Queen of Our Times (2022) By Robert Hardman

 

It can be and has been argued that Robert Hardman’s biography of Queen Elizabeth II is a rebuttal to the Netflix series The Crown. I have never watched an entire episode of the series but know from the clips of it I’ve seen its emphasis was on the more dramatic aspects of her reign, surrounding her and the often times dysfunctional Royal Family as a whole. Hardman, with access to the official record, was determined to set the record straight, or at least clear.

As a work of history Queen of Our Times is mammoth in scale. She ascended to the throne in 1952 the year before I was born and reigned for over 70 years. To a great many people, she really was the Queen of “Our Times.”

Born in 1926, her life coincided with nearly a century of events, including the Great Depression, both World Wars, the fairy-story abdication of her uncle King Edward, the death of her father King George VI who ruled during World War II familiar to today’s cultural audience from the movie The King’s Speech, the assassination of Lord Mountbatten, the disastrous Suez Canal incident, and numerous other highlights, too many to list.  She died peacefully in 2022, having outlived the likes of Winston Churchill  and multiple other Prime Ministers. She reigned during the ascent and then restructuring of the Commonwealth. Then there are the inner workings of the Royal Family, her marriage to Philip, her four children, including Charles, the current King, his divorce from Princess Diana and remarriage to Camilla, and of course the heir apparent, Prince William and the “spare” Prince Harry.

There is a reason the book is nearly 1,000 pages in length.

All of her history has been front page material. I have learned much from the book, linking together multiple phases of her life and “our times.” My guess is that she has had more media coverage than anyone in world history. Yet, this coverage has not always been favorable, everyone loves her, but nearly all hate her family. Though this coverage has not always been fair, or even true, it sells newspapers. And that is why Hardman’s book is important, it tells another version of everything, trying to put it all in perspective.

Recommendation: Yes, and do not let the length of the book dissuade you, it reads like a good novel.

The Day of the Locust (1939) By Nathanael West

 

The Day of the Locust is one of several novels written by Nathanael West. I do not think it is well written, but I will give the author a pass for now because I have not read his other works, not even the well-regarded Miss Lonelyhearts.

The novel is set in Hollywood in the 1930s and details the lives of individuals who have migrated there with the hope of making it big in the movie industry. But “Mecca of broken dreams” is the common denominator and bottom line for all of them. The novel presents in detail the downside of hoping without hope.

There are three primary characters: Tod, a studio production illustrator; Faye a young and blonde wannabee actress; and Homer, an accountant who has come to southern California for his health. There are several secondary characters, some quite memorable, all stereotypes, to represent the dreams of others.

I found the movie (1975) to be every bit the downer as the book, and in fact I was surprised anyone would even think of making this into a movie. The movie was though perfectly cast, with William Atherton as Tod, Karen Black as Faye, and Donald Sutherland as Homer. It received a half dozen or so award nominations, but won only in the costume category, a win I agree with.

Recommendation:  No, though I will at some point read Miss Lonelyhearts.

A Son at the Front (1923) By Edith Wharton

 

I have never read anything by Edith Wharton before, even though her Age of Innocence book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921, the first woman author to be so honored. I always considered her just another “gilded age” writer, along with F. Scott Fitzgerald. How wrong I was.

This week I read her 1923 novel A Son at the Front, a title borrowed from the parents of soldiers in the first World War. Wharton lived in Paris throughout the War.

A focal point of the story is a young man named George, his parents are Americans, but he was born while they were in France making him a French national subject to the French military mobilization guidelines even though everyone considers him to be an American.

His father John Campton is a successful portrait artist who went to Paris along with his wife Julia (because do not all artists end up in Paris?). His socialite mother tired of being an artist’s wife, divorced him, and married Anderson Brant, an extremely rich banker.

Campton has spent much of his life bitter that George as a child lived with his mother and her new husband. To put it mildly he hates Brant for being able to provide George with every material thing and all the connections he needs.

