"The Berenstain Bears and The Spooky Old Tree" by Stan and Jan Berenstain (1978)

It makes sense for you to review those epic scholarly books about influential wars or extraordinary individuals for this blog. You don't want to forget some of the salient details of those works, but these days that's not what you are reading the most often. With a toddler in the house, other titles are showing up in your reading list. And, as with most things in toddler circles, those books keep coming back to you over and over and over again. But just because these books are written for the smallest among us, for those just learning how to sit and listen to stories, it doesn't mean that they don't have great value. Indeed, only after having read this particular title for decades now, the lessons hidden in it are finally becoming more and more obvious.

Your daughter Eleanor is just a bit over 1 year old (moms say fourteen months old, but that is annoying to you). She is walking and starting to talk and eating everything in sight... you know, the cutest and most endearing phase any of your kids go through. What makes this phase even more adorable is that Eleanor is constantly bringing you books to read to her. Most of them are board books, the ones with titles like "Baby's First Colors" or "ABC's." They mostly have simple, bright pictures with one word per page and require you to make a lot of animal sounds. The only book that she has latched on to that is not made of those thick, indestructible card board pages is this gem from Stan and Jan Berenstain. What's surprising is that it's a real book, with regular pages and an actual plot line.

The three Bear siblings (no names in this book) set out from their home armed with the necessary tools of exploration. One with a light. One with a stick. One with a rope. They find the titular spooky old tree and climb inside through a knothole, discovering a stairway over a gator filled river, a secret passage through a darkened hall lined with cobwebs and rusted suits of armor, and the lair of a great sleeping bear (no explanation why the little bears and their family sleep in a cozy lighted home with curtains and bedspreads while this beast prefers to rough it in a cave). The three little bears run in fear from the bear they have awakened all the way back home to the waiting arms of their loving mother bear. And the story is over.

There is an enduring draw to this book. It stands alone among the Berenstain Bears books. No other in the endless series embraces the creepy, scary qualities that make for great kids' stories.

Simple. Easy. Only 200 words.

And yet there are so many questions left unanswered. Why is there a haunted tree so close by the home of the Bear family? That seems like it would depress the retail value of their property, and I don't think Papa Bear would let that slide. And how are there alligators under that tree, and where does that river they swim in lead? Did the Bear family move into a mangrove swamp in the Everglades just for this one book? And where did that spooky old hall come from? Who built it? Why did they abandon it? Where did they go? What is up with those tapestries and melted candles and suits of armor with battle axes and shields? And how did that huge bear come to hibernate in that hall when the only two entrances or exits are clearly built for tiny people/bears?

These unanswered questions only add to the mystery of the book, hinting at a greater world beyond. But Stan and Jan Berenstain aren't content to leave us with just intriguing mystery. They have woven so many great lessons into this silly story written for children.

The first page of the story shows the bears setting out from their front door. It's a reminder to you and your kids that you have to leave the comforts of home to find adventure. As great as home is and as inviting as you try to make it, we all have to leave our comfort zones in order to accomplish most of the things we want to do in life. It is only in seeking adventure that we can answer life's big questions and even find newer, greater questions. If you stay safe at home and try to keep anything from happening to you or your kids, then nothing ever happens to them.

Each of the bear siblings sets out on their adventure with a different item. One with a light. One with a stick. And one with a rope. In the adventure that is our lives, everyone brings different tools and skill sets. The key is to recognize what each person has to offer and to be ready to take advantage of those tools and skills when the time is right. Politicians are always saying that our differences make us all stronger as a nation, not weaker. What is true for nations is also true of families. Dismissing what others have to offer is an easy trap that we can fall into, one that can rob us of richer, fuller experiences.

Throughout the book, the bears come across situations that appear to be precarious or worrisome, a twisty old stair and a spooky hall lined with suits of armor. As a team, they decide to face these challenges despite their misgivings, but each time something is lost, one bear loses their rope to the hungry jaws of a leaping alligator and another bear loses their trusty stick to a falling battleaxe. This is a reminder that often what looks scary is actually dangerous. Children need to be encouraged to trust their instincts. Adults have a tendency to downplay children's fears, but often those fears are well placed and kids have those instincts in place to protect them. Ours is not always the sanitized and perfectly safe world we like to believe it is. In fact, many adults could stand to remember this lesson today.

But the opposite is also true. Sometimes what looks scary and dangerous to us needs to be tackled anyway. Our instincts are valuable, but our fears are not always the greatest guide to our actions. Bravery is not the absence of fear, bravery is the fortitude to do things even when we are terrified of them. Neil Gaiman begins his fabulous children's' book "Coraline" with a quote from G.K. Chesterton. "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." But we have to be willing to face our dragons in order to defeat them.

Being brave is scary, by definition, but one of the biggest lesson in this little book is that being scared can be fun! As each bear loses their tools, they are overtaken by their fears and get "the shivers." When you first started reading this book to her, Eleanor would scramble to a safe distance at these pages because she was avoiding you grabbing her and playfully shaking her belly to give her the shivers. But now she leans in and squeals with delight every time you grab her and say the phrase "the shivers!" We all like to be scared. It's why we watch scary movies and read suspenseful books. It's why we ride roller coasters and jump out of airplanes. Being scared gives us that adrenaline rush that makes us feel more alive. We crave that excitement of facing our fears, even as we avoid actual dangers in our lives. This book has helped you to remember that it's okay to let your kids watch intense moments in movies, it's okay to tell them ghost stories, or sing lullabies that end in the main character being eaten by a bear. Being scared is fun, even when you're one year old.

But when real challenges arrive in our lives, when we are truly scared, it is always best to have loved ones nearby to back you up, to encourage you. The three little bears did not set out to explore the spooky old tree individually, they did it together as a team. When we have someone we trust backing us up they can support us where we fail, they can encourage us to overcome our fears and our hesitations. They can bring new perspectives to our problems and help us overcome our greatest obstacles. It's a reminder to keep your friends and family close, you may need them some day, and they may need you.

We need to face our fears and seek challenges and adventure in life, but we must remember that there is often a cost for pushing our boundaries. As each challenge is met in the book, a tool is lost. Before they make it home again, the three little bears lose their light, their stick, and their rope. It is important for us to remember that sometimes our greatest challenges demand a cost and we don't always know what that will be. It could be as simple as losing sleep, or it could be as important as losing relationships. We must take an honest look at the outcomes of our actions, and ask ourselves if the cost is worth the benefit. The scary times are those when we aren't sure what the cost will be.

Those tools the bears bring with them aren't just tools. We can think of them as talents too. This book reminds us that our talents are pointless unless we use them. If you wield a stick, use it to clear away cobwebs. If you wield a light, shine it into the darkness where it is most needed. We have been given talents and tools for a purpose and no one is served by our refusing to use them when they can do real good in the world. Children need to learn what their talents are, and they need to be praised for their natural strengths, but they also need to be reminded that without using them thier talents are wasted.

Faced with a particularly terrifying challenge (a great sleeping bear), the reader of "The Spooky Old Tree" is asked if the three little bears will dare to go over the bear. The next page then gives a brief overview of the previous pages of the book. In a simple, matter-of-fact way, the reader is reminded of all the challenges the bears have already faced and how they overcame each one. The conclusion then becomes obvious. "So of course they went over Great Sleeping Bear!" This is a reminder that we can look to our own past to draw inspiration to face the future. When we aren't sure if we are brave enough to accomplish something scary, we need to look back and remind ourselves of how much we are truly capable of. The voices of doubt and hesitation can be silenced by our own history. This is a great lesson for kids, but it is also a great lesson for nations, and even humanity as a whole. Can we move forward into the future and set tremendous goals for ourselves with confidence that we can achieve them? Can we eradicate extreme poverty or stave off planetary disaster due to Global Climate Change? Well, we defeated slavery, saved the world from the Nazis, faced off in a half century long Cold War without annihilating the planet, put people on the moon, and made many devastating diseases a thing of the past. So of course we can do these other things!

There is one lesson here that might be the most important, if the least likely to be used by your kids in the future. The three little bears did indeed climb over Great Sleeping Bear, but they were not so stealthy as they had hoped and their actions angered him. The three little bears suddenly found themselves running for their lives. Traditional wisdom tells us to not run from bears, but this is bullshit. You have met actual bears in the wild and it is important for your children to know what to do if they should ever find themselves in similar situations. You want them to learn this lesson... Run! Run fast and run far. There is no metaphor here, no hidden meaning. Bears are scary as hell and you should run away form them. Those monsters eat people!

Eventually the three little bears escape the jaws of Great Sleeping Bear but they don't stop. Terrified, they keep running fast for their ultimate destination, home. At their front door they are greeted by the loving arms of their mother bear and find themselves, "Home again. Safe at last." It is a great reminder that children need a place that feels safe to come home to. Home should be comforting and inviting, a respite from the challenges of the world. Children need that assurance. If all they think about home is "that's where I'm going to get in trouble for my test scores," or, "When I get home, Dad is going to grill me on my sight words," then there is no 'safe at last.' Kids need that. As much as they need discipline and boundaries, they need a welcoming home to offer them rest and safety. It is your job as a parent to provide that.

