"His Majesty's Dragon" by Naomi Novik (2006)

Your friend Andrea gave you this book and told you that you would love it. She summarized by describing it as, "The history of the Napoleonic Wars... but with freaking dragons! It's perfect for you." It's good to have friends who totally get you, you know?

Andrea was right. That is exactly what this book is. It's like a work of historical fiction set in England in 1805, but instead of doing what historical fiction traditionally does, instead of imagining what famous historical figures might have been privately thinking, instead of using an established history as an opportunity to see familiar events through new eyes, Novik uses European history as a jumping off point to see what differences might have arisen if human history had included massive mythological flying beasts. Novik is unapologetic. There is no hint of irony or guilt. It's brilliant.

And these beasts are massive, big enough to support not just one lone rider but whole crews of men (and women, despite the cultural taboo of women actually doing anything). The flight crews are trained to move around their dragons, securing their positions with carabiners snapped onto the leather harnesses trussed all around their dragons. The teams fire vollies of rifles against enemy dragons and their crews, drop crude bombs on targets below, signal allied flight crews to coordinate plans and maneuvers, and render first aide to the dragon if the need arises. Each dragon is trained to fly with flights of others in mutually supportive formations, allowing the strengths of different breeds (and there are many different breeds) to compensate for the weaknesses in others. Tactics and strategies for the use of these dragon flights are reminiscent of the fledgling air forces of the two World Wars that wouldn't be fought for over one hundred more years (at least, in our dragonless reality).  Novik has created a completely new and surprisingly modern way to imagine these familiar mythological creatures, not to mention that she tells one charming story along the way.

The main characters in the book are not initially members of the British Aerial Corps. William Laurence is captain of the HMS Reliant, a 36-gun British frigate engaged on the high seas. Laurence is a consummate Naval Officer. The book opens with he and his crew boarding and capturing a French ship just west of Spain. On board the French ship is a prize unlike anything Laurence had expected, an unhatched dragon egg. When the dragon hatches and chooses Laurence as his rider (a choice that is not really negotiable) the two make their way back to the British Isles to be formally trained in the arts of aerial warfare.

It soon becomes clear that Laurence's dragon, named Temeraire, is not an ordinary breed of dragon. He is smarter, more curious and more independent than the other beasts. As fascinating as the concept of the novel is, as thrilling as the few battle scenes are, the thing that made "His Majesty's Dragon" so enjoyable to read was the relationship between Laurence and Temeraire. Laurence is mired in the gentility of 19th Century England and the professionalism of the King's Navy. The book has some of the best shades of Jane Austen. Laurence feels obligated to behave every inch the gentleman at all times and finds the informailty of the Aerial Corps confusing and off-putting. He finds himself out of step with his society for the first time and leans upon his closest relationship, that with his dragon.

Temeraire loves to be read to, and before long, he understands even advanced mathematics and physics better than Captain Laurence. The massive black dragon loves music and baths. He appreciates respect and becomes fiercely loyal towards his friend and rider. He does not tolerate injustice or cruelty and ultimately becomes a more endearing character than any human in the story. The relationship between Laurence and Temeraire is what defines the book, not the actions they take.

Having dragons in the world does not significantly change the timeline of history in this book. Admiral Nelson is still wins the battle of Trafalgar. King George is still the monarch of England. Napoleon Bonaparte still becomes the emperor of France after their bloody revolution. The concept is intriguing; is history fixed? Is the book already written? Would adding huge dragons have changed who won what battle during the Napoleonic Wars, or the American Revolution, or the American Civil War? What if the Comanches had ridden on the backs of dragons, or the Zulu, or the Vietcong? All things being equal, would the fabric of history have been radically changed at any point if something as fundamental as the notion that "dragons aren't real" were turned on its head.

It may seem like a silly question, but it's not. Historians and anthropologists often point out how horses were instrumental the the conquest of the Americas, how radically different warfare became after the advent of flight, how guns and steel define the difference between the conquerors and the conquered in Earth's history. Books like this make you wonder if it has ever really been the technologies that were employed that were so important in human history, or if it was truly the content of the characters of the people involved, if it was the relationships that they valued that made all the difference. Thankfully, Novik leaves this lingering question tantalizingly unanswered.

However, in "His Majesty's Dragon" Napoleon does eventually alter our timeline after his defeat at Trafalgar. Novik thinks of a clever and unexpected way to innovate a new strategy and use these mythical beasts of the air to attempt another invasion of England, and she kept you on the edge of your seat as you read how the dragons of the Great Britain tried to stave off disaster. It is perfect fodder for an arm chair general like you to try to out-think this author on how else the history of the Napoleonic Wars would have changed with a newly added, aerial dimension. Will Novik keep true to the rest of the history of the 19th Century or will Laurence and Temeraire go on to alter the course of the world in ways that will forge an entirely new timeline?

This was the first in an ongoing series of books (the ninth is due out next year) and you are sure you will end up reading as many of them as you can as fast as you can to see how your questions will be answered.




On to the next book!

"Secret Germany" by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh (2008)

In July of 1944, a bomb went off inside the same room where Adolf Hitler was receiving a briefing. It was placed by German officer, Claus Von Stauffenberg, who had more in mind than just the assassination of an insane tyrant. The bomb was just the beginning of a larger plot to topple the entire Nazi government in order to sue with the Allies to end the most destructive war in human history. Von Stauffenberg was the ring leader of a movement within the German Army's highest levels, a clandestine group, a cadre of men, a Secret Germany, that had been planning this event for years.

You thought "Secret Germany" was going to be another typical history book. It is not. Only the first 70 pages or so follow a traditional nonfiction format by detailing the events of the July 20th plot to overthrow the Nazi government. By page 70, Stauffenberg, the protagonist has already been unceremoniously executed in a downtown Berlin courtyard. The rest of the book moves from a biography of Claus Von Stauffenberg, into a deep historical contextualization of the German nation, followed by a mystical/spiritual justification for the ambitious coup attempt known as 'Valkyrie.' At times, "Secret Germany" seems more philosophical than historical, more Joseph Campbell than Stephen Ambrose.

The Americans were first able to meet the Germans on the ground in face to face combat at a place called Sidi Bou Zid in Tunisia in 1942. To put it bluntly, the Americans got their asses kicked. They turned and ran from the enemy who had taken over almost all of Europe and had threatened to dominate North Africa. Staff Officer for Operations of the 10 Panzer Division at the time (the German unit directly responsible for the American rout) was 36 year old Count Claus Von Stauffenberg. He was undeniably brilliant and had an ease of command that belied his young age. He dealt with problems in his units quickly and informally, remembering small, personal details about his subordinates. Stauffenberg was the kind of officer to whom even his superiors deferred in battle when it counted most. He was a legend in the Wehrmacht, on par with Irwin Rommel. Commanders scrambled to get him in their units. He was destined for high rank.

On April 7th, 1942, Stauffenberg was wounded by strafing American P-40 fighter-bombers. The American .50 caliber rounds tore off his right hand, destroyed his left eye, and left him with only three fingers on his left hand. His knees and legs were so badly wounded that it was believed this promising brilliant officer would never walk again. Transferred to Munich to recuperate, the famous Lieutenant Colonel Stauffenberg received more high ranking visitors than any patient the hospital had ever seen. He refused all pain killers and sedatives and was miraculously back on his feet and on active duty less than three months after he was wounded. While recovering he had remarked to friends that he believed his life had been spared for a reason. He believed he was meant to stop the senseless slaughter of millions (and he wasn't even aware of the full scope of the Holocaust) and do everything in his power to save Germany from utter destruction. "Since the generals have so far done nothing," he remarked to his uncle, "The colonels must now go into action."

