The Death of Dylan Thomas  by James Nashold M.D. & George Tremlett  Mainstream Publishing 1997  Rating - 8
Dylan Thomas a Welshman, and arguably the most famous poet of the 20th century, died in St. Vincent's Hospital in New York's West Village in November 1953 while on a reading tour.  At the insistence of his widow Caitlin, his body was returned to be buried in the village of Laugharne his boyhood home in South Wales.   For more than 40 years it was widely rumored and believed that Thomas died as the inevitable consequence of years of alcoholism and an accompanying dissolute lifestyle, as his attending physician had assured the hospital staff at St Vincent's.  Countless books and articles written about Dylan Thomas since that time, by friends and acquaintances, literary associates, agents and others have only lent credence to those rumors.  The legacy of Dylan Thomas, tainted with the stigma of an alcoholic demise, has suffered because of it.  Caitlin had remained at home in Wales when Dylan made his fourth reading tour in America.  When she received the telegram telling her that her husband had been hospitalized, she flew to New York, stopping in London to party on the way.  She was completely unaware that in fact he was dying. When, days after her arrival Dylan Thomas expired without ever regaining consciousness, Caitlin flew into a rage, assaulting the nuns at the hospital and tearing a crucifix off the wall.  She was put in a straight jacket and following the orders of the same physician who attended her husband, was hospitalized in a private mental facility nearby.  Caitlin Thomas died at her home in Sicily in August 1994 and now rests with her husband in Laugharne.  Throughout the rest of her life after Dylan's death she never accepted the circumstances of his death, but being an alcoholic herself, never followed up to investigate it personally.  However she never doubted the timelessness of Dylan Thomas' poetry.  If you have read his poetry and particularly the poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"  written for his Father, you will agree with her.  Author George Tremlett, who lives in Laugharne, first cooperated with Caitlin Thomas in 1978 when he worked with her in the writing of her successful memoir, Caitlin.  After working with Caitlin at her home in Sicily and reading extensively the accounts of others, he became convinced that the entire truth of Dylan Thomas' death had never been told.  This book is the result of his work.
Reviewed by Dennis August 2008

Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War  by Patrick Buchanan  Crown Publishers 2008  Rating - 10
With this book, Pat Buchanan has taken issue with one of the icons of the 20th century, and one of my personal heroes, Winston Churchill.  He has done so very well.  I have never read a book so critical of Churchill, and few so well researched on the subject.  Buchanan's thesis is that Hitler never wanted to go to war against Great Britain, he wanted the return of German lands and people taken in the Treaty of Versailles which ended the first world war, and he may well thereafter have proceeded to invade Germany's old adversary, Russia, but it was not his plan to invade England, in fact he had an admiration for the English.   The Treaty of Versailles, written in Paris in 1919, was very punitive against Germany and among other things it awarded to Czechoslovakia the Sudetenland; to France, the area known as Alsace Lorraine and to Poland, the city of Danzig all lands which had previously been German.  It was Hitler's primary objective to return all of those lands and their citizens, who were ethnic Germans, to Germany.  In all three cases, the citizens of the disputed provinces favored a return to Germany.  France did nothing when German troops marched quietly into Alsace Lorraine in 1938, Britain and France acceded to German demands at Munich in September 1938 and agreed to allow Germany to re-occupy the Sudetenland, however when after that the rest of Czechoslovakia crumbled and the Germany military took control of the whole country, Churchill and the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain were so incensed that they promptly signed a mutual defense agreement with Poland agreeing to come to their aid if invaded by Germany, essentially indicating a declaration of war on Germany if they invaded Poland.  It was, says Buchanan, a foolhardy action.  Britain was in no way prepared or able to do anything to defend Poland in the event of a German invasion, and Hitler knew that.  Germany invaded Poland with the "blitzkrieg" on September 2 1939 and when they refused to follow Britain's demand that they withdraw, Britain immediately declared war on Germany.  So began the second world war.  Buchanan says that had it not been for the foolish mutual defense agreement which Britain signed with Poland, the Poles would not have contested the return of Danzig to Germany, and Britain would not have had to declare war, and all the misery which followed would have been avoided.  The mutual defense agreement, Buchanan says, was signed by Chamberlain in a moment of anger, feeling he had been duped by Hitler at Munich, but in doing so, Chamberlain had the complete support of Winston Churchill.  Very early on in the war, both sides realized that Germany needed the iron ore from the neutral Swedish mines for its war materials and in winter, the only way to get it to Germany was through Norwegian ports.  Churchill, as first Lord of the Admiralty was responsible to insure that the key Norwegian ports be quickly brought under British control.  He bungled the job, the Germans got there first and dealt the Royal Navy a humiliating defeat.  That defeat and significant loss of British life, brought about the end of Neville Chamberlain's service as British prime Minister.  Winston Churchill, who in fact was culpable for the defeat in Norway, assumed the job of Prime Minister.  This war, Buchanan says, which cost tens of millions of lives, brought about the holocaust, and the ruination of the British Empire, did in fact rid Europe of the Nazi dictator, but it opened the door for one much worse, the USSR and Joe Stalin.  This is an excellent book, a new and worthy perspective on WWII, well researched and well written.  If you are a student of 20th century history, it's a book well worthy of your time.
Reviewed by Dennis  July 2008

