Now the books I did finished were quite good. Some stand out more than others, of course.

FIRST, let’s talk about the books on Trent and Vatican II. I took a deep dive this year with all the turmoil in the Catholic world about the SSPX situation and I wanted to learn for myself what the issues and arguments were. I will say the both the Vatican II collection and the history of Vatican II were both very educational for me. Read in tandem I think they give an excellent understanding at what was, and just as important what wasn’t done in the council.

Also this year, my bucket list book, the Confessions of St Augustine. NO, I had never read it completely, but I did and wow, it was truly eye opening. He pulls no punches. Not gonna lie, there were a couple parts that almost exploded my brain, but I made it through. As I have said, I take theology in small doses because I have to digest it and it isn’t always easy.

Finally, since it is America’s 250th birthday, I managed to complete a couple books on the Declaration of Independence. Tyrants and Rogues was a completely different take on the Declaration, focusing not on the preamble we are all so familiar with, unless you went to public school after 2000, but examines each of the twenty-seven grievances against King George in great detail. The Declaration was written as a legal document but was very much a political statement meant not only for the King and Parliament, but to bolster colonial support for the rebellion against England at a very dark time when all could have been lost.

So, that’s the lot so far.

The rest of the year should be equally busy. You might notice a bit of a theme. It’s time to dive into the millennial old conflict between Islam and Christianity. ALL the conflicts continuing even to today. Sadly, too many Americans have NO understanding of the intractable and irreconcilable differences between the two faiths and what the implications are of the growth of political Islamism in our country.

But I will be digging in and there will be history lessons. I am particularly interested in the book on the Crusades. No doubt I will generate some controversy on that topic. AND of course this is the 25th anniversary of 9/11. It is particularly frightening that many young people espouse ignorant political opinions about Islam because that day is just some fact in their politically correct history book. But to me, it is still something I very much remember and the days and weeks afterwards. Truly the last time we are all united as Americans.

So be prepared, I will call things exactly where the facts lead me.

Okay, this is definitely a grumpy old man moment, but I feel inspired by the patron saint of grumpy old men, St Jerome. One of the great saints of the church, Jerome did not spare his opinion of young upstarts, even St Augustine, one of the greatest theologians of the church.

In his correspondence with Augustine, who had written to Jerome inquiring about his interpretation of Galatians and was the only person from whom Augustine ever sought advice, Jerome icily responded to him that “there remains for you only that you love one who loves you and that you, a youth in the field of scripture, do not challenge an old man.”

I kind of feel this way watching the Instagram feeds of young Catholic influencers pontificating and posturing on the issues of the day. While I admire their desire to further their Catholic faith, I do often wonder if they should spend more time contemplating rather than bloviating like seasoned, experienced theologians ready to “teach” us the true Faith.

Now I will never consider myself a theologian of any kind. I have been a convert to the Faith for almost 27 years (probably longer than many of these youngsters have been alive) and I still have so much more to learn about Scripture, the Catechism, and the general teaching of the Catholic Faith. I am happy to discuss theology, but I rarely try to pontificate about it because I know my limitations. FIRST THINGS FIRST, a little humility goes a long way and may of the kiddos really seem VERY sure of themselves.

Being trained as a historian, I always approach theology from a historian’s perspective—in other words take me to the original documents and I will go from there.

Which brings me back to my point. What I call the “black square” Catholic influencers, and you know who they are, seem to be very hyper-aware of social justice issues but not what the Church actually teaches.

Take the current fad toward socialism…the Church is pretty clear about this in Rerum Novarum

To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man's envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.

BUT, at the same time, the Church is not for unbridled greed or taking advantage of working people either

The following duties bind the wealthy owner and the employer: not to look upon their work people as their bondsmen, but to respect in every man his dignity as a person ennobled by Christian character. They are reminded that, according to natural reason and Christian philosophy, working for gain is creditable, not shameful, to a man, since it enables him to earn an honorable livelihood; but to misuse men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain, or to value them solely for their physical powers - that is truly shameful and inhuman. Again justice demands that, in dealing with the working man, religion and the good of his soul must be kept in mind. Hence, the employer is bound to see that the worker has time for his religious duties; that he be not exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous occasions; and that he be not led away to neglect his home and family, or to squander his earnings.

This is what fascinates me about Catholic Social teaching, AND if you want to really learn about this, go to Word on Fire and get their book it is superb. Catholics do not believe in liberation theology or socialism (Jesus was most certainly not a socialist no matter what the SJWs say) but they aren’t for unchecked capitalism either.

It’s a fine line to walk…but read those paragraphs again. Work has dignity and expecting someone else to take care of you or saying you DESERVE it because of race, creed, ethnic group or whatever is definitely a no-go as well.

So let’s go back to the topic of the day, immigration. AGAIN we go to the source document

Catechism of the Catholic Church 2241

The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him.

Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.

READ THAT SEVERAL TIMES. The open borders people talking about “welcoming the stranger” (most of them just selectively quote the Bible for politics) are missing the point, if I may be blunt. Jesus did not say “Let the Romans tax you so that the immigrants can be taken care of.”

He did not say “Tax the rich to pay for the poor.” He directed people to care for the poor themselves. Now I am certainly not perfect at this, but it really irritates me when progressives seem to dodge this issue altogether. How many of them sell what they have and give it all to the poor? Anyone heard of a Hollywood star doing this?

FINALLY, and here is the question I want to ask, how many of these young Catholic influences are serving at their parish?

NOW I’m gonna get my grumpy up to high speed. Lord knows I am not perfect and I will have many things to answer for, but one thing I can say is that even though I am a very imperfect Catholic, my wife and I did our best to actually live out our Faith serving our Parish. We did Youth Ministry and Confirmation Prep for almost a decade, I was a lector, and my wife worked as the liturgist at our Parish (have you ever had the joy of vacuuming the altar for Easter Vigil?)

Here’s my bottom line….if I have rambled a bit I apologize. To have true theological wisdom, I believe, you must have experience. Wisdom is NOT the same as learning, or even raw intelligence, as my daddy used to say many people are smart but have no common sense. In my observation, many of these young Instagram theologians have little life experience, likely have suffered minimal hardship, and have most probably (although I may be wrong) never faced the real life changing events of going to war, burying a child, or burying your parents and siblings. Therefore I personally have a very hard time taking them seriously. Maybe they do have something to say, but their almost Pharisee like self-assurance, assumed moral superiority, and quite frankly condescending attitude are very off-putting to this grumpy old man.

Yes, I know they are the future of the Church, and I certainly applaud the younger generation and their enthusiasm for the Faith, but I would say be very careful about twisting the Faith to meet the progressive outrage of the day. That is a very slippery slope. The same crowd that cries “separation of church and state,” another supremely misunderstood phrase and concept, is sure ready to try and shame everyone with their Faith to go along with the social issue of the week.

I think St Jerome was right…I will paraphrase “there remains for you only that you love one who loves you and that you, a youth in the field of life and wisdom, do not challenge an old man.”

It was overall a pretty good year, although I fell far short of my 36 book reading goal.

This year was definitely a sad one as the New York Journal of Books ceased operations very abruptly this spring. They were the source of many, many books for me, including some that I would likely have never gotten the opportunity to read and review (as well as add to my history library), they will be sorely missed.

Anyway, here are some of my favorites.

This was the standout book of the year. I have not read much on the Russian Front of World War I so I really looked forward to this book and it was outstanding. As many historians seem to do these days, he is writing a trilogy and this is a great 2nd volume. I am very much looking forward to his next volume on the Middle East.

My top fiction pick would be Jack Carr’s first volume of his new series. For fans of his James Reece series, this is a sort of prequel featuring his father and his time in Vietnam. Good historical fiction is hard to get just right, but it’s clear that Mr. Carr has done his research as the history is seamlessly woven into the story. I can’t wait to see where this story goes.