A cabal of anti-Hitler conspirators had existed within the German military hierarchy as early as '38. As the new Fuehrer planned an invasion of Czechoslovakia, the conspirators were also planning to use the pretext of this clearly unnecessary war to depose (and likely execute) Hitler. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's act of appeasement put the brakes on any need to invade since the Czhecks had been handed to Adolf on a silver platter.

Maybe even more tragically than infamous appeasement of Chamberlain was the fact that this whole debacle served to effectively pull the rug out from under the coup and the conspirators subsequently lost all momentum. The conspiracy lost even more energy as the German military went on to invade country after country and to be met with victory after victory. The conspirators felt they had lost their best chance for success and that popular support for their efforts had likely evaporated.

Stauffenberg became head of the Reserve Army in October of 1943, and took up office in his new headquarters in Berlin. His arrival in the inner circle of the plot to overthrow Hitler energized everyone involved. His charisma, his confidence, and his passion motivated the others to move with purpose and coordination. Assassination attempts had been made on Hitler before (approximately 46 attempts between '21 and '45!), but the new circle of conspirators, lead by Stauffenberg, had plans to not only kill the Fuehrer, but to overthrow the entire German government. He called his plan and his circle of conspirators the "Secret Germany."

The plan already existed within the government and was, ironically, approved of by Hitler himself. It was called 'Valkyrie. ' Intended as a fail safe in case of an emergency, the official plan stated that the German Army (unbeknownst to the SS or the Gestapo) would seize control of all the levers of power within Germany, all government buildings and public spaces. The conspirators, who were all embedded in the highest levels of the military, planned to use Hitler's assassination to put 'Valkyrie' into motion, take control of the government, and then contact the Western Allies to put an end to the war.

On July 20th of '44, six weeks after the D-Day invasion, Claus Von Stauffenberg flew to Hitler's operations headquarters, called the Wolf's Lair, in east Prussia. He was scheduled to brief the Fuehrer on the state of the Reserve Army. A massive bomb was hidden inside Stauffenberg's briefcase. He set the ten minute timer (with only three fingers) and placed the bomb underneath the briefing table a mere six feet from Hitler. Stauffenberg immediately made an excuse to leave the room and exited the building. He and a co-conspirator watched from a safe distance as the hut in which the Fuehrer's briefing was taking place exploded into splinters. Stauffenberg drove to the nearest airstrip and flew to Berlin, convinced no one could have survived the assassination. He prepared himself to arrive in the capital and complete the coup d'etat he had begun.

The problem was that Hitler had survived. Another officer at the briefing had scooted the bomb farther under the heavy oak table and behind a thick divider. The explosion was thus channeled upwards and away from Hitler's body. Four men were killed in the blast, but Adolf was merely stunned and bloodied (though his right hand had a tremor for the rest of his life). As information leaked out from the Wolf's Lair, Stauffenberg's co-conspirators were paralyzed by indecision and impotent fear. They needed his motivating presence to spur them to action. Four critical hours were wasted while Stauffenberg was airborne.

Arriving in Berlin, Stauffenberg began to suspect Hitler had indeed survived, but he continued with the plan and kept 'Valkyrie' in motion. There was a massive manhunt on for his head, but he continued to encourage his fellow conspirators and attempt to overthrow the Nazi government. Men of conscience, the members of this Secret Germany had decided to deny their instincts to round up and execute all of the heads of the Nazi state. They would stick to the official 'Valkyrie' contingency plan. They refused to become the monsters they were fighting.

The coup actually succeeded for a brief time. The orders went out and commanding officers and civilian governors alike faithfully began to enact the 'Valkyrie' plan. The Fuehrer was dead, the German Army was in charge of the country, the SS was powerless. Eventually, word began spreading that Hitler might not be as dead as rumor had him. Soon, a power struggle began between Claus Von Stauffenberg and Adolf Hitler. One man would give an order and the other would immediately countermand it. Men in position of power were forced to choose a side, and they didn't all choose the Nazis. All the oaths of loyalty, all the massive rallies, all the trappings of absolute power, all the cult of personality, the threats, the unprecedented violence... they almost weren't enough to keep the Fuehrer in power. Eventually however, the Nazis reasserted their authority, with Hitler himself making a radio broadcast to assure all that he was still in control.

It has been estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 men were killed in reprisal for the failed coup. 200 were condemned to die before a sham court in the days that followed. Hitler ordered that the hangings be filmed and for weeks afterwards he sadistically watched the footage while surrounded by loyal SS men.

Stauffenberg didn't live through the night of July 20th. He and several fellow conspirators were dragged into the courtyard of their headquarters and put in front of a firing squad. Just before he died, Claus Von Stauffenberg cried out, "Long live our Secret Germany!"

The book would have been fascinating if it had stopped there, but "Secret Germany" kept going and delved deeper into the issue than you had thought possible. Part 2 of the book chronicles the rise of Prussia and the creation of the modern German nation. The region known as Prussia essentially became the Germany that Hitler wanted to shape into a thousand year Reich. The First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire, the Second Reich was the newer German Empire of the 19th century; a superpower forged by Bismark and based on a militant industrialization inspired by the American Civil War. Stauffenberg's ancestors held pivotal roles throughout German history.

Part 3 is a biography of Stauffenberg and therefore also a brief history of the Nazis and Hitler's rise to power. Stauffenberg was a devotee of the famous German poet Stephan George. George stressed the importance of mythology and symbolism and was no fan of the Nazi party. He valued action over words and above all a sense of service to the public. Hailing from such an important and aristocratic family, Stauffenberg had always felt an obligation to serve his countrymen, to give back some of the privileges his fellow citizens had bestowed upon him. Stauffenberg defied everyone's expectations and joined the military to fulfill his sense of obligation to Germany.

As a logistics officer for the 6th Panzer Division during the invasion of Poland, he saw firsthand the brutality and wanton violence of Hitler's new SS murder units as they executed civilians for little or no reason at all. Stauffenberg did what he could to stem the needless bloodshed, but realized that bolder actions needed to be taken by men in positions of greater authority if these atrocities were to be stopped. If no one else would stop it all, he would be forced to climb the ranks and do it himself.

The battle of Stalingrad and the loss of the 300,000 man 6th Army to the Russians in January of '43 proved that Hitler was not the military genius that some claimed he was (some idiots still claim this). Hitler was a lunatic whose flights of vengeance and wrathful tirades needlessly proved the death of hundreds of thousands of German soldiers. It wasn't just civilians in foreign lands suffering under the boot hell of this mad man, it was Germans as well.

Part 4 was the longest portion of the book and it is an exhaustive examination of the history of Germanic philosophy, a massive contextualization of World War II; from Goethe to the brothers Grimm, from Heine and Fantane to Hegel (with whom you disagreed completely). It was fascinating to read and helped you place the war in a larger story of human evolution that you had never been able to do before... but you kind of just wanted to get back to the exciting part of the story.

It was from this rich history and unprecedented philosophical underpinnings that Hitler and the Nazis were able to infuriatingly draw any justification for their monstrous actions. They could pick and choose from paganism and Christianity or from Nihilism and Nationalism to inspire the German Volk, infuriatingly able to claim both Germany's position as the paragon of culture and art at the same time as they justified racism and military aggression. The Nazis stitched together a Frankenstein's Monster of a new religion cobbled together from Christian eschatology, the growing field of psychology, and popular social movements. In this new religion, Hitler was fashioned, unsurprisingly, as the Divine's representative on Earth.