The Forger  by Cioma Schönhaus  Da Capo Press 2004  Rating - 9
The sub-title for this book is "An Extraordinary Story of Survival in Wartime Berlin", and the story, written by Cioma Schönhaus about his own experiences in Berlin during the second world war, is indeed extraordinary.  No surprise to me that its about to be made into a film.  Cioma was born in Berlin in 1922 of Russian Immigrant parents who had moved to Germany to escape revolutionary Russia.  His parents were Jews. With the coming to power of the Nazi party in Germany in 1933, came also the repression, the segregation, the incarceration and eventually, the extermination of Jewish people.  Jews had already started to leave Germany in the tens of thousands in 1935, it continued at an increasing rate until in 1939 when over 70,000 Jews still lived in Berlin, the door was slammed shut and they were forced to live under a curfew.  In 1942 Cioma's parents were both placed on a train and taken to a concentration camp where they died.  Cioma was permitted to stay in Berlin because friends had arranged for him to work in a "reserved occupation" making gun barrels for rifles.  So began his life alone, evading the Nazis, helping other Jews to do likewise through his skill at forging identity cards and other documents.  He hid "in the open" making enough money to stay at fine hotels, eat in good restaurants, wear nice clothes and because of that and his bravado, he did not appear as a Jew and for a long time was neither suspected nor detected.  However, eventually, and partially through his own carelessness, he was identified, his likeness was posted all over Berlin and he had to escape.  He left Berlin as the Allied bombs were falling, and he left on a bicycle, heading for the Swiss border.  Its a wonderful story of determination and survival against incredible odds, all the more because it's true.  It will make a wonderful movie.
reviewed by Dennis March 2008

Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk Alfred Knopf 2006  Rating - 6
I did not do the usual amount of research before I purchased this book.  I had read Pamuk's last book "Snow" which I reviewed and thoroughly enjoyed.  he's a wonderful storyteller.  So when this book was published I just went and bought it.  I assumed it was about Istanbul, a city of great historical interest, and who better to tell it than the man who has lived his whole life there?  It is not about Istanbul, at least that's not what its primarily about.  It's about Orhan Pamuk and his family growing up in Istanbul.  An interesting story, well written as one might expect, but frankly, a little boring. 
Reviewed by Dennis February 2008

The Somme  by Peter Hart  Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2005  Rating  -  9
This is the story of what is the most famous, or infamous, battle of all time.  In the summer of 1916 the combined British and French armies, supported by troops from what were then the British Colonies, confronted the German armies who were dug in to trenches in the French countryside which bordered the river Somme.  The stratehic objective was to push the German line back east and recover control of the town of Bapaume, a distance of about 10 miles.  The political objective was to appease the French by relieving the pressure on them from the German military at Verdun.   The battle began with a massive artillery barrage on July 1 1916 and eventually ended on November 18 without achieving the prime objective.  The opening artillery was intended to disable the German guns, blast their trenches and permit the British soldiers to advance across "no man's land" and take control of the first line of German trenches.  That strategy failed.  The Germans were too well dug in and as soon as the barrage ended and the British soldiers "went over the top" to attack, German machine guns came back into place and the British soldiers were slaughtered by the thousands.  On the first day of the battle, the British army suffered 57,000 casualties, of which nearly 20,000 were dead.  By the time it was ended, the British suffered 420,000 casualties, of whom 131,000 were dead, the French 205,000 casualties and the Germans 600,000 casualties.  Over the five month period, the British/French line advanced some 3 to 5 miles at different points on the line of battle for a cost of over a million casualties on all sides.  So it was not a battle designed to gain ground, but a battle of attrition, one designed to kill as many of the enemy as possible.  The British Expeditionary Force was commanded by General Douglas Haig, with subordinate officers General Henry Rawlinson and General Hubert Gough .  While Haig had complete authority and control of British forces and all battlefield tactics, he was on French soil and the overall direction of the war was in the hands of French General Joseph Joffre.  The German army was commanded by General Erich von Falkenhaym.  The German army was a formidable force of men, well trained through the German system of conscription whereby every male served two years starting at age 20 and then entered the reserve force with regular training.  The British army, by contrast, was a volunteer army, totally unprepared for a land war.  Haig himself said that he did not have an army but a collection of divisions which were untrained, they would, he said, evolve into an army on the battle field.  Unfortunately, most of them never lived long enough.  The battle of the Somme, remains to this day a bone of contention among military historians, the most popular thesis being that Haig and Joffre with a flagrant disregard for human life, repeatedly wasted thousands of lives by pouring untrained men onto a battlefield without adequate preparation and with battle tactics which had failed on several previous occasions.  The author, Peter Hart, has done an excellent job of setting the scene of the Somme in the overall context of the first world war, and of introducing the leading Generals in charge.  The book is filled with the quotes from soldiers who were there at the time.  Almost every one of the nearly 600 pages in this book, contains the actual words of a private, a corporal, a sergeant or an officer who was actually present at the action being described.  This is a book about war, war of the very worst kind, many of the passages describe scenes of unimaginable horror.
Reviewed by Dennis  December 2007