Much of the storyline deals with the dynamic between Campton and Brant, who begin the story conspiring, each in his own way, to keep George out of the military. George is indifferent to the service though his thoughts on the “war to end all wars” evolves during the war and he enlists. Over the course of the book Campton and Brant will learn they each care deeply for George and learn to respect each other for the roles they play in his life. And although they want to protect him realize that he has a right to make his own decisions – a point his mother never concedes.

There are many other characters entailed in this story, all interesting subplots, weaving them together is done masterfully.

Recommendation:  Highly Recommended, the book is pure genius.

Double Star (1956) By Robert Heinlein

 

You know, Science Fiction written in the 1950s can be quite fun. Case in point, Double Star by Robert Heinlein which was published in 1956.  The novel is contemporary to The Martian Chronicles, predates-the original Star Trek television series, and is what seems like “light years” ahead of Star Wars.

As I read it in 2023 it is difficult to discern whether it was knowingly comic in parts or if that developed as the novel has aged, regardless it is quite funny poking at events “back then” that are still entirely relevant today.

The big picture of the story concerns the internal/external politics of The Empire, set in intergalactic space (or what was known at the time mainly Earth, Mars, Venus, Saturn). The government is headquartered at Batavia, on the Earth’s moon.  It operates in a parliamentary form of government, with multiple representatives from various planets, and more divisions within. The two major parties are the Expansionists -- think America’s manifest destiny history; and the Humanity Party, the more isolationist one.  The Humanity Party currently holds the Supreme Minister (prime minister) slot.  An election is coming up however and John Bonforte, a former Expansionist Supreme Minister, is thought to be the likely winner.  To block that, allies of the Humanity Party have secretly kidnapped Bonforte and are holding him captive until after the election so that he can’t campaign.  In response, Bonforte’s team hires an actor named Lorenzo Smyth to impersonate him on the campaign trail and also at an upcoming diplomatic meeting on Mars.  They have only days to pull this off.

One of the more humorous parts of the book is when Bonforte’s team have to stop for a phone book to try to find an address, before they head back from Mars.  Opposition research is done using the Encyclopedia Batavia – what older people reading this will recognize as the Encyclopedia Britanica.

Bottom line: it’s a fun read.

Eight Months in Illinois (1843) By William Oliver

 

A few weeks ago, I took a ride in the country, a favorite pastime I inherited from both my mother and father. Ever since retiring to southern Illinois, I have been putting the miles on the car just driving around. As a history buff I’ve long noted Illinois was not settled from Chicago and then southward, but in deep southern Illinois and then northward.

I set out for the town of Chester, Illinois in Randolph County on the Mississippi River. It is home to a Popeye The Sailor museum (the cartoon’s creator is from Chester). I also visited nearby Kaskaskia, named the territorial capitol of Illinois in 1809). Then on a recent trip to my local library, I came across a book titled Eight Months in Illinois by William Oliver. It is a “how-to” book on immigrating from Britain and Scotland to the U.S. where the Northwest territories had recently been opened up to settlement.

Oliver traveled to Illinois for his research and published it in 1843 when he returned to Scotland. He was in Illinois for eight months at Kaskaskia unable to travel further north because ice on the Mississippi River blocked progress. He spent this time gathering first person (settler/pioneer) narratives and observations on agricultural crops that did well, hunting and fishing opportunities, the burgeoning development of social and cultural institutions. It includes a fascinatingly detailed account of how one bought land to settle on, how townships with future school districts set aside were formed and how it all would be financed.

Recommendation:  Good stuff if you are a history buff.

Related posts:

The Ohio River and the American Experience (1991)

https://tedrakebookblog.blogspot.com/2019/10/always-river-ohio-river-and-american.html

Afloat on the Ohio (1897)

https://tedrakebookblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/afloat-on-ohio-1897-by-reuben-gold.html

SAVED: A War Reporter's Mission to Make It Home (2023) By Benjamin Hall

 

Recently I received the book SAVED as a gift from my dear friend Angela.  While not my usual kind of read, it is immensely compelling.  It is not for the squeamish.

