Review - The KGB Against the "Main Enemy": How the Soviet Intelligence Service Operates Against the United States by Herbert Romerstein and Stanislav Levchenko

Short Review: An account of how the Soviet the intelligence services operated from their inception through to the dying twilight of the nation they served.

Haiku
Useful idiots
Then, hardened mercenaries
At last, ruthless pros

Full review: This book is a very dense review of the operations of the Soviet intelligence services throughout the history of the Soviet Union from the earliest days of the Bolshevik revolution through the mid-1980s (the book was published in 1989). The authors are both former members of the intelligence community - one a former analyst for various committees of the House of Representatives and USIA and the other a former KGB officer who defected to the United States. Together, they weave together the various pieces of public information on the operations of Soviet intelligence to show how the KGB (and its predecessors the OGPU, NKVD, and all the other piles of alphabetical acronyms used by the Russian intelligence services) targeted those designated as enemies of the Soviet state, especially the United States.

The book focuses heavily on those who worked for the Soviets as willing agents, from the early naive and idealistic recruits of the 1920s and 1930s who believed in the worker's paradise, to the purely mercenary operatives of the 1960s and 1970s, to the evolution of the KGB into its final evolution as a service comprised of highly professional intelligence officers. The book is still extremely relevant, because even though the Soviet Union and the KGB are gone now, the intelligence apparatus they represented still lives on in the Russian state, and appears to still be using much the same tactics and with much the same aims as they were during the heyday of the U.S.S.R.

The most interesting elements of the book feature the early Soviet intelligence service - including those who worked in the United States before the U.S. government had even recognized the U.S.S.R. It is hard now to conceive of individuals so idealistic and naive as to believe that the Soviet leaders had their best interests at heart, but it is a historical fact that people signed up to fight as part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War only to be horribly betrayed by constant OGPU monitoring and purges. Many of these idealists found themselves on the wrong side of Soviet factional fighting when Trotsky split with Stalin (and Stalin developed an almost obsessive desire to eliminate Trotsky and his followers), and wound up being killed by those they had placed so much faith in. In the early days, it seems like working for the Soviet intelligence service was a good way to get killed by Soviet agents as cynical apparatchiks in Moscow killed off those they considered unreliable, those who had picked the wrong horse to back, or just those they simply disliked (anti-Semitism seems to have been a very big factor in Soviet decision-making).

The authors detail the use of Communist groups in other countries as fronts for Soviet intelligence operations, focusing especially upon the importance of the Spanish Civil War in spreading Soviet influence through the world before and during World War II. The book goes into great depth concerning the methods used by Soviet intelligence such as putting out numerous forgeries (many so clumsy as to be ludicrous, and despite this, many people seem to swallow them hook, line, and sinker), and showing how the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (and Hitler's subsequent betrayal of that pact) coupled with Stalin's purges crippled Soviet intelligence operations for a generation by disillusioning the idealistic cadre the Soviets had relied upon and forcing the Soviet intelligence service to turn to bribery and blackmail as their primary means of gaining information afterwards.

Much of the book depends on assembling information from many sources, often using wispy-thin connections as evidence. Some might say that Romerstein and Levchenko make too much of some alleged connections; on the other hand, the subject matter is intelligence operations so all of the connections are supposed to be entirely secret - even having some out in the open is evidence to a certain degree. In my estimation, the authors don't stretch their evidence beyond its value, and support their contentions reasonably well, using testimony from Congressional hearings, letters and statements made by various individuals both inside and outside the Soviet intelligence service, and the known actions of individuals. Where contradictory evidence is known to exist, the authors explain why such contradictory evidence is either reliable enough to provide doubt, or why they discount it.

The picture of Soviet intelligence depicted in this book is not a pretty one: The service seems to have been a combination of brutality and clumsiness. One wonders how truly effective the KGB has been, given their propensity to kill their own almost at random, and the almost inept ways they operate at times. That said, the vicious nature of the organization seems to have engendered a level of ruthlessness and paranoia that continues to fuel Russian thought even to this day. In a very real sense, the history of the security apparatus that underlaid the entire U.S.S.R. is the history that best informs us of how modern day Russia came to be. On the whole, the book is a chilling reminder of where Putin and many of the other leaders of modern Russia came from, and how they have been trained to view and deal with the rest of the world.

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Review - Never Call Retreat by Bruce Catton

Short review: As the war comes to a close, the northerners make plans for the aftermath, and the leaders of the Confederacy descend into delusion and self-destruction.

Haiku
Grant, Sherman command
The Confederacy's death
Inevitable

Full review: The third, and final volume in Catton’s famous Centennial History of the Civil War, Never Call Retreat details final dying convulsions of the Confederacy, and the relentless men who made it hold on grimly to the last as well as the much less relentless men who drove it to extinction. The book shows that the paradox of the Civil War is that the destruction of the Confederacy was accomplished as much by self-inflicted wounds as it was the result of Union efforts.

This book shows clearly that the tragedy of the Confederacy was not that men like Grant, Sherman, Thomas, Sheridan, and Farragut ground it into oblivion, but rather that men like Davis, Hood, and Hunter refused to surrender despite their position being obviously hopeless. Hunter’s delusions are laid out clearly in the book - while Grant laid siege to Richmond, Sherman ranged free in Georgia, and Thomas was pursuing the scattered remnants of Hood’s army, Hunter met with Lincoln to talk peace, and was mortally offended that Lincoln refused to compromise on reunion and emancipation – the only two issues of consequence in the war. Even in late 1864, Hunter expected that Lincoln would treat the defeated Confederacy as an equal, and not the broken, hollow shell that it was.

The central figure of the book is Grant, as the volume covers his Vicksburg campaign, ascension to command the Union armies of the west, and finally command of all the Union armies leading to the long grapple with Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Certainly Lee comes off well in parts of the book – his defeat of Hooker at Chancellorsville, Burnside at Fredericksburg, and subsequent second invasion culminating in the Battle of Gettysburg against Meade. But the book demonstrates convincingly that these were futile efforts: Even had Lee won at Gettysburg, his army would have been too worn down to exploit his victory, and even if it had not, he could not have taken the strongly fortified federal capitol. As Grant found out a year later when he laid siege to Petersburg, a strongly entrenched army was almost undefeatable by assault, and there were more than enough troops in D.C. to ward off any assault before relief could come. Grant, laying siege to Petersburg, had plenty of time, as the Confederacy had no relief troops to send. Lee would have had no such luxury.

Through the volume Catton details the ever more desperate efforts of the Confederate leaders, even as their nation collapsed around them and their own people defected. Wild plans were made to do all manner of things: Plots to bomb hotels in New York, or rob the Union in order to provide for Confederate needs, or steal Union warships, and so on. The lunacy of the Confederate leaders led Davis to relieve Johnston, whose delaying tactics had at least slowed Sherman down, and replace him with Hood and orders to go on the offensive - a disastrous command to an army that was completely ill-equipped to the task and which only left Georgia open to plunder. The whole book gives one a taste for the true feeling of inevitability that must have gripped the entire Confederacy, evidenced by the huge volume of desertions that plagued the Confederate armies and the desperate, incredible, delusional (and, due to historical events moving to fast for it to be put into effect, untested) plan to free and arm slaves to fight in its defense.

In all this, Catton weaves the tale of the political events surrounding the war in the field: The Presidential campaign of 1864, pitting McClellan against Lincoln, the debates in Congress and among members of Lincoln’s cabinet over the questions of reconstruction following the war and the status of the now-freed slaves. Catton makes clear that Booth’s bullet cruelly ended what might have been a kinder and better run reconstruction, more effective at healing the nation than the violent and bitter version created by the enmity between Johnson and the radical Republican Congress. The book ends just after Lincoln’s assassination and the final surrender of the last organized Confederate armies (all of whom had commanders who refused to take to the hills and conduct a bitter guerrilla war: Unlike their political leaders, the Confederate generals were often able to see what was best for the interests of the South, and the Union it would have to rejoin). In many ways, the books are the history of Lincoln as a political figure – he was, after all, a surprise choice for the Republican nomination in 1860, and his death put the cap on the war itself.