The last lesson you have learned from this book is a little less concrete than the others, but no less important. It is entirely possible that the whole story was just a figment of the three little bears' imaginations. Children go on adventures all the time inside their own heads. Maybe the mysteries and unanswered questions in this book can all be easily explained by saying that the whole adventure was make believe. The important thing to remember is that that makes no difference. Human brains are story-telling machines and we are hard wired to learn from the stories we are told. Some of our greatest lessons can be learned through fiction and mythology. In fact, that is how humans have taught one another lessons for eons now. To quote the great Albus Dumbledore, "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?"

Once again you are reminded that books written for children can serve adults just as well. Also, they can provide us all with a sense of continuity. You vividly remember reading this very book to your younger brother Nick when he was barely older than Eleanor is now. Holding your own kids on you lap and reading them a story that takes you back to your childhood, teaching your kids the same lessons from the same book you helped your brother learn, helps forge a sense of continuity to your life. It brings you back to your Granny's lap, and to your older brother's lap. It creates a connection with your past even as it extends a bridge to your future. As the years race by and your children grow at an astonishing rate, familiar books allow you the opportunity not just to teach and learn lessons, but to slow down and enjoy the small moments, to drink in the joys of this life you and Liz have created. When you open a beloved book you are flooded with that familiar sense of "Home Again. Safe at last."




On to the next book!





P.S. One of the greatest conspiracy theories around today actually involves the Berenstain Bears. It's possible that we might all be living in our own alternate universe, like Worf in that one episode of 'Star Trek.'
http://woodbetweenworlds.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-berenstein-bears-we-are-living-in.html

"Panzer Commander" by Hans Von Luck (1989)

This one was absolutely fabulous.

To begin with, this image was not the cover of the book you read. There was no swastika at all on your copy (which is an original printing). You weren't able to find an image of your copy (and uploading an actual photo you took of it would be SO tedious) but the swastika is pretty inappropriate. Yes, Hans Von Luck fought for the Wehrmacht under Hitler in almost every theater of war during WW II, but he was no Nazi. This is the story of a soldiers' soldier. A man who fought for Germany because it was his duty, not because he agreed with the insanity of Nazi propaganda. Even while fighting, he longed to marry a woman of Jewish descent, he loved Paris and London, he befriended men he damn well knew were part of The Resistance. I mean, the forward is written by Stephen freaking Ambrose! Colonel Von Luck was not a Nazi.

He was, however, one hell of a soldier. Hans Von Luck was in the vanguard of almost every offensive the German army (the Wehrmacht) launched from Poland in 1939 to France in 1940 to Russia in 1941. He held Erwin Rommel's exposed right flank in the battle of El Alamein and fought against the famed British paratroopers who held the crucial Orne River and canal crossings on the morning of June 6th 1944 in Normandy (D-Day) and he lead one of the last units to be captured in the defense of Berlin. He earned the highest decorations for bravery and valor his nation awards her soldiers and he was widely respected by his enemies. Among the warriors of the 20th Century, he deserves to held in the highest regard.

As humble as a memoir can be, it is clear in reading Von Luck's book that he was one of those people who was simply born for combat. He speaks of it with little passion and an almost disappointing lack of flare. But it is exactly that clinical analysis that hints at his excellence. Von Luck needs not embellish... his story is enthralling enough without any exaggeration. Von Luck is obviously a cultured man, one whose family history of devotion to national service stretches back to Frederick the Great. He is an open-minded, tolerant, almost apolitical man who loves art, music, and bustling cities filled with diverse peoples who can engage in interesting conversation over plates of excellent food and glasses of even better booze (during the war he held off on shelling a particular monastery because he enjoyed the liqueur they made there). His memoir is ultimately a twisted tragedy, a story of how such a cosmopolitan and extraordinary man could become the tip of the spear in the useless and cataclysmic war waged by Adolf Hitler's extremist totalitarianism.

As with other memoirs of former German commanders you have read ("Panzer Battles" by F.W. Von Mellenthin was the best) this book was written with the Cold War in mind. Von Luck starts talking about his relationship with the Russians on page 12! He learned the Russian language in college and went to dance at parties with live performances by Rachmaninoff himself. He studied Tolstoy Dostoevsky, and Pushkin. These were experiences that would serve him well during his five years of captivity in Russia after the war. I mean really, are their any other German commanders who can claim to have danced to live performances by Rachmaninoff? Maybe it is a proven marketing strategy for former German officers to emphasize the lesson the learned in fighting they Russians during the war rather than playing up how many Americans they killed, or maybe it reflects a genuine concern to pass on to the the next generation of soldiers who were likely to face the Red Army the lessons of how to win the looming Third World War. In either case it sets the book in that confusing and terrifying era between the Fall of Berlin and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

Before the Second World War broke out, Von Luck traveled Europe. As Hitler was moving to create a secret armored military to dominate the continent, Von Luck was making friends across all nationalities. He fell in love with Prague and London, but he lost his heart to beautiful Paris and to the French people as well. His network of connections would serve him well as Germany was soon to expand to consume almost all of Europe. Von Luck even mentions hanging out in Berlin in and around the Tiergarten with Martha Dodd (from your first "Reviews For Sam" ever!). You know you love it when a book you're reading references a person or event form another book you loved.

Von Luck was one of the few men serving in the shrunken armed forces of Germany allowed by the Treaty of Versailles after the Great War. He witnessed the secretive expansion of German military might after Hitler had come to power and was one of the first soldiers in the Wehrmacht to get to develop armored, high speed warfare, in violation of international treaties. Von Luck observed the meteoric rise of Adolf Hitler into power. The people of Germany liked the new Chancellor. He found jobs for millions of people, built a national highway network ( the autobahn), expanded German infrastructure, and peacefully recaptured the Rhineland (lost in the Great War). Most of the population saw nothing ominous in the rounding up of communist activists, they wanted the violent troublemakers off the streets too. But, in this memoir, Von Luck remembers all these things through the lens of what was to come. The highway system was crafted with strategic corridors leading to probable jumping-off points for the wars Hitler was planning. The fabulous jobs program would soon evolve to become the brainwashing 'Hitler Youth' movement, and those militant communists who had been rounded up would soon be joined by peaceful Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and any other people deemed politically undesirable. The words "concentration camp" and "ghetto" had not yet been heard by the German people, but it was only a matter of time.

By September of 1939, Von Luck's days of leisurely touring Europe were over. He would soon return to many of his favorite locations throughout the continent but this time on the back of a tank. He was one of the first men to cross the border into Poland. Von Luck, and many other soldiers like him, introduced the world to the concept of blitzkrieg that summer. It would take many more lessons in many more countries before the world caught on and became better at making war than the Germans who raged across the Polish countryside in September of '39. But as it was, this war in Poland was over before October set in and Von Luck was back in his homeland waiting to teach another country what it means to fight a war of movement and envelopment.

The next year, Von Luck invaded France. Again, he was at the vanguard of the first units to cross the border. This time he was under the leadership of the famous Erwin Rommel. Right away, the men under Rommel's command could tell he would be a leader with something special to offer. He was a man who understood from personal experience the need to avoid the stalemates of the last war. It occurred to you as you were reading this part that the Germans' greatest fear during the invasion of France in 1940 was not that they would lose, but that their invasion would bog down. More than achieving victory, the Germans on the ground were fighting to prevent a repeat of the terrible trench warfare of the Great War. As they invaded Belgium in May of 1940 Rommel exhorted his men, especially the men of the recon battalions, "Keep going, don't look to the left or right, only forward. I'll cover your flanks if necessary. The enemy is confused; we must take advantage of it." Rommel knew what the world was soon going to learn, speed kills.

By the beginning of June 1940, barely a month from the start of the invasion of France and the lowlands, the British Army had been evacuated from continental Europe. In two days, supported by the fighters and dive bombers of the Luftwaffe, Von Luck and his division raced through Normandy, the coastal region of France that would, just four years later, take the combined efforts of all the Western Allied forces more than two months to move through. Von Luck lead his men along the Atlantic coast, bypassing areas of major resistance and gobbling up French land like the men of the Great War could never have dreamed. Half way through June, German tanks were in Paris, by the end of the month France had called it quits. When the shooting had finally stopped, Von Luck's recon battalion had pulled up on the outskirts of the famous city of Bordeaux, just 120 miles form the border with Spain! Von Luck himself arranged the escort for the removal of Marshall Petain's provisional government from Bordeaux to Vichy.

These staggering successes left the world shocked and terrified at the prospect of which country might be next. Von Luck describes how he and his men all knew in their hearts that the promised invasion of Great Britain would never really happen. They were right. The Luftwaffe could never gain control of the skies long enough to protect any invasion flotilla crossing the English channel.

For a year, Von Luck did not fire a shot in anger. He and his men were now preparing for the invasion of Russia. They were increasingly disillusioned with any prospects for victory. Their enemy's country was just too vast, the people too numerous for the Wehrmacht to defeat before winter set in. Even with the anti-communist rhetoric and anti-Jewish propaganda ramping up to new heights, no one could understand why Hitler wanted to open up a second front.