Clapton, The Autobiography by Eric Clapton Broadway Books 2007   Rating - 8
Eric Clapton was nine years old before he learned that the couple he thought to be his Mum and Dad were in fact his grandparents. His real teenaged mother couldn't or wouldn't take care of him, and he never knew his father, so his grandparents took him in and raised him. It was ten years before he saw his mother again and she rejected him a second time when he asked if he could call her "Mummy". It was a rejection which would darken his personality for years to come. His grandparents were good to him and it was also at about that time they bought him his first guitar. Music, the Blues and his guitars became his sanctuary for most of the rest of his life. He was self-taught, but he studied well. His models were not the English pop idols of the time, Tommy Steele or Cliff Richards, but the American Blues legends, and he spent hours mimicking the techniques of artists like Muddy Waters and B.B. King. By the age of sixteen he was already playing in local bars and had developed a deadly taste for alcohol. His musical talent grew, his style developed and matured, and Eric Clapton quickly became the legend of English guitarists, as evidenced by the posters which appeared in the London subway proclaiming "Clapton is God". So he adopted the lifestyle of the incredibly wealthy young rockers who followed the Beatles and the Stones onto the world's pop stage, and with that lifestyle came his inevitable addiction to drugs and alcohol. Although he occasionally emerged from his continual alcoholic stupor to make good music, the next thirty years were for him the life of a drug and alcohol abuser with a long series of failed relationships. Among the list of women he had failed relationships with, was Patti, the then wife of George Harrison who has now written her own story of the times. Another gave him a daughter. One of the women gave him his only son who tragically fell to his death from an open window in New York City in 1991. Sobriety finally came to Clapton when he reached a low point in 1987 when he was in his early forties. He credits the 12 stage program with his recovery and he has maintained that recovery. With sobriety came even greater success in his music career and finally, marriage, stability, a yacht in the Mediterranean and three more daughters. Clapton's biography tells the story of a life inflicted with the curses of drugs, alcohol and hedonism, but it was not aimless. He maintained a focus on music and on his kind of music, the blues, not the chart busting rock & roll which was the genre of the time. He invested wisely in homes in Surrey England and in the US and the island of Antigua, and he never forgot his mates with whom he grew up in the business and often rushed to their side when they needed a friend. Biographies are usually slow to read, sometimes too detailed and often boring. This book is not of that kind, its is very well written, reads swiftly and holds the interest.   It is at times amazingly candid and self deprecating. I have listened to Eric Clapton's music, often in awe, since the days when he played with "Cream" nearly forty years ago. One gets to know this man in this book, know him and like him notwithstanding his drunken way so that at the end, when he finally beats his devils and finds peace in his own living room playing with his kids, one feels very happy for him. It is a very good book and worthy of the success it is evidently getting.
Reviewed by Dennis December 2007

Legacy Of Ashes by Tim Weiner Doubleday 2007   Rating - 9
On the very first page of this hefty 500 plus page remarkable chronology of the Central Intelligence Agency, author Tim Weiner states. “The one crime of lasting consequence has been the CIA’s inability to carry out its central mission, informing the president of what is happening in the world”. The Agency was created out of the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, set up by FDR and operated as a World War II intelligence service under General William J. Donovan. Harry Truman wanted it to serve him as a “Global news service” to advise the president as to what was going on in the world.. He said “it was never intended as a cloak and dagger outfit”. Weiner states that the president’s vision was subverted from the start. Not only did the Agency morph into a spy agency, it also became the agency carrying out subversive operations around the globe, and doing so at will and without the control or even the knowledge of the United States Congress. In 1955 President Eisenhower created a “Special Group” charged with the responsibility to review the operations of the CIA. Their responsibility did not extend to approving their covert actions. Then CIA chief Allen Dulles, who's brother John Foster Dulles was the Secretary of State, often did not always tell that group or even the president himself, what they were plotting. “There are some things he doesn’t tell the president” Dulles sister told the author, “it is better that he doesn’t know”   The book goes on to relate numerous instances of occasional fleeting successes, and numerous long lasting failures of CIA operations; from a multi million dollar fiasco in Poland in 1952 to the failure of the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and the misinformation provided to General Colin Powell which he presented to the United Nations on February 5, 2003 leading to America’s disastrous invasion of Iraq.. The CIA was unable even to find the Russian spy Aldrich Ames within their own ranks even though they saw all of their own agents in Russia being arrested and executed. This is an important book. Tim Weiner is well qualified to write this story. In 1998 he was awarded a Pulitzer for his reporting of classified national security programs.   Accurate and timely information about changes taking place around the word, particularly among our potential adversaries, is fundamental to the security of our country. The author asserts that the Agency charged to provide that information has failed and is still failing in its mission. 
reviewed by Dennis October 2007

Troublesome Young Men by Lynne Olson Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2007   Rating - 10
The Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, imposed severe restrictions on Germany with regard to her ability to put men in arms, or to build warships, tanks or aircraft. We now know that during the 1930's under the Nazi party, Germany completely disregarded those restrictions and by 1939 she had assembled massive military strength. During the same period, England, with her Conservative government led by Neville Chamberlain ignored the developing threat of a militant Nazi Germany and not only did England not build her military strength, but also Chamberlain went out of his way to not do anything to "annoy Mr. Hitler". England did nothing when Germany occupied the Rhineland which had been given to France at Versailles, they did nothing when Germany rolled over Austria in the so-called Anschluss. They acceded to Hitler's demands to take over the Sudeten section of Czechoslovakia and did nothing when the Nazis proceeded to take over the entire country. Even when the Nazis invaded Poland and England finally declared war, Neville Chamberlain's government refused to do anything warlike and risk a German reprisal. The first bombers sent over Germany by England dropped leaflets not bombs. As is now well known, in the years prior to 1939, Winston Churchill was the lone voice in the English House of Commons warning of the Nazi threat, but as soon as war was declared, Churchill was made a member of the Chamberlain government and in keeping with his sense of party loyalty, he refused to do anything to even criticize let alone depose Neville Chamberlain. This book is not about Churchill. Its about the handful of young rebels including Leo Amery, Ronald Cartland, Duff Cooper, Harold Macmillan, Robert Boothby and others who recognized early on that the policy of appeasement would eventually result in England herself falling under the Nazi jackboot, and they opposed the Chamberlain policies at every turn. They knew they were fighting an almost impossible battle. Chamberlain was enormously popular, he had an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons, the King was behind him, the French government had given him a country home in France following his "peace in our time" meetings in Munich. Chamberlain even had a "dirty tricks" guy who made life difficult for Members of Parliament who opposed him, but they persisted and eventually they succeeded. The author has clearly done her research well and in this book, she has presented in great detail the story of how these rebels succeeded in eventually bringing about the resignation of Chamberlain and the elevation of Churchill to the position of wartime Prime Minister. It is a fine piece of work and if you are interested in the history of the days before the second world war, I highly recommend it to you.
reviewed by Dennis June 2007