Some honorable mentions—I remember most of the events in this book, a new non-fiction entry by Jack Carr. They happened when I was a midshipman. But, Mr. Carr and his co-writer have gotten archive access to tell the rest of the story and I learned quite a bit more than I knew at the time, to be sure.

This was one of these books from NYJB that I received to review. It goes well with some serious revisionist history of World War II that shows Stalin probably secured more of his post-war objectives than most Western historians thought. It is not for the casual World War 2 reader, but if you want to dive into some neglected history of the war, this is a great book.

Mr. Hornfischer’s final book, completed shortly before his untimely death in 2021, is a perfect capstone to his award-winning career as a naval historian. Covering the often overlooked era from the end of World War 2 to right before the Kennedy Presidency and the height of the Cold War, this time was critical to our nation’s Navy and Marine Corps.

The U.S. Navy reached the zenith of power in 1945, achieving global maritime dominance and far surpassing its nearest ally, Great Britain. However, almost as soon as World War 2 ended, the Navy found itself facing new challenges both overseas and at home as the United States moved to quickly demobilize its wartime military and return to peace. The mighty fleet almost disappeared by early 1947 when the specter of the Soviet Union started to arise in Europe. The Navy quickly found itself performing forward deployments to show the flag and reassure European nations still reeling from the destruction of World War 2 that the United States would stand by them as the Soviets installed puppet governments throughout Eastern Europe and supported a communist insurgency in Greece.

As it began to resume its primary mission of keeping the oceans open for commerce and showing the flag, the Navy faced some of its greatest challenges not from the emerging Cold War standoff with the Soviet Union, but in the halls of Washington DC during the bureaucratic battles over the formation of the new Department of Defense and the integration of atomic weapons into the U.S. defense arsenal and planning. The struggle between the Army, Navy, and new independent Air Force, leading to the famous “Revolt of the Admirals” would be fierce and unrelenting as each service tried to define its role in a world where the whole notion of warfare was being changed by atomic weapons. The story of James Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defense, is not well known to most Americans, particularly his critical contribution to what would become America’s policy of the containment of communism and Mr. Hornfischer draws a sympathetic portrait of this brilliant but tortured man who was mainly responsible for much of America’s current national security bureaucracy.

The arguments about atomic weapons took on a more critical note when the Soviet Union tested its own bomb in 1949 and the new war in Korea brought the Navy back to the forefront of what would become limited warfare under the shadow of nuclear annihilation. Covering the Korean War in several magnificent chapters, Mr. Hornfischer not only tells the heroic tale of the 1^st Marine Division fighting its way out of the Chosen Reservoir, but he almost creates adventure tales of the heroism of Navy frogmen conducting sabotage missions and the heavy involvement of Navy and Marine airmen in conducting crucial air support missions to troops on the ground.

Finally, no history of this era would be complete without the story of the new technologies that shaped the Navy. The first is, of course, nuclear power and the story of the irascible genius Hyman Rickover, the father of the Nuclear Navy and a controversial fixture in the Pentagon of nearly 40 years. His unrelenting drive to place a nuclear reactor inside a submarine creates the first truly underwater weapon system able to remain submerged nearly indefinitely, leading to the first crossing of the polar ice cap by a submarine and the eventual merger of the nuclear submarine and nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. The creation of the Polaris missile program, truly an innovative system built on time and within budget, is one of the great and relatively unknown successes of the Navy during this era, creating nearly invulnerable nuclear deterrent system and forming a crucial part of what would become America’s nuclear triad.

But the more fascinating story is the tale of the Sidewinder missile, a truly pioneering air-to-air weapon that inaugurated a new era in air combat as high-performance jet fighters started to use missile weapons against their opponents, leading to more sophisticated air-to-air missile and aircraft systems through the 1960s. But the Sidewinder, still in production today, was the first truly mass-produced missile weapon that was quickly proven in air combat above the Straits of Taiwan during numerous skirmishes between Nationalist and Communist forces in the late 1950s.

Unfortunately, the book ends rather inconclusively, leading the reader desolate to know that no doubt Mr. Hornfischer, if a brain tumor had not cut his life short, would have written another marvelous trilogy about the Navy during the Cold War, an era ready for thoughtful narrative history. Nonetheless, it is a spellbinding work that will serve his legacy well.

I really enjoyed both of these volumes…it may surprise people just how much conflict there was during the Cold War, even though the U.S. and U.S.S.R managed to avoid a nuclear conflict. Historian Jonathan House concludes his two-volume military history of the Cold War with this impressive survey of the large and small wars that dominated the final three decades of the U.S.-Soviet conflict.

This era was dominated by insurgencies, guerilla wars, and the rise of terrorism, with a few major conventional conflicts in the Middle East, and even superpower wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Deciding which conflicts to cover and how much depth to cover them is a major challenge in a single volume and Mr. House clearly had to make some difficult choices.

He beings the book with what he calls a “halftime assessment,” examining both the nuclear and conventional balance of power between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As the Soviet Union begins a massive decade long buildup of both conventional and nuclear weapon quality and quantity, the U.S. and our NATO allies struggle to maintain conventional capabilities while dealing with the other crises of the decade.

He then continues with a chapter each covering the post-colonial actions in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, highlighting the major players and events of the turbulent 1960s, including the fairly significant proxy support by the U.S., Soviets, and especially Cubans in many of these conflicts.

The Vietnam War received two full chapters and the author examines the full range of military actions from the beginning of the Viet Cong insurgency to the increasingly conventional battles leading to the Tet Offensive in 1968 before concluding with the full-scale invasion of South Vietnam in 1975 by a North Vietnamese Army equipped with tanks and artillery.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan also received major coverage, showing the failed strategic and operational decisions by the Politburo and Red Army, combined with the effects of the U.S. support for the Afghan mujahedeen with sophisticated weaponry. Although the Soviet leadership was able to mostly manage the political and social fallout from the conflict within their totalitarian system, in the long term it became another nail in the coffin for the Communist Party’s rule.

The two major Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 receive somewhat less coverage, which is kind of surprising given their outsized effect on military doctrine and weaponry for the remainder of the Cold War. In the concluding chapters, the author describes in great detail the influence new weapons and the heavy losses on both sides during the 1973 Yom Kippur War had on the American generals seeking the rebuild the Army’s fighting capabilities after the Vietnam debacle. The author shows the clear lineage of the Army’s 1980’s AirLand Battle doctrine and “Big 5” weapons systems to the lessons learned from the costly Israeli victory in 1973.

The author begins the final decade of the Cold War with the disastrous Desert One mishap that began a decade of American military reform. The short conflicts in the Falklands and Grenada are plugged into the overall developments of this decade and the numerous small conflicts America has in Lebanon, Libya and the Persian Gulf are also covered. The volume concludes with the failed attempt by Mikhail Gorbachev to stop the economic and military decline of the Soviet Union, culminating in the peaceful dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the peaceful reunification of Germany.

Although the Cold War era avoided a major nuclear exchange, there were still plenty of conflicts driven by the bi-polar competition between the U.S. and USSR and Mr. House does an admirable job of summarizing the major conflicts and military trends of this era. The author concludes with his observations of the major trends and lessons that are useful for both students and professionals, making this an excellent introduction to the surprisingly wide spectrum of military conflicts, both hot and cold that occurred from 1945-1991.

Putting aside all the breathless pearl-clutching about Russia, an increasingly hostile and assertive China poses the most serious challenge America has ever faced to its long-term security and to the enduring global order established after World War II. In this timely book, author Rush Doshi provides a comprehensive history and analysis of China's long-term grand strategy to move beyond becoming merely a regional power in Asia to displacing the United States as the world's premier military and diplomatic power, upending the established economic and political institutions of global governance to meet their nationalistic purposes.