This series was first published in 1960 – the centennial of the U.S. Civil War. Every Civil War historian since then has been influenced by this work. For most students of U.S. history, this set of three volumes marks the starting point for their study of the war, and as a result, it is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the period, and the later scholarship on the subject. Without Catton, there would be no Foote, no Burns, and no Shaara. The series is also quite clear and straightforward, laying out an incredibly confusing episode in history in a concise and reasonably easy to understand manner.

Previous book in the series: Terrible Swift Sword

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Review - Terrible Swift Sword by Bruce Catton

Short review: McClellan takes command of the Army of the Potomac and transforms it into a capable fighting force, but he doesn't know what to do with it. Lee takes command of the Army of Northern Virginia, but only after the Confederate cause has been essentially lost.

Haiku
After First Bull Run
States learn the harshness of war
Bloody Antietam

Full review: This is the second volume in Bruce Catton's three part Centennial History of the Civil War, detailing the events following the First Battle of Bull Run through to the aftermath of the horrifically bloody Battle of Antietam, including the final removal of McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac. While the first volume was dominated by the politics of the era, this second volume takes place after open hostilities have broken out between the United States and the Confederacy, and as a result substantial attention is given to the military strategies and how they interacted with the politics of both warring nations.

The book covers, for the most part, the period of time that McClellan held command of the Army of the Potomac, and by quoting his arrogant and somewhat delusional letters extensively, demonstrates just how damaging McClellan was to the Union cause in Virginia. To be fair to McClellan, the book also shows how he was instrumental in transforming the chaotic and disorganized Union forces in the Eastern theater into the disciplined and competent Army of the Potomac. In addition, the book demonstrates quite clearly that McClellan's shortcomings as a field commander were not really too severely damaging to the Union cause overall.

For all the press Lee gets as the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, this book makes clear (even if that is not what Catton intended) that by the time he took command of that army in June 1862, the Confederate cause was likely hopeless. One can make an argument that the Confederate cause was hopeless from the start (a position argued quite well by Richard N. Current in his essay in the book Why the North Won the Civil War), but by June 1862, it is pretty clear that the cause was completely lost. The Union had seized Port Royal and the Carolina Outer Banks, closing down most of the Carolina ports, and had taken New Orleans. West Virginia had been carved away from Virginia. In the west, the Confederacy's chance to turn Missouri into a Confederate state had been lost, and their chance to do the same to Kentucky had also slipped away. The Union controlled both the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, and held all of the Mississippi save for that portion of the river around Vicksburg. While the South had been basking in the glory of their victory at Bull Run and found a hero in Robert E. Lee, the North had been busy winning the war.

Catton lays this out step by step, following the course of the war, showing the political realities that drove the men involved, and demonstrating the fates of those who did not recognize, or chose to ignore those political realities (chief among those with a tin ear was McClellan). It also shows how the war transformed from a clash of eager, disorganized militia into a struggle between hardened armies, including showing how McClellan and other commanders were instrumental in transforming the Union forces into professional fighting forces, and how McClellan misused what he had created, as well as showing how Lee was able to take a much less impressive army and bamboozle the ineffectual McClellan. However, the book also gives one the sense that, even though Lee was by nature an aggressive military commander, the risks he took, seen now as brilliant innovative maneuvers, were driven in large part by the fact that he was playing a losing hand, and had to take the extreme long shot gambles he did just to give the Confederacy any chance to win a conflict that it had essentially already lost.

This is a clear, well-written and reasonably comprehensive history of the early years of the central event in U.S. history, and it is a must read for anyone who wants to even begin to consider themselves well-versed on the subject. To a certain extent, this book could be subtitled "The Rise of McClellan and Lee, and the Fall of McClellan", but it also a book about how the enthusiasm and eagerness of the first few months of the war was replaced by a realization of just how hard this war would be, and the effects that this realization engendered. All modern conversations about the Civil War either start with, or are influenced by, Catton's work, and as a result being familiar with this book is almost a necessity.

Previous book in the series: The Coming Fury
Subsequent book in the series: Never Call Retreat

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Review - The Coming Fury by Bruce Catton

Short review: A comprehensive history of how the 1860 Presidential election set into motion a series of events that led to secession, rebellion, and civil war.

Haiku
First an election
Then crisis and secession
Finally, a war

Full review: This is the first volume in Bruce Catton's famous history of the U.S. Civil War. Given that I studied Civil War history as an undergraduate (under Michael F. Holt, author of The Political Crisis of the 1850s, a book that is also in my library), I suppose it is kind of surprising that I never read this series until now. I can only say that I wish I had read it sooner. This is, to put it bluntly, one of the most compelling accounts of the events leading to the U.S. Civil War, and that transpired in its early months, that I have read. Despite the fact that it is a survey, and thus unable to go into great detail, it is one of the best overviews of the history of this time period that one can find.

In the first volume, Catton presents a clearly written history of the events between the 1860 Democratic Party Convention in Charleston, South Carolina to the 1861 Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Virginia. While there isn't anything in the account that I didn't generally know already, Catton links the events together, showing how one foolish idea after another, one miscalculation after another, and one delusion after another all wove together to drive the country away from the delicate political compromises of the 1840s and 1850s first to sectarian extremism, and finally war. Understanding these sorts of connections are the true gateway to really understanding history, and Catton does a masterful job linking them together, showing how one event was influenced by others, and influenced still more in turn.

In The Coming Fury, Catton clearly shows how unready both sides were for the coming conflict, and how both gravely miscalculated the other's intentions. From the bitter, four way presidential campaign in which the only national candidate had no chance of victory, to the bizarre (and ultimately fateful) siege of Fort Sumter, to the Federal government's actions in Missouri to drive out the government of a State that had not seceded, to the clash of rank amateurs that was almost as costly to the victorious Confederates as to the routed Federals many of the events detailed in this volume have an almost farcical tone to them, which serves to underscore the naïveté, the confusion, and the chaos that every person in the U.S. faced during this year.

In contrast to many histories that make the animosities between the factions seem inevitable, and seem like everyone participating knew hostilities were inevitable, Catton, in this volume, shows how men who became implacable adversaries beginning in 1861, grasped to the last at straws that offered any fleeting hope of peace, and the forces (mostly driven by the two sides very incompatible ideas about exactly what they would be negotiating) that made such peace impossible. In many of the chapters the desperation of the parties is almost palpable as they cast about trying to find a solution, any solution, that will allow them to avert the oncoming war. This is in sharp contrast to the many power brokers (most, but not all, of whom were aligned with the doomed pro-slavery pro-secession side) who almost gleefully pushed the country into an armed conflict.

Catton captures this, the last time that true amateurs in politics and warfare would grace the stage, and expertly details the schemes, subterfuges, and blunders they made which resulted in what is still arguably the most pivotal conflict in U.S. history. Most of modern scholarship on the topic of the U.S. Civil War is a reaction to, or an expansion of, Catton's work on the subject, and to truly understand those works, one must start with this one. As one of the foundational works of scholarship about the U.S. Civil War, The Coming Fury and the following two volumes in the series are virtually mandatory works to read for anyone who truly wants to study U.S. history.

Subsequent book in the series: Terrible Swift Sword

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Review - African American Army Officers of World War I: A Vanguard of Equality in War and Beyond by Adam P. Wilson

Short review: An account of how African Americans answered their country's call in World War I hoping their dedication and service would pave the way for equality and justice for their community. Instead, they faced racism and hostility, but emerged from the war as leaders dedicated to changing the world they lived in.

Haiku
During World War I
A community rallied
To confirm their worth

Disclosure: I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Some people think this may bias a reviewer so I am making sure to put this information up front. I don't think it biases my reviews, but I'll let others be the judge of that.

Full review: U.S. history can be thought of in two very different ways. On the one hand, there is the version of history that most school children are taught that seems to have inspired such properties as the History Rock portions of Schoolhouse Rock and which dominates the nostalgia-filled speeches of politicians. In this version of history, the U.S. is a shining city on a hill, built by idealists upon the principles of liberty and freedom after throwing off the yoke of British tyranny. In this version, the U.S. became a champion of progress and democracy, a nation filled with exceptional people that had an exceptional role in the world. On the other, there is reality, which is a version of history that is far less inspiring, but also far more interesting. African American Army Officers of World War I is about the second, very real version of U.S. history, and is an unflinching examination of some of the the best and worst aspects of U.S. history.

