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Post by timothylane on Jun 3, 2020 19:50:43 GMT -8
I wonder if Frank Herbert knew about this program. One of his early books -- variously titled Under Pressure, The Dragon in the Sea, and 21st Century Sub -- dealt with American submarines sneaking into the Barents or White Sea to pick up oil from deposits under the sea. (I'm not sure he ever explained how this was done.) The problem is that the subs are disappearing, and some form of sabotage is suspected.
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Post by timothylane on Jun 24, 2020 18:10:45 GMT -8
George MacDonald Fraser is best known for his Flashman books and other comic looks on history involving anti-heroes of one sort or another. But there was a first draft on this approach, Captain in Calico.
This is a biographical novel involving a year or so (though Fraser passed over much of this just as Shakespeare skips over years, sometimes within a single scene, in his historical plays) of pirate captain John Rackham aka Calico Jack. (I have read that Captain Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean series was based to some extent on Calico Jack.) This starts with his pardon for piracy by Governor Woodes Rogers of the Bahamas (himself a former buccaneer, much as Henry Morgan had been). His brief foray into possible honesty doesn't last long when he finds a target too tempting to resist.
This also involves Anne Bonney, his sometime lover, who in the book provides him with the information about the rich target. Naturally, things don't work out as Rackham hoped -- he never had much luck, which probably means piracy was a poor career choice for him. In the end he was deposed as Captain, and the new choice blundered his way into disaster, for which all of them were executed. (Bonney was part of the crew, but was reprieved by claiming pregnancy. History doesn't record what happened to her after that, though I suppose a romantic might think she was an ancestor of the stepfather who served as a mentor to Henry McCarty aka William Bonney aka the Kid.)
Unlike most of Fraser's work, this is no comedy. It's a serious story of a man who in some ways is the antithesis of Flashman -- a pirate, but also a man of honor, courage, and skill. And unlucky, both in love and life. (Well, he did have some moments, but nothing like Flashman did.) But it's still an entertaining work, and one based on actual history. Fraser grew up on writers of adventure, and had a grasp of it early on. (He also worked on the novel, no doubt polishing it up, for years.) It does have an interesting ending, about which I'll only say that history doesn't prove that it didn't happen even though it's quite speculative.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 24, 2020 19:13:36 GMT -8
"Sword and Scimitar" by Raymond Ibrahim ______________________________________________ Sword and Scimatar is a history of the 1,400 years of war, which Islam has waged upon Christianity and the West. In this sense, it is a military history. On the other hand, the author does not restrict himself to battles, but gives a fair amount of information on Muslim ideas and religious tenets. Ibrahim chooses a number of important battles which took place between Muslim and Christian forces over the centuries. He goes into detail on how these came about and what, as far as it can be known, happened during these conflicts. Ibrahim debunks the myth, which has arisen over the last century, that Islam was not spread by conquest. He also lays bare the facts as regards the Muslims' treatment of their conquered Christian subjects. Islam was and is anything but tolerant of other beliefs. Ibrahim's "Sword and Scimitar" is based on extensive research of primary documents including those of Arabic and Muslim origin. I particularly liked the comprehensive footnotes. As someone who reads such things, I loved the ability to go into more detail on certain points. The book is just over 330 pages long, which is not very long as histories go. Ibrahim was born to Coptic parents who immigrated to the U.S. before he was born. He is fluent in Arabic and English and was a Arabic language specialist for the Library of Congress. He studied under Victor Hanson Davis, who wrote the book's forward. These facts give me confidence that Ibrahim's book is factual and honest. "Sword and Scimitar" may be somewhat too academic for some, but I found it very interesting and informative. If you want to gain a good idea of how things actually happened between the West and Islam, and why they will not change, I recommend you read Raymond Ibrahim's "Sword and Scimitar."
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Post by timothylane on Jun 24, 2020 19:49:50 GMT -8
As someone who grew up as a Coptic Christian in Egypt, Ibrahim would have bitter first-hand knowledge of how Muslim nations treat their Christian subjects. The best they can hope for is dhimmitude. The worst is jihad against the infidels.