Nevertheless, despite the fears and doubts, in June of 1941 Von Luck found himself crossing the Russian border, leading another spearhead into yet another country. Again all enemy resistance crumbled before the shock and power of the German blitzkrieg. Again huge pockets of soldiers were surrounded and eliminated en masse. Again hundreds of thousands of soldiers were captured. Again speed was the key, but this time Hitler had miscalculated. He had delayed his invasion of Russia in order to deal with problems in Greece and the Balkans. The delay proved critical. Even as the Germans advanced at a pace that had been unthinkable in warfare for the history of mankind, time was ticking by and the area they were invading swallowed armies whole. By late October, Von Luck was securing the approaches to Moscow itself. He established a bridgehead across the final water obstacle before the Russian capital. The Germans had almost been fast enough, but not quite.

Overnight Von Luck describes the temperature dropping to levels no one anticipated. Hitler had believed the war would be over before winter set in and as such, in a betrayal of the German soldier as well as the German innate sense of efficiency and perfectionism, had not provided his armies with the appropriate equipment or clothing to fight in -40 degree weather. And even if he had, the German supply lines were stretched over 1,000 miles of Russian steppe with no modern road system and railways with tracks the were the wrong sized gauge for German locomotives, it would have taken too long for the needed winter gear to reach the men who could have taken Moscow. Instead those men, along with their vehicles and weapons, froze in place. Siberian soldiers appeared like ghosts from the snows, clad in white camouflage and gliding silently on skis to rip though the German defenses and wreak havoc on their ridiculously exposed supply lines. New Russian tanks showed up and were more than a match for the German armored units. Von Luck was forced to abandon his bridgehead and retreat. Russia was not Poland or France. It suddenly became clear to everyone that this war was now guaranteed to be a long one. To make the prospects bleaker, before 1941 was over, America had entered the war.

But for Von Luck, the war in Russia was over. Rommel, in command of a headline grabbing army in North Africa had requested the presence of his favorite recon battalion commander. Von Luck describes his drive from the gates of Moscow back to Germany as one would a man fleeing hell itself. He and his trusted aide, Beck, push their beloved Mercedes to the limit, popping stimulants so they could take turns driving westward 24/7, always on the lookout for ski patrol raids or aerial attacks. Escape from the frigid certain doom of the Russian war could not come fast enough.

Von Luck writes about his time in Africa as if it were his favorite part of the entire conflict, more adventure than combat. And it wasn't just that the sands of the Sahara were preferable to the snows of Ukraine. The war there became what would later be referred to as a "gentleman's war." Eventually, despite the intense fighting, the British and the Germans reached what they called an agreement. Combat every day ended at 5:00 PM. Both sides made tea and ceased aggressive patrols for the day. The two sides even established radio contact with one another and would ask their opponents if they had captured friends who had been lost on patrols during the day. A German doctor was traded back to his countrymen for medicine to treat the British soldiers suffering from some native disease. A British soldier, son of a cigarette magnate, refused to be traded back to his side for anything less than 1 million cigarettes; he was sent back to a POW camp in Germany instead. For this brief time, Von Luck, one of the men to introduce the concepts of modern warfare to the world, was given a glimpse of what war had looked like for millennia before. When it was time to fight, both sides would be ferocious, but a certain civility was maintained and fair play ruled all but the most intense situations.

With the absolute trust that made him such a great leader, Rommel placed Von Luck in charge of the entire German flank as they attempted to drive eastward to expel the British from Egypt. If the British were to outmaneuver Rommel it could only be around the right flank, to the south through the endless trackless desert. Von Luck and his men made sure that never happened. Despite valiant efforts and brilliant leadership however, Rommel was forced to call off his advances. He simply did not have the supplies he needed to effectively wage the war Hitler was demanding. Unbeknownst to Von Luck at the time, the British had broken the German radio codes. Every convoy full of supplies and equipment was soon at the bottom of the Mediterranean. They could not hope to match the British in fuel availability, artillery shells, medical supplies, or aircraft. In contrast to the heady days in France when Von Luck helped kick the British out of Dunkirk, the RAF now ruled the skies of North Africa. No matter how extraordinary Rommel and his Afrika Corps were, they could not fight a war with no supplies.

Early in the summer of '42, the Americans landed on the west coast of Africa, outflanking Rommel from the sea rather than the desert. Immediately Rommel became interested in bloodying the Americans who were late comers to this most modern of wars. The Germans raced westward (the opposite direction of their initial advances) and smashed into the Americans in the battle soon to become known as "Kasserine Pass." Von Luck lead the charge through the pass and is therefore responsible for the deaths of more Americans than even the most extreme Nazi could ever dream. This was war. This was his duty. Even to this day, American soldiers hold Erwin Rommel in the highest regard. Despite the casualties at Kasserine Pass, Rommel's name is almost sacred to members of US armored divisions and especially the cavalry regiments, but it was Von Luck who personally lead the attacks that resulted in the most American losses. Reading this section reminded you, once again that this man was a soldiers' soldier.

Eventually the German army withdrew from Africa (three weeks after Von Luck had been sent to plead with Hitler to begin extracting Rommel's forces; the idea being that the Fuhrer might honor the opinion of a true combat commander fresh from the front over his generals who he believed infected with defeatism) and Von Luck was placed in charge of a recon training school outside Paris. By June 1944, he was back in command of a battalion defending the Normandy countryside just behind what were about to become the landing beaches for the Allied D-Day invasion. On the morning of June 6th the invasion came and Von Luck was in perfect position to roll his tanks from the east across all of the British and Canadian beaches, kicking his enemy back into the sea. Instead, he was forced to stay in position. Hitler and the German high command were convinced this was a diversionary attack and refused to commit their armored units to the fight in any decisive way.

But even after they realized this was, in fact, the real thing and Von Luck was allowed to attack, it was in no way an easy task. Not only did he face the same veteran British and Scottish troops he had fought in North Africa, but this time his enemy had both air superiority and naval offshore bombardments to support them. Every advance Von Luck tried to make in the open during the daylight hours was crushed from the air, and every advance that promised to make headway despite this disadvantage was met with a naval barrage that could have stopped the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The Allies were in France to stay.

It is obvious that Von Luck learned a lot from serving under Rommel. During the fighting in Normandy he mimicked Rommel's style of leadership, always moving from hot spot to hot spot, personally leading attacks that were critical to the overall situation. He held back the Allied push inland from the beaches for weeks. During a massive offensive by the British, Von Luck almost single-handedly stalled the entire Allied advance by finding an idle anti aircraft unit, moving them to the perfect position, and insisting they lower the barrels of their weapons to fire into the exposed flanks of the advancing armored units. Without his actions on that day, it is conceivable that the British might have broken out of eastern Normandy a full week before the Americans did farther west.

Instead, it was general Patton and his Third Army, west of Avranches, who broke through the German lines and into the open flat country perfectly made for tank warfare. And suddenly, it seemed as if every German, from Hitler all the way down to the most fresh-faced cadet, absolutely shit his pants. Patton had learned the lessons Von Luck had taught the world about how to fight a blitzkrieg war. He was racing through France as fast as he could go. Even Allied cargo planes had difficulty finding Patton's forward units in order to drop supplies; they had to follow the columns of smoke. Patton's unpredictability made him effectively unstoppable. If this man was in charge of an army that was on the loose, free from hedgerow country, then no German in France felt truly safe. Regardless of the situation in their own sectors, everyone went running for the safety of the fatherland.

But when the Allies came to the border with Germany, the rout ended and Von Luck fought near the border with Switzerland, in the Vosges mountains. Although he avoided the carnage of the Battle of the Bulge farther north, he describes the fighting in his sector as intensely savage. Von Luck talks about hideous hand-to-hand, house-by-house, street-by-street fighting, the kind of warfare where epic battles are waged to gain one floor of a building that will only prove to be demolished the next day by either side's artillery.

On page 209 he says of one such battle, "After eight days we still didn't know whether we were continuing to fight there for reasons of prestige, or whether there was a tactical significance to our holding the position." You thought this quote was a pretty apt metaphor for the entire last half of the entire war. Tragically, every day that Von Luck and his men so skillfully delayed the fall of the Third Reich, more and more civilians died in bombing raids or in that kind of savage street fighting being witnessed on both the western and eastern fronts, more soldiers died in a war that was clearly unwinnable, and thousands, maybe even millions of men women and children were dying in Nazi concentration camps. As monstrous as the actions of the guards and officers at places like Bergen Belsen and Auschwitz are alone, seeing them in the light of the ultimate sacrifice men like Von Luck were making at the fronts made these sins even more unforgivable to you. Genocide was not what the average German soldier was fighting to defend. Most of them had no idea it was happening.