Stauffenberg, a devout Catholic, rejected this return to barbarism, this casting off of responsibility that the Nazis idealized. He stands as a beacon of bravery and sanity in a terribly dark time in human history, and he is seen by many as the redeemer of modern Germany. Claus Von Stauffenberg was a man of action who knew exactly what he was getting into and he did it anyway. He was, and still is, a hero. He proved that good people can stand for what is right, even in the face of defeat. He showed the world that mass hysteria and unstoppable waves of totalitarian insanity can never sweep aside all those who oppose evil. Stauffenberg serves as a reminder that fighting against evil, raging against the dying of the light is what makes us noble beings. He proves that our hopes are not naive, that the lesson of World War II is not the darkness in human souls. The lesson is that the darkness will never win.

Resistance is never futile... even when it is.





On to the next book!




P.S. The final nine months of the war in Europe were as bloody as the previous four and a half years. With the end in sight, the Nazis were thrown into a frenzy of killing. German concentration camps stepped up their brutality and their output of corpses, the Russians cut through Eastern Europe like no one since the Mongols hordes, and the Western Allies firebombed entire cities into dust heedless of civilian casualties.  It is a powerful "what if" to think that had Stauffenberg's July 20th plot succeeded, and it almost did, the body count for World War II might have been cut in half.

"Divergent" trilogy by Veronica Roth (2011)

While interviewing John Green, Stephen Colbert recently defined the term Young Adult novel as "A regular novel... that people actually read." The genre gets crap from the snobbish, but a good story is a good story. If Tolkien published "The Lord of the Rings" today it likely would be pigeonholed into the YA category. You bought the first of this trilogy because you thought your wife would like it and she burned through the series in a week. So, you thought you'd give it a try as well. Not surprisingly, you were glad you did.

***SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!***

The "Divergent" trilogy is written in First Person Present Tense, like "The Hunger Games." Books written like this always make you feel like you can't put them down because the story feels like it's happening right now! It is a limiting style and forces authors to write characters who miss obvious details or make assumptions that readers can see right through, but it is a fun way to read an action story.

"Divergent" is followed by "Insurgent" and "Allegiant" and follows the story of one sixteen year old protagonist who lives in a dystopian future. Beatrice Prior lives in Chicago, but she doesn't know her city even has a name. The city is walled off and the citizens aren't sure what is on the other side of the walls, but they know it's dangerous. Society is arranged into factions, which are like castes but with two major differences. At sixteen, everyone is allowed to choose which faction they want to be for the rest of their lives, and these factions are based on basic personality traits determined by trippy psychological tests. Most people follow the Hindu idea of dharma (although they never call it that) and stick to the factions they are born into, but some switch even though it means being ostracized from their families.

Right away it is clear that Beatrice does not want to stay in Abnegation, her faction. They dedicate their lives to selfless service and she has decided that she cannot live like that. They don't even look at their reflections in mirrors for fear that it might lead to unseemly vanity. She knows that she is not good enough for that life. There are other options for her as Choosing Day arrives for all of the city's sixteen year old citizens; Dauntless value bravery, Amity are dedicated to peace and cooperation, Candor hold the search for truth and honesty as the ultimate goal, and Erudite value lives of study and intellect. Some fail to meet the standards of their chosen factions and face a terrifying prospect. They are kicked out into the cold world of what constitutes a sixth faction, the Factionless.

At her test, Beatrice discovers that she is something special, something that defies easy categorization, something Divergent. Confounding the authorities, her aptitude test confirms that she could fit well into three different factions. She is warned to hide her Divergent status from everyone. Divergents are dangerous and she is not the only one.

Beatrice chooses Dauntless instead of staying with her family in Abnegation, and she changes her name to Tris. The Dauntless seize every day and seek every adrenaline rush they can find. They travel around the city by jumping into open-sided train cars while the trains are still moving, they zipline from the tops of the tallest buildings just for fun. Tris finds that she is braver than she thought and quickly learns that the Dauntless realize that shared experiences and extreme exploits can forge a group of nonconformists into one unit. In Abnegation acceptance is expected, in Dauntless acceptance is earned and that makes it sweeter.

The Dauntless use a powerful hallucinogenic serum to face their fears in a dream world that can be projected onto a screen for others to see. They realize that bravery is not the absence of fear, rather it is doing something even though you are scared to, sometimes even because you are scared to. Roth made you ask yourself if your fears can ever leave you or if they just lose their power over you instead. The older you get, the more you agree with the Dauntless idea that the only way to find out, is to face those fears honestly and intentionally.

Tris falls in love with a slightly older Dauntless instructor named Four, and Roth does not shy away from the fact that sixteen year old girls are sexual beings. Every glance at Four, who lets her call him his real name, Tobias, makes Tris want to be closer to him, every touch sends electrics shocks through her body. The two spend the rest of the trilogy searching for times to be alone together. Tris' lust for Four is exciting and evokes a passion in her that reminds her why she chose Dauntless in the first place.

It soon becomes clear to Tris that something is wrong within the factions. They are all struggling against one another and tensions are high within the city as the factions slip into an "Us vs Them" mentality. And even within each individual faction, something has become corrupted, some central tenants lost. The Erudites are thirsting for power and influence. The Dauntless no longer seem to value the urge to sacrifice oneself in order to protect others. Conflict is inevitable and the plot of the trilogy is one of revolution, the second book is even titled "Insurgent."

Roth is able to subtly teach several lessons in her books. She reminds you of the utter finality of choices made with a gun in your hand and the regret that is inherent in using the ultimate violence against a soldier who was manipulated into fighting you. But really... aren't all soldiers manipulated to some degree into fighting? The plot reminded you of the tenuous nature of revolutions. Most of America's Founding Fathers had different ideas about how to shape their new nation, how to run it. It took two tries at forming a government and a bloody Civil War before we arrived at the system we have today. Most revolutions are far more bloody.

The story gives the lie to the idea that humans can be easily categorized by simple personality traits. We are far more complex than that. We can, of course, embody more than one faction at a time. We can be brave and smart, honest and cooperative. We can be happy and selfless, and in fact, you have learned that it is often difficult to be happy without being a little bit selfless. The last book reminded you also of the beauty in equality. There is a deep fulfillment and joy in the freedom of sharing the same citizenship and equal rights with all.

Above all, the "Divergent" trilogy is all about our choices. How they shape our lives, how each choice ripples out into the lives of others and echoes into the future. Our choices are precisely what make us who we are. You and Nico talked about this while you were reading the books and he observed, with the clarity of a child, that we literally choose to live. Every day. Every moment. We choose to go on. How we choose to define those lives is no less important than our choosing to live them at all. We are our choices.

Roth goes on to make the argument that we also get to choose what we believe, that truth may not be as objective as it seems. There is a conversation between Tris and her best friend in "Allegiant" that excellently tackles the idea of why we believe what we do. Tris starts:

"I know I'm fumbling for an explanation, one I may not really believe, but I say it anyway: 'I guess I don't really believe in genetic damage. Will it make me treat other people better? No. The opposite maybe.' 

And besides, I see what it's doing to Tobias... and I don't understand how anything good can possibly come from it.

'You don't believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they're true,' Christina points out.

'But' - I speak slowly as I mull that over- 'isn't looking at the result of a belief a good way of evaluating if it's true?'"

The whole series was worth it to you just for that one scene.

The series, Like "The Hunger Games" is violent and bloody. Tris watches family members and good friends die right in front of her. She struggles with hard questions and impossible choices. There are deceptions within deceptions and the truth of the world that lies beyond Chicago's walls is one of a cold disconnection from humanity (and you missed those trains the Dauntless rode on). Lies and brutality are commonplace, people are treated like lab rats, and all for the sake of control. Also like "The Hunger Games," "Divergent" reminded you what we choose to sacrifice for. We should only do it for love, and we should only let others do it for the same reason. Self sacrifice should never be motivated by coercion or even obligation. Only love is powerful and meaningful enough to require the greatest price from us.

