Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway by Walter Lord
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Incredible Victory is the story of the Battle of Midway in June 1942. The author does an amazing job of telling the story of the battle using both American and Japanese sources. The narrative unfolds literally minute by minute, so it is a compelling read to say the least.

Briefly, the Japanese planned the operation involving Midway (and the Aleutian islands) in order to bring the American fleet to battle and destroy the remaining US aircraft carriers. The Americans had broken the Japanese code and so knew what the Japanese objectives were, and were able to deploy the three active carriers to counter the Japanese fleet. I won’t go into the details, other than the US fleet was victorious.

One of the big takeaways, for me at least, is how much chance figured into the American victory. If the weather had been slightly different, if the Japanese search plane had been launched on time, if Admiral Nagumo had not hesitated after the first strike on the Midway ground installations – the results of the battle could have been quite different.

I read this book many years ago – it was the first book I read about the Battle of Midway. It was originally published in the 1960s, but the text had held up pretty well. I highly recommend this book.

The Few: The American “Knights of the Air” Who Risked Everything to Fight in the Battle of Britain by Alex Kershaw
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Few is the story of the American pilots who joined the Royal Air Force in time to take part in the Battle of Britain in 1940. It’s an interesting and compelling story about young men who wanted to fly and also wanted to fight on behalf of freedom at a time when the United States was still neutral. To join the RAF as American citizens, they all risked their citizenship and possible prosecution for violating the Neutrality Act. But they persevered and took part in the battle that saved the United Kingdom from invasion.

The book uses letters, interviews and many secondary sources to tell the story. We learn about the American pilots of course, but also about their British comrades. And we also learn about the opposing pilots in the German Luftwaffe. It is a well rounded book, but of course the main focus is on the Americans.

It’s an easy read; Mr Kershaw has crafted a compelling narrative, which at times can seem a bit like a “boys own adventure” story. There are a few errors in the text (mostly dates) that should have been caught in the editing process, but it’s well worth reading.

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dead Wake is the story of the last voyage of the Lusitania in May 1915. It is a story that in some aspects is well known, at least for those who know something about the First World War, but there is a lot more to the story. The author has crafted a compelling narrative about the Lusitania and U-20 and their meeting off of Kinsale Head.

The book is about more than the passenger liner and the submarine that attacked it: we also learn about the impact of the war on society, especially in the United States, which was still neutral. President Wilson figures prominently in the narrative, as does Winston Churchill. And we learn about the passengers and crew of the Lusitania ,and the officers and men of U-20. And we also learn about the Royal Navy’s intelligence operation “Room 40” which was able to decrypt German signals, and tracked U-20 on its way to meet the Lusitania.

It is a very well-written book and it is difficult to put down once you’ve started. I knew a bit about the Lusitania before I read this book, but there were still many things that surprised me. One of the biggest surprises to me was how quickly the Lusitania sank after the torpedo struck it: less than 20 minutes.

The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 by Barbara W. Tuchman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Proud Tower consists of eight essays by the author on various facets of European and American society before the outbreak of the First World War. The book is not a comprehensive history of the years before the war; each essay is self-contained though obviously people and events can appear in more than one essay.

The essays paint a portrait of society in the years 1890 to 1914. So much has changed since the First World War, that in many respects this society no longer exists. The book is an interesting window into a vanished society.

There are two essays focused on the United Kingdom, one on the United States, one on France during the Dreyfus Affair and one on Germany. There is also an essay on the Hague Conferences on disarmament, an essay on Anarchists and the final one is on Socialism. It is a somewhat eclectic mix, but all of the essays are interesting.

I enjoyed the book; long ago for a class in European History I read two of the essays, so it was interesting to read them again, and also read the other six. If you’re interested in this period of History or the First World War, I definitely recommend this book.

Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation by Roderick Beaton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I wanted to find a good history of modern Greece and I came across this book and I’m glad I did. I knew a little about modern Greece thanks to a history of modern Europe course a long time ago. I knew something about the Revolution of 1821, the struggle with the Ottoman Empire and Greece during the two world wars. But this book really filled in a lot of the gaps for me, and I have a much better understanding of modern Greek history.

There were several things that the author brought up that were very interesting to me. One of them was the question, who is Greek? In the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century, Greek was a commonly used language in the Balkan peninsula as well as in parts of modern Turkey. But not everyone who spoke Greek considered themselves Greek. Of course, there was also religion – Orthodox Christianity with the head of the church being in Constantinople. Today we think of ethnic groups, but in the 18th century this concept really didn’t exist.