Von Luck and his men were pulled off the front line to recuperate and receive replacements, but were immediately rushed to the Eastern Front instead, a front which was not so far east any longer. By spring of 1945, the Russians were ominously close to Berlin and Hitler was ordering every available unit into the defense of the capital, however futile that defense clearly was. Von Luck describes witnessing waves of Russians that seem unstoppable, cowering under firepower that seems withering, and facing a tide of vengeance that seems straight out of Dante's "Inferno." It was here, defending his countrymen against impossible odds at the gates of Berlin itself that Hans Von Luck, surrounded, out of ammunition, and at the end of a very long war, finally surrendered to his enemies.

Von Luck's captivity in Russian gulags lasted almost as long as his service in the whole war. Five years spent scrounging for the merest scrap of both food and dignity, being tortured both physically and mentally. His knowledge of Russian culture served him well, as did his deep seated compassion for the least among us. Recognizing that the population near his prison was being just as crushed under Stalin's boot heel as he was provided him the patience he would need to survive the ordeal.

When he was finally released and returned home, Von Luck realized that those five years he had lost in a Russian POW camp had been momentous years for the rest of the world. He and the love of his life no longer had anything keeping them together. They had planned to marry after the war, but she had become a television personality in Germany and he was still stuck in a 1945 wartime mentality. The two were worlds apart and it became clear to both that a relationship would not be possible. Von Luck found odd jobs here and there until settling into a sales position at an export firm, establishing a new branch in Africa. He loved his new career enough that when the West German military offered him a commission, he declined.

In the decades to come, Von Luck lectured and spoke in college classes and at various events commemorating the war he had such a hand in shaping. It was in this capacity that he was brought back into contact with many of the men he had faced across the killing fields of Africa and France. Bound by their mutual service and with no animosity, Von Luck and several Allied commanders struck up deep and lasting friendships. These men, like Colonel Hans Von Luck, had answered the call of their nations and served in the greatest war the world has ever known. As this book was published the clouds of another world war were gathering and Von Luck ends his memoirs with the wish that the young people of the world never be used again for such destruction.





On to the next book!

"Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" by Ransom Riggs (2011)

Sometimes you find great books hidden in the recesses of some used book store and sometimes you are given classic books as gifts. Sometimes though, you just steal fun ones from your kids.

Ransom Riggs has a passion other than writing books. He is also an avid collector of odd vintage photographs. A few years ago, he had collected enough on his own to think about putting them all together to form a picture book, but his editor convinced him to think bigger. Riggs found others with his particular zeal for old pictures and was able to draw on even more fantastical ammunition for the story that eventually became "Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children." The book weaves together more than forty photos, some silly, some haunting, with one fictional narrative thread.

Riggs starts his story in the present day, in his home state of Florida. Jacob Portman tells us about his relationship with his grandfather, a Polish immigrant who loves to tell stories about fighting in World War II. Being Jewish, the aging Abraham revels in regaling his grandson with the tales of how, in his youth, he had made war on the monsters who had come to destroy his people, his friends and family. Abe also loves to show off the odd photos from his youth, photos that Jacob has always believed to be doctored in obvious ways, photos of a girl floating above the ground, a scrawny boy holding a boulder aloft with only one hand, a man with no head. The stories Abe tells along with these pictures are as ridiculous as the photos themselves.

When tragedy strikes and grandpa Abe is brutally killed by what the authorities believe to be a pack of wild dogs, only Jacob knows the truth. He alone saw the monster standing in the swamp behind Abe's house, tentacles wriggling out of its mouth like something out of a nightmare. Jacob knows for a fact that it wasn't dogs that killed his grandfather. This knowledge and Abe's lasts words send Jacob on an adventure that takes him to a remote island off the coast of Wales where he discovers a mysterious enclave of gifted young people. This group of children makes Jacob realize that those stories his grandfather had told him all his life hadn't actually been tall tales. These kids have special powers and the school they live in is locked in a temporal loop. Everyone within its confines lives the same day over and over again, September 3rd, 1940. But its like "Groundhog Day," the people locked in the loop are able to alter the events of the day every time the day starts over again if they wish.

Jacob learns that this school is not the only one of its kind on Earth. There are others in different locations locked into loops reliving different days. Each loop is maintained by women who are called ymbrynes and who can also shape-shift in to bird form. This all seems pretty great to Jacob until he realizes that some of the stories his grandfather had always told him could have been interpreted differently in other ways as well. The monsters he talked about fighting might not have been men wearing sharp uniforms emblazoned with swastikas, they might have been actual monsters. There are forces in the world that hunt people with special abilities and it turns out they also desire the power the ymbrynes possess. Unfortunately for Jacob and his new friends, he has lead some of these monsters straight to Miss Peregrines' Home For Peculiar Children.

"Miss Peregrine" was a fun read, and Riggs integrates the fantastic photos with the story in just the right way to make you smile even while you are getting goose bumps. It takes tremendous talent to craft a story like "Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children" out of a random collection of pictures. Riggs' talent at it reminded you though that it's not really that rare. Isn't that what movies and even illustrated books are after all, just a collection of random images woven together by a compelling narrative, often even a fantastically fictional one? The human brain is a great big story telling machine. Give it a series of seemingly moving pictures and a sound track and it will craft an entertaining narrative, give it a tantalizing clue and it will devise an answer to the mystery, give it an adversary it believes legitimate and it will justify acts aggression and self protection.

This what we have done for millennia. We sit around, staring at the flames of a campfire and tell each other stories. We crowd into huts and amphitheaters to hear old favorites or exciting new stories. We create mythologies to explain the inaccessible and to remind ourselves that we have greatness within us. We dedicate our lives to the service of some stories, and we will go to war for others.

We tell ourselves stories every day, about everything we encounter. Some of them are fiction and some of them are lies. Some of them can tear us and even the people we love apart, and some of them can lift us up to greater heights. This book helped you remember that we must be careful with the stories we tell ourselves, that we need to remember we are built to be shaped by our stories. The stories we craft can help us make sense of the sometimes nightmarish realities of the world, they can help us process the most sublime moments of happiness and victory, and ultimately, our stories are the things that outlive us, at least here in this world.






On to the next book!

"The First World War" by John Keegan (1998)

Well, somebody took the summer off from writing book reviews. You've read plenty of books since June, but with three kids and a big family vacation and moving into a new house and practicing telling people that you were way too busy to write a book review, you were just too busy to write a review for any of those summer reads. Or something like that.

Hey look, a book about World War One! It's been a few months since you've read one of those. Let's get to writing reviews again.

The 101st anniversary of the start of The Great War has now come and gone. You're not sure what about anniversaries taps into human nostalgia, but there is something that feels significant about a century passing since the beginning of this war. Maybe it's the idea that lots of us who grew up during the Cold War weren't sure there would be anyone left on the planet to celebrate this anniversary, maybe it's the sense of the immediacy of recent history juxtaposed against the great remove we feel from ancient events and the uncomfortable process of witnessing one become the other, or maybe it's just our human fascination with round numbers and the comfort we get from marking off time as it tirelessly unfolds the centuries right before our eyes. What ever the reason, you keep picking up books about WW I, and it is a source of endless interest. The more you study this event, the more you realize how completely and utterly it changed the face of the history and the geopolitical landscape of the world.

Most of the books you have read on the First World War, indeed most of the books available on the subject, focus on one aspect or time-frame of the war. They tend to illuminate individual battles or certain months, specific tactical developments or sweeping social changes that arose during the war rather than the whole event. The scope of the conflict is just too immense for most authors to tackle in one volume. So, John Keegan's attempt at encompassing the entirety of The Great War in less than 450 pages intrigued you, despite the fact that you have heard Keegan's name used with disdain by many people who are fans of history. It is ambitious goal and Keegan delivered admirably.

In order to accomplish his task, Keegan had to be ruthless in cutting away the extraneous information. Deciding what exactly counted as extraneous must have been the most difficult process involved with writing this book. Not being an expert in this war yourself, you felt Keegan nailed it. His perspective seeks to incorporate all of the various fronts and battlefields of the war. While he gives very little
attention to the home fronts, he spends a great deal of time explaining both how so many, ostensibly friendly, nations could find themselves at war and describing the eventual splintering of those governments and monarchies that proved to be the war's most lasting casualties.

The opening chapter of "The First World War" is an outstanding and concise contextualization of the pre-war situation in Europe. The web of treaties and international agreements that wore away at the diplomatic equilibrium of the continent, the growing nationalisms, and the tantalizing advances in military technologies seem, in retrospect, to make war inevitable. Keegan proves untrue the old adage (and Metallica lyric) that "to secure peace is to prepare for war." In the summer of 1914, the various European nations' and empires' preparations for a potential war ensured that that war would become a reality. As each government set into motion their plans for dealing with their opponents' mobilizations the others responded with even greater mobilizations. Their prophylactic preparations became self-fulfilling prophesies. A particularly well traveled fly on the walls in the halls of power might have heard arguments akin to, "If the Russians can be ready for war in 60 days, we Germans must be ready in 30." And, "If the Germans are going to be able to be ready in 30 days, we French must be ready in 15... and we need to invite the English." And finally, "If the French can be ready in 15 days, we Germans should invade Belgium tomorrow... especially if they are thinking of inviting the English!"