"Divergent" however, unlike "The Hunger Games," ends with a slightly more hopeful note. Roth leaves you with a beautiful reminder that although life is hard and we will all inevitably get hurt by living in this world, we can help mend one another. We each help to heal the hurts the world can inflict on us. We fix one another. There is hope in that knowledge, and also in the realization that we get to choose who will help make us better.




On to the next book!

"The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane (1895)

This is a book that you read in high school and you remember not liking it. But, then again, you were kind of an idiot in high school. You saw it again in the local library and decided to give it a second chance. You are glad you did.

This book describes one young Union soldier's first experience with combat. It takes place over the course of two days on a nameless battlefield in Virginia.  When "The Red Badge of Courage" was published, thirty years after the war in which it's set, Stephen Crane was credited with writing one of the most accurate first person accounts of what combat in the Civil War was really like. Veterans swore they had been in that exact battle with him. Some even claimed to have seen him in the field and vouched for the accuracy of his accounts. Stephen Crane, however, was born in 1871, six years after the war had already ended.

That's how good this book is.

You have found that all of the things you complained about when you read this book in high school were things that you enjoyed now that you are an adult. The colloquial speech, the nameless soldiers, the inner monologue, and the protagonist's constantly changing emotions all added a realism that sucked you right in to the narrative.

On the eve of his first battle a young soldier, named Henry Fleming but most often called "the youth," is consumed with worry that he might turn and run in the face of his enemy. He is afraid that his childish ideas of himself as a glorious warrior might evaporate in the heat of actual warfare. He fears his own cowardice more than death, since he thinks it more likely. Asking his fellow soldiers if they too share this fear of their own moral weakness does not help since they all lie and deny any such fears.

His emotional self awareness is rare amongst protagonists of war novels. His honesty in his fear of failure is universally human, but tends to be too unattractive to make for a common literary theme. This emotional self awareness is a hallmark of "The Red Badge of Courage." Throughout the novel, Crane describes every fleeting emotion and every passing fear, only to have those fears reversed or those emotions negated within a few pages. Henry's mind constantly vacillates between contradictory thoughts, sureness and uncertainty, confidence and doubt, bombast and fear, alternating between claiming the spotlight and shrinking from stage. It's very human.

When battle finally finds him, Henry, the youth, finds himself swept up in the bloodlust and duty of it all. He instinctively joins his brothers in arms and automatically performs his role as a soldier in his nation's army, pouring rifle fire into the rank of a charging Rebel army. He is a part of a larger machine, one bent on defeating the enemy. He is powerful and integral to a greater plan. His enemies turn back from their charge. He has conquered his fear of cowardice.

The book is far more psychological than you remembered. Crane climbs into the minds of all soldiers who have ever fought: their fear of combat, their dread of failure, all combined with their instincts of a finely honed warrior. He vividly and succinctly details the immediacy of battle. The staccato speech of fighting men, the shock of the carnage, the odd moments that form flashbulb memories, the surprise rude realization that the world did not stop spinning simply because your own life was in danger, the feeling that your ten yards of perception constituted the entire war. Not bad for a man who had never seen war first hand.

Soon after his moment of triumph, Henry, the youth, does succumb to his worst fear. Following the lead of other men in his regiment in the face of another rebel charge, he turns tail and runs for his life. He wanders in the rear areas and comes across a column of walking wounded men, heading for a rear hospital area. He finds himself envying the wounded and longing for his own wound, his own red badge of courage. He watches a friend die horribly, crazed and alone in a nameless field, and Henry wishes now that he were dead instead of wounded.

Returning to the front, with men he does not know, Henry is caught up in a mass retreat. Lost in a tide of terrified and shamed men he reaches out to ask one what is happening. The other soldier, his brother in arms and shame, smashes Henry in the head with his rifle and gives the youth the wound he recently wished for. Henry stumbles off to find his regiment and is cared for by a friend who acts very differently than he did just that morning, more tender, more patient and understanding. Battle has changed him. War changes all who experience it.

The next day Henry takes part in several bloody clashes and distinguishes himself in the fighting, even taking up the regimental flag when the color sergeant is killed. He leads a charge, finds his courage, and realizes that terrible secret that makes all good soldiers worth a damn; in order to be an effective soldier, you have to understand that you are already dead, that it is only a matter of time so you might as well fight as hard and as honorably as you can before your number is up.

After the battle, however, he is haunted by his shortcomings. He is convinced that no acts of valor can make up for the sins he hides in his heart. He ran from his duty, he witnessed a friend die, he ran in shame from another wounded soldier who needed help but kept asking whether Henry was hurt. But, looking inward, Henry finds he can forgive himself. He too has been changed and is no longer the boy he was the day before. War has changed the youth into a man.

The brilliance of "The Red Badge of Courage" is it's ambivalence. You read it and heard a cautionary tale warning of the dangers of war to the hearts, minds, and bodies of those who fight. The desperation, the sorrow, the destruction are rarely worth the sacrifice. You saw no glory in the story, only dire warnings. But you also saw how someone else could read it, someone more inclined to embrace the virtue of armed conflict, and hear it as an impassioned endorsement of the glories of war. Valor and sacrifice can be very attractive. Crane does not tell you what to think; he writes the story as empathetically and realistically as he can, and leaves it to you to decide. Brilliant.

It is also remarkable that Crane had never set foot on a battlefield before writing this book. He says that he grew up listening to old veterans talking about what the war was like, soaking in every detail, imagining what it must have all been like. This is the magic of literature and also of the human mind. These gifts allow us to face things we may never face in real life, to examine fears we may never have to deal with, to understand things we would never otherwise be given the chance to understand. A great book can tap in to that miracle of human empathy, our ability to recognize the complexity of other people, and it can provide us a glimpse of the human condition through the eyes of others, even if those others never existed.





On to the next book!

"Myths to Live By" by Joseph Campbell (1972)

You have always wanted to read a compendium of human mythology, a brief account and comparison of different mythologies throughout cultures and eras. Joseph Campbell seems like the best place to start. Campbell is one of those people who you have always heard of. He's always either been presented to you as a brilliant teacher with a genius insight into the nature of the human experience, or he's been presented as a Great Satan whose teachings should be avoided at all costs. It's that last one that has always made you want to read his stuff, of course. Yet again, you read a book your wife should review instead of you. You're probably not smart enough for this.

"Myths to Live By" is a collection of essays based on public speeches given by Joseph Campbell from 1958 through 1971. Campbell's goal is to show how human mythologies throughout the ages all have similar themes, a continuity that runs far deeper than coincidence or chance could ever explain. It's one of those books that can change the way you see the world forever.

"Myths To Live By" begins with the idea that the staggering progress of human knowledge has lead to the loss of the primacy of ancient symbols and legends, of myths which have proven essential to the human animal. Campbell proposes that humanity's primary psychological motivation is clearly to mythical concerns rather than economic or physical. This explains why millions of Hindus could refuse to eat herds of perfectly edible cattle surrounding them and why a destitute people would bother erecting extravagant cathedrals (eat your heart out, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs). Campbell postulates that the historical record shows that the loss of these myths and symbols threatens to begin the crumbling of society and offers a solution that might save human civilization. So, the premise is a bit grandiose and based on questionable assertions (since human civilization still exists 50 years after the book was written) but the premise maintains a fascinating wisdom and clarity. Campbell tends to cherry pick his examples to fit his preconceived notions, but these weaknesses might just be something that, like the primacy of myths, form a part of human nature.