This leads to another point that the author raises: the difference between the nation and the state. The nation consists of all Greeks (however we define them) but the state doesn’t necessarily include all Greeks. The initial size of independent Greece in the 1820s and 1830s, but it grew to include more of the Greek nation. Including all of the nation in the state is what the author refers to as the “Grand Idea.” This more or less came into place following the population exchanges with Turkey in the 1920s.

I really found this book interesting and a pleasure to read. I have certainly learned a lot, and I’m planning to continue my reading of Greek history.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of my all-time favorite books. It is a novel, but it is also about philosophy, music and language among other things. The novel is set mostly in Czechoslovakia, before and after the Prague Spring of 1968. The novel follows Tomas, a surgeon, and Tereza who meets Tomas while tending bar in her small town, and goes to Prague to see Tomas. Their relationship is complicated by the fact that Tomas is a compulsive womanizer. Sabina, an artist who is one of Tomas’s “erotic friendships” also figures prominently in the story.

For fear of spoilers, I really don’t want to go any further into the plot. I will say that the plot does not unfold in chronological order, so the reader knows the fates of the main characters long before the end of the book. One of the major differences between the book and the 1988 movie, is that the movie is in chronological order.

I highly recommend this book. It may seem to start slowly, but it’s definitely worth the effort to read.

Visualizing The Beatles: A Complete Graphic History of the World’s Favorite Band by John Pring and Rob Thomas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Visualizing the Beatles is a very interesting and very enjoyable look at the the career of the Beatles. While I would say it’s not a complete graphic history of the group, certainly it covers all of the important stuff. I really enjoyed the graphic representation of the data about each album, including which keys the songs were in, who played what instruments, who wrote (or co-wrote) each song, etc.

The book is organized around the Beatles albums, so a few things fall through cracks, but it’s a pretty good way to present the story. And it shows how the group’s clothing and hairstyles changed through the years. I thought this books was a lot of fun and I highly recommend it to all fans of the Beatles.

Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This volume of Maus picks up with Vladek and Anja’s story as they arrive at Auschwitz. They are separated – she goes to the women’s camp at Birkenau and he is in the labor camp at Auschwitz. Vladek proves to be very adept at manipulating the systm (within limits of course) and he is able to make contact with Anja intermittently.

In early 1945, the Red Army approached the camps, and the Germans evacuated the camps, which led to forced marches until the prisoners reached Germany, and then they were put on trains to Dachau. Eventually American forces liberated Vladek, but he had lost track of Anja. They had agreed to meet again in their home town in Poland, which they do. They wanted to go to the United States, but the visa restrictions did not permit it at this time, so they went to Sweden for a few years, before eventually emigrating to the US.

That is one part of the story. The other part is the struggle of Art, the son, and his wife to deal with the aging Vladek. He is not easy to deal with to say the least!

It’s a good book and it’s a compelling story. I highly recommend both volumes of Maus.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

On Tyranny is a very short, highly readable book showing how democracies were vulnerable to totalitarianism in the the twentieth century, and why we should be worried about our democracy today. The author is a professor of history at Yale, and he knows how communism, fascism and Nazism took down European democracies in he 1920s, 30s and 40s.

The twenty lessons run from very short to somewhat lengthy, but never a chore to read. The author writes very clearly and to the point. I also found the Epilogue to be well worth the time to read. I highly recommend this book.

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Maus is the story of the author’s father, Vladek Spiegelman, and his mother Anja, who survived the Holocaust. It’s also the story of the author as he tries to come to terms with his father and his story of survival.

It is an amazing story and it is made more powerful by being in the form of a graphic novel. This volume is the first part of the story, where we meet Vladek and see him meet and marry Anja. They had a fairly prosperous life in pre-war Poland, which changed in September 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded and defeated Poland. As Jews, they were forced to live in a ghetto with little food provided. Vladek had managed to hide jewelry and other goods, so he could trade with Poles for additional food and other things.

As the ghetto was being liquidated, Vladek and other members of his family went into hiding. Sometimes Poles would help, but other times they would not. Every time the hiding place had to be changed, there was always the question of trust – would the people helping them inform the German authorities?

I’m skipping a lot of the details, for fear of spoilers, but Vladek and Anja are eventually betrayed, and they are sent to Auschwitz. This is where this volume of Vladek’s story ends.