The book is a memoir by Benjamin Hall, a young man who worked as a war correspondent across the globe, a dangerous occupation.  Each assignment takes a toll on you when you are single, an even higher toll when you are married with three children. It is one thing to routinely put your life in harm’s way, quite another to put your future with your family on the line.  But that is what happened in February of 2022 when Russia invaded the Ukraine.  Hall volunteered to report from the frontlines where on March 14^th his life would change forever when the car he and his crew were in was struck by a Russian bomb.  He was the only survivor, using “survivor” as a term meaning he did not die.

The story follows the extracting of Hall from the immediate battlefield to a hospital in Kyiv which was actively being bombed at the time, electricity was sporadic, and a 72-hour curfew was in place.  He would lose one leg, and most of the other.  He had burns over 90% of his body, and multiple major “other” problems.  Doctors quickly determined they were not equipped to provide the immediate care he needed.  In a fascinating action sequence worthy of an espionage thriller, he is put on a train headed for Poland, stopped before the border and “smuggled” across the line where a helicopter was sent to convey him to an airport and then on to Landstuhl, the American military hospital in Germany.  From there to a stop over at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC, and then transferred to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas for recovery and rehab.

If one was horrified by the battlefield chapter, the detailed description of his medical rehab is even more harrowing.  Hall survives through sheer willpower, faith, an endless desire to see his family, and is helped by a huge network of people across the globe, from medical staff, war correspondent colleagues, with political and medical assistance from several places, veteran groups and importantly with strings pulled by his employer. The cooperation (some official, some not) is an amazing tale.

I hesitate to mention this, but credit must be given where it is due:  his employer is Fox News (the Network of Lies).  They, as friends and colleagues, were there for him every step of the way, including extracting him from the Ukraine, and arranging for him to be served by U.S. military hospitals.  Hall heaps praise on Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott who was/is at the center of the election lies scandals which cost Fox $787.5 million in a defamation lawsuit a couple of weeks ago.

Recommendation:  Get over your justified distaste for Fox, this is a very good book.

Code Talker (2011) By Chester Nez, with Judith Schiess Avila

 

Non-fiction: The author of Code Talker is Chester Nez, a Native American who was born and raised on the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners region (AZ, NM, CO, UT). As such, he was a citizen of the United States, yet not allowed to vote until 1948 due to state-enacted voting restrictions (sound familiar?).  

Like many Americans, Nez enlisted in the Marines after the attack on Pearl Harbor (ironic when one considers he grew up in the desert).  As history now knows, Nez was one of the original 30 “Code Talkers” – Marines who were fluent in speaking Navajo, a language barely used on the reservations anymore, and completely unknown in Japan and the rest of the world.  They were charged with developing a secret code in the Navajo language for use in battlefield radio transmissions.  Their code would be successfully field tested in the battle for Guadalcanal and remain in use, never broken, throughout the remainder of the war. Their code, and their involvement in it, would be classified until 1968 -- by which time many of them had passed away – long before being publicly honored or even acknowledged.

This memoir has several interesting storylines, not the least of which is growing up in the reservation/checkerboard culture, how the Native religions interplayed with one’s world view, particularly as it pertains to death, and includes how the Code Talkers (420 by the end of the war) faired after the war.

The now declassified code itself, and how it was developed is a completely interesting story.  It details how the little-known Navajo language, without words for such things as battleship and aircraft carrier, was updated, then embedded in a secret code.

Giving appropriate credit.  Judith Schiess Avila interviewed Chester Nez for what was to be a biography.  Since most of the narrative involves Nez telling his story, she changed the format to that of a memoir.  Crediting Nez as the author of his story.   

Recommendation:  Yes. Not just for history buffs.