Atkinson gets a major black mark from its factually wrong description on Amazon. Two of my Great Uncles served in the Western Desert (one died in Greecehttp://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?casualty=2106132). I’m not interested in a book that says “1942 and 1943 [t]hat first year of the Allied war…” I’d suggest Bierman and Smith’s Alamein for a better view of the whole Western Desert campaign.
1491 and 1493 sounds good though.
I remember seeing a documentary on Gericault and his masterpiece, (it may have been one of Simon Schama’s). I found it interesting, but doubt whether it would sustain a whole book for me.
Undaunted Courage also sounds good. I like tales of exploration.
I’ll box it so that you can decide whether to see the name or not; the book holds back from the positive identification of the murder victim for a while as it follows the first days of the case, much like the investigation itself, so that there’s a “reveal” around chapter 3. But anyway, the Murder of the Century was a Turkish bath masseur named William Guldensuppe, murdered by his ex-girlfriend and her live-in lover. The ex, Augusta Nack, apparently wasn’t a very comely woman, but while shacking up with these two, she was still technically married to another man, so she must have been quite the charmer. She and her new lover lured Guldensuppe to a rented house, shot him, cut him up, and scattered his parts in various locations; his head, supposedly encased in plaster and dropped in the East River, was never found.
Hah, I can’t resist spoilers! It sounds like I’d enjoy it though so on to the list it goes. I may have my non-fiction reading for 2012 all planned out in no time!
If you like exploration, try “White Nile” and “Blue Nile”, particularly the former, by Alan Moorehead. Outstanding narrative of the British exploration of the Nile and the African interior.
I agree. I thought it was so good, when I finished it, I immediately read it again. I can’t say that I’ve ever done that with any other book but there was just something about UC that was so compelling.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick: This book details the experiences of a handful of North Korean defectors to illustrate what life is like for the people living there.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson: Similar in structure to the North Korea book, this one uses the story of three black Americans who migrated from the south to the north to in the first half of the 20th century to illustrate the experiences of the huge wave of black Americans who made a similar migration during that time.
The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop by Dan Charnas: Very interesting for hip-hop fans, but probably more so to non-fans in explaining how rap music went from a dismissible ghetto fad to being a huge business
Jon Krakauer has only written a few books, but they’re all awesome.
Into the Wild was made into a pretty good film, but Krakauer’s book is much more real-life and less storybook. In fact, all of his books are great for their wealth of evidence, excerpts from primary sources, interviews, and usually an account of the author’s following in the footsteps of his subjects. Except for Into Thin Air, which is a first hand account of the fatal 1996 Mt Everest disaster.
Under the Banner of Heaven and Where Men Win Glory were more all-encompassing, looking at almost the entire subjects of religion and war through the window of a couple of fundamentalist Mormon murderers and a football player-turned Army Ranger, respectively. I haven’t read Eiger Dreams which is a collection of his essays, mostly from Outside magazine, but I plan to soon.
Your quote is accurate. While Britain was engaged in North Africa as early as 1940, the Allied Command under Ike (which is what these books are about), and the US forces he commanded, did not arrive on the scene until 1942. The books acknowledge the fighting that had gone on prior to US involvement.
Except that isn’t what the sentence says, it says the Allied War, not the “Allied command under Eisenhower.” And thus minimises everything else up to that point. I’m really not interested in any books about how the USA won World War II pretty much by itself. It’s not only untrue, it’s frankly insulting to the rest of us.
I’ve read Krakeur’s magazine article that was extended into Into Thin Air. I’ve seen Into the Wild which I enjoyed but don’t feel any need to learn more about. If you haven’t seen Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man about a similar person you really should.
Both the other two look interesting. I’ve been following the Pat Tillman case on the internet, and a good book on the whole affair sounds great. And I’m oddly fascinated by fringe sects (we’ve had a couple of really interesting ones in New Zealand), so Under the Banner of Heaven sounds promising.
** Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World** by Richard Rhodes.
my dad’s reading this & say’s it’s good. I know you said no celebrity bios but this seems different. Following is from the amazon description:
*What do Hedy Lamarr, avant-garde composer George Antheil, and your cell phone have in common? The answer is spread-spectrum radio: a revolutionary invention based on the rapid switching of communications signals among a spread of different frequencies. Without this technology, we would not have the digital comforts that we take for granted today.
Only a writer of Richard Rhodes’s caliber could do justice to this remarkable story. Unhappily married to a Nazi arms dealer, Lamarr fled to America at the start of World War II; she brought with her not only her theatrical talent but also a gift for technical innovation. An introduction to Antheil at a Hollywood dinner table culminated in a U.S. patent for a jam- proof radio guidance system for torpedoes—the unlikely duo’s gift to the U.S. war effort.
What other book brings together 1920s Paris, player pianos, Nazi weaponry, and digital wireless into one satisfying whole? In its juxtaposition of Hollywood glamour with the reality of a brutal war, Hedy’s Folly is a riveting book about unlikely amateur inventors collaborating to change the world.*
Haven’t read this yet but as a EE, I’m familiar with her involvement in the invention of frequency hopping systems and can say that it’s a fascinating story. I remember her being profiled in IEEE Transactions on Communications a while back.
I agree and in a similar vein, I can also recommend Sebastian Junger, particularly The Perfect Storm, War and Restrepo. All of them were gripping and informative.
Without having read the book, you’re sure assuming a lot about it. Who do you consider participated in the “Allied War”? The book airs all the dirty laundry about poor decision making and bad planning on all sides of the fence. It’s a miracle that the Allies won the damn thing; but of course, if you prefer Amazon reviews to, you know, actually reading the book for yourself, then by all means remain ignorant of the facts.