In 1915 and 1916, with the prospect of entering the raging war in Europe dominating many minds in the United States, prominent members of the African-American community began pushing for black candidates be trained as officers in the American army. As early as July 1916, calls were made for a training camp to be established for African-American men to receive training that would prepare them to be officer candidates in the event of American entry into the war. Given the title of this book, it should come as no surprise that after much political maneuvering and effort, the Fort Des Moines Training Camp for Colored Officers was established in 1917 with an initial class of 1,250 candidates drawn from the black community - 250 to come from the ranks of non commissioned officers already serving in the U.S. Army, and the rest to be drawn from the civilian population. This book is the account of the push for the creation of this camp, the controversies that surrounding its formation and operation, and the men who served first in its program and then as officers in the U.S. Army during World War I, and the profound ways in which these men shaped the United States following the war.

African-American soldiers have served in all of the was waged by the United States. The black regiments raised by the Union during the U.S. Civil War, such as the 54^th Massachusetts, are well known, as are the unites of black "Buffalo Soldiers" who served on the frontier, but black soldiers also fought in the American Revolution and the War of 1812 (although not all served on the side of the U.S.). Wilson documents this history of black service in the first chapter of African American Army Officers of World War I to give the context in which the debate over creating a segregated camp to train African-American officers for services in the army took place.

The most critical observation of the period between the U.S. Civil War and the establishment of the training camp at Fort Des Moines is the dichotomy between the aspirational language used in the laws concerning black service in the U.S. armed forces, and the actually under which they were implemented. Formally there was no legal impediment to black candidates entering the service academies at Annapolis and West Point, but in practice the deficiencies in the education afforded to most black citizens and the reluctance of the legislative branch to recommend such candidates meant that very few could even gain admission. Even if a black candidate did gain admission to one of the service academies, the environment was so hostile that very few managed to graduate - between the U.S. Civil War and U.S. entry into World War I, only a handful of black soldiers managed to graduate and secure positions as officers, the most successful of which was Lieutenant Colonel Charles Young whose career seems to have been hampered by the Army's efforts to ensure that he was never placed in a position where he would command white troops, going to far as to have him forced into retirement for medical reasons rather than promote the officer to Brigadier rank.

This official equality and practical discrimination was replicated in the enlisted ranks, most notably in an instance in Brownsville, Texas in which a company of black soldiers assigned to the army installation there aroused such hatred from the local populace that the locals threatened to meet the incoming soldiers with a posse to drive them out. After the soldiers had been stationed there, an incident in which the soldiers were almost certainly merely defending themselves resulted in an inquest after which President Theodore Roosevelt sided with the locals and had all of the black soldiers present dishonorably discharged. This should come as little surprise considering Roosevelt's disparaging remarks concerning the black soldiers who served with him in the Spanish-American War. Time and again, official equality for blacks in the armed services was undermined by a practical application of the rules that was anything but even-handed. Behind even this official facade of equality lurked naked racism: After the Brownsville incident, many in Congress urged that blacks be formally barred from entering the service academies, and that all black non-commissioned officers in the armed forces be stripped of their rank.

It is against this historical backdrop that the call for the creation of a training camp for black officers was made. Many leaders in the black community foresaw American involvement in the conflict in Europe, and argued that blacks should serves, and that the Army should give black citizens the opportunity to train as officers. Prominent voices in the black community such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Kelly Miller, Fred R. Moore, and others called upon young African-American men to step up to volunteer for duty and become both an example of the loyalty and bravery of the African-American citizen, and a new generation of leaders for their community. As Wilson details, this call was not without controversy, both within and without the black community. Many white Americans opposed the idea of training black men as officers, mostly for predictably racist reasons: Black men were said to be fundamentally unfit for leadership, black men were inherently unreliable, black men were not intelligent enough to serve as officers, and so on. Many within the black community opposed such a training camp on far sounder grounds - the first reviving arguments made during the Spanish-American War which asked why black men should be asked to volunteer to defend liberty and democracy abroad when the society they lived in denied them the same at home. This is a quite reasonable question, and when one reads and outline of how African-American soldiers had been treated to that point, the question that comes to mind is not "why should blacks serve", but rather "why have blacks not deserted the nation in droves".

The second objection to the proposed camp from the black community was something of an extension of the first: The proposed camp was to be segregated. Black officer candidates were to train separately from white officer candidates, and given the Army's track record when it came to actually implementing equal treatment for black and white soldiers, having concerns in this area was entirely justified. Further, having a separate segregated training camp was also seen as an ideological affront, a statement from the government that black America was different from white America. While many modern day Americans are familiar with the Jim Crow laws segregating blacks from whites, many also have the somewhat blinkered view that such laws were the exclusive province of Southern states. The story of the creation of, and controversy surrounding, the training camp at Fort Des Moines should put these notions to rest: In the early part of the 20^th century, the United States as a whole was remained an almost unapologetically racist society.

Despite these objections, the segregated Seventeenth Provisional Training Regiment was created - those who supported it reasoning that even though a segregated training camp was not an ideal solution, half of something was better than all of nothing. A call went out for volunteers, and around 1,250 men responded, drawn from among the best and brightest that the African-American community of that era had to offer as pleas went out for "doctors, lawyers, teachers, business men, and all those who graduated from high school" to enlist. Roughly a quarter of the men who responded had been educated at Howard University, the remainder from dozens of other institutions of higher learning. As Wilson details, the recruitment of this collection of volunteers was not without hiccups, but in retrospect it seems almost remarkable that so many men would choose to give of themselves to an institution that had proved so hostile to them for so long.

Although many prominent black leaders had hoped that Colonel Young would command the training regiment, but his forced retirement prevented that from happening. Instead, Colonel Charles C. Ballou was given the position, and as Wilson lays out, the work of transforming the volunteers into officers began. Much of the history of this process seems fairly unremarkable, although Wilson does highlight both the triumphs of the cadets, and the to be expected indignities heaped upon them. Des Moines was chosen because, as a northern city, it was believed that it would be more welcoming to the training regiment than a southern locale would be, and to a certain extent this was true. On the other hand, racism ran deep in American society, and there were some incidents that are documented as part of Wilson's narrative. More troubling were the obstacles the U.S. Army put in the way of the cadet's success. For his part, Ballou seems to have done his best to prepare the soldiers under his command for their role as officers, but the U.S. Army seems to have been determined to undermine them in sneaky ways. The officers trained at Fort Des Moines were only given infantry training, and were not to be allowed to enter active duty as artillery or communications officers. Later, when some officers were allowed to try their hand at artillery work, they were given little or no training in the use of the equipment, and then their predictably poor test scores were used as evidence that black officers were unsuited to that branch of the service. When all-black battalions were formed, they were divided and scattered across bases throughout the country so as to assuage fears that too many armed black men in one space would foment rebellion.

Time after time, through both official and unofficial means, overt and covert, the men of the Seventeenth Provisional Training Regiment found obstacles placed in their path due to their race. Even so, the bulk of the cadets completed their training and received commissions as officers. If one were to think that their path from there would be smooth, one would be mistaken. Not content with undermining their efforts during training, the U.S. Army continued to do so after the officers and their men were shipped off to France - turning a blind eye to insubordination by white soldiers, issuing orders limiting the freedom of black soldiers while on leave, making efforts to keep black soldiers out of combat lest they demonstrate that they were actually effective at the job, and even going so far as to try to tell the French army not to be too nice to the black soldiers when they were put under French command. Despite France's own less than sterling record in dealing with black troops recruited from their colonial holdings, the French were far more welcoming to the black American troops than their own white American countrymen had been. Ballou, now the commander of the all-black 92nd Division, lost pretty much any built up good will he had earned during his time commanding the Fort Des Moines training camp by issuing a series of orders that his black officers considered insulting and demeaning. Even when black soldiers were allowed into combat, their performance was denigrated in official reports that seem at odds with the other available evidence.