This triumph of military preparation, the speed, complexity, and immensity of which had never been possible before, outpaced the capabilities of the diplomacy of the day. It is common knowledge (often a dubious bastion of information) that the network of alliances and agreements between European powers served to drag the whole continent into war. The implication is that many of those powers went to war against their greater desires for peace. Keegan argues however, that everyone actually knew damned well what they were doing. Austria-Hungary did not need to go to Germany to ask for an alliance before invading Serbia in retribution for the assassination of their heir-apparent. They sought a German alliance, according to Keegan, precisely because Germany's entrance would bring more powers into the conflict which would secure Autsria-Hungary's flanks, and Serbia was guilty of the same crime.

To make his point, Keegan reminds you that even on the day of the fateful Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, July 25th, 1914, Serbian officials were inclined to acquiesce, however humiliating the demands. It was only once they had received word that the Russians, who threatened Austrian's northeastern borders, were preparing to mobilize their armies to rush to Serbia's aide that the Serbian leadership decided to refuse the Austrian list of demands. They had a great power as an ally now, so they felt even more bellicose, not less. On the morning of July 25th, the month-old assassination of the royal heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire remained a purely local issue, one that could have been solved through diplomatic means. By that afternoon, the world had gone to war. The war didn't spiral out of hand, it was started specifically because it would be a huge affair. The smaller powers sought the protection of the greater powers in order to ensure a greater degree of violence, never imagining that they themselves would be destroyed by the witches' brew they had stirred up.

When Russia announced the mobilization of their military, German military leaders believed that they had not simply to counter-mobilize, but to declare outright war. Otherwise the Russians would have been able to bring their forces within the German eastern border before the Schlieffen Plan could be carried out. The Schlieffen Plan, conceived decades before, called for the rapid and overwhelming destruction of France as a combatant so that Germany could then shift focus to her eastern border in order to deal with Russia, which proved a greater threat. Keegan controversially contends here that the sacrosanct, and much since debated, Schlieffen Plan, the plan on whose outcome the fates of nations and empires hung, was fundamentally flawed. Geography as well as geometry were set against the whole concept, argues Keegan. There was simply no room for the hundreds of thousands of troops to swing through Belgium and northern France in time to make the southern facing "right hook" to capture Paris from behind. The miles upon miles of troops, horses, wagon trains, gun caissons, and headquarters networks could not fit in the space Schlieffen had planned for them to advance through within the time-frame he had given them. No amount of planning or war gaming could have changed the geography of the land itself. Keegan claims the Schlieffen Plan was doomed to fail from the beginning but the German High Command of 1914 were burdened by no such notions.

Keegan then follows the almost comical, if it weren't so tragic, back-and-forth sending of warnings from one country to the other. "If you invade here, it will mean war." "Well if you ford this river it will mean war." "Oh yeah? If you cross this line in the sand it will mean war." This schoolyard prattle and saber-rattling came from leaders and statesmen, kings and czars and emperors, men who should have remembered that of the men who first drew that famous line in the sand at the Alamo, every one had died at the hands of the enemy they had so dramatically warned.

In early August the massive German army finally crossed the Belgian border and began dealing with the formidable array of forts that protected the Flemish heartland. The invaders brought with them guns that were so massive that the builders of the forts could never have imagined the destructive power they could deliver. It was like something out of science fiction. Once in place, the German guns took mere hours to demolish the vaunted Belgian fortresses and, in doing so, changing the rules of war that had existed in Europe for over 300 years. Concrete, stone, and steel walls could no longer protect combatants, they had proven they could crumble to rubble too easily under the thunder of 20th Century weaponry. From now on it would be walls made of men that would need to be shattered. Machine guns, massed artillery, barbed wire, and eventually chemical weapons would be brought to the fields of Europe to shatter those walls of men, men who would bury themselves deep in the earth to avoid the newest instruments of death.

After September 1914, the battle lines of the Western Front would barely move at all for years, despite the obscene amount of blood spilled in No Mans' Land. But Keegan reminded you that the Western Front wasn't the only one. He does a masterful job of telling the story of the war in easily consumable chunks, linking them through the four years of war in an intelligible timeline that helped you to think of The Great War in one narrative arc. Keegan walks you through the head-spinning job the Germans had of bouncing from one front to the other, always keeping disaster at bay. He reminds you that the Eastern Front was not just a side show that has been forgotten by history. Instead, the war in Russia and throughout the Balkans was the driving force that steered the course of rest of the war. Each side gained allies or diverted their own troops or launched rushed offensives in response to what was occurring far from the more famous Western Front.

Keegan spends his time on the events that mattered, not the hero's stories the press of the day (and most of the literature ever since) so readily pounced upon. The Red Baron and TE Lawrence barely get mentioned at all. But they shouldn't feel too bad, the entire Battle of the Somme, whose first day marks the bloodiest day in British military history, consumes only 12 pages. But somehow, despite his succinctness and brevity, Keegan never looses the humanity of the story he is telling. His extraordinary economy of language never forgets the intimate heartbreaks intrinsic to the greatest conflict in history up to that point.

Keegan also spares a little time to stir up some controversy, as he is evidently known to do (to the chagrin of his critics). He takes on the century old criticism of the generals who lead the armies of the First World War as being incompetents who were too far removed from the battlefronts to understand the hell of the war they were leading. He calls this criticism misplaced, contending that these generals were placed in charge of fronts that were more vast and armies that were more massive than the technology of the day allowed them to lead simply from horseback, as Wellington and Napoleon, or Grant and Lee had done. Communications with the assault troops simply wasn't possible. When one wave went "over the top" and into the teeth of the enemy, there was no way to know if they had taken their objective or had been cut down one and all, so the only thing to do was order the next wave of boys into the field of certain death and hope for the best. The machinery had been created to provide for butchery on a scale more monstrous than had ever been possible in human history, but the technology to mitigate the slaughter or take advantage when those waves of boys actually achieved a tactical breakthrough (mostly in the field of rapid and reliable communications) would not even exist until the next world war. The generals of WW I weren't lazy, Keegan contends, they had their hands tied behind their backs by the uneven progress of the technology of making war. He might be right about that, but even if he's not, it's fascinating to hear an opinion that flies in the face of conventional wisdom, that considers an issue from a point of view that has not already settled on an answer everyone already agrees with. Keegan did what good authors are supposed to do, he made you think.

The armies of the nations fighting this terrible war suffered so many casualties that by 1917 the French armies refused to go on the offensive for more than a year and the soldiers of Russia were integral in the revolution that deposed their nation's 300 year old dynasty. It wasn't so much that these armies had been defeated on the battlefield as it was that they couldn't accept orders demanding any more senseless slaughter. The massacre on the fronts could be spun as patriotic self-sacrifice for a few years, but when nothing came of it all, armies broke and empires crumbled. The so called "army strikes" were just the beginning. Revolution spread like no time since 1848, the "Year of Revolutions." During World War One kings and emperors were being dethroned so regularly that eventually Britain thought of ousting the king of Greece as simply a short term tactical consideration, they encouraged his removal simply because they wanted a few more troops along Greece's western border. That's how crazy this war was.

After one last great attempt in the spring of 1918, Germany finally gave in. Like so many other countries involved in this war, their society just couldn't take it any longer. In all honesty, both sides were spent. Like George Foreman fighting Ali, they had punched themselves out. The problem for Germany was that her sinking of so many American transport ships had brought a new angry player to the field of battle. Whereas Germany had lost so many men and had no fresh bodies to offer up to the conflagration, the United States had only just begun to commit troops to the fight. Every day brought more and more American soldiers to the war while Germany was literally waiting for the newborns of the year 1900 to graduate into manhood so that they could be fed into the meat grinder. By November, Germany no longer had any allies left. They had all either given up or, as with the Austro-Hungarian empire, simply ceased to exist. The German navy refused direct orders to sail out to meet the British and whole infantry divisions refused to move to the front lines to replace their dead comrades. The war was over.

Adolf Hitler, who fought valiantly in the Great War, would later call this moment a 'stab in the back' and blame the end of the war on some vague yet overwhelming Jewish conspiracy, but he was wrong. The German military in 1918 simply could not be asked to sacrifice any more. German society hadn't been overthrown by Jewish communists it was crumbling from exhaustion, from starvation, from unimaginable grief that rocked every home in the Fatherland. The fact that Hitler could not recognize the true reason for Germany's capitulation in November of 1918 is the root of his delusional and suicidal response to the fall of the Third Reich in April of 1945. From his bunker, The Fuhrer would order that all citizens sacrifice themselves to drive the Russians out, but he would also order the destruction of all industry, the immolation of mountains of priceless works of art he had amassed through years of plunder and pillage, he would order the destruction of the infrastructure that could ensure the the German people could even hope to rise from the ashes of the Second World War. It is an undeniable fact that The First World War led inevitably to The Second, but this truism may describe more than the geopolitical context of the century, it may describe the psyche of one man. Hitler may have been insane all along, but if he was, his madness began in the trenches of the Somme river valley and was catalyzed by the complexities of the ending of what we would all call come to call The Great War.