Campbell asserts that the primacy of mythology in human beings is a symptom of humanity's unique recognition of its own mortality coupled with the realization that "society" still lives on after the individual dies. Humans are born, again unique in the animal world, about a decade too early. We need mythology and ritual and the influence of a distinct culture to shape us into the cultural beings we have become. Our instincts are more of an open book than the scripted impulses of less evolved life forms. We are made to allow other people and the stories they tell to help make us.

In "Myths to Live By" Campbell claims that a proper mythology should 1) instill awe and reverence for the mysteries of the universe, 2) present the universe in accord with general knowledge of the day (so, there go most modern religions), 3) validate and reinforce the cultural norms of society, and 4) help guide citizens through every stage of their lives. He is clearly of the opinion that Western religions do not meet humanity's need for satisfying mythology. He urges you to look Eastward and inward and skyward. Humans can create new mythologies based on our own potential for enlightenment and bolstered by our own extraordinary ability to reach beyond our home planet and possibly colonize the very heavens we once believed ruled our fates.

Towards the end of the book he suggests that Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, was right when he claimed that humans have an instinctive drive to construct subconscious archetypes, to crave and create myths. Our founding mythologies, from the Greek Pantheon, to the animistic religions of aboriginal peoples of the New World, to the Old Testament are not real, Campbell argues. But that doesn't mean they aren't true or important. In fact, if we give the story of Genesis a metaphorical meaning it might become even more powerful than any literal meaning ever could. What if the Garden of Eden exists within each of us? What if the point of the story is that we are all unable (without divine intervention) to return to that perfect ideal existence? We all have eaten of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eternity is Eden and we are all Adam and Eve. Creation myths across all people groups and throughout the ages share much in common. Campbell explains that "Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths." There is a truth to these stories more powerful than the patently allegorical "facts." If there weren't we would have ceased to repeat them long ago and we certainly would not ever fashion new ones, which means there would be no Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. No one wants to live in a world like that.

Campbell takes his cues from famous psychologists like Freud and Jung when describing the operations of the human mind, but he only lets them inform his descriptions. He gives these philosophies of mind great significance, but only as a means of discovering deeper truths. He does not allow Freud or Jung to usurp the wisdom of millenia of human social evolution or his own observations. In Eastern religion, for example, he refers to the overarching social structure as the Superego and the individual's compulsion to adhere to that superseding structure as the Id.

Around 4,000 years ago, one of the greatest shifts in human consciousness took place. Some humans began telling themselves stories that implied they themselves possessed free will, not just the gods. This idea of "the individual" is extremely new and wholly foreign to the way most human societies had previously been shaped. When Yahweh destroyed the Earth in a great flood (or when the Sumerian god, Enlil did the same thing around the same time) he did so because the people were so wicked, implying they could have chosen to be something other than what nature intended them to be. This was a new concept in human history and it affected everything west of Iran. You can see this difference reflected in our subsequent mythology and literature. In the Oddesy, the Aeneid, and Dante's Devine Comedy, the heroes who enter into the underworld are able to recognize dead friends and love ones who have passed from the world of the living. Souls retain their individuality even after death. In Eastern storytelling, the heroes only find faceless dead in the afterlife. Once a soul has departed, it assumes the role of the new society of the dead it has been transplanted into. The individual is lost to the fabric of the universe.

But there is even greater diversity within the storytelling traditions of the world than the rise of the concept of individuality. In Judaism's mythology, we are on God's side. He is good and we are subject to sin. In Greek mythology however, we are on humanity's side. Humanity is good and powerful and the gods are the capricious and flawed ones. In Eastern religions on the other hand, we are the gods! Humans are capable of both creation and destruction, but always within the greater framework of the nature of the universe. In this last version, Campbell finds a truth he spends much of the rest of the book trying to convey.

"We in the West have named our God; or rather, we have had the Godhead named for us in a book from a time and place that are not our own. And we have been taught to have faith... in the absolute existence of this metaphysical fiction... In the great East, on the other hand, the accent is on experience; on one's own experience, furthermore, not a faith in someone else's... The Buddha is one awakened to identity not with the body but with the knower of the body, nor with the thought but the knower of the thoughts, that is to say, with consciousness; knowing, furthermore that his value derives from his ability to radiate consciousness - as the value of a light bulb derives from its power to radiate light. What is important about a light bulb is not filament or the glass but the light which these bulbs are to render; and what is important about each of us is not the body and its nerves but the consciousness that shines through them."

He is saying that we all have the power to make our own story into The Story, to make ourselves into Gods by realizing our connection to the very fabric of the infinite universe. Consciousness itself is a miracle that is simply written into the mathematics of reality and we are the beneficiaries of that miracle. We are designed to allow mythology, art, storytelling, and religion to remind us of that miracle every day.

Campbell explains further what he identifies as a weakness of modern Western religions, specifically. "Where synagogues and churches go wrong is by telling what their symbols "mean." The value of an effective rite is that it leaves everyone to his own thoughts, which dogma and definitions only confuse." That sounds a lot like some of the Christian books you have been reading in Bible study lately. It also sounds like something you might have said before. But sometimes Campbell's teachings are maddeningly circular, leaving you wondering if there really is any wisdom in them at all. "Clarity of the mind is the ultimate goal and when you achieve it you discover that there is no one mind to begin with, so what exactly was cleared in the first place?" That kind of thing. But that absurdity is often intentional in order to allow the mind to release classical logical thought and bring it closer to achieving enlightenment.

"Myths to Live By" reminded you of the central duality of all things. Darkness can only exist if there is also light, evil if there is good, bliss if there is agony. It reminded you that there are more things to be inspired by out there (and in yourself) than you usually acknowledge, that hope is not naive, that suffering can be overcome, and that stories and art are intrinsically important. It also taught you that there are not only different religions, but different ways of thinking about religion, about individuality, about the miracle of human consciousness. And above all the book reminded you that "...the greatest steps in the progress of mankind have been the products... of acts inspired by awe."




On to the next book!




P.S. This guy, Jason Silva, has undoubtedly read some Joseph Campbell, and he is pretty awesome. 
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAY60dY-irY
 and another one from Jason Silva..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZMTdYmfBl4

"John Adams." by David McCullough (2001)

You've never been much for biographies. They tend to be far too tedious. It's said that Eleanor Roosevelt once said that "Great minds discuss ideas, mediocre minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people." You tend to find yourself solidly in the mediocre range of minds since you are endlessly fascinated by the events and the contexts of history. Very rarely have you ventured into the realm of the ideas that inspire these events, but every so often there are certain people who embody ideas so acutely, people who give definite shape to previously mercurial concepts so memorably, that their lives become worth study. Sometimes, certain people are worth a little discussion.

David McCullough is a master at what he does. This was not the first book by him that you had read, and it likely won't be the last, but it might be the longest. It is a complete and expertly told biography of Adams' life, not just an account of his revolutionary or presidential activities. Writing a brief review of such an expansive work is problematic, to say the least. Hitting the high points of the man's life would still result in far too long a review for one little blog. So you decided to try to write down some of the things you most wanted to remember from the book, impressions of the ideas, of the events, and of John Adams himself.

Anytime you read of anyone who was constantly reading, you always feel a deep kinship with that character, real or fictitious. Adams was one of those characters. As a boy, he was an avid reader and a student of human nature. He observed and studied everyone he could, not just those he admired. He searched for what inspired famous thinkers and what had motivated great men. Throughout his life he maintained an extraordinary quality of discernment. A young John Adams was a bit self conscious and tended to look for rivals when none need exist. He was adept at finding the weakness in others but made up for this by honing a knack for finding others' hidden strengths as well (in Adams' eyes, a quick wit covered a multitude of sins). It was this discernment that eventually led him to nominate Colonel George Washington as the commander of the Continental Army and Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence.