As Wilson's account demonstrates, the optimism and hope that fueled the push to create the training camp at Fort Des Moines and establish a corps of black officers within the U.S. Army proved to be misguided. Despite overcoming the obstacles placed in their way, the service and loyalty provided by black soldiers in World War I did little to change the attitudes of the society they lived in. On the other hand, what Wilson's account does show is that many of the men of the Seventeenth Provisional Training Regiment went on to become prominent voices in the black community resulting in an array of political leaders, legal scholars, academics, authors, and artists who shaped the course of the push for equality and justice over the decades following the war. Wilson leans perhaps a bit too heavily on the notion that their shared wartime experience was a prime factor in this development - after all the men who joined the the Seventeenth Provisional Training Regiment were already civic-minded enough to volunteer for service in answer to a call that asked them to give of themselves for a greater cause. There is something of a chicken and egg question here: Did the men whose stories are told in this book become leaders of their community because of their service as officers in the U.S. Army, or did they choose service as officers because they were already on their way to becoming leaders. Either way, their contributions cannot be overstated, and their sacrifices should not be forgotten.

Wilson is exceptionally thorough in his reporting, at times perhaps too thorough, as there are a few places where the book gets a bit repetitive. Even so, African American Army Officers of World War I recounts an important chapter in U.S. history - a chapter of the kind that is far too often overlooked, and which should not be. Wilson's account tells the story of men who not only stood up to be counted in their nation's time of need, their actions forced their nation to begin to live up to its ideals. This is the history of the worst aspects of the United States, but at the same time an account of the nobility that has made the country better than it was before. For anyone who has an interest in the full account of the history of the United States, this book is likely to be a fascinating read.

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Review - Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel

Short review: Sailors need to find out how to calculate longitude. England offers a prize. Clockmaker comes up with a solution.

Haiku
Dangerous sailing
Until unknown clockmaker
Solves it with a watch

Full review: Sailors have been able to calculate latitude almost since men first set out onto the ocean. Calculating longitude, on the other hand, is a technology that has only been perfected in the relatively recent past. Many of the famous explorers whose names students now commit to memory set out with no reliable method of telling how far east or west they were, resulting in many deaths and extensive hardships for the crews involved.

Dava Sobel's book details the story of the Longitude Prize enacted by the British Parliament, the bizarre and impractical solutions offered to win the prize, and the lifelong efforts of John Harrison, a man who finally fulfilled the conditions necessary to win the Longitude Prize, but due to the prejudices and conflicts of interest of the commissioners charged with awarding the prize, was never actually awarded the bounty, despite having the backing of King George himself.

The method for determining longitude is fairly straightforward. One must calculate the local time where one is, and compare it to the time at some known position, which is now always assumed to be Greenwich in the United Kingdom. The difference in the local time and the Greenwich time can be expressed in hours, minutes, and second, and then plotted on a globe, showing the longitude of the ship in question. The prime difficulty facing the aspirants for the Longitude Prize was how to determine Greenwich time when one was presumably hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Astronomers, who favored methods using stellar and lunar observations, eventually settled upon a method that involved tracking the path of the moon across the sky, comparing its location to the locations of designated guide stars, and measuring the distance between the Earth and the moon. This method was complicated and difficult, and required massive numbers of celestial observations to be made before the required charts could be made to begin with. This method was also somewhat unreliable - on a cloudy night, one could not locate the stars needed, many days out of the month the moon is not visible (as it is located on the opposite side of the Earth), and so on.

John Harrison, on the other hand, sought to build a very accurate clock. Once such a clock was set to, for example, London time, one could simply refer to the clock at noon local time, and determine by seeing how far away from noon the clock was how many minutes and seconds of arc one was from London. However, the clock would have to remain accurate over long periods of time, in humid conditions, and across a wide span of temperatures. When the Longitude Act was passed, clocks were not even accurate to within several minutes per day, and even an error of a couple seconds per day would cause the navigator to miscalculate a ships position by dozens or even hundreds of miles.

The book describes Harrison's attempts to build such a clock, eventually settling upon an oversized watch. The book also describes the hostility many of the astronomers on the longitude board evaluating his submission had towards him. While Harrison was a tradesman, and a self-educated mechanic to boot (earning the derision of many of the highly educated aristocratic astronomers on the board), he was their competitor for the extremely lucrative prize. Under the guidance of successive Royal Astronomers, the board imposed more and more difficult obstacles to Harrison's watch, until in frustration he appealed directly to King George. Eventually, with the King's assistance, Harrison was awarded a prize by a special act of parliament. The obstinate longitude board never awarded the full Longitude Prize to anyone.

Sobel has created a compelling story out of what could have been a rather boring event in history. In a roundabout way, Harrison's story explains to a certain extent why pirates and privateers were common before the 1800s, and vanished almost completely thereafter. One thing made clear (to me at least) is that many writers of historical fiction, or even fantasy, make sea travel in the pre-Longitude era too reliable, and too easy. It is probably the measure of the success of a technological advance that it becomes so prevalent and accepted that the difficulties faced in the days before are forgotten by the general public. On that score, Harrison's watch is one of the most significant technological developments in history.

One nitpick I have is with the subtitle of the book. It seems to me that the longitude problem was not a scientific problem, but rather an engineering one. That failing aside, this is an excellent book.

Dava Sobel     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Review - Cobb's Legion Cavalry by Harriet Bey Mesic

Short review: A detailed history of a single Confederate cavalry unit with a definite editorial slant.

Haiku
They came from Georgia
Fought mostly in Virginia
And then surrendered

Disclosure: I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Some people think this may bias a reviewer so I am making sure to put this information up front. I don't think it biases my reviews, but I'll let others be the judge of that.

Full review: Cobb's Legion Cavalry is a detailed unit history of a single unit of Confederate cavalry that served mostly with the Army of Northern Virginia during the U.S. Civil War. The level of detail included in the book is impressive, with an almost day by day recounting of the activities of the unit, a roster of all the officers and enlisted men who served in the unit giving as much of their prior history, service record, and life following the war as could be found, and various other sundry details concerning the unit. Unfortunately, the book is marred by a pervasive and relentless editorial bias that renders many of the glowing tributes paid to the men in the unit seem hollow and forced.

About half of the book is taken up with a detailed account of the doings of Cobb's Legion Cavalry during the U.S. Civil War. Originally raised as part of a combined arms unit under a theory that was quickly discarded, the cavalry portion of Cobb's Legion, officially designated the Ninth Georgia Volunteers, was quickly detached from the artillery and infantry portions and combined with the rest of the Confederate cavalry in Virginia. The book first discusses the recruitment of the soldiers and the Confederacy's process of equipping them with horses and appropriate gear, or rather, the Confederacy's process of asking them to provide their own horses and its struggles to provide firearms, ammunition, and rations. The details her illustrate one of the primary difficulties faced by the Confederacy - the lack of an effective quartermaster system, which plagued the Southern forces from the beginning of the war throughout the conflict until its bitter end. This inadequate supply is cited as evidence of the heroism of Confederate soldiers, but what it really demonstrates is the dysfunctional nature of the Confederacy. After detailing the unit's organization, the narrative launches into a detailed accounting of the actions of the cavalry, reporting on every movement and engagement, including a regular casualty report listing which those members of the unit who were wounded, captured, or killed on that particular day or handful of days described in the given entry. This form of narrative is somewhat interesting, as it gives a view of the flow of history from a very specific viewpoint - confined to the actions of a single unit, but it also contains some limitations, being both to large and too small. To large because it is difficult to get a feel for any individual member of the unit making it difficult to generate empathy for them, and too small because it is easy to lose track of the larger events of the war amidst the details, and consequently many events lose necessary context. Even so, the level of detail provided is impressive, even though it is quite possible to easily get lost in the details if one is not familiar with the broader events of the military actions in Virginia, and later, in the Carolinas.

Following the detailed unit action report, the book contains a comprehensive listing of all the members of Cobb's Legion Cavalry complete with a thumbnail biography of each individual. The first appendix contains biographical information about the various commanding officers who led the unit, followed by a listing of every known individual who served in any capacity at any time with this cavalry, and then a listing of all of the original members who joined when it was originally formed. Also included are lists of those members who were surrendered at the end of the war, those who were killed in action, those who were taken as prisoners of war, and those who were listed as deserters. The sections that are primarily of interest are the first two giving biographical data about the members of the unit, because the remainder are simply lists of names, and are probably of limited interest to anyone not specifically tracing the fate of a particular soldier. The biographical data generally includes the particular soldier's enlistment date, his rank, what the unit records say happened to him, and in many cases a brief bit of background information about that soldier's life before and after their time serving with Cobb's Legion. This section boasts a wealth of detail, but as it is simply an alphabetical listing of the soldiers, there is no real way to get a feel for the structure of the unit, or the connections between the men. Anyone looking for the records relating to a particular soldier, such as a descendant seeking information about their forebear, will likely find this section quite useful. For most other readers it will likely be little more than a curiosity as a source of exacting detail.