You usually try to end these reviews with a positive twist, a bright comment on the overall hopefulness of the world we live in. With this book you don't even have to. John Keegan has done it for you, despite the horrors of the subject matter. He writes about how mysterious the whole war was, why it began, why it was so far reaching, why it was so savage, and above all why so many men willingly sacrificed themselves for hopeless causes. To quote the final paragraph of "The First World War,"

"How did the anonymous millions... find the resolution to sustain the struggle and to believe in its purpose? That they did is one of the undeniabilities of the Great War. Comradeship flourished in the earthworks of the Western and Eastern Fronts, bound strangers into the closest brotherhood... Men whom the trenches cast into intimacy entered into bonds of mutual dependency and sacrifice of self stronger than any of the friendships made in peace and better times. That is the ultimate mystery of the First World War. If we could understand its loves as well as its hates, we would be nearer to understanding the mystery of human life."

The only way to find the answer to those mysteries is to continue searching. So, as always...




On to the next book!

"Isaac's Storm" by Erik Larson (1999)

Erik Larson has caught your attention in the past few years. "In The Garden of Beasts" was the first review you ever did for this blog and "Devil in the White City" is one of those books that even people who would never normally read a history book admit that they enjoyed. His books are all non-fiction, but they read like novels. And even though his use of maps is inexcusably terrible, you have enjoyed his work in the past. So when you saw "Isaac's Storm" for $1.00 you could not resist it, especially when you found out it was about Texas.

When you were 12 years old you went to Sea Camp for one whole summer week. No one believes you when you tell them, but Sea Camp was even cooler than Space Camp which you had gone to the summer before. Sea Camp had a looser schedule and more time to hang out and act like a hooligan. It was at Sea Camp that you saw your first dolphins while laying with your head hanging over the bow of a shrimp boat as it cut through the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The beauty of that trio of amazing creatures mere feet below your face as they bobbed effortlessly, frolicking in the wake of the boat was enough to drive away any silly phobia of sharks. From that moment on for years to come, you were an aspiring marine biologist.

Sea Camp was sponsored by Texas A&M at their Galveston campus and even at such a young age you noticed something about the city of Galveston; everyone there was obsessed with a hurricane that had hit the city almost a century before. Some of the buildings proudly sported "1900 Storm" plaques on their facades proclaiming that they had survived this legendary tempest. Every tour guide you had and every college student who had volunteered their time as a camp counselor would point out to you and the other campers how much the city had been changed by the great storm of 1900. The 8 foot high sea wall ringing the entire island was a direct result of the great storm, the houses on pylons were a response to the great storm, some buildings still bore the line of the high water mark from the storm (which was well above your head). At the time it was fairly interesting to you, but not nearly as interesting as the real live dolphins or the sea turtle hatchery or the cute girls who were actually paying attention to you at a party (granted, they may have only been paying attention to you because you'd been stung by a dead Portugese man-of-war that manged to make your chest feel like it was on fire when it brushed your skin, but they were paying attention by God!). But nothing those people told you about the great storm of 1900 could even come close to making you understand how immense a tragedy it was.

In order to tell the story of the storm, Larson must first tell the story of the science of meteorology. That sounds boring, but Larson, like any decent historian, is a master of making the mundane fascinating, somehow turning meteorology into a tale of impending doom. As he educates you on the finer points of the physics of fluid and gas and the unimaginable forces that come in to play when monster weather systems draw energy from both the heat of the sun and the rotation of the Earth itself, he intersperses his analogy-laden prose with shorter chapters that plot the course of the one specific storm as it was birthed over the plains of Africa. Larson's ubiquitous analogies are absent in these chapters. As he plots the course of the storm across the Atlantic ocean, he sticks strictly to the science and the analytical math alone, giving these passages an ominous foreboding and an authoritative significance. This is the storm the whole story is about.

"Isaac's Storm" unfolds like one of those disaster movies your mother loves so much. It is a jigsaw puzzle of a tragedy. Larson uses his talents at imparting history as if it were a novel to build suspense and draw you into the story even though he tells you multiple times that there is no happy ending. It focuses on one man's struggle to make the most of himself and in the very moment that he reaches his goals catastrophe takes everything from him. Isaac Cline had risen through the ranks of the fledgling and much ridiculed Weather Service in the later part of the 19th Century. He was well respected in his field and confident enough in his experience to make sweeping statements of absolutes. In a book he published a few years before the great storm that would take so much from him, he wrote that hurricanes were required by the laws of physics to turn north through Gulf of Mexico and avoid landfall anywhere in Texas. This is a story of what damage great hubris can bring. "Isaac's Storm" is a great reminder of exactly what pride goeth before. Larson writes the story as if this storm didn't target Galveston, it was after Isaac Cline, targeting him for his certainty.

The weather experts on the island of Cuba, men who knew a thing or two about hurricanes, tried to warn the US about the storm after it left their tropical shores a mess. They knew it was a big one and that the unusual September heat wave would only serve to strengthen the cyclone as it made its way across the relatively shallow Gulf of Mexico. They tried to warn the US but they were muzzled by the very men who should have been the most receptive to their experiences. Again, pride was the culprit here. Pride and a healthy dose of racism and arrogance. "These poor Cubans are such panic mongers see hurricanes in every cloud," was the way the American Weather Service thought about the situation. They banned all weather related communication out of Cuba from being transmitted over American telegraph wires. Consequently, the people of Galveston had no idea what lay in store for them. This is a tale of hubris.

As the 19th century came to a close two cities along the Texas shores were vying to compete with New Orleans as a second deep water port for shipping through the Gulf of Mexico. Houston and Galveston. In 1900, anyone who was the betting sort would have wagered good money on Galveston taking the crown. It was a city vibrant with life. An influx of both foreign immigrants and Americans seeking to find a city where they could make something of themselves swelled Galveston's population greater than any other city in Texas. It was easy to see that Galveston was on the precipice of something big. No one could have predicted that the precipice was really a cliff.

The morning of September 8th dawned with none of the traditionally recognized warning signs of an approaching storm. The wind was coming from inland and there was no brick-colored sky. Isaac Cline saw no reason to be worried. The waves breaking on the beaches of Galveston were deep rolling breakers, but no one knew that was a sign of an offshore hurricane. Issac and the rest of his team from the Weather Service, people who were experts in forecasting the weather, went about their day calmly, never guessing there was disaster in store for them before the next dawn would break. Soon rains began soaking the island and the wind picked up. The waves grew in intensity and began to damage some of the buildings standing on the beaches facing the gulf. Soon those waves began to demolish those buildings. The wind from the north grew stronger and stronger driving the water in the bay between Galveston and the rest of Texas higher on the northern shoes of the island. Galveston was flooding from both sides.

The homes along both shores began to receive even more damage as the day progressed and the wives who had been left home that day began to grow more fearful as the water crept higher and higher into their streets. The men who had left those women at home however, the men who were supposed to make the choices that could save lives, feigned disinterest and a distinct, almost ostentatious lack of worry. They couldn't be seen by the other men to be scared or worried lest their manhoods be questioned. They soon realized the seriousness of the storm when a popular restaurant and saloon had its roof collapse from the gale force winds. Several prominent Galvestionian men were crushed to death before the eyes of dozens of others and the waiter who was sent to find a doctor drowned in the flooded streets outside. Only now, when it was too late, did the men admit their fears and race home to be with their families and try to save their loved ones.

There was no escape though. The bridges supporting the rail lines linking Galveston to the mainland had been destroyed by the storm. In fact, one train that had tried to make it but instead had turned around to head back to the safety of inland had been swamped anyway, killing almost one hundred passengers aboard. No ship's captain could even think of reaching the city in this kind of storm. Galveston is not protected by any wetlands or barrier islands. There is nothing to absorb the brunt of any approaching storm. In fact, Galveston is a barrier island. Before the worst part of the hurricane reached the city, her streets were already completely flooded. Around noon, the anemometer at the weather station snapped off in the hurricane winds. Its last recording was of winds up to 120 miles per hour... and the storm was only going to get much much worse.

The power of this storm was unimaginable. The extraordinary change in barometric pressure alone rose the entire sea level around Galveston by almost three feet. Larson reminded you that one cubic yard of water weighs about 1,500 pounds which means that a wave 50 feet long and 10 feet tall weighs over 80,000 pounds. If that same wave is moving at 30 miles an hour it generates a forward momentum of over 2,000,000 pounds. One witness said the waves moving through the city that day were pouring into his second story window which was exactly 35 feet off the ground. Nothing could stand in the face of that kind of power.

These waves and incredibly strong winds destroyed so many structures that it turned the debris and rubble into a three story high ridge of shattered timbers, twisted metal, stone work, and human corpses. This ridge of debris moved north through the city scouring the earth below clean of anything. Parts of Galveston were scraped as perfectly as if a massive lathe had been used to level her. The winds became so strong as the storm began to make landfall that it would rip bricks from their mortar and fling them across the city perfectly horizontally. Gravity itself was no longer enough to force the flying debris towards the Earth. Debris spun through the air of Galveston like shrapnel from an artillery barrage. The wind drove the raindrops so fast and so forcefully that when they slammed into a horizontal surface they released enough energy to spark little bits of light. On that day in Galveston, rain fell like fireworks.