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Post by timothylane on Jul 13, 2020 19:37:10 GMT -8
A Pillar of Iron by Taylor Caldwell (I was unable to import the link to it at Amazon) is a biographical novel of Marcus Tullius Cicero from birth to death. Of course, this plays out over a tumultuous era in Roman history, a time of clashing tyrants (and would-be tyrants) such as Marius, Sulla, Catilina, Crassus, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Publius Clodius, Mark Antony, and Octavian. It was also a time of political degeneracy, with a republic that faced the same sort of problems America faces. (She is neither the first nor the last to notice it.)
Caldwell (a sometime member of the John Birch Society) makes heavy use of Cicero's own abundant writings on many topics. Many of them deal with issues such as the baleful consequences of the grain dole, the increasing fiscal problems (and high taxation trying to deal with it), and gross public immorality. Much of this will sound very familiar.
In one respect, in fact, Caldwell describes our present better than her own era (the book came out about 55 years ago). Rome was a very disorderly city at the time, with organized mobs following Catiline, Clodius, and Titus Milo. This results in a lot of rioting, and when Cicero remonstrates about it to Caesar, the latter (who supports Clodius for his own political reasons) talks about how Rome allows a freedom to protest now that there isn't a dictatorship (such as Sulla's). Never mind that there's a triumvirate (including Caesar), which is basically a dictatorship of three men rather than one.
That part sounds dismayingly familiar today, probably more so than when the book came out (which was shortly before the race riots and peace marches of the late 60s and early 70s). There's a lot of foreshadowing of future events, especially Caesar's eventually fate. (According to wikipedia, there were far more assassins than Shakespeare listed, including 20 who have been identified.) She also makes use of familiar stories, such as that Marcus Junius Brutus was Julius Caesar's illegitimate son and that Caesar was known as every man's wife and every woman's husband.
Did I mention about the public immorality? Of course, even Cicero was hardly innocent, making extensive use of Clodius's sister, the beautiful trollop Clodia. Caldwell makes no attempt to present Cicero as a pure exemplar of humanity, but there's no doubt where her sympathies lay. What's interesting is Cicero's interest in the Unknown God, such as the Jewish version with its messianic prophecies.
I find this in a most interesting and entertaining book, though occasionally she slips on historical details, often via anachronisms. (Octavius didn't become Gaius Julius Octavianus until he was adopted in Julius's will.)
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 16, 2020 20:22:08 GMT -8
Watching Tom Hanks in Greyhound makes this book timely. I'll add it to the Deep Reading List.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 16, 2020 20:26:38 GMT -8
It's already there. You added it to your list after I reviewed the book a month or two ago.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 16, 2020 20:32:39 GMT -8
This is how I end up with double entries, for sure. Right now, I've started back up on the Bosch "Trunk Music" book, interspersed with David Baldacci's "The Fallen."
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 16, 2020 21:29:20 GMT -8
I have now finish the complete D'Artagnan series. I guess the final two, "Twenty Years After" and "Ten Years Later" must be something between 1,000 and 1,200 pages long. I will probably give a short critique' of both in the next few days.
I will now go back to Brad's "The Great Battles of All Nations."
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 16, 2020 22:01:08 GMT -8
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Post by timothylane on Jul 17, 2020 5:26:16 GMT -8
I don't think Twenty Years After is quite that long, but there's a reason why Ten Years After is generally divided into 3 volumes, none of them small.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 17, 2020 9:04:34 GMT -8
I should have written combined. In fact, combined they may be longer than 1,200 pages.
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Post by timothylane on Jul 17, 2020 9:14:28 GMT -8
I had the Oxford annotated edition of the whole series (and also The Count of Monte Cristo), so I couldn't say how many pages they are in standard editions even if I still had them. But they were thick books. I wouldn't be surprised if the 3 volumes of Ten Years After are more than 1200 pages. The whole series might top 2000. I'm sure my copies did.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 19, 2020 21:02:28 GMT -8
Mr. Flu, I bailed on the David Baldacci book, “The Fallen.” I guess I could have continued with it like a termite chewing through cardboard. There was plenty of cardboard there.
