What Are You Reading

[V.C. Brunswick]

Capturing Jack the Ripper: In the Boots of a Bobby in Victorian London
by Neil R.A. Bell
(Stroud, Glocestershire, UK: Amberley Publishing, 2014)

 

[Fading Fast]

I'm way behind in posting, I've just finished or am currently reading:

"The Chaperone" by Laura Moriarty. Historical fiction about a woman who chaperones a pre-fame Louise Brooks to Manhattan for a summer in the mid 1920s. After a slow start, it does a pretty good job of evoking the era and the story, while very much seen through a 21st Century moral filter, is enjoyable.

"Until They Bring The Streetcars Back" by Stanely Gordon West. Fantastic book. To be honest, I got it because I love streetcars, but while the author uses the street car as a metaphor, the book is basically a fictional account of a teenage boy growing up in St Paul in 1949 and how his simple life gets rocked this way and that in his 18th year owing to events at home and school. The story is good, but it is great time travel as you absolutely feel St Paul in 1949.

"When Books Went to War" by Molly Guptill Manning. Tells the story of the efforts made by partnerships between charitable organizations, publishers and the government to supply the armed forces with books for the soldiers, sailers, etc. in WWII. I picked it up because it combines two great interests of mine - books and WWII. While a bit slow at first, once it gets going, the story of the herculean efforts made to supply the men and women in the military with books is a fun, interesting read. The coolest part is when you learned about the Armed Services Editions (ASE): small paperback editions (designed to fit into the pockets of army and navy uniforms) published specifically for the military. Also, the author does a very good job of showing the moral juxtaposition of the US publishing books for its soldiers while the Germans were burning books. N.B. Lizzie, I think you would enjoy this one.

"Jack of Spies" by David Downing. This is not my usual type of read, but it was a Christmas gift and shows promise as it is a spy novel set at the start of WWI.

 

[Harp]

"When Books Went to War" by Molly Guptill Manning. Tells the story of the efforts made by partnerships between charitable organizations, publishers and the government to supply the armed forces with books for the soldiers, sailers.. .

...the only reading material circulating in my V outfit were Playboy and Penthouse....

 

[Fading Fast]

...the only reading material circulating in my V outfit were Playboy and Penthouse....

The book makes it sound as if every soldier had access to these at least some of the time and that they were incredibly popular - traded for and coveted. But the ASEs run was only during WWII from'43 - '45. I assume you are referencing a later time as Playboy started in the '50s I believe.

 

[Harp]

I assume you are referencing a later time as Playboy started in the '50s I believe.

Vietnam was a somewhat less literary conflict.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"The Dawn of Technicolor -- 1915 to 1935," by James Layton and David Pierce. I don't often spend real money on new books because I still haven't read all the old ones that interest me, but I made an exception for this one. Just released by George Eastman House, the museum of photography, it's a huge, gorgeous look at the life and work of Herbert T. Kalmus, focusing on the original two-color red/green Technicolor systems. If you think all movies prior to the late thirties were black and white, you'll realize how wrong you are as soon as you open this volume -- it's copiously illustrated with film-frame enlargments from hundreds of early Technicolor films, going all the way back to 1917, and continuing thru the twenties right up to the company's first great peak in 1929-30, and then on to the development of the three-color process.

It's not a cheap book -- it'll run you over fifty dollars. depending on where you get it -- and whatever you do, don't drop it on your foot. But if you have any interest at all in the technical side of "old movies," you won't want to miss it.

 

[Harp]

Currently reading Andrew Hodges biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma.

Turing's orientation, persecution, and tragic suicide comprise the book's foundation but its focus for my interest
is Turing the mathematician and prophet; while his personality and mind trace a discernible thread back to Newton.

____________

Innovate, Adapt, and Win; U.S. Marine Corps 36th Commandant's Planning Guidance 2015.
Passed to me for my review by a federal judge and former Marine pilot, General J. Dunford's memorandum is quite comprehensive.
I like Dunford's philosophic approach, which includes cyber warfare.

 

[HadleyH]

Reading about the Cosmos and about life in the Universe....

We are nothing really....

After ...I have 2 books about the Russian Empire to finish....

Life in other planets is too much for us .....worms that we are...humanoids here on earth....

 

[Harp]

Reading about the Cosmos and about life in the Universe....

We are nothing really....

A fair Sheilah beneath the Southern Cross is quite extraordinary. Really.