The impact and value of the author’s analysis comes from the extensive use of Chinese primary sources, particularly speeches by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) top leadership, foreign policy speeches, official documents, and government-controlled media and think tank publications. Expertly interweaving these together with a long-term analysis of Chinese decision-making on topics such as military doctrine, defense spending, and Chinese actions on the world stage, Mr. Doshi provides a holistic and deeply concerning picture of a totalitarian state seeking global hegemony.

The Chinese version of grand strategy delineated in the analysis has been patient, persistent, and relentless, combining all the elements of statecraft—diplomacy, information, military, and economic—the so-called DIME model of strategy. Beginning with the early opening of China to the west in 1979, the author breaks down the sequence of Chinese grand strategy into three basic phases: blunting, building, and expansion, and then shows how each element of the DIME model was conducted during that phase as well as the continuity of strategy across changes in top CCP leadership, with each succeeding General Secretary building on the efforts of his predecessor.

In particular, the Chinese reaction to the fall of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, American military actions in Iraq, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, and the global economic crisis of 2008 were major influences on the Chinese government’s viewpoint of the relative power of China and the U.S., driving their decision-making to a much greater extent than most Western readers understand.

In the past decade, Chinese efforts to displace the U.S. on the world economic stage has only accelerated, with the Belt and Road Initiative and the growing effort to displace the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency creating both economic and diplomatic inroads throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and even Latin America. The challenges faced by the world’s economy from the COVID crisis of 2020 has only increased Chinese economic efforts to take advantage of the situation to strive for dominance in the crucial high-tech industrial race of the 21^st century- quantum computing, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and robotics.

The most concerning factor has been the development in last decade of a more modern and lethal military force, particularly the Chinese navy, which has moved from a force designed to keep the U.S. Navy out of the Western Pacific and the approaches to China to a burgeoning global maritime force capable of projecting forward presence and sea power to defend a growing Chinese economic and diplomatic presence in the Middle East and Africa. The development of large amphibious ships, at-sea replenishment ships, multi-warfare capable surface ships and the beginning of an aircraft carrier fleets show the Chinese are determined to dominate not only the East and South China Seas, contentious zones with waters and potential resources claimed by multiple countries along their littorals, but protect Chinese interests on a global scale.

As the CCP moves towards its goal of global hegemony by 2049, the 100^th anniversary of the Communist conquest of China, the author also provides some recommendations the U.S. and its allies can take to temper Chinese soft power and overt aggression. In spite of its massive development and military power, China faces a number of social and economic structural problems, and the demise of the U.S. and the west has been forecasted before, most prominently in the late 1970s in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate when the Soviet Union seemed on the march to global dominance.

Trump’s recent tariff actions have shown just how fragile the Chinese economy is and how the CCP is going to be challenged with the inevitable slowdown of their growth with a rapidly aging population coming to terms with the long-term wreckage of Mao’s One-Child policy. This only makes them more dangerous as a brutal dictatorship may look for a foreign policy distraction to keep the population in line.

So now we take a hard look at China. This will be a long-term challenge because as President Trump has clearly learned “CHYNA”…has a lot more vulnerabilities than most people think…which could make them even more unpredictable and dangerous.

Abraham Lincoln wrote, “We cannot escape history” and this quote is the key to understanding China’s motivations and actions as the rising power of the 21^st Century.

In this volume focusing on the military history of China, the author uses a series of linked vignettes to tell the largely unknown, at least in Western culture, story of China’s rise, fall, and now re-emergence as not only the dominant hegemon in Asia, but a global power determined to gain the respect and deference believed to be their right.

The book’s unusual format does not use the traditional narrative format and this has its advantages and disadvantages. The primary disadvantage is the author skips over large swaths of time and turns each chapter into kind of a case study. But this issue is fairly minor, as the author chose to focus on several fascinating but less well-known events in Chinese military history, and he does an excellent job of tying them to current Chinese political, diplomatic, and military thinking.

Beginning with the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan and his successors, the author describes almost 800 years of both Chinese prowess and folly, from the horsemen from this arid region who swept into the Middle East to the gates of Western Europe to the armies of Mao Zedong and his successors seeking to revive China as the Middle Kingdom.

Two of these are particularly noteworthy. First, for nearly a quarter century before the great age of European exploration, China was the preeminent naval power in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans. The author chronicles several voyages of Admiral Zheng He, China’s greatest sailor, who commanded vast fleets of ships far larger and more sophisticated than anything in Europe at the time. Ranging as far west as Africa and very possibly as far east as North America, this armada not only conducted trade agreements, but spread the glory of China and its Ming Emperor.

However, in a recurring theme of the book, short-sighted leadership cancelled those voyages and decommissioned China’s mighty fleet just as the European voyagers were heading out seeking their own trade routes and eventual colonies. The period of Chinese naval renaissance is not well known in the West, but it is often quoted by contemporary Chinese as proof of their nation’s heritage as a maritime nation.

The other piece of history is the Sino-Soviet split during the Cold War. The author presents a fascinating analysis that this Communist falling out had its roots much earlier than previously assumed in the West. The split between the titans of Communism actually began in the Korean War, before the death of Joseph Stalin, when the Soviets refused to provide air support to the Chinese armies getting ready to intervene in order to save the North Korean regime. As the author notes in subsequent chapters, this confrontation escalated through the 1960s and was much more dangerous the previously known and only recently declassified sources show just how close the Soviets came to launching a nuclear first strike on China during a series of border skirmishes in 1969.

This Sino-Soviet split leads to the last part of the book, the opening of China to the West after President Nixon’s historic 1972 visit. This crack in the monolith of global Communism leads to the subsequent rise of China as not only a military but an economic power determined to use all parts of the traditional DIME model of strategy: diplomatic, information, military, and economic, to achieve its eventual rebirth of power.

The final section of the books examines the now forgotten incident in early 2001 when a Chinese fighter collided with an American reconnaissance plane in the South China Sea, causing the death of the Chinese pilot and the emergency landing of the American aircraft on the island of Hainan, leading to a several week-long tense standoff between the new Administration of George W. Bush and the increasingly assertive Chinese leadership. Although the crisis was resolved peacefully with the return of the crew and airplane, China put the world on notice that it would start to defend its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

The book concludes with a stark assessment of China’s coupling of its immense economic power to the country’s long-term goals of achieving hegemony in Asia and then becoming the premier world power of the 21^st century. Dealing with China’s global ambitions peacefully will be not only the biggest diplomatic and security challenge facing the United States, it will become the dominant issue facing Asia at large this century.

China is also a rising danger, and the current Russo-China alliance will be the major national security challenge of the next decade. This is the pivot book to looking at China now…..

The 400-year-old relationship between China and Russia could best be summarized as incessant ‘frenemies’-sometimes allies, sometimes adversaries but always in flux as the relative power between them fluctuates. In this new book, author Philip Snow offers a comprehensive history of the constantly changing, always tumultuous, and ever complicated interactions between these two countries that share the world’s sixth largest border. This is an incredibly timely book as the U.S. and other Western powers grapple with the challenge of dealing with an increasingly aggressive Russia and a rapidly developing China, both of which seek to overturn the established international order to suit their own strategic objectives.

Beginning in the 16^th century with the first tenuous contacts between Russians and Chinese, the author reviews the political, economic, social and cultural interactions between these two countries as they both emerge as local, regional and then global powers. The gradual settlement of the vast spaces in Siberia by first Russian Cossacks and then Russian traders and settlers brought them into direct contact with their Chinese counterparts, beginning nearly 300 years of disputes over borders, rights of river navigation and a competition for the other ethnic groups living in the Central Asia region that were often caught between competing Chinese and Russian interests. As the Romanov and Qing dynasties reach a level of stability, the first great cultural end economic ties begin to be established, first locally and then nationally as each country assess the economic and military potential of the other.