Too Close to the Sun by Sara Wheeler  Random House 2006   Rating - 9
The sub-title of this book is "the audacious life and times of Denys Finch Hatton". If you have seen the movie or read the book Out of Africa, Denys Finch Hatton was the English gentleman-hunter who became the sometime lover of Karen Blixen when she lived in Kenya. I confess I do not comprehend the use of the term "audacious" in this connection. Finch Hatton's life was surely somewhat adventurous but "audacious" seems hardly the right word for it. He was, as the English say, "well born", His father was the 8th Earl of Nottingham, his maternal grandfather was an Admiral of the Fleet who had fought beside Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Upon his father's death the Earldom passed to Denys' older brother. Born into a well-to-do upper class family at late stage of the Victorian era, he enjoyed a privileged childhood, attended Eton "public" school for boys and although he failed to get into Baliol College at Oxford which his father had attended, he did attend Brasenose University there and eventually squeaked by with a fourth class degree. The poor performance in University did not surprise him because of his acknowledged tendency to party more than to study, and it seemed not to bother Denys either because the very thought of regular employment bored him anyway. He was a very handsome man, over endowed with charm and very popular with members of both sexes. The year was 1910, the war against the Boers in South Africa was over, the motor car and the airplane had both arrived on the scene, and young and restless Englishmen like Denys were interested in the adventure which might be found in Africa. So Denys Finch Hatton set off for Capetown. Already the European governments were scrambling to establish possessions in Africa. The English had already fought the Boers for control of the gold and diamond mines in South Africa, Germany had established German East Africa, and King Leopold of the Belgians had bought for himself the entire Congo and proceeded to exploit the people and resources there to degree never before witnessed. The Germans referred to it as "Torschlusspanik" the kind of panic which comes when you want to get in somewhere and the door is about to close. When Denys arrived in Kenya, there were already several of his contemporaries there with land and business holdings, hotels and country clubs for the high society had already been established and his carefree luxurious lifestyle continued as before. He soon met Baroness Karen Blixon who had come to Kenya from Denmark to establish an ill-fated coffee plantation. Their story was beautifully documented by Karen Blixon under the pen name Isek Dinesan in the book Out of Africa.  Finch Hatton never seemed to know what he really wanted to do, he knew what he did not want, which was the conventional lifestyle. He did eventually become a successful hunting guide, once leading the future and very brief, King Edward VII of England, on a safari. In this book, Sara Wheeler has in my opinion made a proverbial silk purse out of a sow's ear. I do not regard Denys Finch Hatton as a great Englishman. For someone who was born with golden opportunities and the gifts of good looks, charm and a good education, he accomplished nothing with his life except to satisfy his own selfish whims. He could not even commit himself to the women who loved him. However this author has a wonderful way with the pen, she writes beautifully, and she was obviously intrigued with her subject. More interesting than the stories about Finch Hatton is her telling of the developments in Africa in the first quarter of the twentieth century with a sound grasp of its history. I shall wait and watch for her next work hopefully with a meatier subject.
Reviewed by Dennis May 2007

Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury Archipelago Books  2005 Rating - 7
This book has been described as Elias Khoury's magnum opus on the Palestinian saga. It is a story which needed to be told, and the telling has won this acclaimed writer even more praise. However, for me, riveting as the story is, it missed the mark. The book tells the tragic story of the Israeli - Palestinian conflict since the time the country was torn apart in 1948 to create the state of Israel. The telling of the story follows an unusual mode. Two men are alone in a run-down Beirut hospital. The older man, Yunes, a fighter and legendary leader of the Palestinian resistance, is in a coma. Doctors have said he is beyond hope and expect him to die. The younger man beside him is Khalil his longtime friend who regards Yunes as his mentor and the great leader of the Palestinian people. Khalil, who has had some medical training in China, believes that if Yunes' mind can be kept alive, then with time the body will repair and recover and to that end he sits with him day and night talking to him. Yunes can not speak or respond in any way to Khalil's conversation, so Khalil speaks of events which Yunes already knows about even things which were originally told to him by Yunes in the hope that it will trigger recognition in the comatose mind. What follows then is a very long monologue, retelling the endless stories of friendship love and war over the years which have passed. It was here that the author lost me. I understand that the book was not written for the western reader, and no doubt readers from the region will be more able to follow the many strange names of the people and places. However, I could not, and because of that from time to time I lost awareness of where we were and who were the friends and who the enemy. At no place in the telling did the author step back and put it all in perspective, to redraw the overall picture before delving back into another detailed telling of an attack on a certain village and who shot whom and continued the seemingly endless litany of atrocities by Israeli soldiers. I had looked forward to this book and hoped for a telling from the Palestinian side of the conflict which seems never to end there, what I found was a very long detailed telling, village by village and mountain by mountain, of fight after fight, and tragedy after tragedy. The story is beautifully written and beautifully translated from the Arabic, but I lost my way in this story long before the end. I am still waiting for the book which will tell the Palestinian side of this endless war.
Reviewed by Dennis May 2007