But all of this wealth of detail is rendered somewhat less useful by the obvious editorial bias that runs through the presentation of the book. There are few issues in U.S. history more contentious than the U.S. Civil War. But the primary reason for the contentiousness is Confederate apologists trying to salvage some sort of honorability for their preferred side in the conflict. Mesic is no exception to this - from the outset she describes the men who served in Cobb's Legion as "fighting for Southern freedom from Northern tyranny". But this is just an attempt to divert attention from the fact that the side they were fighting for was tied to a repugnant cause. Confederate apologists have tried to argue that their forebears were fighting for something noble and idealistic, but the bare fact remains that when the Confederacy was formed, its Constitution only differed from the U.S. Constitution insofar as it enshrined ironclad protections for slavery. In short, the men of Cobb's Legion, like the men of all Confederate units, were fighting against a "tyranny" that sought to compel them to eschew treating other human beings as chattel. They were fighting for "freedom", but a freedom so narrowly defined that it removes any moral claims they might have had to fighting "civilized war" (even though those claims were somewhat dubious to begin with). Fighting in favor of slavery is inherently uncivilized. Supporting an army fighting in favor of slavery is inherently uncivilized. Complaining that your property has been destroyed when you seek to hold others as property is a stance that is hypocritical in the extreme. Confederate boosters try to argue that their cause was for "States Rights", but the brute fact remains that the only right they chose to advocate for was the right to hold other men in bondage.

For the most part, Mesic's litany of Confederate apologetics are a fairly standard set. J.E.B. Stuart's Chambersburg Raid is lauded as an example of gallantry and daring. Never mind that militarily it was mostly a failure because they were unable to destroy the Chambersburg rail bridge. Never mind that one of the major accomplishments of the raid was capturing unarmed civilians to hold as hostages. Because it was Confederate cavalrymen, they were dashing and brave and it was a brilliant maneuver. One suspects, given the descriptions given the Union cavalry movements that a similar effort on the part of the Federal troops would have been described as a futile waste of lives. Confederate frontal charges are described as bold and gallant. Union frontal charges are described as useless and costly foolishness. The blundering errors made by J.E.B. Stuart during the days leading to and during the Battle of Gettysburg are glossed over and recast as brilliant strategic decisions. By the end of the recounting of the events of the War, Mesic is reduced to lauding the brilliance of an excursion forced upon the Confederate cavalry to steal cattle to supply the starving Southern troops.

Mesic saves most of her opprobrium for Grant and Sherman, who Confederate apologists loathe, mostly because, as Mesic demonstrates, they still don't understand how these two men served as the agents of the destruction of their beloved Confederacy. Mesic consistently disparagingly refers to the large casualties suffered by the Union during Grant's Overland Campaign, but fails to place them in context. For example, she refers to the Confederate troops as the "victors" of the Battles of Wilderness and Spotslyvania Court House, and from a very technical tactical standpoint one could argue that they were, but by focusing on this narrow technical definition one misses that the "victories" were meaningless. In the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House the Union suffered 18,399 casualties and the Confederacy 13,421 and "held the field". In raw terms, this seems to show that the Confederacy got the better of the engagement, but as a percentage of their forces the Union casualties amounted to 17.5% of Grant's forces, and 22.4% of Lee's. And Lee couldn't afford the casualties. When one looks even more closely, the figures are even more disastrous for the Confederate cause - broken down the Union losses were 2,735 killed, 13,416 wounded, and 2,258 captured or missing while Confederate losses were 1,467 killed, 6,235 wounded, and 5,719 captured or missing. Union losses were mostly men wounded, many of whom would recover and return to the ranks, while Confederate losses were mostly permanent losses. The "missing in action" figures are the most telling: despite the steady drumbeat of Confederate propaganda that the boys in grey were willing to fight to the bitter end no matter the odds, it is clear that they were surrendering or deserting in droves. With the exception of the Battle of Cold Harbour, most of the battles of the Overland Campaign had similar results - the Battle of the Wilderness for example, resulted in 17,666 Union casualties (16.8% of the Union force), and Confederate casualties totaled 11,125 (18.5% of the total). Grant beat Lee on the battlefield because Lee burned his forces faster than Grant, despite what Confederate apologists will tell you. More to the point, despite "holding the field", the Confederate victories did nothing to stop the Union advance into Virginia, rendering their supposed accomplishments hollow and empty.

But Mesic completely misunderstands the nature of Grant's campaign when she discusses his eventual crossing of the James River. She notes that the Army of the Potomac had suffered 60,000 casualties by then, whereas Grant could have placed his forces in that position via ship transport without suffering any casualties. This reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Union strategy assuming that positioning the Union army to threaten Richmond was the primary goal of the Overland Campaign, as opposed to the destruction of the army of Northern Virginia. Grant certainly could have repeated McClellan's maneuver and landed his troops on the banks of the James River by sea, but he would not have bled Lee's army in the process. He also would not have occupied Lee's troops, preventing the Confederacy from transferring troops to confront Sherman's advance. In effect, Grant's action in Virginia allowed Sherman to gut the Confederacy by locking the bulk of Confederate troops into the defense of Richmond. One hundred and fifty years after the fact and the proponents of the "Lost Cause" don't understand what went wrong other than to say they were overwhelmed by superior numbers - which, given the advantage defenders had in the Civil War era, weren't all that overwhelming after all.

But why is this sort of editorial bias an issue? Because when one starts to notice that the author is shading the truth in favor of their preferred historical figures, it calls into question the reliability of other statements made in the text. And because of this, all of that wealth of detail that is packed into the book becomes less than useful, because one has to fact check those details for oneself, which more or less defeats the purpose of having those details in one place. And when information is presented without context in order to slant the reporting, it causes the reader to wonder what else has been left out. For example, Mesic complains frequently about how the Union troops failed to follow the rules of "civilized warfare", but overlooks, for example, that the Confederate use of mines to try to slow Sherman's advance, or the habit engaged in by Cobb's Legion Cavalry "Iron Scouts" of wearing Union uniforms were also violations of the accepted rules of civilized warfare of the time. The editorializing even bleeds into the biographical data provided: Matthew Calbraith Butler's post Civil-War legal career is described as being dedicated to opposing "cruelties" imposed upon Southerners. But Butler is most known in the post-Bellum era for his involvement in the Hamburg Massacre, a race-riot in which seven people were killed, mostly black militia men who were captured and executed for the offense of drilling in a public area. The fact that the "cruelties" imposed upon Southerners mostly consisted of trying to compel white Southerners to treat black Southerners like human beings is not merely glossed over, it is completely ignored.

It is difficult to figure out what to do with a book like Cobb's Legion Cavalry. On the one hand it is clear that the book is a labor of love that required an enormous amount of effort to produce. On the other, it is clear that it should not be regarded as anything other than an advocacy piece. Given that the primary intended audience for the book is likely the descendants of the members of the Ninth Georgia Volunteers, a certain amount of cheering for their accomplishments is to be expected - after all who would want a book that described their ancestors as evil defenders of slavery? But at a certain point, such cheerleading seriously damages the credibility of such a book as a source of historical information. Cobb's Legion Cavalry appears to have crossed that line. As a result, while the book is an interesting window into the day to day experiences of a Confederate unit, the fact that it shades the truth to advocate for a particular viewpoint means that book cannot stand on its own as a historical source.

Harriet Bey Mesic     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Review - Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff

Short review: Joyriding sightseers crash into the jungle. Most die. Survivors aren't harmed by natives, don't lose limbs to gangrene, don't have to live off the land.

Haiku
The Gremlin Special
Crashes into the jungle
Rescuers come soon

Disclosure: I received this book as an Advance Review Copy. Some people think this may bias a reviewer so I am making sure to put this information up front. I don't think it biases my reviews, but I'll let others be the judge of that.