This waxing and waning of local territorial disputes and overall economic and military dominance continues for the next two centuries until Russia starts to modernize and Westernize as China becomes a prime area of imperial competition between England, Japan, Germany, and eventually Russia as well. This era saw a tremendous increase in the Russian sphere of influence in Central Asia and the Pacific region, leaving the Russian in control of vast regions formally under Chinese control. In the aftermath of a disastrous war with Japan and the calamity of World War I, the fall of the Romanov dynasty in the Communist revolution began a critical new phase in the Sino-Russian relationship as an increasingly dominant Russian Communist Party begins to take deeper interest in Chinese affairs.

The relationship during the communist era offers some amazing insights into the tensions between the Russian and Chinese interpretations of Communist theory and dogma and the continuing undercurrent of competition between the two countries, now conducted under the aegis of Communism and its proper implementation. Although some readers might be familiar with the Sino-Soviet rift that began in the 1960s and offered the U.S. the opportunity to begin its own complicated relationship with Communist China after decades of diplomatic hostility with Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, the author provides a compelling narrative showing that the relationship between the two communist powers was brittle for decades before then. During the decade before the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, Stalin, ever the chess master, played off the Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong and the Chinese Nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek against each other to maintain Soviet interests in the country, not completely supporting the Communists until the end of World War II. The Korean War deepened these tensions as the Soviets pressured the Chinese to save their North Korean clients after the U.S. intervened in the war but did not initially provide the material and air support the Chinese felt Stalin should provide.

As the Cold War deepened the author clearly shows that the contemporary view the U.S. had of a monolithic world-wide Communist bloc was far different from the testy relationship between the two nations, particularly after Stalin’s death and during Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. The deepening U.S. involvement in Vietnam additionally complicated the Sino-Soviet relationship as both countries initially supported North Vietnam, but after the Paris Peace Accords and the conquest of South Vietnam, the Chinese actually launched a military expedition into Vietnam in 1979.

The final chapters dealing with the current Sino-Russian relationship show a deepening strategic relationship that has now decisively tilted in China’s favor. The failed Westernization of Russia after the fall of Communism versus China’s nominal Communist oligarchy controlling the world’s fastest growing economy through much of the 1980s and 1990s has now established China as the more powerful partner. Combined with Russia’s failed conquest of Ukraine and the subsequent Western reaction of economic sanctions and military support to Ukraine and Russia now finds itself dependent on China’s military industrial complex, where less than a decade ago Russia was still a major arms supplier to China. As the author concludes, Western policymakers are now faced with dealing with a militarily aggressive Russia combined with an assertive China wanting to change the balance of power in the Western Pacific. How long this alliance will last is a definite challenge to understand and will likely be the key question for the security and stability of the world order for the next decade. If history is a guide, it could endure or collapse with equal likelihood.

The title of this book could not be more accurate. Not only has Vladimir Putin rekindled the Cold War, but it has also become significantly hotter and more dangerous since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This account how Vladimir Putin has tried to reshape Russian history and memory to serve his own purposes is at times intriguing, infuriating, but always enlightening for anyone trying to understand his worldview for Russia.

The narrative covers several aspects behind recent developments in Russian politics and foreign policy since Putin abruptly came to power at the end of the last millennium, and the author does not spare the European community, and especially the United States in making a number of critical foreign policy decisions that likely fed into the unique Russian psyche when relating to the West. The term the author uses is Zlost, a Russian word that describes a deep-seated resentment of how Russia was treated after the fall of communism, particularly during the 1990s when Russian international prestige and society crumbled and the Russian elite felt disrespected by the larger European community.

According to the author, this resentment, combined with the almost pathological Russian fear of encirclement or attack from other European countries, led to many missed opportunities to draw Russia into the Western security and economic structure due to the dismissal of what Putin and his inner circle felt were Russia’s legitimate security concerns. This is particularly true of the expansion of NATO to include many of the former Warsaw Pact countries, which the author outlines clearly became a major issue both politically and psychological for Putin, who felt the West was not only intruding into what he considered a historically Russian sphere of influence, but a direct threat to Russia’s safety. This was brought to a critical point in the mid-2000s when NATO considered the potential to add both Ukraine and Georgia to the alliance, actions that Putin considered ‘red-line’ activities that presented a major threat.

Ukraine ultimately became the focal point of Putin’s European policy and his greatest fear, as the uprising that caused the ouster of a pro-Russian Ukrainian President in 2014 not only fed fears that the West would try to instigate a similar ‘color revolution’ in Russia, but that Ukraine would now become the eastern frontier of NATO. The Russian action to seize Crimea using the ‘little green men’ in 2014, a deliberate provocation that drew only a milquetoast response from the West, and particularly the United States, led directly to Putin’s agitation of the Ukraine regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which quickly became breakaway provinces, igniting a virtual Ukrainian civil war between the Ukrainian government and the majority Russian speaking inhabitants of those regions, a war that would eventually include the covert involvement of significant numbers of Russian troops fighting as ‘volunteers.’

The author shows a fairly straight path from this intervention in 2014 to the outright invasion of Ukraine in 2022. By this time, Putin relied on an increasingly smaller group of advisors that have become virtual sycophants, and he subsequently launches an ill-fated invasion based on outdated assumptions and wishful thinking. The Russian military attacks toward the critical cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv were ill-planned and had poor logistics, expecting little resistance from the Ukrainian military or population, and subsequently suffered humiliating reverses as the tactical and logistical shortcomings of the Russian military were put on world display.

Of course, Putin’s psyche will not accept that his design for a quick invasion and regime change to a more Russophile government have failed and the war now continues into its third year with very little movement on the battlefront since the opening days of what Putin called the “Special Military Operation.”

The author concludes with a question of where the Western democracies go from here when dealing with the most malevolent strongman Russia has seen since Josef Stalin. While there are small cracks being seen in Russia society due to the high casualties and seemingly endless nature of the war, Putin is firmly in power for now. The bigger danger is what Putin might do if he feels his grip on power might be weakening. As the author notes, Putin has been indicted for war crimes so has nowhere to go, his only path forward is something he can call victory in Ukraine. The question left unanswered for now is how far Putin will go to force an acceptable peace deal that he can call victory. Based on the author’s analysis in this insightful but sometimes frightening look at the most powerful man in Russia, there might be no limits.

Continuing our theme of the rise of Russia and the strategic challenge it poses, we have a few books regarding the Russo-Ukraine War, now going on for over three years with no real end in sight.

The Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014 and the ongoing conflict between the Ukrainian government and Russian backed separatists in the eastern region of the country took most of Europe and the United States by surprise. The swift action by the Russian military using “little green men” provided confusion and deniability as Vladimir Putin instituted a new era of “gray zone” warfare—melding diplomacy, information operations, economic coercion, and military power into both a rapid victory for Russia and a tense standoff that continues over five years later.

As this volume lays out, those developments, which happened over the course of a just a few weeks for the Russian annexation of Crimea, had their genesis in the end of the Cold War nearly two decades earlier. The author begins from the breakup of the Soviet Union and the initial independence of Ukraine to consider that while open conflict may not have been inevitable, the collision of visions for Ukraine’s association with Russia and the rest of Europe aggravated the two country’s tense historical relationship.

