how Goering, Hess, von Ribbentrop, Muto, and Tojo were convicted, read elsewhere. If you want details of their crimes, this is not the book. (…)
All Quiet on the Western Front / Erich Maria Remarque
26 October 2005 – 8:57 pm
I’ve carried around my beat-up copy of this classic since high school, but haven’t re-read it in 20 years. Until now. This is the grandfather of all war is hell stories. Remarque tells the story of Paul Baumer, a soldier recruited directly from school. He’s known no other life other than soldiering and being a child. Remarque’s own experience during the Great War is the basis for Baumer’s tale. (…)
Three Year Picnic / Evelyn Whitfield
31 August 2005 – 8:15 am
I stopped by the booth at Northwest Bookfest in November 1999 that the publisher of this book put on. Evelyn Whitfield was manning the booth that day. She had sold all the copies of her book, but she was such a warm personality and sold other people’s books so well, that I had to order a copy of her book.
She wrote the manuscript shortly after her release and return from three years spent in Japanese prisoner of war camps in the Philippines. (…)