Full review: There is a tendency to view major world-spanning events like World War II as a macroscopic clash of civilizations as nations assemble their resources and vast fleets of ships, airplanes, and armored vehicles are arrayed against one another in epic ranks of steel and destruction. But the reality is that a vast world-spanning event is really a multitude of small, personal stories involving people living in some obscure corner of the world doing nothing more than going about their daily lives. And Lost in Shangri-La drives this point home with a mostly forgotten story about survival in the jungles of New Guinea that sparked a media sensation in 1945 during the waning months of World War II.

The story, in a nutshell, involves a group of off-duty U.S. Army Air Corps technical support personnel, including a small contingent of female personnel (in the nomenclature of World War II, these were "WAC"s, because they were part of the Women's Army Corps) who decide to take a day trip to gawk from the windows of an airplane at some natives living in an isolated valley. To get to this isolated valley requires flying in a C-47 dubbed the "Gremlin Special" at high altitude through dangerously treacherous mountain terrain with unpredictable winds. Due to a collection of poor decisions by the commander of the joyride combined with the lousy flying conditions, the plane crashes, killing most of those on board. The survivors are badly injured and must deal with inhospitable jungle and dangerous natives while a rescue effort is mounted by the U.S. Army. After the survivors endure many trials and tribulations among the stone age natives, the U.S. Army manages to get them back to civilization. Despite the subtitle of the book that includes the phrase "a plane crash into the stone age", the survivors are located so quickly, and air drops of supplies established so swiftly, that it really should have been called "a plane crash into lots of airlifted goodies".

Well, sort of. One of the interesting things about the book is just how a story that is generally as bland as the historical events detailed in its pages managed to become a major media event in a world still wracked with war. The whole book is filled with explanations of what might have happened that would have been bad for the survivors, but it turns out didn't actually happen. After they crash, Zuckoff describes how difficult it would be to locate the survivors under the jungle canopy, but they find a clearing and get located within a couple days. Zuckoff writes about how they might have been threatened by the warlike natives, but the natives turn out to be welcoming and friendly. Zuckoff writes about how the survivors' infected and gangrenous wounds might have resulted in amputation of the affected limbs or even death if medical help didn't arrive in time, but then medical help arrives in time. Zuckoff describes how dangerous the parachute jumps of the rescuing party would be, but then everyone lands safely. Zuckoff details everything that could go wrong with the plan to extract the survivors from the jungle, but then everything goes well and everyone gets home safely. Over and over, the repeated theme of the book is just how dangerous things are for the survivors, but then everything turns out fine.

But what is not really dealt with much in the book is the openly racist attitudes of the Americans, and the racist and sexist overtones of the media coverage. Zuckoff deals squarely with the racist coverage with respect to the Filipino paratroopers sent on the rescue mission. But the racism inherent in the American attitudes towards the natives is only given a moderately passing acknowledgement. And the fact that it appears that it became a huge media story almost solely based upon the racist and sexist attitudes of the day. The fact that Margaret Hastings, the lone WAC survivor, was a pretty blond white woman almost alone in a trackless jungle surrounded by dark skinned natives who just stepped out of the stone ages and who were presumed by everyone to be savage headhunters. The obvious implication was the supposed danger this fair-haired damsel in distress was in from these horrible natives who clearly could only be barely restrained from raping her. Adding to the media hoopla were the lantern jawed blond heroes whose job it was to protect Hastings' virtue from these terrible savages, but it seems fairly clear that they are only important because of their supposed role as protectors. Never mind that from context it seems pretty apparent that Hastings (and many other WACs) were sexually active, the media clearly wanted to project the idea that Hastings was a demure virgin who only remained unmarried due to her intense patriotic devotion. Also never mind that most of the heavy lifting in the rescue effort was done by the Filipino paratroopers and medics, who the media completely ignored. The Filipino medics in particular who made the most dangerous jumps of all the rescuers in order to be closer to the survivors and be able to treat them more quickly, were shamefully ignored by the American media.

But this only highlights the confused relationship the media seems to have had with this story. Hastings became a media sensation because of her obvious attractiveness, but given the mores of the era, her chastity was assumed and impliedly threatened by supposedly barbaric natives, which enhanced the salacious nature of the story. Most of the rescuers were Filipino, and thus would have been considered barely more than barbarians themselves, and thus they were left out of the media reports entirely. The attitudes towards the natives of the inaptly named "Shangri-La" valley were similarly confused. In the minds of the the American aircrews and support personnel (and thus to the world at large) the valley was mistakenly assumed to be an idyllic, peaceful enclave of natives living primitive peaceful lives. But they were also at the same time described as giants, cannibals, headhunters, and worse. In short, if there was a stereotype that could be applied to the natives, then it was. Even if it contradicted some other randomly selected stereotype. But this is only given limited attention in the book, whereas the fact that the valley had actually been discovered years before by a man named Archbold, and that Archbold's expedition had had a deadly encounter with the natives. The shooting death of one of the natives by the Archbold expedition is used in the book to provide some tension, as Zuckoff implies that the inhabitants of "Shangri-La" might have been impelled to seek revenge for this killing, but like all such dire foreshadowings in the book, this does not actually result in any additional difficulties for the stranded survivors.

Except for the crash itself, which resulted in numerous deaths, the events surrounding the crash of the gremlin Special and the subsequent rescue of the survivors don't seem to be all that exciting. Zuckoff does a good job at cataloguing all of the various interesting backgrounds of the people involved: the colorful colonel who organized the rescue effort, the paratrooper whose father was a guerilla leader in the Philippines, the brave and committed Filipino paratroopers who followed him into the jungle on the rescue mission, a filmmaker who was a former actor and petty jewel thief who parachutes into the jungle drunk, and of course the survivors - a pretty independent-minded WAC, a tough and brave officer whose twin brother was killed in the crash, and a terribly injured sergeant who shoulders manfully on through his pain. But the problem is that the colorful and interesting characters are much more interesting than the story they inhabit. Some joyriders crashed, a few survived, the Army organized a successful rescue operation that went according to plan.

Although Zuckoff's treatment of the material is thorough and comprehensive, I was left wanting more. The story of the Gremlin Special survivors, despite Zuckoff's best efforts, is, save for the crash, a fairly uneventful tale of a successfully executed Army Air Corps operation. Even the natives, who were the subject to much contemporaneous speculation and fascination, turn out to be only moderately interesting insofar as they affect the story itself. More interesting is the story of the media reaction to the news, but here it seems that Zuckoff opted not to evaluate the media frenzy from a modern perspective, and instead simply chose to report the facts without editorial comment. There is purity in that approach, but it left me thinking there is another book to be written about this aspect of the media coverage in the 1940s that delves into the changed media and social landscape. On the whole, Lost in Shangri-La is a strong, informative piece of reporting, that relates in fine detail the facts surrounding the crash of the Gremlin Special, the interactions of the survivors, natives, and rescuers, and the events that resulted in bringing the three survivors to safety.

Mitchell Zuckoff     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Review - The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

Short review: Lee blunders. Stuart joyrides. Longstreet broods. Meade does little. Chamberlain fights. Pickett charges. Hancock destroys Pickett's division. The South throws away any chance it had of hoping to win the war by trusting to the leadership of a cavalier who belongs to an earlier age.

Haiku
On a rural field
Lee and Meade's vast armies meet
Decide nation's fate

Full review: The Killer Angels is probably one of the best historical novels about the U.S. Civil War. It is certainly the best historical novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, which it details from Lee's initial decision to turn East and move his army towards Washington D.C. in his second invasion of the Union, to the aftermath immediately following the breaking of the ill-fated Pickett's Charge. In between, the largest land battle to ever take place on the North American continent took place, and the result sealed the fate of the Confederacy. The novel also spawned the Ted Turner movie Gettysburg, which is both quite good and remarkably faithful to the book, although as a result it is really long.

Although this book is listed as the middle book in a trilogy, the other two books (Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure) were written years after this one by Michael Shaara's son Jeff Shaara following the elder Shaara's death. Unfortunately, Jeff is not quite as good a novelist as his father, so there is a danger that someone reading them in "order" will read Gods and Generals and decide not to continue the series. That would be a mistake. This novel is masterfully executed and stands head and shoulders above the other two novels in the trilogy.