A Soldier's Story by General Omar N. Bradley Henry Holt & Company 1951   Rating - 9
It has taken me over 50 years to get to this book, but the wait was well worth it. This is not an autobiography of Omar Bradley. It is the story of World War II. It begins with Bradley in jeep on a coastal road in Sicily, headed up to Messina to observe General Montgomery's crossing of the Strait of Messina to attack the Axis forces in southern Italy. It ends with Bradley at his command post in Germany when he received a phone call from General Eisenhower to tell him that the Nazis has surrendered. By that time Bradley had four silver stars on his helmet. Omar Bradley was a soldier's soldier. He shunned the spotlight and fancy trappings of high military office, preferring to spend the time with his men in the field. While general Montgomery lived in a handsome wood paneled trailer which had been built for Rommel by an Italian craftsman, General Patton drove around in an open touring car captured from Rommel with a big silver star painted on each side, and Eisenhower slept in a French Chateau, Bradley drove around in a Jeep with his bed roll on the floor behind him, and slept in a field tent. Bradley never got to witness Montgomery's crossing to the boot of Italy, he was called away by Eisenhower to go to England in early 1943 to join with the British in the planning for the invasion of Europe, code named Overlord. He established the American presence in England and selected the Officers to serve with him there and lead the US invasion forces. Bradley landed in Normandy on D-Day plus one when the beaches had been captured and the British and American forces were fighting to break out into the French countryside and head for the port of Cherbourg. From Normandy, Bradley's army alongside Patton's and the British under Montgomery almost captured the entire German seventh army at the Falaise pocket, they liberated Paris, and in doing so, allowed the French soldiers under their General Leclerc to lead the allies into the French capital. From Paris they chased the German army towards the river Rhine and in doing so, outran their supply lines. Both gasoline for their tanks and ammunition for their weapons was in very short supply and it was necessary to stop the advance. The French resistance had done a good job of destroying the French rail lines to thwart the German supply lines, so it was necessary to truck supplies from the channel port of Cherbourg or from the Belgian port of Antwerp some 500 miles to where it was needed. This left the allies holding a front some 500 miles long during the winter of 1944 to 1945. During the lull, the Germans had rested and rearmed and on December 16 they struck with massive force at the weakest point on that front, in the Ardennes, with what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. In three days the German Panzer Corps had blown a hole sixty miles deep into the Allied front line, two US army groups held out in the face of incredible odds, one at Bastogne and the other at St Vith. After a few more days the Allied line was reinforced with soldiers from general Pattons army on the south and Montgomery's on the north. The Germans were pushed back and chased all the way to the famous bridges over the Rhine at Remagen and at Arnhem. With the relentless pressure from Allied forces from the west and a massive Russian army heading from the east across Poland, headed for Berlin, the war machine of the Third Reich collapsed and its leaders who did not commit suicide, were captured. Bradley and Eisenhower were strongly criticized for the losses suffered due to the Battle of the Bulge, and Bradley's relationship with Montgomery, which had never been very good, was seriously hurt when Monty announced to the press that he and his troops had saved the Americans at the Bulge. This is not a bullet by bullet account of battles, rather its an account of the war through the eyes and daily activities of one of its most famous generals. It is surely the best overall account of a war about which I have read many books. The only criticisms I will make are that Bradley makes only passing reference to the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest prior to the Bulge, a major battle which the US Army lost. It was a fight which lasted ten times as long as the battle of the Bulge and cost ten times as many casualties, and one which some experts said should never have been fought at all. Secondly, in relating the story of the Battle of the Bulge, Bradley barely mentions the fighting to hold the village of St Vith, a crossroad of far greater importance than Bastogne. US forces were overpowered at St Vith, some soldiers fled the scene, officers were relieved on the battlefield and 10,000 men of the 106th infantry surrendered to the Germans. Bradley makes no mention of those events but spends several pages explaining his opposition at the time to Eisenhower's decision to assign part of Bradley's US Army Group to Montgomery's control.
Reviewed by Dennis January 2007

The GOD Delusion  by Richard Dawkins  Houghton Mifflin  2006  Rating  -  7
Richard Dawkins writes on page 5 of this book  "If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down"  I think it was a vain hope.  Nothing permeates life, in all of its aspects, as does the subject of god.  No single subject divides people so much as the subject of god.    God is either the greatest mystery of all time or the greatest myth.  So I believe it is both right and proper that intellectuals who have thought about it sufficiently, debate and publish their thoughts and beliefs about god, and we who have not thought about it enough, should read, listen and hopefully learn something from their effort. Richard Dawkins has thought about it and is an intellectual, he is a professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, and the unordained archbishop of atheists in the world.  But his book, unfortunately, is only somewhat about god and mostly about religion and they're two quite different subjects.  He begins well, with the thoughts of other intellectuals and scientists, Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson and John Lennon.  But before the end of the first chapter the book delves into the case of the Danish (Protestant) newspaper which published cartoons which the Muslims thought to be insulting to Islam and so they burned down Christian churches and threatened murder and mayhem.  A subject which has everything to do with religion and nothing to do with god.  By the first page of the second chapter, the author is already into name-calling, referring to the old testament god as "the most unpleasant character in all of fiction . . . a vindictive, blood thirsty  ethnic cleanser".  Parts of this book were, I thought, brilliant, such as his chapter on "Childhood, abuse and religion", some others, I thought, were silly and frankly, juvenile.  However when I accept that the book is mostly about religions and the strife that they have caused in the world for two millennia, a belief which I have long held myself, then it is a book with an important message and one which is well worth reading.
Reviewed by Dennis November 2007