But I found absolutely nothing compelling about the characters. And although most wouldn’t call this “politically correct,” it really didn’t work having two women and two men, both as mixed teams of cops. I found it annoying and highly artificial.
But like I said, if you are a termite for detective stories, there is plenty of cellulose here to chew on. But I couldn’t find much flavor in it.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 19, 2020 21:06:20 GMT -8
Somewhere, I saw 2,600 pages for the whole series, but I could not confirm it elsewhere. In any case, it is a long series.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 19, 2020 21:07:02 GMT -8
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 22, 2020 12:06:51 GMT -8
I'm enjoying "A Canticle for Leibowitz." I'm about 5% into it but so far so good. This could be another AQP.
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Post by timothylane on Sept 27, 2020 15:02:27 GMT -8
I think I've mentioned "book club" that my friend Grant McCormick runs, by which he sends free Kindle editions of books to a select group that includes me. One of the most recent is Legionary by Philip Matyszak. This is billed as an unofficial guide for Roman soldiers (as addressed to people considering a legionary career as Trajan was about to invade Dacia) by a writer on classical (Greek or Roman) subjects.
Much of this explains legionary life, including a brief look at other branches of the Roman military (cavalry, auxiliaries, the Navy, the Praetorian Guard) and their pros and cons. This is quite interesting, and I would recommend the book to anyone interested in the subject. But what caused me to write is something that rises above that level.
Matyszak discusses the various enemies the Romans face. I haven't read all of the sections yet (so far, it's just the Picts, the Germans, and the Judaeans). But he has some especially amusing tidbits there. For example, "The good think about the average Germans is that he is lazy, disorganized and undisciplined, unlike the efficient, industrious, and well-drilled Italians." I think a guide today would rate the two groups rather differently, which shows how much cultural differences (and changes) can be altered in 1900 years.
In addition, discussing Judaea, he points out, "One advantage to Judaea being a Roman province is that you will understand most of the insults being hurled at you, of which Romani ite domum is likely to be among the least cruel and and hurtful." Reg always was rather ineffectual that way, I guess, as was his particular revolutionary group. I do wonder if Artraveler can explain what "listim" means. Apparently it's even more insulting.
He also has an interesting observation of the Parthian cataphracts. He notes that the Romans legionaries often got rather hot in their armor during the summer. So imagine how the more heavily armored Parthian cataphracts felt during those hot Levantine summers. When the Romans adopted similarly armored and equipped cavalry, one term for them was clibanarii, which Matyszak notes meant "ovens". (Actually, according to wikipedia, the direct translation is "camp oven bearers".)
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Post by artraveler on Sept 27, 2020 16:07:05 GMT -8
I do wonder if Artraveler can explain what "listim" means. Apparently it's even more insulting. Your guess is as good as mine. I don't think it is Hebrew, Latin maybe even Greek. I checked translator and got nothing.
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Post by artraveler on Sept 27, 2020 16:20:59 GMT -8
Started H.R. McMaster new book, Battleground today. Although he left the administration this is not, repeat, not a tell all. McMaster unlike Mattis is aware that even retired he is subject to recall to active duty and takes his duty seriously. He has some insights into the current world political problems and the potential for conflict, full scale and asymmetric.
A few samples from the first few pages:
after the end of the Cold War, America and other free and open societies forgot that they had to compete to keep their freedom, security, and prosperity. The United States and other free nations were confident—overconfident. Overconfidence led to complacency. I bore witness to that growing confidence.
many often debated whether the United States should have invaded Iraq, the better question was who thought it would be easy and why.
Charles Krauthammer called “the unipolar moment.” America’s stature as the only superpower encouraged narcissism, a preoccupation with self, and an associated neglect of the influence that others have over the future course of events. Americans began to define the world only in relation to their own aspirations and desires
McMaster, H. R.. Battlegrounds
I will try to sum up each section as I finish them.
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