While some historians consider the Battle of Gettysburg the pivotal moment in the U.S. Civil War, after reading Bruce Catton's excellent three volume history of the war - The Coming Fury (read review), Terrible Swift Sword (read review), and Never Call Retreat (read review) - I have come to the conclusion that it was instead the last desperate gasp of a defeated nation - a huge gamble against long odds that had little hope of success. This view seems to be borne out by the characterizations in The Killer Angels: The one dominant feeling one gets from most of the Confederate characters is a feeling of exhaustion. The soldiers are tired, Lee is tired, his minuscule staff is tired, and Shaara conveys this feeling perfectly. The lone exception to this is the exuberant General Pickett and the prodigal J.E.B. Stuart, but Pickett's exuberance against this background of overall malaise the rest of the Confederates seem to share makes his confidence seem even more misplaced and makes Stuart's energy seem juvenile. On the other hand, many on the Union side are exhausted by their travails during the unfolding events, but few of them have to deal with the relentless pace of the battle day after day.

The novel is told from a shifting limited third person viewpoint, jumping from person to person as the events of the battle move about. This storytelling style allows Shaara to give the reader a comprehensive view of the battle, while also giving insight into the decisions and difficulties each of the featured individuals would have faced. Reading the novel and knowing the history of the events of late June and early July 1863, one gets a sense of impending doom as a tired Lee lacking reliable intelligence about his enemy and relying on faulty assumptions and erroneous information works to convince himself that the incredibly stupid is actually the correct choice.

The novel makes clear two things. The first is that the Confederacy was already on its last legs, even though the war would drag on for almost two more years. As noted before, the Confederates portrayed in the novel seem almost universally exhausted, but they are also clearly lacking in basic supplies and out-manned by their opponent. The second is that placing too much faith in a single leader can exalt a military organization, but only so long as that leader makes the correct choices. When such a leader is wrong, or places his trust in subordinates who are unequal to the tasks given them, placing him upon such a pedestal results in there being no checks against his poor judgment. The Confederacy was both blessed and cursed with Lee as the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, and this book drives this home with a series of hammer blows that highlight both his obvious strengths as a leader, and his not so obvious but still quite serious flaws.

In the end, this book is probably as close as anyone alive today will come to seeing inside the minds of Lee, Longstreet, Buford, Chamberlain, and Armistead. It covers much of the battle, and covers it quite clearly. Shaara's choice of selecting critical viewpoint characters gives an intensely personal perspective on the battle, but it does limit the book as history as it limits the range of events that can be covered. For example, choosing Buford as his Union viewpoint character for the events of the first day limits Shaara's ability to detail the events of the day that took place after Buford left the main engagement. Similarly, by focusing on Chamberlain on the second day, Shaara is unable to cover the attacks that took place on the right flank of the "fishhook", as well as the attacks even on Big Round Top and the front side of Little Round Top. As a result, the fierce fighting in the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield, and Devil's Den gets limited attention. Such compromises are probably necessary to make an account of a three day battle fit into a single novel length work, so these are probably minor quibbles. Despite this, this is an excellent book, and a must read for anyone who wants to understand the U.S. Civil War and the men who fought it.

Michael Shaara     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Review - A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey: 1957 - The Space Race Begins by Michael D'Antonio

Short review: The Russian launch of Sputnik signals the beginning of the space race.

Haiku
Sputnik plus a dog
Kick the U.S. into gear
To reach outer space

Full review: A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey: 1957 - The Space Race Begins is a tightly focused history concerning the brief time period between the launch of the first Sputnik satellite by the U.S.S.R. and the formation of NASA as an effective agency of the U.S. government responsible for space exploration. Looking back from a perspective of more than fifty years, D'Antonio recounts the heady first days, from the quick succession of Soviet public relations triumphs in the early going of the space race, to the mixed response in the U.S., past the inter service rivalries that characterized the early U.S. space efforts, and finally to the creation of NASA to marshal the U.S. effort into a unified front that, as history shows, allowed the U.S. to leap past their Soviet rivals in technological prowess and claim the Cold War prestige of being the dominant player in space exploration.

The book starts with the launch of Sputnik I, a tiny piece of hardware that amounted to little more than a ball with a radio transmitter. D'Antonio then takes the subsequent events in more or less chronological order, detailing the combination of fear, admiration, hysteria and indifference that Americans displayed in response to this Soviet achievement. D'Antonio puts the Sputnik I launch into historical perspective, but also details how Stalin sought to leverage it for public relations and why the Eisenhower administration's response, at first, seemed to be little more than a yawn. Taking events more or less in chronological order, the book then describes the Soviet follow up to launch the dog Laika in Sputnik II and points out the huge consternation caused by the now little-remembered fact that Laika's trip was, from its inception, a one way ticket to the dog's demise. And D'Antonio details why the U.S. government's response to Laika's fate was muted, due to its own use of animals in aircraft and rocket testing. But where the story really gains traction is when D'Antonio recounts the bitter feuding between the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Navy over which service would take precedence in the U.S. space effort, and Eisenhower's determination that the primary U.S. effort should be civilian, and not military in nature. Focusing on outsize personalities like the egotistical General Bruce Medaris and the officially sanitized ex-Nazi Wernher von Braun, the story shows how unfocused and haphazard U.S. efforts were, and how this inter service conflict served to hinder U.S. efforts, and diminish the civilian NACA (National Committee for Aeronautics) at a time when it should have been pushed to the forefront.

D'Antonio assembles a collection of impressive resources, ranging from government documents to media reports, and interviews with a wide variety of people who were involved in the early U.S. space program, from those intimately connected with the program, to reporters who covered it, to those who were only tangentially involved by being at the right place at the right time. Some, such as the reports of Bradford Whipple, among the first to hear Sputnik I as it orbited the globe, and who was involved in a strange clandestine theft of Sputnik I from the Soviet pavilion at the world's fair, or the accounts given by Cocoa Beach resident Roger Dobson whose family owned a trailer park where many of the early rocket engineers who worked on what would become Cape Kennedy made their homes give a very human feel to what could have been a story dominated by political infighting, cold war paranoia, and engineering reports. Others, such as Jay Barbree, a reporter in the Florida area who covered all of the rocket launches serve to give a perspective on the media response to the repeated U.S. failures, and the handful of triumphs. Among the more interesting elements of the book is the information concerning Wernher von Braun's past as an SS officer directing the construction and use of the V-2 rockets in World War II, and the efforts made by the U.S. government to sanitize and hide his past and true involvement in war crimes (and the involvement of many of the other German rocket engineers brought to Huntsville, Alabama to work on rockets for the U.S. Army). Even with the perspective of fifty years distance, it seems almost shocking that a man who was directly responsible for selecting concentration camp inmates to work as slave labor to build missiles could have his image rehabilitated to such an extent that he would appear in Disney specials espousing the wonderful future that space travel would bring to the U.S. populace.

The most important element of this book is that it covers a time period in U.S. history that is cloaked in nostalgia and recounts it with all its glories and flaws with an unflinching eye. Sweeping away the nostalgic vision of a happy America presided over by the grandfatherly Eisenhower, D'Antonio recounts how Democrats such as Lyndon Johnson jumped at the chance to score political points at the expense of a seemingly out of touch Eisenhower (whose health problems, including a minor stroke, went unreported). Also breaking up the idyllic view of the era is the treatment of women and minorities (despite most of the rocket research being done in the South, minorities are almost completely absent from the book, and oddly, one of their strongest advocates is ex-Nazi von Braun). Most accounts of the U.S. space program, such as The Right Stuff, more or less begin with Project Mercury, with NASA already an established fact, and the rocket program already well on its way. A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey, in contrast, ends with project SCORE, an unmanned launch of an Atlas rocket intended to do little more than show that the U.S. could throw four thousand pounds of payload into orbit just after NASA had been created, but before it had actually pulled together all the elements that would eventually make up the space agency (including von Braun's rocket research group, explicitly blocked from joining NASA by the Secretary of the Army). The account in this book, demonstrating the repeated and frustrating failures to even successfully fuel some of the rockets that the U.S. expected to use to get itself into space puts into perspective the truly brilliant triumphs of the later years, and how it seems almost a miracle that there were no human fatalities on any of the launch vehicles until Apollo 1. Reading this history makes it seem almost amazing that only twelve years separate the fitful and halting efforts described in this narrative and Apollo 11.  Anyone interested in the history of the U.S. space program should read this account of its painful birth of NASA and first feeble steps taken on the path that eventually led to the Moon.