Murder in Amsterdam  by Ian Buruma  The Penguin Press 2006  Rating  -  10
In November of 2004 on a street in Amsterdam, Mohammed Bouyeri, an angry young Muslim man, shot and killed the controversial Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, great grand-nephew of the artist Vincent.  Theo van Gogh had recently completed a movie with the Dutch Politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali titled "Submission" which Bouyeri thought was an "insult to the Prophet Mohammed".  After shooting van Gogh in broad daylight and in the view of several witnesses, Bouyeri took out a knife and cut his victim's throat, then calmly walked away to a nearby park where he was captured by the police.  The murder horrified Holland,. a country which prides itself on its tolerance of immigrants, and sent shock waves around Europe where many countries have provided haven to Muslim immigrants.  The author returned to Holland to investigate the murder and to try to uncover its larger implications.  His book is not so much a story of a murder as it is the story of the people of post-war Holland.  There was in Holland according to Buruma, a sense of guilt as a result of their dismal record in protecting Dutch Jews from the Nazis during WWII.  One consequence has been their liberal immigration policy attempting to "make up" for that, and as a result they have seen a massive influx of Moroccans and Turks and the establishment of a multicultural Christian/Muslim/Kurdish society in Holland.   Ian Buruma, already a well respected writer has done a masterful job of investigating and reporting on this major shift in Dutch society.  This book ranks with the very best I have ever read, and sounds a warning bell for those who might favor the development of muticulturalism in America.
Reviewed by Dennis September 2006

Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks  The Penguin Press 2006   Rating  -  8
Thomas Ricks is the senior Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post, he's been in that job since 2000.  Before that he was in the same spot for the Wall Street Journal.  He has been a reporter for over 20 years and in the process, earned two Pulitzer prizes.  He has reported on military activities in Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Turkey. Afghanistan and Iraq.  So I think he knows what he's writing about.  This book makes very serious charges of incompetence on the part of both the civilian and military leadership which have led America into the war in Iraq.  If they were not true, this writer would surely be in court by now.  He is not, and so I conclude that they are true.  This book confirms my worst convictions about the ineptitude of the leadership of the Department of Defense in the Bush administration.  The book goes on to document countless anecdotes concerning the military conduct of the war and its result in the creation of the so-called "insurgency".  Ricks writes "If America's top military commanders had set out to create an Iraqi insurgency, they could hardly have done a better job, . . . "  Go to your local public library and borrow this book.  Read just the first 111 pages dealing with the run up to war, and it will open your eyes.  The last chapter of that section, chapter 6 is titled "The Silence Of The Lambs" it deals with the failure of the United States Congress to do the job required of it by the Constitution.
Reviewed by Dennis September 2006

Dowding & The Headquarters Fighter Command  by Peter Flint  Airlife Publishing 1996  Rating  -  8
This is the story of the Royal Air Force Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain in 1940, and of Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, the man who conceived the organization of Fighter Command.  Dowding was the man who directed Fighter Command during the fierce air battles of 1940 known as the Battle of Britain, who won that air battle upon which the entire future of Great Britain depended, and who was unceremoniously fired after it was over.  After having easily overrun all of his enemies including France, Hitler then set his sights on England.  At first he thought that England would bend the knee and sign a "peace" agreement with Germany which would leave Hitler the supreme dictator.  However Winston Churchill quickly disabused him of that notion.  On July 16 1940 Hitler announced that England must be invaded and conquered.  He gave to Herr Reichsmarschal Hermann Goering the task to first wipe out the Royal Air Force so that the German army could then cross the channel by boat with complete control of the air, and invade England.  Four days later on July 20th, Goering responded "When the time comes the enemy air craft industry and the air force must be destroyed at the earliest possible moment of the attack.  The defense of Southern England will last four days, and the Royal Air Force four weeks.  We can guarantee invasion for the Fuhrer within a month" . The Germans then commenced the bombardment of England.  However they failed to reckon with the men that Churchill called "The Few" and  failed to reckon with Hugh Dowding.   They soon realized that they had underestimated the capability of the British air defense and both the will and skill of its pilots.  In the first ten days of German attacks RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires shot down 697 German aircraft, while losing only 153 aircraft and 93 flight personnel of their own.  By the end of September that year, the Nazis had forever abandoned their plan to invade England and turned their attention to the East.  Not a single Nazi soldier ever voluntarily set foot on English soil.  The Luftwaffe then turned its attention to night bombing of English cities.  With the primitive radar and defense weaponry of the time, it was a strategy very difficult to defend against, and serious differences arose within Fighter Command.  Inexplicably, on November 24 1940, Hugh Dowding was retired from his position in charge of Fighter Command.  To this day, that action by the English Air Ministry approved by Winston Churchill, has been debated within the English military community.  This book, thoroughly researched and well written by Peter Flint, does not resolve it.
Reviewed by Dennis August 2006