John Adams was never interested in gathering wealth. Instead, he longed to leave his mark on the world. He developed a vision of the future of Western Civilization with a clarity that seems remarkable today. "Creation is liable to change," he wrote in 1755, "Perhaps this... may (eventually) transfer the great seat of empire into America. It looks likely to me. The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves (as the greatest nation) is to disunite us."

John Adams was honest to a fault, hard working to the extreme, dedicated to his country and to its future. A Harvard graduate and practicing lawyer, he was one of the most brilliant and well read of his generation, a generation marked by brilliant and well read people. He was eloquent when he needed to be, quick with a joke and quicker with a laugh. He was loyal, tenacious, and dedicated to his passions. He recognized his own faults, and so was quick to forgive the faults he found in others. He had the rare ability to imagine other people with a complexity that was (and still is) sorely lacking. Adams trusted his discernment, but was never afraid to change his mind when new evidence was presented. He was a true child of The Enlightenment.

But, having listed all of these attributes, this would not be a proper review of the man's biography if you did not mention that John Adams' greatest strength was his wife, Abigail. Throughout their marriage, they were often separated for long periods, but they maintained a passionate romance and a prolific correspondence. Abigail was equally as well read as her husband. In fact, she was his equal in every way except the public accomplishments her sex and her society prevented her from attempting. Her literary tastes tended towards the poets more than the social philosophes. She quoted poetry in face to face conversations and in her writings. Abigail quoted poetry from memory and always seemed to fit her stanzas perfectly to the moment. She kept herself abreast of current events around the world and she voiced her opinions to people whose response mattered most. While her husband was President of the United States, Abigail was widely known to be the better politician among the two Adamses. When it became clear to him that his entire cabinet (left over from President Washington's administration) was likely politically opposed to him, and his Vice President Thomas Jefferson most certainly was, Adams called for the wisest and most loyal adviser he'd ever had to race to the capital to help him in his hour of need. He called for Abigail. It is fair to speculate that the United States of America would not be the same country had one of its most influential founding fathers not been married to such and extraordinary woman.

Abigail Adams has always reminded you a lot of your own wife. Liz is also a woman who is much smarter than you, much wiser, and whose advice not enough people listen to simply because she is a woman. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It is often forgotten (or maybe ignored) that John Adams was actually the defense attorney for the British soldiers (officers and enlisted men) who were charged with the murders of the infamous Boston Massacre. He felt that in a nation of free men, a nation of laws, anyone accused of a crime was entitled to a robust defense. At the time, King George still trusted American courts to try British soldiers. That trust soon evaporated and the king decreed that any accused British soldiers were to be returned to England to stand trial for the crimes they had committed in the American colonies, an affront to Adams' efforts that would not be forgotten.

With the Stamp Act of 1765, British taxes actually affected Americans for the first time, and Adams began to find his voice to oppose the British. He wrote a document espousing the principle of No Taxation Without Representation that was adopted by an unprecedented number of cities and towns throughout Massachusetts. It was but the first of many incredibly influential writings he would create over the course of his life. In fact, when "Common Sense" spread throughout the 13 colonies in 1776, and popular sentiment began turning towards independence, it was speculated by many that Adams was the pamphlet's real author. Adams, however, was troubled by the ideas on government ensconced within the popular pamphlet. He was worried that the author of "Common Sense," Thomas Paine, was far better at tearing down rather than building up. This worry prompted him to shape his own ideas on government as a counter to Paine's. Even though he had become the de facto leader of the 2nd Continental Congress in Philadelphia, he took time and drew on his (and his wife's) extensive study of history and human nature and outlined for a few the delegates a system of government based on mutual checks and balances, one built on a framework of a powerful executive, a legislative brach consisting of two houses, and an independent judiciary. If he had never written anything else in his life, Adams' "Thoughts on Government" would have made him worthy of lifelong fame in American history.

McCullough reminded you of a detail you tend to forget when you think of that extraordinary 2nd Continental Congress. The delegates all gathered together in Philadelphia that summer came from such different worlds, almost alternate realities, that it is a miracle that they could agree on anything, let alone the idea that they should all form a single nation together. The aristocracy from Virginia bore almost nothing in common with the farmer stock of New England. In your mind, the obstinate but hard working Adams seems much more admirable than the sensitive and brooding Jefferson, for example. Next to stalwart John Adams, Thomas Jefferson seems prissy, affected, and snobbish. Jefferson's whole life was a hypocrisy; he hated cities but insisted on staying in the heart of Paris when he was the ambassador there (the Adamses stayed in a much more modest home some way from the nucleus of the city), he abhorred debt and praised frugality while living a lavish lifestyle and owing money to lenders the world over until the day he died, he praised humanity's self evident equality but owned and traded human slaves. All humans bear their own contradictions, but Jefferson's seem more glaring to you, especially when viewed through the lens of such a plain and straightforward character as John Adams.

John Adams, the workhorse of the Congress, chaired more than 20 committees in Philadelphia, including the Board of War, more than any other delegate. He made sure that the 2nd Continental Congress was a revolutionary one. Where other delegates fell ill or returned home to convalesce, Adams stayed and attended the urgent business of his new nation. But he didn't simply sit around passing legislation and writing influential papers. In his role as a Founding Father, Adams was a man of action. Putting his life on the line, he was part of the first peace delegation to cross battle lines at the British request to meet with admiral Howe to discuss peace terms. He was chosen to cross the Atlantic to join Franklin as ambassador to France (his ship traded shots with a British merchantman and Adams was in the thick of it all with musket in hand). He traveled to Amsterdam and secured the first of many loans for his nation from Dutch banks. After the War for Independence was over, John Adams was chosen as the U.S.'s first minister to the court of St. James and presented himself before the very king from whom he had made damn sure his fellow countrymen had declared independence.

As the war dragged on, Abigail and John Quincy, as well as Thomas Jefferson joined him in France. The spring of 1785 might have been the best time in the Adamses' lives. The three revolutionaries, Franklin and Jefferson and Adams, were the toast of Paris. They drank deeply of the culture and history of the country that was soon to dissolve into revolutionary chaos. They all enjoyed one another's company and their own considerable fame. But Jefferson and the Adamses were no Jacobins. In fact, they seemed far more conservative than the notoriously morally loose French aristocracy, far more humble and circumspect. The juxtaposition this image posed for you proved charmingly memorable.

Back in the states, Shay's Rebellion (against high taxes) soon illustrated the need for a stronger federal government. Congress was considering how to do that. This afforded Adams and Jefferson the opportunity to spar over their opinions of the best form the new government should take. Jefferson, Adams wrote, was "apprehensive of monarchy" and favored a weaker executive branch while Adams was afraid of "the aristocracy" he had seen arise from too powerful a legislative branch. Both however, favored a new Bill of Rights to be attached to the new Constitution. Their debates were to continue for decades to come and shaped the crux of today's modern political party platforms.

In 1789, Adams became the first Vice President of the United States and, therefore, the first President of the US Senate. After President Washington decided to limit his administration to just two terms, John Adams was elected President with Jefferson as his VP. The Adams administration was consumed with avoiding the gathering storm of war with revolutionary France. The Massachusetts farmer turned Commander in Chief championed peace through engaged diplomacy backed up by a powerful navy. He passed controversial (and likely unconstitutional) laws barring derogatory speech against himself and the government in general, and allowing for the expulsion of suspicious immigrants. The Alien and Sedition Acts are the darkest black eye on the face of Adams the historical figure and likely the reason his face is not on Mt. Rushmore.