The author steps through the next 20 years of Russo-Ukrainian foreign relations, interlacing the effect of international and domestic politics, economics, and most importantly, what he calls the “security dilemma” of relations between the two countries. This idea, the central theme to the narrative, postulates that each country had a particular and unchanging set of strategic goals assumed to be necessary for their own security and sovereignty that were fundamentally divergent to the other. The prime example of this phenomenon was the desire of Russia to maintain its great power status, particularly the hegemony of a sphere of influence over the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Belarus. This was a direct challenge to Ukraine’s desire to open up to the West and explore eventual admission to NATO and the European Union.

The role of NATO and the Balkan Wars of the 1990s receives special attention from the author as these events had an outsized influence on the overall strategic situation between Russia and Ukraine. The two wars NATO conducted against Serbia, both of which the Russians opposed but were either militarily or politically unable to stop, convinced Russia that NATO was a growing threat on their eastern frontier, which combined with NATO’s rapid expansion eastward into the former Warsaw Pact countries after 1991 made Russia consider any move by Ukraine to seek admittance into the military alliance a strategic threat.

Although the author also explains that decisions taken by individuals, particularly Vladimir Putin, also had an influence on events, the long-term environment was ideally suited for a potential clash of arms. The amount of detail the author provides is substantial and excellently annotated footnotes are provided. Some interesting details also provided by the author include the fact that Ukraine was a nuclear power in 1991, with large numbers of Soviet ICBMs retained by the Ukrainians after they declared independence. The US exerted great pressure on them to turn over their nukes for disposal, guaranteeing their sovereignty in return. Although the author does not spend a great deal of time speculating, it does make the reader wonder if events might have turned out better or worse if Ukraine had retained some nuclear capability.

In addition, although a political crisis prevented a Ukrainian response to Russia’s seizing of Crimea, the Ukrainian Army was on the verge of victory before the Russians not so covertly sent regular army forces into the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk to bolster their separatist allies and establish the current line of conflict still in force today.

Although this book is rich in detail, it is very well laid out for the average reader wanting to understand how this new frozen conflict occurred. The author pulls no punches and lays out various arguments in a straight-forward manner. Although there have been recent signs of a slight thawing of the immediate conflict, the overall strategic situation remains unchanged and this conflict will remain a challenge for Europe to manage for the foreseeable future.

Remember when Barry O mocked Mitt Romney for saying Russia was our greatest adversary in 2012? Good times, good times—-turns out Barry O was wrong about that and everything else. And of course, he allowed Russia to takeover the Crimea with very little consequences but some stern disapproval. Anyway, Putin maybe be a brutal dictator, but he has his own logic…which we should seek to understand..

What does Putin want? This question has vexed Western politicians, strategists, and military officers since the former KGB officer first became Russia’s President in 2000. Since that time, any number of Western pundits have tried to understand the motivations of the most important man in Russia, and more importantly, tried to figure out how to deal with a resurgent Russia determined to re-assert its place in the international order.

Ms. Stent, a former National Intelligence Officer for Russia, provides a timely and in-depth look at Vladimir Putin’s view of Russia’s place in the world by examining Russia’s on-going relationships with strategic allies and adversaries. Each country or regional case study begins with an in-depth historical background focused on the Communist and post-Communist eras, especially during the Russian nadir of the 1990s that most influenced Putin’s foreign policy views.

Rightly so, the author spends the most time on Russia’s relationship with NATO, Europe, and the United States. Relations are at their most tense since the end of the Cold War, and the NATO alliance members, particularly Germany and the United States, face significant challenges managing the intricate web of economic, military, and political issues presented by a Russia determined to divide Europe and separate America from the Atlantic alliance.

The chapter on Putin’s views of NATO expansion in Eastern Europe and the subsequent conflict between Russia and the Ukraine are particularly well done and thought provoking. The author seems almost empathetic with Putin’s dark interpretation of the expansion of NATO, particularly in the Baltics, which he views as surrounding Russia with hostile powers and removing the former buffer of the Warsaw Pact to an imagined attack by NATO.

Combined with Putin’s view of an immutable sphere of influence Russia is entitled to over Belarus and Ukraine, and the reader gets a much better understanding of Putin’s motivation for seizing Crimea in 2104 by a coup de main and why Russia continues to expend blood and treasure in the “frozen conflict” of Eastern Ukraine.

Beyond Europe, the author highlights how Russia continues to exert an out-sized influence in the Middle East by maintaining relations with nearly every stakeholder in the region, even between adversaries such as the Israelis and Iranians and the Syrians and Turks. The intervention of Russian airpower, special forces, and state-sponsored mercenaries to bolster the Assad regime in Syria was a watershed moment for Putin and the likely success of that mission has greatly increased Russia’s prestige in the region. Putin’s desire for Russia to have a seat at the table for any negations on the future of Syria have been realized, and the subsequent close relationship between Russia, Turkey, and Iran has caused concern in both the region and Europe, where Turkey is still a member of NATO. Whether Russia can manage its occasionally contentious relationships within this seemingly intractable region remains to be seen.

Finally, the author examines the most critical of Russia’s relationships, at least from the perspective of the U.S.—its new-found rapprochement with China. Russia’s relationship with its colossus to the south has historically been more challenging than its interactions with Europe. Even during the Cold War era, the two Communist powers came very close to nuclear war over a Siberian border dispute in the late 1960s. For the moment, this new entente is clearly focused on diminishing the influence of the United States and reshaping the current international order to be more amenable to their goals and interests. However, the author notes their latent historical mistrust, particularly now that China has a vastly more diverse and growing economy and increasingly capable military, makes this more likely a temporary alliance of convenience rather than a long-term relationship.

The book does not offer any sort of upbeat prognosis. An interesting point raised by the author is that Russia has no real allies, relying on a series of bi-lateral relationships or one-sided alliances of mutual, although often fleeting interests, since Russia desires to be the senior player in nearly all arrangements. Another critical factor is the potential successor to Putin, who is currently constitutionally term-limited to 2024. Putin’s cult of personality and extreme centralization of power, which has reached Stalinesque proportions, make the question of whether Putin will truly step down and who might actually succeed him a major riddle for Russia watchers.

In addition, no matter how well Putin manages Russia’s current military and diplomatic efforts, the continued demographic issues Russia faces, combined with an economy still dependent primarily on oil and gas exports and crippled by Western sanctions, make Russia’s current situation probably untenable in the long-term. While Russia may remain a military super-power due to its nuclear arsenal, its ability to maintain that power with a stagnate economy and internal domestic issues in a post-Putin era remains in doubt.

The strategic challenge posed by a resurgent, but fragile Russia are driven almost exclusively by Vladimir Putin and this volume offers an excellent starting point for understanding how Putin intends to take on the world.

This is another one of those books I would have probably never read without the NYJB. It took a bit to warm up to, but is a fascinating answer to the question-”Does history repeat itself?”

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Does history repeat itself? Many historians think there are certain common themes throughout history, but author Neil Howe has taken this concept to a whole other level with what could be one of the most thought provoking and controversial books of the year. Building upon nearly a quarter century of research and writing, the author has developed an extraordinary model that history does indeed repeat itself, and more remarkably, it does so with a periodicity that extends back nearly 500 years.

Mr. Howe’s thesis is built around two complimentary ideas. First, there are definable seasons of history that last from 80 to 100 years, and they are succeeded or “turned” in succession with a strong regularity, usually by some trigger event that can also be defined throughout history. He defines these seasons as High, Awakening, Unraveling, and Crisis. Moreover, functioning within and upon these seasons and turnings are four well defined generations that are both defined by these turnings and affect each successive turning as the generations ages and moves up the maturity ladder, so to speak, and assumes leadership in society during each succeeding season.

For modern readers, he uses our current definition of generations such as the GI Generation, Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, and what he terms the Homeland generation. However, he also categorizes generations in slightly different manner and weaves them together as the Hero, Artist, Prophet, and Nomad archetypes, each with the own characteristics which repeat along with the cycle of his seasons. He spends several chapters to develop his theses with numerous historical examples of the differing seasons, merging all these pieces seamlessly together into an amazing cycle that seems irrefutable.