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick  Viking 2006  Rating  -  7
This is of course the story of the Mayflower and the Puritans and others, which it brought to Cape Cod in 1620.  At least that's what I thought it would be about.  The Mayflower left Plymouth England on September 6, on page 29 and arrived off Cape Cod on November 9, 1620 on page 32.  So you're not going to learn a lot about the 65 day voyage from this book.  They were well north of their intended destination, which was the mouth of the Hudson river, but with a ship full of sick and diseased passengers, Captain Jones decided it best to take what he could get and put them ashore as quickly as possible.  By November 11, the passengers had written and signed a "MayflowerCompact" to govern themselves, Master Jones had steered his ship around the tip of the Cape and brought it to anchor in Provincetown harbor, and on page 47 they went ashore.  The next 311 pages to the end of the book, are really about the various Indian tribes and how they interacted or didn't interact with the Pilgrims.  Mr. Philbrick has done a masterful job of telling the story of the Indians, the different tribes and their leaders, even down to knowing the color of the rug in the chief's wigwam and how he broke into a sweat when he took a drink of aqua vitae . . . how did he find that out?  But that's not what I wanted to know.  I wanted to know how the Pilgrims lived, particularly during the first year before crops came in, what did they plant, what domestic animals did they have if any, how did they decide who was in charge of what, and how did they handle the fact that males outnumbered females six to one?  How did they house clothe and warm themselves when they first arrived in a cold New England winter?  If you already know all about that stuff and what you really want to read about is King Philip's war, then this is the book for you.
Reviewed by Dennis July 2006

Ten Years at The Court of St. James  by Baron von Eckardstein   Rating  -  10
This book was published 85 years ago, so its not likely that you're going to walk into Barnes & Noble and find it.  Freiherr von Eckardstein was born in 1864  into German nobility. During his most privileged life he could count all of German nobility, two Kaisers, Kings, Princes, Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers, and Ambassadors among his friends. After a short military career, he joined the German diplomatic service in 1888.  During the following 20 years he was a front row witness to the events taking place in Europe during the last years of the Victorian era and the short reign of Edward when England went to war against the Boers in South Africa, and the stage was set for the awful war to end all wars. It is that story which he tells in this book.  Its a fascinating story.
Reviewed by Dennis  February 2006

Guns, Germs and Steel  by Jared Diamond  W.W. Norton & Co. 2005  Rating  -  6
This book is no doubt the result of a great deal of research and a lot of erudite analysis, and if it had been reviewed by a Sociologist, it would probably have received a much higher rating.  However I am no Sociologist and unless you are really into sociology and interested in the development of cultures around the world, this reading is hard slogging.  It deals with the way that cultures have developed differently in different parts of the world.  It attempts to answer questions such as why some cultures developed metal tools and farming implements thousands of years before others and similarly, why some cultures developed weapons like guns , thousands of years before others and were able to dominate and in some instances, wipe out, other weaker cultures.  I confess to having done a little "skipping" over passages which I found uninteresting.  I was interested to read this book because I thought it might throw some well researched light on the subjects raised some years ago by a book titles "the Bell Curve".  However to my disappointment, this book does not address those delicate matters nor does it provide any insight as to why to this time, the continent of Black Africa, in spite of its ideal central location between the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australasia, in spite of its fertile soil and ample rivers, and in spite of its favorable climate and richness in mineral deposits, why that continent is so backward in every respect.
reviewed by Dennis  February, 2006

John Adams by David McCullough  Simon & Schuster 2001  Rating  -  10
This is perhaps the finest biography I have ever read.  Beautifully written by David McCullough about a man, one of the "Founding Fathers" a prime mover in the American Revolution and second president of the United States.  Its a big book, over 650 pages of 12 point type including a dozen or so pages of pictures.  In spite of its size this book never languishes, never strays off its focus and never bores.  It is a well researched and beautifully told story of the life of John Adams who was born in Braintree Massachusetts on October 19, 1735, and who died on the 50th anniversary of American independence at about 6 PM on the afternoon of July 4th 1826, about 5 hours after his lifelong friend Jefferson passed away at Monticello.  In the company of the likes of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton,  history has treated John Adams as one of the lesser lights.  It is clear that he lacked the flamboyance of his contemporaries.  His one term as president was less than glorious, he was remembered more for the hated Alien and Sedition acts than for any other accomplishment of his term.  He was however in the overall scheme of things, a giant of the revolution.  He was a deeply religious man as compared to Jefferson and Franklin neither of whom professed any deep or abiding religious faith.  He was hard working, usually arriving at his office in the early morning hours often before sunrise, as compared to Ben Franklin, the man who wrote "early to bed, early to rise makes a man . . . ", but who in fact, when the two of them worked together in Paris, often had to be aroused at 11 AM.  Along with Franklin he was sent to Paris to try to engage French support, particularly naval support, in the continuing struggle against superior English military power.  Frustrated by the lack of  progress there, while Franklin busied himself with the ladies of French society, Adams went on his own initiative to Amsterdam to seek support from the Dutch.  On more than one occasion the loans he was able to arrange there saved the Republic during those early years.  When he was returned to Paris at a later date with Jefferson, Adams, ever mindful that he had a limited amount of money available to him for his keep, chose to live frugally in a rented room, while Jefferson lived the lavish lifestyle he loved in a small castle, and borrowed extensively to purchase lavish French furnishings for it, furnishings which later were taken to his home at Monticello.  While Franklin flirted with French courtesans and Jefferson bedded his teenaged slave girl, John Adams  wrote almost every evening to his beloved Abigail back in Braintree.  He was a man of absolute integrity. McCullough explores all of these phases of Adams' life, through the war years, the early years of the Republic when Adams spent most of his time in Europe, the presidential years when even Jefferson his Vice President worked against him and all the post-presidential years of his life, the years Adams called his happiest years.  It is truly a splendid book, worthy of all of the praise it has been given.
Reviewed by Dennis January 2006