His entire cabinet was arrayed against him politically and his own Vice President actively campaigned to undercut his political goals. Unlike almost all of the other politicians of the day (especially Hamilton and Jefferson) Adams refused to vilify his adversaries in the newspapers. He refused to use the press as a weapon against his political enemies. It is not surprising therefore, that John Adams only served one term as POTUS. It is important to remember though, that only 250 votes in New York would have won him the entire state and given him a second term. Remember that tidbit the next time someone tells you that your vote does not count.

Adams ended up doing more for the cause of revolution and more to shape the modern United States than any of his fellow Founding Fathers, but has received far less credit. Jefferson had his Declaration, Revere had his ride, Washington his cherry tree, and Madison the authorship of the Constitution (heavily influenced, of course, by Adams). But at the end of their lives, none of the members of that extraordinary generation would have as many achievements in the American cause under their belts than John Adams.

Above all, Adams was obsessed with serving his country, with securing the future for his posterity. But his devotion to duty never dimmed his vision of a nation that could one day prove to be a beacon of freedom and hope and culture to a world shackled by monarchy and tyranny. In a letter from Paris to his inimitable wife, Adams wrote;

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architacture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children the right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."

John Adams was a man of many controversies and contradictions, but quotes like this show that he had his priorities right. Reading his biography made you wish that his posterity could see the world through his eyes more often.





On to the next book!





P.S. Adams' "Thoughts on Government" in April of 1776, his response to build up the tearing down that "Common Sense" was doing, should be required reading for any high school government class. It is public domain and easily accessible on the internet and it is outstanding.
http://www.constitution.org/jadams/thoughts.htm

P.P.S. In the winter of 1761, Adams witnessed, first hand, what he considered to be the birth of American independence. James Otis, Adams' political hero and legal example, argued before the five British judges of the Massachusetts court that the search warrants which had been used by the British government for years, even in England itself, were null and void because they violated the natural rights of Englishmen. This reminded you that great events never spring into existence fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. History is filled with nameless, forgotten people who toil away in obscurity, always bending the arc of human civilization towards justice. That those people are unsung today does not mean that their actions were meaningless. Actions build upon actions and inspiration is built upon inspiration until sometimes the whole world stops and notices. You may never know what the end result of your choices might be. This anecdote served as reminder to make sure that you act in a way that will shape the world to the form you want to see. Not all of us can be John Adams, but none of us is an island.

"In Harm's Way" by Doug Stanton (2001)

You first heard of the story of the USS Indianapolis from Robert Shaw as Captain Quint, the fictional captain in Speilberg's movie Jaws. You've been fascinated by the story ever since.

You have a pretty healthy phobia of sharks. You don't try to hide it. When you take the kids to the aquarium you always reach into the petting tanks to touch the rays and fish that glide by, but you stay well back from the shark tanks. Nico, eight years old now, thinks it's funny to see his father, who is fascinated by everything, standing tight-lipped and dry with his hands by his sides, yards away from an experience as amazing as petting a live shark. But in your mind, maybe you should blame the movie Jaws, or maybe blame your own irrationality, these animals are pure killing machines. They have evolved for hundreds of millions of years to do one thing and one thing only... to eat anything they can. Reading "In Harm's Way" didn't exactly do a lot to help you conquer this fear.

The USS Indianapolis was an American cruiser that was built a decade before WW II broke out. Cruisers aren't as big as battleships and they don't pack quite the punch, but they are much lighter and therefore much faster. The Indy, as she was known, became a favorite of President FDR's and he toured South and Central America in her during the 30's. After war broke out, she was legendary Admiral Spruance's flagship. The Indy used her speed to keep the famous commander of the US 5th Fleet in the thick of battle wherever that may be. Her crew became used to having their orders changed on the fly. She was in almost constant combat from the minute the bombs fell over Pearl Harbor until the minute a kamikaze slammed into her off the coast of Okinawa in March of 1945. The Indy had limped 6,000 miles back from Okinawa to San Francisco Bay. She'd been docked at Mare island for four months for extensive repairs, and by July she was almost ready to get back into the war.

Captain Charles McVay, commander of the USS Indianapolis was surprised to hear that his famous cruiser would be leaving her repair dock on a secret mission before she was completely brought back up to 100%. The United States needed a fast, proven ship to deliver top secret cargo and the Indy and her crew fit the bill perfectly. Unbeknownst to anyone on board, The Indianapolis would be transporting the world's first nuclear weapon, the bomb called Little Boy which would later be dropped on Hiroshima. She would be bringing Little Boy to the island of Tinian where a B-29 bomber was waiting to fly it on the most destructive bombing mission any airplane has ever flown. Along with the secret cargo, two "artillery officers" came aboard (actually, they were experts in radiation detection and in the assembly of the bomb).

After the bomb was loaded onto the Indy on July 16th, she paused in the waters of San Francisco Bay. She was waiting for orders to proceed until after the results of a secret test. The world had just experienced its first nuclear explosion when the scientists from the Manhattan Project detonated their Trinity device in the deserts of New Mexico. As soon as the results of the secret test were verified, the Indy was allowed to sail underneath the Golden Gate bridge and out into the Pacific. Twenty one days later, the city of Hiroshma would be destroyed.

As the 12,000 men on board the Indianapolis steamed at full speed towards Pearl Harbor in July of '45, long gone were those early panicky, lean, holding-on-by-the-skin-of-our-teeth days of the Pacific War. The US Navy had recovered from the devastating losses of the first battles in the conflict with Japan. Over the last four years of a naval war that spanned a quarter of the globe, the US Navy had become a behemoth, a massive bloated fighting machine. More than a million men had passed just through San Francisco on their way to the war and over one third of them had done so in just the last four months. The invasion of the Japanese home islands was being planned and there was speculation the death toll for both sides would be unimaginable. The war was going to end soon, the question was how many more people had to die before it was all over. The Indy held the answer in her cargo hold. The faster she could delivery it, the sooner the bloodiest war in human history might end. The USS Indianapolis made the 2,405 miles from San Francisco to Pearl Harbor in 74.5 hours, a record that still stands today.

By July 26th the Indy had successfully delivered her special cargo to the world's largest airbase at the time. Tininan was a tiny island on the rim of the Mariana trench. It was from this speck in the ocean that the massive B-29 bombers had been launching their bombing runs against Japan's cities and industries 1,600 miles to the north. A bomber named the Enola Gay was there waiting for her special payload and her chance to make the most famous bombing run in history. Just six hours after arriving at Tinian, the Indianapolis was already at sea again. She had left behind her on the island the two guest "artillery officers" and her special secret cargo, a uranium-based fission bomb called Little Boy.

Within days, the Indy had reached Guam, the headquarters for the US Fifth Fleet. From here Captain McVay received orders to continue unescorted to the Philippines. The Indianapolis had no sonar, hunting subs was a job for destroyers, not cruisers. The waters she was sailing into, the Philippine Sea, some of the deepest on Earth, were known to have Japanese subs in them. The problem was that this knowledge came from a classified American code-breaking program called ULTRA. No one on board the Indianapolis had clearance to be briefed in on ULTRA intelligence and the Navy couldn't take the chance that the Japanese might realize their codes had been broken. Rerouting American ships into safer waters would be a dead give away to the Japanese that their communications had been compromised. 1,200 men on one of the US Nay's most famous ships were sailing into dangerous waters with no idea there were Japanese submarines prowling them.