His thesis is well developed and compelling and Mr. Howe examines all the facets of society that both influence and are affected by the cyclic turns of time and generations. The interactions of politics, economics, cultural and societal norms are compared and contrasted across time along with the key turning points that cause massive change, particularly war, epidemics, and social upheaval.

His evidence is overwhelming and the clever use of multiple tables to highlight these seasons and their cause and effect will give the reader pause. For anyone who questioned whether World War I was a catalyst for World War II or if 9/11 created the Great Recession of 2008, Mr. Howe not only shows how these pieces fit together, but he also goes back 200 years to show that although the particular events may change, the inevitable cause and effect of history becomes as regular as the tides upon the seashore. Sometimes the reader could get buried under the amazing amount of details as he makes his argument, but the effort is well worthwhile as many events in American history now seem to make a more coherent whole rather than a series of isolated actions by individuals. Although Mr. Howe acknowledges the contingency of history and free choice, his hypothesis that humans have repeatable behaviors and social interactions is hard to refute.

Of course, the author leads the reader through the first half of the book to get to the real purpose of this book, examining how the current crisis came about, how long it could last, when it might end, and how it will affect the current four generations of American society today with their vastly different upbringing, worldview, and desires. This projection is grounded in solid history and prior experience and will offer the reader both hope and trepidation as the alternatives he investigates are either grim or optimistic depending on the actions of the generations.

What does the future hold for American and the world as the Boomers age and the Millennials begin to assume the reins of societal leadership? Where does Gen X fit in and how will the current generation raised in the post-pandemic world fit into this new world? These are important questions and Mr. Howe offers some important historical lessons to show that history does indeed have its own cycle and rhythm that could offer some answers.

If you’ve ever stared at a blank page, whether paper or on-screen..this is a darn good book. Also one of those I would have probably never read except for the NYJB, but I am always seeking to improve my writing (aren’t we all…or at least those of us who grew up with Big Chief tablets and typewriters going clackity clack), and this is an excellent resource for thinking out of the box.

There are a trove of books offering guidance, many of them focused on the same mechanics and formulas most people learned in school or college, and many others focused on business writing or completing the great American novel.

Retired Professor Thomas Foster takes a completely different approach in this book, leading readers on a discovery that while writing can be a challenge, it can also be a rewarding expression of a writer’s personality and intellect. He takes a more personal, almost philosophical approach beginning with the most fundamental questions that many writing books simply skip over—Why are you writing? Who is your intended audience? What is the desired outcome you want from someone reading your written work? By beginning with the most basic question of who is your reader, he then builds on some forgotten aspects of writing that most “manuals” neglect as they try to quickly move the reader to forming the ever-important thesis statement.

While Mr. Foster does not spend a lot of time on split infinitives or discuss dangling participles, he still offers solid advice on the process of writing, and covers two absolutely critical topics— finding your voice and editing. Although these topics may not seem to have much in common, they are critical for someone trying to identify, nurture, and ultimately embrace their unique style of writing. As he elaborates, many writers adopt a universal formal or perhaps informal style of writing that does not always suit every occasion and can come across as stilted. He notes you must become comfortable with your writing persona, as he calls is, and offers excellent recommendations for beginning writers to hone this persona to suit their personality.

While he doesn’t offer a writing cookbook or checklist, any book on writing usually offers tips and pointers and Mr. Foster does not disappoint. However, his checklist is for the writer as opposed to the writing, and his insights into what he calls the Seven Deadly Sins of writing are spot on. Any writer who hasn’t encountered worry, self-doubt, overconfidence, muddiness, vagueness, poor structure, or dishonesty is a fortunate writer indeed. He steps through each of these challenges, especially worry and self-doubt, two of the harshest nemesis to new writers with very practical tips and techniques to get you over that all important first draft.

This first draft receives a great deal of attention, as it should, according to Mr. Foster. It is the constant trial of any writer to have a good beginning, a solid and well composed middle, and the often neglected by critical ending. The key takeaway of the entire book is that any first draft is a good first draft, no matter which of the seven deadly writing sins the author is facing. As he notes, you can’t edit and ultimately improve and complete what you don’t have, so just getting to a first draft is the crucial milestone as there is now something to work. One of his specific recommendations writers should definitely take to heart, is to always read your first draft aloud, even if you’re alone. The human ear can pick up on strange phrasing or illogical writing much better than just reading along with your eyes, and this is extremely helpful in the early phases of editing when working on grammar, phrasing, and the general flow of the writing. And of course, as he notes, editing is a process, not an event, so it may take several days, at least in his recommendation, to fully de-structure, refresh, tighten, and most importantly, end a good piece of writing.

There are many other ideas and concepts he discusses, steering the reader through the infuriating, but finally rewarding process of writing something that someone not only wants to read, but moves them in a way desired by the writer. While it’s not a manual or even a style guide, it is a writing guide that digs below thesis, punctuation, paragraphs, and sentence structure to offer a philosophical view of the most needed, but often dreaded art of written communication.

Yes, back in the day, our Presidents had consequential speeches and writings…

From the beginning of our Republic, American politics and society has been shaped by the writings of our Presidents. Craig Fehrman, author of the best-seller Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote has collected some of the best Presidential speeches, memoirs, and other writings to create both a valuable reference and a thought-provoking journey through American history.

The author chooses writings from nearly every President, allowing the reader to discover first-hand how the office and role of the Chief Executive has evolved. Presidents have made famous speeches throughout our history, and many of those are here, but the author also gathers many lesser known speeches and other assorted writings to provide a more intimate look at the men who have held the nation’s highest elected office.

These topics allow the reader to peruse many of the most famous American speeches and writings, offering an opportunity to read in context some of the most famous quotes in American history.

One of the more interesting collections are the campaign speeches of presidents over the centuries. The political process of choosing a president has completely changed over the 231 years since George Washington assumed the office, from the era where candidates feigned disinterest and used proxies to publish their thoughts to the campaign biographies and political position writings of recent candidates. Many presidents had an extensive body of writing before assuming office and the author includes a number of these as well to show how a president’s political views develop over the course of his personal life and public career.

The variety of chosen topics highlights the wide range of domestic and foreign policy challenges faced by the Chief Executive, from Lincoln’s first and second inaugural addresses, to Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chat on the rising threat of the Axis powers, to the historic address by Ronald Reagan at the Berlin Wall. Many of the writings also offer a behind the scenes look at presidents and the presidency with excerpts from the memoirs of Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter showing the very humble origins of even some of our most recent presidents.

Whether they are uplifting or somber, reflective or persuasive, America has been gifted with many highly intelligent and rhetorically gifted Chief Executives. This volume is both an excellent historical narrative and reference volume of an exceptional selection of the top-quality writings of that unique institution that is the American Presidency.

I know, I know, but every week it seems like my own TBR grows (whether shopping my own extensive and awesome 50 year old library (yes I have been reading history since 1975) or falling victim to the newest book on Amazon I always seem to be chasing the next shiny object, so speak.

Anyway, of the 15 (yes only 15) books I have managed to finish, although I have several more I am almost done with, these two really stood out.

I started the year off with Nick Lloyd, an absolutely marvelous young (at least to me) English historian who excellently captures the complicated and bloody fighting in Russia, the Balkans, and Italy, three areas of the war seldom ventured into by Western historians. But understanding the fighting on the Eastern Front and the destruction of three of four empires eliminated by this war is key to understanding all the trauma and change of the 20th century. I have often said that World War I gave us fascism, communism, Islamism, and nearly all the “isms” that made the 20th century the bloodiest in human history and wrought changes to Europe and the Middle East that still haunt us today.

