What are you currently reading?

[karlhenning]

Even juicier than I remembered it: The Loved One, Evelyn Waugh.

[bwv 1080]

Also due to bwv recent reads, I started this one as well:

Good book, but somewhat dated as later authors such as Beevor and Glantz have had open access to Soviet records which Craig lacked.  Most notably is that no one believes the sniper duel between Ziatsev and the German Sniper School instructor.  Despite being in Ziatsev's memoirs there is no record that the instructor ever existed.

[Philoctetes]

About to start this:



After, I'm done reading through all my my 21st century art books.

[Scarpia]

About to start this:



After, I'm done reading through all my my 21st century art books.

A lot of hype for this book when it was published.  A good read, but it didn't leave a strong impression on me. 

[Philoctetes]

A lot of hype for this book when it was published.  A good read, but it didn't leave a strong impression on me.

I'd not heard of it until recently when a friend suggested it to me. He seemed to like it; so I'm still hopeful.

[Scarpia]

I'd not heard of it until recently when a friend suggested it to me. He seemed to like it; so I'm still hopeful.

Well, I must have liked it because I later bought Smith's second book, On Beauty.  But even after reading the amazon blurb I remember nothing of the book except the title.   

[Philoctetes]

Well, I must have liked it because I later bought Smith's second book, On Beauty.  But even after reading the amazon blurb I remember nothing of the book except the title.   

Well that bodes well.

I have a tendency to forget everything about things I like outside of the fact that I like them.

[Bogey]

Good book, but somewhat dated as later authors such as Beevor and Glantz have had open access to Soviet records which Craig lacked.  Most notably is that no one believes the sniper duel between Ziatsev and the German Sniper School instructor.  Despite being in Ziatsev's memoirs there is no record that the instructor ever existed.

Thanks, and really good to know.  Let me know if any of the other facts are fuzzy as well.

[bwv 1080]

Thanks, and really good to know.  Let me know if any of the other facts are fuzzy as well.

regarding Stalingrad, two salient points that past interpretations have missed are
1) the Soviets did not "melt away" -retreating and not offering resistance during the drive to Stalingrad.  They fought the entire way.  Importantly they did avoid large encirclements unlike 1941 so the Germans had little to show for their efforts
2) to relieve pressure on the city the Soviets launched a series of largely forgotten suicidal attacks on the German flanks that destroyed whole divisions and did little damage to the Germans but kept reinforcements from the city and bought time.  The pressure also was a primary cause of the poorly equipped German allied Italian, Hungarian and Romanian armies being moved into the remote flank positions which were the target of Operation Uranus

[Todd]

I'm just under halfway through HW Brands' newest book which covers the post-Civil War era, explaining in condensed form (just over 500 pages) how the US expanded economically, geographically, etc.  It's a pretty broad topic and while well researched, is not presented in a dry, scholarly way.  The short vignettes including episodes from the lives of people famous and not are entertaining, and the factual information the author provides backs up his overall concept well. The book is also quite even-handed.  He presents the accomplishments of such men as Carnegie and Rockefeller as positive, but he also explores the social costs in some detail.  The way he describes (in admittedly brief fashion) some of the struggles between Plains Indians and the whites is quite well done.  He's no historic ideologue.  Those wanting more detail and a squarely scholarly approach to this era should look elsewhere, but I'm reading it because Brands knows how to make history jump off the page.  The book is not as good Brands' bio of Andrew Jackson, but it's roughly on par with his bio of FDR. 

[jlaurson]

Leave it to Psmith
(Blandings Castle)
P.G. Wodehouse
[Everyman Wodehouse]

[Opus106]

Right-ho!

[Brahmsian]

Read it all in a day (OK, book was mainly pictures, but still).  What a fascinating man Gould was.

Glenn Gould:  A Life in Pictures

[MN Dave]

STUNTS by Charles Grant.

[DavidRoss]

Those wanting more detail and a squarely scholarly approach to this era should look elsewhere, but I'm reading it because Brands knows how to make history jump off the page.  The book is not as good Brands' bio of Andrew Jackson, but it's roughly on par with his bio of FDR.

Thanks, sounds worth a look.  I finally got around to David McCullough's 1776 -- a good read at first, bogged down a bit with tiresome detail about skirmishes in the military campaigns and fell short of contextual information about what was happening elsewhere.  Clarifies how much of a role was played by luck or Providence, as well as by managerial incompetence on both sides, and subtly makes a case for Mrs. Loring as the underappreciated hero of the revolution.

[Bogey]

Mars was an operation on the scale of Uranus (the Stalingrad offensive) and was meant to be a simultaneous Northern counterpart.  However the offensive was a total disaster for the Soviets who lost over 300,000 men and 1600 tanks in a few weeks of fighting

96 hours before Operation Uranus commences in the Craig book.  Some "allied mice" just took out some Panzers of the 22nd.  Have you read other accounts of this?

[bwv 1080]

96 hours before Operation Uranus commences in the Craig book.  Some "allied mice" just took out some Panzers of the 22nd.  Have you read other accounts of this?

Glantz has the strength for the 22nd on September 14 at 66 tanks - 9 mkIV, 15 III long, 17 III and 25 pz 38(t) a month later when it was moved to a reserve position in the rear of the Romanian 3rd army he has the strength at 46 tanks and no mention of significant fighting over the period - so it may be true

[Scarpia]

Artist of the Floating World



Kazuo Ishiguro.

This book by the author of "Remains of the Day" deals with an artist living in Postwar Japan.  It has in common with Remains of the Day that the characters live in a world where frank expression of their feelings or opinions is strongly suppressed by social conventions.  The artist at the center of the story has to deal with the unpleasant fact that his decision during the war years to base his art on Nationalistic ideals rather than "pleasure" had negative consequences and caused him to become isolated from his colleagues in the post-war era.   Then there is the perhaps even more painful realization that his activities during the war made no difference either way.  A very fine book.

[Florestan]

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn --- The Cancer Ward

Paradoxically enough, a country whose political regime was never even remotely close to liberalism produced a long line of writers who celebrated the indelible personal liberty and dignity of even the humblest of human beings like no Westerner ever did in his liberal country. 

[SonicMan46]

Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (2010) by Jack Rakove, a Pulitzer prize winner historian and professor at Stanford - reviews were not superlative on Amazon HERE; my interest was stimulated by another review in the NY Times HERE - so, I decided to do a library borrow - just through a hundred pages, and kind of agree w/ the NY Times review - however, will continue - just not a thrilling read (and this is really an area of my interest!) -