 

[HadleyH]

A fair Sheilah beneath the Southern Cross is quite extraordinary. Really.

Thank you kindly !

Merci Monsieur.

 

[Harp]

Thank you kindly !

Merci Monsieur.

Ma plaisir belle.

 

[HadleyH]

Sir

Thank you Sir.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Currently going over not one but two interesting bits of sociology from the Era --

-- Love In America: An Informal Study of Manners and Morals in American Marriage by David L. Cohn. My interest was piqued in this author's works earlier this month, and I don't know how I've gone so long without coming across this particular book. Published in 1943, it's a slap in the face with a cold wet towel for what a lot of people still believe about the period in which it was written. In a chapter called "Paradise Without Wings," Cohn discusses in some depth the discontentment, frustration, resentment and fear that characterized the life of the middle-class American woman -- exactly presaging much of what Betty Friedan would say twenty years later. If she had not read this book herself as a thinking young woman, I would be very much shocked. As with most academics, he has little to say about working-class life, but his picture of middle-class love and marriage is a real eye-opener for those who think women were docile, happy, and cosseted before those mean old feminists ruined everything.

-- And, the other volume on the nightstand is "Communism in the United States," by Earl Browder. Published in 1935 at the height of the "Popular Front" era, it's word straight from the horse's mouth that the ideology being promoted to the would-be Reds of the thirties had nothing to do with violent revolution, and everything to do with building a left-wing coalition against Fascism. Whether you buy that or not, it's pretty clear that Browder was not, and was never, any kind of an orthodox Marxist-Leninist. His idea of communism -- and the idea which quite a few Americans in the thirties endorsed -- was basically socialism dressed up in an Uncle Sam suit. (Of course, the Hitler-Stalin pact pulled the rug out from under all that, and Browder never recovered...)

 

[Harp]

Currently going over not one but two interesting bits of sociology from the Era --



-- Whether you buy that or not, it's pretty clear that Browder was not, and was never, any kind of an orthodox Marxist-Leninist.

fftopic:
Going over some econ data and Russia's capital outflows have exceeded $151.5 bln in 2014 and the rouble sank 40% against the dollar.
Russia's sovereign rating is now at junk status. The hybrid unorthodox Marxist brand old USSR throwback style Vlad's been pitching
has proved ineffective against macro economics, sanctions, and global oil prices.
It's the bottom of the ninth inning and he hasn't been pulled yet....

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's the bottom of the ninth inning and he hasn't been pulled yet....

Lester Rodney would appreciate the metaphor.

 

[Harp]

Lester Rodney would appreciate the metaphor.

A name from the past-I wonder if he ever wrote anything about Farmer fanning Jackie Robinson's strike out and the misunderstanding
between those two that subsequently followed. Farmer helped integration in his own way, and helped bring Satch Paige into the majors.
:coffee: I wonder if Rod ever penned a memoir?

 

[LizzieMaine]

He never did, which is very unfortunate. He lived to be 98, but never seemed to find the time. There was a decent biography published a few years ago called "Press Box Red," by a guy who had known him in his prime, but it didn't get widely circulated.

What I'd really like to see is an anthology of Rodney's sportswriting. The Worker was not well-archived, and while there's microfilm scattered around various major libraries, it's pretty close to impossible to find actual surviving paper copies from his era.

 

[Harp]

I found Irwin Silber's Press Box Red, The Story of Lester Rodney on Amazon; also a reference to a MA thesis circa 1995,
Baseball on the Radical Agenda, The Daily and Sunday Worker on the Desegregation of Major League Baseball, 1933-47
by Kelly Rusinack at Clemson University. The Rusinack paper appears the closest effort to an anthology of Rodney available
and seems to offer a serious expenditure of scholastic shoe leather through the archival record.

It is indeed unfortunate and all the more surprising that a journalist of Rodney's sense of purpose failed to advantage
retirement to produce a solid capstone work that squared the corners of his remarkable career.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Over Here!" by Lorraine B. Diehl. Only a chapter in, but it seems like a survey of the social and cultural environment in New York City in the years leading up to and through WWII. The first chapter discussed the German Bund and its predecessor in NYC and, the German immigrant community overall.

 

[WarHorse]

"The Day of Battle" by Richard Atkinson.....brilliant historical on the WWII campaigns in Sicily and Italy. Excellent author.