Houses collapsed with entire families huddling inside them. A massive Catholic orphanage that had stood on the shores of the city like a castle was taken apart stone by stone, like a child demolishing his Lego creations. For days afterwards, the bodies of children were found tied with rope to the nuns who had died trying to keep their charges safe until the very end. Elsewhere in the city, survivors told impossible tales of being swept out to sea on the flotsam of their neighborhoods only to be blown back to the skeleton of the city that had been destroyed by a storm no one knew was even coming that morning.

Isaac Cline watched as his house collapsed around him. His family, and fifty other neighbors who had unwisely sought refuge in the Cline house were either crushed in the collapse or thrown into an angry sea. Miraculously, Isaac and his youngest daughter clung to the lifeline of the remains of their house. Somehow, in the wrack and fury of the storm, tossed by waves and blinded by lightning, Issac found his brother, Joseph, who had saved Isaac's other two daughters. Isaac's pregnant wife was not so lucky. Her body was found days later only a few blocks from the footprint of their old home. Joseph had urged Isaac for hours before the collapse to abandon the house and seek safety in the higher ground closer to the middle of the island. In his arrogance, Isaac had refused to listen to Joseph, and his wife had paid the price. The two brothers never spoke again.

In the days after the storm roared over the island and moved ashore, funeral pyres had become the most efficient means of dealing with the piles of bodies littering what remained of Galveston. Somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 people had been killed. When you were twelve year old, they told you wrong. In the years after the storm the city hadn't built an eight foot sea wall, they had built one that rose seventeen feet above the beach around the entire city. Not only that, they made a titanic effort and raise the whole city, every building, road, wall, and lamp post even higher. They filled the space underneath with eleven million pounds of earth. But it wasn't enough. The Texas oil boom hit just after the storm destroyed the city. Houston dredged her bay to create the perfect deep water ports for the oil tankers that would soon be moving millions of barrels of black gold out of the state. Houston had stolen Galveston's crown in her moment of tragedy and eventually became the largest and richest city in the state. Today, Galveston is where the wealthy of Houston have their beach houses.

Almost exactly 108 years after the great storm of 1900 struck Galveston (and nine years after Larson wrote this book) hurricane Ike almost wiped the city off the map again. This time we knew it was coming and evacuated the population appropriately. Satellites and storm-spotting airplanes now help us better predict where deadly storms will go and how powerful they will be when they get there. But "Isaac's Storm" is a vivid reminder to never succumb to our own hubris. Nature is the most powerful force on Earth. Believing we can control her or predict her is a recipe for nothing but disaster.

There is a reason the people of Galveston still speak of the great storm of 1900 with awe. Because it was a monster. They still talk about it because they need to remind one another what the city lived through and they need to sound the alarm to the rest of us that hubris can summon the worst of nightmares. Some monsters are creatures of our own making and humility is a virtue that can save lives.






-On to the next book!




P.S. Here is a panorama of what was left of Galveston after the storm passed over. Only a few buildings are left standing in the heart of downtown, the rest is scoured clean all the way to the beach which merges seamlessly with the flat spread of the ocean. Pictures like this make it clear that the fact that anyone survived the storm at all is miraculous.

"All Creatures Great and Small" by James Herriot (1972)

There are few phrases you enjoy hearing more than "Hey, Sam, I got you a book!" Your long time friend Tim Crawford said this to you not long ago and since he is the single most well read person you have ever had the pleasure of knowing you were excited to see what literary gem he was going to bequeath to you. You were surprised when he handed you a copy of "All Creatures Great and Small." He was a touch giddy and smiling as he handed it over as if you should be equally excited and maybe even honored since everyone has heard of this classic. Naturally you felt like an ass for having no idea what it was. He told you that he had read it several times because it was so enjoyable adding the most interesting endorsement you've ever heard for a book. "I found it on sale at Book People. The woman who sold it to me told me that in the ten years she'd been working there, she'd never seen James Herriot go on sale. That's how good this book is." Within a few days you were buried in its pages and realized that Tim and the woman at Book People were right, this book never needs to go on sale.

"All Creatures Great and Small" is a memoir of a country veterinarian in northern England in the 1930's. James Herriot is not the author's real name, he changed his own name and those of many of the book's characters to protect their anonymity. Immediately after graduating from college Herriot finds himself in Yorkshire hoping for a job interview. His potential employer is nowhere to be found once Herriot arrives at the vet's office, so Herriot begins answering rings on the doorbell and dispensing advice and making diagnoses as if he had any real world experience at all, which he does not. Eventually Herriot's would-be employer arrives and, unsurprisingly, hires him on the spot.

Herriot is instantly smitten with the parade of rural characters revolving through the office doors. The Yorkshire Dales are the hills and mountains that form the border between England and Scotland and the folks who live there have never really felt they belonged to either country. This instills in them a fierce self reliance and thriftiness that rings familiar to your Texan heart. The way Herriot writes it, Yorkshire sounds almost like The Shire in the real world. The folks are humble and kind and hearty with an endearing loyalty to family and a love of food and drink. Some barely move a muscle to help the young vet perform his jobs and others literally chase after and tackle bulls with their bare hands to assist Herriot in his endeavors.

One elderly widow called Madame Pumphrey becomes smitten with Herriot and her precious Pekingese adopts him as his uncle. Tricki-Woo, because what else would you name an over pampered Pekingese, showers Herriot with care packages in the mail and invitations to posh parties attended by the very finest of Yorkshire's upper crust. Herriot's adventures in meeting such a cast of eccentric and lovable people made you laugh out loud often in public places.

It was simply one of the most charming books you've read in years. Each chapter forms it's own perfectly crafted story. The book is almost episodic, which is ironic considering it spawned more than one sequel, a movie, and a long-running British TV show.

Herriot writes his dialogue phonetically, like Mark Twain often did, to try and capture the particular pronunciations he heard while in his practice. When arguing the lineage of a cow to be examined by Herriot, one farmer begins debating with his sons. "She was bought in, wasn't she? 'Nay, nay, she's out of awd Dribbler.' 'Don't think so-- Dribbler had nowt but bulls." Quotes like that bring you into the story in a way that a more clean prose simply can't do. It forces you to sound out the words the way the people who are now long dead and gone said them at the time, it brings the language back to life for a brief moment. It serves to make you the conduit for a momentary resurrection, if not of the people, of the time and place they existed.

Each call on the office phone brings Herriot out to far flung highlands and remote farms dealing with everything from cows suffering from difficult birthings to a horse whose intestines are twisted up too badly to survive. Herriot's boss Sigfried and his brother Tristan (what in the hell kind of names are those in Yorkshire?!) help guide Herriot into his new life and ease his transition into the fabric of his adopted society. The farmers and their families suffer from a natural generosity and help to ease his transition too by heaping pounds of homemade bacon and sausages and butter on Herriot in addition to insisting that he "come in for a drink" after every job is completed.

Through the course of the book it is clear that Herriot has become smitten with more than just the citizens of Yorkshire Dales. The landscape of Yorkshire itself becomes as much a character as the people. The haunting lonely highlands and the suicidally steep valleys are clearly enchanting to him. He makes a spring day high in the Dales sound like a piece of heaven and a sudden blizzard on a barren farmland feel like a slice of hell. Herriot quickly adopts the landscape into his heart and revels in the knowledge that his job allows him the freedom to roam this new found glorious countryside. Even in the closing moments of the book, working side by side with his new beautiful wife, Herriot is more interested in describing the majesty of the land around them than the charms of his new bride. In the Dales that form the transition between England and Scotland, Herriot found his home.

But it is not only the land that serves as a transition in the book, a place where one nation becomes another, a region between urban and rural, it is the time that is a transition as well. The 1930's were an in-between era for the western world, a region between the two greatest wars in human history, a transition between the ancient and the modern ways of life. Herriot describes his charge as a country vet as almost sacred in this decade because most of the people in Yorkshire still relied on horses for everything from transportation to providing the muscle power to pull a plow or wagon. Cars were scarce and terrifyingly unsafe. Corporations hadn't yet taken over the raising of livestock so the health of an individual cow could represent and entire family's future well being. Medical practices that would become common place within a few years seemed new and alien. The art of veterinary science still featured a dramatic flare held over from a now bygone era, an era when it was natural for a vet to employ a "therapeutic compound" more for it's tendency to create an impressive puff of purple smoke to awe the farmers more than its tendency to actually heal anything.

The stories are no doubt embellished to the point they might be unrecognizable to the men and women who participated in them, but who cares? It matters less that Herriot got the facts right than that he got the feeling right. "All Creatures Great and Small" felt wonderful. It made you envious of a humble man who lived in a much harder time in a more unforgiving place doing much more difficult work. It's good to be reminded that a humble life can still be an enviable one and that making an impact right where you live can be far more meaningful than seeking false significance and fleeting fame on a larger stage.





On to the next book!