The I-58 was one of only six submarines the Japanese Navy still had in operation in July of '45. Just after midnight on the night of July 29th, two torpedoes launched from the I-58 smashed into the forward sections of the Indianapolis. The second torpedo hit a 3,500 gallon fuel tank. The damage was catastrophic. Within eight minutes, the order went out verbally among the crew (all of the electronics on board were knocked out, including the coms) for all hands to abandon ship. Moments after the torpedoes had struck her, the flagship of the US Fifth Fleet had rolled onto her starboard side and was sinking. There was no time to release any of the ship's lifeboats. Some of the men were able to simply step into the sea without even getting their hair wet. Within twelve minutes of the strike, more than 900 of the crew of the Indianapolis were in the water watching her burning hulk disappear under the waves. Four days later, only 317 of them would come out of the water.

Hundreds of men had been vaporized instantly or had burned alive in the attack. More had been crushed by heavy equipment sliding across the decks when the cruiser rolled. These men never had a chance. They were dead within minutes, or even seconds of the torpedoes' explosions. Their friends who had survived would soon consider those who had died in the attack to be the lucky ones.

Sharks are attracted to electrical currents. This sixth sense allows these keystone predators to detect prey even when visibility is low. Huge warships steaming over open waters not only create massive electrical fields but they also create a trail of trash that would have also attracted sharks (opportunistic feeders that they are) for miles and miles around. After the ship sank, it is likely that hundreds of sharks who had been trailing in the cruiser's wake feasted on the corpses of the sailors from the doomed Indianapolis. After the first day, they turned their attention to the surviving crew members, many of whom had been horribly wounded or burned when their ship was attacked.

The sharks, mostly tigers, blues, makos, and whitetips, attacked the periphery of the groups of survivors who had clustered together. The sharks preferred to eat at dawn and dusk. The men watched during the sweltering daylight hours while hundreds, maybe thousands of the ancient predators circled them. The waters of the South Pacific were clear enough that the sharks, each averaging ten feet long, could be seen even fifty feet below the survivors' feet. As the sun came up every morning and set every night, the monsters would strike from the deep and from the darkness.

It must have been like a nightmare. Not a metaphorical nightmare, but an actual nightmare, like the ones that you have occasionally. You know the ones. They are soaked in blood and fear, with rows of ghastly silver teeth gruesomely ripping apart living flesh. The ones where screams fill the air and death is personified by sleek and swift beasts who kill without reason. The sharks averaged fifty kills a day among the survivors of the Indianapolis. Fifty men were eaten alive every day while their helpless friends watched. Some died screaming and fighting back, while others were killed more surreptitiously. Sometimes sailors would nudge their sleeping friends only to realize, to their horror, that the head and shoulders bobbing in the life vest were all that remained of their friend. As you read "In Harm's Way" you wondered how any of these men maintained any scrap of sanity.

Most of them did not. Exposure, dehydration, and the constant threat of being eaten alive would be enough for most humans to loose their minds. But the men of the Indy also had to deal with the psychological effects of ingesting salt water. No matter how educated a person might be in the dangers of drinking ocean water, being surrounded by 10,000 square miles of water when you are dying of thirst can prove too tempting for even the most stalwart. Too many men could not fight the urge to drink their fill. Those who gave in, quickly went insane as they floated on the waves. Salt water psychosis is incredibly painful and many of the men died screaming in agony, even those untouched by sharks. Some began hallucinating and at times many of them would have mass group hallucinations. Often, these hallucinations ended with the men drowning themselves or drinking even more saltwater, which proved just as deadly. Tragically, early on the morning of Wednesday, August 1st, one group of deranged boys attacked one another with knives and bare hands. Fights broke out for the most illogical of reasons and, in the throws of insanity, sailors killed each other. After just a few minutes of this, fifty more of the survivors from the Indianapolis floated lifeless on the waves, murdered by their own shipmates.

Through a series of tragically unpredictable circumstances, almost no one else in the US Navy had any idea a ship had been sunk. The Indy had sent out a distress signal and she was missing from her appointed meeting the next day, but a ship like the Indianapolis was regularly called away from her assigned missions and sent where she was needed with no warning or notification. It was assumed, by those who even noticed she was late, that she had been called off to more pressing matters.

After four days of their agonizing ordeal, on Thursday August 2nd 1945, the survivors were spotted by an American anti-submarine bomber. The men from the Indy floated in a skein of so much fuel and oil from the sinking of their ship that the pilot of the bomber began to make an attack run on them, mistaking them for a Japanese submarine. Realizing his mistake, he radioed in the location of the desperate flotilla of survivors and so began one of the largest rescue operations in the history of the US Navy. By then, their life vests were so inundated with water that even the men who were lucky enough to have worn a vest were in danger of drowning. The pilot of one PB-Y seaplane, seeing how desperate the situation was below him, even ditched in the massive ocean swells, damaging his airframe so badly that the plane would never fly again. The pilot, Adrian Marks, used his ruined aircraft as a lifeboat, a refuge from the sharks and a place to administer rudimentary medical treatment for the most grievously wounded and malnourished among the survivors. 56 men were saved by Marks and his PB-Y.

American ships for hundreds of miles around converged on the area. The survivors were spread out over miles of open ocean. The currents and the winds had drifted them over one hundred miles from where they had first entered the sea. Within a day, all of the survivors had been pulled aboard American ships. Most of them were suffering from burns, lacerations, fractures, skin ulcers from the salt water, dehydration, starvation, pneumonia, shock, exposure, and shark bites.

Six days later, when Little Boy fell out of the sky above Hiroshima, it had the words "This is for the boys of the USS Indianapolis" written on its side. It is remarkable that the men who delivered the most technologically advanced weapon ever used in warfare, something out of a science fiction story, soon found themselves at risk from one of the world's oldest killers. It was a reminder to you that humans may be able to harness the power of the atom, but we are still part of a natural world and sometimes that world asserts itself in the most fearsome of ways.

Captain McVay survived the ordeal only to be court martialed for the sinking of his ship. To this day he remains the only American captain to be brought up on charges for losing his ship to enemy action in a time of war. The war was over within weeks of the recovery and the papers that heralded the end of hostilities also give a few inches of space for the sinking of the Indianapolis. It was an embarrassment for the Navy and they needed a scapegoat. Ostensibly, Captain McVay was reprimanded because he was not sailing his ship in a zig zag course. The prosecution argued that this would have prevented any submarine from being able to plot an acurate firing slution and would have saved the ship. The defense brought in not only a prominent American submarine commander to refute this assertion, but also the captain of the I-58 himself! The very man who had sunk the ship testified that zig zagging would have done nothing to complicate his calculations and the Indy would have been sunk anyway.

It didn't matter. The Navy was not interested in looking to place blame any higher than the rank of captain. In 1968, after two decades of shame and after receiving stacks of hate mail from grieving family members of the sailors who died under his command, Captain McVay killed himself on the steps of his New England home. In the history of the phrase "adding insult to injury" this injustice against Captain McVay surely stands out as one of the most apt.

Reading "In Harm's Way" reminded you that some fears and some phobias are not always illogical. There are monsters out there in the world, and sometimes they really do want to eat you. But it also reminded you, once again, of the extraordinary sacrifices people have been willing to risk in order to fight against totalitarianism, to protect their country and their way of life. They knew that they were possibly protecting these things not for themselves, since they might not live to enjoy them, but for their families at home and for the people of the future... for you. If there are monsters in the world, it is good to remember that there are also heroes who are willing to risk everything for the people they love.





On to the next book!



P.S. You can't end this review without linking to the clip from Jaws of Robert Shaw as Captain Quint giving one of the best speeches in movie history. Richard Dreyfus' reaction in the background is exactly what you felt like when you were reading some of the most unbelievable parts of this book, slack-jawed and humbled to speechlessness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9S41Kplsbs