Michael D'Antonio     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Review - Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910 by Stephen J. Pyne

Short review: The U.S. Forestry Service is born in a baptism of fire that was probably misguided and unnecessary.

Haiku
The forest ablaze
Heroic firefighters
Sacrifice in vain

Full review: Names like Gifford Pinchot, Richard Ballinger, Henry Graves, Coert DuBois, Joe Halm, Ferdinand Silcox, Ed Pulaski, and William Weigle are probably completely unfamiliar to the majority of people in the United States. This is understandable, since most of them are fairly obscure figures who were involved in politics and forestry in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, but it is also, to a certain degree, unfortunate as these people and their actions largely determined the course the U.S. government took in administering the vast public lands of the American west for most of the Twentieth century. Year of the Fires focuses mostly on the pivotal year of forest fighting in the northern Rocky Mountains in Montana, Idaho and Washington, and the events that led to the embryonic U.S. Forestry Service's determination that all forest fires must be fought in the name of progressive virtue. But the real crux of the book is the conflict between science and ideology, and the dangers of allowing ideology and public sentiment to triumph over science, and the cost that this can entail, not just in terms of money and resources, but also in terms of human lives.

At its heart, the book is about the conflict between Teddy Roosevelt's protege Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the nascent U.S. Forestry Service and President Taft's Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger over the proper administration of the national forest reserves. Pinchot was a committed conservationist, but one who would brook no opposition to his view of how conservation should be undertaken, and as a result, he clashed with Ballinger, who was technically his superior, as well as just about every other Taft administration official in the Department of the Interior. But what was the clash about? As Pyne details, the clash was a conflict of ideology with Pinchot and the progressive movement on the one side buttressed (somewhat) by the newly formed Yale School of Forestry, and basically everyone else on the other. Pinchot and his followers, who populated the newly formed Forestry Service, were eager, brash, well-meaning, and committed to their cause. They were also, as Pyne amply illustrates, probably dead wrong in their views.

The basis of the problem was that the Forestry Service needed to find a reason to justify its existence, and the newly minted graduates of the Yale School of Forestry needed to find a purpose for their chosen profession. Pinchot, like many conservationists of the era, was an believer in the idea that the U.S. was wasting its natural resources (and waste, to a progressive activist at the time was an anathema), variously espousing the views that the U.S. faced an impending timber famine, that forests were needed to regulate climate, and that forests prevented flooding. Unfortunately, almost all of these arguments were shown to be at odds with the science, which left only the question of fire policy to serve as the sine qua non of the Forestry Service's existence. Fire, in the minds of the progressive conservationists of the era such as Pinchot, was nothing but a destructive force that harmed the natural beauty and wealth of the nation. Unfortunately, the denizens of the rural countryside of the time saw fire as a potential tool, to be used to clear land, drive out or kill vermin, reduce the available "slash" or fuel that might keep bigger , uncontrolled fires going, and a number of other purposes. As Pyne writes, 'the rural South was alight with flame". Further, Pyne shows that the available science seemed to suggest that fire was not wholly bad, was probably necessary, and was likely responsible in large part for the majestic nature of the vast western forests the Forestry Service purported to be guarding. Scientific studies on the effects of fire commissioned by the U.S. government suggested that not only did some species not suffer from forest fires, but some depended upon them as part of their reproductive cycle. Native American practices predating the arrival of white settlers in which Indian tribes would engage in controlled burning of forested regions were highlighted as evidence that fire, when properly used, was actually advantageous to the health of a forest.

But these pieces of evidence conflicted with the ideology of the progressive activists, and were swept aside. The studies that indicated the benefits of fire were either dismissed or suppressed. The Native American forest management practices were tagged with the derogatory label "Pauite Forestry", and treated as little more than the foolishness of savages. Fire, Pinchot and Harry Graves (Pinchot's successor as the Chief Forester) declared, was always bad, and should be prevented if possible, and immediately stopped if not. There was no such thing as a good fire, no matter the source, all forest fires should be fought, and further, it was the Forestry Service who would do the fighting. It was this conviction that led to the Forestry Service taking the lead and placing its foresters, its hired crews, and the U.S. Army in the path of the great forest fires of 1910 which created the story that dominates much of Pyne's account in Year of the Fires.

Unfortunately, it is this element of the book, focused on the individual foresters who hired, equipped, and led the crews through the firefighting season of 1910, that is the weakest. Pyne follows the various firefighters - men like Joe Halm, Will Morris, Major William Logan, and Ed Pulaski among many others - through the year with a month by month account starting in January and running through November. Pyne shifts from one story to another on a chronological basis, tying all the threads together in the "Big Blowup" of August 20-21, and then letting each play out to the end of the season. But by structuring his story this way Pyne's narrative isn't able to gain any momentum. As he is determined to keep all the dozen or so thread up to date through the book, just as soon as one forester's story begins to pick up steam, Pyne abandons that account, shifts to another forester and brings him up to date, and then shifts to a third, and a fourth, and so on before returning to the account of the original forester or Army officer and picking up where he left off. This means that all of the individual stories are hard to follow, and the overall narrative lacks substantial power, as the reader is always having to make mental notes to keep all the players straight. Further, since the reader is always up to date on all the stories, many of the dramatic (and highly publicized) turns of events of the summer (and most especially the Big Blowup) lose their impact. When William Weigle is told, for example, that Ed Pulaski and his entire crew have died in the fire, the moment has almost no emotional impact for the reader, since the reader knows (because Pyne has told him) that Pulaski and his crew are not dead, merely cut off from communication by the path of the fire. If Pyne had instead told each individual fire fighter's story in turn, or at least in larger chunks than the rapidly rotating snippets in the book, then not only would the history be much easier to follow, it would allow for much more emotional impact, and impress on the reader to a much greater degree how these events played out to the public.

Because as Pyne makes clear, it was the mythologizing of the brave foresters who stood against the fires that carried the day for the Forest Service's firefighting in the face of contradictory science and theory. The fact that during the Big Blowup of August 20-21 between 70 and 90 men died (Forestry Service and U.S. Army records are contradictory as to the actual number of the dead) as the fires they were fighting, stoked by the winds, swept over their lines and sent them running for any refuge they could find, allowed the Forestry Service to create a cadre of heroes who would have been dishonored should the nation decide that the cause they fought in was not justified. Never mind that no actual foresters died fighting the fires, and those who did were mostly men who were considered so unreliable that the Forestry Service could not give them their train tickets to travel to the fires directly for fear that they would immediately cash in their tickets and head for the nearest saloon. (One interesting aside is that the events of the summer of 1910 seem to indicate that while you can induce a man to take a dangerous job with the promise of high pay and good food, this is insufficient inducement to get him to care enough to actually do the job well). Never mind that many of the men who fought the fires were employees of the less than popular railroad and lumber companies, or Army privates grumbling about the damage the fires did to their uniforms as they were ordered into action. Never mind that when called upon to compensate those injured in the flames and the families of the dead, the Forestry Service proved to be difficult to deal with at best. The resulting account of the Big Blowup was written by three heroic foresters, whose most important qualification was that they lived, and filed reports with their version of events. And because they crafted the account, the lesson of the Big Blowup and the rest of the terrible fire season of 1910 was not that the policy adopted was misguided and should be revised, but rather that what was needed was simply more commitment to the cause, more money, more men, and more effort.

And this is why U.S. forestry policy from 1910 until the 1990s was one of almost rigid adherence to the doctrine of fighting fires no matter how small they might be. True the policy relaxed somewhat in the 1930s, when the service began to allow some naturally occurring fires to burn out on their own, but on the other hand the creation of the Depression era Civilian Conservation Corps gave the Forestry Service a massive number of available bodies to throw into their fire prevention and fire fighting efforts. What makes Year of the Fires compelling to read is the careful account given by Pyne that illustrates how a government service clinging to an ideology with almost no substance behind it managed to secure its vision for the administration of public lands across the entire United States for the better part of a century. Despite the sometimes confusing nature of the account, Pyne's thorough and comprehensive treatment of the data that was at best poorly preserved will allow a careful reader to understand how ideological advocacy and a little myth-making can triumph over fact, and exactly how dangerous this truly is. This is, in the end, a superior piece of historical scholarship, and well-worth reading.

Stephen J. Pyne     Book Reviews A-Z     Home