Along these lines, I looked long and hard at Endgame 1944. But I thoroughly enjoyed reading Stalin’s War, which totally changed my perspective on World War II (to call the Russians allies was a completely farce…they were at best frenemies against a greater foe, but no allies to be sure) and this seems like a natural fit to continue this vein of history. Beginning with the end of the brutal fighting after the failed attack at Kursk in 1943, the author takes us through the vital last 18 months of the war, showing that Stalin had his own ambitions and goals that did NOT include liberating Eastern Europe the same way the Allies liberated Western Europe. And the overly naive thinking of FDR that he could somehow “manage” the Soviets when he himself was becoming increasingly feeble and unable to truly execute the burden of the Presidency (sound familiar?).

Once again, to truly understand the Cold War and everything that happened from 1945-1991 you have to understand Stalin, the Russian way of thinking, and the trauma of suffering two invasions by Germany within a generation. The Russians really don’t think the same way we do and this carries down to the present day with Putin and he warming on Ukraine.

So what’s coming…well, on my Goodreads page I have a shelf I call “bullpen”

These are the ones that are next up, some of which I may currently be reading and some I want to try and get to by the end of the summer, now that it is too hot to sit on my front porch. There are books on leadership and business that will probably pop up as I get deeper into this year of my job, but these are my goal.

I figure I need something to shoot for.

In the age of Twitter and TikTok, the notion of someone writing a long essay on the issues of the day or whatever strikes their interest may seem more than quant. Yet as this anthology clearly shows, the great American essay is a unique literary tool that has survived many transitions of communication mediums and is alive and well today.

Selected by the editor across the span of American history, these essays cover a wide array of topics—political, social, cultural, and even quirky. The editor has cast a wide net to show how the evolution of the essay as an enduring literary form.

The political essays include writings from some of America’s most famous politicians and philosophers including Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, edited for clarity and highlighting some of the most important political thoughts in American history, including the Federalist Papers and Washington’s Farewell Address.

Accompanying these essays is an excellent set of essays on the struggles of women and minority to secure full political and social equality, beginning with an article written in 1790 on the equality of the sexes, and continuing into the 19^th century as writers such as Sarah Moore Grimke began to draw parallels to the burgeoning abolitionist and feminist causes. Succeeding essays carry forward the argument raised by Margaret Fuller in 1845 on the capability of women to reason as well as men, and the essay by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, considered the greatest feminist thinker of the 19^th century on the extreme individualism of independent solitude. Taken together, all of these essays show the aggregate thinking of a rising feminist wave in American society that eventually led to the 19^th Amendment granting women the right to vote.

Concurrent with these essays is another progression of essays outlining the struggles to end slavery and grant civil rights to all Americans, beginning with Frederick Douglass in 1848 with “To My Old Master, Thomas Auld.” The editor contrasts that with the more firebrand essay “Comparative Condition of the Colored People of the United States” by Martin R. Delany, a contemporary of Douglass, who harbored more critical and pessimistic views of racial prejudice in the United States. In the post-Civil War and civil rights era, the essays by W.E.B. DuBois and Ralph Ellison cover the continued struggle to achieve not only political, but economic and societal equality into the 20^th century.

The cultural essays include some remarkable sermons, beginning with Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” one of the most famous sermons preached in America and an exemplar of the First Great Awakening religious movement in America. A later piece by Dr. Martin Luther King, “Beyond Vietnam,” shows King’s powerful rhetoric in addressing the controversial war with the contemporary civil rights movement and urban turmoil.

In addition, the editor includes several essays simply to point out the more esoteric aspects of American culture and thought, ranging from H.L Mencken, one of America’s great literary curmudgeons, to incisive modern feminists such as Susan Sontag and Nora Ephron.

And, of course, no volume considering the American essay would be complete without a few essays on the subject of writing essays, and the literary art in general. Wonderful writing by Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Gertrude Stein, and Guy Davenport examine the art of writing, the evolution and purpose of the essay, and even the joy of reading in general, a past time that has certainly changed at least as much as writing in the age of the internet and social media.

With the ongoing transition from magazines to the internet the essay has also transformed, yet well written and insightful pieces still can generate commentary among the public and bring notoriety to the author. This is a marvelous volume that introduces the reader to the wide variety of American writing and literary thought of the last two centuries of our nation’s history.

This is another one of those books that I would never have read if not for the NYJB. I am not usually a biography reader…but there are a few authors I like…Ron Chernow is one and Andrew Roberts is another that I will read biographies they pen. AND, since it’s almost July 4…I thought this review was rather timely….

George III has been the king Americans love to loath over the centuries. Whether he has been pilloried in the Declaration of Independence as a tyrant or depicted on Broadway as a singing despot, Americans have been taught for over 200 years to regard King George III as the man who lost America by being a dictator. But in this remarkable revisionist volume, Andrew Roberts, noted biographer of Winston Churchill and Napoleon, presents a completely different picture of the last king of America. Granted recent access to the royal collection of Hanoverian papers by Queen Elizabeth II, over 85% of which were previously unpublished, Mr. Roberts presents a much subtler and more sympathetic picture of a monarch that was, in fact, much more educated and politically astute than previously understood.

To say George III had a challenging upbringing would be an understatement. Caught up in a contentious royal family that was trying to fit into two worlds between their German heritage and British upbringing, George III watched the family feud between his father and grandfather during his childhood, experience early loss when his father, the heir to the throne, die at a fairly young age, leaving George to navigate a rocky relationship with his grandfather, King George II, before ascending the throne as a very young man. George would be considered forward thinking for his time, having a keen interest in the arts, music, and sciences and Mr. Roberts shows that far from being the dullard portrayed by even some English historians, George had a very incisive mind and considered thoughtfully many of the burgeoning political theories of the day. He also had a considerable independent streak, conducting his own search for a suitable wife when he came of age, seeking someone he considered compatible instead of merely making a customary political marriage. His choice of a wife was acceptable to the English nobility and political powers, if somewhat uninspiring, although Roberts notes they did have a happy and successful marriage, producing no less than 15 children.

Not unexpectedly, the coming of the political crisis, war, and loss of the American colonies dominates most of the book, and Mr. Roberts offers a unique British perspective that may surprise many American readers. As many historians have noted, the successful capture of Canada and end of the French footprint in North America removed the major military threat to the colonies. Many British politicians at the time had a premonition that the security provided by the victory in the French and Indian War would loosen colonial ties, and their prediction indeed came to pass. As one of the many missed opportunities to avoid the eventual break with England, it’s notable that neither George III nor any of his senior ministers ever visited the colonies in the 1760s to become acquainted with the growing political and economic independence of their largest trading and security partner. The persistent theory among the English ruling class that only a small minority of malcontents was stirring up trouble was, as the author notes, the biggest English foreign policy blunder until appeasement in the 1930s.

As England attempted to alleviate their crushing debt incurred during the war by passing more direct taxes on the colonies, it was almost inevitable that the growing autonomy and confidence of the colonists would conflict with the desire of England to maintain the status quo and reassert Parliamentary authority. But as Mr. Roberts notes, at key points in the burgeoning crisis, King George and his ministers were unfortunately embroiled in political infighting that diverted their attention at critical junctures. Combined with the unavoidable tyranny of distance and communication of the early 18^th century, and the crisis quickly became a full-blown rebellion.

However, as the author notes, even when the colonies were declared in rebellion, the English never truly attempted to suppress the colonies with the same violence and cruelty shown to the various Jacobite rebellions during the mid-1700s. There were no large-scale massacres or burning of cities and many of the British commanders attempted an overly conciliatory tone toward the colonists. Although there were several opportunities where the British might have prevailed, the eventual independence of America came as a shock to the entire British political establishment.