Postwar, a History of Europe since 1945  by Tony Judt  The Penguin Press 2005  Rating  -  10
The dust jacket says that this is the result of a decade's work by Tony Judt, and I have no doubt that is true.  In 830 pages of incredible detail and careful analysis, this book  covers the period since the end of the second world war in 1945, and tells the story of the countries which make up the European continent, .  From the fight for a new French identity after the shame of Vichy France, and the miracle of German economic recovery, from the ethnic turmoil following the break up of former Yugoslavia and the tortuously slow recovery of debt ridden England, to the demise and fall of the super power USSR and the inexorable growth of the burocratic monster called the European Union.  Professor Judt has taken it all apart, examined it in detail and put it back together.  He has studied and documented the economic, the political, the military, social, health and welfare aspects of the countries and even their citizens' changing interests in motion pictures, literature, sport and dress.   It is truly a monumental piece of work which I think will stand as the reference work on post war Europe for a very long time.  The book is crowded with detail, and not an easy read, but it is well organized and indexed, contains many pages of interesting photographs and is liberally supplied with footnotes, which I find much better than a bibliography. Europe is my part of the world, I was born and educated there, I speak the languages, after I became a US citizen, I returned to work for a US Multinational company there and traveled extensively over Europe for several years.  So I think I know Europe and its history and I did not find any factual disagreement with Mr. Judt's book.  There were some instances where I did not agree with his analysis or conclusions, but they were not of major import.  This is a fine book about modern Europe and if the subject interests you I can unreservedly recommend it to you.
Reviewed by Dennis January 2006

Shostakovich and Stalin  by Solomon Volkov  Alfred A. Knopf 2004  Rating 10
Now I know that this book is not everybody's cup of tea.  Let's face it, not everyone is interested in post-revolutionary Russia and specifically in the relationship between dictator Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili Stalin and the so-called cultural intelligentia?  If however,  that period of history does sound interesting to you, then this book is a treasure.  Joe Stalin was perhaps the ultimate dictator.  He controlled everything.  Not just the military, the economy, foreign affairs and the system of justice, but also the entire cultural community in the country.  Books, paintings, plays, poetry and music, all were subject to his whim.  If Stalin did not approve, they were banned and in the most extreme cases, the artists were sent up the river to Siberia.  If their work pleased him, they were well taken care of with an apartment and a stipend in a country which, at the time, was in a severe economic depression.  During the second world war, when Russia was deeply involved with the bloody German invasion on the doorstep of Moscow and every able bodied Russian male was sent to man the guns, Stalin would not permit any of his favored artists, writers or musicians to go anywhere near the conflict.  Some artists and writers acceded to this total control, some could not take it and some even committed suicide.  Some left the country when they could, and many were executed or disappeared into gulags and remote prison colonies. The names of Boris Pasternak, Alexandr Soltzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov were soon to become well known in the West.  This book focuses on the relationship between Stalin and the celebrated Russian classical composer Dmitri Shostakovich, one of the people the author refers to as a "Holy Fool".  Dmitri Shostakovich was born in 1906.  He was 18 years old when Lenin died and he would spend the next 31 years under the heel of Joe Stalin's boot.  Throughout recent history he has been the target of much speculation as to whether he submitted to the dictates of Stalin or whether he seemed to appease the dictator while at the same time cleverly expressing himself through his music.  It seems that Stalin himself was not sure, at times banning his work and at times awarding him the prestigious Stalin prize.  In the USA during and immediately after the end of the second world war, Shostakovich was regarded as a beacon of light in Stalin's repressive Russia, defying the dictator and standing tall.  The author reveals however that " . . . in 1949 America's love affair with Shostakovich came to a sudden and brutal end."  It was on the occasion of the "Waldorf Conference", a signal event held at New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel in the early days of the cold war.  Joe Stalin wanted the West to see Russia in a better light and encouraged, even insisted that Shostakovich become a member of the Russian delegation to this "cultural exchange".  Shostakovich had completed his speech to the conference when the American delegate, Nicolas Nabokov, cousin of the famous writer and himself a composer, jumped to his feet and asked "Is Shostakovich personally in agreement with the attacks that appeared in Pravda on the music of Western composers Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Hindemith?"  Shostakovich rose to reply and was handed a microphone . . .  "and with eyes lowered, burning with shame, he muttered that , Yes, he fully agreed with Pravda"  Nabokov later said that he knew what the answer would be and knew it would expose Shostakovich as being not a free agent, however it was in his opinion the only legitimate way to expose the internal mores of Russian Communism.   Solomon Volkov, an award-winning  Russian Musicologist and writer has done a magnificent job of documenting this aspect of Russian life at the time when it was closed to western eyes.
Reviewed by Dennis December 2005