"Slave Nation" by Alfred and Ruth Blumrosen (2005)

After reading "John Adams" by David McCullough last summer you began thinking about the odd contradictions of the existence of slavery in the United States even in the moment of its birth. You were fascinated by the juxtaposition of the image of America's Founding Fathers gathering together in Philadelphia in 1776 hailing from such wildly different backgrounds. The fact that some of the men who created a nation based on the idea that all people are created equal could own human beings and force labor from them at the threat of a whip or worse is something you cannot quite wrap your brain around. So, you've kept your eye open for any interesting books on the subject. When you opened this one in the store and saw that the introduction was by Eleanor Holmes Norton, you knew you had to read it.

World War One started with a random assassination that no one thought would be that big of a deal. It ended up being one of the single most influential events in modern political and military history. In 1772 an English chief justice ruled on a case before his court, a case as seemingly inconsequential as an assassination of an obscure royal family member 143 years later, but whose implications had ramifications that were possibly equally as momentous.

In October 1771, a slave named Somerset ran away from his master, an influential Virginian named James Stewart. Stewart and Somerset had been living in England for only two or three years when Somerset ran away. Before that they had lived in the British colony of Virginia. Slavery was still perfectly legal throughout the British empire, but more and more cases were piling up in British courts trying to clarify exactly how legal slavery was in England, on the island of Great Britain itself. No one was quite sure what the law would say about holding someone against their will. Several cases had been brought to the Court of the King's Bench, the oldest and highest common law court in England, but the chief justice, Lord Mansfield, had always managed to avoid having to rule in any clear cut way about the legal status of runaway slaves. He was always able to convince the owners to let their slaves go free rather than bargain that the courts of England would take the opportunity to outlaw slavery all together.

Feeling betrayed by his long time personal assistant, (not that Somerset would call himself an "assistant") Stewart hired slave catchers who caught Somerset and took him back to a ship bound for Jamaica, where he would be sold off. In his brief time in London, Somerset had made many influential friends. Some of those friends became his godparents and were quick to come to his rescue, bringing Somerset's case to Lord Mansfield and insisting that the captain of the slave ship had no right to hold Somerset, a British subject, against his will. Stewart refused to free Somerset as so many others had done under pressure from Lord Mansfield. The Chief Justice tried to reason with Stewart, warning him that he might not like the ruling if he forced the court's hand into making a clear judgment, but Stewart was being financed and encouraged by the slave traders of the West Indies who had a financial interest in clarifying the legality of their business model throughout the empire (how awful is it to think of the buying and selling of human beings as a legitimate business model?). Stewart's intransigence forced Mansfield's hand. He had to make a ruling.

On June 22, 1772, he did. "The state of slavery is... so odious, that nothing can support it but positive law... I cannot say that this case (or slavery in general) is allowed or approved by the law of England: and therefore the black (Somerset) must be discharged." You had to look up what the phrase 'positive law' meant in order to understand this ruling. Basically, it's the legal version of the status quo, a way of saying that 'it is that way because it's sort of just always been that way.' This ruling had huge ramifications throughout the vast British empire, upon which the sun never set. The Blumrosens say that this ruling is the spark that ignited the American Revolution which makes it even more shocking that you and most other Americans have never heard of it.

It is remarkable that so much hung in the balance over the actions of one man. By running away, Somerset was shaping the course of western civilization. But this was no Alexander, no Napoleon, no Genghis Khan. He was a simple slave, stolen from his homeland and thrust into an alien world. Then again, Somerset was not intending to set off any revolution. He merely wanted his freedom. His case is a reminder that everyday average people really can shape the world simply by doing what they know is right.

In the British colonies in North America, tensions had been mounting as Parliament enacted tax after tax on the colonists only to repeal each successive tax under outraged public protests from the colonists. Throughout the mid 1700's the British government was being seen more and more as a threat to the self-rule the colonists had come to love. Suddenly the highest court in England had described slavery as something so odious that it couldn't be allowed under any laws in England. Not only was the entire economic model of the southern colonies built upon slavery, but many industrialists from the northern colonies relied on the odious institution for their bread and butter as well. After the Somerset decision, colonies which would never have been interested in independence over some paltry taxes suddenly felt their very way of life threatened. When faced with the prospect of independence, everyone who profited from slavery had to ask themselves which they valued more, their identity as Englishmen and subjects of the crown... or the preservation of their very way of life.

As the flames of revolution began to spread, some of the northerners who usually identified themselves as antislavery were willing to compromise their values for the sake of independence. They were also motivated by the pragmatic realization that any law immediately abolishing slavery would inevitably flood the streets and fields of the South with uneducated, physically impressive, freed slaves who might understandably have vengeance on their minds. Not to mention that Massachusetts, the seat of the rebellion while the Continental Congress was in session, was occupied by British forces and under marshal law, so it was imperative that they secure allies in the struggle for independence. Virginia was the wealthiest, most populace, and arguably the most influential of all the colonies. Taking a hard line against slavery would have run Virginia from the conference and insured that Massachusetts would have remained a colony with an English boot on her throat.

In 1774 the First Continental Congress issued their Declaration on the Rights of the American Colonies. John Adams himself penned the fateful Article IV of the Declaration which declared colonial independence from Parliament's power, but not yet from the authority of the king. It was Adams' attempt to marry northern complaints of "taxation without representation" to the southern fears that Parliament would soon outlaw slavery, and Adams knew full well that Parliament would never accept it. He was right. Parliament was outraged by the Declaration and Article IV was the thing that assured that there would be a War for American Independence, and it was a direct result of the abolitionist John Adams trying to reconcile southern fears for the preservation of slavery with the rest of the colonies' desire for independence.

Within weeks, British forces were doing more than merely occupying Boston. They sought out colonial weapons caches and ammunition depots, beginning with those at Lexington and Concord. The bloodshed there, the shot heard 'round the world, made it clear that a Second Continental Congress would need to be assembled.

This Second Continental Congress would be the one to not only issue the Declaration of Independence, but also establish the Articles of Confederation, the first government of the United States. After the war ended and the revolution had birthed a new nation on this continent, the Articles proved too weak to hold the states together as a nation. The Articles of Confederation failed specifically because they created such a weak central federal government in favor of more powerful individual sovereign state governments. There was no concept yet in the newly formed United States of any American national citizenship, so the citizens of each state thought of themselves as Virginians or Georgians first, not Americans. Each state would retain its sovereignty in every situation... except one.

Each state was free to determine the legality of slavery within its borders, but the southerners who were founding the new nation insisted that they be guaranteed that slaves would be considered property even in states that outlawed the odious institution.The last thing they wanted was to visit a free state and have their slave run away claiming that the slave master had no legal claim to keep him in bondage against his will. Even though it was antithetical to their states rights mantra, the representatives from the slave states insisted that the free states recognize that slaves were property, not human beings. This was a direct result of the Somerset case in England four years before.

In 1787 the Constitutional Congress which had been called to replace the Articles of Confederation almost ended in a complete dissolution of the entire union. Tradition teaches that the main point of contention was a disagreement between the larger states and the smaller ones about whether representation in the new government would be equal or whether it would be based on population count (their compromise is why we have a Senate and a House of Representatives). The Blumrosens contend however, that the real issue was actually a fight between the slave states and the free states over the fate of land west of the Appalachians. Virginia had claimed the vast area for itself for future settlement, while the New England states insisted that the area be set aside for themselves and that slavery be declared illegal in these northwestern territories. In the end the northern states won. Slavery was declared illegal above the Ohio river. The lines of the future Civil War had been drawn and it was now only a slow march to the inevitable ctatstrophic bloodshed.

No one single thing can truly be christened as the single event that sparked the American Revolution, not even an extremely influential court case. But "Slave Nation" reminded you that, when considering the causes, and seeing past the inspiring rhetoric, we should all remember how important slavery was to the founding of the United States. The generation that Americans would come to refer to as our Founding Fathers were wrestling with an idea that seems today to be completely absurd, the notion that people could be property. But part of why that's such a ridiculous concept today is because of the very ideals those men introduced and the very language they used in becoming the founding fathers. And that's an inspiring thought. The Blumrosens reminded you that we should be just as free to mold the values of this nation to the realities of our day as the founders were free to shape a nation under the social influences of their own. Goodness can still come out of something evil. Inspiration can be found even in the darkest of moments. Perfection is not a prerequisite for greatness.




On to the next book!








P.S. As much as you love Thomas Jefferson, you also find him an epic disappointment. He said so many incredible things and illuminated countless wonderful ideas but he owned and sold human beings as property. Screw the morals of the day. He did it and he should have known better specifically because he was so enlightened! But the Blumrosens reminded you that Jefferson left the word 'property' out of the Declaration of Independence specifically because he knew that putting it in there could be used to defend slavery. If he had said "...Life, Liberty, and Personal Property" instead of "the Pursuit of Happiness", one of the founding documents of the nation would easily have been interpreted as sanctifying the evils of slavery for much longer than the 1860's. So, maybe you could cut old Thomas some slack from now on. Maybe re-read the last three sentences of this review occasionally.