However, George maintained the thrown for almost another four decades, seeing Britain through the upheavals of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and numerous other crises during his remaining life. Unfortunately, George’s poorly treated mental health issues, now generally believed to be a form of manic depression, combined with the gradual loss of his eyesight, led to his increasing isolation before his death in 1820 as the third-longest reigning monarch in English history.

Mr. Roberts paints a much different picture of America’s last king than that which our Founders portrayed. Although he certainly sought to maintain the political status quo and the power of his throne, he was not quite the tyrannical despot depicted in colonial propaganda and political tomes. This volume provides a more nuanced picture of an almost tragic figure trying to bridge the old and new political order between representative democracy and the oligarchy of the English nobility. Although he was destined to be the King who lost America, he was a more noble and enlightened leader than generally understood at the time who tried to bridge an impossible chasm between the Old and New World.

This battle has fascinated students of the Civil War and military history for decades and created an entire cottage industry of hundreds of books and a magnificent movie.

If you’ve never seen this movie it is excellent. It is a bit long (my wife reminds me of that constantly) but shot on the battlefield so it is very realistic.

Now, if you’re talking best books on Gettysburg (and you know you want to) here are my favorite. As always there are SO many, but these have clearly stood the test of time.

This is one of the finest works of historical fiction ever written. Absolutely magnificent. His son wrote sequels that cover the rest of the Civil War that are awesome as well.

Now, if you just want to read ONE volume on the battle, this is my favorite.

Stephen Sears is one of my favorite Civil War historians and he was written a series of books on the major battles in the Eastern Theater.

Now if you have a DEEP interest in this subject, I recommend these three volumes

I inherited my father-in-law’s copy of the Second Day with his notes written in the margins—he loved to do that to his books. They are awesome and VERY in-depth.

Now, one of the newest volumes I am still reading takes a very different look at the battle.

So a lot of books say they are offering a “new look” at the battle, but this one really delivers. Far from an “accidental” battle, the author makes a compelling case, so far at least, that the armies clashing at Gettysburg was inevitable once they crossed into Pennsylvania. Of course it is well known to anyone who has studied the battle that Gettysburg was a major crossroads, but, as the author relates, armies required a great deal of water, forage and a railhead to be supplied and Gettysburg met several of these requirements as well, making a clash probable as both sides took to the same roads and needed access to the same water sources. It has really been fascinating so far.

Gettysburg is very crowded but a lot of fun to be at during this weekend. They always do it up big and there have been some major renovations to the park—especially to Little Round Top. I already have a trip planned for later this summer….my annual pilgrimage.

So this is a good example of a book I would probably have never read except for the New York Journal of Books. But it was certainly thought provoking…….

What makes a successful political revolution? Are revolutions driven from the top down or bottom up? Why do some revolutions seem to produce a more detrimental political system than the one they replaced? These are some of the questions answered in this new volume that examines the political and social revolutions that happened across the Atlantic on three continents from 1760-1825. The author does not examine revolutions from a military or political theory perspective, although these are mentioned in passing, but as cultural, societal, and class struggles to break free of the hierarchical and caste systems in which they began.

This volume introduces a completely different way of examining familiar events such as the American and French Revolutions while featuring less well known events such as the revolutions against the Spanish Empire in Latin American. All of the case studies consider the process and outcome of the organization of political groups, often coming from different strata of society and how these groups either cooperated or competed for political power and leadership of the revolutionary movement. A familiar example of this is the beginning of the American Revolution where very wealthy colonists like John Hancock and Samuel Adams conducted their resistance against what they considered unfair British taxation very differently than many of the groups styled as the Sons Of Liberty composed of working class and tradesmen. Although these groups had similar motives for their resistance, they used completely different means to express their resistance and often competed for political and social power of the burgeoning ‘Patriot’ movement.

Following on his view of political organizing and movements happening within the changing, but not completely replaced old political and social order, the author makes a compelling case that even within a Revolutionary cause, there remains, at least in what he terms the first generation of the movement, a lingering remnant of the social and economic hierarchy that created the cause. Many of the political elite of the new American nation eventually advocated for the creation of a strong central government under a new Constitution in the decades after independence that seemed to cement some of the old order of direct taxation of the people, a national legislative body, and an overriding court system.

By expanding the scope of his volume to include Latin America and other revolutions such as the slave revolt on the island of Santo Domingo the author not only provides a look at similar revolutionary efforts, some successful and others that were brutally repressed, he provides an entirely new cast of reformers, some of them women who wielded a significant amount of political power as they tried to influence societal change showing that revolutionary movements of the era were not an exclusive male domain.

Of course, the darker side of these revolutionary movements is examined as well, including the retention of slavery in America and the devolution of the French Revolution into chaos, terror, and eventually a consolidation of power under Napoleon. The Napoleonic Era introduced its own changes to the political, social, and cultural landscape of Europe. The sweeping away of much of the old French ruling hierarchy with the demise of Louis XVI began the transformation of not only France, but eventually Europe into a more nationalistic and homogenous setting leading to the brief reemergence of the monarchy in France.

The author then develops his thesis further by examining the second generation of revolutionaries, those politicians raised in the changed political landscape that either reinforce the political and social effect of change or attempt to curtail those changes to their own advantage. In the United States, the successors to the Founders, while extending the idea of republicanism and social mobility for some, were forced to confront the enduring effects of slavery and its pernicious influence on American politics amid the growing divide between north and south on the extension and protection of slavery. Similar issues are explored in Latin America as the second generation of revolutions take place, now led by military leaders such as Simon Bolivar that show the continued link between military action and political revolution.

The author then concludes with an assessment of the historiography of ‘revolutionary studies’ through the 20^thcentury, positing earlier interpretation of the effectiveness of political revolutions on long term societal and cultural change were somewhat incomplete as they did not always account for how these same revolutions opened up new divides between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ that arose from the gradual dissolution of the old order. But what became common to all of the situations examined by the author was the need for new political organizing across the social landscape to make change enduring, even if it was imperfect. This is an important and sweeping study of this critical period of political change that shows revolution was not something confined to Europe and the new United States, but a slow process that changed the political landscape of much of the Atlantic Ocean region.

Remember when we considered AI to be far out there science fiction? When the HAL9000 was considered sophisticated? Yea, those were the days.

It’s actually worse than you think. If you follow me on Instagram, you know I have pontificated about how this new generation can’t read a book, can’t think for themselves, and are losing the ability to critically think. Again, it’s worse than you think.

I just read this article.

ChatGPT is getting smarter, but excessive use could destroy our brains, study warns

I mean we all have read about “war” going on between students and professors over essays where the students basically turn in a ChatGPT essay as professors use tools to try and find it. The idea of learning for the sake of learning has clearly died, and now it’s all about the credentials. But what does this mean in the long term? I mean clearly a college education is now becoming essentially meaningless since everyone basically cheats their way through college.

Well, to me it’s scary because as an employer I need people who can digest information, think on their feet, and problem solve, often with conflicting or incomplete information. Clearly as an entire generation grows up with the HAL9000, this is not going to happen. Not to mention the whole discussion of “misinformation” and online discussion.

And don’t forget that we’re raising an entire generation of people who don’t or CAN’T read . Phonics was mostly killed off long ago, so this isn’t surprising, but it is scary.

The warning about AI-induced brain atrophy comes — somewhat frighteningly — as the technology is becoming more “intelligent.”

Wow…just wow….I mean we already have an entire generation that literally can’t take to each other or hold a prolonged conversation, not to mention what it’s doing other than the so-called “dating scene.” It’s almost like human interaction is something to be avoided unless it’s through an avatar because human relationships are messy.

But then again, so is thinking for yourself.

This situation is just going to get worse.